Horses and Bananas

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Are you a horse lover or even an admirer? Michael Markarian presents an argument for support of H.R. 503, the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act.

• Every month, thousands of ex-racehorses, work horses, and family ponies are crammed into double-decker trucks where they can barely stand, and shipped hundreds of miles to Canada and Mexico. After arriving across the border, they are slaughtered for food exports to Europe and Asia, where horse meat is considered a delicacy.
• Agribusiness groups use stalling tactics and make the same old tired arguments about "unwanted" horses.
• [Even though] there are willing adopters and a network of horse rescues ready.

But bananas may give us the best case yet that I have seen for regulation of corporations, other businesses and whole industries.

• The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen as a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world -- and where they are leading us.
• For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened?
  
• They had one good entrepreneurial idea -- and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself.
• But have we learned? Across the world, politicians like George Bush ... tell... us the regulation of corporations is "a menace" to be "rolled back"; they even say we should leave the planet's climate in their hands.
  
• Now that's bananas.

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