Hemp, The Great Green Hope

by Rand Clifford
June 10, 2011

“It has something to do with something called marijuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind.”
So said congressman Rayburn to congressman Snell’s question: “What is this bill about?”

That was way back in the summer of 1937, when congress was being asked to essentially outlaw a drug they knew nothing about, marijuana. But realistically, marijuana had little to do with it. The real issue was non-drug industrial hemp.

Industrialists were like scarab beetles, rolling around this giant ball of profit protection, and they ran right over the domestic hemp industry. Hemp presented way too much competition, too much threat to entrenched and entrenching profits. Took a pretty big ball of dung, but the scarabs rolled it expertly, professionals. Except for several years of heavy production during WWII, under the feds’ “Hemp for Victory” campaign—which told the truth about hemp and helped us win the war...not a single acre of hemp has been legally grown in America since 1937. Seventy-four years and counting. That was one enormous ball of dung. The entire hemp-prohibition infamy could be called a dung deal, especially as related to the common good.

What could have possessed grown men, congressmen even, into making it a crime to grow one of the oldest, and the most valuable crop in history? Essentially the same thing that keeps the common good in government crosshairs today, the hideous mechanics of humanity’s ultimate modern plague: obsession with corporate profits—virtually the opposite of government Of, By and For the people.

Also in 1937, in its annual report to stockholders, the DuPont company gloated over “radical changes” regarding the federal government’s conversion of taxation authority into a tool for forcing acceptance of “sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization”. They went so far as proclaiming that, after massive farm foreclosures of the depression, farmers were inhibiting America’s industrial progress. They should move to industrial cities so farmland could be consolidated into huge agribusinesses controlled by corporations—along with all other means of industrial production. Farming should be primarily for food.

DuPont’s president, Lammont DuPont, even ordained: “Synthetic plastics find application in fabricating a wide variety of articles, many of which in the past were made from natural products. The chemist has aided in conserving natural resources by developing synthetic products to supplement or wholly replace natural products.”

Yes, a world of synthetics...mother lode patents, petroleum alchemy, pollution, extinction, poverty and disease, deforestation, global warming; fascism, globalization, perpetual wars for dwindling resources; corporate centralization of all means of production—even global food supply. Concentration of money, of power, of control—power to the corporations, slavery to the people. Conversion of largely rural, agricultural America into an urban, industrial nation. Landfills brimming with immortal waste leaching death into our living systems...until death do us part.

The reason scarabs were in such a frenzy over hemp in 1937 was clearly revealed by Popular Mechanics magazine—a full six months after! the American hemp industry was effectively dead and buried via trademark corporate chicanery. The February cover story for Popular Mechanics in 1938 was titled, “The New Billion-Dollar Crop”. Imagine how much money a billion dollars was in 1938. The article told the truth, praising the advent of new machinery that would drastically reduce hemp’s labor demands; and praising a crop so valuable that in the early days of America, for farmers with a certain threshold of acreage in production, it was illegal not to grow hemp.

Imagine the chagrin of people involved in our burgeoning hemp industry upon learning that hemp had been banned in America because of “The Killer Weed from Mexico”, by the illegal Marijuana Tax Act. By law, taxes are for raising revenue, not for molding behavior. But obviously—even more so today than ever before...upper echelons of power are above the law. Laws are for “small people”—unless they facilitate, as George Bush the elder said, speaking of certain clandestine federal operations, “The continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

And remember DuPont’s “...radical changes regarding the federal government’s conversion of taxation authority into a tool for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization”? What about the Constitution...or as George Bush the younger calls it, that “...goddamned piece of paper”?

As for the news, the New York Times reported on August 3, 1937, that “President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions”. A dung deal. Industrial hemp strains of cannabis have zero drug potential, and are NOT “marijuana”, but...never mind. Competition slammed. Profits protected. Hemp threat eliminated.

The negative impact to the common good of America from seventy-four years of hemp prohibition is difficult to fathom. America is largely about service jobs and finance, not manufacturing or production—despite consumer spending being 70% of our Gross Domestic Product. We offshore as much production as possible to take advantage of slave labor markets, lax environmental protections, tax incentives.... And we sink ever deeper into debt as former middle-class citizens, their jobs off-shored, become street people, and millionaires become billionaires, and billionaires shed their skins.
 
Spokane’s congressional representative is a republican named Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Somehow two of my email addresses got on her mailing list. I fatigued over all the trumpeting of GOP efforts to take from the poor to give to the rich, and repeatedly tried to get off Cathy’s list without success. So I replied to one of her emails by simply asking her to define her position regarding the common good of America. Bingo, I’m off Cathy’s list. Haven’t heard from her in months.

Hemp has taught us many things about how power works in America, and our education continues. Hemp’s usefulness is truly remarkable; food, fuel, fiber, paper, plastics—using modern technology, hemp offers an estimated 25,000 natural products. Hemp needs no petrochemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, and is actually beneficial to the soil. Hemp is nature’s premier powerhouse for converting sunshine and water (and carbon dioxide while breathing out oxygen) into an astonishing range of superior, eco-friendly products. Perhaps one of the worst things about hemp is that, for the bulk of our perception-managed population, it sounds too good to be true. Well, for about the last 12,000 years hemp has proved true—yet for the last seventy-four years in America, growing hemp has been a crime. That’s the real crime.

The U.S. hemp industry is currently ringing up $400 million in annual retail sales—all of it on imported raw materials! The number of good, non-transferable (cannot be “off-shored”) jobs hemp prohibition costs us is shameful. We need solid jobs. We need to create value. Other economic benefits of hemp, along with the environmental benefits, are all but incalculable.

The idea of a “jobless recovery” is ludicrous, the term itself an oxymoron. Parasitic Wall Street casino killing off the middle class is also killing off America. Globalization is shoving us back toward feudalism. Dark-ages redux. Privatization is poisonous...and the way things are going, how long do you think it will be until some corporation privatizes the atmosphere, and we have to pay to breathe? Hemp is a powerful antidote to globalization and privatization. No other plant can actually empower entire regional economies...the antithesis of globalization. Farmers could regain the status they deserve, growing the world’s most useful crop and selling it to local markets that sell it to local processors that sell their products to locally-owned businesses that sell to local citizens that work in the hemp industry—all with the aid of public banking. All the wealth stays where it belongs—with the people that create it. This could all be happening across America right now, putting hundreds of thousands of people to work creating wealth. But...the same movers and shakers standing most in the way of America returning to hemp slither in the same den as other parasitic snakes that ripped off the whole world with complex toxic debt bombs rated as AAA investment-grade securities while at the same time profiting on bets that the toxins would foul the entire global economy—THEN when their toxic bombs burst, slithered to Congress dripping crocodile tears and begging for (and getting) $23.7 trillion! (1) of taxpayer blood via threats of global financial meltdown, and threats of martial law in America. The whole sordid nightmare represents the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history. Troubled Asset Relief Program...doesn’t paying federal taxes make you proud to be American?

So much for the “shining city upon the hill”. Too bad we commoners lack the spirit to fight for hemp and get back some shine....

Of course democrats and republicans are simply two sides of the same corporate-toady coin, despite apparent differences especially regarding the common good. In 2005, republican representative from Texas Ron Paul was chief sponsor of the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005”. The bill would have allowed farmers to grow industrial hemp—non-drug varieties of cannabis, differentiating between cannabis strains and setting limits on the amount of psychoactive THC allowed. Now, for the environment, the economy, the common good—for everything that deserves a future, that sounded too good to be true.

The bill died in committee.

Ron Paul tried again in 2007, 2009, and on May 12, introduced the “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011”. This time Ron Paul has twenty-two co-sponsors—and that’s where differences appear in the way democrats and republicans regard the common good; twenty of the co-sponsors are democrat, two of them republican. It’s the most co-sponsors Ron Paul has attracted so far. Sounds like hope? At this rate, perhaps in a few more decades such bills might even make it out of committee.

Chances even seem good for a democratic senator to introduce for the first time a companion bill in the Senate. But odds are overwhelming that the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011 will die in the usual place: The Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

You might wonder why in hell an agricultural bill is going first to a committee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. Well...sorry folks, this is America, and the bill is actually an entrenched-profits issue, common good against the ruling elite. We should all know by now what function hope has in America, but collective amnesia is epidemic. So....

Never mind.

And the ultimate clincher that scarabs might never be able to obliterate with their mighty balls, stark revealment of marijuana interdiction being an attack on hemp...it’s getting closer. Hemp was prohibited by prohibiting marijuana...but it is conceivable—even almost certain that eventually, marijuana will be legalized, but not hemp. The purported reason for banning hemp will disappear, but not the ban on hemp. Such is how power works in America. And amnesia.

The environmental benefits, the economic benefits, the major surge of job creation, the luxury of superior natural products—forget them and the countless other benefits to the common good of America; the impact to entrenched profits would be too great for the elite to ever allow hemp to be grown in America again. As long as the status quo is maintained, hemp will never have a chance.

We obviously need drastic changes to the status quo, but us commoners have a profound problem called apathy. Relentless perception management of corporate mainstream media feeds the apathy, and amnesia. How are mainstream Americans ever supposed to learn the truth? How is the fact that we outnumber our primary oppressors nearly a million to one ever supposed to be seen clearly, and focused on as a platform for doing something...anything to correct problems such as hemp prohibition, and American imperialism being so vastly more important than us common Americans?

Hope is an elusive thing, unpredictable—just like us...we hope?

(1)  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM

Economists and Job Creation

The Old Economic Textbook
By DEAN BAKER 

In the wake of the recession brought on by the collapse of the housing bubble many people have called for a new economics. There are certainly grounds for arguing that we need a new economics, but the bigger problem is that economists will not even adhere to the old economics, or at least not when it runs against the accepted thinking in political circles.

This is perhaps most obvious in the response by economists, or lack thereof, to the large U.S. trade deficit. In a system of floating exchange rates, the adjustment to a large and persistent trade deficit is supposed to be a decline in the value of the currency. That is 100 percent economic orthodoxy.

Economists ridicule the people who worry about jobs being lost to imports by telling them that new jobs will be created in other sectors of the economy. There is some logic to this story, but an essential part of the picture is supposed to be a decline in the value of the dollar.

Suppose the United States starts buying $100 billion of imported manufactured goods each year that replace $100 billion worth of goods that had formerly been produced domestically. The story is supposed to be that this means that we have increased the supply of dollars on international currency markets by $100 billion a year, while not increasing the demand at all. With a greater supply of dollars and no change in the demand, the price of the dollar will fall measured in foreign currencies.

A lower-priced dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper for people living in other countries, leading to an increase in exports. A lower-valued dollar also makes imports from other countries more expensive, leading us to import less. If we export more and import less, net exports will rise, creating jobs and moving trade back toward balance. That is the textbook story and the reason that good free traders don't worry when we lose jobs to imports.

However, what happens when the dollar is not allowed to fall? In the last decade many countries, most notably China, have explicitly pegged their currency to the dollar. They do this by buying dollars on international currency markets when their trade surplus (our trade deficit) leads to an excess supply of dollars. In effect, the action of these governments are preventing the normal adjustment process that would bring trade back toward balance and keep the U.S. economy close to full employment.

Without this adjustment process, the "free trade" crew has no real argument. It is entirely plausible that increased imports will lead to higher unemployment since the adjustment mechanism that is supposed to bring the economy back to full employment is not working. This is all straight traditional economics textbook stuff.

Now it is possible to have other channels to fill the gap, but these are by no means automatic. For example, we could have the government run big budget deficits, creating demand either by increased spending or lower taxes. However there is no guarantee that the government will take this route, especially when the deficit hawks rule Washington.

The other possibility is that the Fed will lower interest rates and thereby stimulate demand. This is a mixed blessing even in the best of times. Investment is only modestly responsive to lower interest rates. By far, lower interest rates will have their largest impact on consumption. When this low interest rate channel works, it means that people will borrow lots of money to buy things, and in that way fill the gap in demand created by the trade deficit. This leaves us with heavily indebted households who have nothing saved for retirement; sound familiar?

Of course when the federal funds rate is already at zero, as is the case now, this low interest rate route for boosting demand will not work at all. In principle, the Fed could take more dramatic steps, like its quantitative easing policy, but there is little appetite in Washington for pushing these extraordinary measures very far.

This brings us back to the exchange rates. Mainstream economists, who believe their own economics, should be yelling about the over-valued dollar and demanding action to bring the dollar down to a level more consistent with balanced trade. However, economists have been largely silent on the issue.

We get a lot of feeble comments about how China should raise the value of its currency against the dollar, but China is a big country and they don't want to do this, so too bad. Of course the United States is not in fact the most helpless country in the world, especially when it comes to lowering the value of the dollar in international currency markets.

Joe Gagnon and Gary Hufbauer, both of the 100 percent mainstream Peterson Institute for International Economics, developed a very simple proposal that will put serious pressure on China to reduce its holdings of dollars. They call for taxing China's dollar holdings at a 20 percent annual rate. This can be done in a way that is 100 percent legal under U.S. trade agreements and has no obvious negative side effects.

The question this proposal should raise is why don't all economists support the Gagnon-Hufbauer proposal or some comparable measure. The over-valued dollar is a major obstacle to restoring a normal economic balance with near full employment levels of output. This is an issue where all mainstream economists should pretty much agree.

Of course there are powerful interest groups that don't necessarily want to see the dollar fall. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and other banks are probably happy to have their dollars go further in buying up Chinese assets. Similarly, Wal-Mart and other major retailers probably are not anxious to see the prices of the goods they import increase by large amounts. And Pfizer, Apple, and Time-Warner would probably be worried that if we anger the Chinese government over its currency policy it might be less anxious to protect their patent and copyright claims.

If this were a case argued on the economics - the mainstream economics that everyone learns as undergrads and grad students - the economics profession should be lined up solidly behind Gagnon and Hufbauer. However, the interests of those with money and power seem to be on the other side and that's where we find most economists.

So, the story here is that we may or may not need a new economics, but first and foremost we need honest economists. We don't seem to have many right now and it is not clear how a new economics would change this fact.

The Good Jobs Are Being Shipped Out Of America As Part Of Globalism

Need A Job? Too Bad! 
By Michael Snyder - Published on 12-16-2010

I hope that you enjoy the cheap foreign-made plastic trinkets that you will be exchanging with your family and friends this holiday season, because they are literally destroying the U.S.economy.  As part of the new "one world economy" that both Democrats and Republicans insist is so good for us, millions of good paying middle class jobs have been shipped out of America.  Do you need a job?  Are you wondering where all the good jobs went?  Well, the next time you are out just walk into a store and start looking at the product labels.  Most of the things that are sold in our stores are now made out of the country.  So if you need a good paying job to support your family that is just too bad - you have been merged into a global labor pool where you must compete for jobs with people on the other side of the globe willing to work for less than a tenth of what you usually make.  Welcome to the "one world economy" where big global corporations make a fortune exploiting slave labor on the other side of the world while "overly expensive American workers" get dumped out on the street.

Are you in favor of a redistribution of wealth?  Most of the time when the phrase "redistribution of wealth" is brought up, conservatives and libertarians visibly cringe - as they should.  But did you know that right now the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world is taking place and our politicians are doing nothing about it?

For a moment, imagine a giant map of the world.  On that giant map, put a huge pile of money on the United States, and also put a huge pile of money on China and on the OPEC nations.  Now imagine a big hand coming along once a month that takes tens of billions of dollars out of the U.S. pile and puts it into the piles of China and the OPEC nations.

As this continues month after month after month, what is eventually going to happen?
The U.S. pile of money is going to get far smaller and the other piles of money are going to get much, much larger.

And that is exactly what is happening in our world today.

Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year - not really anything to worry about  it.

Well, let's fast forward to 2010.  For the month of August alone, the trade deficit with China was more than 28 billion (that's billion with a "b") dollars.

In other words, the U.S. trade deficit with China in August was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with China was for the entire year of 1985.

My, how the world has changed in 25 years.

Oh, but doesn't China "invest" some of that money they are getting from us back into our country?

Well yeah, our top officials regularly go over there to beg them to lend us more money.  Now we owe China close to a trillion dollars.  We also owe the major oil exporting nations of the Middle East massive amounts of money.

Is this a good idea?  Let us keep in mind the ancient principle that the borrower always ends up the servant of the lender.

Is it wise for the United States to become enslaved to China and to the oil exporters of the Middle East?

Is that any way to run an economy?  Is that any way to run a country?

All over the United States factories are closing down.  If you go to shopping centers in many areas of America you would think that the hottest new store was called "Space Available".
Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

What kind of progress is that?

"But oh", the supporters of the one world economy will declare, "the cheap goods, the cheap goods!"

Yes, I hope you enjoy paying ten percent less for your plastic trinkets.  But you will also support American workers one way or another.  Either you will provide them with good paying jobs, or you will pay for their food stamps and their unemployment checks.

One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in a federal anti-poverty program.  As 2007 began, 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now 42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.

Can anyone out there please explain how the "one world economy" is supposed to be good for us when 42 million Americans cannot even feed themselves?

Allowing our country to be deindustrialized just so that we can consume more cheap goods from China is like tearing down pieces of your house to keep your fire going.  In the end, you won't have much of a house left.

Whatever your opinion of Donald Trump is, this next video is worth watching.  Trump certainly should not run for president, but as a savvy businessman he definitely understands what China is doing to us....