In response to the 3/15/18 cover story by George Kimberly, “Farmers, Enviros Sue EPA Over Monsanto’s Disastrous Dicamba Pesticide,” why are corporate criminals like Monsanto, creator of Agent Orange, and other polluters who poison the planet and the people — who seem to have very little say in the matter — allowed to profit across generations and are sometimes even subsidized by the government, i.e. taxpayers? Doesn’t this expose the lie behind the government claim to care about our health and well-being that justifies the “War on Drugs”?
The Drug Enforcement Administration and all other law enforcement spend billions of taxpayer dollars to stop people from buying drugs on the black market, which is something everyone involved does voluntarily. Despite demonization and harsh legal consequences, producers, distributors and consumers of black market products continue to do so. This has tremendous societal costs, which are borne by all of us, because “they” are “you,” or someone you know and love.
Maybe we’d be better off putting those Drug War resources into stopping merchants of death like Monsanto. Everyone and everything exposed to their products is irreparably damaged, and even a successful lawsuit does nothing to change that fact. They need to be stopped before they are allowed to profit off their poison. We should be filling the prisons with truly bad actors like them instead of trying to stop people from exercising their free will, which will never work.
If we really cared about people’s health and welfare, the choice would be clear. And “We the People” are still responsible for making that choice.
Mark Ivan, Calexico, Calif.
Didn’t Trump just get played (again) in Asia? During Kim Jong Un’s unexpected trip to China, he was reported to have offered to surrender his nuclear weapon capability to China; he already has a planned meeting with South Korea. I suspect that if Trump has the nerve to take the meeting with North Korea, he will be handed a list of demands from a united Asia.
After observing our decades-long interference and the hell we have visited in South East Asia, the people in Asia, who know us better than Trump does, will have come to the conclusion that they will not tolerate our starting wars in their territory. South Korea, having come to an agreement of mutual defense with North Korea, will not see any upside to any further American military presence in their territory. This will leave the other allied countries, like Japan, in the predicament of standing up to a united Asian front, or continuing to support American interference in Asian affairs.
I suspect that South Korea and Japan will find themselves between a rock and a hard place just about now, but the nuclear threat Trump poses will have to be taken into account along with economic consideration. Either way, our relationship with Asia is in grave peril.
I believe that President Blusterbutt just elbowed us out of other Asia’s business and weakened our strategic position in the world. It probably didn’t help that he also tried to play tough guy with smart, savvy capitalists like the leaders in China. If Russia and other former communist countries unite, it’s big trouble for the West. If we had experienced diplomats in place in Asia, I suspect that this debacle would have been put off for a while. In addition, Trump does not have a nodding acquaintance with the sense of honor and the strong antipathy to corruption which is at least minimally a foundation of the Asian ethos. Asian leaders have observed that he is not to be trusted. There was a time in Asian history when a man would be expected to kill himself if he acted dishonorably. What an evil clown Trump must appear to be in Asia. So, yea?
P. Ann White, Meridian, Texas
Climate change is the last great tragedy for mankind and life on Earth: something that almost every educated person is aware of, but politically almost nothing is being done to resolve. This is particularly true in the USA where our president and one of the major political parties is in denial of a scientifically verified fact – the world is rapidly warming because of human activity!
However, there is more to the story. Behavioral scientists have known for 60 years of Calhoun’s rat overpopulation-overcrowding experiments. Unbeknownst to many people, rats. like humans. have social hierarchies and complex relationships. In short, Calhoun provided rats all the food and water they needed, but in limited space. As population densities increased social structures broke down (he called it a behavioral sink) and in some experiments the population went to zero even though food and water were available.
Thus, it is possible that overpopulation may kill us even before climate change kills us. Even if human social structures do not break down, there remains the relationship between global population and carbon dioxide. They are tightly linked to each other and both are increasing in parallel. One way or the other it is a great tragedy because we know of it and are doing nothing.
On a positive note; if human social structures break down before carbon dioxide kills us, then at least other of God’s living organisms have a chance of survival, even if human consciousness ends.
James M. Krueger, Spokane, Wash.
There is another long range issue that needs to be on the table in relation to Universal Basic Income. Humanity desperately needs to get its population growth under control. Where population growth is decreasing this has largely to do with the fact that the information-based economic system no longer favors family life – maximum exploitation of economic opportunity favors high-level mobility, low-level loyalty, commitment and remaining unencumbered by non-work related responsibilities. These are the exact opposite of what create healthy families, but have had the positive side effect of reversing population growth trends.
A strong policy of UBI might well erase that positive side effect, especially if it applied to all people in a family and not just the working-age adults. Can we have a robust policy of UBI that also discourages population growth? I don’t have a particular policy for which to advocate, but this needs serious discussion and I haven’t heard it yet at all from UBI advocates.
Daniel Liechty, Normal, Ill.
We have all been ecstatic to hear so many new progressives running. It shows that Trump has enlivened those who had been taking our democracy for granted.
But now we are experiencing the downside: having several progressives in a given race ends up dividing the progressive vote, thus giving the machine candidate a wide-open door to victory. We saw this in the Illinois 17th district for state rep, where the progressives split way over 10,000 votes, opening the door for the machine candidate to win with only 7,800.
It shouldn’t happen — and there is a simple solution: Conduct a poll; the one with the highest numbers stays in the race, the other progressives bow out.
Lee Knohl, Evanston, Ill.
Assault weapons and large-bullet-capacity magazines were illegal in this country for 10 years (1994-2004). During that time murders with those weapons declined.
Studies show that trained police officers do the wrong thing in an emotional gun situation 55% of the time. Yet extreme idiots think the solution to school shootings is to give everyone a concealed gun! What percentage of lightly-trained teachers might accidentally shoot a student? Probably more than 55%, since armed protection is not their primary job. What if a student overpowers the teacher and takes her/his gun? Suppose the teacher has locked the gun for safekeeping, then how would he/she get hold of it in time to prevent an armed intruder from killing? Gun fanatics ignore these questions.
The solution is to limit access to guns, to require frequent background checks and test-based licensing, and to require a valid gun license to purchase bullets.
Our safety and the safety of our school children will not change overnight. It will improve gradually over a decade or more. Criminals will probably continue to have guns for quite a while also. But the shooters who killed school children throughout our country were not criminals, they were unhappy loners who snapped and had way-too-easy access to high efficiency murder machines.
Bruce Joffe, Piedmont, Calif.
As an aging octogenarian, staunch feminist married to the same woman for 60-plus years, father of a beautiful, intelligent and accomplished daughter; as well as two granddaughters with similar attributes, I am somewhat befuddled as to why, with the many injustices and disparities that exist throughout the entire world, within just about every segment of our societies’ governance and oversight, where the effects of predominant male voices and votes and the continuance of power and control that exists worldwide that must be challenged and changed in order to attain that Egalitarian Society we were promised but yet to attain.
After 72 years of absolute dominance in all “final decision making,” our suffragettes determined, collaborated and DEMANDED CHANGE They didn’t “pussy foot around,” they DEMANDED that their VOICES AND VOTES be a part of the decision-making process that effected their lives and futures that our all male Founders denied them at our inception (1776).
In light of our present plutocratic governance and authoritarian-type leaders expanding in numbers throughout the globe, it has now become more urgent and essential for women to learn from our suffragettes’ historical precedent in DEMANDING an injustice be corrected.
That is exactly where “we” are (2018) at this evolutional time in history when the dominant male decisional testosteroneal levels are becoming an increasing threat to humanity and civilizations throughout the world.
The time is here and NOW for women to DEMAND PARITY in the governance (50% male, 50% female) of our entire nation (local, state, and federal) in all tax-funded and supported entities of governing immediately, before it is too late in salvaging humanity.
Frank C. Rohrig, Milford, Conn.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2018
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