It's dusk in the Age of Aquarius

From Huffington Post:

Costco and Sam's Club Rationing Rice

Peter of Lone Tree posted an item quite a while ago about food rationing and hoarding because of probable world shortages. There were some here who laughed it off as a conspiracy theory. No more laughter.

The bullshit that has been foisted on American and the world about biofuels may be the real conspiracy. A conspiracy by government(s) in cooperation with oil companies.

The U.S. used to be the breadbasket of the world. Once big corporations started taking over the farming and drove the smaller farms out, prices started to rise and profits for the big corporations rose accordingly. But that wasn’t enough for them. To insure increased profit, big farming had Congress allow laws to be passed to pay most farmers NOT to grow certain food (that would increase the supply and lower their profits). I lived on a farm owned by a radical Republican farmer who was paid $40,000 a year NOT to grow any food crops. The going rate at the time was $100 per acre and he had 400 acres. However, he was allowed to grow alfalfa to sell to a nearby mushroom farm to be used as fertilizer. For these bales, he received $125.00 each and provided over 300 each planting cycle and he could plant and harvest twice in one summer. So he made$75,000 more than for planting and selling corn. This was in the 80s. He made out very well from the government by taking advantage of the system. And all the time he ridiculed those who were on welfare and received food stamps for being freeloaders!

Over the last few years, we’ve been told through a wonderfully arranged propaganda stint that we need biofuels, especially all the corn we can convert so we can keep running our 10 mpg SUVs a block to the store to pick up those necessary items we all just can’t live without. (Feel free to fill in the necessary item of YOUR choice YOU can’t live without). And we bought into it lock, stock and $120 barrel.

Now the farmers are getting paid more money to sell their corn to big oil for conversion to SUV food than to sell it for human consumption. The result was predictable yet many ignored it because they really, really needed to waste gas getting that quart of Häagen-Dazs at 10:30 at night.

And who is making out by creating a food shortage? I don’t have to say, do I? In addition to them, add the gun manufacturers (because we’ll all need guns to keep our starving neighbors from looting our food!).

I can envision things becoming so desperate that armed guards will patrol cattle ranches and farms with orders to shoot to kill anyone they think might poach or steal. Can you say Blackwater?

We need to stop the non-growing farm subsidies. We need to stop the ethanol conversion and work toward other renewables that DON”T starve the world. But we won’t because the Republicans want business to prosper even at the expense of lives of expendable people. The Democrats have been spayed and neutered and will act accordingly. And we will continue to ignore people as conspiracy theorists who predict things we don’t like. And because we don’t like them, we all know they won’t happen!

It’s becoming increasingly evident that more drastic action needs to be taken. People like Denny Hastert could feed a family of 4 for a couple of months; Cheney, maybe 2 months. Others could provide soup bones.

Heinlein’s Valentine Michael Smith may have had the right idea.