Rumors abounded, however, of corporate farmers illegally irrigating thousands of acres with the super-subsidized water—by inventing complicated lease-out lease-back arrangements, by controlling excess land through dummy corporations, by leasing from relatives, and so on. It is unclear how much the Bureau knew about this and how exact its knowledge was; what is clear is that it did little or nothing to end it. Even a self-proclaimed populist like Mike Straus was afraid to tangle with the giant California farming corporations and the politicians they helped elect. “Straus huffed and puffed about
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