Obi-wan Kenobi: "The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
We must be cautious."
...abolish this damn ministry:
Vice farm minister Kobayashi to resign over Endo's scandal:sources
Kyodo News
TOKYO, Sept. 7 - Vice farm minister Yoshio Kobayashi has decided to resign apparently to take responsibility for leaving unattended the misuse of farm subsidies by a farmers' association in former farm minister Takehiko Endo's hometown of Yonezawa in Yamagata Prefecture, informed sources told Kyodo News late Thursday.
The mutual aid association illegally received 1.15 million yen in government subsidies in connection with the damage grape farmers suffered in fiscal 1999, by inflating the number of mutual aid association members listed as eligible to receive the money.
The misuse of such subsidies was revealed by the Board of Audit of Japan in 2004.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, however, has not urged the mutual aid association to return the subsidies to the state coffers as soon as possible, although it has been aware of the matter, the sources said.
Just think...if METI absorbed the MAFF, the natural resource exploitation livelihoods would be just another industry. They would have to compete equally with other industries for consideration, protection and subsidy. Japanese negotiators would no longer have to make fools of themselves in the Doha Round, protecting Japan's weekend farmers from impoverished Asian and African peasants. Japan fisheries negotiators, with the manufacturing and services industries leaning on them, would no longer be able to behave like morons at the IWC conferences. No more provocative "Minke whales are the cockroaches of the sea"-like statements...oh, it would be heaven.
And the likelihood of a real administrative reform happening, what with the DPJ knocking on the doors of every farmer, fisherman and lumberjack in creation, winking at them from their newly won seats in the House of Councillors--is nil.
Oh Jun-chan, scion of suburban Kanagawa--the least respected of all the prefectures in the Diet and patron of the Yokosuka naval bases--how can you remain silent in these dark times?
Ah, I see the early bird has spotted another worm in the apple.
ReplyDeleteI assume you are aware that METI and MAFF were once as one? No what-if's here though; the politics drive the bureacracy, not the other way around. And the politics have gone domestic and local for the time being.