http://standardspeaker.com/opinion/sugar-controls-leave-bad-taste-1.2339068
Can’t read it without subscribing.
I don’t subscribe and can read it - anyway
For a study in how not to govern, there probably is no better example than the farm bill that Congress cobbles together every five years. It is a collection of special-interest favors to massive agricultural interests at the expense of American taxpayers and consumers. And none of those fingers in the Treasury are stickier than those of the heavily subsidized sugar industry.
Federal policy provides a web of price controls, tariffs and supply restrictions to protect a handful of Southern sugar cane and Midwest sugar beet growers from market competition. For just about everyone except those few producers, the results are economically disastrous.
A host of U.S. candy producers have been driven offshore not by high labor costs but by the artificially high price of sugar. Major producers have moved to Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and Thailand. According to the U.S. International Trade Administration, the sugar program kills three manufacturing jobs for every sugar-growing job it protects.
Even though the program is not supposed to impose any direct costs on the government, the Congressional Research Service says it costs about $100 million a year to maintain. And due to price guarantees, the government was forced to pay $280 million in 2013 for sugar when it fell below the target price, and resell it at a loss.
Special-interest governing is a bipartisan game. But due to deeply polarized politics, there is a chance to kill the sugar program. Republicans want the farm bill to include draconian work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps. Democrats won’t vote for that, and without some Democratic votes, Republicans won’t have enough votes to overcome sugar program opposition from fiscal conservatives.
This blatant corporate welfare should die on its own lack of merit. But if it takes a perverse manifestation of partisan politics to end the program, that’s sweet enough.
Yup. All of it should die. ALL. OF. IT.
Incognito window.
I don’t use that and it works for me
Tried it. Still couldn’t open it. They’re onto me…
turn off java script
I just tried it too, with incognito and w/o it won’t let me in, I keep getting the same sign in pop up.
Maybe they have something against the West Coast.