Lead Stories
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According to government data published by the Environmental Working Group, the federal farm-subsidy program, established in 1933 to help struggling family farms, now allocates 73 percent of its funds to 10 percent of America’s farmers, almost all of them well-off. Since 1996, $38 million has gone to a man in Elaine, Arkansas, who owns a tractor dealership, among other businesses, and lives in a 13,000-square-foot mansion. The subsidy program, which is being reviewed this month by Congress, guarantees high prices for crops that are already plentiful worldwide; does not subsidize farms producing fruits, vegetables, or cattle; and allows farmers to exceed the subsidy ceiling by establishing a second corporation.
Shane Hedges, a staffer for Montana governor Judy Martz, was involved in an auto accident in August 2001, and immediately after the crash, while police were still seeking evidence, went to see the governor wearing clothes that were bloodied when his passenger in the car was killed. Governor Martz promptly washed the clothes, and Hedges ultimately resigned and pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide. In January 2002, when the laundering became public knowledge, Martz said, “The mother in me did it. A mother does that kind of stuff.”
Least Competent People
Per Olympic rules, one member of Canada’s gold-medal-winning team in duplicate bridge (held the week prior to the Salt Lake City games as a “demonstration event”) was selected for a random drug test….A few days after closing a plant and laying off 4,500 autoworkers, Ford Canada proceeded with a previously scheduled campaign asking all workers to wear buttons declaring “Ford Pride.”…And police in Vercheres, Quebec, attempting to inform a home owner that his mailbox had been knocked over, stumbled onto a $2 million marijuana farm in the man’s basement.
