First it was cheese...

Farm subsidies from the federal government often result in what economists call unintended consequences. For years, up until the early 1980's, the federal government, in order to keep the price of diary products high, purchased tons of cheese and squirreled it away in caves scattered around the state of Missouri. (This is true, google it.) In 1983, the government decided to unload the $4 billion worth of cheese they had stored in Missouri by giving it away. Block long 'cheese' lines were a common sight for awhile.

What happens when the government accidently passes a $30 trillion subsidy bill for soybean farmers?

According to sources within the House Appropriations Committee, a misplaced decimal point deep inside the 279-page Farm Relief and Reform Act of 2010 increased the soy subsidy by roughly 1.75 million percent, precipitating the nationwide glut…

In response to the inundation, the Food and Drug Administration released a revised food pyramid Tuesday consisting entirely of soybeans and soybean-based products, as well as nutritional guidelines urging every American to eat eight servings of soybeans per hour...

In the Senate, meanwhile, efforts to repeal the subsidy have been held up by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), whose state now enjoys a median household income of $131 million.

"I'm not going to get into this silly debate about whether there are too many or too few soybeans," said Grassley, standing chest-deep in the hulled oilseeds as he addressed the Iowa Soybean Association. "The bottom line is this subsidy protects good, honest soybean jobs from being shipped overseas, and unlike my opponents, I choose to stand with American workers."

As usual, politicians BS it and government agencies change course to make the mistake appear as though it were planned all along. No surprise.

I know, it's The Onion, but it sounded real to me.

Another mystery solved! Who put the extra cheese INSIDE pizza crusts...and why?

At the cost of millions of taxpayer dollars, two Federal agencies, the Department of Agriculture & its subsdiary, Dairy Management, follow two very different agendas. The D of A would like nothing better than to accompany each of us to the grocery store and slap our hands every time we reached for a bag of potato chips, a steak or, God forbid, a nice big chunk of regular-fat cheese. Working under the umbrella of the D of A, Diary Management spends millions of dollars for their designated special interest group, diary farmers, convincing fast food restaurants to increase the amount of cheese they use in their products ~ thus the introduction of Pizza Hut's cheese-in-the-crust pizza along with Taco Bell's steak quesadilla (featuring three kinds of cheese and cream sauce) and the Chessy Angus Bacon burger offered by Wendys. My pull quote, with my emphasis, from the NYTimes:

When eaten in moderation and with attention to portion size, cheese can fit into a low-fat, healthy diet,” the department [of Agriculture] said.

In its reports to Congress, however, the Agriculture Department tallies Dairy Management’s successes in millions of pounds of cheese served.

These efforts, the department reported, helped generate a “cheese sales growth of nearly 30 million pounds.”

The Department of Agriculture has a number of similiar programs promoting other products, including (we're not supposed to eat) beef and potatos, but Diary Management is the largest. It's most recent and wildly successful effort increased sales at Domino's Pizza by directing them to add 40% more cheese to their pies and paying for a 12 million dollar marketing campaign. Quite a feather in the cap of Thomas Gallagher, who heads up Diary Management and makes upwards of $600,000 annually for his efforts.

the whole article ~ worth reading 

More cheese...happy dairy farmers who vote...happy Mr. Gallagher...all paid for, in large part, by taxpayers...business as usual. I bet even the cows think this foolish.