Change... It's Not Free And It's Not Easy

We voted for "change," right? And Obama wants "change," right? And even if the filibuster-mad obstructionists in the Senate can stop every single thing he tries, there seems to be something at work for the status quo even more venal and deadly dangerous than the tactics employed by McConnell, Kyl, Cornyn, Burr, Coburn and Isakson. Reading between the lines at Glenn Greenwald's Salon post this week, you can detect a mighty powerful CIA might resistant to any kind of substantive change. (And these are, after all, the forces that got away with assassinating John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, a President and a senator running for president.)

The Wall Street banksters, reviled by nearly everyone in the country, are vigorously pushing back against Obama's very modest plans to rein them in a tiny bit. They vowed to bring America down if they don't get what they claim in their rightful due. Netroots activists in Michigan are pushing back against JP Morgan today with a call to boycott Chase until JP Morgan agrees to stop undermining the U.S. economy. Watch the great video Emptywheel did explaining-- and demonstrating-- what they're doing. Meanwhile the Congressional Oversight Panel has the right idea about what to do with the thieving, corrupt, avaricious banksters. “All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets,” the panel, headed by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report. Hyper-corrupt politicians on the panel, John Sununu (R-NH) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), both notorious shills for Big Money Interests, dissented from the report, as expected-- and as they were paid to do.

This week we saw the hysteria when Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried reshuffling the priorities for Defense spending. Fattened special interests-- war profiteers and the members of Congress they own-- will not go down without a fight and the security of the nation is the last thing on their minds. Right-wing Blue Dog Dan Boren (R-OK), who didn't support Obama in November, has joined with Republicans in attacking Obama as "soft on defense."

The battle over health care and insurance reform is another with powerful vested interests that will stop at nothing to keep their sacred cows from being gored. The list is endless and whichever way President Obama turns he is forced to confront dug-in and powerful special interests that will not budge.

Today, one of Israel's biggest newspapers, Haaretz, reports that that country's new far right prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is ready to confront Obama on his plans to make even the most nuanced of changes in U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East, a foreign policy that should be only about America's security and best interests but that has become a captive to special interests and the members of Congress who do not put America first.

But there's another report in the media today, on a seemingly less explosive topic (less explosive if you don't live in a farming district), that demonstrates the deeply entrenched resistance to change Obama is finding: U.S. farm policy. Again, powerful vested interests that have spent immense sums on buying the fealty of corrupt and powerful members of Congress. Over the last ten years AgriBusiness has spent $136,880,412 on lobbying federal officials. And since 1990 they have spent another $461,144,666 in direct payments (legalized bribes) to federal elected officials, mostly members of Congress. Two to one the AgriBusiness bribes have gone to Republicans but huge amount have gone to conservative Democrats, primarily Blue Dogs, who vote with Republicans and prevent changes in farm policy that would in any way disadvantage agricultural corporations. The dozen biggest recipients of legalized bribes from AgriBusiness in the House (bolded names serve on the House Agriculture committee and starred names serve on the Budget committee):

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $1,559,273
Devin Nunes* (R-CA)- $1,449,107
Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)- $1,364,395
John Boehner (R-OH)- $1,245,813
Wally Herger (R-CA)- $1,162,058
George Radanovich (R-CA)- $1,157,891
Tom Latham (R-IA)- $1,148,125
Bob Etheridge* (Blue Dog-NC)- $1,120,768
Allen Boyd* (Blue Dog-FL)- $1,055,954
Jerry Moran (R-KS)- $1,048,318
Greg Walden (R-OR)- $1,043,380
Ranking member of Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture Jack Kingston (R-GA)- $1,018,298

And in steps President Obama who is proposing to place limits on federal subsidies to large, profitable farm operations. Ma and Pa Kettle on their little family farm are not the ones who have shoveled over half a billion dollars into the coffers of friendly members of Congress. Large, profitable farm operations have-- corporate farms and as CQPolitics pointed out this morning, the changes Obama wants to make are decidedly not "the sort of change that agricultural interests, or their powerful advocates in Congress, are likely to believe in."

[B]ackers of subsidy caps to larger farm operations still hope they can harness Obama’s popularity and transfer mounting populist anger over corporate bonuses from the boardroom to the feedlot to produce renewed traction for the plan in Congress.

That strategy won’t be easy. The administration’s plan was to use the fiscal 2010 budget process as the vehicle to revamp the subsidies program. But in adopting their budget resolutions last week, both the House and Senate rejected a key feature of the plan-- a proposal to cap subsidies to individual farmers at $250,000. Another proposal to phase out subsidies to farmers with gross annual retail sales of $500,000 or more was turned down as well, with North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, calling it “just a mistake,” and Minnesota Democrat Collin C. Peterson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, deriding it as simply “stupid.”

Stupid? Peterson, who many think is the single most corrupt member of Congress-- yes more corrupt that Jerry Lewis, more corrupt than Jack Murtha, more corrupt than Charlie Rangel, even more corrupt that John Boehner (although that is really a stretch)-- has a "D" next to his name but votes with Republicans more than almost any other Democrat in the House and is especially interested in funneling as much money into the corporations that have financed his sleazy career as he can. How about "stupid" being that "taxpayers provide about $16 billion a year to farmers for crop subsidies, conservation payments and disaster relief." Most of that accrues to the benefit of already extremely wealthy corporate farmers, not to family farms. (In 2006 farm subsidy payments went to nearly 23,000 individuals with adjusted gross incomes of over half a million dollars. That's your tax dollars Collin Peterson and his Republican allies are redistributing. Think for a minute about how hypocritical Blue Dogs are always wailing how they stand for a balanced budget too!)

One reason the backers of the Obama plan have already run into stiff resistance is that the farm lobby is made up of more than just farmers. Department of Agriculture figures show that as average farm size increased, the number of farms in the United States shrank to 2.2 million last year, from 6.3 million in 1940. But those numbers don’t reflect the broader reach of agriculture interests in rural America’s business establishment, including small-town bankers, insurance agents, farm equipment dealers, rural land speculators, and seed and fertilizer merchants.

Then there is the concentrated power of the House and Senate Agriculture committees themselves. A study by the liberal Environmental Working Group found that 43 percent of all farm payments between 1995 and 2006 went to the congressional districts with representation on the House committee. States with seats on the Senate panel accounted for 58 percent of the total.

“It is no surprise that the large bulk of agriculture subsidies go to just 30 congressional districts in the entire nation, and they are well represented on the Ag committee,” said Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin dairy country who has broken ranks with the milk lobby in the past over retooling farm subsidies. “They are going to try to protect the status quo and protect the programs as they exist. That’s why I don’t think you’ll get real ideas of reform and change and a new direction for agriculture policy coming from the Agriculture Committee.”

Unhappy with greedy special interests determining U.S. policies? Do something about it.