Oxfam --- dragging people into poverty.

Bravo for Oxfam, they got this one right. The BBC reports that "Oxfam says so-called policies in developed countries are contributing to the world's soaring food prices, which hit the poor hardest." They report that Oxfam says fuels won't combate climate change.

A spokesman for Oxfam said: "Rich Countries... are making climate change worse, not better, they are stealing crops and land away from food production, and they are destroying millions of livelihoods in the process." The BBC says that the Oxfam report shows that "biofuels have dragged more than 30 million people worldwide into poverty."

I've lived in the Third World and written about how conditions were improving there dramatically for some time. But in a few short years greedy politicians, pandering to Big Agri and Big Energy managed to produce a policy that is good for no one but the politicians and the corporations who benefit from the subsidies and hand-outs. These people are literally starving people to death.

Meanwhile that great advocate of the poor, Barack Obama, is in bed with the very corporate interests who are helping starve people to death. The New York Times reports that Obama has close ties to the ethanol scamsters.

Pandering to the Big Agri Mr. Obama has been endorsing ethanol and the massive handouts that greedy corporations are getting at the expense of taxpayers. Obama's favorite welfare queens wear business suits. Former Democratic Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, often travels with Obama. Daschle went from the halls of Congress straight to serving on the board of "three ethanol companies" and "works at a Washington law firm" where "he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy." The Times also notes that one point Obama was criticized because he flew at "subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midlands, which is the nation's largest ethanol producer" and, I might add, one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare around.

Apparently Obama does love poor black folk provided they can vote in the election. Then he has compassion. When his pandering to the ethanol lobby leads to pushing millions of black folk in Africa back into poverty Obama doesn't give a damn. Obama's concerns about poverty and hunger don't go far. He's a fraud.