Some Unneeded Publicity--Payment Limits

Ronald Reagan once used a "welfare queen" (someone who had exploited the system to live high on the hog) to attack welfare. The same seems to be happening with payment limitations. See this link on Maurice Wilder, the reigning king of farm program payments:

"Yes, our pal Maurice certainly gets around. While he isn’t busy farming farm programs for oodles of cash, he’s pumping oodles of Nebraska’s precious groundwater. Or, to be precise, somebody else is pumping it for him:

A man who owns 125 Nebraska irrigation wells has never drilled a single one. Maurice Wilder, 66, of Clearwater, Fla., primarily develops retirement communities, recreational vehicle parks and office buildings in Florida and Texas. And he's never lived here.

As noted above, The King of Farm Programs doesn’t confine himself to farming, either. Check out the following data on our little buddy:

• Total holdings nationwide estimated at $500 million in 2005.
• Owns 10 office buildings in the Tampa Bay, Fla., area with more than 1 million square feet of space.
• Has 4,500 mobile home lots and 12,500 recreational vehicle lots in Florida and Texas.
• Commercial and residential land holdings.
• Owns 200,000 acres of farmland and ranch land in eight states. That's roughly 312 square miles, or nearly the size of Douglas County."