{"id":14793,"date":"2012-06-26T13:19:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T17:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=14793"},"modified":"2012-06-26T16:10:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T20:10:52","slug":"giving-mccain-his-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14793\/giving-mccain-his-due\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving McCain His Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, here on the blog<\/a>, I went to town on Senator John McCain for what I viewed as his asinine, borderline incoherent rants about Citizens United<\/em> specifically and money in politics generally. At the time, I noted offhandedly that while McCain has always been horrible on the issue of political free speech he has much to recommend him in other areas. Happily, only a week later, he’s in the news for one such virtue : his opposition to wasteful spending.<\/p>\n

McCain was on the warpath against the waste in the Senate’s version of a farm bill passed late last week, going so far as to produce a top 10 list for Twitter of the most egregious proposed expenditures. The items:<\/p>\n

#1 – Creates new USDA office to inspect catfish. FDA already inspects catfish, so this one\u2019s a real bottom-feeder.<\/p>\n

#2 – $200 mil Market Access Program promoting brands overseas. Example: Holding “liquor mixology demonstrations” in Russia.<\/p>\n

#3 – $25 million to study health benefits of peas, lentils and garbanzo beans. Pretty sure they\u2019re healthy.<\/p>\n

#4 – Subsidies for mohair (AKA goat wool), which have cost taxpayers $20 million+ since 1954<\/p>\n

#5 – New subsidy for popcorn producers. Yes, popcorn subsidies – after popcorn prices rose 40% in recent yrs.<\/p>\n

#6 – $10 million to establish new USDA program to eradicate feral pigs. Talk about pork!<\/p>\n

#7 – $15 million to establish a new grant program to \u201cimprove\u201d the U.S. sheep industry. A ba-a-a-a-a-a-d idea.<\/p>\n

#8 – $700 million for \u201cAg and Food Research Initiative\u201d funding grants to research pine trees in FL & study moth pheromones<\/p>\n

#9 – $40 million in grants from USDA to states to encourage private land owners to use land for bird watching or hunting<\/p>\n

#10 – $200 million for \u201cValue Added Grant Program\u201d often used to give grants to wine producers (& cheese makers too) “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All jokes his.<\/p>\n

Thanks to McCain, some of the provisions (like the catfish inspection) were stricken from the bill. We’ll have to wait for the legislation to be finished to see how bad the final damage is, but we already know this: the outcome will be better than it would have been had John McCain not been part of the process. For that (and for his statement, quoted in the New York Times<\/em><\/a> over the weekend, that he is “\u201chard-pressed to think of any other industry that operates with less risk at the expense of the American taxpayer\u201d), he deserves our thanks.<\/p>\n

Now if only he’d shut up about campaign finance reform …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, here on the blog, I went to town on Senator John McCain for what I viewed as his asinine, borderline incoherent rants about Citizens United specifically and money in politics generally. At the time, I noted offhandedly that while McCain has always been horrible on the issue of political free speech he has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3654,602,3656,3655,721,687],"class_list":["post-14793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-agriculural-policy","tag-big-government","tag-excessive-spending","tag-farm-subsidies","tag-john-mccain","tag-pork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14805,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793\/revisions\/14805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}