Your Agriculture Department has paid millions of dollars to thousands of dead farmers. At least 55 of the deceased got payments of $400,000 or more. To get farm subsidies, you're supposed to be "actively engaged" in farming. Kind of hard to till the soil when you've been planted in in for years yourself.
And millions more go to city slickers who never even see the farmland they own. The extent of their "active engagement" in farming may be limited to a couple of conference calls a year to the people actually doing the farming.
All told, there were 1.8 million people getting farm subsidies in 2003. The Bush administration wants to crack down on who's getting farm money and come up with a better definition of "actively engaged." (Chicago Tribune via Yahoo!)
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