How soon will the Left eat their own?
Hey. I’m always here to offer advice to the Left, to make their road smoother, to point them in the direction of fellow travelers they should cancel for deficiencies of “wokeness.”
Let’s start with the issue of GMOs, poisonous Roundup, and Monsanto (now swallowed up by Bayer).
Joe Biden is going to appoint Mr. Monsanto, Tom Vilsack, as his Secretary of Agriculture. Tommy boy held that post under Obama.
The Organic Consumers Association writes [1] (see also [2], [3], [4]): “If, like us, you dream of an organic, regenerative food system led by independent family farmers, then news that Joe Biden has asked Tom Vilsack to return to his Obama Era post as Secretary of Agriculture should be a real cause for concern.”
“…when you look behind the curtains to see what Vilsack was really doing at USDA from 2009 through 2017, it’s not pretty.”
“He pushed through a corporate agribusiness agenda that began with his approval of more new genetically modified crops than any other Secretary, culminated in his shepherding of a bill to kill GMO labels through Congress, and included his racist firing of African American land trust hero Shirley Sherrod and his distortion of data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers. Between 2006 and 2016, the USDA [US Dept. of Agriculture] was six times more likely to foreclose on a black farmer than a white farmer.”
“But, Biden doesn’t care about any of this. Vilsack is Biden’s buddy and that’s all that matters to him. As the American Prospect reports, Vilsack has had ‘a decades-long relationship with Joe Biden, going back to when he endorsed him for president while mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in 1988’.”
“Vilsack has remained very loyal to Biden. In the last year, he gave Biden more than $8,000 in campaign contributions (excluding money from his wife or to Democratic Party committees).”
“This support didn’t just get him a job in the cabinet, he wrote Biden’s campaign platform on agriculture issues, stuffing it full of false solutions like corn ethanol and methane digesters run on factory farm dairy waste.”
“We need a USDA Secretary of Agriculture who will be a hero, steering our food and farming system toward a brighter, regenerative future—not a Secretary who will continue to be a pawn for the same corporate interests that are causing, and profiting from, the mess we are in.”
Good luck with that dream under Biden.
Let’s go further. Here’s a piece I wrote during the Obama years—you know, when we were all living in paradise—about the president’s GMO program.
Keep in mind that Biden’s new secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was on board every step of the way, with Obama. Vilsack was enabler, expert, political operative, cheerleader—
MEET MONSANTO’S MAN IN WASHINGTON, BARACK OBAMA
Obama? A warrior against corporations on behalf of the people? It’s long past the time for ripping that false mask away.
During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO/Roundup issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.
These activists weren’t just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said: “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.”
Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.
Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in assuring that, if elected, his administration wouldn’t do business “the old way.” He would be “responsive to people’s needs.”
Then came the reality.
After the election, people who had been working to label GMO food and warn the public of its huge dangers were shocked to the core. They saw Obama had been pulling a bait and switch.
After the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:
At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.
As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.
As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.
As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.
As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.
We should also remember that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.
Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.
The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn’t just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.
And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.
Monsanto GMO alfalfa.
Monsanto GMO sugar beets.
Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.
Coming soon: Monsanto’s GMO sweet corn.
Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.
Syngenta GMO stacked corn.
Pioneer GMO soybean.
Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.
Bayer GMO cotton.
ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.
A GMO papaya strain.
And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.
This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.
You don’t attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.
From this perspective, Michelle Obama’s campaign for gardens and clean, organic, nutritious food is nothing more than a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.
Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.
We are talking about a president who presented himself, and was believed by many to be, an extraordinary departure from politics as usual.
Not only was that a wrong assessment, Obama was lying all along. He was, and he still is, Monsanto’s man in Washington.
To those people who fight for GMO labeling and the outlawing of GMO crops, and against the decimation of the food supply and the destruction of human health, but still believe Obama is a beacon in bleak times:
Wake up.
—end of 2014 article—
Well, well. Tom Vilsack is back. Biden is about to betray the Left on a key issue.
Dear Lefties: Are you going to sit still for this?
Start tweeting and FBing.
I wonder whether you’ll get censored by your comrades in Big Tech…
SOURCES:
[1] https://advocacy.organicconsumers.org/page/25412/action/1
[2] https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/tom-vilsack-agriculture-secretary-everything-thats-wrong-democratic-party
[3] https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/back-future-tom-mr-monsanto-vilsack-part-i
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/21/joe-biden-tom-vilsack-agriculture-secretary
January 18, 2021 -
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Hillary Clinton, Obama, United States
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