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Billie Sol was largely financed by cotton price supports and grain-storage fees paid for by the taxpayers. If there had been no price-support programs, there would have been no inviting storage business for him to get into, no cotton allotments to obtain by fraud.
In its sheer gaudiness, the Estes mess dramatizes the farm scandal more vividly than ever before. If that dramatization were to result in something really being done about the farm fiasco, who knows but that the U.S. might even owe a vote of thanks to none other than Billie Sol Estes.
* The Murchisons are also great believers in the virtue of borrowing money to make money.
Only half-jokingly, Clint Murchison once laid down a maxim that "a man is worth twice what he owes."