The decision was made last year, but I just heard the news “broken” yesterday on public radio, that Archer Daniels Midland has discontinued its support of the Lehrer News Hour. Publicly, the company says that the viewers of the News Hour are not the “movers and shakers” they want to influence, but I suspect the truth is more that the movers and shakers that watch the News Hour are too intelligent to be as influenced by sponsorship of one news program, or by the entire public broadcasting system, as ADM wants us to be influenced. 6 or 7 Million Dollars per year doesn’t, in my mind, make up for funding Brasilian farmers who illegally clear the Amazon forest, utilizing the labor of enslaved and tortured children, and cheating the taxpayers who subsidize it with an inferior source of alternative fuel to what ADM’s farmers are accustomed to planting and harvesting. The voters aren’t buying it any longer, so ADM is focusing its corrupt efforts on the elected representatives of the republic, which it has successfully influenced for decades.
“ADM’s political heft was behind the 54 cent per gallon tariff that the US government has imposed on imports of sugar-cane based ethanol from Brazil, which is cheaper than ADM’s corn-based fuel. The tariff dates back to 1980 when the CEO of ADM convinced President Carter to adopt it, according to former ADM lobbyist Joseph Karth.”
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13646&printsafe=1 [14th paragraph, in section “Friends in High Places”]
ADM has no incentive to try to “influence” viewers, of public or purely commercial television. It has purchased, lock stock and barrel, the President — who still makes noise about corn ethanol like it’s a competitive fuel — and 399 current members of Congress, who increase food stamp benefits to try to explain away subsidies to agribusiness families with incomes up to $1.5 Million. I’ll bet you every cent I own that Ron Paul did not vote for this inflationary, fiat-currency-based, legislative cronyism.
