Apr 17
Holy drought aid, Batman!
By Denise Ross
I’m putting together my weekly newspaper column (Mitchell, Spearfish, RC Weekly) about the Farm Bill, and more specifically about the would-be Disaster Title (guaranteed drought aid) that Sen. John Thune is working hard to get passed.
Writing a guarantee of those disaster payments into the Farm Bill isn’t terribly popular outside of a few enclaves. This map from the Environmental Working Group might explain why.
This map shows where disaster checks are sent almost as a matter of course - like every other year. It’s us here in SD and ND in a dramatic fashion. And now I have the Gear Daddies song African Killer Bees Are Coming running through my head. (If you squint, you can see Frank Kloucek’s dot on the map.)
The disasters waiting to happen (but not waiting long) are the Dakotas, west Texas, Oklahoma, to a slightly lesser extent Georgia and Alabama and then something’s going on in northern Arkansas.
The Environmental Working Group, those folks who published each farmer’s subsidy payments online, says it’s hardly reasonable to call such federal payments “emergencies.”
This small minority of farmers, located in a handful of states, would be the chief beneficiaries of a permanent trust fund for disaster aid because they would be applying for it almost every year.
Thoughts?
2 Comments so far
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Wait a minute. Aren’t all those areas noted on the map overwhelmingly conservative? Aren’t those the voters who insist that government is too big and should just stay out of their lives? That the only legitimate role of the federal government is to provide for the national defense? That the federal government should be shrunk until you can drown it in a bathtub? And you’re telling me those same people are cashing government checks about every year for a predictable event (drought)? Wow.
OK, enough with the snark. I’m a farm kid myself. I understand. At least I’m honest enough to be a registered Democrat, because I can acknowledge that the government has a role to play in helping people improve their lives, not just in giving ME a check while saying screw you to everyone else.
It’s cool how the heavy concentration of black dots pretty much stays within the borders of north and south dakota and doesn’t spill over much into our neighboring states. Disasters apparently recognize state boundaries. Could it be because Gov. Rounds declares part of the state a disaster area every year?
Unfortunately, the federal government (read this as you and me taxpayers) cannot afford to send disaster checks every year for predictable events. People need to do their own planning for what to do when we don’t get enough rain, or when we get too much rain and something floods, or when a tornado hits. There is generally insurance available for such things. The same is true for those who build their homes in a flood plain or along a coast that is struck by hurricanes every year, or in an earthquake zone. The government is not there to bail people out who have made a decision not to buy insurance or not to buy enough insurance. Certainly, the government is not there to bail people out more than once for the same problem (for instance when someone’s home floods and they rebuild in the same place and it floods again).
And this comment comes from a Democrat.