Michelle Bachmann: Welfare Queen

**Ronin Tetsuro** · 26th December 2009 08:20 AM

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government â€œhandoutâ€ as socialism. What her followers probably donâ€™t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. Thatâ€™s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And sheâ€™s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obamaâ€™s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is â€œreaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.â€

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organizationâ€™s records, Bachmannâ€™s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmannâ€™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 subsidizedâ€”or â€œsocializedâ€â€”businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of Americaâ€™s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmannâ€™s free-market dream world as Cubaâ€™s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesnâ€™t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be â€œrewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.â€ Thatâ€™s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

Truth hurts.

Can't wait for the usual suspects to fire up their Apologizers and get to work on this one. Should be a creative day.

**Davocrat** · 26th December 2009 09:23 AM

Too bad she doesn't understand how to use it.

"Fellow Americans pause wait for applause thank you for inviting me pause, nod and wave. we have much work to do in winning back our nation smile and pause..."

**Chief** · 26th December 2009 09:43 AM

[quote name='Ronin Tetsuro' date='26 December 2009 - 07:20 AM' timestamp='1261840819' post='86176']

Truth hurts.

Can't wait for the usual suspects to fire up their Apologizers and get to work on this one. Should be a creative day.

[/quote]

I don't believe that she can be blamed that the US took their farms out of the free market, engaged in price controls, etc... Its not like she voted for that crap, which came into being around 1930. Here is an interesting essay about farm subsidies.

http://www.fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/0604Folsom.pdf

**daniepalos** · 26th December 2009 09:50 AM

We could end the War on Poverty and welfare, by attrition, with full compliance with the federal at-will employment doctrine and state at-will employment laws.

We can eliminate poverty in our republic, when due to a simple lack of income, if anyone who is naturally unemployed can have recourse to unemployment compensation that meets or exceeds US poverty guidelines; in a manner that conforms to that federal doctrine and those existing state laws.

**nomadrider** · 26th December 2009 10:33 AM

[quote name='Ronin Tetsuro' date='26 December 2009 - 10:20 AM' timestamp='1261840819' post='86176']

Truth hurts.

[/quote]

You can thank the great socialist Franklin Roosevelt for initiating farm subsidies:

"... the federal government tried to manage U.S. agriculture through a combination of subsidies,

commodity supply and price controls, acreage allotments, production quotas, and restrictions

on imports. The central planning was supposed to ... prevent farm income from

falling below â€œacceptableâ€ levels. In practice, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) usually

ended up telling farmers how much and what to produce..."

And you criticize Bachman (as a farm owner) for participating in the subsidy program your former leader initiated. That's pretty damn funny.

But then you attack her position on foreclosure assistance and responsibility of homeowners when in fact it was

the lack of responsibility by the Dem's beginning with Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act of '77, then forced loan practices

to low income families that finally culminated in the housing meltdown of '07-08.

Michelle's point is why should she pay for your mortagage? Ask you next door neighbor if they would pay your irresponsible mortgage, a mortgage you

entered into with insufficient means to pay it off. Let me know what they say.

**Davocrat** · 26th December 2009 10:54 AM

[quote name='nomadrider' date='26 December 2009 - 12:33 PM' timestamp='1261848837' post='86208']

Michelle's point is why should she pay for your mortagage?

[/quote]

I think Ronin's point is, why should we pay for her farm?

**anonnymous** · 26th December 2009 10:56 AM

What I found most interesting was calling her an " anti-government insurrectionist ".

**Ronin Tetsuro** · 26th December 2009 11:13 AM

[quote name='Davocrat' date='26 December 2009 - 11:54 AM' timestamp='1261850062' post='86218']

I think Ronin's point is, why should we pay for her farm?

[/quote]

Well, I'm glad someone got the point. This thread isn't about the inaccuracies of farm subsidies, but about yet another Teabagger hypocrite being exposed. That some posters are failing out loud to address this is instructive.

**Davocrat** · 26th December 2009 11:16 AM

[quote name='anonnymous' date='26 December 2009 - 12:56 PM' timestamp='1261850186' post='86220']

What I found most interesting was calling her an " anti-government insurrectionist ".

[/quote]

Anti-current-government opportunist would be more precise.

**daniepalos** · 26th December 2009 11:19 AM

Would we need the expense of corporate welfare if no real person is in official poverty?

Artificial persons, who can sometimes afford entire departments to help them conform to rational actor theory, should not (in theory) need any corporate welfare.