The Cato Institute's Sallie James has an eye-popping post on Cato's Liberty blog:
Well, here’s an interesting, if three-weeks-old, story. Apparently the North Dakota Farm Bureau’s annual convention recently passed a policy calling for the elimination of all agricultural programs. Reading between the lines of the original press release indicates that the call was part of a broad political stance taken by the NDFB to move away from government intervention in many areas of the economy, apart from farm programs, including cap-and-trade and health care:
Reading between the lines or not, the first line of the release clearly states:
In a vote for less government intrusion in our lives, delegates to the North Dakota Farm Bureau annual convention passed policy stating that all government agricultural program payments should be eliminated [EWG emphasis].
Ruh-roh. I wonder what the National Farm Bureau mothership thinks about a member organization in a big agriculture state denouncing billions in farm subsidies. One of the NFB's primary missions is to passionately defend the payments that are concentrated in the hands of largest and wealthiest farm operations. North Dakota ranks 8th in the nation in total taxpayer funded subsidies received, raking in $8.34 billion in subsidies from 1995-2008, and $484,307,998 in 2008 alone.
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