Calhoun Chronicles: Who’s Minding the Store?

Calhoun Chronicles

For thousands of years, farmers have saved seed from each crop to be plant the next spring. They have also sold seed to their neighbors.
This is now illegal.
Farmers are now jailed and or sued for doing this!

Farmers no longer have any real choices as to what they plant. The banks tell them what they want the farmer to do, and he does it, if he wants to stay in business.

The giant seed companies are being bought up by the mega chemical companies. These companies are genetically modifying the seeds and putting a patent on these modifications. If a farmer uses or sells seed, he is infringing on a patent. Also, some seeds are genetically modified to be sterile and would not produce a crop even if planted.

The altered seeds require chemical products from the parent company to thrive, and the parent company is involved with some of the processing of the crops.
Thus, the company owns the seed, owns the chemicals that the seed is modified to require, and has interest in the processing.
There are only a handful of companies that will control every aspect.
All of the old school varieties of plants are becoming extinct. Farmers have no choice as to who to buy from and at what price, or what chemicals to use. The consumer will have no choice as to what variety is put on their table and no choice as to where the product originates, or if it is modified.

Found this over at Dean's World. File this under "Think On These Things".

GOP lawmakers block intelligence overhaul

CNN.com

This must be the bill that I brought up below - why CNN doesn't feel the necessity of naming the bill or at least providing the bill's identifying number is beyond me.

So now I'm wondering what's going on, and in Washington, how can you be sure? First, the news breaks that a clause was slipped in to ease financial disclosure laws on every executive branch official. Now the Republicans are divided over immigration policies and are holding up the bill, while Bush is grandstanding them to pass it.

What it appears to be now: the bill isn't going to pass this year, and people are casting around trying to pin the political fallout on somebody else. The financial disclosure measure could have been bait for the Democrats (not many bit, and those that did made the reason for their opposition clear). Now Sensenbrenner's severe restrictions on legal and illegal immigrants getting driver's licenses are making him the whipping boy.

The real issue in this debate is the power of the new director of national intelligence, particularly budgetary power. The less budgetary power, the more the new post will be a figurehead. Three guesses as to what Bush's first position on this bill was.

The bill would have forced the Pentagon, which controls an estimated 80 percent of the government's $40 billion annual intelligence budget, to cede much of its authority on intelligence issues to the new national intelligence director.

"What you are seeing is the forces in favor of the status quo protecting their turf, whether it is Congress or in the bureaucracy," said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who was the chief Senate author of the failed compromise bill, in what amounted to a slap at her Republican counterparts in the House.

New York Times (link later)

By hook or by crook, this bill died. Without somebody knuckling under, the issue will be passed to the next Congress, who must begin the whole process over. Meanwhile, the Pentagon still has its money, Bush is pinning it on Sensenbrenner, and the problems identified by the 9/11 Committee still hobble our intelligence community.

This is what you elected, America.

Slip-Happy Republicans: Abortion in Spending Bill

NYTimes.com

Republicans have slipped an anti-abortion clause into an omnibus spending bill that would bar federal, state, and local governments from blocking funding to health care providers who refuse to accomodate or support women who seek out a legal procedure. Women all over this country will be denied their right to a safe and legal abortion because of this measure. The smart investor will grab all the stock in wire hanger factories he can find - that is, if millionaire televangelists haven't snatched it up already.

This is a common tactic of politicians, by the way: attaching a controversial measure to a bill that has little or no connection to its import. It's shameful when Democrats do it, and it's shameful when Republicans do it (unless they can meet in secret and get those rules changed, too). So Slip-Happy Republicans will become a running feature around here. Somebody else can document the Democratic abuses.

Senator Boxer will be doing what she can to stop this part of the bill from becoming law. Go tell her thanks.

GOP Uses 9/11 Bill To Neuter Financial Disclosure Laws

LATimes.com

Welcome to Bush 2.0, where a bill named for the 9/11 attacks and intended to improve the intelligence processes in this country is being used to gut financial disclosure laws, not just for top level intelligence officials, but for all executive branch officials.

Tucked within the House's 497-page version of the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" is a provision to repeal the requirement that senior-level officials report their personal financial assets valued at more than $2.5 million. It also would end the practice of disclosing the dates of stock transactions.

The mask has truly slipped. What can I say, my fellow Americans?

You asked for it.

Enjoy your picture show.

Mother Upset Over Cross-Dressing Day

campusreportonline.net

I remember back in Demopolis, AL, we had a yearly event where the girls would play football and the football players dressed as cheerleaders. It was just goofy and fun.

It didn't last the whole day, though. And apparently the school principal had promised last year that it wouldn't happen again.

But the kids weren't being required to dress as the opposite sex. And they could bring a canned good for charity if they weren't going to cross dress. So the point is: there seems to be some cause for disappointment with the school, but some other people need to get a grip. Didn't any of these people see Tootsie?