What is the difference was between a lawyer and rat?

There are some things that rats just won't do.

Today’s post is from Zero Hedge (Tyler Durden)

And just last week, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that effectively kicks the scientists out of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, and makes room for industry insiders.

What’s curious is that this bill specifically allows for industry representatives to serve on the advisory board even when they have a direct conflict of interest with the board’s advisory activities.

This makes it yet even easier for a handful of big companies to influence public policy and force everyone else to do their bidding.

To give you an analogy, this would be the same thing as commercial banks like Citi or JP Morgan getting to choose the representatives that set monetary policy at the Federal Reserve.

—Oh wait, they’re already doing that.

Or it would be like the Department of Homeland Security buying completely useless body scanners from a company linked to the former head of DHS.

—Oh wait, they already did that too.

Or it would be like the FDA selecting some of its top executives from big agriculture companies like Monsanto.

—Oh wait, they already do that too.

Abraham Lincoln famously said at Gettysburg in 1863 that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The system we have today is none of those things.

The EPA is not there to protect the environment.

Homeland Security is not there to secure the homeland.

The FDA is not there for the health and safety of Americans.

Zero Hedge Worth Reading!

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged, 1957