Joe Miller acknowledges receiving farm subsidies

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Anchorage Daily News


U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, who in a recent Project Vote Smart survey opposed federal spending on agriculture, is acknowledging receiving farm subsidies during the 1990’s from land that he owned in Kansas.

Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto said Miller, who is from Kansas, purchased the farmland in 1990 when he was in the Army and essentially rented it out to be farmed, finally selling the last of the 140 acres that was being farmed in 1998.

Miller moved to Alaska in 1994.

DeSoto’s acknowledgment follows the Alaska Dispatch, based on a Freedom of Information Act request with the USDA, reporting that Miller received more than $7,000 in federal farm subsidies for the Kansas land over a seven year period. The USDA has yet to fulfill a FOIA request made by the Daily News for documents on Miller’s farm subsidies but DeSoto said he does not believe that the subsidies received would have amounted to much more than the reported $7,235.



Read more: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/153228

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SOCIALIST!

[dennis4868]

1. why is this suprising?

Repubs are for government when they get the money.....but screw everyone else....

[Blue_Tires]

3. +1000

My area is full of hardcore anti-tax, freedom-loving, big-gummitt-hating, free market worshipers whose entire livelihood is dependent on scamming the Pentagon for military/intelligence contracts...

[kenny blankenship]

2. Priceless!

Hey Joe, tell me where in the Constitution does it say you get subsidies for planting/not planting crops?

Give that money back, Joe!

[xchrom]

4. hmmm -- quelle surprise. nt

[No Elephants]

5. In other news, Republicans collect unemployment, OASDI and government pensions, and

avail themselves of the benefits of Medicare and any other government benefits on which they can get their hands.

Hypocrisy is one of their strong suits.

[onehandle]

6. Just another teabagging grifter. nt

[Alcibiades]

7. Hypocrite.

He won't even change his position and say that he was wrong. Indeed, he lets his spokesman speak for him:

"DeSoto said that it was standard practice for farmers to receive the subsidies in Kansas and that the nation was in a much better financial situation at the time that Miller received the funds.

“This was back in the 90’s, the situation the country was in was far different than now,” he said."

So let's see, when the economy is flush, people ought to accept help from the government, but eschew it when times are tough? That's exactly backwards. Miller has come out against federal agricultural spending. According to his own ideology, if he were articulate enough to describe his beliefs, such subsidies are a market-distorting force in the economy.

The fact is that these programs were conceived in the Great Depression, and continued because we wanted farmers to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle, and not to have to live like peasants on their own land. They make our farm products competitive internationally, and are one of the few things the government has really done to help our balance of trade problem.

[Bravo Zulu]

8. Anti-socialist Bachmann got $250K in federal farm subsidies,too!

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — so fond of accusing the Obama administration of foisting socialism on an unwilling America — has apparently been the recipient of about a quarter of million bucks in government handouts.

Liberal site Truthdig links to an Environmental Working Group analysis of federal agricultural subsidies and found that the Bachmann family farm, managed by her father-in-law until his recent death, received $251,000 in farm payments between 1995 and 2006.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate her stake in the Wisconsin farm is worth up to $250,000. Her income from the farm has grown from $2,000 a year a few years back to as much as $50,000 for 2008.

Truthdig calls her a "Welfare Queen":

Bachmann's family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann's recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized — or "socialized" — businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls.

Bachmann isn't alone in her selective socialism: EWG found that the top four districts receiving the largest ag payments are represented by conservative Republicans.

1. 3rd district of Nebraska (Rep. Adrian Smith - Republican) - $1,736,923,011 in subsidies go to 51,702 recipients.

2. 1st district of Kansas (Rep. Jerry Moran - Republican) - $1,315,979,151 in subsidies go to 75,802 recipients.

3. 4th district of Iowa (Rep. Tom Latham - Republican) - $1,288,622,912 in subsidies go to 35,696 recipients.

4. 9th district of Texas (Rep. Randy Neugebauer - Republican) - $1,227,192,312 in subsidies go to 21,290 recipients.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/1209/Antisocialist_Bachmann_got_250k_in_federal_farm_subsidies.html

[benddem]

9. Is he going to

give back the money for his West Point free education, paid for by us?

[freebrew]

11. If he made it through...

let him have it. It's not much of a real education, unless you want to start a war.

[SoapBox]

10. BUT, it simply doesn't matter to the RushThugs and T.HaterBaggerCircusClowns...

As Ed Schultz said a couple weeks ago, all that matters is that he
has an "R" next to his name. The "R" lemming voters don't give a crap about anything else.

Oh ya...and that he is a FRACK'N CRAZY LOON.

[alp227]

12. So how'd a non-subsidised farm work?

You see, that's the futility of the whole Tea Party "limited government" message. Sometimes, you just plain NEED government to make things work.

[librechik]

13. HAH!! After denying it for days...

I knew he was full of shit on that. How can you live in Alaska and hate "socialism?" The whole state
would die without it.

[GreenTea]

14. Receiving Government Corporate Subsidies is Corporate Welfare - Yet the republicans always trash

and point their fingers at government social programs, the rich and corporations use much larger Federal Government social programs in comparison to what the poor and the unemployed need and receive, comparatively infinitesimal amount of government subsidies (grants) welfare than the rich and their corporations receive from the government.

While the same multi-million and billion dollar corporations, corporate farms and oil corporations, etc. who make outrages quarterly profits, yet still demand & receive deficit raising millions and billions of dollars in Federal Government subsidies - Corporate Welfare from OUR tax dollars!!

[atreides1]

15. So, What we have here is....

.....I got mine, the rest of you can go f**k off!

[Tx4obama]

16. Joe Miller Admits Reaping Federal Farm Subsidies Despite Railing Against Taking Government Funds

Source: AP (via HuffPo)

JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, who believes the federal government is on the brink of bankruptcy and has called for an end to the "welfare state," received federal farm subsidies for land that the fiscal conservative owned in Kansas in the 1990s.

The acknowledgment by the Miller campaign that he accepted farm subsidies follows a story by the Alaska Dispatch, which discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that he got $7,235 in subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1991-97.

It drew a sharp response from critics, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which headlined a news release: "Extremist Joe Miller also a hypocrite."

A blog last week reported that Miller, an attorney, received subsidies for land in Alaska; the campaign called that a "manufactured story from a Democratic blog."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/joe-miller-admits-reaping_n_733717.html

[Journeyman]

17. And there are those who reap even when they don't sow. . .

[SpiralHawk]

18. This is sooooo Republicon. They are ALL hypocrites

Wake up America. The Republicon Hypocrite Party is fixing to Shock & Awe you even more...

[valerief]

19. On the one hand there's Joe the Plumber. On the other, there's Welfare Joe. nt

[Vinca]

20. It's not considered socialism when they get the dough.