Don't know how many got a chance to see the documentary Food Inc., but it paints the picture pretty well.
The documentary does a good job of showing how corporate interests not only harm governance and society, but that there're no signs of this type of governance letting up. If so, there's an inevitable conclusion.
One aspect of the documentary is how corporations dictate what free and sovereign citizens can and can't do. For instance Monsanto has it so that farmers cannot re-plant seeds which come from crops they grew with seeds intially purchased. And how they hire individuals to go out to farms to investigate and prosecute those that do. In addition to that, from Monsanto's geneticlly modified seeds, the pollen from those plants get into other fields, and they then go out and prosecute farmers who never planted their seeds, but whose crops have become tainted with their patented genes.
The documentary notes that it was Justice Thomas, a former lawyer for Monsanto, which wrote the opinion to the Supreme Court ruling which allows such things.
Another thing that struck me is when one farmer said that corporatization of the farm industry creates the mystiqueof cheaper food, but when things like the costs of transport, the way in which food is processed, and the amount of sugar in corporate food products, end up costing society as a whole in wasted energy and healthcare costs.
I know this whole scenario is not news to anyone who has been paying attention, but I saw the documentary and it really drives home the need to convoke the Article V Convention, in order to propose amendments in regards to what a legal fiction (corporation) is allowed, and how to limit its influence on governance.
I did a search the other night and found two diaries posted about Food Inc.
This one was revealing in its argument that the producers of the documentary do a good job of showing what's wrong, and how wrong the situation is, but defeats it all with the bogus assertion that We The People can do what we supposedly accomplished in regards to the tobbacco industry.
Mark27
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The narrator suggested that challenging the agriculture overlords and forcing transformation to a more traditional method of food production was in fact possible, evidenced by the recent transformation of the tobacco industry to be more consumer-friendly.
Come again?
Is he really suggesting that the gold standard for industrial transformation via public policy is government's unconscionably cynical tobacco policy? Seriously?
What has been the transformation with tobacco thus far? The only tangible change to occur in the industry since government has put its thumb on the scale has been the cultural demonization and financial pillaging of the product's consumers.
Beyond that, what has really changed? The same major players in the industry 20 years ago continue to run the show today. In fact, they have a higher market share...and that's by design. In 1998, states effectively legislated Big Tobacco monopoly protections in exchange for an annual ten-figure protection stipend. And subsequently, as part of last year's SCHIP legislation, government has been levying taxes to upstart competitors that are more than 1,000% higher than the tax increases levied against Philip Morris and RJR to effectively run the upstarts out of business and preserve revenue flow to state and federal coffers.
Bottom line: the "reform" against the tobacco companies that the Food, Inc. narrator celebrates has merely been government doubling-down on the egregious ethics of the tobacco industry's past practices and turning the industry into an ATM machine for both government coffers AND the same tobacco barons they claim to be "reforming".
So will this be the level of "reform" that all progressives find acceptable in transforming the food industry, as appears to be the case with the film's narrator based on his comments? Will we be perfectly fine if the current arrangement of crop subsidies, corporate consolidation, saturation of processed corn, and exploitation of impoverished illegal immigrant labor in food production continues so long as ever mounting "sin taxes" are levied against consumers of these products?
People Power Granny
http://www.dailykos.com/...
It is time to now change the face of farming in this country. It will never be simple or painless, but the longer we let corporations run the show, the more enslaved we will become to them in the years ahead.
Anyway, there's an inevitable conclusion to what's taking place, and if you think you're going to escape the consequences, I'd ask who the maker of your spacesuit and rocketship is. We're here, this is happening, and it's not going to go away by itself.
If we held a convention on the authority of the Constitution we could deliberate on amendment proposals Congress cannot or will not.
If you think that's a bad idea and you have not seen Food Inc., then hopefully you will get a chance to. You might process the information it presents and change your mind.
Educate yourself about the Article Convention:
http://www.foavc.org
http://www.callaconvention.org
http://www.article-v-convention.com