Okay, maybe you don’t. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion about columnists, but Froma Harrop is one of the best voices out there calling for the application of a little common sense in the business of government.
One of her recent columns dealt with government subsidies, and she took aim at Dairy Management, a marketing company that is partly funded by the Agriculture Department. Her research revealed that the former CEO of Domino’s received over $4 million in compensation last year for his efforts to help the dairy market by using more cheese on the pizzas.
On the other side of the Agriculture Department coin is the current effort to fight obesity. Froma found it ironic that “one arm of the Agriculture Department is promoting sales of cheese as another urges the public to eat less of it for health reasons. Your tax dollars at work fighting other tax dollars.”
She points out, as have many other columnists, that the problem of obesity is not so much connected to what we eat as it is to the fact that we don’t get enough exercise.
While Dairy Management does get most of its revenue from fees paid by the industry, the taxpayers still put millions into the enterprise. Froma suggests that the dairy businesses run their own trade association and pay for it. Take it out from under the auspices of the government.
Hear, hear. And what about getting rid of subsidies altogether? Folks in Washington say they want to cut the deficit this year. Ending this feeding out of the government pantry would be a good beginning.
What do you think? Should we end subsidies?
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Aw, Carol… Thanks. Will go check it out.
I haven’t really looked into it, but I do feel that there might be some who need the subsidies. But there are probably fifty times as many who don’t. To me, it’s sort of like stopping the earmarks for politicians. Stop them!
Helen, the smaller independent farmers that I know personally don’t like the subsidy as they would rather grow crops and sell them the way it was done 100 years ago. Commodities trading and government interference has only seemed to benefit the corporate farmers who have lobbyists in Washington.