Sure there are many factors. But maybe one we do not think about sufficiently is the role of the corporations and their bought and paid for politicians in their two parties the Republicans and Democrats. Look at how they subsidize food production.
- Meat/Dairy get a 73.8 percent subsidy.
- Grains get 13.2 percent.
- Sugar/Oil/Starch/Alcohol get 10.7 percent
- Nuts/Legumes get 1.9 percent
- Vegetables/Fruits get 0.4 percent
That’s right – just 1.9 percent for nuts and legumes and 0.4 percent for fruits and vegetables. And these are the healthiest things to eat. As a result, a salad often costs you more than a Big Mac. And people fatter and fatter and more unhealthy and unhappy.
Percentage of high school students who were obese* — selected U.S. states, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2007
One of the reasons for this balance in the subsidy business is that the meat and dairy states have a very powerful influence over law making through their control of the Senators in the small rural states. The US is not a democratic society. The smallest rural state has two Senators, the same as the largest urban state. In this way they have this huge power imbalance and feed us and our kids crap.
One other aspect of government and its role we are always hearing about from the extreme right is about government and how bad it is. Their slogan is: "Less government in business and more business in government." That is the state must leave the capitalists alone to do what they want but the capitalists must control the state more.
When capitalism began to first show its terrible destructive nature a couple of centuries ago a movement of working people from below demanded that it be regulated, that is that laws be passed and agencies set up to control the corporations. The depression of the 1930's gave this movement a big impetus. Capitalism was shown to be a catastrophe for most working people during that period. The capitalists have been fighting to remove this regulation ever since. Reagan and Bush both said it was their task to role back all the changes that had been implemented in the 1930's and 1960's.
Capitalism initially had to accept regulating bodies because the anger against it was so great. If it had not then a genuine socialist movement might have developed and threatened its very existence. So here in the words of one of its spokesmen is what it did. The Interstate Regulatory Commission was the first regulating body. It was supposed to regulate the railroads. The capitalists at first went berserk over it. They had to be left alone they screamed, freedom was under threat they screamed. But one of their more astute leaders was Richard Olney. He was given the job of the Attorney General at the time, and surprise surprise, he was also a railroad lawyer, he calmed them down. He showed them how to look at things, how to see the balance of forces and how to continue to control things.
He explained: "The Commission, as its functions have now been limited by the courts, (the courts especially the higher courts play this role of trimming laws to suit the corporations demands) is or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of the railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal. Further, the older that such a commission gets to be, the more inclined it will be found to take the business and railroad view of things. It thus becomes a sort of barrier between the railroad corporation and the people, a sort of protection against hasty and crude legislation hostile to railroad interests. The part of wisdom is not to destroy the commission but to utilize it." Yes this is what they have done ever since, corrupted the regulatory bodies.
In the recent mine disaster which killed 29 miners it was shown that the regulating body for mine safety was stacked with mine owners and former mining executives. The body that is supposed to look after the oil and gas industry is stacked with management and owners from those industries also. These regulatory bodies are covers to allow the privately owned corporations in these sectors to do what they want. At the same time they are used to try and con people into thinking capitalism is being overseen.
Look at the environmental catastrophe that is now developing in the Gulf. This is the fault of profit addicted BP. But it is also worth looking at the role of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the federal agency that is supposed to regulate the nation's off-shore oil and gas industry. The Wall Street Journal, no friend of regulation, reports that the MMS "may have sidelined regulatory efforts that would have brought the US oil industry in line with prevailing industry safety standards." The Journal's article revealed that Deepwater Horizon which operated the rig for BP did not have a remote control shut off switch which is used in some other major oil producing nations as a last resort protection against underwater spills. As we say you cannot control what you do not own. And not only that when the major corporations own the politicians and the state they bend the rules to suit themselves and the regulatory bodies become agencies of the industries, just like the financial regulatory bodies became agencies of Wall street and the financial institutions.
They have other ways of defanging these bodies than stacking them with owners and executives of the industries they are supposed to be regulating. They defund them, that is give them so little money they cannot possibly carry out their duties, they give them so few staff they are helpless to take on the corporations even if they were motivated to do so. At one stage when there was the scare over the threat to children from paint on toys from China there was one person in the entire USA with the responsibility to check into the safety of imported toys and they were supposed to stand up to the giant corporations.
The organizers of this blog believe that you cannot control what you do not own. That is why we believe that the major corporations in the world have to be taken into public ownership under workers control and management. The state, the regulatory bodies, the mass media, will all serve the capitalists as long as the capitalists own the economy and run it.
Just look at the catastrophe in the Gulf now. I cannot watch the terrible suffering of the oil slicked birds and animals and fish, the destruction of the livelihoods, everybody who had a brain in their head knew that BP had not cleaned up its act. it is admitted now that the very weak regulatory rules here in the US for oil drilling were not even kept to. BP owners are criminals. BP and the big corporations cannot be controlled by regulation. They will take over and corrupt the regulatory bodies as they have the money and political power to do so. Capitalism has to be ended. The ownership of the major corporations has to be taken out of their hands. Capitalism has forfeited the right to rule. The capitalist class has forfeited the right to exist. We see that on the bodies of the destroyed wildlife and the polluted waters of the gulf. We need to work for a democratic socialist federation worldwide.
Contact us and let us work together for this goal. It is not acceptable that we sit and do nothing in the face of the developing catastrophe.
Sean
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