When the Department of Agriculture began accepting applications for Trump's bailout in September, we learned that not all farmers would be reimbursed an equal amount. While soybeans farmers would receive more than $1 per bushel, some farmers would receive far less than that. Corn farmers, for example, were slated to receive a pathetic 1 cent per bushel.
Farmers who spoke to Reuters are understandably insulted by the Department of Agriculture's offer to pay them 1 cent per bushel and they're demanding answers from the department.
Farmers who can't quite figure out why the Department of Agriculture decided they should only be paid 1 cent will be happy to learn that the Secretary of Agriculture also has no fucking clue.
“You have to wonder why Washington even bothered” with the corn subsidy, said Sharkey, 43, a fifth-generation farmer. “The soybean payment? That’s real money that can help us.”
Even Sonny Perdue, Trump’s agriculture chief, fails to understand the pennies in trade aid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary - a former farmer himself - recently told corn growers gathered in Champaign, Illinois, that the measly offering left him baffled and asking his agency’s economists how they figured the number.
“We have got $1.65 on beans and a penny on corn? That doesn’t make any sense’,” he said. “If I were picking numbers, I’d have picked a different one.”
If the Secretary of Agriculture were deciding what the Department of Agriculture's policy is, he would have picked a different one.
I was going to say that's 'good to know' with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but it really isn't. It's bad. Sonny Perdue is ostensibly the man in charge.
I've already said this once before, but each week I feel like I have a whole new reason to say it: this is even bigger shitshow than I dared imagine.
If there's one thing Republicans have been fairly good at, it's redistributing taxpayer funds to their own constituencies and donors at the expense of everyone else. But in this case, they can't even get that right. The Trump regime is too incompetent to properly implement their own bad policies.
Virtually everyone who works for the Trump regime, or at least those chosen by Trump or his appointees, is an idiot.
I wonder if career civil servants who were there before Trump and will still be there when Trump is gone will look back at these years as a blur. I feel like I will. I'll never forget what Trump has done to the federal government, but sometimes there's so much shit on top of shit, it becomes a slurry.