Perry, for a person who is picking nits you are getting rather too many wrong: Fortunately you are now arguing in a region where I can give authoratative sources online.
Karl Hess Jr (PhD). wasn't Barry Goldwater's speechwriter. His father was. His father didn't have a PhD -- indeed, he never attended a state run school past his early teenage years.
I had missed the Jr bit, but Hess Sr is somewhat better known.
Karl Hess senior also was never a Cato instutute staffer -- to my knowledge, his son is not on the staff of the Cato institute either.
Wrong, try visitng the Cato Institute's site: http://www.cato.org/people.html You can find his papers at: http://www.cato.org/pa-234es.html Of course the Cato Institute may have simply added him to their "staff" list to make them look more important but I doubt it. The piece is not particularly original, Cadilac Desert made the same points in the early 80s. On the other hand it is a briefing paper intended to influence legislation so thats not suprising. Federal subsidies of water and farmland have turned into corporate handouts. This is hardly suprising given the mechanism. The farmers want to get a freebie handout while pretending that they are not on welfare. This leads to a mechanism which is attempting socialist policies without admitting that they are socialist, the handouts have to be disguised resulting in far more waste than if an intellectually honest policy were followed. In the EU there is a similar system of corrupt price support for agriculture, mainly supported by the French. I don't know of any serious political movement which supports such policies except for farmers advocates which does not recognise them as pork barrel. Phill