The Washington Post's yearlong investigation of the farm lobby, dubbed "Harvesting Cash," is muckraking journalism at its best. Advocates for the developing world's poor have lambasted the subsidies that the U.S. government pays to American farmers for some time. The problem is that economists and advocates can (and do) argue about the inefficiency and unfairness of these subsidies until they are blue in the face; the idea that inefficiencies or no, we should tighten our belts and support generations of American farmers is such a powerful one that the arguments make little difference.

The Post takes a long look underneath the macroeconomic arguments against -- and the farm lobby arguments for -- agricultural subsidies and finds... simple corruption. You may have heard that most ag subsidies end up making their way to huge ag corporations rather than the plucky family farmers we carry around in our heads. Or that these subsidies have actually hastened the demise of said family farmer. But the bar keeps getting lower: First, we learned that the government has paid out more than $1.3 billion to people who don't actually farm. And today, the Post reports that taxpayers have paid almost as much to farmers who have been deceased for years.

One wonders what level of absurdity our agricultural policy will have to attain before the American voter demands some big changes.