Sustenance for the Needy and the Greedy

On his show last night on PBS Bill Moyers addressed a problem that is spreading around the world like a plague, and that is the growing food shortage.

He started with a survey of several food pantries in and around New York City. Not so long ago these sites of mercy were well-stocked with edibles of many types, but now they are in very short supply, especially diary products and fresh vegetables. Almost all of what they had to hand out to the needy was in cans, which are rich in sodium. . One of the main reasons why the pantries are in such short supply is that the companies and others who used to donate to the pantries are now selling that food overseas.

I couldn't help noticing, however, how even here, the disparity between the well off and the needy could not be hidden. The two pantries they showed in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn definitely had lots of nearly empty shelves and closets. But the one in the affluent suburb of Westchester seemed to have lots more supplies, though they spoke of how the numbers of bags they gave out had increased greatly in recent weeks.

From there Moyers swung to examining a series that Washington Post investigative reporters ran on farmers and others who own large acreages in the nation's "breadbasket" in the Midwest. But rather than really doing any farming, it's been more profitable for many to simply let their land lay idle while collecting money from the Government for "disaster relief."

These disasters ran mainly along the lines of droughts, though in many counties enough rain has fallen for several years. But still farmers and absentee landowners are collecting millions every year for doing little or nothing with their land.

Droughts, however, can't be used forever, and these people -- who most likely are quick to snarl with disgust and resentment at any mention of welfare for city dwellers -- needed other disasters to justify these windfalls at the taxpayers' expense, and the midair explosion of the "Columbia" shuttle during reentry a few years ago furnished just such an opportunity. Some of the shuttle fragments had scattered over parts of East Texas, and that was enough to qualify these landowners for millions more in disaster relief.

Moyers informed us that the current Farm Bill containing all these boondoggles for use not only in East Texas but also all over the country is due to expire in a few days, and Congress is conferring on the new one. While providing for more in the way of help for the needy, such as food stamps, the House is not expunging those giveaways to the farm landowners and is keeping those at the same levels. The Senate is also providing more assistance to the needy, but it is also increasing the farm subsidies.

One would think that with all the clamor building up throughout the world for food, the farmers who are farming would not need so much help from the government, while those feeding at the disaster trough could be turned away entirely. But maybe one trick mode of thinking is that all those countries in high distress -- such as in Haiti where some have been reduced to eating biscuits made of mud, for which they even have to pay -- can't afford to pay good prices and so the subsidies really can be said to come under the heading of "foreign aid."

It is certain that the new Farm Bill, therefore, will be even worse, as typified by one U.S. senator, a longtime monster from Kentucky named Mitch McConnell, who has quietly slipped in a provision giving a subsidy to the breeders of race horses

It was a very good report, though I noticed one glaring deficiency that Moyers seems to have overlooked. Not once was the word "greedy" ever used. Not once.