You recently criticized the Heritage Foundation’s stance on the sugar program (“What’s the Heritage’s Foundation’s beef with sugar?”)

I question a lot of what was said. The ASA says that the sugar program is run at no cost to the taxpayer: Well, who is paying for it, then? How do you separate the consumers who are paying for it from the taxpayers who they claim are not be charged for it? Seems to me to be the same people. 

The ASA also says that U.S. sugar is cheaper than in many other countries. All that proves is that other countries have stupid politicians, too. And the fact that in August the price in the U.S. was slightly less than the world market proves nothing. Why doesn’t ASA tell us how often this has happened in the last 10 years?

Actually, the sugar program is a form of theft — the use of the government to force some people to give their money to other people (the same can be said of the ethanol-for-fuel program).

There’s an old saying that a democracy will last until the citizens learn they can use the government to pick their neighbor’s pocket, which is almost the national pastime now.

The Heritage Foundation should be commended for trying to save the Republic from those who are trying to turn our country into a mutual-theft society. The government farm programs—except maybe a little bit that goes for research — contribute nothing to U.S. food security. Their main result is to encourage farmers to do “stupid” [things],  thinking the taxpayers will bail them out.

FARM PROGRAM CROP: Sugarbeets are harvested from a field in the Red River Valley in North Dakota. (Photo: Lon Tonneson)

One other thing, why do we see so many articles saying the good times are just around the corner; and none telling of the real possibility that things are really going to get bad? Can you imagine what a Chinese collapse (a very real possibility) would do to the soybean market? And we’re way overdue for a drought of the magnitude of the 1930s.

Otto is from Crystal, N.D.