Tom Vilsak Monsanto Shill Another In Long Line Bad Obama Appointments

I know we are all in the glow of the Obama victory, but it has to be said: His cabinet picks have been HORRIBLE. I don't mean Hillary Clinton or Eric Holder. I do believe that on the issues that are his priority he is picking experienced people who will carry out his will. To have smart people around you who disagree with you is an important thing. But where his picks are most important are in the places he won't really be engaged or where he doesn't really have the background to get into the weeds of the policy his appointees will be carrying out. It is in those appointments that we who want this country to truly transform to actually CHANGE that we should be very very concerned. Take for example appointing Tom Vilsak to Agriculture. There as an opportunity to appoint a smart capable secretary who has small farmers and smart agriculture policies at heart. Instead we got a shill for the corporate farms and the most evil company in the world Monsanto. Small Farmers put together a list at Food Democracy Now: 1. Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture. 2. Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE. 3. Sarah Vogel, former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, attorney, Bismarck, ND. 4. Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY. 5. Mark Ritchie, current Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. 6. Neil Hamilton, attorney, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, IA. Instead we got this guy: * 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. OBAMA I WANT CHANGE... you won't get it with this guy... we can do better... RSS