An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna

[Ichingcarpenter]

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, woman, white, liberal. But this past summer I saw a News Hour show on farmers committing suicide in Maharastra, India, which affected me deeply. I started learning what was happening to farmers and to food and how the Clintons are connected.

The News Hour piece said Monsanto, a US agricultural corporation, hired Bollywood actors to sell illiterate farmers Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds, promising they'd get rich from big yields. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto's) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had immense debt and couldn't collect seeds to try again because Monsanto seeds are"patented" as "intellectual property").

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Monsanto has a $10 million budget and 75 person staff to prosecute farmers. http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./).

Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land (The Hindu). Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering.

What does this have to do with you?...........snip>>>> read on


http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/310/

[hedgehog]

1. Farm policy gets treated as yesterday's issue, but it is basic to

just about everything else. Do you care about soil conservation, clean water, clean air, energy sustainability, global climate change, low wage workers? These issues all tie back to how we raise the food we eat and the fibers we wear.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Obama wants the USDA to help farmers go organic.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. I was unaware of the history of the FDA and

Monsanto, Tyson foods, rBGH under the Clinton Administration.
The article is cross referenced with supporting documents.

[Fridays Child]

3. K& R. Maybe you should cross-post this in GD: Primaries. eom

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. No Way........LOL

I haven't seen a rational mind or an academic study presented
in that area for almost a year.

Be my guest though........:) :hi:

Monsanto and Tyson foods have been on my shit list for a long time.

[Donkeykick]

5. Question.

After reading the following, what do you think my evaluation should be on your statements--one way or the other? :shrug:

(An excerpt from the letter)

Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this
subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying
things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may
be wrong.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. No, because the writer is a renowned Psychologist and

a known advocate on Indian Agriculture.

[Donkeykick]

9. I see that we're both...

thinking the same thing, huh. :popcorn:

[cosmicdot]

13. "... may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there ..."

she continued to write ... "... and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so."

imo, that's what she was suggesting where she could be wrong (IOW, what her research has taught her on the subjects, i.e. GM, etc.) in, likely, a rhetorical, probably tongue-in-cheek, way ... as in, I may wrong about what I have found, but I highly doubt it ... possibly implied: do your own research and see if you agree with me.


of course, you didn't state what your evaluation is ... one way or the other

[Donkeykick]

14. Thanks.

I duly take note of your opinion too! :kick: :hi:

[eleny]

6. K&R

[Angela Shelley]

8. Thanks Ichingcarpenter!

[dsc]

10. Funny, she was too busy to mention Espy's aquittal

guess that slipped her mind. Also slipping her mind was the unamimous SCOTUS ruling that Independent Council in Espy's case was vindictive and out of line pursuing the case. He spent millions to convict a black man in MS gee, I bet that was real hard work.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Tyson Foods pleaded guilty.

In December 1997, Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest poultry processor, pleaded guilty to giving Espy more than $12,000 in illegal gifts, and agreed to pay $6 million in fines and investigative expenses.

In a similar case to Tyson Foods, Sun-Diamond was fined $1.5 million for giving $6,000 in gifts to Espy. Sun-Diamond won a reversal at the Court of Appeals. Independent Counsel appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in affirming the decision of the Court of Appeals, found that the gratuities statute requires a link between a gift and an official act. Unable to make such a link, Independent Counsel dismissed the gratuities charge against Sun-Diamond. The unanimous opinion of the court, written by "Justice Antonin Scalia", stated that the prosecutor's interpretation of the law was so broad that even a high school principal could be in legal trouble for giving a souvenir baseball cap to a visiting Secretary of Education. <5>

The Sun-Diamond decision played a pivotal role in the later acquittal of Mike Espy because Independent Counsel was unable to link gifts received by Espy to any official act.


Barbour endorsement

Espy crossed the partisan line to endorse Republican Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour in his re-election campaign in November 2007


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Espy

[ggeriak]

12. What a bunch of crap!

Unbelieveable!! Lies and distortions - Enough of this nonsense.

[Donkeykick]

15. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Ichingcarpenter]

16. Epsy endorsement and Barbour's background

Barbour's background

Barbour was the Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs for two years during the term of President Ronald Reagan.<3>

Between 1993 and January 1997 Barbour was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee and has strong ties to both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

In 1991 he founded and, until 1999, was the Chair and CEO of Barbour Griffith & Rogers. According to Barbour, the firm was sold to the Interpublic Group of Companies in 1999. Part of the sale deal was that the name remain the same even though Barbour no longer had a financial stake in the company.<4>

"In 2000 Haley chaired the Bush for President Campaign Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C. He was one of ten members of Governor Bush’s National Presidential Exploratory Committee in 1999," a biographical note states.<5>

While campaigning, he also appeared at a fund-raiser sponsored by the Conservative Citizen's Council. The CCC is a modern-day version of the White Citizen's Councils that fought racial integration throughout the South in the 1950s and 60s.<2>

Since his election Barbour has championed tort reform, which he describes on his website as a "fight against lawsuit abuse", through the passage of the Tort Reform Act of 2004.


http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Haley_Barbour
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2007/Oct/18/espy-crosses-party-lines-backs-republican/

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. Monsanto and the money they spend on persecuting farmers

Somehow, a single corporation has managed to use patent law to gain de facto control of the nation's two biggest crops -- and managed to annul the age-old right of seed-saving over a broad swath of farm country. Monsanto may have airtight logic on its side for patent law, but it has clearly run afoul of a much less-enforced branch of legal code: antitrust law.

The time has come to bust up this giant seed trust.






http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17/