DARK Act Money Drop!

Today activists from Occupy Monsanto and the Organic Consumers Association did an epic money drop in the Senate gallery to highlight the fact that so many Senators have been funded by the biotechnology industry. Unfortunately, the Senate voted to continue debate on the DARK Act. These activists will be in court on August 4.

Roll Call: Protesters Shower Dollar Bills on Senate
Common Dreams: Activists Throw Money on Senators Voting on GMO Labeling Bill (Video)
The Hill: Group drops $2,000 on Senate floor to protest GMO bill
Mother Jones: Congress Just Passed a Bill to Nix GMO Labeling
RT: Money tossed on Senate floor as Vermont’s Sanders and Leahy protest federal GMO bill
Washington Examiner: Protesters litter Senate floor with cash during GMO vote

Natural News: Whole Foods caught in GMO marketing deception, false advertising – here’s the proof:

(NaturalNews) A bombshell investigative video just released by Infowars.com has exposed what can only be called false and misleading advertising by Whole Foods. It all began when InfoWars reporters Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton visited Whole Foods last week to try to find out what customers thought about Whole Foods stores selling so many unlabeled genetically modified foods. That fact was recently admitted by Whole Foods in its own blog post.

As you can see in the video, some customers were shocked to discover that Whole Foods sells GMOs in their store. The majority of Whole Foods customers, it turned out, had no idea the company was selling GMO.
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KPLR St. Louis, Missouri: Jacology – Some Folks Really Hate Monsanto

ST. LOUIS, MO (KPLR) – Millions of people worldwide hate St. Louis’s own Monsanto. I don’t mean dislike, I don’t mean disagree with, I mean hate. To activists worldwide Monsanto is somewhere between Al Qaeda and Satan himself in the pantheon of evil.

The reason is that Monsanto is the world’s leading purveyor of GMO’S. That stands for genetically modified organisims. The folks at Monsanto say their genetic engineering and gene splicing has produced corn and wheat and rice and vegetables that are resistant to drought and disease and insects. They say that will help feed tens of millions of starving people worldwide whose food supplies are held hostage to bad weather, insects and poor soil.

But Monsanto’s opponents say Monsanto is bad for two reasons: One, health & two, money.

They say the main thing Monsanto’s genetic modification is working on is to make crops resistant to damage from pesticides like Monsanto’s own Roundup. They say that leads to more pesticide spraying. They also say some genetically-altered foods like soybeans produce previously unknown allergic reactuiions in humans.

As to the money. Monsanto and other companies patent the crops they modify. So farmers can’t use those seeds without paying a fee. This leads, they say, to a genetic monopoly. Especially since the vast majority of both corn and wheat now grown in the United States is genetically modified.

Today protestors have been marching on Monsanto here in St. Louis and worldwide. In California voters will soon decide whether all genetically modified crops should be labeled. Monsanto, ironically, says geneticvally modified foods are completely safe, but they’ve spent over four million dollars so far in California to stop those foods from being labeled.

I’m Charles Jaco and that’s Jacology.

Source: KPLR St. Louis, Missouri

Why Senator Bernie Sanders’ GMO Labeling Amendment to the Farm Bill Failed: Monsanto’s GMO Money

Last week corporate cash killed Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) GMO Labeling amendment to the Senate Farm Bill (S. 3240). The Genetic Crime Unit of Occupy Monsanto decided to cross-reference the Amendment’s vote tally with the last 10 years of Monsanto’s PAC contributions to U.S. Senators.

It’s not surprising that of the 73 Senators who voted against (‘Nay’) the amendment, 37 Senators, or over 50%, received a combined total of $237,500 in campaign contributions from Monsanto’s PAC. Only 2 Senators, Senator Inouye from Hawaii & Senator Leahy from Vermont, who received a combined total of $8,000 from Monsanto’s PAC, voted in support (‘Yea’) of the GMO labeling amendment.

Monsanto’s GMO Money is rampant in the halls of Congress and the corporation’s patented genes are becoming a biohazard to the health of American democracy. With nearly half of American U.S. Senators becoming genetically mutated, we must take action to remove Monsanto’s GMO Money from the currency supply. Do you have plans for the third week of September? Yea.

Note: These figures are only from Monsanto’s PAC. Congress receives millions of dollars from the biotech industry as a whole, undoubtedly influencing their vote against the people’s right to know if they are eating GMOs.

Monsanto’s Lobbying Expenses 2002-2012

Throwing around a few grand here & few grand there to buy off politicians is really nickels & dimes compared to the vast amount of money Monsanto has spent lobbying Congress.

Over the last 10 years Monsanto has spent over $52 million dollars making sure they get the most favorable legislation possible. Of that $52 million, nearly $11 million was paid to outside lobbying firms (listed below) to lobby on behalf of Monsanto, while the rest of the total (over $40 million) was spent on Monsanto’s staff lobbyists.

The results? More pesticides, more GMOs, and more of why we will Occupy Monsanto this fall!

Source: Center for Responsive Politics (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)
Note #1: When compiling this list it was shown that many of the lobbying firms no longer exist because many of the lobbyists merged their firms together. When a firm was found to have merged with another, the dirty money Monsanto paid them was added together in the table above.
Note #2: In 2000 Monsanto merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn and was later spun off into the “New Monsanto.” However, the data for 2002 includes Pharmacia as Monsanto’s parent company and show that there was lobbying money spent on the pharmaceutical industry. For the table above, only the lobbying money spent on Agricultural Services & Products was included.

Monsanto’s PAC Contributions to Members of Congress 2002-2012

When you’ve got billions of dollars in your coffers, you can afford to pay off political candidates & members of Congress. The tables below from the Center for Responsive Politics show donations to U.S. politicians from Monsanto’s Political Action Committee known as Monsanto Citizenship Fund between 2002 and the first quarter of 2012. If your Senator or Representative is on this list, contact them and say that you don’t support Monsanto’s efforts to genetically contaminate the world’s food supply. Combine the totals below with the $50 million dollars Monsanto spent on lobbying and it’s easy to see why Monsanto deserves to be occupied this fall.

Source: Center for Responsive Politics (2012, 2010, 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002)