Day: December 10, 2025

Farm Aid, Donny Style

Common knowledge that our farmers have been struggling and losing the battle thanks to the ill-conceived tariffs….and now Clueless Leader has decided to do something….

President Trump announced a $12 billion bailout for US farmers on Monday, aiming to soften the blow from his own tariffs and a tough year in agriculture. The relief includes $11 billion in direct payments through the Farmer Bridge Assistance program, with another $1 billion set aside for other commodities, the Wall Street Journal reports. Soybean farmers, hit hardest by collapsing prices and the loss of China as a top customer, are expected to benefit the most. Trump announced the aid plan at a White House roundtable Monday, saying it would be funded by tariff revenue, the AP reports.

Farm bankruptcies are up 60% this year, with the cost of goods including fertilizer rising and crop prices low after a record harvest. The aid, set to roll out at the end of February, drew praise from major farm groups. The American Soybean Association lamented 2025’s combination of bad prices, high costs, and lost markets. At Monday’s event, Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pointed fingers at foreign-owned agribusinesses for driving up costs.

Soybean exports to China, which once bought nearly a quarter of all US beans, dropped to zero after Trump’s tariffs, though purchases resumed after a deal at the end of October. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he announced $12 billion in aid to farmers during a trade dispute with China. The total compensation for lost farm business due to tariffs during his first term was around $23 billion, the Journal reports.

As in 2018, farmers say they appreciate the help but would rather make money from selling crops than government payments, the AP reports. “I think we need to be looking for some avenues to find other funding opportunities and we need to get our markets going. That’s where we want to be able to make a living from,” says Kentucky farmer Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association. Asked Monday if there would be more aid packages, Trump said it would depend on market conditions, the BBC reports. “The farmers don’t want aid,” he said. “They want to have a level playing field.”

This will be a welcome relief but will not solve the problem just delay the inevitable.

How much if this aid will go to agri-business giants?

Let’s be honest these lame tariffs are causing much of the problems…..

Democratic US Sen. Ron Wyden was among those who emphasized Monday that President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies have helped create the very conditions the White House is now citing to justify its new $12 billion relief plan for American farmers.

“Instead of proposing government handouts, Donald Trump should end his destructive tariff spree so American farmers can compete and win on a level playing field,” said Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “Donald Trump’s trade war is taxing families, killing markets for our farm goods, and driving farmers into bankruptcy.”

“Trump’s plan to bail out farmers won’t even get agriculture communities back to even,” the senator added. “They’re still paying more for fertilizer, equipment, and seeds, while grown-in-the-USA farm goods are facing more obstacles than ever in foreign markets. Don’t forget that all of this trade destruction and taxing was to raise money for Trump’s massive handouts to billionaires and the ultra-wealthy.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-farmer-bailout

His plan will not solve the problem as I have stated…..his plan is to throw money at the problem he created with the hope that some good can be rescued from the action.

BTW, prices will not go down because of this so-called ‘plan’….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Why The Boats?

Since September the US has been actively targeting small boats of the coast of Venezuela stated that they are ‘narco boats”…..but why now?

Here is a thought…..

We do not yet know with certainty that the US military targeted survivors of a boat strike at the Defense Secretary’s encouragement. But, we do know that the bombing in question was illegal, regardless.

Officially, Hegseth ordered that attack to combat drug trafficking. Since September, the administration has conducted more than 20 lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing over 80 people. In each case, the White House claimed that the targeted vessels were transporting narcotics on behalf of drug cartels, although they’ve presented no evidence to support those allegations.

Of course, the US military has not traditionally claimed the authority to summarily execute criminal suspects. When the government believes that an individual is selling illegal substances, it typically arrests that person and puts them on trial.

The Trump administration insists, however, that South America’s drug cartels should be considered terrorist organizations — and that each time these groups export narcotics across our border, they effectively commit an attack on US soil. Therefore, the US has the right to “secure our homeland from the drugs that are killing our people” by waging war against Venezuela’s narcoterrorists (and/or small fishing boats that could theoretically be carrying contraband).

This reasoning is absurd on its face. Supplying cocaine to Miami dance clubs and flying planes into New York skyscrapers are categorically different offenses. To define the former as an act of war is to drain that term of all meaning. In practice, it also entails empowering the president to kill anyone he suspects of engaging in illegal commerce. No past administration has ever asserted this authority, and no domestic or international legal body has ever affirmed its legitimacy.

What’s more, the president’s position isn’t just theoretically unsound but factually baseless. In justifying its campaign, the Trump administration has constantly invoked America’s overdose epidemic. In September, Hegseth called his missile strikes a “defense of the American people,” since “100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration.” President Donald Trump, meanwhile, claimed that each individual speedboat the military has incinerated would have killed “25,000 American people” (a claim that is, of course, mathematically ludicrous).

https://www.vox.com/politics/471075/trump-hegseth-strike-venezuela-drug-boats-war

Basically this is fodder for the press to keep them looking elsewhere.

I still wonder why attack a small boat that is carrying small amounts if at all….why not track them to the ‘carrier’ ship and take out a larger haul. if you feel you must attack.

But let’s be honest: Donald Trump does not care whether illegal, dangerous drugs enter the United States. He does not care that thousands of people have died after taking these drugs.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”