While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are in Afghanistan and the Philippines defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Republican (fascist/socialist) de facto President George W. Bush (having received an unlawful advantage of 52 ineligible Electoral votes) signs the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, which totally repudiates the ostensibly free-market intentions of the Freedom to Farm Act  of 1996—which had been passed by a Republican CONgress.  Among the 2002 act’s command-market provisions are:

• an almost 80% increase in Federal agricultural subsidies over the next decade;
• the revival of subsidies for honey, lentils and wool, which had already expired under the Freedom to Farm Act;
• resident aliens, who have been in the nation for five years would become eligible for Federal food stamps;
• low-income families who are able to become independent of government welfare payments would be able to continue to receive Federal food stamps for an additional five months;
• imported catfish from Vietnam may no longer be labeled as catfish;
• creation of the Conservation Security Program to spend an initial 2,000,000,000 “dollars” to encourage farmers to adapt environmentally friendly farming.

       Nearly one half of this emergency aid will go to the top seven percent of the most lucrative farms, which are owned by the Chevron and John Hancock Corporations, and individuals such as David Rockefeller, and Ted Turner.

       NOTES:

• Just two days previous, while in Columbus, (Federal enclave of) Ohio, Bush lectured CONgress, the states and the nation on the value of hard work and proposed strengthening the 1996 welfare reform act, which is intended to remove United States enemy-citizens from government welfare rolls.
• Over the previous three years the Department of Agriculture has purchased one billion “dollars” of non-fat dry milk—enough to meet the nation’s needs for 16 months—in an effort to maintain dairy prices above market levels; this makes it necessary to subsidize these expensive diary prices with food stamps for the economically disadvantaged.
• Having re-established farm price supports, raised tariffs to their highest levels since the Great Depression, signed the biggest educational, pork-barrel gift to the national teachers’ unions, and severely restricted freedom of speech for challengers for Federal office, Bush “[i]n less than two years…has presided over more government expansion than took placed during eight years of Bill Clinton.”

       [added 11/10/2023]