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   July 1, 2011, 11:12 pm   
   Conservative Cash Crop   
   By TIMOTHY EGAN   
      
   Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.   
   Tags:   
   farming, Federal Aid, Michele Bachmann   
      
      
   The media jackals have been all over Representative Michele Bachmann   
   for misstatements, zany ideas and alterations to history as she kicked   
   off her presidential run in Waterloo, Iowa, home to serial killer John   
   Wayne Gacy =97 not the actor John Wayne, as she said in her evocation of   
   dreamy small-town life.   
      
   From her contention that eliminating the minimum wage would mean full   
   employment to her assertion that =93almost all=94 people in the =93gay   
   lifestyle=94 have been abused, these things can be explained. Bachmann   
   has a worldview that requires constant reshaping in the face of real   
   life. However, if God is writing the script for her campaign, as she   
   says, He needs a fact-checker.   
      
   When pressed this week on her unique view of American origins =97 that   
   =93the very same founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly   
   until slavery was no more=94 =97 Bachmann doubled-down, citing as her only   
   proof the abolitionist John Quincy Adams. Given that Adams was just 8   
   years old when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the   
   Continental Congress, 10-year-old Sasha Obama should be remembered for   
   killing the world=92s top terrorist.   
      
   All of the above only fortifies Bachmann=92s position with a Republican   
   base that would eat dog food for breakfast if the government said you   
   should not.   
      
   But what is more troubling is the issue raised by taxpayer payments   
   for various Bachmann family enterprises. This is where rigid ideology   
   meets mushy reality. The Bachmann family farm in Wisconsin got   
   $251,000 in federal handouts from 1995 to 2009, according to the   
   invaluable table of subsidies put out annually by the Environmental   
   Working Group, a Washington-based research organization.   
      
   There=92s no story there, Bachmann insisted this week, because she and   
   her husband didn=92t get a dime from the farm. It went to her late   
   father-in-law, she said. If that were so, why did she list herself and   
   husband as financial partners in the farm for every year that she has   
   been in Congress? Are her Congressional disclosure forms accurate, the   
   ones with a handwritten declaration of earning =93farm income=94 of up to   
   $102,500 from the Bachmann limited partnership?   
      
   Her husband, Marcus Bachmann, while farming the government one way   
   through the business of his parents, tills another field of federal   
   money with his mental health clinic in Lake Elmo, Minn., which offers   
   =93quality Christian counseling=94 for the troubled. The clinic has   
   collected Medicaid payments of roughly $137,000 since 2005, NBC News   
   reported this week, on top of $24,000 in state funds to train the   
   clinic=92s staff.   
      
   Fine. It=92s all legal. Wouldn=92t every small business love to have a   
   stream of reliable government revenue. And the hypocrisy of a   
   socialism-hating Tea Party leader professing to own a piece of a farm   
   that has been engaged in the nation=92s most indefensible socialist   
   scheme is just standard behavior for a politician worthy of the   
   calling.   
      
   Bachmann=92s fabrications show a brain fevered in cognitive dissonance.   
   She has to believe that the founders were perfect and divinely   
   inspired =97 not flawed men who rose to greatness. Not, in Thomas   
   Jefferson=92s case, even much of a Christian, and an owner of slaves   
   valued as 3/5 of a person in those same heaven-sent blueprints.   
      
   So she tells a fable, and like Sarah Palin when caught in a lie,   
   refuses to admit the mistake. Her supporters cite Barack Obama, the   
   candidate, who mentioned that he=92d been to =9357 states=94 in the 2008   
   campaign. See, he makes stuff up, too! The obvious difference is that   
   Obama did not continue to insist on the accuracy of the error.   
      
   Farm subsidies are at least consistent with modern Republican ideas on   
   wealth concentration. But, in every other way, they make a mockery of   
   Bachmann=92s political philosophy.   
      
   Even in times of bumper crops and record prices, rich landowners reap   
   a harvest of tax dollars. Many of them, like those self-described   
   partners in agriculture Michele and Marcus Bachmann, seldom get any   
   dirt under their fingernails. About 90,000 checks went out last year   
   to landowners who live in cities. Ah, to be a therapist with a field   
   of federally fertilized corn.   
      
   Nationwide, 10 percent of the subsidized farms get 76 percent of all   
   the handouts: $447,873 per recipient over the last 16 years, the   
   database shows.   
      
   These payments assure protection from the cruel swings of the free   
   market. Bachmann herself has pressed for even more farm socialism. In   
   2009, she praised the Agriculture Department for injecting money into   
   the pork industry in an effort to keep prices up =97 and she urged   
   further government intervention.   
      
   =93You don=92t privatize your profit and socialize your losses,=94 she   
   said this week, to a big cheer. If only it were true on the Bachmann   
   family farm.   
      
   A version of this article appeared in print on July 2, 2011.   
      
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