Late last week we reported how the U.S. Senate voted to sustain cuts worth billions of dollars from the food stamp program in the name of fiscal austerity while maintaining billions of dollars of subsidies and other price supports for the sugar lobby.
Let's look even deeper into the original 33-66 failed vote to restore $4.5 billion in food stamp funding. The amendment offered by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to the farm bill that was offered to do this funded the food stamps by cutting "guaranteed profit for crop insurance companies from 14 to 12 percent and by lowering payments for crop insurers from $1.3 billion to $825 million."
Not only was Gillibrand asking the Senate to help a group of individuals without well-connected lobbyists -- the poor who rely on food stamps -- but she was also taking on a powerful interest group: crop insurance companies.
We conducted a review of campaign spending by the crop insurance industry's top political action committee --Â the American Association of Crop Insurers PAC (AACIPAC) -- and its lobbyists it has contracted through a Virginia law firm, and found, unfortunately, unsurprising results.
Of the 11 sitting Senators -- four Democrats and seven Republicans -- who received campaign funding from AACIPAC in the 2010 election cycle or the current one, not a single one supported Gillibrand's amendment to restore food stamp funding by cutting guarantees to crop insurers.
Additionally, I searched through Federal Election Committee (FEC) data and found that one of AACI's lobbyists it hired, Michael McLeod, donated $1,260 in 2011 to Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), one of the Democrats who voted against food stamps and for crop insurers. Nelson is retiring, so it would seem that he does not need campaign funding, but earlier this year he refused to disclose any job negotiations he will be having with lobbying firms -- so perhaps he is building goodwill toward a new career.
Another lobbyist hired by AACI, Laura Phelps, was a minor donor to Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2008, giving $250 according to FEC records. Warner also sided with crop insurers and against food stamp recipients.
In Washington, D.C. money buys access and, sometimes, votes. This can have devastating consequences for America. One columnist in Washington state estimates that the state's 234,000 households receiving food assistance may face cuts of up to $90 each in food stamps -- perhaps owing to the legalized corruption in the U.S. Senate.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/24/top-secret-what-food-stamps-buy/
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061141675&srvc=rss
2. Where does the Constitution authorize the federal government to subsidize individual food purchases?
3. This is why there is "Corporate Money" in politics. If you take away the incentive (stealing tax dollars to line their profits) for corporations to make political donations, they won’t do it anymore.
http://www.jillstein.org
The GOP has found or created a loophole, in a crafted court argument, that is tailored to the conservative justices ego driven interpretations and beliefs in the constitution..... an argument that the Justices would agree to that would pave way to make the taxpayer foot the bills to their own defeat with out any out of pocket costs...
They pay the CEO a huge sum of cash salary. (Subsidies and tax abatement allow all this to occur. Effectively the subsidies these corporations receive allows even larger bonuses and salaries without effecting the business bottom line.) perfectly legal/ then the CEO and the top brass toss a piece of the bundle to the super pac..... or directly to the candidate, or both. Its his choice at this time... Corporations are people all right. That is not counting any donations the "Corporation" makes when it finds it optimal to be a corporation and not a mere mortal... Citizens United? or Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde?
OBAMA 2012
RESTORE BALANCE TO THE SUPREME COURT.
also we are at a point t here will most likely be another opening in the supreme court this election cycle.. its not a matter of liking Obama... its a matter of do you want the supreme court to go even farther to the radical right and that would last for decades and decades with the young appointees