American Made Sham Elections: Monsanto Vultures Come Home to Roost

The American made sham election conducted in the 2014 mid-term has opened up America to billionaire vultures picking America’s carcass clean.  While there are many vultures that are feasting on the corpse of America, the most powerful is Monsanto, and the vultures have come home to roost.

The historic 2014 mid-term elections in the United States had the lowest number of voters who were allowed to participate since the 1940’s.  An historic amount of money was funneled into Republican campaigns; $3 billion dollars was funded by a handful of billionaires to purchase the American government.  According to theACLU, The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 guaranteed the fundamental right of our citizens to choose their own leaders.

               Excerpt:

The Voting Rights Act continues to protect the voting rights of millions of voters across the country today. This landmark civil rights legislation is a critical safeguard to ensuring equal access to the ballot and guaranteeing our most fundamental right as Americans. Since its passage in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has guaranteed millions of minority voters a chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted.

Poll taxes and literacy tests were among the many discriminatory laws that were enforced to keep African Americans from voting. In an effort to tear down these historical barriers and to protect the guarantee that the right to vote is not denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

Section 5 of the Act required jurisdictions with significant histories of voter discrimination to "pre-clear," or get federal approval from the Department of Justice (DOJ), for any new voting practices or procedures, and to show that they do not have a discriminatory purpose or effect.

In June 2013, in a huge blow to democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula used in Section 5. Section 5 of the Act requires jurisdictions with significant histories of voter discrimination to "pre-clear," or get federal approval from the Department of Justice (DOJ), for any new voting practices or procedures, and to show that they do not have a discriminatory purpose or effect.

In states where the legislatures are controlled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), new restrictive voter I.D. laws written by the ALEC bill mill disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in 2014.  In Texas alone, it is estimated that over 600,000 people were denied the right to vote.    From New York Times:

Excerpt:

As New Rules Take Effect, Voters Report Problems in Some States

Some longtime voters in Texas reported on Tuesday that they were refused a ballot because they lacked newly required photo identification. In North Carolina, voters who showed up at the wrong precinct were unable to vote, reflecting a new policy. And in Georgia, hundreds of frustrated people called a hotline to say they were unsure if their voter registrations had been processed, some of the thousands of would-be new voters who reportedly faced uncertainty.

Yep, no need to protect the hard-fought rights of citizens to exercise the most fundamental of rights, the right of the people to select their leaders.

Most of the new policies were adopted by Republican legislatures in the name of electoral integrity, even though evidence of voter fraud has been negligible. They are opposed by Democrats who say tighter rules are aimed at discouraging minorities, poor people and college students, groups that tend to prefer Democrats, from voting….

In Florida’s Broward County, for example, technical malfunctions and voter confusion about polling sites led to delays and an emergency request by Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor, for a two-hour extension of voting hours. A Florida judge denied the request….

Florida’s voter disenfranchisement after years of Republican rule are “epic” with the 2000 Presidential election as the template for voter disenfranchisement.

While several of the new laws have been challenged or ruled unconstitutional by lower courts, the final limits remain to be sorted out by the Supreme Court.

This Supreme Court would not exist were it not for the ultimate sham election of 2000.  With the government solidly in control of ALEC sponsored politicians, expect to see more voter restriction laws written by ALEC.

The Supreme Court allowed disputed changes to take effect for this election in Ohio, which cut early voting on a Sunday that was popular with black churches; in North Carolina, where early voting was curbed and same-day registration abolished; and in Texas, which adopted the country’s most stringent photo identification rules.

Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, ending direct federal oversight of voting laws in regions with histories of discrimination, allowed Texas to proceed with its photo ID requirement.

A federal district judge — noting evidence that more than 600,000 registered voters in the state, mainly poor, black and Hispanic, did not have the specified documents — struck down the law, calling it the modern equivalent of a poll tax.

So, what are the ramifications of American made sham elections of 2014?  From The Intercept:

               

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HOW VOTER SUPPRESSION HELPED PRODUCE THE LOWEST TURNOUT IN DECADES

On Tuesday, older, white voters — who traditionally support Republicans — went to the polls in droves, while turnout among traditionally Democratic groups — the young, the minoritized, and women — was down. Indeed, overall turnout declined to an estimated 36.6% of eligible voters, the lowest rate of participation since the 1940s, despite the $3 billion spent by candidates, political parties, and super PACs.

Yes, President Barack Obama’s poor performance and approval rating undoubtedly played a role in the lower turnout. But the evidence is piling up that systematic voter suppression, including voter ID laws and dubious vote-fraud prevention software, played a significant part in keeping people from casting ballots, as well.

Surprise, surprise.  Big winner, Monsanto, the Monsanto sham election vultures have come home to roost.  An army of ALEC soldiers of fortune, Fortune 500 that is, won elections across the United States.  From Source Watch:  

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Monsanto is considered the mother of agricultural biotechnology. The company produces biotechnology, genomics and herbicides for corn, cotton, oil seeds, and vegetables. It produces genetically altered seeds to tolerate its flagship product, Roundup….

Monsanto has been a corporate funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). [4]

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wish lists to benefit their bottom line.

Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills

Within days of the 2014 mid-term sham election, organic farmers in California were handed a fatal blow, the ALEC bill mill has proposed wiping out California’s organic farming community.  From San Francisco CBS Local: 

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Organic Farmers Object to California Pest-Management Plan

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) — With organic food growers reporting double-digit growth in US sales each year, producers are challenging a PROPOSED California pest-management program they say enshrines a pesticide-heavy approach for decades to come, including compulsory spraying of organic crops at the state’s discretion.

Chief among the complaints of organic growers: The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s pest-management plan says compulsory state pesticide spraying of organic crops would do no economic harm to organic producers, on the grounds that the growers could sell sprayed crops as non-organic instead.

Oh joy, joy, joy.  The corporate celestial heavens have opened and the Monsanto nightmare of control over the food supply, not only in America but across the world is fast becoming a reality.  Monsanto’s war on organic farmers just won a major battle in that war. 

Well, move over California according to the New York Times the U.S.D.A. has just approved GM potatoes for one of ALEC’s members Simplot, the biggest producer of French Fries for McDonald’s. 

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U.S.D.A. Approves Modified Potato. Next Up: French Fry Fans

A potato genetically engineered to reduce the amounts of a POTENTIALLY harmful ingredient in French fries and potato chips has been approved for commercial planting, the Department of Agriculture announced on Friday.

Yeah, sounds like preemptive war on American potato farmers.

The potato’s DNA has been altered so that less of a chemical called acrylamide, which is suspected of causing cancer in people, is produced when the potato is fried.

The new potato also resists bruising, a characteristic long sought by potato growers and processors for financial reasons. Potatoes bruised during harvesting, shipping or storage can lose value or become unusable.

Yep, that what it's all about profits.  

The biotech tubers were developed by the J. R. Simplot Company, a privately held company based in Boise, Idaho, which was the initial supplier of frozen French fries to McDonald’s in the 1960s and is still a major supplier. The company’s founder, Mr. Simplot, who died in 2008, became a billionaire….

Bingo, McDonald’s major supplier of French fries has now gotten the go ahead from our government to taint the potato crop.

But the approval comes as some consumers are questioning the safety of genetically engineered crops and demanding that the foods made from them be labeled. Ballot initiatives calling for labeling were rejected by voters in Oregon and Colorado this week, after food and seed companies poured millions of dollars into campaigns to defeat the measures.

Of course they don’t want you to know you are buying Frankenstein crops that are genetically modified and raise serious concerns about their safety.    If Monsanto and the ALEC gang are so cocksure their GM crap is so great, why not label it and let the American consumers decide if they want to risk their health eating your product?

Genetically modified potatoes failed once before. In the late 1990s, Monsanto began selling potatoes genetically engineered to resist the Colorado potato beetle. But the market collapsed after big potato users, fearing consumer resistance, told farmers not to grow them. Simplot itself, after hearing from its fast-food chain customers, instructed its farmers to stop growing the Monsanto potatoes.

So, in 1990 the Frankenstein potato market collapsed because people didn’t want GM potatoes, so don’t tell the people their buying potentially dangerous crap, and problem solved. 

Yes, it pays to own a government. And you have to wonder how that referendum was worded in Colorado and Oregon that the people would vote against labeling GM crops.  According to Source Watch:

An issue of growing concern is the Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods [8]. Many have questioned why it is that while consumers in all of Europe and about fifty other countries around the world including Japan, India and China are guaranteed the right to know through strict labeling standards what foods contain GM ingredients,[22] while consumers in the United States are denied this same right. Polls indicate that the great majority of Americans who are aware of the issue want labels.[23][24]

So, in Japan, India and China citizens are protected with strict labeling standards that are denied to the citizens of the “greatest Democracy” in the world. 

So let’s take a look around the world at Monsanto’s successes and failures in poisoning the food supply.  From Global Research: 

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The Seeds Of Suicide: How Monsanto Destroys Farming

“Producing more, Conserving more, Improving farmers lives.”

These are the promises Monsanto India’s website makes, alongside pictures of smiling, prosperous farmers from the state of Maharashtra. This is a desperate attempt by Monsanto and its PR machinery to delink the epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India from the company’s growing control over cotton seed supply — 95 per cent of India’s cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto.

Control over seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers…

Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders…

The entry of Monsanto in the Indian seed sector was made possible with a 1988 Seed Policy imposed by the World Bank, requiring the Government of India to deregulate the seed sector…..

In 1988 India was forced to deregulate the seed sector by the World Bank, nice.

Monsanto’s seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of super profits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India. This systemic control has been intensified with Bt cotton. That is why most suicides are in the cotton belt….

That is why we have started Fibres of Freedom in the heart of Monsanto’s Bt cotton/suicide belt in Vidharba. We have created community seed banks with indigenous seeds and helped farmers go organic. No GMO seeds, no debt, no suicides.

Then there’s this article in Nation of Change:

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Monsanto’s GMO Seeds Contributing to Farmer Suicides Every 30

Minutes

“Many families are now ruined thanks to the mass suicides, and are left to economic ruin and must struggle to fight off starvation.”

In what has been called the single largest wave of recorded suicides in human history, Indian farmers are now killing themselves in record numbers. It has been extensively reported, even in mainstream news, but nothing has been done about the issue. The cause? Monsanto’s cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest — if not the largest — cause of the quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years.

A quarter of a million farmers dead because of Monsanto.  Let’s take a stroll over to Mexico and see how Monsanto’s GM Corn/Maise plants are faring.  First of all in December 2013 a judge in Mexico banned Monsanto’s Frankenstein corn seeds.  According to Sustainable Pulse:  

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               Mexican Judge Throws out Monsanto Appeal to Confirm GM Maize Ban

A Mexican judge has thrown out the appeals of Mexico’s SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Ministry), and Monsanto, who were attempting to overturn a September court ruling that banned the planting of GM maize in Mexico…

The Mexican federal government had allowed trial crops of GM maize to be planted in Mexico since 2009 before the shock decision in September made by the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City. Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. cited “the risk of imminent harm to the environment” as the basis for the decision.

The Judge’s ruling means that multinationals such as Monsanto and Pioneer are legally banned from releasing GM maize into the Mexican countryside.

Well, I guess that should be that, but what’s this?  According to an April, 2014 article in SustainablePulse, Monsanto wants the judge thrown off the case.  I guess the Mexican judicial system hasn’t been packed with lunatics like in America’s.  

Excerpt:

Monsanto Request Removal of Mexican Judge over GM Maize Ban

Monsanto have requested the removal of an Appeals Court Judge in Mexico, who ruled against them in the ongoing legal battle on the prohibition of GM Maize in the country.

In December, Judge Marroqun Zaleta threw out the appeals of Mexico’s SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Ministry), and Monsanto, who were attempting to overturn a September court ruling that banned the planting of GM maize in Mexico.

Monsanto wants to judge shop for a more favorable judge.  In the meantime, France was rejecting enslaving their farmers to Monsanto’s Frankenstein seeds.  From Global Research:

Excerpt:

Geopolitics of Organic Food: Russia, China and France Ban GMOs

Russia’s RT reported in an article titled, “Russia will not import GMO products – PM Medvedev,” that, “Russia will not import GMO products, the country’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said, adding that the nation has enough space and resources to produce organic food.” The article would quote Russia’s prime minister who stated specifically, “if the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food.”

I agree with Medvedev, but Americans aren’t eating GM products because they want to, they don’t know what they are eating because ALEC politicians won’t allow labeling.

The article would also state that products in Russia containing more than 0.9% genetically modified ingredients must be labeled, as opposed to US laws where no labeling is required for genetically modified products despite steadily growing public opposition to the practice.

All the world knows that Monsanto’s Frankenstein seeds are a killer, in every way.  And what’s really crazy is that on October 30th, 2014 just days before the November 4th election a previously pro-GM Monsanto scientist has reported to Info Wars  GM seeds are a health hazard.

 

Eating genetically modified corn (GM corn) and consuming trace levels of Monsanto's Roundup chemical fertilizer caused rats to develop horrifying tumors

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FORMER PRO-GMO BIOTECH SCIENTIST ADMITS GMOS AREN’T SAFE, REFUTES CLAIMS BY MONSANTO

Former Biotech Scientist Speaks Out

In comes Dr. Thierry Vrain, a former GMO biotechnologist who has come out with a lot of information that should open people’s eyes about the real dangers of genetically modified foods and crops.

Vrain will be the first to admit that Monsanto has conducted a lot of studies showing that GMOs are safe, but he changed his own tune about ten years ago when he started reading scientific journals from other countries.

“I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.”

You know, America once led the world in science and industry, now after the overthrow of the United States Government, December 12, 2000 we are just a third world country when it comes to science and innovation.  Our government is packed with anti-science climate deniers who believe Jesus rode on dinosaurs.

No longer can American produce be trusted, because American people are not allowed to have sunlight when it comes of the integrity of the food products grown in America.  How long will it be before American farmers are committing suicide because American crops are banned around the world for lack of labeling?

Here is what he thinks about his former industry now:

“I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat…

“The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

There are no long-term feeding studies performed in these countries to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.

But, there was one bright spot in the November 4th, 2014 election, Maui has banned Monsanto Frankenstein seeds.  From WordPress:

Excerpt:

They got into Monsanto’s face. They accused Monsanto/Dow of spreading poison.

They didn’t say, “You have a right to know what’s in your food and we’re all nice people, and reasonable people have a right to disagree.”

They hit it hard.

The Maui SHAKA Movement and voteyesmaui.org and other activists won by a very narrow margin—and instituted a temporary ban on new Monsanto/Dow GMO crops in Maui County.

Their corporate opposition spent $300 for every vote they got. And lost.

A tip of the hat and a bow to Maui County activists.

It would be one thing if American made sham election results stayed within our shores, but the election results have a long deadly reach across the world.  From TruthDig:

Excerpt:

How can it be just that so few dictate the lives of so many? I’m not referring to the 1 percent and the 99 percent. I’m speaking of the voting population in the United States and in its minions Canada and Britain. Meanwhile, the billions of people around the world whose lives are directly impacted by the decisions made by elected officials in these wealthy nations have virtually no voice. The US Empire is far from democratic. It is authoritarian! It is imperialist! It is unjust! And a revolution is needed.

So while the world moves to protect their citizens and environment from Monsanto, America is once again left behind.  With ALEC’s anti-science politicians doing the bidding of Monsanto, the Monsanto Vultures have come home to roost.

By Patricia Baeten