THIS YEAR'S INFLATION

The New York Post yesterday carried the prices of commodities, metals, bonds, etc. and reviewed their performance for 2010. Gold, for instance, closed at $1413.10 an oz.; up 29% for the year. A sign that people are afraid of other investments...not good news unless you are holding gold.

Three commodities that have some bearing on hemp, as they could be replaced by or sourced from hemp, are soybeans, cotton and ethanol. Soy is up to $13.66 a bushel, a 31.4% change from last year; cotton, however, is up much more dramatically - closing at $1.40 a lb., up 85.8%. This is making for runaway inflation and more expensive clothes, not to mention, a lot of water wasted on this thirsty monocrop.

Ethanol is at $2.36 a gallon, just under the price of petrol here in the US - and would be even cheaper if it were made en masse from hemp and other farm wastes.

John Crudele in his article about the US economy notes that consumer spending is up 5.5% -which is being toted as a good sign, but he notes that some of this spending is merely money spent on higher prices at the pump - and, he might have added, on clothing now that cotton spot prices are almost double those of last year.

So again, it is time for America to grow hemp. Ease the demand on water and create a commodity that can be produced on US soil for a change. But I doubt the Post will ever tell us such a truth.

HEAR NO EVIL

David Goldstein in the McClatchy Newpapers recently reported on the new US gov legislation which would clamp down on one of the Bush government's deadliest of enemies - whistleblowers. A footnote on a ruling against a Federal whistleblower noted that the Labor Department did not recognise protections against those who reported on illegal activities concerning clean water, drinking water, toxic substances or haxardous waste. Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project, asserts: "This is the latest in a systematic war to gut the environmental whistleblowers' statutes. They are a lifeline so government workers can challenge illegality without engaging in professional suicide."

The EPA, which is now regarded as a major joke, has stated that it did not recognise protection in any of the six major environmental laws. Respect for the law is not to be expected from the Bush people, in fact, the White House is seeking to break the law and not pay the US troops the 3.8% raise to which they are legally entitled under a 1999 ruling; please note that this was under the Democrats, and now that the warmongering GOP is in power, they don't want to pay the troops - in fact, they are currently opposing the 3.5% proposed pay rise put forth in the Democrat controlled Congress.

And they are opposed to Americans growing hemp. Understandably, as this seed helps the birds to sing, a fact brought up in 1937 when the GOP made hemp illegal by manipulative means.