8/11/10
Washington, D.C., is a hotbed of political lobbyists whose primary goal is to sway politicians to do their bidding. Multinational biotechnology giant Monsanto is one such lobbyist with a Political Action Committee (PAC) that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to buy off candidates to support its agenda. And in the most recent U.S. election cycle, most of the company's funded candidates won their races.
According to a recent report from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), ten of the 15 Congressmen that Monsanto helped fund won their seats, including Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Monsanto even gave money to a number of candidates that were either retiring or not up for reelection, most likely as a "thank you" for previous political favors.
Based
on information contained in disclosure reports, Monsanto spent over $470,000
on the overall mid-term election cycle, with just under $128,000 going to
Congressional Democrats and over $121,000 going to Congressional Republicans.
To see if your Congressmen accepted money from Monsanto, check out the OpenSecrets
Monsanto contributions page:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2010&cmte=C00042069
Monsanto darling Bill Northey, who was just reelected as Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture, also has a history of financial ties with Monsanto. Northey, a Republican with a strong allegiance towards biotechnology, unsustainable industrial agriculture, and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), beat out Francis Thicke, a Democrat who operates an organic dairy farm and believes in bringing local, sustainable, family-scale farming back to Iowa and the U.S.
NaturalNews
recently covered a story on Francis Thicke that provides some interesting
background into the importance of the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture race,
as well as a link to a free E-book written by Thicke about sustainable agriculture:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030206_Francis_Thicke_Iowa.html
According to a recent report in the Iowa Independent, former Iowa Democratic Party and Polk County chairman Jerry Crawford, announced his support for Northey just a few days before the election, which may have helped sway voters against supporting Thicke. Crawford has strong ties to both U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, as well as Monsanto.
So no
matter what side of the aisle a politician is on, if he or she can be purchased
and controlled by Monsanto, then the money starts flowing. To help combat
this corrupt practice, OCA has put together a petition to send to your elected
officials demanding that they "Say NO to Monsanto's Dirty Money".
You can access that petition here:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25335
by Ethan A. Huff
Sources for this story include:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_21936.cfm
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2010&cmte=C00042069
http://www.naturalnews.com/030325_Monsanto_election.html
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