Mussolini once said that fascism should rightly be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. That is what we have in America.
One example is marijuana prohibition, as Natural News points out. Legalization would save taxpayers nearly $14 billion per year, but, hey, prohibition helps out the pharmaceutical and prison industries. Big Pharma can’t patent cannabis, is the trouble, and they don’t want to compete with its amazing medicinal properties, like how nerve endings in our bodies are hardwired to respond to cannibinoids, which might help to defend against HIV and cancer, while they have to resort to scientific fraud to get their own less-than-worthless drugs onto the shelves.
Here’s another example from the Carolina Journal Online (via Tom Woods)
The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.
Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”
Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.
When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.
But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.
Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.
The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.
And in my home state of Michigan, the DNR is now trying to put small pig farmers out of business by eradicating their pigs and declaring those who do not comply with their regulation prohibiting “feral” pigs to be felons, while the factory-farming pork industry and friends cheer the the slaughter on.
