Turns out there is a way to make money farming, after all;

According to Gretchen Shappert, U.S. attorney for the western district of North Carolina, “the Warren Farms investigation is literally the mother of all crop fraud investigations. It was a result of a perfect storm of individuals who were involved in fraud.”
Robert and Vicki Warren are among eight people who pleaded guilty to swindling the government and insurance companies out of more than $9 million in bogus insurance claims from 1997 to 2003. The Warrens were among the largest tomato growers east of the Mississippi; at one point they owned 26 farms in three states, including one run by Bobby Chambers.
“We grow different kinds of produce, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, just a little of everything,” says Chambers, a beefy, baby-faced, 42-year-old lifelong farmer who runs a spread that borders the Nolichucky River in Cocke County, Tennessee.
According to trial records, he helped the Warrens stage a hailstorm to make it look like their tomatoes had been destroyed, so they could collect the insurance money.
Chambers says he bought a bag of cocktail ice and a disposable camera, and, on his boss’s order, created a foul-weather tableau. “The way we did it, we was down taking pictures, out this row, and then we just stood behind it and throwed the ice over the top. To me, it looked like a hailstorm,” says Chambers.
To complete the scene of devastation, they then picked up wooden tomato stakes and attacked the unsuspecting vegetables. “They had one Mexican who did all the beating, he beat every 16,000 of them. He’d just go through there and knock the leaves off of them,” says Chambers, as he illustrates the activity with a long stick. “It made it look like where the hail had beat it up.”

It gets better. Not only does the US Treasury back insurers in the risky business, the USDA subsidizes premiums.

The government is so generous with crop insurance that it subsidizes farmers’ premiums. Edwards says the USDA paid the Warrens more than $2 million to help them insure their tomatoes. He compares it to the following hypothetical situation: “Every year a bank gets robbed and they notice the bank robber is using an old getaway car and they ask, ‘Would you like a car loan to have a nicer getaway car next year when you come to rob us?’ Because the government is subsidizing the farmer’s ability to defraud us for the coming season.”

Good ol’ farm ingenuity!

Paying off the provincial debt – �$22.7 billion Rewarding every man, woman, and child in the province – $1.1 billion Transferring $53 million in lottery sales made primarily in Ontario and Quebec to 17 oil field workers in Sedgewick, Alberta– Priceless!

(As an aside, be sure to read the link to the MacLean’s article above for a dripping example of Alberta envy masquerading as a story about a winning ticket.)

---

Update: I crossposted this to the Shotgun, where a commentor took me to task for placing a capital “L” in “Macleans”.
Thinking more about the error, I can only say that where I come from, when we hear someone mention “Macleans” we just assume it’s a reference to MacLean & MacLean* in the plural. (And that Paul Wells writes their lyrics.)

The understatement of the decade;

“You are a fool if you enter North Korea to make money.”

Official Xinhua photo of the ” re-entry capsule of the Shenzhou-6 spacecraft” returning to earth.
via Drudge

Fred, over at Gay and Right, has picked up on a report that echoes something I’ve long argued – that if climate change is indeed real, then it’s the height of human arrogance to pretend we can reverse it, even if human activity is one of the contributors. Despite all the advances in science and technology, not much progress made in changing the weather.

One approach � mitigation � would limit carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere largely by reducing emissions due to human activities. The Kyoto Protocol is an example of this approach. The second approach � adaptation � would reduce society�s vulnerability to, or help cope with, the consequences of global climate change due to higher CO2 emissions.
The projections underlying this study are from researchers who are sympathetic to mitigation. However, their conclusions show that adaptation is preferable. Cost estimates are based on reports from various United Nations-affiliated organizations.

So, before you Kyoto-marxists come to “carbon tax” my personal resources (crippling my ability to adapt) , how about a little demonstration? Make it rain.
Then, make it stop.
Human (and animal) kind has survived massive climate shifts throughout our history, and barring cataclysmic change, will continue to do so. The resources that will be sucked down the wealth transfer hole under Kyoto would be better applied to adaptation.
The obvious advantage to the adaptation model is that there isn’t nearly as much guesswork involved. Furthermore, even if a magic device were invented tomorrow that neatly removed massive amounts of CO2 from the atomosphere for mere pennies a day, we cannot assume that the results would include a stabilization of weather. Because, meteorological��semantics aside, it’s local weather patterns that we must live with and adapt to, regardless of what direction the overall climate is going in.
Update – DO NOT MENTION THE WEATHER MACHINE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

The Firefly coming to Canada, specifically targeted at the 8-year old travelling salesman demographic.
What do I think?

I thinking I’m starting a pool on the first complaint to a Human Rights Commission.

Woohoo!

Have a great trip, folks.

A blogger poll by Right Wing News.
My pick for number 1 spot didn’t even make the list.

Now that you mention it, I wonder what the verdict might have been if Jackson were a man of the cloth, instead of a sequined man-thing of the closet.

Harper fans, be of good cheer. Sure, your leader is considered unsightly by many. Reclusive, even. No worries! A small surgical procedure can fix all your problems:

Stubbs performs what he calls �the Toronto trim,� a combo procedure that includes a reduction of the inner labia and a slight �unhooding� of the clitoris so the little man in the boat isn�t being quite so reclusive.

Can’t you just see Harper’s poll numbers shooting — up — already? Ontario here we come!

Subtitled: Rent The Dog
Sneak Preview: Rumours that Scott Brison offered her a ride on his pony appear to be totally unfounded.

Partying Liberals were treated Thursday night to the incredible sight of Belinda Stronach, Canada’s new human resources minister, and Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, dancing atop a speaker at an Ottawa bar. The tune? “Material Girl,” by Madonna. The lyrics to that song include these memorable, and some would say fitting, words: “Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they’re OK, If they don’t give me proper credit, I just walk away. They can beg and they can plead, But they can’t see the light. That’s right, ‘Cause the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right.”

When asked for reaction, Liberal members present at the bash responded stiffly.

I’ve been offered the opportunity to publish Belinda Stronach’s Blackberry.
But that would be unethical, because although she has established herself as a double-crossing hypocrite, willing to sell out her relationships, her constituants, her friends and her party to edge a little closer to the center of power – doing so would indicate that my principles are no better than hers, and as we know, as an unaligned, unelected, private individual voter and taxpayer, I must be held to a higher standard.
As I have been well reminded – “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
Quite so. However…
Three wrongs break a tie.
So, here’s the deal… I’ll put it up on Ebay, with all money raised going to tsunami relief.
Or… eh… I’ll trade it for Paul Martin’s.

Just for fun.

And if this doesn’t work, there’s still Plan B…

*

At Wizbang, Jay Tea has the latest developments in the saga of an American family struggling with an often fatal genetic defect known as “Rich Playboy Disease”.

Last month we learned from university researchers that dogs have personalities.

Dr Sam Gosling, of the University of Texas, rates the dogs on four key traits with positive and negative extremes. He adds that his work suggests pets should be matched with owners who have similar personalities.

I’ll have to write this down…

The work was presented at a major science conference in Washington DC.
“We used approaches used to assess human personality and applied them to dogs,” said Dr Gosling.
“You do find personality differences between breeds. Indeed, many have been bred on that basis. But you also find enormous [personality] differences within the breeds themselves.”

Now we learn that animals like to play and have a sense of humour.

Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.
“Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our ‘ha-ha-has’ and verbal repartee,” says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

In otherwords, formal research dollars and intellectual resources are being devoted to experiments that reproduce observations that can be obtained by raising a litter of puppies or owning two cats.

Sean at Pol:Spy;

Here’s a question for all of you kids stranded in the maritimes who lack the requisite number of marketable skills and/or firing synapses to find gainful employment outside of your birth provinces. Exactly how much of your precious new found resource revenues do you think will be left after the Liberals sneak in their carbon tax in the new budget and claw all of that money back?

Go read the link, and then head to the main page. He’s on a roll lately.

Proof positive (not that more was needed) that the NHL is being run by hockey players.

“It’s an experiment, let’s leave it at that,” Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn said Tuesday while watching Rochester practice.
Quinn said the test came after NHL officials discussed whether changing the ice color from white would enhance how the game is viewed by fans in arenas and on television.
The Sabres offered to try it and, after some experimentation, settled on painting the sheet in what they call “electric powder blue.” To offset the new colored surface, arena officials decided
to make the blue lines fluorescent orange, which is also the color used for the faceoff circles.
The center line, normally red, is now dark blue.

Reports that the NHL is also considering enhancing team uniforms with coloured sequins remain unconfirmed.

There’s only one question left if the new colors ever came into
effect: what would you call a defenseman?
“Guess, I’d become an orange-liner,” Jeff Jillson said.

Or, in the immortal words of Guy Macon* just “a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid”.

Huh.
Someone wasn’t thinking.

Are YOU interested in spending up to 30 days along the Arizona border as part of a blocking force against entry into the U.S. by illegal aliens early next spring?
I invite you to join me in Tombstone, Arizona from APRIL 1 – 30, 2005 to protect our country from a 40-year-long invasion across our southern border with Mexico.
Chris Simcox of Civil Homeland Defense, and the publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona has helped protect our borders for five years with only a handful of patriotic volunteers. It is time we provided him with reinforcements.
I am recruiting volunteers to converge on the southern border of Arizona for the purpose of aiding the U.S. Border Patrol in “spotting” intruders entering the U.S. illegally.
This is strictly a volunteer project. No financial subsidies are available. And, you will probably need a tent, sleeping bag, hiking gear, etc. You will be responsible for all costs associated with your participation.

Subsidies? I know people who would pay for the chance to do this.