One lump or two?

LAST YEAR the Bush administration negotiated a free-trade agreement with the five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic. It has yet to submit the deal to Congress...

why?

[A] coalition of special interests has seized Congress by the throat.

raise your hand if you find this at all surprising...

U.S. sugar policy stands for all that's bad about our political system. The government restricts imports through a series of quotas, pushing U.S. sugar prices to between two and three times the global market rate. As a result, a handful of sugar producers, notably in Florida, a battleground electoral state, pocket $1 billion a year in excess profits. To protect this cozy arrangement, the sugar barons plow a chunk of their revenue back into the political system. During the 2004 election cycle, two Florida sugar companies gave a total of $925,000 to election coffers.

what's good for jeb and george (and the sugar producers) is good for jeb and george (and the sugar producers)...

Producers' enviable profits come straight out of consumers' wallets, so that ordinary supermarket visitors are made to subsidize welfare for corporations. At the same time, efficient foreign sugar producers, many of them in poor countries, are denied a fair chance to export their way out of poverty. Meanwhile there is an environmental cost: In Florida, sugar cane production has contributed to the degradation of the Everglades.

as an aside, carl hiaasen, a reporter for the miami herald, has authored a number of wacky murder mysteries set in florida that expose in hilarious fashion the blatant political corruption that is florida's hallmark... in his book, strip tease, he offers a very funny but also very sobering look at florida's sugar mafia...

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