Last week, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) sent out a report with this headline: "The Rich Get Richer: 50 Billionaires Got Federal Farm Subsidies."
The piece was meant to draw attention to the "problem" of well-known billionaires and celebrities pocketing farm subsidies.
The only problem is, there isn't a problem.
Martin Vandepas, the lone person to comment on EWG's webpage about this report, innocently asked: "Is there any more recent data available? The chart doesn't show any crop subsidies after 2007. That was 9 years ago."
To date, Martin's question has gone unanswered by EWG.
That's because the inconvenient answer is "no." Billionaires haven't received farm payments in a really long time because lawmakers closed that loophole in the 2008 Farm Bill.
Some still receive conservation subsidies – environmental subsidies the EWG supports and encourages. Those subsidies were conveniently omitted from this billionaires' report, as well as others in the past.
So why would EWG try to incite a panic about a problem that was fixed nearly a decade ago? Because it's part of their propaganda cycle designed to generate false headlines. About every 18 months, EWG publishes a nearly identical report in hopes of stoking anger to gut what's left of the farm safety net.
Source: www.farmpolicyfacts.org