Use the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database to see which Tennessee farmers get which government subsidies. (Well, you can see part of it at least, but not all.) That search also helps explain why these Big Hogs love NAIS and government intervention so much—it all lines their own pockets!

Click here to access the database. (Now updated through 2010!)

Tennessee took $3.32 BILLION in total farm subsidies from 1995 through 2010. If you ask our politicians, they will boast of this and thump their chests, but their pride is their shame. The money is ripped from taxpayers and given to these special interests. Then the same government oppresses small farmers, freeholders, and businessmen with stupid regulations that keep them from dealing directly with the public or competing with the Big Hogs, and keep them poor.

A few points of interest from the EWG site pertaining to Tennessee:

• 78 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in Tennessee, according to the USDA. (Interestingly, this is down from 82 percent in 2007—which means more farmers today accepting more subsidies.)
• Among subsidy recipients, 10 percent collected 87 percent of all subsidies amounting to $2.4 billion over 15 years.
• Recipients in the top 10 percent averaged $11,372 in annual payments between 1995 and 2010. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients saw only $95 on average per year.

And here’s another interesting question: how many state and federal representatives and senators and office holders also receive government subsidies? Shouldn’t receiving government money disqualify them from holding public office, where they get power to decide who gets to feed at the government trough?

We say, get the slop hogs’ snoots out of the government trough, and out of our way! Let the government keep its money, we’d rather be free men than hogs.