Welfare Queens demand continued handouts.

And I guarantee you that these welfare queens really do drive Cadillacs, and not old ones, either. Unless they are driving Mercedes and BMWs.

This is from last Thursday but the story is as timeless as welfare for the undeserving rich. Paul Blustein has the story in the Washington Post:

The Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, drew objections from members of the Senate Finance Committee at the first hearing on the accord. The pact, which would largely eliminate barriers to trade between the United States and five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic, is one of President Bush's top legislative priorities this year and is shaping up as a crucial test of the United States' willingness to strike new trade agreements.

The criticism came not only from Democrats, who have grown increasingly hostile toward free trade in recent years, but from Republicans, especially those worried about the agreement's impact on U.S. sugar producers...

The industry has been protected for decades by quotas that limit sugar imports and keep U.S. sugar prices at more than twice world levels. It enjoys significant clout partly because large cane-growing companies in the South shower campaign contributions on politicians of both parties

I wonder how much Hawaiian mortgage lenders shower on them as well: imagine the effect on the price of residential land there if hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane land went resoundingly bankrupt because American were allowed to pay the world market price instead of double that.

People in Hawaii could afford to own homes, homes much more closely comparable than now to Mainland houses at any given price range if sugar land was available for housing. As it is, the Welfare Queens who own the land may well prefer to sell a lot, but as long as subsidies keep it more or less profitable the politicians will have little reason to stand up to the other ppl who demand that the land be kept in beautiful agricultural splendor: Damn the ppl who can't afford houses, and to hell with all of the professors who the colleges can't afford to hire because the profs can't afford housing out there. The students are the ones who will suffer, and with them the state for decades to come.

Profitable sugar is screwing Hawaii's future: stupid housing costs are no benefit to anyone except those who own residential land and those mortgage lenders who have a lot of money tied up in artificially expensive real estate.

In the long run, one of the best things which could happen to the state is for Bush to succeed in eliminating sugar subsidies: The price of standard housing would fall dramatically, colleges could afford better professors from more diverse backgrounds, and children raised there could reasonably hope to afford to own their own homes after they are employed adults.