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Obama signs 'Monsanto Protection Act' written by Monsanto-sponsored senator


key2thecup

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Not really a surprise anymore. Standard operating procedure for a while now.

What really is sad is that this page only has a hand full of comments, yet effects pretty much everyone...and their health.

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Monsanto is pure ???? evil and the list of companies that use their products is now so vast and so disheartening that I avoid all major grocery chains. It's almost easier now to write up a short list of the companies that DON'T use genetically modified ingredients. Whole Foods, Home Economist (now Healthy Home Market), World Market, health food stores...these are the only places I shop now. How in the hell this ever got passed is mind-boggling to me...and yet people still stuff their faces with their particular brand of poison....Kellogg's, Post, Quaker, General Mills...all the cereal brands that my family used to trust...they are now Monsanto...and I have to pay 4 dollars for a box of Mom's Best or Nature's Path or Barbara's cereal...but it's absolutely worth it, knowing I'm not taking any of Monsanto's regulated poison into my body. I've attended two protests against these diabolical people and will continue to do so. I make people aware, when I visit a grocery store with my brother or my mother..that these foods that are being produced now from companies such as Kraft and Nestle and even Morningstar Farms now are incredibly unhealthy for them...and while there aren't many who listen...if at least one person decides to stop buying these things...then my efforts are not completely in vain. Swear to you people the red herring ought to be the US national fish...because I'm willing to wager that this passed right under everyone's nose while they were yelling about gun control and homosexual marriage.

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The process sounds a lot like how the NRA has crafted the language of various pieces of legislation to protect itself.

The most blatant example being the exemption for gun manufacturers being sued under general product liability law for what is by any definition a "dangerous good".

The US Congress enacted a law in 2005 that was signed by President Bush — under heavy lobbying from the NRA and the gun industry — that gives gun manufacturers and dealers broad immunity from being sued. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) shields the gun industry even when it makes guns that are unnecessarily dangerous and sells them recklessly.

The 2005 law has drawn attacks from gun control advocates and constitutional scholars, who portray it as a powerful insulator for gun manufacturers. Why should gun manufacturers, they ask, enjoy a special liability protection not available to other companies that make potentially lethal products?

"Gun companies should be treated the same as any other company. There is no reason to give them special exemption from litigation," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "It is an outrageous piece of legislation."

Gun control advocates said they see a lawsuit in Alaska as their best hope to overturn the law. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has challenged the constitutionality of the gunmaker shield law in a case involving a rifle taken from a gun shop by a convicted felon.

The origins of the shield law stemmed from a rising tide of litigation against the gun companies by crime victims. In most of these cases, plaintiffs alleged that the company was negligent in not forcing the dealers of its products to properly abide by existing laws that prohibit, for example, convicted felons from obtaining a firearm.

The most significant of these cases, and the one perceived as most damaging by the gun lobby, was brought by the families of the 13 people killed or seriously injured over a three-week span by the Washington, D.C.-area snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. The pair used a .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, similar to the one police said was used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children in 6 adults with brutal efficiency in Newtown last week.

In 2004, Bushmaster and the gun dealer settled the lawsuit for $2.5 million in a case that gun control advocates hailed as a "major breakthrough."

The gun lobby agreed. The next year, following a fierce lobbying campaign by the NRA, Congress approved the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which offers a broad shield against lawsuits filed by victims of gun violence. The law does not provide 100 percent immunity, and the The Brady Center, which represented the families in the sniper shooting case, has challenged its constitutionality.

But in the years since, the law has done what the industry wanted: offer protection against litigation that targets it for liability when guns are used to commit crimes. The law also ended all existing lawsuits.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA chief executive, hailed the legislative victory as a "historic day for the NRA and also for the Second Amendment." He said Congress "saved the firearms industry" by protecting it against "a blizzard of litigation to bankrupt the industry by legal fees."

In the Senate, the legislation won support from 15 Democrats, mostly from pro-gun states, including Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, now the majority leader. President Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, and Vice President Joe Biden, a senator from Delaware, voted against the measure.

The language of the bill hewed closely to the NRA's position. "The possibility of imposing liability on an entire industry for harm that is solely caused by others is an abuse of the legal system," the law says.

The NRA did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

The Brady Center also did not respond to a request for comment. After the law passed, a top lawyer vowed to "vigorously attack the law in courts." The Brady Center has continued to bring liability cases against gunmakers and sellers, citing exemptions in the law.

"Well-pleaded, carefully crafted cases can still proceed against irresponsible gun companies," wrote Daniel Vice, an attorney for the group, in a guide for lawyers who want to sue gun companies.

The Brady Center is currently handling a case it hopes to use to overturn the shield law. In 2006, Jason Coday, a drifter with a lengthy arrest record, shot and killed Simone Kim, a contract painter, outside of a grocery store in Juneau, Alaska, where he was working. The two men did not know each other.

Coday was prohibited under federal law from purchasing a firearm, but two days before the shooting he walked out of a gun store in Juneau with a Ruger .22-caliber rifle. Ray Coxe, the owner of the store, claimed Coday stole the gun when his back was turned and left $200 on the counter.

In 2008, Kim's family sued, alleging that Coxe knowingly allowed Coday to pay for the gun without first getting a background check. Two years later, a state judge dismissed the case, citing the lawsuit shield law, which protects gun shops and manufactures against civil claims arising from the "misuse of their products by others." The family appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, which heard the case earlier this year. A decision is pending.

Even if the shield law were immediately repealed, it is unclear whether the Newtown shooting victims would have a case to make against Bushmaster, part of the Freedom Group of arms and ammunition makers owned by Cereberus Capital. (Cereberus said on Tuesday it was putting the Freedom Group up for sale because of the massacre.)

According to news reports, the Bushmaster assault-style weapon used in the shooting was legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, the gunman's mother. That wasn't true with the Washington, D.C. sniper case.

The sniper Bushmaster came from Bull's Eye, a gun shop in Washington state. Lee Malvo told investigators he stole the gun. Lawyers for the shooting victims claimed the retailer had acted negligently in allowing this to happen. Bushmaster, the victims claimed, acted recklessly in not ensuring that its dealer prevented the gun from falling into criminal hands.

The lawsuit cited a report by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which determined that Bull's Eye could not account for 238 guns that should have been in its inventory.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/newtown-victims-lawsuits-nra-_n_2325721.html

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Change isn't coming until our thirst for consumerism is quenched. Once we snap out of this era, it will be realized that capitalism should not be the way our world economy should be operating (although it's a bit mixed at this point).

And after a massive social economic and political revolution takes place, we as a species can start to evolve again.

Two major hurdles to get over before that happens though. 1. We need to stop being mere consumers, and that requires global educational, economical and political change, which we are afraid of. 2. We need to devise a better society to live in. No easy task, as there will always be opponents to a socialist economy from the current elite, and the examples of socialism in the past ended up being repressive failures.

While there are plenty of reasons to want to change, there are also plenty of reasons to avoid it until we HAVE to change. Unfortunately, i don't see the upcoming revolution happening peacefully. Probably won't happen in my lifetime either, barring a global economic meltdown. But i don't doubt it's going to happen either.

Technology is advancing quickly, meaning the labour force may find itself more and more jobless as we move forward. Meanwhile, a mushrooming global population equates to a catastrophic end to economic growth, which is the only way capitalism can be sustained.

For now, the 1percenters are hoarding up, bunkering down and legislating workerbee civil rights and freedoms away so they can hopefully survive the apocalypse. But, like the aristocrats, this isn't going to end well for them either.

The next great war is frequently called a race war. It won't be. It will be a class war.

But nevermind folks. For these next handful of decades we'll be safely lulled to sleep by buy, buy, buy while our hot air balloon economy springs an odd leak or two.

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USDA Needs More Time to “Review” Monsanto and GMO Crops?

The laughable insistence by the Department of Agriculture this past Friday that it needs more time to look at the data for Monsanto and other biotech companies who are poisoning our food supply is further evidence that our government institutions are bought and paid for with corporate cash. And instead of keeping a watchful eye over the public’s food supply, it was recently detailed by Anthony Gucciardi how they specifically use our tax dollars to push Monsanto’s agenda.

As Dow pushes for its new corn called “Enlist” to be approved by regulatory bodies, the USDA is saying it needs ‘more time’ to conduct environmental studies. It will come down to a battle of the public’s insistence verses the coffers of mega-billionaire companies, and we will either see new GMO alternatives or regulatory action. It’s more than this one crop that hangs in the balance, though. Dow first wants to roll out Enlist corn, followed by soybeans and cotton to be used in combination with its new Enlist herbicide that combines the weed-killers 2,4-D and glyphosate.

Since the USDA seems to need some help in making their decision, let’s have a gander at just some of the studies coming out in the past months about the negative impact of GMO on the environment as well as our health. I encourage you to share this article with as many people as you can to get the word out, as well as March on Saturday, May 25th in the March against Monsanto to help convince our government agencies that we’ve had enough of GMOs . Whether it’s from Monsanto, Dow, or anyone.

Here’s but some of the latest:

  • The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently been slapped with a lawsuit because GMO agricultural practices and pesticide use is killing off our bees, a viral part of the ecosystem that helps to pollinate crops.

  • GMO corn and the high fructose corn syrup which it is often used to make is killing us at staggering rates. Diabetes and cancer rates as well as obesity can all be traced back to GMO crops.

  • The funky DNA in GMO crops is creating super bugs that then warrant more and more chemical fertilizers. When will it ever stop?

  • GMOs are hiding in all kinds of foods since our government won’t support labeling, so the cereals you eat, the meals you dine on in restaurants, and even the ‘health’ food you consume is often laden with GMO.

  • Organic farming can feed the world, even though we’ve been told otherwise.

The list goes on, ad infinitum. What other proof does the USDA need?

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