Word: reaping
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...forthcoming budget confrontation between President Nixon and Congress, the first showdown will probably involve a $225 million program that few urban Americans have ever heard of: the Rural Environmental Assistance Program, or REAP. It is a classic case of an originally worthwhile program that outlived its usefulness but gained such a large constituency of supporters that several Presidents have failed in attempts...
...When REAP was started 37 years ago, the idea was that the Government would subsidize farmers to undertake such conservation practices as terracing their land, reseeding grassland and spreading lime on their fields to enrich them. The plan made sense in 1936: better conservation was urgently required to prevent the spread of dust bowls, and farm income in those Depression days needed bolstering by any means available...
Over the decades, farmers' income has grown to record highs, and REAP has degenerated into a pork barrel. Many farmers were paid year after year for continuing conservation practices that they were originally encouraged to start as a demonstration for their neighbors. Some REAP drainage projects destroyed wetlands needed by wildlife and subsidized the growing of potatoes in Idaho to the detriment of potato farmers in Maine. Former Agriculture Under Secretary John Schnittker voices the most telling criticism of the program: "REAP subsidizes farmers to do what they would do anyway. Most conservation practices are themselves profitable...
...National Symphony Orchestra, which has performed at past Inaugurations. Local radio and television stations have balked at providing free commercials to promote the sale of Inaugural medals. J. Willard Marriott, chairman of the Inaugural Committee and a hotelman himself, has irritated local hotel operators, who had hoped to reap a big profit from the Inauguration, by not scheduling more events in their establishments...
...According to his interviews, most Superlawyers despise these unorthodox crusaders. For the new breed of consumer oriented lawyers thrives on exposing the secret deals Superlawyers earn thousands on. Ralph Nader and his confederates show little respect for those Washington Lawyers who bargain their way into positions of power and reap huge financial windfalls for their corporate clients. The new lawyers ask: what is the lawyer's responsibility to society, as opposed to his responsibility to an individual client? Should cases which involve major public-policy issues be resolved in full view of the public or in seclusion behind the doors...