RFK Shredded Trump's Economic Plan 50 Years Ago

Yeah, the Orange Menace is going to create 25 million jobs (sic) by eliminating the food and work safety regulations that keep us alive and turning the Treasury over to his billionaire friends so we can beat Somalia on the Galtian Paradise scale.

Think Progress:

Donald Trump is running on the erroneous belief that ending regulations, particularly environmental ones, is the key to faster economic growth. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), who was assassinated June 6, 1968, explained just how misguided that view was just weeks before he was killed.

U.S. economic growth has emerged as a major issue in the presidential campaign. Donald Trump has many untenable ideas, as the Washington Post explained in an April piece headlined, “There is math, there is fantasy math, and then there’s Donald Trump’s economic math.”

That article quoted an economist at the Tax Foundation (who helped model Trump’s tax plan) saying, “It’s not consistent with historical experience. It’s more consistent with a world where we’re hiring butlers for our vacation homes on Ganymede” [Jupiter’s largest moon].”

I wanted to zero in on one of Donald Trump’s fictional strategies for boosting economic growth: As he explained last month to CNBC, “we’re going to be getting rid of a tremendous amount of regulations.”

In particular, when Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed Trump in March on how he’d cut the federal budget, Trump answered “Department of Environmental Protection [sic]. We are going to get rid of it in almost every form.”

In reality, slashing regulations, particularly regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, would be very counterproductive, as a 2015 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress made clear. The OMB found that ten years’ worth of major Federal regulations provided annual benefits to the nation (in 2001 dollars) of between $216 billion and $812 billion, while the estimated annual costs were only between $57 billion and $85 billion.

Of that, EPA regulations delivered the majority of benefits ($132.5 to $652 billion) but only about half the costs ($31 to $37.5 billion).

Of course, lots of those benefits were things like reduced health care costs because the air got cleaner — and those benefits don’t show up in our primary measure of economic growth, GDP. Indeed, reducing sickness and death actually lowers GDP.

Who can doubt that our wildly unsustainable global economic system is now the biggest of Ponzi schemes — where the economy appears to grow faster the more we burn fossil fuels and destroy a livable climate?

Robert F. Kennedy explained why GDP is a useless measure of economic well-being back in the 1960s.

Robert Kennedy was one of the few national politicians ever to challenge our monomaniacal pursuit of GDP to the exclusion of true economic well-being. In Detroit on May 5, 1967 he pointed out: “Let us be clear at the outset that we will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods.”

 

Weeks before he was killed, he spoke on this subject at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 — in what President Obama called “one of the most beautiful of his speeches.”

Here are the key lines:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product — if we judge the United States of America by that — that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

When you take this view of economic well-being, a President Trump could well bring this country greatest depression we have ever known.

Forget Trade: TPP Gives Corporations Veto Power Over National Laws

That's not hyperbole.  Under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, corporations can force countries to repeal all laws protecting consumer health and safety, clean water, clean air, safe food - anything that might cost a corporation a single penny in profits.

Ever wonder what it's like to live in a third-world country?   In a Randian paradise where only corporations have rights? Where the Kinder-Morgan can frack the fuck out of your front yard for free?  When Congress approves TPP, we'll find out.

Down with Tyranny:

Congress isn't just not debating it, Members who want to see what's in it must do so alone in a locked room and aren't allowed to bring a record devise-- or even a pen and paper! Those who have done so say only two of the 26 chapters cover traditional trade matters. The bulk of the document, which must be accepted or rejected without any modification, consists of new rights and privileges for multinational corporations (especially international banks and pharmaceutical companies) and irrevocable constraints on government regulation. The document makes it easier for companies to move jobs offshore, take control of natural resources and prevent the regulation of financial services. Kiss the whole concept of "Buy American" or even "buy local" bye-bye-- banned under the agreement.

Conventional courts cannot adjudicate individual trade disputes in the countries where they occur. All disagreements must be decided by “Investor State Dispute Resolution” conducted by TPP Tribunals staffed by lawyers from the private sector who are empowered to force governments to pay unlimited fines to corporations that believe their profits are in jeopardy.

Plotted in secret, the TPP is a corporate coup d’état benefitting the drug, energy, banking and agribusiness industries. It was supposed to take effect this year but the process was delayed when Australia refused to submit to the corporate court system and New Zealand objected to pharmaceutical companies determining the price of drugs sold in New Zealand. All countries denounced America’s demand that regulations on financial speculation be eliminated and drug patent monopolies be extended so that the introduction of generic equivalents could be postponed for years.

It's Not About Jobs: The Real Danger of TPP is Global Corporatocracy

Eric Loomis at LGM:

One of the biggest concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements are the Investor State Dispute Settlement courts that have no accountability to anyone, can overturn national laws that improve labor and environmental conditions, and are utterly opaque. Here is a very useful run-down of the ISDS and the TPP:

In short, ISDS gives corporations the power to sue national governments for lost future profits related to public interest legislation, most commonly focused on the protection of the environment.

SNIP

Since we still don’t have the final text, we don’t know, but while there do seem to be some cosmetic changes that maybe could change these courts a bit to fight against dubious corporate suits, the reality is that these trade courts still give unaccountable judges authority to reject a nation’s climate change legislation if it hurts an energy company’s profit or repeal a minimum wage law if a corporation disagrees. Certainly creating courts that citizens have no ability to access is tremendously undemocratic and is a major problem with the modern trade framework. If these courts gave workers the ability to sue corporations or nations that undermined their rights or if citizens could seek redress for pollution and disease they experienced because some company parked a factory in their backyard, that might be a different story. But as constituted, the ISDS courts a prime reason to fight against trade deals like the TPP.

But environmental legislation is just the tip of the iceberg.  TPP would let corporations force countries to abandon any and all regulations, including those protecting clean air, clean water, safe food and everything else that defines civilization. 

Jim Hightower has been yelling about this for years.

Massie Brags About Vote To Make Sure You Die Gruesomely

Because that's what the REINS Act does:  mandates the removal of all federal regulations preventing e coli in hamburgers, and exploding car gas tanks, and collapsing construction equipment, and falling elevators, and typhoid-infused drinking water, and flesh-eating bacteria in hospitals, and electrical fires in office buildings and failing brakes in 18-wheelers barrelling down on school buses and ever other kind of horrific "accident" that repugs don't give a flying fuck that kills or maims you.

“Excessive regulation stifles economic growth, hurts small businesses, and raises consumer prices,” said Congressman Massie. “It is vital that Congress act to reduce our regulatory burden, which raises consumer prices, reduces wages, and costs jobs," Massie was quoted in a press release.

The motherfucking liar is lying about fucking his mother. Again.

Down with Tyranny:

Only two "Democrats"-- both right-wing Blue Dogs, Henry Cuellar and Collin Peterson-- voted for the Republicans' REIN Act (HR 427) Tuesday afternoon. Todd Young (R-IN) was the chief sponsor, but the enthusiasm among Republicans was huge-- 171 cosponsors. It passed 243-165.

Ted Lieu, an active duty Air Force Reserve officer was in California on official business and couldn't vote. But he explained to his constituents why he opposes the bill, which he termed:

a radical, potentially unconstitutional House Republican-authored bill that guts the ability of federal agencies to establish rules protecting food safety, clear air, clean water and other crucial common-sense safeguards. The Reins Act is strongly opposed by a broad range of consumer, health, environmental, labor, scientific, and public interest groups.

 They don't call 'em "e. coli republicans" for nothing.

KY's Congress Repugs Voted to Hide Altered Food From You

The real issue here is not food safety, but food supply.  GMO crops are corporate possessions; farmers cannot save seeds for next year's crop, but must buy new seeds every year from Monsanto.  GMO put one of the planet's most toxic and despicable corporations in control of the entire world's food supply.

Regardless of whether genetically-modified organisms in food are dangerous to human health, they are absolutely lethal to the food supply and the ability of farmers to maintain sustainable crops.

But four of Kentucky's six representatives don't give a flying fuck about that.

Only Democrat John Yarmuth of Louisville and repug/teabagger Thomas Massie of Northern Kentucky voted to prevent Monsanto from sneaking unlabeled GMOs into our food.

Repugs Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers and Andy Barr all voted to take control of the nation's food supply away from farmers and consumers and give it to giant corporations.

Down with Tyranny:

This is a relatively simple issue. Food activists want to see potentially dangerous GMO food labeled so that consumers can make up their own minds about whether or not to feed it to their families. Monsanto and the GMO-Republicans, led by the Koch brother's Mike Pompeo (R-KS), want to make sure that there is no labeling and that the states that have already passed labeling laws to protect their citizens-- Connecticut, Maine and Vermont-- are over-ruled. I guess the concepts of states' rights and small government are trumped in GOP minds when their Big Business allies squawk loud enough! The bill passed (last week) 275-150. 

GMOs Don't Work

As I have written before, my objection to GMOs has to do with destroying the food supply through hybrid seeds that farmers must buy every year instead of being able to propagate from their own harvest.

Not to mention the extreme danger of putting the future and safety of our food supply in the hands of giant corporations - many of which like Monsanto are proven criminals - which can then literally hold the planet hostage.

Those objections would stand even if GMOs actually worked the way they are advertised.

They don't.

Lauren McCauley at Firedoglake:

The biotechnology industry “myth” that feeding billions of people necessitates genetically engineered agriculture has been debunked by a new report out Tuesday by the nonprofit health organization Environmental Working Group.

The report, Feeding the World Without GMOs (pdf), argues that investment in genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, has failed to expand global food security. It advocates more traditional methods “shown to actually increase food supplies and reduce the environmental impact of production.”

Over the past 20 years, the report notes, global crop yields have only grown by 20 percent—despite the massive investment in biotechnology.

On the other hand, it continues, in recent decades “the dominant source of yield improvements has been traditional crossbreeding, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.”

As the report states, “seed companies’ investment in improving yields in already high-yielding areas does little to improve food security; it mainly helps line the pockets of seed and chemical companies, large-scale growers and producers of corn ethanol.”

KY Prison Contractor Serves Rat-Eaten Cake in Michigan

Anybody doubt that Aramark is doing this and worse here?  Anybody think inmate riots are not an appropriate response? Anybody want to try to defend privatization?

Think Progress:

Rodent saliva is on the dessert menu in Michigan’s prisons thanks to Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) decision to hand over prison food service to Aramark, one of the largest private prison food vendors in the country.

In July, 2014, an Aramark employee discovered an inmate who worked in the kitchen throwing the rodent-marred cakes into the trash. The Aramark worker instructed the inmate to stop tossing the desserts and start slicing off the parts that had visibly been “eaten or pawed at” and adding frosting to cover the cuts. “The Aramark employee allegedly ordered him to cut the sides of the cake off and serve it to the population,” reads one of the July 20, 2014 emails unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request from the liberal group Progress Michigan. No illnesses resulted from the incident, the state spokesman told the site. In subsequent emails, staff ordered a full cleaning of the kitchen in question and sought a pest control crew.

Aramark, a food service vendor conglomerate that has described its prison contracts as a primary driver of company growth in previous correspondence with shareholders, fired the worker who had ordered the cake served on the following day, according to the emails.

The incident might like an isolated screwup by one reckless individual, but Aramark has earned a reputation for putting the company’s bottom line ahead of prisoners’ well-being in both Michigan and other states. Aramark once served rotten-smelling meatballs that had thawed in a broken freezer, though the company maintains they were not rotten. More than a hundred inmates at another Michigan prison were quarantined with a serious digestive bug that Michigan Department of Corrections officials said was probably linked to food. In Ohio last August, 1,000 incarcerated women threw their lunch trays out in protest after maggots were found on Aramark’s food serving line. The company’s operations have been accused of underfeeding inmates and been linked to prison unrest, including a 2009 riot in a Kentucky facility.

 And nibbling rats are just the tip of the disgusting iceberg, you can be sure. 

Get Your Seeds From Coops, Not Corporations

It's getting harder every year to find seeds that are not genetically modified to put real farmers out of business and turn a giant profit for Monsanto.

But in some countries, farmers are doing it for themselves.

Truthout:

In the face of overwhelming competition skewed by the rules of free trade, farmers in El Salvador have managed to beat the agricultural giants like Monsanto and Dupont to supply local corn seed to thousands of family farmers. Local seed has consistently outperformed the transnational product, and farmers helped develop El Salvador’s own domestic seed supply–all while outsmarting the heavy hand of free trade.

 Here in the States, try Seed Savers to find untreated, heirloom, non-GMO seeds.

Beating Monsanto

Corporations are close - very close - to establishing the Lords-n-serfs economy that will give them unchecked power.  But they're not there yet.

And it is possible for even the most marginalized people to stop them.

Truthout:

Farmers across El Salvador united to block a stipulation in a US aid package to their country that would have indirectly required the purchase of Monsanto genetically modified (GM) seeds.

Thousands of farmers, like 45-year-old farmer Juan Joaquin Luna Vides, prefer to source their seeds locally, and not to use Monsanto's GM seeds.

"Transnational companies have been known to provide expired seeds that they weren’t able to distribute elsewhere," said Vides, who heads the Diversified Production program at the Mangrove Association, a community development organization that works in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador.

"We would like the US embassy and the misinformed media outlets [that are pressuring the Salvadoran government to change their procurement procedure] to know more about the reality of national producers and recognize the food sovereignty of the country," he added.

Big Ag might not win.  But only if we fight them every step of the way.

Do Not Buy Tribe Hummus

Yes, there are many other food companies who are worthy of boycotts, and whenever I find information like this on them I will post it. Do not read this while eating - hummus or anything else.

Erik Loomis:

One big victory for corporations in recent years is keeping OSHA fines so low that their trivial cost makes fixing safety problems not worth the effort. Of course this has a predictable cost:

Twenty-eight-year-old Daniel Collazo was nearly done with his shift cleaning machines at the Tribe hummus plant in Taunton, Mass. when other workers heard his screams. 

Collazo had become caught in the rotating screws that blend the hummus and struggled to free himself as slowly-winding 9-inch blades kept turning, crushing his arms and part of his head, according to public records. His co-workers dashed to cut the power and desperately tried to untangle Collazo from the machine. 

Despite their efforts, Collazo died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. But the horrific Dec. 16, 2011, accident could have been prevented had the plant followed a standard safety practice known as “lock out/tag out.” It requires employees to be trained to cut power to industrial machinery before cleaning activities begin.

OSHA had visited this factory and found the working conditions outrageous:

Two years before Collazo was killed, federal officials fined the owner of the Tribe plant for failing to follow the safety procedure at another of its New England food processing plants. Tribe’s own consultant had warned that failing to train cleaning workers in lock out/tag out created “an extreme safety risk,” records show, and said “the probability that a fatality could occur is likely certain within a year’s timeframe.”

OSHA fined Tribe $9500 for those violations.  

Tribe thought at that price there was no reason to fix the problems. Now they were fined $450,000 upon Collazo’s death, but you can see why they would take that risk since the managers no doubt didn’t think someone would actually die. What is $9500 for a subsidiary of Nestle? Pocket change.  

I did like this:

Since Collazo’s death, Tribe has hired a new chief executive, Adam Carr, who has sought to increase the company’s visibility. Tribe finished paying its OSHA fines in April and has embarked on a new marketing campaign: “Hummus made with love and chickpeas.”

The secret ingredient is the blood of dead workers.

Buy Your Groceries in Vermont

Remember, the issue is not just lack of safety - which has yet to be proven - but the catastrophe of letting one giant corporation own the basis of the entire planet's food supply.

They couldn't make it happen in California, but ....

From Firedoglake:

- It seems Vermont will be the first state in the nation requiring GMO labeling on all foods

Food Safety Won't Matter When Corporations Own the Source of Our Food Supply

Far be it from me to question a biologist's expertise on biology, so I will address the political problem:

GMO puts the entirety of the planet's food supply and future ability to grow food in the hands of profit-taking corporations.

Without GMO, you don't have to pay any money to anyone to grow your own food. Collect seed from open-pollinated, heirloom plants, nurture the seeds into mature plants, eat what you need, store the extra and save seeds from the rest, and do it all over again next year.

With GMO, you have to pay money - huge, unsustainable amounts of money - Monsanto to get seeds to plant to grow food.  But you can't save seeds from what you've grown, because they are hybrids or sterile.  You have to pay again for seeds next year to start all over from scratch.  And the year after that and the year after that and the year after that.

It's food slavery.  Even if I thought GMO foods were perfectly safe, cured cancer, eliminated racism and were the solution to biodiversity, drought, overpopulation, climate change and the heartbreak of psoriasis, I wouldn't eat or plant them because doing so leads to a corporation owning the source of our food supply.

PZ Myers:

I find myself continually bewildered by the argument against genetically modified food. However, we have no choice, we need to constantly improve the stocks.

We have a great deal to gain from growing GM crops. They offer humanity a way to improve food productivity without having to make further inroads into our planet’s wild places to create more fields for farmers. The position was summed up by Sir Mark Wolpert, the government chief scientist last week, when debating the CST’s report. "The challenge is to get more from existing land in a sustainable way or face the alternative, which is that people will go unfed, or we’ll have to bring more wilderness land into cultivation." From that perspective, the case for GM crops is unanswerable.

Not everyone will agree, of course. Green opponents to GM crops claim they pose a risk to health, though no research has ever produced any credible evidence to back this point. Thirty years ago, it could be argued that we should proceed cautiously because of potential health dangers. That argument is no longer acceptable.

I have a lot of sympathy for the green argument, except that it ignores the real problem to focus on a minor issue. The real problem isn’t that some of our crops carry modified genes, especially since they all do — every single one of our major food plants are the product of intense artificial selection for traits that benefit agriculture. No, the real problem is how much of our country is overwhelmed with monocultured species — most of the botanical diversity of the United States is gone under a layer of wheat and corn and soybeans and pretty much nothing else. Minnesota is 54% farmland, and we aren’t even the most intensely plowed over state in the country.

It seems to me that the green approach would be to encourage more GMOs to increase the efficiency of farmland use; and to struggle to get less land committed to agriculture by ending the corn ethanol boondoggle and by encouraging more vegetarian diets, so less livestock. Worrying about an artificially introduced gene in a crop seems silly when the real problem is that versions of that crop are taking over everything, replacing wetlands and prairie with endless fields of corn, GMO or not.

Kevin Drum, on even more food-supply-endangering problems with GMO crops: 

Even if GMO foods are safe to eat, there are a host of practices surrounding the use and marketing of GMO seeds and crops that are highly questionable. And those practices frequently fail to get the attention they deserve thanks to intense lobbying from corporate interests with billions of dollars at stake. Over at Wired, Brandon Keim provides an example of this dynamic at work. It's the story of Bt corn, which was engineered to be poisonous to corn rootworms, a pest that used to cause billions of dollars in damage to corn crops. For a while it worked great. But then, corn rootworms evolved a resistance to Bt corn, largely due to industry and farmer resistance to proper management:

Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Give Monsanto Control Over the World's Food

Throughout human history, as long as you had the tiniest patch of ground and a few seeds, you could feed yourself.

If the U.S. approves the TPP, that ends.

Ellen Brown at Counterpunch:

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.  “Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

Profits Before Populations

Genetic engineering has made proprietary control possible over the seeds on which the world’s food supply depends. According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.

SNIP

Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other countries—including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia—GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the healthcare crisis.

Read the whole thing.

Monsanto Reaps Rewards for Destroying Global Food Supply

Again, regardless of the risk GMOs may or may not pose to human health, they are an immediate and lethal threat to the safety and longevity of the world's food supply, not to mention the livelihood of the world's farmers. When Monsanto and other corporate giants own every seed on the planet, only the rich will eat.

From The Nation:

The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The choice of Fraley was widely protested, with eighty-one members of the prestigious World Future Council calling it “an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability.”

Monsanto’s Man

The choice of Monsanto’s man triggered accusations of prize buying. From 1999 to 2011, Monsanto donated $380 million to the World Food Prize Foundation, in addition to a $5 million contribution in 2008 to help renovate the Hall of Laureates, a public museum honoring Norman Borlaug, the scientist who launched the Green Revolution.

For some, the award to Monsanto is actually a sign of desperation on the part of the GMO establishment, a move designed to contain the deepening controversy over the so-called biotechnological revolution in food and agriculture. The arguments of the critics are making headway. Owing to concern about the dangers and risks posed by genetically engineered organisms, many governments have instituted total or partial bans on their cultivation, importation, and field-testing.

A few years ago, there were sixteen countries that had total or partial bans on GMOs. Now there are at least twenty-six, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

Restraints on trade in GMOs based on phyto-sanitary grounds, which are allowed under the World Trade Organization, have increased. Already, American rice farmers face strict limitations on their exports to the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and are banned altogether from Russia and Bulgaria because unapproved genetically engineered rice “escaped” during open-field trials on GMO rice. Certain Thai exports—particularly canned fruit salads containing papaya to Germany, and sardines in soy oil to Greece and the Netherlands—were recently banned due to threat of contamination by GMOs.

SNIP

Unfortunately for the biotech corporations, more people are listening to the words of scientists like Dr. Oscar Zamora, vice chancellor of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, who says: “For every application of genetic engineering in agriculture in developing countries, there are a number of less hazardous and more sustainable approaches and practices with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of safety record behind them. None of the GE applications in agriculture today are valuable enough to farmers in developing countries to make it reasonable to expose the environment, farmers and the consumers to even the slightest risk.”

Surprise Small Victory in the End-Shutdown Bill

They'll be back, of course, with even more campaign cash for cooperative congress critters, but for the moment, there's a ray of hope for those of us who value safe, available, affordable food.

Zoe Carpenter at The Nation:

Other than re-opening the government and averting a global financial crisis, one good thing about the funding bill passed last night was that it put an end to a corporate giveaway known colloquially as the Monsanto Protection Act.

Formally called the Farmer Assurance Provision, the measure undermined the Department of Agriculture’s authority to ban genetically modified crops, even if court rulings found they posed risks to human and environmental health. Republican Senator Roy Blunt worked with the genetically modified seed giant Monsanto to craft the initial rider, and it was slipped into a funding resolution that passed in March. There was concern that an agreement to end the shutdown would extend the provision, which is set to expire at the end of the month.

Jon Tester, a farmer and Democratic Senator from Montana, removed the measure from the bill yesterday. “All [the Farmer Assurance Provision] really assures is a lack of corporate liability,” Tester argued in March. “It…lets genetically-modified crops take hold across the country – even when a judge finds it violates the law.”

SNIP
  Meanwhile, Monsanto is facing at least 16 lawsuits for failing to contain genetically modified wheat, which was found growing on an Oregon farm earlier this year. Concerns about the company’s aggressive patent policies and their implications for food sovereignty are global: this summer, Chileans protested a law protecting GMO manufacturers, and activists rallied in dozens of countries this weekend as part of the second “March Against Monsanto” demonstration. 

When the Bees Go, So Does All the Food

If like me you tend to think the world will end with a whimper rather than a bang, put this one at the top of your list of likely scenarios.

Divine Irony:

Barely two weeks after 25,000 bees were found dead in a parking lot in Oregon, another round of bee devastation has been reported. This time, the mass die-off was far worse. More than 37 million honeybees were found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, according to beekeeper Dave Schuit, who lost the bees from 600 hives in June. He and many others are pointing to insecticides called neonicotinoids, used in planting corn and some other crops. "Once the corn started to get planted [in Elmwood] our bees died by the millions," Schuit said. After a record-breaking loss of honeybees in the U.K., the European Union banned several pesticides in May, including neonicotinoid pesticides.

this should be concerning a lot more people than it is

not only because bees are one of the most important animals in the world and their job is a lot more than gathering honey but also because they are what scientists refer to as an “indicator species”

this means that when their populations start dwindling and then rapidly dropping, humans need to watch their shit because that means that environmental factors are too difficult for THEM to live in, so it might be difficult for US to live in, too. bees basically act as an indication that humans have a lot to worry about and when they start dying like this it deserves a lot more than a few headlines.

SNIP

Get excited, motherfuckers. Without bees, we will die off. Bayer and Monsanto continue to produce the chemicals that have been proven to kill them, and the government has their backs. Bees pollinate 30% of our food in the US and we are passing legislation to PROTECT the scumbags responsible for killing them.

think about your future life without kiwis, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, sunflowers, cotton, apples, plums, pears, mustard, celery, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, beans, cherries, melons, turnips, canola oil, alfalfa, soybeans, lemons, oranges, and I could go on forever. Bees are amazing creatures who are responsible for the comfortable lives we lead in this country and we cannot sustain and feed our population without them.

SNIP

We can do something to help and YOU CAN HELP, YES THAT MEANS YOU. ALL YOU NEED IS DIRT, A FEW BUCKS, AND A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE, LITERALLY. Plant flowers that bees like and that attract them.

Bees prefer flowers that are blue, purple, and yellow. Choose flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer, and fall seasons such as coreopsis, Russian sage, or germander. They especially love clover! Other plants include sage, salvia, oregano, lavender, ironweed, yarrow, yellow hyssop, alfalfa, honeywort, dragonhead, echinacea, bee balm, buttercup, goldenrod and English thyme. Buy seeds online.

GET RID OF THE PESTICIDES!!

If pesticides are killing off the bees so easily, what do you think it’s doing to us? The EPA says studies have shown pesticides can cause birth defects, nerve damage, and cancer. There are other ways to get rid of pests in the garden than using chemicals. Organic Garden Pests shows you how to keep off the bugs the organic way.

Give the bees a free home!

Giving bees a “bee block” alone is a huge load off their backs! You can buy homes here or You can even build your own.

Please, if you have already reblogged this, reblog this is again with what I have posted onto it so you know what you can do to help. We can make a difference.

Sources and other helpful links:

5 ways to help our disappearing bees

How to “Friend” Your Native Bees

Why gardening is good for your health

Silence of the Bees

The Fight Against Monsanto: Winning Overseas, Losing Here at Home

Remember: the danger of Monsanto's Genetically Modified Organism seeds is less to individual health (which has not been proven) than to the global food supply when expensive, single-season GMO monoculture destroys the diversity of heirloom, self-propagating seeds.

Don't get distracted by the health arguments. Concentrate on protecting the food supply.

In Europe:

Hungary has destroyed 1000+ acres of GMO corn– for the second time.  So far, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Austria and Peru have bans on GMO crops.

And the French president is maintaining the ban on Monstanto's GM Corn.

In India:

As India’s government prepares to make the controversial Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) bill a law, enhancing the hold that biotech companies like Monsanto have over the nation’s food production, the tiny bee may be emerging as a potential savior by offering ways to increase crop yields naturally.

Thanks to efforts by the Mumbai-based organization Under the Mango Tree, bees have been incorporated into the fields of small farmers and food growers in communities in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Through its Bees for Poverty Reduction program, UTMT is helping farmers increase their incomes and agricultural productivity through India’s indigenous honeybee Apis cerana indica.

But in the U.S., Monsanto's corruption contaminates everything from social media to elections.

Washington state agriculture officials confirmed that a farmer’s alfalfa crop was contaminated with a genetically modified trait, a “low-level” presence that nonetheless has prevented him from exporting it.

SNIP

The “mixup” points to a larger controversy brewing in Washington state over the presence of genetically modified crops, Reuters reports:

USDA and GMO proponents have said biotech and non-biotech crops can co-exist successfully. But opponents said the incident in Washington state shows that non-GMO farmers have to bear the burden and cost of any lost sales if their crops get contaminated, even at low levels.

“Co-existence is a myth,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety, which sued USDA to try to stop its approval of biotech alfalfa. “We don’t know how to control contamination. They say biotech is just another tool in the toolbox. That is not true. It’s a tool that takes over all the other tools and makes them worthless.”

The furor it’s inspired will likely influence an upcoming ballot initiative that would mandate labeling of GMO foods in the state. It’s popularly known as “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.” Monsanto, along with DuPont Pioneer, have dedicated millions of dollars to defeating it.

Make a Profit By Paying $15 Per Hour

You've heard that McDonald's in Australia and Europe pays workers $15 per hour and survives, but maybe you think that's some kind of furriner cheating.

How about a fast-food chain right here at home that succeeds by paying its workers double the minimum wage?

Bryce Covert at Think Progress:

Michigan’s Moo Cluck Moo currently pays entry-level workers $12 an hour — far above the state floor of $7.40 — but come October 1, that starting wage will rise to $15, co-owner Brian Parker told the Daily Beast’s Daniel Gross.
Asked why the restaurant, which has only been open since the spring, will raise its wages, Parker told Gross, “We always wanted to be at $15 an hour. It just feels human to do it.”

Its previously high wages brought the company better customer service, more skilled employees, less turnover, and free publicity. The time saved from having to hire new workers and train them will save it money. And with five people working at any given time, the increase in wages will mean an increase in hourly costs of $15, the cost of two transactions. The owners are betting that it will be a good investment.

I don't eat fast food, but if a Moo Chuck Moo opened in Kentucky and paid its employees $15 an hour - thus shaming every other restaurant in the state - I'd eat there every day.

What's GMO and What's Not

Since Monsanto and the other Big Ag corporations have prevented labeling laws, we're left to guess what we're buyin. Here's a general guide from Mother Jones.

So what are some examples of food that are genetically modified?

1. Papayas: In the 1990s, Hawaiian papaya trees were plagued by the ringspot virus which decimated nearly half the crop in the state. In 1998, scientists developed a transgenic fruit called Rainbow papaya, which is resistant to the virus. Now 77 percent of the crop grown in Hawaii is genetically engineered (GE).

2. Milk: RGBH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a GE variation on a naturally occurring hormone injected into dairy cows to increase milk production. It is banned for milk destined for human consumption in the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Many milk brands that are rGBH-free label their milk as such, but as much as 40 percent of our dairy products, including ice cream and cheese, contains the hormone.

3. Corn on the cob: While 90 percent of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified, most of that crop is used for animal feed or ethanol and much of the rest ends up in processed foods. Sweet corn—the stuff that you steam or grill on the barbecue and eat on the cob—was GMO-free until last year when Monsanto rolled out its first GE harvest of sweet corn. While consumers successfully petitioned Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to not carry the variety, Walmart has begun stocking the shelves with it without any label.

4. Squash and zucchini: While the majority of squashes on the market are not GE, approximately 25,000 acres of crookneck, straightneck, and zucchinis have been bioengineered to be virus resistant.

5. "All natural" foods: Be wary of this label if you're trying to avoid GE foods. Right now there is no strict definition of what constitutes a natural food. This could be changing soon as federal court judges recently requested the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether the term can be used to describe foods containing GMOs to help resolve pending class action suits against General Mills, Campbell Soup Co., and the tortilla manufacturer Gruma Corp.

Are there any foods I've heard might be genetically modified—but actually aren't?

1. Potatoes: In 1995, Monsanto introduced genetically modified potatoes for human consumption, but after pressure from consumers, McDonald's and several other major fast food chains told their French fry suppliers to stop growing GE potatoes. The crop has since been removed from the market.

2. Seedless watermelon: While it would seem plausible that a fruit that produces no seeds has been bioengineered, the seedless watermelon is a hybrid of two separate breeds. It has been nicknamed the "mule of the watermelon world."

3. Salmon: Currently no meat, fish, or egg products are genetically engineered, though a company called Aqua Bounty has an application in with the FDA to approve its GE salmon.

4. Soy milk: While 93 percent of soy grown in the United States is genetically engineered, most major brands of soy milk are GMO-free. Silk, the best-selling soy milk brand in the country, joined the Non-GMO Project in 2010. Many popular tofu brands in the United States also sell GMO-free tofu products.*

5. Rice: A staple food for nearly half the world's population, there are currently no varieties of GM rice approved for human consumption. However, that could soon change. A genetically modified variety called golden rice being developed in the Philippines has been altered to include beta-carotene, a source of vitamin A. Backers are lauding it as a way to alleviate nutrient deficiency for the populations in developing countries.

How about organic foods?

Since the late '90s, USDA organic standards have prohibited any genetically modified ingredients. Originally, the agency tried to include GE foods under the organic umbrella, but it backed down in 2002 after a massive public outcry to save organic standards.

Lots more info at the link.

Home-grown veggies are non-GMO only if you obtain the seed from sources of heirloom and organic seeds, like Seed Savers.

When Big Ag and Austerians Join Forces

It will look like this:

In India 22 children are dead and another 25 hospitalized after free school lunches were found to be poisoned by an agricultural chemical.

From Zandar.