Revolving Door between government and agribusiness

Damn but this is so true.  The lines that divide right from wrong and legal and illegal blur more and more as those that pass the laws and set the policies do so to cover their actions.  Integrity in business and in politics has become an albatross.  There is no way to exist, to profit, and to prosper with this thing, this antiquated concept of integrity hanging around your neck.  How is it possible to compete in business and politics when all around you do what they can to make their products the cheapest way possible, and politicians require so much cash to be elected that integrity is an outmoded concept impossible for any individual or corporation to possess?

It is what it is, and we have to live with it.  Or so they say we do.  What follows here is some examples of the concept of "the Monsanto Revolving Door".  Not my invention, it is all over the internet as examples of the graft and corruption between business and government IN JUST THIS ONE INDUSTRY!  It's all from (Source)

David W. Beier . . .former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc. . . . chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore when he was Vice President.

 

Linda J. Fisher . . .former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances...now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

 

Michael A. Friedman, M.D. . . former acting commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Department of Health and Human Services . . .now senior vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation.

 

L. Val Giddings . . . former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS) . . .now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

 

Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs . . .now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

 

Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States . . . now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

 

Josh King . . . former director of production for White House events. . . now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.

 

Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee...and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise.

 

Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, . . .now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).*

 

Michael Phillips . . . recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture . . . now head of regulatory affairs for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

 

William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), . .now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

 

Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA... still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company... still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, . . . and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding... now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.*

 

Lidia Watrud . . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, . . .now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division.

 

Jack Watson. . .former chief of staff to the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, . . .now a staff lawyer with Monsanto Corporation in Washington, D.C.

 

Clayton K. Yeutter . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.

 

Larry Zeph . . . former biologist in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, . . . now Regulatory Science Manager at Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

 

*Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA "primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications" ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation in 1994 for their role in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of Posilac, Monsanto Corporation's formulation of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbST or rBGH). The GAO Office found "no conflicting financial interests with respect to the drug's approval" and only "one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations". (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report).

 

And yet this list leaves out one of the really HUGE violations of impropriety in government, and that is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who for a number of years in the 70's was an attorney for Monsanto itself.  Thomas has never wavered from his decisions  in favor of Monsanto in every case involving the Giant company that has come before the court.  Currently in the case Monsanto vs Bowman, it is clear that Thomas will side with Monsanto instead of doing the proper thing and that is to recuse himself.  

 

I hate to say it, but back in the sixties and seventies the youth of America protested not just a war, but the very foundation of society.  Heroes of that war on the establishment fell mightily, Jerry Ruben it turned out was an heir to a fortune and never actually had to work a day in his life being a stockholder in many major corporations, Abby Hoffman came back to the US after years in self induced exile and became a part of the establishment he fought against.  Tom Hayden, a politician.  So many others, lost in the quagmire of fuzzy boundaries between reality and idealism.  The fight taken out of them by crass commercialism and money.  The war to bring back freedom to the people that then seemed foolish to many and righteous to others, was in fact based on the revolution that brought this country into existence.  Foolish at best, it was what it was, an attempt to change our government.  Just as the idealism that drove the revolution in the sixties foundered when the reality of existence in an industrial world became apparent, the needs of the participants to just simply exist overcame the idealism driving the revolution.  Buckminster Fuller however expresses the definitive paradigm for this, he is quoted as saying, " You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

 

Building a new model for our world is easier than you think.  It already exists.  Sustainable farming methods, government and business practices that exhibit integrity and truth in all of their actions and dealings with each other and the public.  Taxation that is in fact proportionate to income, and set at a fixed percentage instead of the current system of the middle class paying higher percentages than the wealthy.  And businesses making decisions based on the health of not only the consumers, but of the earth itself.  The paradigm shift is within our grasp, it is up to us, each and everyone of us to realize this, and to act on it with the POWER that we each have within us.  Don't buy products made by companies that damage the environment, add toxic additives, or don't follow best business practices.  Vote against politicians that demonstrate the inability to follow up on promises and instead place the needs of businesses over that of their constituents.  And finally the ability of every one of us to spread the word of the world that can be, over the world that is.  

 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to change the world in which you exist.  The alternative is to live in it as it is, and die a slow death from the toxins in your food and within your environment itself placed there by greed and graft and all within your power to change.   Good luck world citizens.