Meanwhile, the Farm Payment Story in Europe...

While Obama initiates a fight against direct payments to farmers with gross income over $250,000, Europe has its own payment system costing about $50 billion (at current exchange rates). Jack Thurston starts an explanation why that's politically unsustainable:

1. the payments started as replacement for subsidies but have been in place for 2 decades
2. most money goes to the biggest farmers with the best land, like Queen Elizabeth II
3. landowners get rich, not working farmers
4. poultry, pig and horticulture people don't get paid
5. the most money often goes to the people who do the least for the environment (i.e, who farm the most intensively)

Most of the above sound as if they could apply to the U.S.