Cotton Or Cake?

Do you like cotton? Cotton makes good clothes and a lot of other things.
One of the things it makes is wealthy farmers. Not all cotton growers mind you, but some connected ones. Let's start at the top. America will pay Brazil over $147 million to settle a lawsuit so we can continue to subsidize some very wealthy cotton growers. Now enter stage left, Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. She wants to bestow even more money on those cotton growers in the form of disaster relief. Problem is, there's no real disaster. To be sure the output for 2009 was below 2008 because of too much rain, but 2008 was a banner year. 2009 is slightly above 2007's output. No matter, Blanche still wants them to have this largess. After all, it is an election year. And Blanche is in a tough campaign. Anyway, the money just isn't available in the budget except for a little known and little used pocket. At least it's little used for this purpose. See, it's supposed to be used to help feed needy children. But, hey, needy children don't vote. Wealthy cotton growers not only vote, they donate to Blanche's campaign. So when you place needy children on one side of the scale and wealthy growers/voters/donors on the other side.... well, you do the math. And that math ads up to $787,000 on top of the $874,000 subsidy for one grower. Ah heck, let those kids eat cake.