Excellent piece by Peter Beinart on the Bush administration’s double standards on agricultural subsidies. Bush has been rightly lecturing the Europeans on their vast subsidies for agricultural products, which do as much as anything to kill off the fledgling development of poorer countries and benefit only a few, wealthy agri-businesses. But Bush, being the big government big spender he is, has signed a bill shoveling even more tax-payers’ cash to farmers. Beinart moves in for the kill, noting:
… the subsidy on cotton, which the 2002 law more than doubled, from 35 to 72 cents per pound. The United States is a highly inefficient cotton producer; in fact, America’s production costs are roughly three times those in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. Yet Burkina Faso is losing market share because the United States subsidizes its cotton industry by roughly $2 billion per year (three times as much as the U.S. Agency for International Development spends annually on Africa). According to Oxfam, the United States actually spends more subsidizing the production of cotton than it earns selling it-making the industry a net loss to the U.S. economy. Those subsidies go to America’s 25,000 cotton farmers, who boast an average net worth of $800,000; by contrast, the average yearly wage in Burkina Faso is roughly $200.
If Bush were actually an economic conservative, this would be a scandal. But, alas, he isn’t. I don’t mind tax cuts for the wealthy to encourage investment and growth. It’s the vast government subsidies to the wealthy – paid for by everyone – that stick in my throat. I’d hoped Bush might restrain those subsidies. In fact, in this case, he’s doubled them. It just gets depressing after a while, doesn’t it?
NYT CRAPOLA: An insider reader writes:
You should take a look at the Boldface Names column on Page 2 of The New York Times of Tuesday, May 27. Although it says in the Boldface Names/Joyce Wadler headline that the column was written by Joyce Wadler, in fact it was written in its entirety by Campbell Robertson, a clerk in Metro. Joyce Wadler was off on holiday. The column at one point mentions “our young Boldface Names reporter.” But, of course, the reader would naturally assume that since Wadler’s name is over the whole column, she wrote all or at least most of it. This deception occurred with the approval of Jon Landman, Jayson Blair’s old boss, and shows that lots of people in control at The Times still don’t get it, even after all that has gone on lately.
So who did write the column? And what rules apply to this kind of thing? Last week, I emailed this question to retrace@nytimes.com. No response, natch. I have no idea whether this is true or not. Maybe posting this item will prompt a reply.
The Dish 