Sometimes I Wonder

Sometimes I wonder
What I'm a-gonna do,
Cuz there ain't no cure
For the Wormtown Blues...

I read in the T&G today that people who have been dead for years continue to receive farm subsidies for not growing certain crops. The whole article is here.

I'd like to get paid for not growing something.

Maybe I could get paid for not growing marijuana? Or how about poppies? How about if I don't grow as much hair on my head as other people... can I get a subsidy for being bald?

The first paragraph in the T&G article pretty much says it all. "The Agriculture Department sent $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven year period, congressional investigators say."

But the real killer for me was a quote by the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is quoted as saying that it's "...NO LONGER tolerable to PERMIT billions of dollars" to be paid out like this...

If I had only known that such vast sums were available for easy pilferage, I could've retired a lot earlier.