During the 1960s and early 1970s, Frank Lucas was one of the biggest heroin dealers in the United States.
Smuggling his product in the coffins of dead American soldiers, he made millions in the drug trade and helped facilitate the destruction of poor communities throughout New York. But many of the folks in those neighborhoods didn’t see it that way. In fact, to many, he was a hero.
There’s a great depiction of this in the 1997 movie, American Gangster, where Lucas’ associates are shown handing out free Thanksgiving Day turkeys to hundreds of neighborhood residents.
Of course, this kind of thing is not uncommon. For decades, big-time crime bosses have used this technique in an effort to quell any potential blowback. Sure, Lucas played a very big role in the tragedies and addictions of the less fortunate. In fact, he profited from it. But every now and then he’d let the serfs wet their beaks. That, my friend, is how you keep the masses from rising up. And no one knows this better than Tom Vilsack of the USDA.
Pesky Tree Huggers
For the sake of clarification, I don’t believe Vilsack has the same motives as guys like Frank Lucas. I don’t think he intentionally seeks to harm folks. But the truth is, his actions do just that.
You see, yesterday I received a press release from the USDA entitled: USDA Awards Over $52 Million in Grants to Grow Organic and Local Food Economies.
While most environmentalists will be quick to swoon over this announcement, the $52 million in welfare the USDA is offering is merely just an attempt to placate those “pesky tree huggers” that have the audacity to want to eat organic food.
As a “pesky Libertarian tree hugger,” I can assure you, I have not been appeased.
Here’s what Secretary Vilsack had to say:
“Local and regional food systems are one of the pillars of our efforts to revitalize rural economies. Consumers are increasingly demanding more local and organic options. Investing in local and regional food systems supports the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers, especially smaller operations, while strengthening economies in communities across the country. Today’s announcements also improve access to fresh, healthy food for millions of Americans.”
The truth is, if the U.S. government wants to revitalize rural economies, it should stop meddling in rural economies.
Many small and local farms already do quite well without the generous subsidies the government offers industrial farms and giant concentrated animal feedlots. In total, we’re talking about roughly $20 billion a year set aside primarily for industrial agriculture, with most of that cash going to industrial corn producers so they can pump out more corn to shove into your gas tank. By the way, corn ethanol subsidies come in somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion annually.
So now Secretary Vilsack wants me to get excited about $52 million for local, organic producers?
If these guys really want to support local, organic farmers, the best thing they can do is eliminate agricultural subsidies entirely. The way I see it, if any of these farms can’t operate competitively without our tax dollars, then their business models are inferior.
In a real free market, healthy competition will dictate which farms prosper and which farms fail. Not the government.
