I agree with you all. I wrote a WSJ op-ed in 1996 about the insane “Freedom to Farm” bill and why we should end all farm subsidies, but predicting the bill would not, as promised, end them in “seven years”. And it didn’t, so I tried to harp again in the WSJ right after the disastrous “security” bill that ensured their continuance shortly after 9/11.

In Fields Without Dreams, I noted how there is no need for the welfare program–no logic about who gets aid, no real help for small farmers, but ample hypocrisy for ‘boot-strap’ conservatives in going along with it and ‘little-guy’ liberals in promoting it- Now more than ever with high crop prices that are bound to get higher. It’s one of those strange policies, like open borders, that unite the worst strains of contemporary liberalism and conservatism into a perfect storm of hypocrisy.

It’s time it just ends. Any bad that follows by such a meat-ax approach is balanced by the greater good of having it end, saving the money, and ending the charade. As an added benefit it will put the onus on the humanitarian Europeans to put up or shut up about hurting Third-world farmers.