Farmer who put up sign claiming Democrats are ?party of parasites? has taken $1 million in farm subsidies.
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 24th, 2010 4:37 am by HL
Farmer who put up sign claiming Democrats are ?party of parasites? has taken $1 million in farm subsidies.
Missouri farmer David Jungerman has raised the hackles of local residents with a politically-charged sign he’s placed on his “45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer” on his farm. The trailer reads: “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats – Party of the Parasites.” Now, the Kansas City Star reveals that Jungerman has been the recipient of […]
Missouri farmer David Jungerman has raised the hackles of local residents with a politically-charged sign he’s placed on his “45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer” on his farm. The trailer reads: “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats – Party of the Parasites.” Now, the Kansas City Star reveals that Jungerman has been the recipient of over a million dollars of federal farm subsidies since 1995:
The Raytown farmer who posted a sign on a semi-truck trailer accusing Democrats of being the “Party of Parasites” received more than $1 million in federal crop subsidies since 1995. […]
After a story about Jungerman’s trailer ran in Sunday’s Star, however, some readers called him a hypocrite for criticizing others for getting government help while taking government subsidies paid for by taxpayers.
Jungerman said he put up the sign to protest people who pay no taxes, but, “Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them” in social programs.
Trying to defend himself, Jungerman told the press, “That’s just my money coming back to me. I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.” He also said that the sign is aimed at national Democrats, not local Democrats, many of whom are “are old-fashioned Harry Truman Democrats,” who Jungerman says are “more conservative than many Republicans.” For the record, Harry Truman campaigned on establishing a single-payer health care system and famously vetoed tax cuts, making him much more progressive than many of today’s Democrats.
Flashback: Rand Paul said that if he were a governor hit with an ethics scandal, he’d just pardon himself.
In 2006, Ernie Fletcher was the Republican, scandal-plagued governor of Kentucky, fighting off charges that he concocted a “a scheme to illegally award state jobs to political supporters.” After a two-year probe by the state attorney general into his hiring practices, Flether was indicted by a “special state grand jury on three counts of criminal […]
In 2006, Ernie Fletcher was the Republican, scandal-plagued governor of Kentucky, fighting off charges that he concocted a “a scheme to illegally award state jobs to political supporters.” After a two-year probe by the state attorney general into his hiring practices, Flether was indicted by a “special state grand jury on three counts of criminal conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination.” Fletcher later signed an agreement with the attorney general conceding that there was “wrongdoing by his administration” in exchange for dropping all charges. But in August 2006, Rand Paul — now the GOP Senate candidate — penned an op-ed in the Kentucky Post offering a different solution. Paul said that if he were Fletcher, he’d simply pardon himself:
Now to give Fletcher a break, we have to acknowledge that having a bulldog attorney general who is a wannabe Democrat contender for the governorship has driven this nightmare. If you had a Republican attorney general, there would be no indictments and no case. Food for thought for Republicans: Apparently you can’t govern peacefully unless you win the governorship and the attorney general’s office.
Which gets me back to my daydream. What would I do if I were governor?
First, I’d have pardoned myself and everyone included nearly a year ago. Without a pardon the case goes on and on. Fletcher has gotten no kudos whatsoever for not pardoning himself.
Richard Beliles, chairman of the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause of Kentucky, said Wednesday that Paul’s pro-pardon stance would have been “good for an emperor, but it’s hardly good for a public servant. … If that’s what he really thinks, he doesn’t understand the concept of a public servant.”
