I know it’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things, but I think this article in the Washington Post is indicative of what’s wrong with our government these days.  It’s all about farm subsidies being paid to people who live in sub-divisions built on old farmland.  Here’s an excerpt:

Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

"I don’t agree with the government’s policy," said Matthews, who wanted to give the money back but was told it would just go to other landowners. "They give all of this money to landowners who don’t even farm, while real farmers can’t afford to get started. It’s wrong."

The checks to Matthews and other landowners were intended 10 years ago as a first step toward eventually eliminating costly, decades-old farm subsidies. Instead, the payments have grown into an even larger subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers.

Most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, but they are under no obligation to grow the crop being subsidized. They can switch to a different crop or raise cattle or even grow a stand of timber — and still get the government payments. The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards.

The payments now account for nearly half of the nation’s expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; both political parties bear responsibility for building our "nanny government" but the Republicans have been getting away with pointing the finger at the Democrats for their support of entitlement programs like welfare.  I’d love to see someone call the Republicans on their support of corporate subsidies like this and watch them squirm.  It kills me that the Republicans’ staunchest supporters are the same people who are being screwed by Republican economic policies, and it kills me even more that the Democrats are so ineffective that they can’t get that point across to the electorate.  Helps explain why I’m neither!