Democracy at work
November 2002
by Brandon Copple

This is a story about democracy, about a people's government coming to the aid of a citizen in need. Prepare to be inspired.

It begins in early September, when I returned from two weeks in Europe to discover that I had gone broke. By broke, I mean I had no money in the bank, no money in my pocket, no money in the ol' mason jar. I mean flat-fucking-broke. Yeah I was getting paid, every first and fifteenth, and pretty good money too. But it was all spoken for. On the first, there were the rent and the student loans, and on the fifteenth, the credit cards.

So, with no cash on hand and the pay checks passing through my bank account like it had contracted dysentery, I had no choice but to institute some budgetary restraints until I got the debt under control. I didn't buy anything (except the occasional CD…gotta have music), didn't eat out (except the occasional pizza…gotta have pizza), and didn't hang around in bars (well, actually I did). I put off plans to attend a friend's wedding in Phoenix. I started looking for a cheaper apartment. I decided to sell my couch.

Listen, I know it's not exactly the Joad family, in the Dust Bowl. I had a job, a decent apartment and enough space between me and my credit limits to scrape by for as long as it took to pay everybody back. Eventually I knew I'd pay my way out of the hole I'd dug. But it was starting to get ugly. A student loan check bounced, prompting the student-loan company to fire off three letters berating me for failing to meet my obligation and demanding that I respond immediately. I threw them all in the trash. Never respond to anybody who demands a response.

I've always been bad about paying bills, so it didn't surprise or impress me when the gas company, cable operator and local phone-service provider threatened to pull my various plugs if I didn't pay what I owed.

On the other hand I was pretty embarrassed when American Express called to let me know that they would be canceling my green card if the balance wasn't paid (in full, for chrissake) by such-and-such a date. There was no way I could pay it off. I'd already sent them as much as I could for that pay period; in fact I'd overpaid them, like a dumbass, leaving myself to buy groceries on another credit card because all my cash had gone to the Amex boys.

So I knew the card was toast. Ordinarily not a huge deal, but in this case I was uncomfortable because it's a corporate card, sponsored by my employer. To get a new card after they took the proverbial scissors to this one, I'd have to go crawling back to the accounting people, explain away my seeming irresponsibility and ask them to sign me up for a new card-the prospect of which was not only humiliating but repulsive. I don't want to have to ask accounting types for anything, ever. I realize that you're going to have to ask of them now and then-that's the way it works-but I don't believe you should have to explain your personal financial failings to them, or apologize to them for being a fuck-up, even when you are.

Around the time I got the call from Amex, I also tapped out my overdraft protection. Do you have overdraft protection? If not, you need to get some. Best thing since soft-core porn. At my bank they give you a $1,000 line of credit, and when there's no money left in your account, you automatically start drawing from the credit line. This means the cash machine will keep spitting out twenties long after my checking-account balance has fallen to zero. Of course, I pay interest on the overdraft funds, so really it's just another credit card. Sweet!

Anyway, it was the last week in September when I hit the $1,000 limit on my overdraft protection. Now I had another grand in interest-bearing debt to go with a stack of unpaid bills, a useless Amex card in the drawer and a money clip with nothing to clip. With five days before the next pay check, I hunkered down, bought some groceries (Oh Mastercard, My Mastercard), went home to catch up on some reading, cook some meals, jerk around my apartment.

October 1, I got paid. Half of it went straight to my landlord. Using a calculator (a nice one with lots of funky symbols and batteries, not one of those shitty old solar ones), I then determined how much cash I would need to last the next two weeks, sent what I could afford to the credit-card folks and set the rest aside as a two-week liquidity (as it were) provision. I managed a pretty frugal weekend, but by the time I left for a trip home to Kansas on October 10, I had already spent all the money I'd provisioned. Baffled and pissed at myself, I went to Kansas.

Then, a day after I returned (Tuesday, October 15), a miracle happened. After stopping at an ATM to draw a little of my newly direct-deposited pay, I looked down at the receipt-statement thing that comes out, and I nearly pissed my slacks. You know what that thing said? Balance: $10,000 (actually it wasn't exactly that; it would be uncouth to tell you exactly how much it was, and as you'll see, it'd make you mad).

I was stunned, but I knew what it must be. Manna from heaven, baby – my farm payment. Straight from the District, USDA approved, taxpayer funded. Cha-ching.

You see, I own a farm. A third of a farm actually, in southwest Kansas, where my dad grew up and my granddad grew hard-red winter wheat for sixty years. My old man died eight years ago and when his dad passed away a few years later, I got Dad's third of the family farm.

No big deal really, just a dry-land wheat farm, not too big, never made anybody rich. And unlike the folks in crappy John Mellencamp songs, I don't get too sentimental about the family farm. Yeah, my father's father farmed that land. Before that, his father and his mother's father farmed it. I spent a lot of time on the farm, and I never once saw any of them kneel down, grab a handful of dirt, and look wistfully across the plains as the life-giving soil fell through his fingers. I did, on the other hand, hear every one of them cuss that land about eight ways from Sunday, every chance he got.

After granddad died there was some question as to what to do with the farm. Since none of the heirs were dumb enough to start farming, we rented it out for a season and then a year later, applied to and were accepted into the Conservation Reserve Program. It was simple: we, as landowners agreed to sow our land in native grass and to refrain from plowing or planting on the land for five years. The native grass helps prevent soil erosion, and taking the land out of production helps alleviate the crop surpluses that lead to depressed grain prices. As a reward for our ecological and economic benevolence, and in exchange for letting our land sit fallow, the government reimburses us in an amount roughly equivalent to the farm's annual earning power.

In case you haven't figured it out, this is where the government pays me not to farm.

And let me tell you, I am not farming. You want to see somebody not farming, you just come see me. I'll show you not farming: not farming in a bar, not farming on the couch, not farming in the sauna or down by the lake. I haven't farmed in years and I don't plan to farm anytime soon. It wouldn't be right.

In return for my abstinence, I get semi-annual payments from the Department of Agriculture; I won't tell you how much (again, it's for the best), and lest you think your tax dollars are going to waste, allow me to put you at ease. The money that arrived in my account in early October went straight to pay off my two-week vacation in Europe. All my bills are paid. Overdraft account is back to zero. You are looking at a man with no credit-card debt.

And thus it is my hope that you, my fellow citizen, will permit this meager expression of gratitude. For the generous spirit which allows families like ours to survive on the land even despite the vagaries of a global agricultural economy. For your dedication to preserving the vital resource that is our nation's farmland.

I thank you, my family thanks you, and my creditors thanks you. America the beautiful, indeed.

(Brandon Copple is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)