Forum Post: Dems Say Boehner Blocking Farm Bill, Wants More Food Stamp Cuts
Posted 10 years ago on Nov. 29, 2013, 8:48 a.m. EST by GirlFriday
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Over the past month, the House and Senate have been working to come up with a compromise farm bill—the five-year piece of legislation that funds agriculture and nutrition programs. The main sticking point is the level of cuts to the food stamp program. House Republicans want to cut $40 billion from the program, while the Senate wants to trim $4 billion. Last week, the talks fell apart, and the two sides are fighting over why.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/john-boehner-farm-bill-food-stamps
Besides the attack on food stamps in the farm bill there is also the do not label GMOs initiative:
It's easy to see why Monsanto was voted the world's most evil corporation for 2013. [1] Two examples from just the last 30 days might almost be enough to win the title all on their own.
Last week, 20 environmental activists were brutally assaulted for protesting the biotech giant in Argentina. [2] And in the November 5 election, Monsanto broke spending records to defeat a Washington ballot initiative that would simply label genetically engineered food (GMOs). [3, 4] What are they hiding?
But we've been shining a light on Monsanto's shady activities. Thanks to SierraRise supporters like you, it's not just the Big Ag corporation's products that are potentially toxic, but also their reputation.
Rather than fix these disastrous practices, Monsanto is trying to buy a better image. [5]
They recently hired former Senator Blanche Lincoln [6] and the high-powered PR firm FleishmanHillard to improve their reputation and help block more labeling initiatives in 2014. Now when you want to know what's in your food, the forces against us will be stronger than before.
This means we need to fight back against the Monsanto agenda harder than ever. Let's start by sending 75,000 letters reminding our government to listen to we the people, not them the corporations and PR firms, and label GMOs now!
Monsanto -- the maker of toxic chemicals like Agent Orange -- is also the largest producer of risky genetically modified seeds. Corn with built-in insecticides? Squash impervious to virus? We have a right to know what we're eating. Many other countries around the world do require GMO labeling -- but Monsanto is bringing in the big guns to make sure they can keep hiding that critical information from our families.
Senator Blanche Lincoln used to serve as Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She was sometimes called "the Senator from Wal-Mart," [7] and her other clients have included oil giants Valero and ConocoPhillips, everybody's favorite cable provider Comcast, and credit giant Experian. She's clearly an influential figure in Washington, and now she's ready to cash in for "the world's most evil corporation."
Corporations always do this -- why fix a problem if you can pay someone to hide it? That's why so many of us decided to join the SierraRise community. We're sick of corporate lobbyists running the show -- this is a democracy and all of our voices matter. By speaking up now, we can be louder than Senator Lincoln or any other Monsanto lobbyist or executive.
The FDA has the power to enforce labeling and protect our health -- but not if we let Monsanto's lobbyists go unanswered.
We deserve to know what's in our food. Send your letter to the FDA today demanding customer choice -- we need labels on GMO foods!
In it together,
Nathan Empsall SierraRise Senior Campaigner
P.S. Five signatures are even more powerful than one -- after you take action, be sure to forward this alert to your friends, family, and colleagues!
References:
Sheets, Connor Adams (2013 June 10). "Monsanto Named 2013's 'Most Evil Corporation' In New Poll." International Business Times.
Frayssinet, Fabiana (2013 November 29). "Argentine Protesters vs Monsanto: 'The Monster is Right on Top of Us.'" Inter Press Service News Agency.
For more information about GMOs and biotechnology, please visit http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/.
Le, Phuong (2013 October 29). "Record-breaking sums of money pour into state's food labeling fight." KOMO News.
Hopkinson, Jenny (2013 November 29). "Monsanto confronts devilish public image problem." Politico.
Sheppard, Kate (2013 October 16). "Monsanto Hires Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln As Lobbyist." Huffington Post.
Uygur, Cenk (2013 October 20). "'Senator From Walmart' Hired By Monsanto, Scores Big In Post-Senate Life." The Young Turks via YouTube.
Photo Credit: Progress Ohio, CC BY-2.0
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I added:
And - NO - it does not cost more than the labeling already placed on products - it just adds the GMO notice.
The last official figure calculated by the GAO estimated that the crop insurance program lost $117 million to “fraud, waste and abuse” in 2005, or about 4.3 percent of the program's $2.7 billion cost that year. Crop insurance spending has since expanded to roughly $9 billion. Food stamp fraud, by contrast, accounts for about 1 percent of the program’s cost.
In March, federal investigators uncovered the largest detected crop insurance fraud ring in the country—a $100 million scheme involving insurance agents, claims adjusters, brokers and farmers in eastern North Carolina. “I can tell you it’s everywhere, all across the country,” Jimmy Thomas Sasser, a claims adjuster who was sentenced to four years in prison for his involvement, told the press.
And last month, the GAO reported another form of widespread crop-insurance fraud: payments going to dead people. The USDA likely paid out $22 million to dead farmers between 2008 and 2012, because, as the report found, the “RMA does not use [the Social Security Administration] master list of deceased individuals to verify whether its policyholders have died. http://inthesetimes.com/article/15519/looking_for_fraud_try_crop_insurance_not_food_stamps/