Catfish oversight, weather radios and a Christmas tree tax: Meet the pork-filled $956 BILLION Farm Bill

Monday, February 10, 2014
By Paul Martin

The massive five-years agriculture spending plan, signed Friday by President Obama, includes a $3 million plan for Christmas tree taxes
Most of the bill covers food stamps, with the number of benefit recipients doubling since Obama took office
The U.S. will spend $1 billion per year loaning money to sugar barons so they can keep prices stable and avoid overseas competition
Another $100 million will go to study how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup
$1 million will buy weather radios for rural Americans, despite plunging hundreds of weather apps for smartphones and plunging access rates

By DAVID MARTOSKO
DailyMailUK
7 February 2014

The federal government pays for a $15 million ‘wool trust fund,’ runs a $170 million program to protect catfish growers from overseas competition, sets aside $3 million to promote Christmas trees, funds another $2 million to help farmers sell more sheep, and plunks down $100 million researching how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup.

And that spending is just three one-hundredths of one per cent of the Farm Bill that President Barack Obama signed Friday in Michigan.

Liberal and conservative watchdogs alike are hopping mad at what they say are pork-barrel projects included in the five-year agriculture spending law as home-state perks to lawmakers that are unneeded or redundant.

There’s a new 15-cent levy on every live-cut Christmas tree, a proposal that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had blocked but will now be beyond his control. Tree growers will put the money into a fund for ‘industry-funded promotion, research, and information program[s],’ but the cost will inevitably be passed on to consumers.

The Farm Bill also includes $1 million in grant money to buy weather radios, despite the ubiquity of weather.com and the plummeting costs of both Internet service and smartphones.
And it continues a $200 million ‘market access’ program that has paid companies like Fruit of the Loom and McDonalds to run commercials.
One grant from that fund even funded a reality TV show in India aimed at promoting cotton. Another paid Welch’s $844,000 to hawk grape juice outside the U.S.

The Rest…HERE

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