Big Brother Monsanto Watches You, Wants Your Money, Worship

While comfortably ensconsced in your lounger, watching HDTV and snacking on popcorn, you may not be particularly excited about hearing that Monsanto Corporation is after the world's seeds, of which it now controls about 30%. Even if those seeds include popcorn. Even if they nearly control 90% of American seeds, and take the position of God-to-be in their all-powerful, all-knowing takeover of world Agriculture, demanding capitulation, adulation, remuneration from every man, woman and child who works the land.

The question on everyone's mind is simply, "What does that have to do with the economy? Will that raise my taxes?" Or maybe "Will that hurt my candidate's chances?"

Nobody seems to feel that a corporate giant is now standing in their living room, dictating what they will or will not eat, how much they will pay, and how they will feel tomorrow. And you can't see them or talk to them. They don't really need you. They need your acquiescence. Simply by doing nothing in the comfort of your home, being as conventional as humanly possibly, by not asking questions or talking about anything other than celebrinews, you are pleasing them, in their good graces. You are, in short, their kind of people.

First, you should read this article in Vanity Fair, if you haven't already, with a graphic description of how Monsanto plays God, Big Brother-style, as well as the sins of the Old Bad Monsanto, the Chemical Company that brought us the most poisonous chemicals in existence: PCBs and dioxin, and threw them carelessly around the world's environment for future generations of protoplasm to have more "interesting" genes, for those couch potatoes who are no longer entertained by humans with normal limbs and features and find health boring. Then,

Here's an article about a movie Americans will never see - or so we're told - entitled "The World According to Monsanto" by French filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin. And why should Americans see it? It could create that anathema of American security Comptrollers: panic! Oooh, don't tell them slugs the truth - they'll panic! Remember Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds radio show? Oh, don't tell me you're under 85? That pre-TV radio show and its impact on the population of the time is trotted out on every "UFOs: Real or Imagined?" show as the Ultimate Reason we, in 2008, should never be allowed to see anything controversial, such as Dan Rather's story on George Bush maybe evading the - gasp! - draft... Fire the guy! Schmirst Amendment, my ***! And so, too, Corporate Giants have to be protected. And especially their all-important omnipotence-giving Patents for which they have paid Untold Millions that Must Not Be Squandered by Peasants and other Lowlifes.

Meanwhile, if you want to know just how bleak our American future with Monsanto REALLY is, just look at India. Better yet, listen to Dr. Vandana Shiva:

"Recently I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of
farmers' suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region in
India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have
become waterlogged desert. And, as an old farmer pointed out, even the
trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides has killed the pollinators - the bees and butterflies.
And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, where farmers have also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton seeds referred to as "white gold", which were
supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers.

"Their native seeds have been displaced with new hybrids which cannot be
saved and need to be purchased every year at a high cost. Hybrids are also very
vulnerable to pest attacks. Spending on pesticides in Warangal has increased
2,000 per cent from $2.5 million in the 1980s to £50 million in 1997. Now farmers are consuming the same pesticides as a way of killing themselves so that they can escape permanently from unpayable debt. The corporations are now trying to introduce genetically engineered seed, which will further increase costs and ecological risks. "

Does that sound familiar? Not yet? Well, listen to America's beekeepers, who say bees are dying wholesale, and think again. Monsanto cares about nothing except making profits, and finding ways to dupe people into thinking it cares about something other than making profits.

But Monsanto does not operate in a vacuum: pro-corporation, conservative, pro-"market values" capitalist culture provides the breeding ground for companies like Monsanto that value nothing but their own bottom line, and feel morally justified in doing so.

Again, Dr. Vandana Shiva put it best:

It is often said that the roots of environmental destruction lie in
treating natural resources as 'free' and not giving them 'value'. Most
discussions in the dominant paradigm assume that monetary, commercial or market
value is the only way of measuring or valuing the environment. It is falsely
assumed that value can be reduced to price.
However, the market is not the only source of values, and monetary values are not the only ones. Spiritual values treat certain resources and ecosystems as sacred - there are also such social values as those associated with common property resources. In both cases, resources have no price - but a very high value. In fact, it is precisely because their value is high that these resources are not left to the market but are taken beyond the domain of monetary value so as to protect and conserve
them.
...
The proposal to solve the ecological crisis by giving market values to all
resources is like offering the disease as the cure. The reduction of all value
to commercial value, and the removal of all spiritual, ecological, cultural and
social limits to exploitation - the shift that took place at the time of
industrialization - is central to the ecological crisis.
This shift is reflected in the change in the meaning of the term 'resource', which originally implied life.
...
With the advent of industrialism and colonialism, 'natural resources'
became the parts of nature required as inputs for industrial production and
colonial trade.
... Nature, whose real nature it is to rise again, was transformed by this
originally Western world view into dead and manipulatable matter - its capacity
to renew and grow denied.
...
The market economy is only one of the world's economies - in addition,
there is nature's economy of life-support processes and people's economy in
which our sustenance is provided and our needs are met. Nature's economy is the
most basic, both in that it is the base of the people's and market economies,
and because it has the highest priority to, and claim on, natural resources.
However, development and economic growth treat the market economy as the primary one, and either neglect the others or treat them as marginal and secondary.
Capital accumulation does lead to financial growth, but it erodes
the natural resource base of all three economies. The result is a high
level of ecological instability. The anarchy of growth and the ideology of
development based on it are the prime reasons underlying the ecological crises
and destruction of natural resources.
...
The dominant model of environmental economics promoted by the World Bank
and major economic powers attempts further to reduce nature's economy and the
sustenance economy to the market economy. Preoccupation with 'getting the prices
right' can lead to a blindness to the fact that the market usually gets the
values of justice and sustainability wrong.

The marketization of common resources is based on myths. The first is
the equivalence of 'value' and 'price'. Resources - such as sacred
forests and rivers - often have very high value while having no price. The second is that common property resources tend to degrade.
Privatization is frequently prescribed for solving 'problems' caused by
overusing resources under open access and common property. But it is based on
the tradeability of private property, while commons are based on the
inalienability of shared rights derived from use. The assumption that
alienability is more conducive to conservation is derived from the false
association of price with value.

There is much more, and her views are well worth looking at. And if you want to be more than convenient-to-manipulate protoplasm, it would be worth your while to boycott Monsanto products and write to your Congresspeople or other politicians about what values people have and want to protect from giant Corporations who are about to destroy something you'd have a hard time living without: food. Oh, and planet Earth.

Hillary Courted Racists for PA Win?

Check out this piece in Buzzflash which says, among other things,

"Clinton began her focus on the white vote in earnest during the South Carolina primary, when husband Bill famously equated Obama's campaign with that of an earlier black presidential campaigner, Jesse Jackson. The linkage was
immediately spotted as a clever way of labeling Obama as a "black" candidate, since Jackson has always been a lightning rod for white voters because of his active support for touchy issues such as affirmative action and fair housing laws.
She also made much during the Pennsylvania campaign of Obama's membership in a black church in Chicago, and of his relationship with the church's black liberation preacher, Jeremiah Wright (adding that she "would have left" such a church herself).

"...clearly some of her support came from whites -- men and women -- who, as Clinton Pennsylvania mentor Gov. Ed Rendell said, "will not vote for a black candidate."
And there in stark terms is the answer. There are white voters in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania -- a lot of them, in fact -- who are simply racists. They will not vote for a black candidate for president. Period.
That is a far different thing from a black voter who votes for a black candidate, or a Catholic voter who votes for a Catholic candidate. Identity politics is not racism."

Then there are Hillary "backers" who claim that calling those people "racist" is wrong, since a vast majority (90%) of blacks voted for Obama, claiming that to be "more racist." The writer explains as above, but failed to mention that this is a constant neocon rant: the "reverse racism" rant. It's total bull, and indicative of the divisive and Republican-strategied power-at-any-cost strategies of Hillary, whose proven expertise as a consummate liar should give those who dislike Bush and his policies pause indeed.

I find the gap between her higher rhetoric and her lower standards too appalling. I'd rather have the first woman President to be someone I could trust.

Cool It, Ladies, She's Worse Than You Think: Hillary May Out-Macho McCain

They say "older white women" are Hillary's strongest supporters. Well, I'm sure all those Boomer Ladies wouldn't be so hot about her if they actually heard her take on war.

If you're thinking there isn't a hair's-breadth of difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, think again. And think hard. Hillary Clinton represents the same empire, military-solves-all mentality that threatens to put our country on the fast track to total collapse. Is this the "Democratic" candidate you really want?


Hillary wants to play warmonger with Iran at a time when those with greater knowledge say that would be the worst possible mistake:

The book All the Shah's Men (authored by Stephen Kinzer, interviewed for truthout by Maya Schenwar) reminds us that, when it comes to Iran, the backseat is probably where we should be sitting. The US was responsible for the 1953 coup that toppled Iran's democratic government, replacing it with the repressive Shah regime, which hastened the Islamic Revolution of 1970s, inspiring the rise of radical groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Yet the US has not yet taken its Middle East history lessons seriously. Kinzer noted
that our attitude toward Iran and Iraq is symptomatic of the US's overriding
tendency toward using military force to shape economic policy - in this case,
oil management - to its advantage.
Kinzer's most recent book, Overthrow, shows how the "regime change" model has developed over the past 110 years. In our interview, he discussed the motivations behind that empire-driven mentality - and why, ultimately, it's doomed to fail.

Hillary has joined John McCain and the Republican-led warmongers into another dangerous and obviously disastrous adventure in threatening Iran. Her interest, presumably to "look tough", and bodes more of same if she took office.

And then here on Keith Olbermann's Countdown, Hillary extended her "as macho as McCain" new look, or should I say, same old outlook. Check this great diary on that interview. Here's a sample from that interview:

And one of the ways of testing it is to make it very clear that we are not going
to permit them, if we can prevent it, from becoming a nuclear power, but were
they to become so, their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a
nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would
prevent it from happening, and that we would try to help the other countries
that might be intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran because they were
a nuclear power, avoid that fate by creating this new security umbrella."

To which author ab2kgi said on Dailykos,

This talks about using our nukes to defend an entire region, arguably the
most unstable in the world. Beyond the lunacy of offering our nuclear
arsenal to an entire region of the world, she misplaced a couple of facts along
the way. The most glaring of which is the last NIE(reported
on here) that stated that Iran suspended it's nuclear weapons program in
2003. She also seems to forget that meeting Putin had with Ahmadinejad(reported on here), where they stopped just short of "we will defend you if you are attacked."
It would seem that Russia is developing ties with Iran that would
certainly play into any nuclear intervention with Iran and would likely be our
demise should Russia attempt to launch nukes at us.

This kind of irresponsible machismo is exactly what women claim to be tired of and why we might like to have a woman president. But it does the exact opposite to exhibit the worst qualities associated traditionally with men in order to get their supposed votes. She promotes macho values in order to supposedly win as a woman. Possibly even worse yet, she doesn't even logically evaluate the absurd proposition that Iran could attack Israel with nuclear weapons. That kind of proposition is exactly the mindless concept held by many who still say "yes" to solving all the world's problems militarily. Are we going to take a giant step backward into neocon more-bang-less-buck land? Say "no" to Hillary and her nukefest-frenzied More of Same campaign.

Omar Khadr Update: Evidence of Innocence

Guantanamo's "child terrorist" may have a strong legal defense, according to recent reports: the U.S. soldier Omar Khadr is accused of killing may have been killed not by Omar Khadr, but by friendly fire. Imagine, after Khadr was tortured and imprisoned at the infamous and cruel Guantanamo prison for alleged terrorists as an "enemy combatant", it may turn out that he was innocent completely of the alleged crime. Bear in mind, he was forcibly detained at age 15 to allegedly protect Americans from "terror".

Lt. Cmdr William Kuebler told CTV Newsnet that during the discovery process
of Khadr's legal proceedings, the U.S. government released interviews from
American soldiers who said they were lobbing grenades into the compound where
army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer was killed in July 2002. ...

"As the process unfolds, we are learning the government's case against
Khadr gets weaker and weaker," Kuebler said. "It departs from the mythical
account that was originally sold to the Canadian government and public that Omar
Khadr must have been guilty of throwing a hand grenade because he was found
alive in the compound . . . (as) today we learned that U.S. soldiers were
throwing hand grenades into that compound."
"Given the fact there were no
eyewitnesses to Khadr throwing a hand grenade (friendly-fire) is yet another
possibility."

Of course, the government will do everything in its power to railroad Khadr into a conviction, but we hope an international outcry, and perhaps a domestic outcry as well, could make those whose hands are bloody in this quagmire think twice and give this defendant the same rights accorded to other human beings: the presumption of innocence.

Or are all principles to be trashed in the interest of fear?

New Book on Omar Khadr Gets Reviewed

Check out this review of Guantanamo's Child, by Michelle Shephard (John Wiley & Sons Canada), a great read on Omar Khadr's life.

Reese: Aging, "Manure-Spreading" McCain Not Presidential Material

Charley Reese has 2 words for John McCain: 1) too old; and 2) spreads too much manure. I think it's a fair assessment. Reese thought 2000 would have been the right time for McCain instead of Bush. Having missed that train, he's too far over the hill to handle the incredible mind-boggling complexities of the world we are now in, including the crumbling empire, absurd military oversell, and of course, the "Superbadboy-power" who doesn't even have the pocket change to clean toilets in New Orleans, but borrows their way to the X-games of invasion/occupation and beyond. As Reese put it:

Forty years ago, McCain was a hero. It was a noble thing he did when he
refused a Vietnamese offer to be set free and chose to remain with the other
POWs. He's a patriot. He's brave. He also finished near the bottom of his Naval
Academy class. He's never pretended to be a scholar. Now he's nearly 72 years
old, and if he ever did understand the Middle East, he obviously doesn't now.
...
The old warrior no longer knows who the enemy is or where he is located.

As to McCain's ideas on "security", I liked what Reese said so much I'm printing the whole thing:

Sen. John McCain is already spreading the old "strategic interests" fertilizer along the presidential campaign trail while pretending to be an expert.

Let's hope he really can explain what interests require us to maintain troops in Germany and Japan 63 years after the end of the war. What exactly is the purpose of those troops? Are we expecting the Mongols to descend on Japan? Does he expect the Cossacks will ride across the plains to attack Europe? Does he think that two of the greatest economic powers on Earth – Japan and Europe – are too poor to defend themselves? The old boy is living in the past.

When American politicians talk about strategic interests, they are talking about just what I called it, manure. We have no strategic interests in the Middle East whatsoever. We wish to buy oil there. Last time I checked, those countries that produce oil were selling it to any country willing to buy it, whether that country had troops in the area or not. Since oil isn't edible, there's not a heck of a lot you can do with it if you don't sell it.

What are all those Navy ships in the Persian Gulf doing? Do McCain and George Bush seriously believe that Iran would launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia? That's ridiculous. There might be some aspects of Iran's government we don't care for, and that's OK, because it is not our government and we don't have to live under it. Nobody in his right mind, however, has ever accused Iran of being an expansionist nation. All McCain has to do is read up on his history and ask the CIA to explain to him Iran's order of battle. Their forces are not equipped for invasions.

As for the nuclear nonsense, both Iran and our own intelligence agencies say that the Iranians are not interested in developing nuclear weapons. But suppose they were. Who cares? I'm much more concerned about the nuclear weapons in Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, Great Britain, the U.S. and Israel.

Iran is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and its people are smart. They are not crazy. They know that one day their oil will run out, and they want to develop nuclear power. They signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They have called repeatedly for a nuclear-free Middle East. To compete with the nuclear powers, they'd have to produce so many nuclear weapons and delivery systems, it would bankrupt them. They've decided that option would be foolish. Now if they can only convince our foolish politicians.

I sometimes think our older politicians fell in love with the British Empire. I think many of them secretly long to sit on a veranda somewhere and be served drinks by humble servants. They love the idea of empire. The admirals and generals like to fly around to our 702 overseas bases, play a little golf, have a few drinks and fly home again.

The reality is that we can no longer afford our overseas empire, no matter what strategic interests McCain and Bush like to fantasize about. We're about to go busted. It's pretty hard to maintain an empire on credit when you have borrowed money from the people you claim to be lording it over. The Philippines kicked us out of our bases there. I predict the Japanese will eventually do the same. Get a stable government in North Korea and the South Koreans will be showing us the door. We should leave on our own and devote those billions of dollars to domestic priorities.
Bush is mad to push the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It should be disbanded, not expanded. It has no enemy. By expanding it, however, Bush seems to be trying to convince Russia that NATO is its enemy. That's not a smart thing to do. It's dumb. Talk about something that is not in our strategic interests, it's restarting the Cold War with Russia.

What's It All About, Israel?

Here's why Palestinians, in part represented by Hamas, have trepidations about recognizing Israel as Israel wants to be recognized - defined as "a Jewish state":

A recent poll found that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis support “transferring” the Palestinian citizens of Israel – more than 1.4 million people – out of the country.

It's the fear of that very expulsion - expulsion of all non-Jews - that would be the final crushing blow to Palestinians. And hey - "expulsion of all non-Jews" - doesn't that sound somehow ... racist?

Remembering MLK

Caught this great quote from the great MLK from Heathlander:

“Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can’t do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor; when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There’s something wrong with that press!”
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ” This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.”

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

US Plans to Occupy Iraq, Grab Its Resources

In Maya Schenwar's article, "Managing Iraq's Econoccupation", she discusses how negotiations between the Bush administration and the US-backed Maliki government have forged ahead relentlessly to basically "occupy" Iraq economically, especially to maintain that all-important stranglehold on Iraq's impressive oil supply.

On the one hand, Iraq is being torn apart by violence, largely inspired by the US invasion and occupation of that country. On the other hand, the real "message" of that invasion and occupation, the oil-grab and strategic base-grab is being strongarmed into place by aggressive "diplomatic" talks. Talks, of course, that are made forceful by that megaladon US military presence. According to Ms. Schenwar's article in truthout:

In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month, State Department
Iraq Coordinator David Satterfield revealed the Declaration of Principles
proposals have now been divided into a binding Status of Forces Agreement (on
military involvement) and a nonbinding Strategic Framework Agreement (on
economic and diplomatic relations). Neither would be submitted for the consent
of Congress.

Some of the details being worked out in the Strategic Framework Agreement are detailed here:

Thanks to Bremer's alterations of Iraqi law during the first year of the US
occupation, American companies are now allowed to buy out 100 percent of Iraqi businesses, instead of partnering with them. Bremer's orders also eliminated Iraq's high taxes on corporations, exchanging them for a 15 percent "flat tax." They abolished the practice of giving preference to Iraqi companies - in contracting out reconstruction work, for example - and erased a requirement to hire Iraqi workers.
Previously, Iraqi banks were closed to foreign ownership. Now, not only can foreign banks operate in Iraq, they can take over private Iraqi banks as well.
Bremer reworked Iraq's trademark and copyright laws, eliminated trade barriers and afforded foreign businesses the option of circumventing Iraq's legal system and taking any disputes to international tribunals.

This is your blueprint for occupation. Iraq will cease to have any effective sovereignty, the U.S. having essentially "taken over" the country and its resources. So much for the blatant lies and propaganda fed to US protoplasm, calling it a "liberation". What a callous, calculated con job! In a very telling example of the propaganda lie vs. the on-the-ground truth:

The November version of the Bush-Maliki agreement suggested a commitment to
"facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq,
especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and
rebuilding of Iraq."
According to James A. Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, the "flow of foreign investments to Iraq" wouldn't manifest as generously as it sounds: The deal would primarily translate into "US/UK oil company control."
Last week's assault on Basra was "part of an effort to defeat the 'nationalists' in Iraq and consolidate a pro-US political regime that will go ahead with the oil deals," Paul told Truthout.

Just before fighting erupted in Basra, the Iraqi presidential council approved the "provincial law," which clears the way for elections - potentially allowing nationalist leaders who oppose US oil interests to come to power. Maliki's Basra attack, says Paul, represents a failed attempt to quash that possibility..

Wow... this means that our soldiers are fighting to keep Iraq as a US "possession", not a sovereign nation. Our enemies are no longer called "terrorists". Now that the deed is done, or almost done, we can call them what they really are: "nationalists". We are fighting to keep control of Iraq, especially its oil. And according to the article, this is not the idea of Big Oil corporations, but Bush/Cheney's idea. Of course, Big Oil stands to profit, but Bush's idea was to keep America richer, on oil, maintain the status quo.

The Iraqis, however, have quite a different agenda, and with what little rudiments of democracy they have now in place, they are fighting the US oil-grab with all they've got.

According to James A. Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum,

"The Parliament has remained steadfastly opposed and, in spite of periodic
predictions that parliamentary agreement is 'near,' they have not acted," he
said. "There have even been rumors that the companies have offered $5 million to
each parliamentarian who votes 'yes,' a rumor that seems to me to be probably
based in reality, yet even with such blandishments the Parliament has not
acted."

And a recent poll shows 63 percent of the Iraqi people want Iraqi companies to keep control of their country's oil.

Antonia Juhasz, a fellow at Oil Change International, isn't convinced that US policy will change with the November elections either.

"I hope things would change under a Democratic administration. But the
fact that neither Clinton nor Obama has put forward an immediate withdrawal plan
is worrisome. It doesn't give me confidence that they would abandon the oil
policies the Bush administration has pursued."

Obama's going to have to address the hard stuff: either we're for democracy, and have to listen to the will of the Iraqi people, or we're for aggression and empire, and have to listen to the warmongers, oil interests, and neocons.

Government's "Fed" Overhaul a Huge Con Job

The Federal Reserve sounds like a solid branch of the "Federal" government, doesn't it? So putting the banks, the markets, the economy in the hands of the "objective, fair" U.S. government of which the Presidentially-appointed Alan Greenspan was appointed Chairman for decades, ah, this should put things in order, right? Most Americans think the "Feds" are Federal as in Federal government. No. They are "Federal" as in "Federal Express." It's a private corporation. Welcome to government by the "New Corporate People".

Here's one take from Ellen Hodges Brown on the huge and significant Bush/Cheney plan to "consolidate" the sectors of our economy:

The Federal Reserve, which has been credited with creating the current housing
bubble and bust just as it created the credit bubble of the Roaring Twenties and
the bust of 1929, is now to be given vast new powers to oversee regulation of
the banking industry and promote "financial market stability."

Worse, there will be even less regulation than before, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Many of the [Treasury's] proposals, like those that would consolidate
regulatory agencies, have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial
markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation. ...
The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a
lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges
greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are
being traded in foreign markets. ...
While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to
greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation. The plan
would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings. . . .
And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely
unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging, like credit default swaps,
which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative
instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.

So it is not designed to fix or even help the economy, the one that's heading into a recession or worse, but rather to allow banks greater leeway in order to be "more competitive" in the "global market". Somehow, devaluation of US currency and a downward economic spiral don't sound like good ways to be "competitive" in any market. It sounds like a snake-oil scheme designed to serve old, white, rich men in self-deluded power and wealth that doesn't really exist.

As Ms. Brown so eloquently summarizes:

And as the falling debris of the American economy still piles up around us,
the very agency that enabled disaster is now seeking to consolidate ultimate
authority and accountability to itself, and through centralization and
arrogation of power, eliminate all those pesky little Constitutional and State
regulations and agencies, recalcitrant governors and the last few whistle
blowers, so that the further abuse of power can be streamlined through one
agency only. That agency is to consist of an alliance of the banking powers and the executive branch, a perfect formula for the institutionalization of continual abuse.

Meanwhile, the cost of basic necessities like wheat, oil, corn, milk, meat, and everything else, spikes so fast people are reeling. And as usual, the poor get poorer, the hungry get hungrier, the rich get more disconnected from reality, and the military gets more wars to eat. Is it too late to turn this thing back?