Hightower Lowdown

Some of W’s appointees are so ugly you wouldn’t pull them behind a John Deere with 30 feet of rope. The ugliest yet might be the man he snuck in as undersecre-tary for rural development in the Ag Department.

As head of a large corporate farm in Iowa, Thomas Dorr was slipperier than an Enron exec. He rigged his books to get around the legal limits on federal farm payments, which allowed him to grab more crop subsidies from us taxpayers than he was entitled to receive.

Twice, including this year, he got caught and was forced to return thousands of dollars to the government. Dorr shrugs off his conniving, telling senators at his confirmation hearing that his illegal scam is okay because “I have known many, many farmers who have done that over the years.” Maybe, but they probably didn’t expect to get a top federal appointment.

While Dorr loves getting federal farm money, he hates the idea that any of his tax dollars might go to help other rural people. Three years ago, he sent a hot letter to Sen. Tom Harkin denouncing a small tax that helps extend Internet access to rural areas, saying that “subsidy games” had turned Iowa into a “state of peasants.” Odd attitude for a guy who wants a job administering programs to help the rural poor.

Dorr once made the unfortunate comment that three Iowa counties were enjoying prosperity because of their homogeneity—white and Christian, that is.
This clod shouldn’t be in the USDA. And he wouldn’t, except that W made him a recess appointment last month, sneaking him in while the Senate was out of town.