Seeing It Coming

I was listening to a news story on the radio about the food shortage and how it's been exacerbated because of the use of corn crops to create ethanol as fuel. The reporter asked the man he was interviewing about whether someone could have seen this coming. A good, albeit still laughable question.

Of course they should have seen it coming. This, and a lot of other issues that Ralph Nader's been warning people, our elected and government officials in particular, about for ages. You can find a column Ralph Nader wrote back in 2003 criticizing, among other things, the subsidies for corn ethanol programs here. Then again, it doesn't often take a genius to notice something you're being hit over the head with.

In case our elected officials are too blind to see things like how taxpayer subsidies for big agribusiness to grow corn for oil can lead to a food shortage, how our crumbling infrastructure can lead to problems like an incoming hurricane taking down New Orleans or an unsafe bridge crumbling in Minnesota (look here for info on James Ridgeway's stunning investigative work on what's behind this), how deregulating the greedy people on Wall Street and rewarding them with taxpayer monies every time they cause another huge disaster could lead to a subprime loan disaster and speculation bidding up gas prices, and on and on--in case they're too dumb to notice these problems it's their job to notice and find the obvious solutions it's their job to follow through with, there's Ralph Nader and others giving them the heads up right and left. Mr. Nader really makes their jobs easy for them. Alas, you can lead a politician to urgent answers but you can't make him use them to solve problems.

One thing's for sure, Ralph Nader's been no coward when it's come to speaking up and working on important issues. In a more recent column, "Fueling Food Shortages," from April 25, 2008, Mr. Nader wrote:

Don’t rely on the election year political debates to pay attention to destructive corn ethanol programs. For years I have been speaking out against this boondoggle, while championing the small farmer in America, but no one in positions of Congressional leadership has been listening.

I guess sometimes brains and foresight aren't enough--you need backbone, courage, compassion and principle to be President, characteristics sorely lacking in the corporate candidates especially.

Disagree? Show me who has them. Find me someone Better Than Nader.