Why is Hillary really running???

I have begun to really wonder why Hillary is running?  Who is behind her and why is there a desparation to see to it that she is in the White House..?

Yesterday, a friend sent an e-mail with an article in this month's Vanity Fair about the giant agricultural concern Monsanto..

Full article:

http://www.vanityfair.com/...

The article is quite long, but I am going to highlight the parts that are things about Monsanto that I had not previously known.  

Monsanto has a long history in our country and it is not a good history.  Monsanto's corporate Karma is burnt and it is time to take this corporation out..so what does this have to do with Hillary Clinton's run..??

Monsanto has not yet quite gotten total control of the food supply.  This effort began in the 1980's.  Monsanto now has over 600 patents on genetically modified plants..let's take a closer look at the connections between Monsanto and the Clintons..

more over the jump..

Here is a piece from the recent article in Vanity Fair by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele called, Monsanto's Harvest of Fear:

The Control of Nature

For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. "It’s not like describing a widget," says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.

Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover "a live human-made microorganism." In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for Monsanto.

This radical departure from age-old practice has created turmoil in farm country. Some farmers don’t fully understand that they aren’t supposed to save Monsanto’s seeds for next year’s planting. Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product. Still others say that they don’t use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds, but seeds have been blown into their fields by wind or deposited by birds. It’s certainly easy for G.M. seeds to get mixed in with traditional varieties when seeds are cleaned by commercial dealers for re-planting. The seeds look identical; only a laboratory analysis can show the difference. Even if a farmer doesn’t buy G.M. seeds and doesn’t want them on his land, it’s a safe bet he’ll get a visit from Monsanto’s seed police if crops grown from G.M. seeds are discovered in his fields.

We have all heard the stories about Monsanto harrassing farmers, suing farmers, taking their farms from them, intimidating farmers and otherwise being bad stewards of the land and unwelcome neighbors to us all.  

Monsanto created Agent Orange and DDT..rBST and rGBH artificial growth hormones which is injected into cows to increase the milk yield, however, there are side effects to this practice that are not good for the cows..but effects on humans has not been conducted..

Monsanto began selling the supplement in 1994 under the name Posilac. Monsanto acknowledges that the possible side effects of rBST for cows include lameness, disorders of the uterus, increased body temperature, digestive problems, and birthing difficulties. Veterinary drug reports note that "cows injected with Posilac are at an increased risk for mastitis," an udder infection in which bacteria and pus may be pumped out with the milk. What’s the effect on humans? The F.D.A. has consistently said that the milk produced by cows that receive rBGH is the same as milk from cows that aren’t injected: "The public can be confident that milk and meat from BST-treated cows is safe to consume." Nevertheless, some scientists are concerned by the lack of long-term studies to test the additive’s impact, especially on children. A Wisconsin geneticist, William von Meyer, observed that when rBGH was approved the longest study on which the F.D.A.’s approval was based covered only a 90-day laboratory test with small animals. "But people drink milk for a lifetime," he noted. Canada and the European Union have never approved the commercial sale of the artificial hormone. Today, nearly 15 years after the F.D.A. approved rBGH, there have still been no long-term studies "to determine the safety of milk from cows that receive artificial growth hormone," says Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist for Consumers Union. Not only have there been no studies, he adds, but the data that does exist all comes from Monsanto. "There is no scientific consensus about the safety," he says.

However F.D.A. approval came about, Monsanto has long been wired into Washington. Michael R. Taylor was a staff attorney and executive assistant to the F.D.A. commissioner before joining a law firm in Washington in 1981, where he worked to secure F.D.A. approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone before returning to the F.D.A. as deputy commissioner in 1991. Dr. Michael A. Friedman, formerly the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for operations, joined Monsanto in 1999 as a senior vice president. Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the E.P.A. when she left the agency in 1993. She became a vice president of Monsanto, from 1995 to 2000, only to return to the E.P.A. as deputy administrator the next year.

William D. Ruckelshaus, former E.P.A. administrator, and Mickey Kantor, former U.S. trade representative, each served on Monsanto’s board after leaving government. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was an attorney in Monsanto’s corporate-law department in the 1970s. He wrote the Supreme Court opinion in a crucial G.M.-seed patent-rights case in 2001 that benefited Monsanto and all G.M.-seed companies.

Donald Rumsfeld never served on the board or held any office at Monsanto, but Monsanto must occupy a soft spot in the heart of the former defense secretary. Rumsfeld was chairman and C.E.O. of the pharmaceutical maker G. D. Searle & Co. when Monsanto acquired Searle in 1985, after Searle had experienced difficulty in finding a buyer. Rumsfeld’s stock and options in Searle were valued at $12 million at the time of the sale.

Yep..you read that right..Mickey Kantor has served on Monsanto's board of Directors...

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Here are his Security and Exchange Commisssion filings:

 772 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 04/16/2003 15950
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 02/04/2003 20995
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 01/08/2003 20994
772 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 09/20/2002 15447
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 09/20/2002 42355
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 06/07/2002 13694
772 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 5 02/15/2002 15614
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 09/07/2001 13606
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 4 11/13/2000 17444
666 KANTOR MICHAEL [text] [html] 3 10/17/2000 11524

Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group is also a reporting shareholder in Monsanto:

526 CARLUCCI FRANK C [text] [html] 5 01/24/2003 18860
526 CARLUCCI FRANK C [text] [html] 4 09/20/2002 15630
526 CARLUCCI FRANK C [text] [html] 5 02/15/2002 16647
526 CARLUCCI FRANK C [text] [html] 4 10/10/2000 14053
526 CARLUCCI FRANK C [text] [html] 3 04/10/2000 11761

Lockheed Martis is also a reporting shareholder in Monsanto:

333 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP [text] [html] 4 01/17/2008 7949
333 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP [text] [html] 4 01/18/2007 7656
333 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP [text] [html] 4 01/19/2006 7656
333 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP [text] [html] 4 01/19/2005 7634
526 LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP [text] [html] 4 01/20/2004 5992

and John S. Reed .. Chair of Altria Group which is a 100% owner of Philip Morris tobacco..

333 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 06/03/2003 5801
526 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 05/02/2003 8118
526 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 04/28/2003 18075
526 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 04/02/2003 8001
526 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 03/04/2003 8005
526 ALTRIA GROUP INC [text] [html] 4 02/04/2003 8037
 

Mark Penn also has ties to Monsanto..

Polling Czar

After the 1994 election, Democrats had just lost both houses of Congress, and President Clinton was floundering in the polls. At the urging of his wife, he turned to Dick Morris, a friend from their time in Arkansas. Morris brought in two pollsters from New York, Doug Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, a portly, combative workaholic. Morris decided what to poll and Penn polled it. They immediately pushed Clinton to the right, enacting the now-infamous strategy of "triangulation," which co-opted Republican policies like welfare reform and tax cuts and emphasized small-bore issues that supposedly cut across the ideological divide. "They were the ones who said, 'Make the '96 election about nothing except V-chips and school uniforms,'" says a former adviser to Bill. When Morris got caught with a call girl, Penn became the most important adviser in Clinton's second term. "In a White House where polling is virtually a religion," the Washington Post reported in 1996, "Penn is the high priest."

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble's Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of "inoculation": shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.

In 2000 Penn became the chief architect of Hillary's Senate victory in New York, persuading her, in a rerun of '96, to eschew big themes and relentlessly focus on poll-tested pothole politics, such as suburban transit lines and dairy farming upstate. Following that election, Penn became a very rich man--and an even more valued commodity in the business world (Hillary paid him $1 million for her re-election campaign in '06 and $277,000 in the first quarter of this year). The massive PR empire WPP Group acquired Penn's polling firm for an undisclosed sum in 2001 and four years later named him worldwide CEO of one of its most prized properties, the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (B-M). A key player in the decision to hire Penn was Howard Paster, President Clinton's chief lobbyist to Capitol Hill and an influential presence inside WPP. "Clients of stature come to Mark constantly for counsel," says Paster, who informally advises Hillary, explaining the hire. The press release announcing Penn's promotion noted his work "developing and implementing deregulation informational programs for the electric utilities industry and in the financial services sector." The release blithely ignored how utility deregulation contributed to the California electricity crisis manipulated by Enron and the blackout of 2003, which darkened much of the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

full story in The Nation

Hillary is a stealth candidate..she is a Republican in Democratic clothing..even people who support Hillary have to come to the conclusion that a Hillary Clinton presidency is not going to be healthy for them..