The San Francisco Chronicle fronted a hard-hitting story this morning on the sorry state of farm bill politicking in Washington ("Dems work to keep subsidies for agribusiness"). Read the top and you'll want to read the whole damned thing.

As Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton toured the land denouncing special interests, giveaways to the rich, home foreclosures, job losses and a middle-class squeeze, back in Washington House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats met behind closed doors on a plan to raise taxes and cut food stamp money to protect billions of dollars for agribusiness, a sector of the economy that is booming.

Democrats built political support for the farm bills they brought to the House and Senate floors last year the old fashioned way: they bought it. The bills provided modest funding bumps for perennially short-changed food assistance programs for the poorest Americans, and added some money for enormously popular conservation programs that Congress has cut each of the last five years.

But with the Bush veto threat tightening farm bill belts, we're now hearing that "everyone will have to share the pain". Insiders tell EWG that means bait and switch reductions in funding increases that had been approved for conservation and nutrition programs so that Democrats will be able to largely spare farm subsidies from cuts or reforms, as usual. Moreover, a brand new permanent subsidy will be authorized for disaster aid, to the tune of $1 billion or so per year, most of it going to a handful of Great Plains states.

The negotiators agreed Tuesday to find $10 billion in extra money in a last-ditch effort to save the farm bill, once seen as an opportunity to reform commodity programs and divert scarce funds to conservation, nutrition, organic research and California fruit and vegetable growers who are locked out of the Depression-era programs. The money is needed to appease these interests while still maintaining the commodity subsidies. Yet in proposals so far, those areas get trimmed to keep the subsidies flowing.

The subsidies demanded by the farm lobby would help big corn, wheat and soybean growers in areas where income is shattering records, credit is flowing and real estate values soaring.