how much has Didier the teabagger gotten in farm subsidies

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

and why wont the local media ask.

[pscot]

1. Didier The Teabagger

Sounds Chaucerian, or like something out of a fantasy novel :rofl:

[The empressof all]

2. I for one would rather have Didier run than Rossi

If I have to look at Rossi's puss plastered on Billboards across the state I may scream. He annoys me almost as much as Eyeman who I think is an evil little toad of a human being.

[Suich]

3. $273,000, according to the Seattle Times!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2012441890_danny25.html

There's also this: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/index.html

(Scroll down a bit for reader's reaction to Mr. Didier.)

:rofl:

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

4. great link thanks

[eridani]

5. Great article by Danny Westneat in the Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2012441890_danny25.html

Nowhere is the myth as confused with reality as in rock-ribbed Eastern Washington. The place depends utterly on the government and communal resources for its existence, from the New Deal irrigation system still being paid for by taxpayers elsewhere, to farming subsidies and crop price supports. Yet in their own minds, they are mavericks living off the land.

"We don't need the government to come in and try to prop things up," a Lincoln County grain buyer told me as the economy was collapsing in the fall of 2008. As if the local economy weren't already propped up.
Or take Didier. His personal story is impressive, winning a Super Bowl and returning to run the family farm. That's true merit there. At the same time, I'm having a hard time thinking of two more socialistic enterprises than pro football or farming.

The National Football League is famed for its anti-capitalistic, share-the-wealth approach, where unionized players are guaranteed to make minimum salaries and rich teams give money to poorer ones so they can compete. Plus, taxpayers pick up the tab for the stadiums.

Washington state's farmers, likewise, simply couldn't survive on their own. They've been paid nearly $4 billion in federal cash subsidies since 1995 (Didier's alfalfa farm got $273,000 of that). Taxpayers and electricity ratepayers also pay more than 90 percent of the yearly costs of the Columbia Basin Project, the nation's largest system of dams and irrigation canals.


A comment from Horse’s Ass—

Thanks for the link Goldy, but Danny left out the rest of the story. Rural electrification was socialized policy, so was universial telephone service. Eastern Washington would be a 3rd world country without the government and socialism. The farm to market roads and the Interstate Highway system that links them are all socialized policy. How about Hanford? The US Government created the modern economy of the Tri-Cities; first with bomb production, then with nuclear power, now with cleaning up the messes the first two made. And lets not leave out education. Three of the state’s four year institutions are in Eastern Washington. And one of them, WSU, created the wheat economy of the southeastern part of the state, the wine industry that is now about everywhere, and produced efficiencies that save each of those farmers money and lowered my cost of food. WSU and the rest: all socialized policy.

Fred Jarrett once said there was a higher percentage of people in Eastern Washington dependent on the government than there had been in the Soviet Union. I don’t know if he was right about the numbers, but his point, like Danny’s, was