Truth, Transparency & Trust: We Need It, And In the FDA

Genetic Hybridization has been a long standing pillar of those who use farming, herding and ranching to supply their means to make a living.  Unfortunately, it is no longer the “mom and pop” farms which manufacture the bulk of this nation’s produce.

Since the development of global agribusiness, which has been steadily encroaching upon the local output of the total production base of livestock, fruits and vegetables since the 1980s, the one agency which has been slated to regulate the quality of these consumer items, the Federal Drug Administration (as well as the USDA), has been rendered wholly toothless as a result of the incessant putsch for deregulation, perpetrated by those who stand to gain the most in the business.

Now, and particularly within the last 10 years, GMO foods (GMO is Genetically Modified Organisms) have penetrated our supermarkets, and GMOs are present in pretty much all non-organic preprocessed foods.

We are now exposed to more GMOs in our foods and produce than ever before, with little to no oversight of what actually comprises them.  We know that right now, most corn (corn and canola oil), alfalfa, soybeans (soy, soy lectin), sugar beets (sugar other than pure cane sugar), papayas, cotton (cotton seed oil), yellow squash, and some kinds of non-organic Golden Rice are either wholly or partially composed of GMOs (see the list).  All meat products produced in the US, since they are all fed 100% GMO feed stocks, are essentially 100% GM meats.  I think it’s time to go vegan.  Organic Vegan, that is.

We also know that somewhere in the neighborhood of 93% of Americans support the labeling of GM products.  Europe (the EU) already requires labeling of GM foods, and since the mid 2000s, the EU has banned most types of GMOs from being grown or produced within its boundaries.

So why does this matter?  Let’s go back into history a little bit.

In 1901, Monsanto was founded.  It started off making an artificial sweetener called Saccharin, which it marketed to Coca-Cola.  In the 1920s, Monsanto started producing vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin, and basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and rubber processing chemicals.

Odd that a company which makes food additives would also be making sulfuric acid (which will eat through your skin) and rubber processing chemicals (which can kill you), isn’t it?

Since the 1940s, Monsanto become a leading manufacturer of plastics, including polystyrene, synthetic fibers, the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, Agent Orange, the artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet), bovine somatotropin (bovine growth hormone or BST), PCBs, LEDs, 2,4-D, BT-Toxin, and most profitably, Round-Up and Round-Up resistant GM seeds.

Obviously, DDT (an “insecticide”) and Agent Orange (a “defoliant”) are no longer being produced, but 2,4-D is a very close cousin to Agent Orange, and what the BT-Toxin does to insects makes DDT look humane.  BT-Toxin is a GM toxin which alters the DNA of insects so that their internal organs turn to gel and explode.  Somebody at Monsanto really has it in for bugs, huh?  They put this stuff in Round-Up, and the GM seeds which are constructed to be Round-Up resistant have this same GM BT-Toxin in them.  It has been shown that when GM plants grown with these BT-Toxin-infused genes are consumed by some animals, the bacteria in those animals’ stomachs get their DNA altered so that they become miniature BT-Toxin factories.  Yes, that’s pretty gross, right?

So it is conceivable that if you eat enough, say, GM corn chips, your stomach bacteria will start producing BT-Toxin, causing your stomach to explode, just like the insects.  This will cause a very painful, and very certain death.  Maybe somebody at Monsanto really has it in for everyone who eats their GM seeds, actually.  Just as an aside, there were several Monsanto scientists who, having learned from their research the effects of BT-Toxin in the feeds which were then fed to cows, stopped buying non-organic beef and milk altogether, and one even went so far as to buy his own milk cow.

Now, it should be noted that they did have some help, from the inside.

From Wikipedia:

• Justice Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto in the 1970s.  Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the 2001 Supreme Court decision J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. which found that “newly developed plant breeds are patentable under the general utility patent laws of the United States.”  This case benefited all companies which profit from genetically modified crops, of which Monsanto is the largest.
• Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner before he left to work for a law firm on gaining FDA approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone in the 1980s.  Taylor then became deputy commissioner of the FDA from 1991 to 1994.  After he went back to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy, Taylor was later re-appointed to the FDA in August 2009 by President Barack Obama.
• Dr. Michael A. Friedman was a deputy commissioner of the FDA before he was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto.
• Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before she was a vice president at Monsanto from 1995 to 2000.  In 2001, Fisher became the deputy administrator of the EPA.
• Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co., which Monsanto purchased in 1985.  Rumsfeld personally made at least $12 million USD from the transaction.

One would wonder why the Republicans wanted to get rid of the EPA under Dubya, when their corporate cronies were actually running it, at least from afar, and mostly from the inside.

Not only this, but Michael Taylor is currently heading the FDA and has been appointed Food Czar by none other than Obama.  With Taylor leading the FDA, giving the FDA more money will not help unless all vestiges of Monsanto are removed from government.  Taylor will undoubtedly just continue to green light all Monsanto foods, without regard to the health and safety of the people who are eating the food.

And as for the poor who live on USDA subsidies?  Well, just talk about shoving it down their throats….

To achieve the Truth, Transparency & Trust which are required of the FDA, Taylor must go, along with Obama, and we must replace the void with real leadership who have actual respect, and not this apparent disdain, for We The People.

But all is not yet lost.

There is also a California Initiative to require labeling of all GM foods.  The theory is that food producers would rather not admit to the US public that they have GMOs in the foods they make, and rather than label them, the food producers would rather remove the GM ingredients from all their foods than admit they were there in the first place, and Monsanto will simply go out of business or something.

Now you would think that passing this initiative would be a no-brainer, but lobbying and false advertising by Monsanto have defeated a similar initiative in Oregon not but a few years ago.  Monsanto has and will claim that the companies who produce the food will have to charge, look out, way more money to print new labels, and therefore the food will become, oh, so much more expensive.  Pity then for the poor consumer, no, no.

The opposite is actually true. Not to mention that food producers change their labels all the time with no increase in consumer cost, the labels will not change (since the food producers will not want those labels on their foods), and the food producers will actually save money by not having to pay Monsanto extra money to put their GM foods in the food producers’ products in the first place.  Labeling is a win-win for everyone but Monsanto.  That must be why they at Monsanto really have it in for us.

Then there is SB 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.  This act will require little oversight by the FDA of GMOs, will encourage GMOs to be added to foods, will require organic farmers to submit to a litany of overburdensome regulations regarding the supposed “safety” of their foods which have been perfectly safe for millennia, and will actually outright prohibit anyone from growing their own food in their own garden.  If you grow food, you go to jail.

No, unfortunately, I am absolutely serious.  I wish I was kidding.

So obviously, SB 510 needs to be stopped in its tracks, and we need to get its sponsors and supporters out of office.  Immediately.  You really have to wonder if this is yet another Bilderberg ploy to cull more of the population.  Getting death into our foods would easily enable them to take out all but one of fourteen.

In the meantime, please protect yourself by making sure that you never buy GMO foods.  Please check out:

• nonGMOshoppingguide.com
• seedsofdeception.com
• responsibletechnology.org
• intrepidmag.com

for more information, and remember, as always:

With Knowledge and Love, We Can All Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

At Last, GOP Admits They Want Slavery

Source:  Huffington Post

I’m not quite sure who at Huff Post didn’t manage to catch this the first time around.

From the above cited article:

The politicians pushing drug testing disagree. In South Carolina, where the unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, well above the national average of 8.5 percent, Republicans want the nation’s toughest requirements: blanket drug testing of every applicant for unemployment benefits and compulsory volunteer work for the long-term jobless.

Now, I don’t know if I need to give you the definition of the word “volunteer”, but I’ll give you the link.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/volunteer

Of course, the issue here is that Republicans want to mandate “compulsory volunteer work” for those on unemployment insurance.  Well, if, to volunteer, you must be actively willing to do whatever it is, then how exactly is the oxymoronic phrase “compulsory volunteer work”, presumably where, since the work would be compulsory (so you would not actually be volunteering, but would be mandated to work, and to work at no pay at that), how is it not an exact description of slavery?

With slavery, it is mandated that people perform work without pay, and with “compulsory volunteer work”, it would be mandated that people perform work without pay.  Ergo, “compulsory volunteer work” is just a euphemism for slavery.

Finally, the Republicans admit what everyone has been thinking.

The GOP wants to go back to the “good ole days”, um, where slavery was legal?  Really?  But there it is, in black and white, for all to see.  The GOP wants us all to be slaves.  I knew it.

Wait one minute.  If the GOP wants to go back and make us all “volunteer” slaves, could they perhaps get a few non-profits together that had people picking cotton and tobacco, and maybe even vegetables in the fields?  That way, the GOP could kill the DREAM Act, have their border fences, and not have to pay for any housecleaning and gardening labor.  They could still prevent any economic recovery, since all of us who were out of work would have to volunteer for the already rich, who, after all could pay for these jobs, but if they have slaves, then why bother?

This all has to do with the notion that the GOP thinks that anyone who is poor is on drugs, and that those people receiving any form of public assistance must be poor, and therefore on drugs.  I don’t know, but if I were to work for those assholes, I would need to be on drugs.

First of all, those people who get unemployment insurance (UI) are able to do so because they were just recently employed, and through no fault of their own, they were laid off, downsized, outsourced, or what have you, generally by an already rich Republican.  The money which pays for UI does not come from the individual taxpayer in the first place.  It comes from a tax on corporations which would never be given back to the corporation if left unpaid to the UI recipient, and generally comes out of the allocated employee salary funds from that former employer, so it really is the UI recipient’s money to begin with.

I know for a fact that there are quite a few Republicans who are employed and who use drugs (Rush Limbaugh to name one).  If there are individuals who are employed and who use drugs with the money they earn, it is their business (beyond the scope of not getting busted with the drugs, should they be illegal).  So if someone on UI wants to spend a portion of that retained earned income on drugs, it should be no one else’s business but the UI recipient’s.

The GOP nationwide in the states’ legislatures and in US Congress has been pushing for enactment of legislation which would remove welfare, TANF, SNAP, and UI recipients from having the ability to receive their checks unless they are able to pass a mandated random drug test.  Oh, and by the way, the recipient has to pay for the test.  I thought the GOP was against individual mandates, or perhaps that is just when it suits them.  One law in Florida mandating these measures was struck down because it clearly violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.

This all caught my eye because there is some pushback from the Democrats who are essentially saying that if you are going to test people who get public money (still not sure why they include UI), then we ought to be testing everyone who gets public money, including state and federal representatives.  Maybe not oddly, but at least effectively, this move made some of the GOP sponsors of the bills withdraw them, in what seems to be a direct admission of hypocrisy by the GOP.

Yes, once the Democrats pushed back by amending the bills so that the GOP bill sponsors would also have to get tested, those Republicans decided that the measure was not such a good idea after all.

I think that if we were going to institute this policy, it would be a good idea to make sure that ALL public money, like corporate banking bailouts for instance, will only go to people who have tested negative for illegal drug use, particularly cocaine, MDMA, and maybe ketamine in their case.  Oh, and how about all those oil subsidies?  No drugs for them.  No more partying with the regulators for you, Big Oil!  Imagine how much money this would save.  Do you really think the oil and banking barons would give up their drugs for public money?  I doubt it.

And the next time you see some sort of whacked-out SOPA/PIPA/NDAA/EEA type of legislation come out of Congress, well, test them too.

Vote Legalization!  Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

Corporations Are Not People, But The People Who Compose Them Are

I suppose that, in the face of Citizens United, demanding that corporations should not be People is now the new fad.

This was never the case with me.

It is simply, Prima Facie (on the face of it), that corporations, which have not an expiration, nor a Corpus Delecti (think, a gravestone), amongst other oddities, do not quite fit the general description of Persons, nor, as a whole, People, who are themselves rather distinct.

It is with this in mind that I do propose a new set of Rules which shall govern corporations. These rules hearken back to the days of the founding of The Dutch East India Company, which was, and still remains, the very first corporation to come into being, way back in the year 1602 Anno Domini. It itself was only chartered originally for 21 years, but quite obviously, things in this regard have gotten very far out of hand.

We, The People, should now exercise our Collective Will to remand these entities and their progeny back into a more manageable state. I have some ideas.

1) Corporations must be chartered. This really sounds obvious, but it is really not so. Today (and only the other day I in fact have done this), corporations can be created by any individual person or entity without limit. They can exist only by the stroke of my (or anyone’s) pen.

This is not the way it used to be.

Corporations used to be created to perform a duty, and would so be regulated by a chartering commission (now the Commerce Division or some such), and could not become chartered unless they were to serve some obvious purpose.

Corporations should be chartered by a body with actual oversight which can rule on whether their charter is valid.

2) Corporations must serve the Public Good. This is another baby which was thrown out with the bathwater.

Corporations, in their original charter, must state for what Public Good they will provide. The Chartering Commission will have due public input to hear the yeas and nays of why and why not the new corporation will or will not serve the Public Good.

It is ultimately up to the People to determine what, if anything, is in the Public Good.

3) Corporations shall exist for a definite amount of time, during which, they shall either perform or not perform, according to their charter, the stated Public Good via which they were originally chartered.

If a corporation fails to perform in the Public Good, according to the dictum set forth in its charter, then the charter and so the corporation’s license to operate, shall be revoked. This extends to that corporations must pay their fair share of taxes and not outsource their labor to foreign countries, but provide work for those in Our Nation.

An annual renewal of all corporate charters should be the litmus test, and that renewal should be held in public, with public approval.

4) Corporations are not a shield for liability, but a “collection of fools” over which that liability is spread.

I could write a number of names of corporations here which would bring up horrific images of disaster to most folk. I will not, but rather I will focus on what can be done to improve corporate liability.

The limited liability which corporations now enjoy should extend only between its members (who are actual People and not other corporations), so as not to exclude any member from liability, so long as that member has any part in the issue from which the liability had originated.

If there was one bad apple in the corporation, and that one apple made the Gulf Oil Spill or Bhupal, then it is solely up to the other members of the corporation to prove their innocence, or, otherwise, the entire “ship of fools” goes down and shares plural personal liability.

This may just be a start. Please tell me what other rules governing corporations which you would like to see. I am very open to popular opinion on this matter.

We are The People — Let Our Love Be The Way!