How does McDonald’s sample budget for employees reflect consumer ideology?

By Marc Jampole

 

McDonald’s created a sample budget for its employees to help them do better financial planning.  The budget is so absurd in its assumptions and serves as such ready proof that Mickey Dee’s doesn’t pay its workers enough that you would almost swear it was satire—something Jonathan Swift might conjure.

Other articles have pointed out the almost mocking lack of reality in a budget that starts off by depending on a second job that pays 85% of what you’re getting for flipping burgers for 40 hours a week—that is, if you’re lucky enough to have a full-time job at Mickey Dee’s.

What I find interesting is the degree to which the McDonald’s sample budget for employees reflects the ideology of consumerism.

We start with the fact that the second most expensive line item is the car payment. Note that McDonald’s is not talking about what one of its full-time employees might spend on operating the car each month—insurance, gas, maintenance. No, this line item of $150 is for paying the loan you took to buy your car. Not only does McDonald’s assumes that everyone has a car, but it also assumes that you borrow money to buy it, as opposed to running your car into the ground. These are two of the major tenets of American consumerism: 1) drive a car and 2) borrow to get what you want before you can afford it. 

The budget offers the possibility that the monthly housing payment is a mortgage. Where can you get a house with a $600 mortgage (which must also include real estate taxes)?  McDonald’s knows that very few of its employees can afford a mortgage, but the possibility of being able to have a house sets a goal for the employee: home ownership, which is another tenant of American consumerism.

Note that the budget assumes that the employee will be completely middle class: have health insurance, cable TV service and a car. Of course the numbers they put down are phony: What health insurance plan is a mere $20 a month? How many people pay nothing for heating?  The $600 a month for rent or a mortgage payment must have seemed quaint to McDonald’s employees in San Francisco and New York.

But this low-balling of virtually every line item enables McDonald’s to give people the magnificent sum of $800 a month for the line item in bold: Monthly Spending Money. That’s $800, or $27 per day, that the employee can spend every month on him or herself. It’s called disposable income and it’s the lifeblood of consumer culture. Movies, clothes, vacations, gambling, jewelry, HBO, restaurants—all is possible with the $800 a month, at least on a small scale.

Except for three things:

1. That $800 has to cover food.
2. It also has to cover car maintenance and gasoline
3. It also has to cover the difference between the low-ball estimates of the other line items and what they will really cost.

Nowhere does the budget let us know that Monthly Spending Money includes food, gas and car maintenance. Let’s hope that the employees who use this budget don’t buy season’s tickets to the Lakers before they figure out that they also have to pay for food with that $800 a month of spending money they get.

By constructing a budget that assumes a typical employee could live a consumer-driven life, McDonald’s not only asserts the consumer ideology, it also attempts to hide the fact that their jobs make it impossible for employees to live the American dream reflected in the budget.  McDonalds has fooled no one, though, as witnessed by the excoriation it has gotten from the mainstream news media. 

The McDonald’s sample budget for its employees is new evidence that we need to raise the minimum wage and not marginally, but by a lot. After the initial jolt to the economy, a minimum wage of $15 an hour would drive up all wages and lead to more consumer spending.  It would give the McDonald’s workers twice as much money each month, which means they might not have to work a second job, or if they did, they could have some real spending money. Of course that would mean that McDonald’s executives and shareholders would have less money to plow into the stock market or expensive art.

In the Zimmerman case, the judicial system worked, but the law was wrong.

By Marc Jampole

 

No one can see into the mind of George Zimmerman. A lot of the people disappointed in the not guilty verdict in his trial believe that he went out hunting someone, just like Bernard Goetz did in the New York subway system almost 30 years ago. But they’ll never be able to prove it.

In the same way, the district attorney was unable to prove that George Zimmerman committed either murder or manslaughter the night he shot Trayvon Martin. Six honest citizens weighed the evidence and found that there was reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed a crime. Some are saying the judicial system failed in the George Zimmerman case, but they’re wrong. It worked just fine.  Both sides presented their case and the jury deliberated a reasonable length of time. Both the prosecutor and the defense team employed a lot of resources—would that every defendant could have access to such topnotch legal services.  The judicial system worked just fine.

What didn’t work and doesn’t work is the law itself. The extension beyond one’s residence of the right to defend person and property that Florida and many other (mostly Southern) states have made is wrong. It’s wrong because it’s based on another bad law: the one that allows private citizens to carry loaded guns in public.

Racism is not directly the issue in the murder of Trayvon Martin either, although as with most issues in America, racism is part of the backdrop, one of the reasons the issue exists. Gun culture is strongest where racism is strongest—that’s just a simple fact. But I’m not going to state or imply that anyone on the jury was racist.  Unless shown otherwise in vivid detail, I’m going to believe that the jurors put aside their prejudices and rendered a decision to the best of their abilities.

George Zimmerman—now he’s a different story. I could believe that a hate or fear of African-American young men motivated him to pull the trigger.  It might have motivated his desire to become a citizen vigilante. It might have motivated his desire to assert his right to fire under the law, his right to kill another man while still following the law. And it might have motivated him to seek a young black man as his target.

 

None of it would have mattered if the law were different.

From the start, the tragedy of the murder of Trayvon Martin has been about one thing and one thing only—the need of our society to finally stand up to the gun lobby and outlaw possession of loaded guns in public places.

Editorial: Lighten College Costs

Federal student loan interest rates doubled on July 1 because Republicans would not agree to a proposal by Democratic Senate leaders to keep the loan rates at 3.4%. The House, along partisan lines in May, voted to switch the rates on Stafford loans to a market-based system, with the rates recalculated every year, at 2.5 percentage points above the 10-year Treasury bill rate (which closed at 2.58% on July 10). The loan rate would be capped at 8.5%. The White House said that would create uncertainty for families and put them at risk of paying more when market rates go up. President Obama proposes to base student loans on market rates, but would fix the rate for the life of the loan.

Republicans on July 10 filibustered the Senate proposal that would have returned the rate to 3.4%. So the student loan rates will stay at 6.8% for the foreseeable future.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has a much better idea: the government should lend money to university students at the same rate that the Federal Reserve offers the nation’s banks — 0.75%. The federal government should not be making a profit off our college students — as it does under the current rates. The Treasury will make $51 billion in profits off student loans this year, Sen. Warren noted.

More than 38 million Americans are saddled with student loan debt adding up to nearly a trillion dollars. The class of 2013 graduated with an average debt of $35,200 (up from $26,000 in 2012). That accumulation of debt is the result of more than 30 years of Republican efforts to cut the “free ride” for college students.

The federal government took a leading role in developing higher education opportunities when Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted federally controlled land to the states for development of “land-grand colleges.” Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, which provided funding for education to keep American students ahead of their Soviet rivals, particularly in math and science, during the Cold War. It also provided financial assistance for millions of students attending college through the National Defense Student Loan program. In 1965, the Higher Education Act under Lyndon Johnson expanded National Defense loans (later renamed Perkins loans) and introduced Stafford loans, which were guaranteed and subsidized by the government.

Republican leadership ended in 1981, when President Reagan, who had railed against college students whom he felt had it too easy when he was governor of California, signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which cut funding for Pell Grants and excluded middle-class students from the program, limiting the grants to lower-income families. He also cut direct student loans and restricted eligibility for them. He also phased out Social Security survivors’ education benefits, which provided one-fifth of student aid in 1981.

As governor of California from 1967 to 1975, Reagan ended free tuition at state colleges and universities, arguing that if students had to pay for their education, they’d value it too much to skip classes for protest events. He also annually demanded across-the-board cuts in higher education funding, slashed construction funds for state campuses and declared that the state “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.”

Texas was proud of higher education opportunities it offered for students of modest means through the 1970s. When Rick Perry attended Texas A&M in 1970, the state paid 85% of the cost of higher education and a student could get a bachelor’s degree with little or no debt. Tuition and fees for the regular workload of 15 hours was $104 per semester for Texas residents. (That was the equivalent of 65 hours working at the minimum wage of $1.60.) Tuition and fees rose to $2,357 a semester (or 458 hours at the $5.15 minimum wage) by 2002. But a student could still pay tuition and fees by working 20 hours a week, not counting room and board.

After Republicans gained control of the Texas Legislature in 2003, with Perry as governor, the Legislature “deregulated” tuition. Since then the Legislature has cut appropriations for the state’s universities to less than 20% of the cost of higher education. In 2012, the average cost for a semester for a state resident was $7,533, an increase of 55% since deregulation, the Dallas Morning News reported. (That’s the equivalent of 1,039 hours at the minimum wage of $7.25.) The estimated cost of undergraduate education at the University of Texas in 2013, including campus housing, is at least $25,704. (The estimated cost for California residents to attend the University of California, including housing, is $31,700.)

States are spending $2,353 less per student on higher education nationwide in the 2013 fiscal year than they did in 2008, amounting to a 28% cut since the recession hit, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported in March. Eleven states have cut funding more than one-third per student, while two states — Arizona and New Hampshire — have cut their higher education spending per student in half. Texas, despite its relatively healthy economy, cut 22.7%.

Public colleges and universities across the country have increased tuition by an average of $1,850, or 27%, since the 2007-08 school year, after adjusting for inflation, to compensate for declining state funding. In two states — Arizona and California — tuition at four-year schools is up more than 70% in that time.

As costs have shifted from the states to students, sharp increases in tuition have accelerated longer-term trends of reducing college affordability. At the same time, many state universities and community colleges have been forced to cut faculty and staff positions, reduce course offerings and reduce support services.

President Obama and the Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010 expanded funding for Pell Grants and cut fees the government has been paying to private lenders that issue government-backed loans, but after Republicans took control of the House, Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposed further cuts to the Pell Grant program, claiming it costs too much and is “unsustainable.” In 2011, he told a student, “Look, I worked three jobs to pay off my student loans after college. I didn’t get grants, I got loans, and we need to have a system of viable student loans to be able to do this.”

In fact, after the death of his father when he was 16, the skinflint collected Social Security survivors’ benefits, which he put away for college, until age 18. He also worked side jobs in college and during his early years as a Capitol Hill staffer.

In 1950, 5% of American adults had bachelor’s degrees. Today, 31% do and as manufacturing jobs are exported overseas a university education will be increasingly necessary to get into the middle class and stay there. But more than 40% of college freshmen won’t graduate, and high costs are a leading reason.

Most European nations, as well as China, who lagged behind the United States for years in the number of adults with college degrees, recognize the value of higher education and offer free post-secondary education. The College Board in 2010 warned that the growing gap between the US and other countries threaten to undermine economic competitiveness, as the US ranked 12th among 36 developed nations.

State legislatures should step up to restore their share of the cost of higher education and make it affordable to students working no more than 20 hours a week. At the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, that means tuition should be no more than $3,625 a semester (or $7,250 a year).

Congress should adopt Sen. Warren’s proposal to offer student loans at cost. It also should restore Pell Grants for middle-class families and/or increase the minimum wage so that students can attend these high-priced state schools with a part-time job.

After World War II a college degree was attainable for Americans who could make the grade; those graduates helped the postwar economy boom and American productivity was the envy of the rest of the world. Since the Reagan era the pursuit of a college degree has become a struggle for low- and middle-income families. It’s time once again to invest in the future. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2013

---

Populist.com
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

---

Copyright © 2013 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the August 1, 2013 issue

COVER/David Dayen
Bank of America whistle-blower: ‘Told to lie’

EDITORIAL
Lighten college costs

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
GMO maker wins World Food Prize

DISPATCHES
GOP creating new generation of Latino Democrats;
Revocouption in Egypt;
What’s next in Egypt?;
Republicans ready to rumble over Obamacare;
NSA spying imperils US ’net services;
Don’t forget Pacific trade deals;
Lack of water threatens global food supply;
No climate change deniers at front lines of wildfires;
Cruz's dad bribed official to enter US;
Insurers refuse to cover pistol-packing teachers;
Fla. sols inadvertently ban computers, smartphones ...

MARK ANDERSON
Farm bill follies

BOB BURNETT
Texas: America’s dream or nightmare?

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Hypocrisy on the high court

MARK ENGLER
Should we have a ‘maximum wage’?

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Immigrants behind our health

SAM URETSKY
Inflammatory decision at Supreme Court

DON ROLLINS
Ohio welcomes fracking waste

WAYNE O’LEARY
Financial reform and the Democrat

JOHN BUELL
Tech giants and surveillance

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Not all black and white

JIM VAN DER POL
Even on the prairie, our ship is in trouble

HEATHER SEGGEL
Life in a time of revolution

ROB PATTERSON
Burns explores when the system cuts corners

POPULIST PICKS
‘Rectify’; ‘Bletchley Circle’; ‘Codebreakers’

and more ...

Oregon plan to base tuition on future income could end banks’ college loan gravy train

By Marc Jampole

The Oregon state legislature has passed a bill asking a state commission to consider an innovative plan to charge bachelor degree recipients from state schools no tuition or fees, but instead make them pay 3% of their salary for 24 years after finishing school.  It’s called “Pay It Forward,” based on the turn-of-the-century melodrama of that name in which people pay back good deeds done for them by doing good deeds for others. With the current conception of the plan, students would pay .75% of future earnings for each year of college they complete, so that someone receiving an associate degree at a community college would be responsible for 1.5% of future earnings for 24 years.

Someone did the math: the average recipient of a bachelor of arts from an Oregon state university would pay about $39,653 over a lifetime, about $7,000 more than the actual cost of tuition and fees. That’s not bad—my math concludes that it’s a break-even for a student considering a 10-year loan of $32,500 at 4%, the interest on which is the same $7,000.

Of course, that’s average, which is what I love about the proposal. People who don’t make as much money will pay less and those who make a lot of money will pay more. Paying more when you do better makes perfect sense to me—no attorney can be successful without a degree, because no one will use a lawyer who didn’t go to law school. Just as no one will hire a marketing assistant without a degree. Currently, both the marketing assistant and the attorney pay the same to go to a state school. Under the Pay It Forward proposal, the successful corporate attorney will likely pay more than the average, while the successful marketing assistant who never gets promoted will pay less than average.

The Pay It Forward plan thus automatically creates financial aid for students who can’t afford to go to college, and it seems to do it more efficiently and fairly than the current system. Universities could also continue giving academic scholarships to the very most outstanding students—the scholarships could involve not requiring payback of future earnings or payback at a lower rate.

The conceptual drawback to the plan under discussion in Oregon is that it would only cover tuition. Some students would still have to take out loans to cover living expenses. It seems to me that since colleges operate dorms, there is no reason why all college costs can’t be wrapped into Pay It Forward.

Some are already calling the proposal unfair to the very successful person—say the engineer or medical doctor—who is going to pay vastly more money for college than he or she would under the current system. But the current system isn’t working for most people, because most people have to borrow money to go to college. I see nothing wrong with continuing a full tuition system alongside the Pay It Forward. If a wealthy physician wants to send his brilliant girl to the state law school and pay full rate, no muss no fuss—more power to both of them. But the Pay It Forward system involves a social contract between the college and the individual—the school has no idea how financially successful the individual will be in the future. The school is therefore taking both current risk and part of the future risk. In return, it should expect the individual to take a portion of the future risk, especially since that future risk will always be commensurate with the individual’s reward, since the future payment will be based on salary. 

In a way, Pay It Forward concept is a mirror image of the highly successful Social Security program. What will happen under Pay It Forward is that those who went to college will pay for those who are going to college. With Social Security, those who will retire someday pay for those who are currently retired. 

All of this talk of Pay It Forward is pie-in-the-sky, though. Does anyone think that the bank lobby would allow such a plan to pass and be implemented?

The student loan is the ideal investment for a bank, since it is the only type of loan that does not get wiped away in a bankruptcy! Roughly two-thirds of all students need to borrow money to go to college and college debt now averages almost $27,000 per borrower. That’s trillions of dollars in outstanding loans, and growing!

Banks will never go for a plan in which states finance college education and take away such a lucrative source of income.  And if the history of the government bailout of our economy post 2008 is any indicator, the big banks always get what they want.

Insurance companies may become quiet heroes in fight for gun control

By Marc Jampole

 

Frequent readers know that one of my favorite hobby horses is to defend government solutions to social problems against the absurd claims that the free market will solve all problems better than the government.

Most of the facts are in my favor: our wars have become disasters since we started to depend on mercenaries and privately run prisons are a shameful shambles.  Social Security faces a manageable short-term financing problem because the ratio of workers to retirees will fall for a few decades; all that’s required is a quick fix or two. Compare the minor Social Security financing challenge to all the private pension plans that have gone belly up over the past 10 years or to the collective 401K plans of the American public. The public Social Security is on much firmer ground than private retirement solutions, which study after study concludes are severely underfunded.

Having now given one more screed in favor of government solutions, I must admit that the private sector may succeed where government has failed in one instance: in fighting the absurd idea that the way to make our streets safer is for more people to carry guns.

Since the Newtown massacre, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been campaigning to bring firearms into school. As usual, politicians of both parties have lined up to give the NRA what it wants: As the New York Times reported, seven states have recently enacted laws permitting teachers and administrators to carry guns in schools.

But it’s doubtful that any teachers are going to be carrying guns to class in any of the seven states.  The insurance companies won’t let them. For example, the Times reports that the insurance company that covers 90% of all the school districts in Kansas has told its agent to decline coverage to any school district that permits employees to carry concealed handguns. In Oregon, the association that manages liability insurance for virtually all the school districts will charge an extra $2,500 premium per year for every staff member carrying a weapon on the job.

The Times article does mention school districts that permit teachers to carry and have been able to get insurance, but for some odd reason the writer is not able to name any of the insurance companies providing the coverage to these gun-toting districts.

Insurance companies are often at the forefront of increasing safety, because improved safety leads to a decline in accidents, which in turn leads to fewer claims, which then leads to some combination of lower premiums. I have seen a number of businesses of all sizes improve safety protocols and policies at the insistence of the insurance company. When insurance companies walk away from business, it can affect the economy of a region, for example, in a flood zone. And despite the bad rap they get, health insurers have been at the forefront of preventive medicine, because it leads to healthier patients, which again, lowers claims.

The problem that our elected officials have is that they want to believe that wishing makes it so.  Many legislators and their financial backers wish that we could prove a divine hand created us or that global warming is not taking place or that lowering taxes on the wealthy creates jobs. All nonsense! In the same way, these benighted and corrupt legislators join the NRA in wishing that arming America to the teeth will make us a safer land. Lots of studies suggest otherwise.  In fact, most studies demonstrate that the more guns in a population, the more people will be injured or killed by guns.

Insurance companies do a good job of reducing all risk to money, including the risk of death and injury. When the insurance companies raise rates on school districts that permit gun-toting teachers, it’s because they know that they will have to pay out more claims because of death and injury.  They’ve run all the numbers and they know that more guns in a workplace will cost them money. Somebody is going to have to pay—some with higher premiums, some with their lives.

Media's confused on the Casey Guernsey story

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes:

            Happy Fourth of July weekend…or as we like to say on the farm, “Hope none of those glowing ashes from the fireworks from town fall on my super-dry hayfield.”

            Not that we don’t have fireworks of our own, of course, but we don’t count those as dangerous.

            Just before the weekend began, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a couple of bills that the Republican General Assembly passed in a fit of hubris at the end of the session. Each included that ridiculous and irresponsible promise to foreign corporations to sell Missouri land to them. This insertion, sponsored by Representative Casey Guernsey, would have given China the right to buy all the land owned by industrial ag in Missouri. China has its eye on Smithfield, a corporation that was allowed to buy land in the northwest part of the state despite laws against corporate ownership of land. Back in the 1970s, see, the General Assembly worried that losing our land meant the end of free enterprise and property rights. Today, Casey Guernsey doesn’t understand that.  

The media has run ever so many stories accusing the governor of vetoing “agriculture bills.” “Nixon vetoes two agricultural bills,” say the headlines, as if these bills would have helped farmers. But, in truth, these bills (SB 9 and SB 342) had sections that Guernsey snuck in at the end of session when there was no chance for farmers to think about or comment on them.

The media also frets that Shanghui International Holdings, China’s leading pork producer, will abandon their offer to buy Smithfield in a $7.1 billion deal. Like the sale, which would put more CAFOs on our land, sucking up our water and polluting our air, would be a positive for the state!

The GA has a veto override session in September, and we can be sure Smithfield is distributing dollars around the heartland, so we’ll see where the Casey Guernsey story leads us next.

That’s it for today! July 5, 2013.

National atheist association shouldn’t resort to cheap rhetorical tricks

By Marc Jampole

The full-page ad by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in the July 4th edition of many national news media, including The New York Times (where I saw it) does a great job of reminding us that our founding fathers were not religious men; and that to the extent that they did have religious beliefs, they tended towards deism, which rejects revelation and faith as the essence of religion in favor of reason and empiricism. 

With so many right-wing politicians falsely claiming that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, Franklin and the others were devoted bible-thumping Christians, it’s good to see what they actually said in print. The FFRF ad demonstrates that, in fact, the founding parents questioned the existence of god, disdained organized religion and believed neither in miracles nor in the truth of the Bible.  FFRF chose an auspicious day—July 4th, a favourite time for wrapping the American flag tightly around the Bible. 

The headline of the ad says it all, “Celebrate Our Godless Constitution.”

The call to action in virtually all issues advertising is to send viewers to the website. Here FFRF disappoints by telling us an extended fib in its mission statement:

The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.  In modern times the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, for abolition of capital punishment, for women's right to vote, for death with dignity for the terminally ill, and for the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers just as they were the first to call for an end to slavery.”

What? Most social and moral progress brought about by atheists?

Was Gandhi free of religion? Was Martin Luther King free of religion? St. Thomas Aquinas? The Quakers in the abolition movement? Erasmus? Epictetus?

Believe me, I’m no fan of organized religion, which has been used to inflict a lot of harm on people and countries.  But that does not mean that people with religious beliefs have not made major contributions to ending slavery, having a secular government, giving women and minorities the vote, curtailing discrimination, enfranchising LGBTs and all the other steps we humans have made towards moral and ethical perfection.

Both atheists and the religious have contributed to our moral progress, and in implying otherwise, FFRF overplays its hand.

The second and more disturbing overplay is to use the term “free-thinking” in opposition to “religious.” FFRF wants us to be free-thinking, by which they imply that only people free of religion can be “free-thinking.”

But free thinking refers to a mode of thinking that atheists, agnostics and the religious can all have. To my mind, the free thinker can see into the minds of others; take the point of view of others; look for new ways to solve a problem when old ways aren’t working; appreciate new music, cuisine and other entertainments; and have opinions that continually evolve as opposed to being set in stone at the age of 21.

A free-thinker often thinks situationally, as do the many Catholics who condone abortion if a woman is raped or if it’s a 13-year-old girl with mental disabilities.

While it may be more likely for a religious person to have a rigid thought process, I have known more than a few atheists who have been such rigid thinkers that they could not see the value that ritual plays in organizing the lives of people simply because rituals usually reflect a religious context. 

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud the efforts of FFRF to make sure that our government spends no money promoting any religion. But while protecting the separation between church and state, FFRF does not have resort to distorting the role of atheists or the religious in pursuing social change.

Instead, FFRF should tell us what it does best.  The website features an impressive list of accomplishments in defending the public and public spaces from the intrusion of religion. Listed among FFRF wins are:

• Winning the first federal case challenging “faith-based funding” of a pervasively sectarian social agency
• Winning the first court order to a U.S. Cabinet revoking federal funds to a pervasively sectarian agency
• Halting federal funds to a bible school offering no academic classes
• Ending “parish nursing” faith/health entanglements at two state universities
• Halting a government chaplaincy to minister to state workers
• Winning a legal challenge ending 51 years of illegal bible instruction in Rhea County (Dayton, Tennessee) public schools
• Winning a federal court decision overturning a law declaring Good Friday a state holiday
• Barring direct subsidy to religious schools, in a federal lawsuit upheld by an appeals court
• Declaring unconstitutional the creation of a state post to “assist clergy” to save marriages
• Stopping public financing of an annual nativity pageant at a state capitol
• Ending commencement prayers at a Top Ten University
• Halting religious postal cancellations

Note that in all these cases, the organization did not promote atheism or agnosticism, but rather defended all of us against those who would use public funds and public venues to proselytize their beliefs.  It promoted free-thinking by removing the official stamp of approval from one type of thought.

Our best move in Egypt is to back no one until there is a stable government

By Marc Jampole

It’s hard to know what to wish for in Egypt.

Morsi and the Muslim brotherhood have reneged on their promises to steer the country towards a middle course in social matters, such as women’s rights. What’s worse, the economy is a mess. On the other hand, Morsi is the legally elected head of state, thanks mostly to the fracturing of the large secular humanist population into several parties in national elections.  

No one wants a military takeover—and yet, if the military pushed Morsi out, installed a technocratic government of the Egyptian meritocracy headed by the highly competent and apparently honest Mohamed ElBaradei, wouldn’t that give Egypt some stability? Couldn’t the land of pyramids then engage in Democracy 2.0, another chance to get it right?  Hasn’t a similar process of military-induced governmental reset taken place in Turkey and a few South American countries?

National Public Radio intimated this morning that the new generation of Egyptian generals is not blood-thirsty, suggesting that if the military took over, there would not be a lot violence. It sounds like the kind of wishful speculation in which the American major media love to engage when it comes to foreign countries. Through the years, the major media has been ready to swallow “the light at the end of the tunnel,” “the people will rise up in democracy” and “the war will be over in a few months.” We heard that last claim about both the Civil War and Afghanistan…and it’s what the British generals told King George. 

Violence can come from many sources. Thus, even if the Egyptian military managed to enforce constraint, that leaves a small but blood thirsty fragment of extreme right-wing Islamists who could inflict a lot of damage with a few bombs.

One group we all should admire are the protesters. Imagine, they are risking their lives to gather and make their voices heard. They are sick and tired of the economy floundering, sick and tired of bread lines and gas lines, sick and tired of unemployment and underemployment, sick and tired of government corruption and corporate-government cronyism.

Sounds just like the Occupy Movement protesters on Wall Street and all over the world. While I would be delighted to have the protesters play a major role in the Egyptian government, it is therefore highly unlikely that our leaders agree with me. The history of American statecraft is to prefer to do business with authoritarian governments—they’re stable, they’re hard to vote out of office and their leaders tend to want to enrich their own pockets, making them open to business deals with large American corporations.  Whatever they say, be it Bush or Obama, our leaders care more about Egyptian cotton and Egyptian markets than they do about Egyptian civil liberties and Egyptian democracy.

The United States and Egypt have been economically entwined for decades. Whoever ends up leading Egypt will quickly see the folly of trying to change that.  To protect the economic interests of its large corporations, the U.S. government will be inclined to deal with any Egyptian government.  Even if Egypt took a wide swing to the right as Iran did, there is just too much money on the table not to come to some sort of an agreement.

That is, unless either the United States or the Egyptian government does something real stupid. 

We can’t control extremists of any stripe, but we can control our own actions. That’s why the best thing the United States can do right now is to stay completely out of Egyptian affairs. And when things settle down, let’s make sure that whichever faction ends up on top—military authoritarians, secular humanist democrats or Islamists—understands the very minimum in civil rights, environmental regulation and workplace safety that we demand from our trading partners.

Food sovereignty vs. GMO crops

Interestingly, the World Food Prize, which will  honor Monsanto scientists that developed GMO crops, isn’t getting much buzz in the media, while the discovery of GMO wheat in Oregon, which points out the dangers to our food system, is. Both involve Monsanto, but maybe the media is catching on and not giving the seed corrupters the positive attention they crave.  There’s even a little comic strip following the GMO wheat story. In one strip, a wheat plant is sobbing out its sad story to a field of other wheat plants. He says he doesn’t know where he came from, who his parents are, and the other wheat plants are sobbing along with him.

Meanwhile, a few organizations are following the Food Sovereignty Alliance, a group that gives out an alternative food prize to draw attention to the problems our food system is causing. Last week, WhyHunger and Food First issued a joint statement that says, “Honoring executives of biotechnology giants Monsanto and Syngenta with this year's World Food Prize sends precisely the wrong message about sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.”

Their press release continues: The World Food Prize has disregarded well-documented evidence from the United Nations and other sources that small-scale diversified farming is the most effective way to end hunger, the Alliance. Reliance on genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture creates crippling debt for farmers, produces herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds,’ and keeps control of our food system in the hands of large corporations.

Last year, the Food Sovereignty Alliance honored a group of women peasants from Korea who are keeping the traditional seeds and recipes alive in food for their children in schools. Next month, the alliance will announce their winners for 2013. This group, a bunch of faith organizations and farm organizations, network with labor groups and other social justice thinkers. They say:

Unlike the World Food Prize, which promotes increased industrial food production through technologies such as genetically engineered seeds, the Food Sovereignty Prize champions proven solutions to hunger that empower those most impacted by the injustices of the global food system. While the World Food Prize recognizes individuals, the grassroots organizations honored by the Food Sovereignty Prize are led by their members, and most organizations count over 20,000 families as members and leaders.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) has also released a statement: "GMO crops have led to the loss of food security worldwide and for small farmers, they have led to the development of factory farms and have destroyed biodiversity in food we do produce and consume," said David Goodner, a community organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, an environmental and human rights activist group that opposes corporate farming. "The World Food Prize by selecting these people to honor shows that it cares more about corporate profits than it cares about truly feeding the world with healthy food."

You can learn more at: http://foodsovereigntyprize.org/ and http://usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org/

Why do our elected officials want Americans to starve?

By Marc Jampole

 

As the lead story of the latest issue of The Progressive Populist by Jill Richardson reminded us this week, the House of Representatives wants to cut $2.0 billion out of the annual food stamp budget.  A bill in the Senate would limit the cut in the food stamp program to $400 million. Either set of cuts will result in some combination of fewer people receiving food stamps and those receiving food stamps getting less.  Let’s make no bones about it, people will go hungry.

 

In a recent article circulating the Internet, someone named Michael Lombardi puts two well-known numbers together to demonstrate the enormity of the problem of food insecurity in the United States: the number of Americans on food stamps (47.7 million) and the number of people living in Spain (46.2 million).  Guess what? More people get food stamps in the United States than live in the entire country of Spain.

We have a country’s worth of people so poor that they need government funds to buy food. 

Despite what race-baiting right-wingers like Rick Santorum say, the large number of people on food stamps does not reflect on the weak moral fiber of Americans or some special group of Americans. Believe me, very few if any of the nearly 48 million U.S. citizens on food stamps want to be on food stamps. Food stamp recipients must earn less than 130% of the federal poverty line, which in 2013 computes to a little over $30,500 a year for a family of four and less than $15,000 a year for an individual.  But there’s another catch. To qualify for food stamps you pretty much must have no savings, since even $100 in liquid assets (bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and ETFs) will disqualify you, no matter how little you make.

Do you know anyone who wants to live at the poverty level with no savings?  I don’t and I never have, even during the hippy-dippy-trippy days of the 1970s.

I know people who have lost their jobs or are chronically underemployed. I know people who don’t have the skills to get a decent-paying job and I know people with skills that have grown obsolete. I know people who were never trained how to write a resume or cover letter in school and people who have trouble reading because of a disability.

I know people who have been emotionally crushed by fighting one or more of our dirty wars or who have had the energy drained out of them by extreme and persistent poverty. I know people who overextended themselves in debt because of illness in the family. I know people who bought into the American ideology of consumption and didn’t save enough money and then lost their jobs. 

I know people who lost their jobs when the CEO screwed up and then walked away with a golden parachute.

I know a lot of children in poor families, who face food insecurity through no fault of their own, merely because they were born into a poor family or one that fell from the grace of a middle class life.

All of these people—the children and the adults, those in poverty through no fault of their own and those who “got what they deserved”—all have something in common besides their impoverished conditions.

They are all human beings. They don’t deserve to go hungry in a land of plenty.

So why do so many of our elected officials want to starve their fellow Americans?

If we want to cut the food stamp budget, we should create more jobs through major public projects such as improving mass transit, retrofitting buildings to make them greener and safer, and repairing bridges, highways and dams. We should make sure the jobs are well-paying by substantially raising the minimum wage and fostering increased unionization of the workforce. We need to invest in our schools.

Starving people to cut the budget is inhumane and not worthy of a representative democracy.

The farm bill goes down, but local foods march on!

For the last week, I've been in internet purgatory. After a great art event at the farm, enjoying the solstice and the jumbo moon, amazing, and making my best picture ever, even Barb said it looked like a chicken, I left my computer in the sun. Don't ever do that. It ended up fried, unresponsive, dead. Even the experts haven't been able to get the information off the hard drive. Ah, well. Now I have an even greater appreciation for my local community. What if the internet goes down everywhere? Well, if it's summer, we'll get by. If it's winter, well, better have some summer food in the cupboard. Or learn how to hunt. A couple of new books on local foods emphasize the importance of hunting and fishing. In my neighborhood, where hunting is a common activity, we are shocked by the number of city folks in the woods with guns that shoot rat-a-tat-tat, maybe 15 shots at a time. Nobody who really knows how to shoot needs 15 shots to bring down a deer. Or a coyote, turkey, dove or even squirrel, rabbit...well, you get the picture. We're not much for gun control around here, but then comes the news from the college campus. One of our favorite basketball players, a cutie with a big grin named Tony, shot dead in Memphis on his summer break. I went to the memorial service in search of answers but nobody could talk about it yet. That's what heartbreak does to you, leaves you speechless. that's enough for today. June 27, 2013.

Bad Supreme Court decision in voting rights case won’t make difference in real world

By Marc Jampole

The best analogy I can find to characterize the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to strike down part of the Voting Rights Act is to imagine a patient with high cholesterol, probably because of poor nutrition. The doctor gives the patient a cholesterol-lowering drug and the cholesterol goes down to a safer level. The doctor concludes that the patient is cured and makes the patient stop taking the pills. We all know what’s going to happen next.

“The patient is cured” states the essence of the argument of the five right-wing justices who decided that nine states no longer need to get approval from the federal government before making changes to voting procedures.

But don’t the many recent attempts to limit voters’ rights in these nine plus many other states prove that the disease has not been cured?  These voting restrictions always seem to affect minorities, the poor and the young more than other groups. Keep in mind that many if not most of these new restrictions on voting were blocked by the feds, overturned by courts or repudiated by their sponsors after the election.  The Latin phrase, res ipsa loquitur—a thing that proves itself—seems to apply to recent Republican attempts to prevent people from voting. We just know those good old boys are still eating bacon and fried foods slathered in gravy, yet the good doctors of law at the Supreme Court took them off their Lipitor.

But at the end of the day, this decision is going to mean little. Whatever the decision would have been, Republicans will keep introducing legislation to make it more difficult to register to vote and to vote. And when those laws pass the many Republican controlled state legislatures, civil rights groups, Democrats and organizations representing minorities will continue to take them to court. Most but not all of the laws restricting voting rights will be overturned. The controversy will continue to energize voters on both sides—but that will help the Democrats, since theirs are the voting groups targeted by Republican efforts.

Yes, registering to vote and voting will become harder in many locations. But voters will become hardier and more assertive as they react with anger to attempts to limit their rights.  Groups will continue to do a better job of registering voters and escorting them to the polls on both sides, but there are more potential voters for the Democrats.  The Republicans are playing a losing hand.

Charter schools continue to underperform public schools.

By Marc Jampole

 

The New York Times headline this morning should have read “Charter Schools Continue to Underperform Public Schools.” Instead the Times headline writer went with “Charter Schools Are Improving, a Study Says.”

Both are true, but the first is truer because it isn’t taken out of context. Someone could infer from “Charter Schools are Improving…”  that they were better than public schools, particularly since many falsely believe that already, either because they have swallowed the “free market is always better” Kool-Aid  or because they have read so much derogatory right-wing nonsense about public schools and teachers’ union.

Here are the facts: “The National Charter School Study” by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) is the gold standard for comparing the performance of charter schools and public schools.  CREDO released its original study four years ago and released an updated version yesterday. In both studies, neighborhood public schools win over charter schools hands down. 

But charter schools are improving—from very bad to mediocre: In 2009, 37% of charter schools performed worse than the neighborhood public school and only 17% did better. Now 31% do worse than the neighborhood school while 29% do better.  As the Times underscores, charter schools range in quality from state to state: doing better in New York, Michigan and Louisiana, and worse in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Texas, among other states.

What’s so fascinating to me is that the New York Times would have a misleading headline to a story that was on the whole fairly balanced. The lead sentence, for example, stated that charter schools did poorly in the 2009 study and that the 2013 update merely showed that “in a few states, charter schools are improving in some areas.” When the headline clashes with the story content, it is often a sign that the editorial opinion of ownership or the editorial board favors the view expressed in the headline.

The continued mediocre performance of charter schools is not surprising. The business model for the charter school dooms it to failure. While parents may people a board of directors of a charter school, the school typically hires a for-profit company (or a for-profit parading as a non–profit) to run the school. Charter schools pay teachers less money than public schools do, primarily because charters are typically non-unionized. While some of the money saved by paying teachers less may or may not finance more equipment, new books or more teachers, we know that a good part of it is going to higher executive salaries and company profit. Now teachers are like attorneys, accountants, engineers and other professionals. While the highest paid may not be the very best, in general the best get paid the most. So with the best teachers taking the public school jobs, charter schools are left with the least experienced and the less competent.

Let’s face it: The sole purpose of the charter school movement is to destroy teachers’ unions and thereby lower the wage rate of all Americans. It’s part of the 30+ year campaign to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.  This political agenda, shared by virtually all Republicans and many Democrats,  has four main tenets:

1. Lower taxes on the wealthy.
2. Reduce government spending on social welfare programs for the poor and near-poor.
3. Privatize traditional government services, leading to profit-making opportunities for the wealthy
4. Destroy unions.

There are many things wrong with the American education system. But charter schools don’t really solve any of them. The charter school movement is a failed experiment.

Let’s pull the plug. Let’s ask our elected representatives to outlaw and dismantle charter schools and instead increase aid to education that will put more teachers in the classroom, reduce the size of classes, give students everywhere access to the Internet and computers, extend gifted programs to lower grades and level the playing field between schools in rich and poor neighborhoods.

First, Jeffrey Smith. Then, Monsanto.

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: On Wednesday night, Farm and Fiddle (KOPN 89.5 fm, Columbia MO) had a great interview with Jeffrey Smith of the Center for Responsible Technology. He’s the guy that took the information on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our food and put them into consumer language. The first piece I got from him, a CD called, “You’re eating What??”, blew me away with the way he took the complicated issue and broke it down. I had been overwhelmed with information—from my points of view as a farmer seeing the neighborhood change, a mom wondering what kind of food system my kids would inherit, and a consumer myself—what’s this doing to my own body? This CD put it all in simple terms that I could use. He let us copy “You’re Eating What?” and pass it out to our friends and family. And now Jeffrey has come up with more projects—books, videos, a speaking tour and a speaker’s bureau. Yay, him! So, as I said, we had this great interview where he answered questions from “Isn’t the government making tests and looking out for us?” (Answer: No.) to “What is a GMO?” (Answer: a living organism with the gene from another living organism inserted. For example, a gene from a bacteria that eats the cells of corn rootworms) to “What’s wrong with eating GMOs?” (Answer: the gene that eats rootworms also eats us! Why would we want to put that in our bodies?) I was feeling really good about the interview and when I got home, I got a phone call from a good friend. Figuring she wanted to congratulate me on the excellent radio program, I tried to sound humble. But that’s not why she called. Her news? Monsanto has won the World Food Prize. Three scientists will split $250,000 for figuring out how to insert foreign genes into crops, creating GMOs. What a crock. When you mention the name, “Monsanto,” in my world, people have a range of about 3 reactions, none of them, “Well, they deserve a prize!” Instead, people say, “They’re the number one cause for suicides in farmers in India” or “After ruining a crop, they sue farmers for gene pollution” or, just, “I hate those guys.” I’ve never met a person that says, “Monsanto? They should get a prize!”

Who’s next to tell truth after org. admits it can’t turn gays straight? Global warming deniers? Creationists?

By Marc Jampole

An organization that for almost 40 years has tried to turn gays into heterosexuals with prayer and psychotherapy announced earlier this week that it is disbanding because its executives and many board members no longer believe that sexual orientation can be changed.  I suppose Exodus International and its leadership started paying more attention to facts and less attention to what they wanted the facts to be.

It’s another step forward for the gay rights movement because there is one less organization around telling people that homosexuality is abnormal or an illness. That’s a good thing, to be sure.

When I read the story, though, the first thing I did was to look into the clear summer sky for flying pigs.

Then I began to speculate about the other myths and lies that drive our national dialogue on political issues.  Could we be seeing the beginning of the secular humanist equivalent of The Rapture, one characterized by people either realizing or admitting the truth? Could I hope beyond hope that Exodus International’s disbanding is the first in a long series of similar announcements?

What will be next?

Will the Discovery Institute admit that intelligent design is folderol and repurpose the organization to support research that fills in the blanks in the scientifically proven theory of evolution?

Will the Koch Brothers and other climate change deniers suddenly make a public mea culpa about the tens of millions of dollars they have spent trying to convince the public that global warming is not occurring? Will they start supporting the environmental regulations and development of alternative energy sources that we need to address the rapid rise in Earth’s temperature?

Will the Catholic Church finally catch up to the 98% of its adherents who have used birth control and declare that it’s not a sin against the religion?

Will Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich shamefacedly cop to using racist code words when he talks against food stamps and aid to dependent children?

Will the House Republicans stop telling the lie that we have to lower taxes on the wealthy so they can create jobs and admit that the best way to create jobs is through government programs?

Will these Republicans look at the damage wrought by private prisons, mercenaries (in the army) and charter schools and finally acknowledge that sometimes a government solution is better than having the private sector do it? Will they admit that taxes have been too low on the wealthy for more than 30 years and that this low tax regime is what has caused virtually all of our economic problems?

Will right-wing economists finally admit that environmental regulations don’t hurt the economy, merely the industries they are trying to protect, and that raising air and water standards will create just about as many jobs as it will threaten?

Will those bankrolling the charter school movement finally just tell us the truth that the only reason they are in favor of charter schools is that they want to destroy teachers’ unions and thereby bring down teacher salaries?

Will gun manufacturers and their lobby finally admit that all statistics show that more guns in the street lead to more gun deaths and that far more people are killed and injured each year from friendly fire than from people using guns to protect themselves?

In short, will we finally base our public discourse on truth and science, and not on myths perpetuated to benefit one industry or one group of people?

I close my eyes and I see hundreds of pigs flying in a V formation. Dancing around them are aurochs and unicorns. Blind men and women are throwing away their canes. Lambs and lions are in bed together watching the Chicago Cubs play the Seattle Mariners in the World Series.

But when I open my eyes again, the sky is clear and my computer screen is filled with another politician hooting about how high taxes are.  The Rapture for Truth has not yet arrived.

It’s not just the federal government that wants to spy on us

By Marc Jampole

 

The Obama Administration is rightfully taking a lot of hits for government surveillance programs that track data related to every phone call of every U.S. citizen and for demanding data that the computers of Google, Apple and other information technology companies collect from everyone.

Now we’re learning that the government isn’t the only one that wants to spy on us.  

Big telecommunications companies have developed technology that embeds infrared cameras and microphones into cable boxes and digital video recorders (DVR). They want to put these devices in the homes of people, turn the cameras and microphones on, have computers watch and listen, and then broadcast TV commercials targeted to the activities and conversations that viewers have while they watch TV.  If a family is eating Mexican food in front of a baseball game, they suddenly might see the most interesting man in the world quaffing a Dos Equis.  If the viewers are talking about going to a movie, a TV ad for the latest James Bond flick might suddenly appear. Unless, of course, it’s pre-teen girls, in which case the ad could be for the latest Disney princess movie.

Last year Verizon filed a patent application for a monitoring system that would determine what commercials to broadcast viewers based on their behavior when watching the boob tube.  Verizon boasted in its patent documents that the system could even detect moods. The patent office rejected the patent application, but all that means is that if Verizon started installing it on its equipment, other telecommunication companies could copy the system without paying Verizon any royalties. Verizon could still implement the technology.

Verizon isn’t the only big data company that wants its eyes and ears to become part of your family.  Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 for yet another consumer surveillance system.

The worst case scenario for this invasion of privacy is if a couple gets turned on by an on-screen kiss and begins to undress each other with the TV still on. Will an ad for condoms come up? Or maybe one from an anti-choice group? Will the video of your love-making be available to the National Security Administration?

To prevent this obnoxious corporate spying on our private lives, Representatives Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) introduced the “We Are Watching You Act of 2013” in Congress last week. If passed, the law would allow consumers to opt out of monitoring altogether at any time. If a viewer allowed monitoring, the company would have to clearly display “We are watching you” on the TV screen.  Already an industry expert at the influential consulting firm Gartner is complaining that the “We are watching you” legend would take up too much space on the smaller screens of laptops, tablets and smart phones.

While I applaud Capuano and Jones for wanting to protect consumers, wouldn’t it be safer for our freedom if these systems were just outlawed?  We all know that companies virtually always make opt-in, opt-out protocols as confusing as possible. For example, my bank recently sent me a brochure telling me about opt-out options that would prevent it from using or selling my data. The brochure came with the regular bank statement, folded to look like one of those bill-stuffer ads that many of us throw out without looking (which is what my significant other did and then had to fish out of the trash when I told her what it was). The bank asked depositors to complete and mail a form to opt-out of some information sharing and to make a phone call to opt-out of a different set of information sharing. The way the information was presented on the page made it very easy for people to think that you could either phone or mail in a form and that you didn’t need to do both. Of course, there was no return postage for the opt-out form. 

Corporate America is selling us a lot of stuff right now, even with the old-fashioned method of analyzing the demographics of the audiences of TV shows.  I don’t think they need any more help in this area. Forget the opt. Just make it illegal.

Rep Doug LaMalfa Sticks It To Taxpayers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Here’s an article that should piss anyone off: “A Rice Gets a Price Premium: Farm-Bill Subsidy Sets High Floor for a Type Grown by Lawmaker Who Pushed It.” As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a 4th-generation Japonica rice grower, has put a federal subsidy for himself into the farm bill. If you’re not familiar with Japonica, it’s not a rice we eat much in this country. Most of it is exported, at a low price, disrupting markets in Asia. Our cheap rice comes into their cities, undercuts their subsistence farmers. The rural kids, with no prospects for the future, leave home for the cities and the land goes bare. Next step: Big Ag moves in with big tractors, big combines, big gas hogs and hey presto we’ve exported the same bad system we have here. And, back at home, never mind that Japonica (also known as sticky rice) yields more per acre and sells for more on the market, LaMalfa wants a guarantee that if the price goes below a certain level he’ll get a taxpayer-financed bonus. The name has changed—not a direct payment—but the game has stayed the same. Taxpayer payments will keep these guys in business. This creep’s farm has received “almost $4.7 million in farm subsidies since 1995,” says the Journal, including nearly $1.2 million in direct payments.” Guess they can’t get by without the handouts. At the same time, they’re cutting food assistance to poor people and ensuring that schools feed inferior, fatty meats and canned veggies to school kids. That’s in the House version of the bill. The Senate version simply promises guarantees for rice, cotton and peanuts.

Kudos to Senators Begich, Merkley, Boxer and Sanders!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Nice work, Senators! Four of you have introduced amendments to the Farm Bill that would rein in some of the outrageous benefits that big ag has been enjoying. The amendments are: - Senator Begich's (D-Alaska) amendment # 934 would ban the sale of genetically engineered salmon until Federal wildlife agencies give their OK. -Senator Merkley’s (D-Oregon) amendment #978 will repeal the "Monsanto Protection Act" provision in the 2013 government spending bill. That “Act” eliminated judicial oversight of genetically engineered crops. - Senator Boxer’s (D-California) Sense of the Senate amendment # 1025 supports mandatory GMO labeling.. Her amendment 1026 asks that FDA and USDA study the 64 countries around the world that already require GMO labeling. -Senator Sanders’ (I-Vermont) amendment supporting the existing rights of states to enact their own laws requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods. Already this year 26 states have introduced labeling laws with the possibility of passage in a number of states. THANK YOU for thinking of family farmers AND consumers!

The Supreme Court Speaks Against Gene Patenting

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I may be mistaken, but it looks like the U.S. Supreme Court has finally looked at some precedents and laws other than the ones Monsanto has so carefully placed in their venue. Monsanto, you might remember, has been paving the way to complete ownership of all plant genes on the planet. They’ve been stocking their vaults with unusual beans, grains, vegetables of all kinds, and working through the gene pools, patenting as fast as they can. At the same time, they’ve been working up case law that proves they have the right to claim patents on these genes and that farmers who grow the plants on their own are breaking the laws. But last Thursday the Supreme Court unanimously decided that human genes cannot be patented! This is huge! For starters, it means you, dear reader, have some rights to your own body and its miracles. If you are stricken with some disease and your body figures out how to fight it, you have the right to claim that cure even if some college researcher captures a little of your dna, isolates it and develops a vaccine that imitates what your body did. We have to hope that this precedent leads to some more decisions that reverse the outrages of the past. Gene descriptions have become easy to create, thanks to new gene-reading machines. But gene descriptions are not the same as gene inventions and it’s time the Supreme Court and our lawmakers accepted that fact. As Judge Clarence Thomas wrote, “separating a gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.” And the other justices, bless them, agreed!