I pointed out a few weeks ago that the ginormous King Ranch is a welfare queen recipient of cotton subsidies. Well, wouldn’t you know it, billionaire and GOP sugar daddy Dick DeVos is a welfare queen recipient of corn subsidies (perhaps we should call him the "High Fructose Corn Syrup Daddy").
Consider Dick DeVos. That Dick DeVos. The former president ofAlticor Inc., the son of one of the richest men in the country, theRepublican who ran the most expensive campaign for governor in Michiganhistory.
He got more than $6,000 in federal farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005, mostly for corn.
His wife, Betsy, got an equal share.
A close DeVos associate, Jerry Tubergen, who lives in a $1 million home in Ada Township, got a slightly smaller cut.
To be fair, the DeVoses aren’t making anywhere near the kind of haul the King Ranch is making–they’re growing the wrong crop for that. But considering the fact that the DeVoses are hoping to skip out on billions of dollars in estate taxes by getting their buddy George to make the estate tax repeal permanent, don’t you think it kind of stingy for them to suck at the teat of our farm subsidy system? Not to mention the fact that the money the DeVoses are taking could fund a pretty interesting organics research program. Instead, it’s contributing to a tacky pyramid scheme. That, plus the Republican party.