Farm Funny Stuff

S.C. House Ways & Means Chairman Dan Cooper has a foolproof way to get our state’s economy moving again.

Wanna hear it?

Cooper’s plan is to create a new government program that will promote and sell S.C. farm products to our public schools – and pay some bureaucrat $80,000 a year to run it.

It’s genius, right?

Seriously, why didn’t we think of this?

Dubbed the “S.C. Farm to School program,” this little stinker of a bill exemplifies everything we hate about government.

“A successful South Carolina Farm to School Program requires the resources, expertise, and collaboration of a number of state agencies, including the State Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Environmental Control,” the legislation says.

Are you kidding? God help us.

Here’s the price tag to get this new government program up and running …

… this new program would cost approximately $124,200 in the first year and $99,200 each year thereafter. Recurring costs include the salary and fringes for 1.00 program director ($79,200) and operating expenses of $20,000. One-time costs include $15,000 for website development and $10,000 for office equipment. General fund costs could be reduced to the extent that the department is able to obtain grants and donations; however, the department indicates that while federal grants might be available for specific projects it is not likely that such funds would be available for program administration and general operating expenses.

That’s obviously in addition to the cash that S.C. public schools will fork over to pay for the farm products, which nobody is estimating at this point.

This particular bill was written about extensively by the Palmetto Scoop yesterday, however the article was pulled from the website for some unknown reason today.

Also interesting is that lawmakers were going to push this ridiculousness through the House of Representatives last week on a voice vote, which as you may recall is in direct violation of the “transparency” rules House Speaker Bobby Harrell passed last December.

Fortunately, Rep. Nikki Haley held up the tractor … err, train and demanded a roll call vote.

That vote failed 62-1, though – with half of the S.C. House of Representatives not voting.

This bill is sheer taxpayer-funded insanity.

“Bovinous,” our founding editor might say.

South Carolina farmers have every right to market and sell their products to South Carolina schools, and God knows the illiterate little fat asses being churned out by our “one size fits all” monopoly could sure use some nutrition in their diets.

But it is not the taxpayers’ job to subsidize those marketing efforts.

Nor is it sound public policy to build a new government program around every redneck lawmaker’s bright idea – in the worst budget environment in history, no less.

We should be cutting government programs, not creating them. And we should be firing bureaucrats, not hiring new ones to assume additional private sector responsibilities.

“Farm To School” is a perfect example of why S.C. state government remains among most inefficient, most redneck and most ridiculous in the history of Western Civilization.

Let’s hope the Senate exposes it for what it truly is, another brick in our state’s big government wall.

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