Corporatizing Water
TIME FOR ANOTHER VOYAGE into the Far, Far, Far-Out Frontiers of Free Enterprise. To-day, Spaceship Hightower takes you waaaay out--much farther than you might want to go. And that's the question: How far should corporate control of our lives extend?
Already, a handful of huge corporate entities control the basic decisions over our jobs and standards of living, using this power to hold down the middle class aspirations of millions of us. These same powers control the content and flow of mass communications, culture, entertainment, and sports, as well as of education. They control the political process, and through it they are the powers that move government. They've also become the supreme force over everything from pollution to our nation's foreign policy.
Now, corporations are getting their clutches on the very basic of life: the earth's water supply. In Nation magazine, writer Kirkpatrick Sale reports that on March 21, 1998, a United Nations conference in Paris formally and officially decreed that water "should be paid for as a commodity rather than be treated as an essential staple to be provided free of cost."
It's a complete shift from the concept that the world's water is a public resource to the concept that it's just another corporate commodity to be bought and sold, like pork bellies and stocks. It's also a completely undemocratic shift, since we the people were not consulted or even informed. Yet such world leaders as the French Prime Minister have hailed the change, saying that "for far too long" governments have held to the outmoded notion "that water could only be free, because it fell from the heavens."
It's a new corporate gold-rush . . . only it's our lakes, rivers, oceans--even the rain itself--that's being claimed as a private asset to be branded with corporate logos. If they do it to water, it won't be long before they claim our air, too.
USDA's Barren Seed
THERE IT IS AGAIN. That big, wet smooching sound you hear every time big business gets together with big government. This time it's the U.S. Department of Agriculture playing kissy-face with the giants of agribusiness, which keep finding new ways to mess with Mother Nature for their own fun & profit. In their latest scheme, government scientists and corporate profiteers have teamed-up to mess up one of nature's basics: Seeds.
Ever since there has been agriculture, farmers have saved their seeds from this year's crop to replant for next year's. Not just economic sense, this is also an ecological boon, because so many farmers saving so many seeds helps strengthen local strains and promote a broad genetic diversity in the world's crops. Selecting, saving and exchanging seeds with neighbors is just smart agriculture.
So along come the geniuses at USDA, using our tax dollars to develop a seed that will not germinate when replanted, thus putting an end to seed-saving by farmers. Who would want such non-germinating seeds? The seed corporations, of course, since it means every farmer in the world would have to come to them each year and buy new seeds. The ag department has recently issued a patent to the Delta & Pine Land Corporation--the world's largest cotton seed company-to control and sell this genetically-perverse crop technology. Appropriately enough, these barren seeds are known as "Terminators."
The world's farmers and the genetic diversity of our food supply are in danger of being terminated by this twisted technology. So why did USDA pursue it? The goal, according to an agency spokesman, is "to increase the value of proprietary seeds owned by U.S. seed companies."
Silly me, I thought USDA's goal was to serve the needs of consumers and farmers, not increase the profits of agribusiness corporations.
Tainted Chickens
SAY IT AIN'T SO! But it is. According to an investigative report by Cox Newspapers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is allowing big poultry processors like Tyson to sell tainted chickens to your family and mine.
Despite a recent announcement that USDA has imposed strict new safety rules and implemented a high-tech inspection system in poultry factories, surveys find that more than 70 percent of raw chicken in America's grocery stores is tainted with sickening, bacteria-laden chicken feces.
It seems there are a couple of fatal flaws in USDA's new chicken-checking system. First, instead of having independent, federal inspectors checking for contamination, now the companies are allowed to inspect themselves! Second, even when chickens are found to be contaminated, companies no longer have to discard the tainted birds. They can simply rinse them with chlorinated water and ship them right on to market as though they're perfectly healthy poultry. The industry calls these "salvaged" chickens, but there's no requirement that the companies label them as such so we consumers can know what we're getting.
Officials say, "Not to worry!" They claim that these salvaged birds pose no health danger, asserting that the chlorine rinse kills the killer bacteria. But independent experts gag on this claim, saying that rinsing is "worthless." Indeed, a former head of USDA's poultry inspection lab notes that a test using chlorinated water 10 times stronger than what the companies now use had zero impact on the fecal bacteria on chickens.
This is no idle question, since salmonella, campylobacter and other deadly bacteria in fecal contamination kill 3,000 of us Americans a year, and sicken 4 million more of us. First, corporate chicken processors contaminate our political system with big money donations, then they're allowed to contaminate our food supply.
Money Talks
THE Congress of the United States, in all of its majesty, recently rejected all efforts to stop the corrupting flood of corporate campaign contributions that's drowning our democratic process.
It would almost be OK if this gang of thieves, led by Loudspeaker of the House Newt Gingrich, had at least made their stand honestly, admitting that the current corrupt system keeps them in office, and that they would be more likely to amputate their own right leg with a dull knife as to cut off this flow of money. Instead, they insulted us by trying to pose as Statesmen, asserting that campaign contributions are simply the way people today express themselves politically. Believe it or not, they said that restrictions on giving money to politicians amounts to a restriction on the People's right to free speech.
Free speech? Holy Thomas Jefferson! If money is "speech," then consider how loud Amway Corporation's voice is in Washington. In April 1997, its chief honcho gave a cool million dollars to the Republican Party. Just a few months later, Newt's Republican Congress gave Amway a special tax loophole worth as much as $280 million dollars. That's not "free" speech. . . it's bought-and-paid-for speech!
How loud is your voice in this system of money-equals-speech? Only four percent of us Americans are in the political-contributor class at all, meaning that 96 percent of us are total nonentities in the money game that Washington politicians depend on. But in Washington, you don't count unless you give a thousand bucks or more. Is that you? Probably not. Only 165,000 Americans-six-one-hundredths of one percent of our population-give as much as a thousand dollars to candidates or parties.
Do the math yourself--if we let them say that money equals speech, 99.94 % of us are voiceless.
"Jail" for the Rich
WHEN F. SCOTT FITZGERALD WROTE that the rich "are different from you and me," he could have had in mind the special privileges being granted in the County, Virginia, to Susan Cummings.
Until recently, Ms. Cummings, a 35-year-old heiress to an arms manufacturing fortune, lived on her 350-acre, Virginia estate with her lover. But then she got into trouble: she shot and killed her lover.
One reason the rich are different is that they generally get more and better lawyers than the rest of us can afford. Cummings was charged with first degree murder, but pleaded self-defense and was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Her sentence: 60 days in jail.
The rich are different, too, because the system handles them with kid gloves, even when they go to jail. The women's cellblock in Fauquier County Jail has six bunk beds in a 20'x18' room. To make Susan Cummings' 60-day stay more pleasant, though, five women prisoners were transferred out of the cellblock so the heiress could serve her time in private. It costs County taxpayers $200-a-day to store the five other inmates elsewhere.
The Sheriff's department says the transfer is necessary to protect Cummings' life from the other women who might resent her 60-day sentence, since they are serving far longer for things like forgery.
The sheriff's spokesman said, "a lot of these people are not in the polite realm of our society." But, as one of "these people" who got shipped out put it: "She's the one serving time for killing someone, not any of us."
Meanwhile, inmate Cummings gets to bring food in from the outside, and gets to have all the visitors she wants, for as long as she wants-while other prisoners are limited to 3 visitors a week for a total of only 30 minutes.
As another county official said: "When somebody gets 60 days for shooting someone and five years for writing bad checks, it makes you wonder about the influence wealth has on our judicial system."
This is Jim Hightower saying . . . The moral is clear: If you commit a crime, be sure you're rich.
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