Nothing particularly surprising here:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report.
In a selection of 181 cases from 1999 to 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that officials approved payments without any review 40 percent of the time.
The report cited a 1,900-acre soybean and corn farm in Illinois that collected $400,000 on behalf of an owner who lived in Florida before his death in 1995. The company did not notify the government of the death but certified each year that the dead shareholder, who owned 40 percent of the company, was “actively engaged” in managing the farm.
Of course I disapprove of this kind of waste, but it is really hard to get my knickers in a twist these days about 1 billion over seven years when we are closing on a half a trillion spent on the Iraq war, with a good bit of that wasted. You remember that war- it was going to pay for itself.
Regardless, at some point, when our government is approaching sanity, we need to have a serious discussion about why these subsidies need to continue, period.