Perhaps you think that corporations use their campaign donations to buy politicians who then deliver public policies the corporate donors want. And perhaps you think this is corrupt, anti-democratic, and… well, stinky.
You would, of course, be right. As Lily Tomlin has put it, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”
The corporate purchase of Washington is pretty widely reported, but – keep up now – for the kleptocratic stinkiness is fast consuming our statehouses as well. The Republican Governor’s Association has devised a layaway purchase plan allowing brand-name corporations – Aetna to Walmart – to make secret donations of $100,000 or more a year to the RGA in support of the corporate-friendly agenda of various GOP governors.
Feed the RGA’s political-favor-meter with $250,000 a year (as Coca-Cola, the Koch brothers, and others do), and the association cynically anoints your corporation with the ironic title of “Statesman,” opening up gubernatorial doors throughout the country. Well, sniff the participants, the money buys nothing but “access” to policymakers. But wait – when was access put on the auction block? Shouldn’t everyone have access to our public officials? Of course, but if you call your governor, you can’t even get an office intern to call you back.
If you’re an RGA corporate “Statesman,” however, you could get a tête-à-tête with Rick Perry, the recently indicted governor of Texas, or a private breakfast with Bob McDonnell, the now-convicted former-governor of Virginia. See, membership in the corrupt club has its privileges.
The corporate donors to this previously-secret scheme of plutocratic rule says it’s okay, for they also give money to Democrats. Oh, bipartisan corruption – that makes me feel so much better, how about you?

“G.O.P. Error Reveals Donors and the Price of Access,” The New York Times, September 25, 2014.


The mendacity of GMO purveyors

Tenacity can be a virtue. But the persistent push by giant food conglomerates to deceive us consumers has turned their tenacity into raw mendacity.
Brand-name food peddlers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists, lawyers, campaign donations, PR hypesters, and political manipulators so they can genetically (and dangerously) alter the dinner we put on our family tables, without bothering to tell us which items they’ve messed with. With practically no public notice, their first deception was to get Washington to okay the production and introduction of genetically modified organisms into corn, canola, soy, and other crops. Then they quietly pushed to prevent federal regulators from requiring that these tam ered Frankenfoods be labeled as containing GMOs. Next, they tried a grand deception insisting that foods tainted with GMOs qualify for the national “organic” label.
Even our usually-submissive regulators balked at that one – but, look out, for here they come again! Big Food’s industry front group, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, is now demanding that foods with genetically-engineered ingredients be allowed to use the word “natural” on their packages.
Natural? Let’s see – one, these biotech mutations are not products of nature, but of corporate technicians; and two, the plants are manufactured in corporate labs by extracting genes from a foreign plant or even an animal, then splicing those genes into the manufactured creature. The very DNA of this man-made “food” is altered, with no understanding of the long-term environmental or health consequences.
A Twinkie is more natural than that! They’re perverting both our language and nature’s reality. To oppose these profiteers’ tenacious mendaciousness, contact the Environmental Working Group: www.ewg.org.

“Group Seeks Special Label For Food: ‘Natural,’” The New York Times, December 20, 2013.