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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 3/4/16

Why Is Our Government Working for the Private Good Over the Public Good?

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Thom Hartmann
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That's a real possibility, because our government has stopped working for the public good, and now it works mostly to line the coffers of multibillion dollar corporations.

Thanks to the court rulings in Citizens United, Buckley v. Valeo and Santa Clara County v. the Southern Pacific Railroad, Monsanto is technically a person, and the money that Monsanto spends to put their shills in Congress is technically "free speech."

But these corporations apparently aren't happy with being seen as merely being equal to living, breathing human beings under the law.

No, they also use their incredible financial resources to go to court to make sure that certain laws just don't apply to them.

Right now, Monsanto is suing the state of California to make sure that consumers in California don't know that Roundup is probably cancerous.

Under a California law that was passed by ballot initiative back in 1986, it is illegal for businesses to knowingly expose any individual to a chemical known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity without first giving a clear and reasonable warning, and the discharge of such chemicals into a source of drinking water is prohibited.

Just makes sense right? Companies should tell consumers when they're being exposed to dangerous chemicals, and those chemicals should be kept out of people's drinking water.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer found in 2015 that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is "probably carcinogenic."

So this should be an open and shut case.

Monsanto produces a chemical that's recognized as cancerous, and the law says that they have to label products that contain cancerous chemicals.

But Monsanto is suing, saying that it's unconstitutional for a state agency to use findings from any international organization.

And that's just flat-out insane, because WHO research and the international exchange of public health data is critical to answering questions like "is this chemical linked to cancer?"

The fact is that these corporations don't really care about public health, they care about their bottom line.

They figure that it's cheaper to sue the state of California than to potentially lose out on sales by telling people about the fact that chemicals like those in Roundup can cause cancer.

And that's the same reason why Monsanto pays to get Monsanto-friendly politicians into Congress.

Buying elections might be expensive, but owning lawmakers who can write loopholes is cheaper than paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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