I’ve written numerous articles about the media over the years and almost always refer to the media study conducted by our foremost intellectual, Noam Chomsky. Noam studied our media in depth in the 1980s and 90s. His conclusion was our media serves the oligarchy (owners of this country) to “manufacture consent and sell them goods and services (consumerism) to fuel the profits of the oligarchy.”

This podcast is about the animal industry or the operational systems known as CAFOs and CFOs. The confined feed operations are operated throughout the Midwest and the Heartlands here in the USA. Due to the misnamed Right to Farm bills, the dirtiest of operators have free reign over our lands. Many of them are also massive polluters of our waterways, as indicated below:

Speaker 1 00:00:14 When recording it, night and a train come through. It’s kind of interesting to play a little led Zeppelin, cashmere, and, uh, uh, to blend into the actual recording. Anyway, I got a lot of feedback from the last, uh, uh, recording that I did on oligarchy. Uh, we talked about the military-industrial complex and how great thinkers like Albert Einstein pointed out that we were an oligarchy but never received an invite to the, uh, why ha house. Um, kind of the same thing for the military-industrial complex. They don’t need an invite. They’re in there all the time. In fact, they’re sitting and waiting in think tanks and other nonprofits supported by the military-industrial complex. They are the, what we call the neocons, and they work for both the Democrat and Republican parties. Uh, make no mistake about it. They work in, they work both parties and, uh, they work it all the way down to the local level.

Speaker 1 00:01:45 And that is pretty much what you’re gonna find with the animal industrial complex is what Wikipedia calls ’em. And, um, uh, their definition is the term animal industrial complex refers to the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. It includes every economic activity involving animal animals such as the food industry, meat, dairy, poultry, agricultural, an animal testing, uh, academic industrial animals in space, medicine, uh, clothing, labor and transport, tourism and entertainment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, um, and most of this takes place in confined animal feed operations. That means a lot of animals in a very small space. And some of these animals don’t get, uh, uh, get to move, and they’re confined to a cage at a very young age. And there they will live out their, uh, short lifespan, and then they’re are slaughtered and put into the meat production facility. So, and, um, we’ve invited China.

Speaker 1 00:03:26 China’s now the top, uh, pork producer in the United States. They own Smithfield, uh, which used to be US corporations now owned by China, which brings in an unusual slant to all our China bashing that our politics are doing right now in order to prepare ourselves for war over there. So as you, as you see how the oligarchy works, um, you see them operating behind closed doors. Uh, they’re the ones that put together the, um, right to farm bills, you know, the misnamed right to farm, just like the misnamed right to work. Um, bills are put together by these industry oligarchs and pushed through by the politicians that they pay. Um, do they go against the, uh, American people? Well, we, we enjoy eating the meat, uh, but the problem is we subsidize the process of us eating the meat in the fact that the animal industrial complex, just like the military-industrial complex pollutes, they’re the biggest polluters in our country.

Speaker 1 00:05:03 And, uh, um, it, it is really hypocritic

A short trip through the formation of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). More of a brief description of the MIC and further details of an oligarchy as pointed out by Thomas Jefferson, later analyzed by Albert Einstein and then the warning by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As for funding this beast:

Improving these laws will require tackling three legal — but corrupting — phenomena that skew public policy for personal and private gain. We have practical solutions for each of these persistent problems. First, close remaining loopholes to slow the revolving door between the Pentagon and defense companies. Second, end the rubberstamp approval of former military personnel working for foreign governments. And third, mitigate the risk and appearance of financial conflicts of interest for senior Pentagon officials.

We are making the case that the US is an oligarchy - not a democracy.

The discussion was longer than expected since it was just an introduction. I mean, the resolution was just an introduction to study the possibility of forming an ethics committee to oversee the operations of the city’s business. Jeff Robinson, Democrat and President of Muncie City Council introduced the resolution to form a committee. There was pushback by several political players. But, overall, who could reject such an idea? Ten years ago, there were plenty who rejected an ethics plan – mostly Democrat HQ players listening to their bosses. Today, only one voted against the resolution – Isaac Miller from the 4th district in Muncie.

Progress is slow in Muncie, Indiana.

This series of podcasts will delve into the world of oligarchy. So many, dating back to the original framers like Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and President Dwight Eisenhower, would point to the economic wolves or mysterious men and women who shaped policies behind closed doors. Trump was going to drain the swamp but had no idea who these creatures were. The fact is, he was one of them.

We’ll have many episodes under this title.

Welcome, everyone, this is Todd Smekens with Muncie Voice.

In my writings, I often refer to the oligarchy, and everybody always asks me, what are you referring to when talking about an oligarchy? And usually, it’s in reference to all the commentary that you hear on the news about our democracy in distress. Well, it is in distress, and however media, the mainstream media does not point us to what we need to be looking at. What they’re pointing at is how the Republicans and how the Democrats are invoking policies on the rest of us and working outside the mainstream and which they refer to as a democracy in crisis.

However, when you look at it, when you take a step back, and you look at who controls both the Democrat and Republican headquarters, the Koch brothers had spent decades consuming the Republican Party to the point that it is no longer even remotely resembles what the Republican Party was a decade ago. This is the objective of the Koch brothers. They are the owners, they are one of the richest men in the world and they’ve acquired that wealth through inheritance and through their private corporations. And it’s very interesting, it’s very telling for us to learn that they are not a capital company. They are private capital. They have not gone to the stock market to raise money for their business. Therefore, they are the anti-government slash business interest and they are against that. And they fund the politicians who are against that. Anything to nip away at the government, they fund that. And we need to know that that’s important because what you’ll find out is every policy, I mean, they fund 150 universities. They fund the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation. They own and fund all these, even our NPR and public radio and our local university here in Muncie, Indiana, Ball State. The Koch brothers are behind all of them. And because of that, they get favorable recommendations and policies being advocated and written by the professors at these universities.

So we must identify that democracy is based on the individual people. When the Constitution was written, they were very specific about claiming that we are a democracy and that we need to ensure that the government is by the people and for the people. The whole we the people. Well, Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, was one of the enlightened ones, so to speak. He went over to spend a lot of time in Europe before coming to the United States and helped organize the government for us. And even though he was a slave owner, he commented quite frequently about we the people. He was very concerned about the press and its position in holding the government accountable. And that’s very important. But what we see today, I mean, Jefferson wrote letters to judges back in the day and said he saw the economic wolves, the robber barons of the day, he saw those up on the horizon, and they were looking to take down the government as soon as they formed it. And the people that formed it were pretty much all oligarchs. A few people took it upon themselves to write, and frame the Constitution, the Democratic Republic that we claim that we have.

If you look on Wikipedia in the Democracy Index, we’ve ranked 25th out of all the countries on Democracy. All the countries on Democracy. That does not speak well for our existing democracy. We are not a democracy. And again, once again, we