It is a sad position to be in as mirrored by BenE's ranting above. Americans such as myself and the other folks like Russ Steele, George Rebane, Greg Goodknight and Barry Pruett have lived a set of lives trying our best to keep the country free from the likes of the liberal's nanny state. Though I was never in the military as others have been, I do my best to honor their sacrifice for their ultimate defense of freedom. The liberals are "french".
BenE says this,
"USDA is owned by Monsanto despite which party is in charge. FDA is owned by the pharmaceutical industry no matter what party holds power"
It begs the question, prove it! Our country is the freest country because we have until the last few years, been the place where a business could be created and prosper. Now with the liberal nanny state rules and regulations we are headed south in the list of important places.
What liberals don't get is the results of their policies to "protect us" from ourselves. Every time a rule or regulation goes into place it is one more theft of our freedom. But the liberal doesn't get it. I get it. When they pass the rules, Americans then sit down and say, Hmm, this rule sucks so let's see where I can still do my thing even though they are trying to stop me. That is why the tax code has grown to be 100,000 plus pages.
So BenE and his nanny state pals cry the blues when people and businesses try their best to survive the yearly onslaught of thousand more rules and regulations which for the most part hurt the little guys and businesses the liberals say they are concerned about. The big businesses hire lawyers and publicists to deal with the onslaught. If we blew up the boxes as Arnold famously said (and never did) we would see an almost immediate blossoming of jobs and businesses that have been incubating all over the country.
Blow up the boxes, remove most of the regulatory bodies and try something a lot different than the present overbearing, stifling police state of regulations and their proponents (liberals) and America will rebound and regain its number one position on the planet.
But I am not optimistic about a giant redo of the country. The liberals will have none of it because it takes away their power to tell the doers what to do and how high to jump. It is also a huge money maker in the fees, taxes and exactions. The government gets to fund those regulatory police with all that dough the liberal create. Money is power. But maybe I am wrong and America will regain its past glory.
It will take a restructuring of the education system first and foremost. We need to have people teaching who actually teach and are not ideologies spewing the liberal agenda into the minds of mush. We need to change the courts to get common sense back into our justice. We need consequences for bad behavior for thieves at all levels, whether individual or corporate. We need discipline in American schools and we need to remove "civil service" from the government environs and "tenure" from the education systems. Hell, many college professors teach one day a week and get $100,000 salaries!
We start that stuff soon and America can return to the number one spot on the planets top ten list. I fight for that and all the freedoms associated with it's success. Liberals, once the "progressives" have morphed into the "regressives" and must be defeated at every opportunity.
November 6, 2012 will be a good starting date for the resurrection of American freedom and opportunity.
Todd,
ReplyDeleteHere is a start with the so-called liberal Obama administration and Monsanto. Astonishing, as the Obama admin is the Bush administration was much worse. Until you read and are able to converse on what I posted here this will be it because it will be a waste of my time.
Who's in the Obama Administration?
Tom Vilsack, USDA Secretary
As Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack was a leading advocate for Monsanto, genetic engineering, and factory farming. President Obama proudly lauded his new Agriculture Secretary for "promoting biotech."
Vilsack has, in fact, promoted the most controversial and dangerous forms of agricultural biotechnology, including pharma crops, plants genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. When grown outdoors on farmland, where most pharma crop trials have occurred, pharma crops can easily contaminate conventional and organic varieties.
In one chilling example from 2002, a corn crop engineered by ProdiGene to produce a vaccine for pigs contaminated 500,000 bushels of soybeans that were grown in the Nebraska field the next season. Before this incident, a similar thing had happened in Iowa where the USDA ordered ProdiGene to pay for the burning of 155 acres of conventional corn that may have been contaminated by the firm's biotech plants.
ProdiGene eventually went out of business, but not before it received a $6 million investment from the Governors Biotechnology Partnership, chaired by Iowa Governor Vilsack. Vilsack didn't want any restrictions placed on experimental pharma crops. In reaction to suggestions that pharma crops should be kept away from food crops, Vilsack argued that "we should not overreact and hamstring this industry."
Michael Taylor,
Senior Adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on Food Safety
The Organic Consumers Association generated nearly 40,000 letters opposing former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor's appointment as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety.
Michael Taylor should not be a senior FDA food safety adviser. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it.
Roger Beachy,
Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture
On October 5, 2009, Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto's nonprofit arm), became the chief of the USDA's newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (a nomination that doesn't require congressional approval).
Roger Beachy should not be steering the direction of US agricultural research. Beachy is a long time Monsanto collaborator who heads an institute which was established by Monsanto and academic partners with a $70-million pledge from the corporation. It's effectively a Monsanto front.
Beachy left the post in April 2011.
So what have you done to change that BenE? It is one thing to complain and another to act.
DeleteContinued
ReplyDeleteIslam Siddiqui,
Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Islam Siddiqui, currently the US Trade Representative's Chief Agriculture Negotiator, was Vice President of CropLife America, the notorious lobbying group that represents pesticide and genetic engineering companies, including the six multinational corporations that control 75% of the global agrichemical market: Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and DuPont.
CropLife is the group that infamously chided the First Lady for planting a pesticide-free organic garden at the White House.
Before CropLife, Siddiqui was a chemical farming and biotech booster in Clinton's USDA. It was his bright idea in 1997-98 -- rejected by the organic community -- to allow GMOs, sewage sludge and irradiation in organic production. (The Organic Consumers Association spearheaded the successful campaign to save organic standards from Siddiqui.)
And, oh yes, we should also mention that Siddiqui was an Obama campaign donor and fundraiser.
Elena Kagan,
Supreme Court Justice
As President Obama's Solicitor General, Kagan took Monsanto's side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case.
In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, Monsanto tried to get the Supreme Court to force genetically engineered alfalfa onto the market without an evaluation of the crop's environmental impact. Geertson Seed Farms made the case that the USDA should have considered the fact that GE alfalfa would permanently contaminate their GE-free alfalfa seed.
As Solicitor General, Kagan was supposed to represent the interests of the American people in matters that came before the Supreme Court. Instead, she went to bat for Monsanto.
Kagan joined a Supreme Court that includes a former Monsanto lawyer, Clarence Thomas.
Agriculture policy has never been used as a litmus test by Senators vetting Supreme Court nominees, but, given recent evidence that genetically engineered food causes sterility and infant mortality, and the damage Monsanto's RoundUp is doing, creating herbicide-resistant super weeds and ravaging the root systems of "Roundup Ready" plants, Kagan's position on agriculture policy has never been more important. President Obama's pick is even more troubling in light of a White House panel's warning that consumers should go organic to avoid the carcinogenic pesticides that lace conventional and genetically engineered food.
Continued Rajiv Shah part I
ReplyDeleteRajiv Shah,
USAID Director
Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor in his 30s with a business degree and no previous government experience, was the agricultural programs director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is on the board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Danforth Plant Science Center, is one of Monsanto's key non-profit partners, forcing hazardous Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on farmers and consumers worldwide.
The multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation is helping Monsanto infiltrate markets in poor African countries by fraudulently claiming that GMOs can feed the world and reduce rural poverty with high-priced genetically modified seed varieties that supposedly, but in fact do not, increase yields, resist drought, and improve nutrition.
Links and collaborations between Gates, Monsanto and Danforth include project partnerships, hiring one another's employees and making donations to one another's projects.
At the Gates Foundation, Shah supervised Lawrence Kent, who had been the director of international programs at the Danforth Center, and Monsanto vice president Robert Horsch, a scientist who led genetic engineering of plants at the seed giant.
Raj Patel, Eric Holt-Gimenez and Annie Shattuck, writing for the Nation (Ending Africa's Hunger, September 2, 2009) report that:
The Gates foundation's $1.3 billion in agricultural development grants have been invested in science and technology, with almost 30 percent of the 2008 grants promoting and developing seed biotechnologies.
AGRA used funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to write twenty-three grants for projects in Kenya. Twelve of those recipients are involved in research in genetically modified agriculture, development or advocacy. About 79 percent of funding in Kenya involves biotech in one way or another. Over $100 million in grants went to organizations connected to Monsanto.
In his short tenure at the USDA, Shah used connections made at the Gates Foundation to fill the USDA's Research, Education and Economics mission area with biotech scientists and advocates. These include Roger Beachy of the Danforth Center, Maura O'Neill who ran a public-private venture dedicated to drawing biotech companies to the Seattle area where the Gates Foundation is based, and Rachel Goldfarb, another former Gates employee.
Shah used his USDA post to champion genetic engineering and other controversial technologies. In a 2009 report to Congress on programs delivered by his mission area, Shah emphasized technology over ecology, saying, "We can build on tremendous recent scientific discoveries - incredible advances in sequencing plant and animal genomes, and the beginnings of being able to understand what those sequences actually mean. We have new and powerful tools in biotechnology and nanotechnology."
Rajiv Shah part II
ReplyDeleteHe also directed millions of dollars toward GMO research.
This included $46 million through the Specialty Crop Research Initiative. (This money may not go exclusively to GMO research projects, but "science-based tools," "genetics and genomics," and "innovations and technologies," describe the initiative, while there is no mention of organic practices, conventional breeding or integrated pest management.)
Another $7 million went to several universities for research to develop stress-resistant crops, a research topic that Monsanto promotes as their raison d'etre, despite the fact that they have never commercialized a single stress-resistant GMO plant. (Hundreds of thousands of stress-resistant varieties are utilized by traditional farmers around the world who have saved seed and bred their plants conventionally for centuries.)
The GMO research grants also include $11 million in Coordinated Agricultural Project grants to four research universities to study "plant genomics and ways to improve the nutrition and health values of important crops." Expect more GMO tomatoes, potatoes, barley, soybean, and trees. And be on the lookout for new, GMO legumes embedded with cholesterol and diabetes drugs.
According to a USDA press release on the awards, "Because humans consume more legumes than any other crop, this research has the potential to reduce cholesterol and sugar levels, which in turn can prevent or alleviate certain types of cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases."
The irony is that there's a GMO legume already on the market, soy, that has found its way into just about all processed and fried foods in the form of partially hydrogenated soybean oil (a.k.a. trans fat). Will the result of this research be a new GMO legume that treats diet-related diseases caused by other GMO legumes?
It would certainly be a first for the field of genetic engineering. In fact, any new GMO crop that actually improved the nutrition, health value, or stress-resistance of any crop would be a first. Contrary to popular belief, to date, there is not one consumer benefit associated with any GMO crop. They're all genetically modified to either withstand or produce pesticides (usually manufactured by the chemical company that genetically engineered the crop).
Last year, Shah, with only six months of government experience, was appointed by Obama and confirmed by the Senate to lead the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where he has already begun to funnel millions of dollars in taxpayer money to Food Inc., Monsanto, and the biotech bullies.
So I ask again BenE, what have you doing to fix what you are complaining about?
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DeleteBenE, don't write so much. Todd rarely reads more than 3 sentences of your post. The same way I always read less than three sentences of his article before I post.
DeleteI thought so. What a hoot!
Delete"Hell, many college professors teach one day a week and get $100,000 salaries!"
ReplyDeleteReally Todd? How about YOU prove this pure unadulterated BS! Sounds like the drag-on is just trying to incite and inflame as usual.
Ken Jones
It is a well known fact these profs, all liberals for the most part, have aides that do the work and the Profs take the dough. You need to talk to some of those aides Kenny.
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DeleteAlso, they aren't aids todd. They are graduate students and in particular PhD students. The PhD students get their full tuition payed and usually a living stipend of about $25k (about $75k worth of benefits per year). So, the compensation is pretty good. Also, where is this dough you are speaking of? Professors get a base salary from the university and then win funding. However, the funding goes towards research and not their personal pay checks.
DeleteSo let me get this straight Billy. We hire a professor at $100,000 plus benefits and pension to teach the kids and he shows up one day a week and has a aide who we pay his tuition and a salary of 25K and you think I am goofy? You are making my point and I thank you for proving the system is totally screwed up.
DeleteTodd I would agree with you, but it is the same in the construction business with the head contractor making more money than his hard working builders. It is just how capitalism works.
DeleteAlso, stating that all professors are liberal is a little misleading. I would agree that pretty much all humanities professors (english, history, ect.) are liberal, but the science, math, economics, engineering, and business professors certainly are not. I know for a fact that most economist and business professors are pretty much libertarians. In the science/math/engineering departments there is a mix.
DeleteFor instance a lot of professors work on projects for the pharmaceutical industry (these include biostatisticians, pharmacists, chemists, biochemists, and many more) and I can almost assure you that all these people hate obama-care because it makes life more difficult for pharmaceutical companies and that is where they get their funding from. HOWEVER, yes all humanities professors are liberal and very irritating.
DeleteWell all the polls I have seen over the years say about 80 to 90 percent of all profs are libs. I have given you the information I have recieved from numerous sources and aides so we will simply agree to disagree. Professors are ripping us off and we see the results. Student loans and huge student debts. If you think the ,money doesn't pay the profs to the tune I have stated, give us some links to the places you say back up your claims.
DeleteOh, and it is tptally different than the construction business. We are free enterprise, schools are government. So your basic understanding about the issue is fatally flawed.
DeleteHere is a link to a study on the political registration of Profs Billy. Four to one D over R and in some cases 8 to 1.
Deletehttp://www.cwu.edu/~manwellerm/academic%20bias.pdf
Check page four and then go spank yourself.
Golly I love to show the left as the wrongheaded folks they are!
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DeleteTodd, I am not sure why you deleted my last comment, but you need to know that most universities are actually privately run or in other words not associated with the government. Such university include Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, MIT, and the list could go on and on.
DeleteI am talking about all Universities regarding the roll of the profs. Maybe I was unclear on that. Youtfr post were deleted because you got out of control. Please use a real name and email address.
DeleteThis noise sounds familiar.
ReplyDeleteI just read a story about how the "state" might dis-allow a new Indian casino
just because it will give competition to an existing one.. Now the good part..
The state workers are heavily invested in it.( the existing one) Now isn't that special?
So now those "investors" have a great way to keep that competition away.
Legal conflict of interest.
Here we have LIB constituents ( Native American minority) practicing good old Capitalism. Soon to be screwed over by the vary same ones that claim to have their best interests in mind.( LIBS) But State workers take precedence over minorities. in this case.
Oh hello Walt. I can see you are using the JQP name again for some reason.
DeleteTodd,
ReplyDeleteI gave you what you asked for and have received little response other than a possible admission that my point was correct, which is exactly how I will take your response. What I gave you was a small example have the USDA/ FDA and supporting agencies are headed up by Monsanto representatives, this is actually known as "regulatory capture". Ever wonder why so many regulations eliminate small and medium size businesses? It is to reduce competition for big business. It is done through regulatory capture. The example I gave you was small and about one company and one industry, our entire government has been captured by big business thus no longer acts on the publics behalf but rather the bottom lines of transnational corporations and business women/men.
Definition of 'Regulatory Capture '
Regulatory capture is a theory associated with George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist. It is the process by which regulatory agencies eventually come to be dominated by the very industries they were charged with regulating. Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, formed to act in the public's interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public.
Wrong.
DeleteWOW!!! Right out of Atlas Shrugs.. Thanks Ben.
Delete"Free enterprise" sure isn't free.
BenE, you gave me what I asked for? No, you gave me nothing. People running the different Executive Departments come from all over the place. I need proof from you rather than speculation that wrongdoing hs occurred. Sort of like you asking for proof that Obama is really a Kenyan.
DeleteTodd,
DeleteYou will cut off your nose to spite your face.
Here is a perfect case of how the FDA fast tracked a drug that was proven to be dangerous, not because they're incompetent but due their allegiance to the very industry they are supposed to regulate. Pradaxa the latest prescribed pharmaceutical to kill those who take it. Doctors are lied too and patients are the ones who pay with their lives but Boehringer Ingelheim stands to make a hefty profit. Just imagine if you got your federal tort reform how much more money the company could make killing people?
http://www.levinlaw.com/practice-areas/pradaxa-lawsuits
BenE, so there has never been a drug OK'd by the FDA and run by a person NOT from the industry that has had a bad end? Your link does not make a case in any way for a FDA boss being paid off, arrested or prosecuted. You are using hyperbola and it proves nothing for your case.
DeleteTodd,
DeleteThis conversation is too complex unless you can at least discuss the revolving door of private and public offices that I listed above, although the problem is in every department and involves every major industry.
A couple of questions that have pretty basic answers- Do you see a correlation between Monsanto revolving door and the fact it controls around 90% of all genetically modified organism (GMO) seeds in the US?
90% of soybean, corn, and cotton are GMO's and are found in 70% of processed foods in the US. I am voting Yes on 37, how about you?
Yes on Prop 37
http://www.carighttoknow.org/
Well, let me see here BenE. If there has not been a prosecution, arrest or a scandal causing some executive to leave because of a impropriety, I just can't agree with you. If you want to be useful and fulfill your desire to see someone else in charge then go getum. I have no problem with that. What fascinates me is you folks deny voter fraud and resist (with actual cases) but complain of some FDA dude who worked in private enterprise and has never been accused of wrongdoing.
DeleteTodd,
DeleteWhat aren't you understanding? Buying influence and key regulatory positions allows big money special interests to write the laws and regulations. Of course they aren't breaking the law at this point because they wrote the law to make what they are doing legal. Even if there are some laws that have remained on the books who is going to take action against big party funders and ruin any chance of getting a high paying lobbying position when leaving the public sector.
Interesting.. The Left says their all for women and their "rights".
ReplyDeleteThen how come no daycare at the DNC convention? They do at the RNC,,
There is a sign at the DNC,, NO brats allowed.( paraphrasing of course)
But count on the Lefties accusation of the Conservative "war on women"
to continue. Never mind that Leftys actually have a war on women. The banning
of children at the LIB convention is proof enough.
The double standard is alive and well.
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DeleteLOL!!,,,,, How bout' 5? Is that all it takes to send ya' over
Deletethe edge?? Try using a REAL name. What are ya' Yella'? ( that's old timer for,,, chicken) ( pokes at Annon. with pointy stick)
Got your blood preasure up yet?... NO??? Then why ya' yellin'?
No more anonymous and no more Robert, both phony.
DeleteSorry Todd this is off topic, but well worth commenting on.
ReplyDeleteNot too long ago in out "under new management" paper, there was a
story about a mine about to open this Fall. In today's edition,
there is word of a fast track dam on the Yuba permit in the works.
Which will out ECO nuts try and shut down? My money is on the "green"
power of the river.
I happen to have looked at the mine. It looks like they will go into operation
as planned, despite the circus hoops set up by the county ,state, and FEDS.
Yes, our local job killers can't fight two fronts at the same time.
" Flower" and Freddy Dandelion" may think chaining themselves to equipment will get them somewhere, but I have a chain remover just for this reason. I may get a chance to drag it out once again. ( yup,, had to use it once a long time ago on a logging job.)
YES!! To resurrect a mine in this county is worth celebrating.
And a potential JOB ta'boot!
My memory is a tad fuzzy on just which guilt ridden, eco guy it was who's
ReplyDeletehell bent on getting one of those electric horseless carriages, nut he better get one
while he can. Government Motors has stopped production on the Volt... Again.
This time, no news when, or if, they will start making them again.
The SCOTUS decision didn't quite work out as they planed. Since it was deemed a TAX, and didn't fall under the interstate commerce clause,( like they hoped)
They can't force us to buy a Volt, in the same way they wanted us to buy insurance.
Just think... If big gov. could mandate us buying insurance, "because everyone would at some point NEED it" they could make the same argument about a car, and "just" which one we should be mandated to buy.
So get the Volt while you can..LOL!
The plot thickens over at the DNC convention. They tell a Cardinal from the Church to take a hike (so to speak) then have an Islamic “Jumah” prayers for two hours on the Friday of its convention.
ReplyDelete"Their jummah (group) prayer is…about empowering their Islamist and MB sympathetic groups into the very fabric of the political system so that Americans become anesthetized. We need American Muslims to speak up and marginalize these radicals. The DNC needs to understand and reject them because of their radical history and ideas."
Do these idiots (DNC)think only Conservatives go to Church? OR is the DNC embracing the religion of our enemy?
They don't seem to have a problem with our troops getting killed by the vary ones they train. Nice way to say thanks....
I sure hope that Lefty news will televise that part.
Walt,
ReplyDeleteChill. OK?
Islam is not the enemy. There are millions of Islamic Americans. Want to put them in Containment Camps?
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ReplyDeleteIt seems that the shifts in our society happened around the time of Bush I and Clinton era's, "the globalization movement" or NAFTA. The US economy and institutions enjoyed a disproportionate amount of prosperity, and then we went to a global economy. Our economy had to come to equilibrium with our partner country economies, which weren't doing so well. So, our economy shrunk while our partner country economies grew. Simultaneously, the far east economies have been growing leaps and bounds. This all coupled with US laws that foster trade deficits and US outsourcing of manufacturing has also contributed.
ReplyDeleteI do remember that Pharma successfully lobbied to prevent foreign import of equivalent, lower cost drugs from Canada and others. It seems that Monsanto and others have strong foothold with the decision makers. I've never heard about the Gates foundation being involved in nefarious activities with Monsanto.
On liberal professors, someone posted a comment about humanity professors being liberal and science & engineering professors being conservative. This seems to be generally true. (I remember visiting an engineering professor; he had to turn his radio down to talk -- on his radio he regularly tuned into RushL.) I don't know about pay. It seems at research institutes that grant PhDs that the pay is in excess of $100K/yr with lite teaching loads and at privates this is true; however, at non-PhD granting institutions, I've heard that the average pay is less than $75K/yr with heavy teaching loads, 9 courses per year. I think that it is even worse at JCs, i.e., ~50K/yr with heavy teaching loads.
Sorry for the long response. Just thought I'd give my 2 cents on the topics of your post.
I hope as a nation that we can chart a course to a new greatness. With the shift to a world economy, I don't know if we can go back to how we did things to recapture our former glory. I believe that we need to think out of the box in combination with the timeless things that worked in the past.
Good post to draw responses.
Good comment. I can agree with most of your obe=servations on the opinion side. On the facts side tghe issues can be fact checked for veracity. I think you can go to the UC Syetmes website and look at the pay scales and the benefits to see how California pays. It is the same across the country for the most part.
Delete