What effect does corporate power have on the food we eat?
Has corporate power, by means of campaign bribes, skewed the playing field and screwed the American People and the people of the world?
Has the Politico-Agrico-Industrial Complex made foods that are worse for us all to eat too cheap to pass up — and foods that are good for us too expensive to buy?
Seems so.
Check out these items from Michael Pollan:
A discussion on NPR/PRI/WBUR's Here & Now about how the farm bill subsidizes high production volumes, by the bushel, of cheap corn and soy, but does nothing to help vegetable farmers. Even corn farmers used to be subsidized with price SUPPORTS — that is, methods to keep corn prices HIGH, not low. Farmers have never benefitted from low prices for their products; only agribusiness and now corn-fuel corporations benefit. These are the treacly, sticky folks from High Fructose Corn Syrup Land that help us continue to shift into a nation of obese-diabetics-who-don't-have-sickness-insurance. Ever heard this song about the "junk-food junkie" who dies with a Ding-Dong™ on his breath?
Not to sound cynical, but isn't that what you would expect of our campaign-funded government and our greed-wallowing corporate executive class? And not to ignore the fact that there are STILL some American citizens working, IN AMERICA, for American "multi-national" corporations.
But the number of US citizens working in America for American multi-nationals continues to dwindle. Unemployment (if you use the most common-sensical measure, "U-6," — that estimates everyone who has taken lower-paying jobs, shorter-houred jobs, temp and stop-gap and minimum wage jobs, everyone who's gone on SS disability, taken "early retirement", has given up looking and just volunteers or runs for public office, who is "overqualified" PLUS those folks getting their six months of unemployment insurance payments, our ACCURATE unemployment rate is running at around 12%, not 3% or 4% or 5%. Twelve percent.
The Iraq Invasion and the Iraq Occupation (the so-called "OIF" or Occupation Iraq's a Failure) have been good for:
- George Bush in the 2004 election;
- Dick Cheney in retirement benefits every year from Halliburton/Brown,Root&Kellog;
- Dyncorp, Blackwater (which means sewage, in the RV lexicon), etc.;
- All tank, jeep (humvees), ammunition, tank, MRAP, bomb, airplane manufacturers.
The Iraq Invasion and the Iraq Occupation (the so-called "OIF" or Occupation Iraq's a Failure) have been double-plus UN-good for:
6,000 or so dead US soldiers and contractors;
1,000,000, give-or-take another million or so, dead Iraqis (from 1992 on until today
