The United States currently pays $20 billion dollars per year in direct farm subsidies. Most of the money goes to corn which mainly goes into the corn sweeteners that make us all fatter and push many people into type 2 diabetes. The second biggest crop is cotton which is grown mainly in the Central Valley of California with subsidized water.

As the glorious biPartisan Deficit Commission sets its sights on the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and the tax exemption for employer provided health care because these represent aid to people who are not in dire poverty and distort economic choices we should note these forgotten sources of waste and inefficiency.

Why are we paying large landowners to do things that emphatically do not need to be done? Why are all of our "Free Market Economists" and assorted very serious people so silent on this particular form of domestic Crony Capitalism. Where are agricultural subsidies in Paul Ryan's Roadmap For America?

Wonks Anonymous imagines that the dinners thrown by the agricultural lobby for the folks in D.C. must be very grand indeed.