Horace Heffner wrote:
Honestly, I disagree with this policy. I do not think that any part
of government can or should be removed from the hand of politics.
Well, it was also the goal to get the energy fund entirely out of
government as well: "When financially independent, and maybe sooner,
the agency should become a private non-profit corporation, a trust,
with special legislated benefits and duties."
First, the people in this Energy Fund fund would be as political as
any other group of people or chimpanzees. Primates all engage in
politics, all of the time. Industry would buy off the Fund managers
as quickly as they subvert members of Congress.
Second, this would put the Energy Fund beyond the reach of the
taxpayers, where no publicly funded organization should be. The
Japanese economy is in tatters, and the government has the biggest
deficit in the world in percent terms, because large parts of the
budget go to specially established half-public/half-private
"independent" institutions. They answer to no one, and they waste
billions of dollars mainly on lunatic environmental destruction:
megaprojects that dump concrete into forests, national parks, rivers,
and the ocean. About 55% Japanese coastline has been ravaged by this
(Kerr, p. 19), and nearly all of its rivers. No one benefits from
this but the construction companies and the "amakudari" ("descent
from heaven") retired government officials who run the institutions.
They pocket millions of dollars.
This subject has been dominating the Japanese news this week. The day
before yesterday, the agriculture cabinet minister in Japan hung
himself partly because he was caught with his fingers in one of these
cookie jars. It is called the "Green Forest Society" -- or something
like that. And at 5:00 a.m. yesterday, another retired high-official
from the Society "descended from heaven" in a more literal fashion
than usual, when he jumped off his 11th floor apartment balcony onto
the pavement below. (A little too high but well-and-truly retired.)
Naturally, the purpose of the "Green Forest Society" is to destroy
green forests and replace them with monocultured cedar trees that
nobody wants, and that cause severe erosion, local plant and animal,
and nationwide sinusitis from pollen, killing thousands of people and
forcing children and old people indoors. By 1997 they have wiped out
43% of Japan's forests, according to Kerr. They name these
organizations after whatever part of nature they are destroying,
"Friends of the Rivers" "Ocean Partners" or what-have-you, like the
U.S. "Greening Earth Society" which promotes global warming on behalf
of the coal interests.
- Jed
