Change We Can Believe In: Obama Chooses Monsanto Creature, Tom Vilsack, for Secretary of Agriculture

December 18th, 2008

The fever dream reality of the Obama hive mind goes something like this:

Obama is just pretending to be evil so that he can get into power, but then the Hope and Change, etc. will flow.

—The Cognitive Mechanism Behind Political Fundamentalism… And Probably Lots of Other Fundamentalisms

We have just lost cabin pressure, and I don’t mean on the Monsanto corporate jet that Tom Vilsack uses.

What’s next? Obama Re-Animates Josef Mengele for Health and Human Services?

Via: Organic Consumers Association:

Six Reasons Why Obama Appointing Monsanto’s Buddy, Former Iowa Governor Vilsack, for USDA Head Would be a Terrible Idea

OCA, November 12, 2008

* Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s support of genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops, especially pharmaceutical corn:

http://www.gene.ch/genet/2002/Oct/msg00057.html
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/drugsincorn102302.cfm

* The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.

http://www.bio.org/news/pressreleases/newsitem.asp?id=200…

* When Vilsack created the Iowa Values Fund, his first poster child of economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning dairy cows.

* Vilsack was the origin of the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, which many people here in Iowa fought because it took away local government’s possibility of ever having a regulation on seeds- where GE would be grown, having GE-free buffers, banning pharma corn locally, etc. Representative Sandy Greiner, the Republican sponsor of the bill, bragged on the House Floor that Vilsack put her up to it right after his state of the state address.

* Vilsack has a glowing reputation as being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto. Sustainable ag advocated across the country were spreading the word of Vilsack’s history as he was attempting to appeal to voters in his presidential bid. An activist from the west coast even made this youtube animation about Vilsack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmoc4Qgcm4s

The airplane in this animation is a referral to the controversy that Vilsack often traveled in Monsanto’s jet.

*Vilsack is an ardent support of corn and soy based biofuels, which use as much or more fossil energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor.

http://cryptogon.com/?p=5739