Fox News Sells Fracking as ‘Incredibly Good for Our Environment”

Corporate Propaganda September 16, 2013 | By WakingTimes

Alex Pietrowski, Staff Writer

“Nature doesn’t give us a clean environment.”

Recently on Fox News, Alex Epstein, the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, and author of the book, Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet, argues in favor of hydraulic gas fracturing, or fracking, as it has become known. This is the technique of extracting natural gas and oil from layers of underground shale rock by pressure-injecting an undisclosed mixture of water and chemicals deep into the ground.

This particular segment serves as an outstanding example of what corporate propaganda looks like and how the media triggers our cultural programming to stimulate fear/desire conditioning, in order to persuade us into conforming to a selected position on an issue.

The clip begins with the graphic of a printing press rolling out unlimited dollar bills across the screen and the Fox host framing the conversation, asking their central question about fracking…

“…its being called a modern day gold rush… reducing the need for foreign oil. With so many opportunities to frack in the Unites States, could this technology be a new path to American wealth?”

A New Path to American Wealth?The guest, Epstein, is introduced and hails fracking as a technological revolution as important to society as the invention of the computer, explaining how we are sitting on a Texas sized amount of shale rock that should be extracted for the benefit of all.

The host goes on to explain ‘one of the big stories this week,’ a report issued by somebody about the economic benefits of fracking and how in high fracking areas they are already seeing a ‘trickling down’ of this vast wealth to the average person. Wages are supposedly up, U.S. tax revenues are up, disposable income is up, and the question is asked by the host…

“… is this really going to affect my own wallet, is fracking really going to help me save more money and live a better life?”

There are close-ups of dollar bills hovering in the background.
The central concern over fracking, for those who oppose it, is not that the economy will suffer if we don’t frack, but rather the damage it does to the environment; making people sick, contaminating water and causing droughts, drying up aquifers and causing earthquakes. This question was raised by the host, and addressed by Epstein:

“…fracking is actually incredibly good for our environment, and there’s two reasons. One is that this rock right here [holds up a piece of black oil shale rock], this exists 5000 feet away from ground water, so the last thing that’s going to contaminate your ground water is a fracking operation. But #2, look at the places in the world with the best environments. They’re the places that use the most energy, because nature doesn’t give us a clean environment. We have to clean it up, that takes a lot of energy to purify the water, to grow crops, to make the word a better place, and that’s why I titled my book, Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet.”

The host closes by stating that the EPA claims that there is no evidence that fracking ‘contaminates gravel,’ whatever that means, and so the question seems resolved to these two, and the closing postulation of the issue is offered:

“…gonna be interesting to see if we get lower energy bills across this country as a result of fracking if it takes hold.”

Clip from Media Matters:


Propaganda Is Exactly This

Propaganda according to WIKI:

“Propaganda is a form of communication aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda statements may be partly false and partly true. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.”

Propaganda according to Merriam-Webster:

2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

You Decide!

This short piece of corporate propaganda is aimed at triggering our programmed fear of economic insecurity, and our programmed desire to be monetarily wealthy. By appealing to both our fear of loss and need for gain, this attempts to persuade the viewer that an increase in fracking is supportive of prosperity and personal security, and therefore a good idea. There is inadequate representation of the other sides of this argument, and there clearly is strong bias toward fracking and the oil and gas industry.

In the era of alternative media, where individuals have picked up the torch of journalistic integrity, is it any wonder why alternative news sources are winning out over the corporate model that offers us brain-washing like this that Fox and Friends presents here?

So much more to the Story

As with any issue where there is a tremendous amount of money to be made by those with entrenched connections, there is alwasys so much more than what is routinely spoken of in the mainline press, and, as usual, opposing viewpoints are easily found. Here are a few other angles on the issue of fracking, highlighting some of the well-founded concerns of people not approached for comment in this Fox news segment:

• Fracking Away Our Water Supply
• Fracking is linked to Earthquakes
• Fracking: A Deadly Power Surge
• Waste Injection Wells
• Hydro-Fracking: Boom or Bust
• Radioactive Fracking Waste
• Is Fracking Even Profitable?
• 5 Consequences of Fracking

The Greatest Debt Crisis The World Has Ever Seen Is Coming

September 17th, 2013

By Michael Snyder

The largest mountain of debt in the history of the world just continues to grow even larger, and everyone knows that this colossal debt spiral is not going to end well. But we all keep playing along because nobody wants the party to end. Right now, there is an unprecedented ocean of red ink covering the planet. Globally, governments have never been in so much debt, corporations have never been in so much debt and consumers have never been in so much debt. But every time someone suggests that this is a problem and that we should at least try to get debt levels to settle down a bit, people start screaming that “austerity” will hurt the global economy. And of course it will. But we can’t continue to live way, way above our means indefinitely. Well, we can try, but at some point this entire house of cards is going to come crashing down and we are going to be facing the greatest economic crisis the world has ever seen.

It is kind of like watching a slow-motion train wreck that you have no chance of possibly stopping that you know will end up killing lots of innocent people. This debt crisis is going to end up destroying the global financial system, but there is not a thing that you or I can do to prevent it from happening. The unprecedented debt binge that we are witnessing right now is going to continue until someday we hit a brick wall of financial disaster. We can yell and we can scream, but it isn’t going to stop what is happening.

As the Telegraph recently noted, even the Bank for International Settlements is warning that debt levels are way too high. According to the BIS, total public and private debt levels are now 30 percent higher than they were in 2008…

“This looks like to me like 2007 all over again, but even worse,” said William White, the BIS’s former chief economist, famous for flagging the wild behavior in the debt markets before the global storm hit in 2008.

“All the previous imbalances are still there. Total public and private debt levels are 30pc higher as a share of GDP in the advanced economies than they were then, and we have added a whole new problem with bubbles in emerging markets that are ending in a boom-bust cycle,” said Mr White, now chairman of the OECD’s Economic Development and Review Committee.

The BIS can see the disaster coming, but even they have no chance of preventing it.

For the rest of this article, I am going to focus on government debt, but please keep in mind that corporate debt and consumer debt are also totally out of control globally. It would be very hard to overstate the nightmare that we are facing.

But of course national governments are the biggest offenders when it comes to debt…


Asia

Japan now has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 211 percent, and as Simon Black of the Sovereign Man blog recently detailed, they are rapidly heading toward a national financial meltdown…

Looking purely at the numbers, Japan’s medium-term fundamentals are among the bleakest in the world.

Total government debt amounts to over 200% of the country’s entire GDP– a figure so large that the Japanese government spends 51.5% of the 43 trillion yen ($430 billion) they collect in tax revenue just to pay interest!

Perhaps even more astounding is that ‘primary balance expenses,’ i.e. normal government expenditures, totaled 70.3 trillion yen, or 163% of tax revenue.

The only way they’ve managed to stay afloat is by issuing more debt, which makes the problem even worse. In fact, 46% of the 2013 budget is being financed by debt.

These guys are running out of rope. And fast.

China is facing a different sort of a problem. In that nation, the growth of private domestic debt is wildly out of control.

According to a recent World Bank report, private domestic debt in China has grown from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

There is no way that is sustainable, and at some point that massive bubble is going to burst.


Europe

Even though some European nations have supposedly implemented “austerity measures” in recent years, debt levels continue to rise rapidly. The following are some numbers that were recently released which show that government debt to GDP ratios for some of the most financially troubled nations in Europe are absolutely soaring…

• Euroarea: 92.2%, up from 88.2% a year ago
• Greece: 160.5%, up from 136.5% a year ago
• Italy: 130.3%; up from 123.8% a year ago
• Portugal: 127.2%, up from 112.3% a year ago
• Ireland: 125.1%, up from 106.8% a year ago
• Spain: 88.2%, up from 73.0% a year ago
• Netherlands: 72.0%, up from 66.7% a year ago

Anyone that tells you that the crisis in Europe is “over” is lying to you. The debt crisis is getting worse, not better.




The United States

The biggest mountain of debt of all can be found in the United States.

30 years ago, the national debt was a little bit above a trillion dollars.

Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars.

At this point, the U.S. already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain. And since Barack Obama entered the White House, the debt to GDP level has soared to unprecedented heights…

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

One reason for this is that the U.S. is facing some tremendous demographic challenges in the years ahead.

In other words, our population is getting older.

It is being projected that the number of Americans on Social Security will rise from 57 million today to more than 100 million in 25 years.

How in the world are we possibly going to pay for that?

Already, we are very heavily dependent on foreigners to pay our bills.

According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollarsof our debt at this point.

China and Russia account for about one-fourth of that total. Right now, China owns approximately 1.275 trillion dollars of our debt, and Russia owns approximately 138 billion dollars of our debt.

So what would happen if we went to war with Syria and they decided to quit borrowing from us and they started dumping our debt instead?

That is a very good question.

And actually, according to Zero Hedge foreigners have already started to dump a little bit of our debt…

Today’s TIC data showed something disturbing: for the fourth month in a row, foreigners were net sellers of US Treasury paper in July, as total foreign holdings declined from $5.600 trillion to $5.590 trillion which represents 49% of total marketable debt (including the debt owned by the Fed of course). In other words, since peaking at $5.724 trillion in March, foreign-held debt has declined by $134 trillion, at a time when yields have surged on fears the Fed’s tapering of its own purchases of bonds will mean less Fed frontrunning opportunities.

We certainly cannot afford for that to continue, because we desperately need other nations to finance our reckless spending.

Our debt is wildly out of control, and the only way we can keep the entire system from collapsing is to go into even more debt.

As I noted recently, if the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

That is a whole lot of money.

But most Americans do not consider it to be a problem because disaster has not struck yet.

Unfortunately, they simply don’t understand how quickly an exponential problem can overwhelm you. I think that the following illustration from Simon Black is particularly helpful…

Let’s say you’re at a party in a small apartment that’s about 500 square feet in size. Then suddenly, at 11pm, a pipe bursts, starting a trickle into the living room.

Aside from the petty annoyance, would you feel like you were in danger? Probably not. This is a linear problem– the rate at which the water is leaking is more or less constant, so the guests can keep partying through the night without worry.

But let’s assume that it’s an exponential leak.

At first, there’s just one drop of water. But each minute, the rate doubles. So by 11:01pm, there’s 2 drops. By 11:02, 4 drops. And so forth.

By 11:27pm, there’s only six inches of standing water. Yet by 11:31pm, just four minutes later, the entire room is under nearly 8 feet of water. And the party’s over.

For nearly half an hour, it all seemed safe and manageable.People had all the time in the world to leave, right up until the bitter end. 11:27, 11:28, 11:29. Then it all went from benign to deadly in a matter of minutes.

By the time that our politicians and the talking heads on the mainstream media admit that we have a debt emergency on our hands, it will probably be far, far too late.

The greatest debt crisis the world has ever seen is coming, and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it.

But you can take measures to get prepared for it.

Please get prepared while you still can.

The Surveillance Industry

Weekly Funnies

Triple Play: Sports, Politics & Greed

Saturday, September 14, 2013 by BillMoyers.com

Triple Play: Sports, Politics & Greed
 from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

The NFL recently announced it would pay out $765 million to settle a lawsuit from thousands of former players suffering from concussions and related brain trauma. A large sum, but a small percentage of the billions the football league and other professional sports franchises haul in for their owners. The vast gap between sports tycoons and the everyday fans who shell out hard-earned cash to watch their athlete heroes on the field is yet another reflection of the gross inequality between the one percent and the rest of society and another example of how inextricably linked sports and politics are in our lives.

“There’s always so much happening in the world of sports and there’s always so many different ways in which sports not just reflects our lives but shapes our lives,” Zirin tells Moyers. “It shapes our understanding of things like racism, sexism, homophobia. It shapes our understanding of our country, it shapes our understanding of corporations and what’s happening to our cities. In so many different ways sports stories are stories of American life in the 21st century.”

Fukushima is Out of Control says TEPCO Official

Friday, September 13, 2013 by Common Dreams
Statement contradicts assurances of Japanese PM, comes as fresh steam is spotted billowing from reactor
- Sarah Lazare

"I’m sorry, but we consider the situation is not under control."

Those were the words of Kazuhiko Yamashita, executive-level fellow for Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company when he was pressed by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

His statements directly contradict the claims of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who assured the International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires Saturday that the situation is under control.

TEPCO officials moved quickly to cover Yamashita's tracks, releasing a statement Friday declaring

It is our understanding that the Prime Minister intended his statement ‘the situation is under control’ to mean that the impact of radioactive materials is limited to the area within the port of the power station, and that the densities of radioactive materials on the surrounding waters are far below the referential densities and have not been on continuous upward trends. According to this understanding, we share the same views.

Yet, all evidence suggests that the crisis is far beyond the current abilities of the Japanese government and operator TEPCO to contain it.

Each day brings new disasters, with fresh reports on Friday that steam is billowing from a reactor. Radiation levels at the plant were found to be 18 times higher than TEPCO previously claimed, climbing to a high of 1800 millisieverts per hour—enough to kill a person in just four hours.

TEPCO has poured thousands of tons of water to cool the melted reactors, yet has no sustainable plan for storing it once contaminated. The temporary tanks where the radioactive water is currently being held are springing leaks, releasing the water into the groundwater, and by extension, the sea. TEPCO says it has resorted to patching tank leaks with plastic tape.

The Japanese government announced in early September it will invest $500 million to build a giant 'wall of ice' surrounding the plant. Yet, experts predict it will take at least 2 years to complete, and there is no evidence that this is enough to stem what has become a ballooning crisis.

The disaster was touched off by Japan's March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the meltdown of fuel-rods at several reactors and continues to unleash toxic radiation into the air and sea. Over 160,000 people have been evacuated, transforming nearby areas into ghost towns in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The Japanese government has been criticized for moving to re-start other nuclear facilities as the Fukushima crisis spirals.

Internet S.O.S.

Saturday, September 14, 2013 by Media Citizen

by Tim Karr







Last week we learned that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have broken the back of digital encryption — the coded technology hundreds of millions of Internet users rely on to keep their communications private.

Is the Internet on life support?

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA and its British counterpart are also hacking into smartphones to monitor our daily lives in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before the age of the iPhone.

This news, just the latest revelations from the files of Edward Snowden, only heighten our sense that we can no longer assume anything we say or do online is secure.

But that’s not all. In a case that was heard in a U.S. federal appeals court on Monday, telecommunications colossus Verizon is arguing that it has the First Amendment right to block and censor Internet users. (That’s right. Verizon is claiming that, as a corporation, it has the free speech right to silence the online expression of everybody else.)
It's come to this. Government and corporate forces have joined to chip away at two pillars of the open Internet: the control of our personal data and our right to connect and communicate without censorship or interference.

The Surveillance Industrial Complex

A series of reports coordinated among the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica revealed that the NSA and its British counterpart have secretly unlocked encryption technologies used by popular online services, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Using National Security Letters and other secret court orders, intelligence agencies can wedge their way onto the large telecommunications networks that move most of the world’s Internet traffic. Getting access to the data is only half the challenge. To read and sort these communications, the NSA works with a lesser-known assortment of security vendors that filter through mountains of data, target references and patterns of interest and crack codes designed to safeguard user identity and content.

Many of the companies that ply this trade are only now being exposed through “Spyfiles,” collaboration among WikiLeaks, Corporate Watch and Privacy International designed to shed light on the multibillion-dollar industry. According to the latest documents provided by Edward Snowden, U.S. intelligence agencies alone spend $250 million each year to use these companies’ commercial security products for mass surveillance.

Without safeguards that protect users from surveillance and censorship, the Internet’s DNA will change in ways that no longer foster openness, free expression and innovation.It’s part of a sprawling complex of companies, lobbyists and government officials seeking to rewire the Internet in ways that wrest control over content away from Internet users.

While motivations may differ, the result is the same: a communications network that works against the Interests of many for the benefit of the few.

Tearing the Fabric

The Internet wasn’t meant to be like this. Bruce Schneier, an encryption fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, writes that the NSA and the companies it works with are “undermining the very fabric of the Internet.”

Telecommunications companies are doing their part by giving spy agencies access to our data. They’re also bankrolling a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to destroy Net Neutrality — the one rule that prohibits Internet service providers from blocking or degrading our ability to connect to one another, share information and use the online services of our choosing.

If Verizon wins its case in Washington, ISPs will be able to prioritize certain online content while degrading user access to sites and services that the big companies don’t like.

It’s a business that puts at risk the most integral function of the World Wide Web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s pioneer, saw the network as a “blank canvas” — upon which anyone could contribute, communicate and innovate without permission.

Berners-Lee’s invention relied on an open protocol that gave everyday users power over the network. This networking principle has far-reaching political implications, favoring systems that are more decentralized and democratic.

Without safeguards that protect users from surveillance and censorship, the Internet’s DNA will change in ways that no longer foster openness, free expression and innovation.

Media Policy

If we’ve learned anything during the Summer of Snowden, it’s that corporations and governments alone can’t be trusted to be good stewards of the Internet. We need media policies that protect our privacy and promote access to open networks.

The fight for these policies is being led by a diverse and bipartisan alliance of civil liberties and communications-rights organizations, including the ACLU, EFF, Free Press and Public Knowledge.

We’re not alone. Millions joined the call for Net Neutrality in 2010; millions more stood up to defend the Internet against the PIPA and SOPA Web-censorship bills in 2012. The battle to protect users’ privacy has engaged new audiences as we've learned more about the extent of the NSA's mass surveillance.

In each of these arenas, we’re working to stop bad laws, amend others and implement new policies that put Internet users first.

A grassroots movement is fueling this fight. If you haven’t joined us yet, now’s the time to step up and save the Internet.

US, Russia Reach Deal on Syria's Chemical Weapons

Saturday, September 14, 2013 by Common Dreams

Despite agreement, US still holds to possibility of military force

- Andrea Germanos

The U.S. and Russia reached a deal on a process to remove or destroy Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014, officials for the two countries announced in Geneva on Saturday.

After a third day of talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov outlined the details of the deal, including a condition that Syria must provide a comprehensive list of its chemical weapons stockpiles within a week.

Kerry told reporters, "I have no doubt that the combination of the threat of force and the willingness to pursue diplomacy helped to bring us to this moment."

Echoing Kerry, President Obama said on Saturday, "This this plan emerged only with a credible threat of U.S. military action."

However, as Howard Friel and Noam Chomsky have pointed out, the threats of force against Syria the U.S. has issued are illegal.

Obama also emphasized that the deal did not mean that the possibility of force was off the table. "We will maintain our military posture in the region to keep the pressure on the Assad regime," he said. "If diplomacy fails, the United States and the international community must remain prepared to act."

The "Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons" released by the State Department on Saturday states, in part:

In furtherance of the objective to eliminate the Syrian chemical weapons program, the United States and the Russian Federation have reached a shared assessment of the amount and type of chemical weapons involved, and are committed to the immediate international control over chemical weapons and their components in Syria. The United States and the Russian Federation expect Syria to submit, within a week, a comprehensive listing, including names, types, and quantities of its chemical weapons agents, types of munitions, and location and form of storage, production, and research and development facilities.

We further determined that the most effective control of these weapons may be achieved by removal of the largest amounts of weapons feasible, under OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical] supervision, and their destruction outside of Syria, if possible. We set ambitious goals for the removal and destruction of all categories of CW related materials and equipment with the objective of completing such removal and destruction in the first half of 2014. In addition to chemical weapons, stocks of chemical weapons agents, their precursors, specialized CW equipment, and CW munitions themselves, the elimination process must include the facilities for the development and production of these weapons. The views of both sides in this regard are set forth in Annex B.

The United States and the Russian Federation have further decided that to achieve accountability for their chemical weapons, the Syrians must provide the OPCW, the UN, and other supporting personnel with the immediate and unfettered right to inspect any and all sites in Syria. The extraordinary procedures to be proposed by the United States and the Russian Federation for adoption by the OPCW Executive Council and reinforced by a UN Security Council resolution, as described above, should include a mechanism to ensure this right.

Agence France-Presse reports:

Kerry said that Russia and the United States had agreed on the circumstances under which they might request a Security Council resolution under Chapter 7, which can authorise both military and non-military sanctions.

But Lavrov emphasised that the agreement did not include any automatic use of force if Damascus fails to comply, but rather would refer any Syrian violations to the United Nations for review.

Just how all the weapons would be safely destroyed is unclear, as the New York Times writes:

Security will be a major worry for the inspectors who are tasked with implementing the agreement; no precedent exists for inspection, removal and destruction of a large chemical weapons stockpile during a raging civil war. Mr. Lavrov said the agreement would require the cooperation of Syrian rebels and not just the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

In addition, as the Guardian's Peter Beaumont writes, "deeper divisions remain," the U.S. still clings to a possible threat of force, and while the agreement seems to be a step forward, the ongoing human catastrophe appears to have no end in sight:

Even as the two men spoke it was clear, from comments by Barack Obama and other officials that the red lines on all sides remain where they were at the beginning of this week.

The US – in the comments of both Kerry and Obama – still hold up the "possibility" of the threat of force if there is non-compliance from Syria, a step back in its military posture from a week ago. Definitions of full compliance, in any case, are likely to be contested over the coming months. [...]

The wider war, which has claimed over 100,000 lives on both sides and displaced 6.6 million, will continue with conventional weapons. And in the event of non-compliance the same arguments seen over recent months will be revisited. [...]

In other words, for all the apparent progress, the can of the Syrian war has been kicked down the road by the imposition of various conditions, many of which surround the key issues. There may be no more chemical attacks but for the foreseeable future the war and the humanitarian catastrophe will continue.

The Pesky Poor

Saturday, September 14, 2013 by Common Dreams
by Christopher Brauchli

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor
It cannot save the few who are rich.
— John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address

One of the questions the curious voter from time to time wonders, is how a person can distinguish good government handouts from bad government handouts. The answer to that question is not as obvious as it would seem to be to the uninitiated. The question was most recently posed (and answered) by U.S. Representative, Stephen Fincher, a member of the House of Representatives from the 8th Congressional District in Tennessee.

Mr. Fincher has distinguished himself by standing up for the right of the poor to prove their self-sufficiency by not partaking of the food stamp program. Because the poor are not always as motivated as they should be and in the case of parents with children but without funds to care for them, unable to keep their lives together, Mr. Fincher believes they should work harder to earn what they require to live as he, and others like him, do. The problem he is helping them address is their dependence on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as the food stamp program.

According to the Department of Agriculture, an estimated 14.5 percent of American households “were food insecure” some time during 2012.” The Department of Agriculture says people who are food insecure have 26% less money to spend on food than households where hunger is not a member of the family. People who have food “security” are people who have access “at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” As a result of the recession from which the country is slowly recovering, almost 48 million Americans out of a population of 313.9 million are now receiving food stamps to help them avoid becoming “food insecure.” As part of the budget negotiations that are taking place during the rare times when members of Congress are not on vacation, Republicans are proposing that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as the food stamp program be itself reduced by $40 billion over the next 10 years. If that goal is met it is estimated that in excess of four million people will lose their food stamps and join the ranks of the “food insecure.” The legislation that the House hopes will accomplish this is part of the 2013 Farm Subsidies Bill that the House hopes to vote on by the end of September. One of the enthusiastic supporters of the bill and its attendant cuts to the food stamps program is Mr. Fincher.

Mr. Fincher is a member of the House Committee on Agriculture and in May he and many of his colleagues on that Committee voted in favor of a bill that increases farm subsidies for crop insurance and decreases funding for food stamps. Following his vote in May he explained it saying: “The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country.” Quoting the Bible to explain what might otherwise be seen as excessively stingy he said: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Eating is not the same thing as farming. Farming is what produces the stuff that those who can afford it eat and helping farmers with subsidies is not, as Mr. Fincher would be the first to tell you, the same as stealing from those in the country and giving to others in the country.

According to the Environmental Working Group, a research organization that keeps track of government subsidies, Mr. Fincher is one of the biggest beneficiaries of federal farm subsidies. Between1995 and 2012 Fincher Farms in Tennessee received payments totaling $4,180,287, almost all of that from commodity subsidies. In collecting those subsidies his farm was one of the ten percent in Tennessee that collected 87 percent of all subsidies paid in that state. Seventy eight percent of Tennessee farms received no subsidies.

Of course neither the farm program nor food stamps are without their limits. Assistance under the food stamp program comes to an end if the recipient has modest amounts of income calculated under formulae published by the federal government. The gross income for a family of three must be below 130 percent of the poverty line or $25,400 a year, its net income must be below the poverty line and it must have assets of $2000 or less in order to qualify for food stamps. Similarly, there are limits on how much a farmer can earn before losing subsidies. A farmer, like Mr. Fincher, who earns more than $750,000 in farm income or $500,000 in non-farm income is no longer eligible to participate in the farm subsidy program.

There are just a few weeks left before the fiscal year comes to a close. It appears likely that Congress may extend the farm bill for another year. If it gets to a vote it is obvious how Mr. Fincher will vote. After all, he’s a farmer, not a filcher like the hungry and the poor.