The GMO Backstory

Companies that sell Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) have academic researchers on their payroll who say that GMO food is safe, and there is therefore no need to label. Organic and natural food companies have their own paid experts who say there are unresolved questions about GMO safety and labels make sense. The driving force for both sides is making money.  GMO sellers know such labeling is a stigma that can cause them to lose customers. Organic food companies who can already voluntarily label as ‘non-GMO’ to marketing advantage want to keep the battle going because GMO seller resistance to labeling further fuels the public’s lack of trust.  How does a situation like this happen anyway?

The biotechnologies that led to the development of GMO were emerging in the 1980s, and many of those who had business interests and investments in this emerging technology wanted to see it commercialized as quickly as possible to start generating the all-important return on investment.  This emergence came on the coattails of the deregulation frenzy that started in the 1980's, and then Vice President George Bush Sr. at the behest of biotechnology business interests like Monsanto assisted in establishing the “substantial equivalence principle” in order to keep the US  biotech interests at the forefront of the biotech industry.  This substantial equivalence principle was and continues to be highly criticized for its lack of credibility for a number of reasons:

• The author of this Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation that is so favorable to the Monsanto’s interests was one of Monsanto’s primary lawyers at the time.
• Monsanto is also known for stacking regulatory agencies like FDA and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with their own personnel and hiring personnel from these agencies with very attractive compensation packages in what has come to be known as the “revolving door” process.
• Since these newly created organisms are genetically modified (i.e. their DNA significantly altered) they are not substantially equivalent.  These genetic modifications resulted in quantifiable differences in their metabolism, biochemistry, and chemical composition as indicated by several studies. 

    The problems with the substantial equivalence principal are well-documented, but it is still in effect decades after it was controversially introduced into regulation.  This approach to streamline the commercialization of GMOs appears to be politically driven rather than based on sound science and more focused on the profit objectives of the GMO producers than responsive to the well-being of the consuming public (“GMO Regulations in the US and the European Union”).

The substantial equivalence principle greatly simplified the commercialization of GMOs because any safety testing of the resulting organism once a substantial equivalence was established by the producer (something fairly easy to do), the producer had carte blanche to market the product with the option to safety test (or not).  Most chose not to test.  The end result is that large numbers of GMOs were developed and marketed without any safety testing.  So when GMO producers say their products are safe today, they generally don’t have any studies or data to attest to their product’s safety.  They only have the notion that decades ago a group of bias inclined biotech lawyers and scientist modified regulation to say what they have done is ok.

Curiously, the biotechnology companies were able to assume two seemingly opposite views of their GMO creation.  On the one hand, they claimed their GMO’s are substantial equivalent to their unmodified source organism that were modified to create them.  This shortcut enabled them to take advantage of the substantial equivalence principle so the GMOs can quickly be offered for sale without regulator obstruction.  On the other hand, they claimed their GMO’s are substantially different from these same unmodified organisms to support their applications for patent protection for these same GMO intellectual properties.  They were able to do both without even being questioned making it appear to some that the government organizations intended to be unbiased, fair, and in the public interest were actually rigged to favor the industry.

The Critical Failure of the Electoral College

The Electoral College was created to be a buffer between the general voting population and the selection of a President. The founding fathers wanted the government to be selected by the people, but they were afraid direct election to the Presidency might someday be a problem. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. Hamilton wrote about the role of the Electoral College in the Federalist Papers as follows:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

The founders believed that the Electoral College would insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They feared that some one might be able to manipulate the citizen voters. They did not trust the population to make the right choice, and believed the Electoral College was less likely to be manipulated by foreign governments or charismatic con men.

In 2016, this stated mission for the Electoral College is called to task with the election of Donald Trump for the office of President.  The Trump campaign was based on an unprecedented collection of rancorous, dishonest, and even lascivious discourse that was considered by most to be disrespectful to the office of the Presidency.  In parallel with this unprecedented campaign rhetoric, a foreign government appears to have injected information stolen from private and personal communications networks into the electoral process that was favorable to the Trump campaign.

Trump's win is further clouded by fact that Trump did not actually win the popular vote.  He received approximately 2.5 million (i.e. ~2% of the total electorate) fewer votes than Clinton.  The irony here is that he won the Presidency by virtue of the other reason the Electoral College was created which was to give extra power in the Presidential election to the smaller (i.e. less populated) states.  His substantial loss in the popular vote was eclipsed by this intentional slant to a commanding lead in the Electoral College.

Even after his election victory, Trump has continued to show no aptitude for the office with a rogues gallery of Cabinet appointees, breaches of decades old protocol (e.g. contact with Taiwan President), and his continued childish use of the electronic communication tool, Twitter, to engage in casual banter with his supporters and more importantly his perceived enemies.  He appears to have not interest in intelligence briefs and fully intends to bully his way into and through his Presidency.

The time has come for the Electoral College to demonstrate its value by denying Trump the Presidency per the founding fathers original intention. When the Electoral College convenes on 19 December to make the election of the new President official, The members of this esteemed body need to man up and deliver this 'effectual security against this mischief' that Hamilton believed it should.

If the Electoral College fails in this mission, we the people should be taking actions immediately to completely eliminate the Electoral College from the election of the President.

Separation of Business and State

Today the Trump Administration is going after the Dodd-Frank law and a regulation designed to force retirement advisers to work in the best interest of their clients called the fiduciary rule.  Trump want to claim to the the champion of the common man, but both these changes only benefit the very wealthy at the expense of the common man.  Dodd-Frank was create to offset some the deregulation of Depression Era legislation that was design to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression.  Within 10 years of the repeal Glass Steagall Act from the Depression Era, this country experienced the Great Recession of 2008 which took the majority of middle class wealth from the middle class, and put it the portfolios wealthy bankers and other financial con men. 

October 29, 1929 (aka Black Tuesday) is a dark day in the history of the United States and all the rest of the world.  It is the day that officially marked the end of some several years of wild speculation and unbridled economic debauchery and heralded a decade of the worst economic times in modern history.  The descent into this Great Depression started in the United States on Black Tuesday and smothered the world with devastating effects that lasted for years. 

The postmortem of this financial disaster identified many causes with irregularities in the banking sector at the top of the list.  A number of legislative measures were enacted to prevent the recurrence of these problems, and among them was The Banking Act of 1933 (better known as the Glass-Steagall Act).  Years of stable banking followed the passage of Glass-Steagall, but some thought that certain provisions in the Glass-Steagall Act were unreasonable and have lobbied for its repeal in all the years since.  These efforts were largely successful on November 12, 1999 when President Clinton (D) signed the Gramm (R)-Leach (R)-Bliley (R) Financial Modernization Act of 1999 into law gutting some of the major provisions of the Glass-Steagal Act.  Nine years after this 'modernization', the United States was the source of yet another wildly speculative banking/finance scheme that brought the world to the brink of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  The resulting financial crisis was all too strikingly similar. 

For the last 30 years, business interests have been busy working an aggressive political agenda to roll back decades of business regulations and corporate/personal taxes.  They say these regulations and taxes are an unreasonable obstacle for business that hinders job creation.  They say they want to take us back to a Golden Age when capitalism was vital and unconstrained, and everybody was in the queue to be fabulously rich.  Though they are not terribly specific about the exact time of this Golden Age, it appears to be the late 19^th century.

After the Civil War, this country experienced a very rapid expansion of economic growth.  Fortunes were made, and empires were built, but in this financial feeding frenzy, it became apparent that many of these fortunes and empires were acquired by less than honorable means.  Free markets were manipulated, labor was exploited, politics and businesses were corrupted, and the majority of people in this country (i.e. consumers and labor) were being exploited for the profit of the few.  Instead of being a Golden Age, it become known as the Gilded Age taken from the Twain/Warner novel The Gilded Age:  A Tale of Today which satirized the greed and political corruption of that time.  The gold of that age only existed as a thin gilded layer over a much larger piece of base metal.  It only had the appearance of gold from the outside, much like the distribution of wealth in this country today.

The unfairness of this 19^th century situation was brought to light by a number of reform oriented thinkers many of whom were writers like Twain and Warner.  Their thinking set the stage for the Progressive Era that followed during which a number of legislative and policy measures were enacted to correct these social inequities.  Notable among these measures are:

Free Market Manipulation:  The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) was passed to prohibit certain business activities (e.g. cartels and monopolies) that reduce competition in the marketplace and establish a way for the United States federal government to investigate and pursue business entities suspected of being in violation.  The Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) extended the Sherman Act by specifying particular prohibited conduct, the three-level enforcement scheme, the exemptions, and the remedial measures.

Political Corruption and Election Rigging:  The Tillman Act (1906) was passed to prohibit corporations from making direct money contributions to candidates during elections.  The Tillman Act was extended with the Publicity Act (1910) (aka the Federal Corrupt Practices Act) by adding and extending its range to include primary elections.

Food and Drug Safety:  The Pure Food and Drugs Act (1906) prohibited interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs creating the regulatory functions that in the 1930's became the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Also in 1906, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was enacted to prevent adulterated or misbranded meat and meat products from being sold as food and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.

These pieces of legislation and others were embellished and supplemented with other legislation over the last 100 years to become a body of works to protect free markets, minimize corruption, and protect consumers and labor.  These social revelations and the legislation they spawned were not popular with much of the big money that was benefiting from the status quo at that time.  Simply put, some of the wealthy did not want to give up their unfair advantages.  The question ever since for them has been how best to undo all this 'progressive' thinking that happened after the last capitalist feeding frenzy of the Gilded Age.   

These deregulation efforts were largely ineffective until the 1980's when these business interests formed an unholy alliance with religious extremists (aka the Christian Right) who were motivated to make abortion illegal and undermine the Constitution mandated separation of church and state so that they could declare themselves our state religion.  This move brought many voters motivated by religious and anti-abortion fervor into blind aligence with the corresponding business agenda without question even though it in many case this business agenda was not in their best interests.  This coming together of big money and big religion was not actually so surprising because the big religion business of fleecing the flock has made many 'religious' leaders very wealth.  The wealthy religious leaders benefited from the entire Conservative Agenda religious and business (http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/Televangelists_Lack_Oversight.html ).

The result has been a protracted, multi-front effort that 1) acquired politicians through funding and base support, 2) stacked the courts with persons sympathetic to their agenda, and 3) infiltrated and undermine regulatory and policy generating agencies.  After 20 years of carefully conceived staging, the coup started in earnest with the landmark gutting of Glass-Steagal in 1999, and a financial feeding frenzy began that brought our economy to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in less than a decade of elapsed time.

The simplest approach has been the direct purchase of politicians with campaign funding and out right gifts of cash, merchandise, and services.  Properly primed (aka bribed) politicians can generate legislation to eliminate or water down existing laws and policy such as executive orders.  This simple approach has been hindered by the 1906 Tillman Act which was enacted to stop the practices at the end of the Gilded Age.

Another more covert way of relaxing regulatory control has been the infiltration regulatory agencies by persons sympathetic to business interests.  For example,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops

http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2010/01/16/fda-more-pro-industry-than-any-time-in-35-years/

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/29/biotech-industry-campaigns-for-gmo.aspx

http://emmaspeaks.hubpages.com/hub/The-Revolving-Door-Between-Monsanto-the-FDA-and-the-EPA-Your-Safety-in-Peril#

Finally when all else fails, it is important to stack the courts with judge appointments sympathetic to business interests.

The separation of church and state was pure genius, and had the business of the time been as large and meddlesome in the days of our countries founding, business would have been separated from the state by constitutional amendment in the Bill of Rights too.