Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has been chosen by President-elect Barack Obama for agriculture secretary, the LA Times reports Dec. 17. The Organic Consumers Association warned a month ago against choosing Vilsack, calling him “Monsanto’s buddy” and “a shill for agribusiness biotech giants.” The OCA delineates six reasons why appointing Vilsack “would be a terrible idea”:
* Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s support of genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops, especially pharmaceutical corn:
http://www.gene.ch/genet/2002/Oct/msg00057.html
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/drugsincorn102302.cfm* The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.
* When Vilsack created the Iowa Values Fund, his first poster child of economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning dairy cows.
* Vilsack was the origin of the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, which many people here in Iowa fought because it took away local government’s possibility of ever having a regulation on seeds- where GE would be grown, having GE-free buffers, banning pharma corn locally, etc. Representative Sandy Greiner, the Republican sponsor of the bill, bragged on the House Floor that Vilsack put her up to it right after his state of the state address.
* Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto. Sustainable ag advocated across the country were spreading the word of Vilsack’s history as he was attempting to appeal to voters in his presidential bid. An activist from the west coast even made this youtube animation about Vilsack. The airplane in this animation is a referral to the controversy that Vilsack often traveled in Monsanto’s jet.
*Vilsack is an ardent support of corn and soy based biofuels, which use as much or more fossil energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor.
Note that Steven Chu, Obama’s pick to lead the Energy Department, is also a leading “biofuels” booster.
lets leave the murky depths…
Chu is an idiot–these guys are still waiting for the big bang–the fact that the latter not only did not occur but couldnt–will keep the so-called scientific vanguard in charge of things–when reality should realise these tenures have been stacked for the last 10-15 years.
Consequently–fusion which just requires a fine-tune will never get off the ground;energy from space via collectors will be called preposterous–and the continued sourcing of all
oil nations will require either a 9/11 commission,warren commission–or better still-ENergy department to conclude that
Nuclear Reactors are a cost-effective way to have a foreign policy.
Looney tunes–unless you happen to want to shoot your own citizens in Kent State.
[ guess 9/11 couldnt be similar–but as they say at monsanto–give us a pig and we’ll get it to fly a 757 in two weeks]…wake up america.
huh?
I ran this through google translate and it still didn’t make sense.
Actually one phrase sticks out: Looney Tunes.