They're the top dogs and we're a bunch of fire hydrants

jim hightower talking with bill moyers...

I'm saying pretty clearly that I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power. Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they're the top dogs, and we're a bunch of fire hydrants, you know? Out here in the countryside. And they can do what they want to with us. What's been missing is what can we do about it? And those people in Iowa, by the way, are not alone. There are people in Minnesota doing that, people in Oregon that I know. People in Texas. All across the country.

It's about the long haul. And the target is not government, it's those who are pulling the strings of government, which are those corporate lobbyists and the money that the corporate executives and now corporations directly can put into our campaigns.

i think hightower is only partially right... for one thing, it's not the central issue only in politics, it's the central issue across the globe in every area of human existence... for another thing, corporate power is only the tip of the iceberg... there are unbelievably wealthy elites that sit largely invisible behind the corporations, the banks and world governments that, for all practical purposes, get their way with little to no opposition... as the old saying goes, we have to drive stakes through the hearts of these blood-sucking vampires if we don't want them continuing to hunt us through their vale of perpetual darkness...

the populism hightower advocates is a good start but we have to take it further... populism has to be rooted in the common good... i think hightower gets that, at least if this quote from him is any indication...

Everybody does better when everybody does better.

the real vampire we have to slay is the twin-headed, hideous monster of unfettered capitalism and social darwinism...

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The next step in government surveillance: implanting mandatory microchips on Bessie and Fido

from jim hightower's hightower lowdown via alternet...

[T]he National Animal Identification System (NAIS) sets up a whole new surveillance program to defend you and yours from a rather odd national security threat: terrorist chickens. And terrorist cows, horses, pigs, sheep, llamas ... and so on. Advanced under the benign guise of protecting public health from outbreaks of animal-borne diseases, this program is intended to tag and track every farm animal in America from birth to death.

It is, to say the least, intrusive. NAIS would compel all owners of such animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every "event" in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance.

but wait... it gets worse... much worse...

If you keep a pony for your kids or board a couple of riding horses, if you've got a few chickens in your backyard, if you've got a potbellied pig or a pet goose, if your youngsters are raising a half-dozen ducks as part of a 4-H club project, if you maintain a buffalo or a goat just for the fun of it -- indeed, if you have any farm animals, NAIS wants you in its computerized grasp.

Every farm, home, horse stable, or other domicile of these animals would have to have its address and precise GPS coordinates filed into the system's central computer, along with the name, phone number, and other personal data of the owner/ renter of the premises. Owners of the animals would have to tag every one of them (luckily, fish ponds are not included!) with an approved tracking mechanism -- most likely by implanting radio-frequency ID chips into them.

[...]

If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead is given a single lot number to cover the whole flock or herd. Second, it's no accident that NAIS will be so burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer equipment, time) to small farmers and ranchers. The giant operators are happy to see these pesky competitors saddled with another reason to go out of business, thus leaving even more of the market to the big guys.

typical invasive government nonsense and total overkill to boot... this will do nothing to control animal-borne diseases... a proposal was made several years ago to simply send a dna sample of every animal used in food production to a national registry... that way, should an infection or disease break out, the dna of the infected food could be immediately traced to its source and the entire chain of the production cycle would be totally visible... unfortunately, the giant packing houses solidly oppose traceability, so the proposal died...

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