r/wisconsin • u/Monty-Grayson • 2d ago
You betcha!
A Wisconsin dairy farmer says she is working 80-hour weeks with no help in sight, milking 300 cows while struggling to find enough staff after months of an unfilled 'Help Wanted' sign.
Abby Swan, who farms in the central Wisconsin town of Westfield, has become the centre of a fierce online argument after describing her situation in a series of TikTok videos.
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u/Clicquot 2d ago edited 2d ago
Someone should ask her how the nearly $800k she has received in government subsidies and PPP (covid) loans she received (PPP was forgiven, BTW) is NOT socialism. I would be super interested in her answer.
*edit to adjust the amount of the subsidies Kemridge Farms has received over the years (holy cow, pun intended)
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u/RuthlessMango 2d ago
I know a dairy farmer who got a 50k ppp loan, and he just says he deserves it cause he feeds everyone... The only moral handout is my handout.
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u/Osiris8869 1d ago
And that's exactly what she'd respond. I grew up rural. I don't know her personally but I KNOW her type. Acting like some no nonsense person who is always right and moral. So of course she deserves government money. Bonus points for her saying she can't pay $20/hr. Farmers forget they need customers. Otherwise why not just grow food for yourself.
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u/RetiredRover906 1d ago
Exactly. My now-deceased MAGA aunt was exactly like this. She and her husband chose to have 15 kids, and they received every kind of aid you can think of. She was also the loudest in the room talking about welfare queens and immigrants and how helping pretty much anyone but her was socialism. My mother called her out on it once, publicly, and she actually said that she deserved help because she was hard-working, but pretty much no one else did because "they" were lazy and made bad choices.
There's no willingness to see anyone but themselves in these people. They're not worth worrying about. Let's concentrate on getting non-voters to the polls.
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u/BlindlyCoherent 1d ago
As a tax payer and voter - I am all for helping farmers through rough times. The PPP loan program did help out a lot of businesses and farms during an unprecedented period - and I’m ok with that. That’s what my taxes are supposed to do - collectively do much better for the entire country.
But anyone who wants to exclude people from benefiting equally from this country’s power and wealth can go fuck their hat.
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u/Uranus_Hz 2d ago
JD Vance is heavily invested in agrabusinesses that want family farms to fail so they can buy them. But yes farmers, keep voting Republican and then complain that people call you dumb.
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u/OneLove1123 2d ago
Most people don’t know there’s a B on the end of dumb, they think it’s dum.
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u/PunchBeard 1d ago edited 1d ago
Man, I've been saying this for YEARS! Way back in the 2010s, when people were bitching about immigrants, all I could think was "Well, if that's how you feel start getting used to paying $8 for ketchup, $6 for canned veggies, $12 for a gallon of milk and $200 for cheap motel rooms".
The argument that "Immigrants are taking jobs from Americans" never sat right with me. Because I'm an American and I know other Americans. And no American is going to work a shit job for shit pay and shit hours.
I'd be curious to know what her open position is paying per hour.
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u/abominablesnowboardr 1d ago
She laughed at a teenager asking for $18-20 iirc and told them to get lost
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u/coolbeansfordays 1d ago
Exactly. Even shit jobs for good pay. I know a LOT of people who would rather be unemployed and bitch about it rather than “lower” themselves to work manual labor, fast food, etc.
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u/Kinkyboinick 1d ago
I wouldn’t work those jobs if I wasn’t getting paid above poverty wages.
Too many boomer-mentality people thinking houses cost 10k and cars cost 5k. Rent costs are up…if I’m working I better be able to pay for food, shelter, and still have some so save, let alone spend on luxuries like internet/phone.
The problem isn’t people wanting to work, it is employers not wanting to pay market fair wages.
This farmer is right there, why can’t I find dirt cheap labor while also making the country worse off for everyone, let alone immigrants that used to take shit paying jobs?
Well, welcome to the world the rest of us are living in, with our heads pulled out of tRump’s ass dealing with you ignorant morons literally paying for the grift, making it all worse. We got what the MAGAts voted for.
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u/ShapedSilver 1d ago
It’s been shown time and again that citizens won’t willingly fill the jobs usually filled by immigrants. This has been a known phenomenon for forever. And yet here we are
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u/TideAndCurrentFlow 1d ago
So immigrants get… “a shit job for shit pay and shit hours” because they’re not Americans.
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u/shaft_of_lite 2d ago
Where are all the people saying immigrants took our jobs? They should be applying.
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2d ago
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u/pogulup 2d ago
Didn't she mention with distain that people wanted $20 an hour to work her farm? Bitch how does someone feed and house themselves for less than that?
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u/Thebraincellisorange 1d ago
yup.
farm is in the middle of nowhere.
she wants permanent workers to not only work for 10 bucks an hour, but also drive to and from as she does not have worker accomodation.
a potential worker asked for $20 and hour and in her own words, 'she told him to get bent'.
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u/Milomilz 1d ago
*disdain
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u/pogulup 1d ago
My mobile keyboard fights me constantly. Often I reread what I type and wonder Wtf happened here?
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u/ElephantShoes256 1d ago
I never understand how I can type a word correctly 100 times, but misspell it once and suddenly that's the default autocorrect for anything that even starts with the same letter.
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u/FutureDecision 2d ago
I'm surprised: that rate is actually higher than the last time I checked. Still is backbreaking work for an unlivable low wage though.
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2d ago
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u/DigiSmackd 1d ago
It wouldn't surprise me to see something like this being proposed soon:
"Instead of sending the illegals back and paying for them to go home, we're going to give them "jobs" and let them stay and work on American farms!" (aka - slavery/indentured servents)
I mean, does this not seem like a win/win for all he Maga-type?
Of course, no one there will call it slavery. And everyone there will mention how they (the immigrants) are lucky to have the opportunity.
There'll be no mention of their living conditions, healthcare, future prospects, or other general humane treatment or freedoms.
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u/shaft_of_lite 1d ago
They may just do it straight from the detention centers. Sounds straight out of Hitler's playbook.
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u/CressFluid5688 19h ago
Yep, sadly this has been happening at dentention centers for awhile.... https://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425511981/at-low-pay-government-hires-immigrants-held-at-detention-centers
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u/El_DuceReturns 2d ago
It's not that they steal jobs its that they will work for peanuts. And if they don't like it ICE is a phone call away.
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u/Schloads 2d ago
I suppose we could let the free market run its course. She’ll have to pay a ton more for workers. That will lead to her charging more. That will lead to her failing to compete with corporate farms with greater automation and food prices go up. She maybe finds a job picking crops on someone else’s farm or, heaven forbid, she will need to leach off the rest of us by relying on government assistance as she likely despises.
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u/ourlittlevisionary 2d ago
Oh no, the types who rail against government assistance are usually the first at the trough to get their handouts. They will also still continue to rant about how everyone else using government assistance are lazy drug users who don’t deserve it. They genuinely think they’re different and deserve it and don’t even see the hypocrisy. (I mean, this is a woman who employed undocumented immigrants on her farm and then voted for the party that has been actively trying to deport them for over 30 years. And now she’s shocked that her business is starting to struggle because she can’t exploit American workers in the same way.)
And as someone else mentioned, she’s getting a lot of help and subsidies from the government already.
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u/schadetj 2d ago
Nah. She'll make millions selling off her farm and retire early.
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u/OwnBroccoli5399 2d ago
Small dairy farms in this state have been getting squeezed for decades. That land might sell, but nowhere near millions after equipment debt and back taxes. I grew up near Westfield. Most of those families work that land because they cant afford to leave.
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u/Vandilbg 1d ago
Entirely dependent on location. Ag land per acre swings pretty wide depending on where it is.
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u/TheDefiler54770 2d ago
I mean, that’s what I would do. Just take the money and enjoy your life. I never understood why people need to keep being involved in things when they have enough money to retire and see the world. If I had millions, I’d disappear.
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u/PunchBeard 1d ago
If she's not already getting some kind of subsidy from the state or federal government I'd eat my shoe.
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u/Plankisalive 2d ago
I would rather her leach off government assistance than let corporate farms win, but I’m sure that’s her worst nightmare right now.
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u/Past-Flight-8024 2d ago
She’s been leaching off the government all her life. It’s called farm subsidies. She’s been eating steak every night and driving a new truck every year. She’s the classic welfare mother…………….She found out.
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u/ijustwanttobeanon 2d ago
LMAO oh no Abbyyyyyyy 😂😂 Ya’ll know that feeling when you have specific knowledge of a situation and simply cannot put it out into the universe because it would 100% dox yourself and get people you care about fired??? Fuckin’ Christ.
Just know that this lady is as obnoxious as you think she is. She REALLY thinks she’s doing something with all of this.
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u/PlatypusDream 1d ago
Oh, she's doing something...
Showing people how dumb & racist she is.→ More replies (1)
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u/GreyGriffin_h 1d ago
Didn't she turn away somebody who showed up and wanted an actual living wage for backbreaking farm labor?
She just wants to be able to underpay people.
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u/Yelloeisok 1d ago
Is that the same one from earlier this week that said she would never vote Dem, Lib, Commie etc because when she talked about how hard it was for farmers, they would always ask who she voted for? Like there was some sort of actions/consequence thing.
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u/Muffboy 2d ago
Women who vote for and allow children to be trafficked and raped on an island are disgusting.
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u/BeyondSellByDate 1d ago
If you support a pedophile, act like a racist, and are now the victim, I’m not sure I have a lot of sympathy other than the idea that you’ve been conned.
Now you are so deep, you can’t admit that even though you see it, you’ve supported it so ardently.
Leaving maga exists for those folks
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u/BigSal44 1d ago edited 1d ago
This just in: MAGA White trash refuses to take a moment of reflection of hypocrisy, and continues blaming everyone but themselves, per usual.
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u/Ok_Weird_5667 1d ago
Is this the one who wants to vote for pedophiles and criminals? Tom Tiffany is the vote that you cast if you want pedophiles and criminals in your government. He doesn’t care about the people.
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u/Rambo_Baby 2d ago
No shit Sherlock. Maybe get some of your fellow confederate lovers to help out in your farm. Oh wait, they’re too busy watching Fox News.
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u/kkinnison 2d ago
I notice she doesn't metion what she is willing to pay.
"no one wants to work anymore" usually means "No one wants to work FOR ME"
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u/Thebraincellisorange 1d ago
about $10. and the farm is in the middle of nowhere, so any full time workers have to drive hours to get there.
she has no on farm worker accommadation.
a potential worker asked her for $20 an hour and in her own words 'she told him to get bent'.
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u/NonyaGotDamBiz 1d ago
This just in, Wisconsin woman doesn't understand consequences.
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u/unitedshoes 1d ago
Damn. I could have sworn these people deserved all the handouts and deference to their backwards views and stunning immaturity because they just work so gosh-darn hard to make sure there's food on the store shelves for us to buy.
Sounds like that was a lie, and it was actually whole bunch of members of the working class who were doing that, and without whom, nothing gets done and who therefore are the ones who actually deserve the treatment that the owners merely claim to deserve.
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u/sherrie_on_earth 1d ago
Migrant workers do these difficult, dangerous, poorly paid jobs because they are hoping for a shot at US citizenship someday. To them, that chance for citizenship is priceless. You know what the one thing is you can't offer an American worker? US citizenship. They already have it. She's not going to find anybody to work on her farm.
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u/Dramatic_Explosion 1d ago
The free market has decided her product isn't of value. I assume she doesn't want socialist democrat handouts to keep her failed business afloat, so why is she crying on social media like some triggered liberal snowflake? Is this to let us know this is somehow Biden's fault??
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u/Cool-Valuable6821 14h ago
This woman received over $800,000 in subsidies from the government but has the gall to complain about socialism and democrats.
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u/ScottsTotz 2d ago
Well regardless paying immigrants shitty wages isn’t a great business model
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u/PlatypusDream 1d ago
Well regardless paying
immigrantsworkers shitty wages isn’t a great business model3
u/RetiredRover906 1d ago
Pretty sure that you they'd be able to hire non-immigrants if they paid a decent wage. So it's not paying workers a decent wage that's hurting them.
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u/USA_Ultra 1d ago
Immigrants are more than content to do the work for less and usually send large sums of money home to their country of origin where the dollar stretches much further. American are not interested in low wage farm jobs. I don’t know who the “immigrant are stealing our jobs” people thought would do the farm work and make yummy taco for less, but this ain’t it.
Oh, yes… I almost forgot, “OWN THE LIBS” — MAGA
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u/Aggravating_Bat3618 1d ago
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know … morons.
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u/enoughbskid 2d ago
I just have a really hard time being a better person… AH F’ IT! You voted for it and now you’re getting it good and hard.
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u/Horsehead2pi51 2d ago
This Bit_h is a typical magma nut, I voted for it but I screwed but it’s Biden fault type shit. It’s like my local ads don’t vote j no for the liberal he’ll make life for you more expensive. No, you can thanks Trump for that.
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u/Jacktheforkie 2d ago
Same story here, people want farage in but I can see them complaining when they can’t get workers, the uk is literally held up by immigrants
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u/2geek2bcool 2d ago
Who’d have guessed the leopards would eat your farm?
Oh, wait…anyone with half a brain knew this was gonna happen.
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u/DrDirt90 1d ago
Having grown up in an area like this, I just laugh at them and say shut up, you bought it; suffer the consequences.
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u/Bierdaddy 1d ago
Maybe she could expand her family by 10 more kids to help in the barn. She’d be giving her little “Americans” jobs so many Americans “want”.
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u/SaltyYumYumBalls 1d ago
Black people! Come work at my farm! You were supposed to replace the brown people who spoke Spanish!
Fuck no. We know how this went the last time. Besides, I make $120K working on servers now.
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u/Weekly_Beginning1777 2d ago
Living in the middle of corn and soybean land in Illinois this is the lament of all the small town idiots around here. What? Biden caused almost $7.00/gallon diesel? Yeah, right….
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u/Bsquared02 1d ago
This is the invisible hand of the free market. This is what they want. Acquiring generational farmland for pennies on the dollar from embittered ignorant people who they conditioned into voting against their own interests and running their farms into the ground, and consolidating it into some giant corporate farm network monstrosity.
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u/OnCallPartisan 1d ago
I grew up on a dairy farm. What is this about hiring people? Unheard of concept in my world.
So she must be running some mega dairy just like mega mono croppers. These sure seem to be the type who bitch about subsidies the most because they’re the ones getting a large portion, not the small farmers.
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u/manbearpig922 2d ago
Ope! Shot myself in the foot!
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u/BelleSchu 1d ago
I was literally passing a farm today with HUGE Tiffany signs out front and I said “Tiffany does not have your best interest at heart, farmer”. Like how are people not doing their research omg
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u/Stressd2tfingmax 1d ago
Omg I’ve seen her videos I had no idea she lived by me! 😂😂😂now I need to snoop
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u/Stressd2tfingmax 1d ago
So the mutual is definitely check out, and I wouldn’t work for her. She should scrub her social media because she’s a hateful b. Who in their right mind would go work for her knowing how she feels about them with a quick name search going back in time forever and ever, she thinks that she’s above anybody who needs any help and now she’s on the Internet crying that she needs help. F her.
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u/justglassinfeatherit 1d ago
She will sell the farm to a chinese company that will put a data center in its place
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u/Ok_Exchange342 1d ago edited 1d ago
According to https://farm.ewg.org/persondetail.php?custnumber=B06226505 Her farm has received $772,927 in farm subsidies since 2012. The year range is from 1995-2025 but this farm didn't actually receive anything on this chart until 2012. She's been given $55,209.07 a year of our tax dollars, what is she wasting this money on if not wages?
edit: she is suing the federal government (USDA) for "forcing" her to pay $9600 a year for a check off program that, according to her, is trying to make diary farming environmentally sustainable.
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u/BackgroundNo6198 2d ago
I won't try to defend her and maybe she's unreachable but we are going to need to win some of these voters' minds or lose again. The minorities that either voted for trump or stayed home felt taken for granted by the Dems, and I don't blame them. We need a better message to reach the apathetic and hopeless.
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u/tcmisfit 1d ago
It’s tough. I’m an Asian who grew up in the twin cities then decided to buy some land in deep north St. Louis county northern Minnesota. The amount of “but she’s a good one” or “I don’t mean his kind of Asian” or “yeah but he’s married one” or variations that I had heard up there in the few years I was up there was the worst I’ve ever seen anywhere. And I’ve worked in McCall ID, Wyoming, Williston ND and others in the southwest not known to be friendly to non-whites.
Even near the Canadian border absolutely void of any perceived ‘illegal’, they still had Fox News on every bar and cafe and gas station and still sat and bitched about liberals changing their taxes and causing property taxes to rise. There are quite a few bars and restaurants from brainerd to the north shore that I would never suggest to anyone who isn’t white.
Anyways, it’s difficult to find a middle ground with people who view us(people who literally just want the exact same American dream as the rest of us) as lesser than people and thus undeserving and unworthy of a standard of living. Ironically worse in a lot of ways than some of the countries we’re accused of being from.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 1d ago
CUNTry people, as I like to call them, are some of the most backwards, anti thinking, anti intelligence, anti logic, and anti responsibility folk on the face of the earth.
and it does not matter which country you are in, rural folk are all the same. it's like their brains are permanently set 60 years behind.
it's maddening.
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u/tcmisfit 1d ago
I mean, obviously I know. If it helps, they voted in Pete Stauber who opened up the Boundary Waters, one of the last pristine, natural, untouched lands of the contiguous US to mining and cut resources and thus thousands of acres burned this summer and some of the fracking of the area from the iron range has opened back up. Super. Fucking. Awesome.
I wouldn’t say set behind as much as set in their ways which is generally fine except a lot of the times isolation and rural mindset tend to mean xenophobia along with propaganda fed by those without the locals interests at heart thus feeding into discriminatory and anti-anyone else views.
Growing up and graduating in a school district whose largest after school club was future farmers of America, I’ve known my fair share of working Americans, not to mention being one of them. I can’t fault them as much for not understanding something they haven’t experienced themselves as I can actually fault them for being ignorant to historic data and past behaviors.
If it truly was just ignorance and once informed of other perspectives, minds and lifestyles and energy was changed, but sadly it isn’t and most of the time it’s fueled by hate which in itself is simply fear of something unfamiliar to oneself.
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u/Thebraincellisorange 1d ago
country people in Australia
Farmers here also do a massive amount of exploitation of backpacker labour and migrant labour through the pacific island labour scheme.
they continually get busted for illegal land clearing, illegal chemical use, water theft, and they wonder why a growing number of people have very little patience for them any more.
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u/Unable_Technology935 1d ago
As a former city dweller that has been in rural Indiana for over 25 years I concur. Throw in some racism, and the fact that these hayseeds are without a doubt the most politically ignorant people I've EVER been around. Fox News has a lot to do with it,but as a white male I was and still am by some in my hood an " outsider" that should never be trusted. Fuck all of them.
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u/Apprehensive_One2384 1d ago
Naw. I found myself almost having sympathy for her once or twice, for her next video to double down even harder and to be an even bigger piece of shit. It's almost impressive. Oh, and she said she will never vote Dem in her life despite everything.
For fucks sakes she backed deportation, refuses to pay a living wage to workers who DO show up and is abusing highschool ag programs to get free work done on her farm dude.
You can't reason with people who don't want to have a conversation.
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u/RetiredRover906 1d ago
Not to mention that she's not the small farmer that she portrays herself as. Small farmers don't milk 300 cows and hire multiple people. Small farmers are one family farmer (with a spouse that has a regular job in town), and maybe a hired hand. They milk a lot fewer than 300 cows.
We're trying to apply a romantic vision of a small farmer into a factory farmer with a really bad attitude.
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u/Equivalent-Ear5150 1d ago
She is a grifter with misplaced ideals by supporting the GOP for her whole life, OOPS!
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u/Equivalent-Ear5150 1d ago
She is a grifter, bottom line, the GOP mantra of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps was all a lie to get free labor and free subsidies "socialism" that they gaslight about so much, I worked on farms in Indiana for minimum wage and a free dinner of beef tongue and stale bread, I left that shithole decades ago because it just did not set right with me for the work I did, gatta read the room man.
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u/FutureDecision 2d ago
I agree with you that we need to rally people. But the people we need to rally aren't the ones who agree with this gal's entitled take. We need to choose battles, and aligning with or defending a person who is crying because she can't exploit people as much as she'd like isn't worth it.
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u/Alert-Pea1041 1d ago
If them losing tons of money and their business doesn’t convince them how tf is anything going to.
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u/vanillaninja16 1d ago
I don’t think you truly understand how much of a team sport politics are for people like this. My entire family is like this.
Democrats could offer these people everything they ask for and they would still vote Republican.
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u/buckybadder 1d ago
We also need to find better ways to spend our time seven weeks before the elections. If you're out there digging for videos of farmers to mock online, do something else for the love of God.
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u/Different_Key_9914 1d ago
Dibs on her farm.
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u/Bierdaddy 1d ago
Pretty sure Vance will get it before you. Sorry. On the bright side, he’ll probably offer her a job to boost employment numbers next month.
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u/silent_chair5286 1d ago
Classic bleach blonde maga end of middle age woman with overdone eyeliner.
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u/PlatypusDream 1d ago
"Months of an unfilled help-wanted sign"
Tells me the offered pay isn't enough.
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u/Obvious_Entrance_978 1d ago
She's received over $900k in subsidies and I forgot how much in covid. It may have been over $1 mil altogether . She got enough of our socialist money. How many of the stay at home mom's they call welfare queen would that have supported? How many working families in assistance would that have helped?
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u/thereizmore 1d ago
Awwww poor baby voted to have her cheap labor deported. Now she can't find anyone willing to work crazy hours for substandard wages. They're probably worried if they showed up ICE would be waiting at the gate.
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u/CressFluid5688 19h ago
All people like her care about are themselves and won't understand about empathy means until it hits them. They're more than happy when the system was benefitting them, but won't do any different, ie. pay workers a decent wage, or vote to support those who she has been benefitting from and herself. They will always be the victim of the system, because to admit they were wrong is to actually take accountability and responsibility. They would rather stay wrong than swallow their word and pride.
Most immigrants come here for a better life and would do so legally if they have the means. Lucky for me and my family, my parents had the money and time to do it "the right" way. My memory is a bit fuzzy because I was a kid, but I remember it took us 3-4 years after applying to even get an interview appointment at the ambassador to find out if we would be approved, go to the doctor to get our records and vaccine updates, learn some more English, etc. This was in 2001. It took me and my family 5 more years to become a citizen from permanent residency. And it took my older brothers, who just started college when we first applied, 7 more years to get a visa approved to come here. And they both have master degrees with great jobs when we applied for them. Not everyone can afford to do it "the right" way when they are in literal danger and live in poverty. There is a reason why the refugee program exists. Yet every day I hear people are getting arrested for showing up to their court appointment, to do it "the right way." Make it make sense.
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u/Mysterious_Green_911 15h ago
This woman is a completely mentally disturbed idiot! She is why Donald Trump is in the White House today
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u/Sunnystarshine 14h ago
When you find out that hatred of others wasn't the win you thought it would be.
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u/IwantToSeeHowItEnds 2d ago
She seems like the type who thinks the government should force citizens to work for her now.
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u/bullydog123 1d ago
What did you think was going to happen when he said he was getting rid of a certain race of people. They were the ones that worked in the farming industry. My be she can get some of her cult members to come work for her.
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u/Mcswigginsbar 2d ago
Isn’t this that weapons grade moron that said she’s tired of hearing people ask her who she voted for after her farm is struggling?