Oregon GMO Labeling: This Time It's Personal

It amazes me how an editorial board - who happen to be in the information business - can actually fit such a huge foot in their mouth (Congress likely to settle GMO food labeling dispute, Oregonian 7/21).

Food labeling provide essential information about the contents, including nutritional value, which in the U.S. are reflected as percentages of vitamins and minerals of whole ingredients and/or percentages of daily supplements.

The set of nutritional tables we presently read on the back of our food products were produced during World War II era, which is to say that our tables are based on eighty year old science. Don't look for GMO reference on Wikipedia - some of the most reputable sources contain misinformation.

Genetically Modified Foods contain only a small fraction of nutrients, suffering severe deficiencies while producing chemicals that scientists decided can help ward off pests and disease. Not only are these food products devoid of any real nutritional content, they also taste terrible. For instance, corn that taste like Styrofoam is actually very close to that: plant cellulose, low on nutritional content, high in frankenstein-like plant-produced chemicals.

Now GMO labeling requirements are the last battlefront food producers face because it would eventually lead to revised nutritional tables, pointing out wide discrepancies in GMO value versus unmodified, organically grown food.

The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, pending House legislation introduced by Mike Pompeo (R) KS and G.K. Butterfield (D) NC. is exactly the opposite of what it sounds like: it would prohibit states from mandating labels for genetically engineered foods.

The Oregonian editorial board suggestively supports this bill. This is casting a blind eye to valuable future information, much like forgetting how to file a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request.

Editorial boards are not tasked with investigative journalism, but considering the influence they wield through readership, the opinions expressed should at the very least be based on responsible journalism.

Sticking It To Congress: Saving The Post Office With Marijuana

In 2006, a republican-dominant congress passed a bill that G.W. Bush would sign into law, requiring The United States Postal Service provide health care, retiree benefits and pensions to it's 600,000 work force. At the time the USPS was running "in the red", a mere 2 million annually.

But the package congress wrote mandated a program - pre Obamacare - that pushed them not 2 million a year in the red - but 2.2 billion a year.  In fact, one might wonder if the 109th congress actually signed the bill in red ink.

Clearly, when Congress "hamstrung" the United States Postal Service with a annual $2 billion 'financial obligation', the ultimate demise of our traditional mail system was their intention.

As deputy postmaster general Ronald Stroman points out (Some Postal Pains 8/21 Oregonian), "the Postal Service is looking for ways to extract new sources of revenue from it's national delivery system".

It may seem like an unlikely alliance, but Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who is a proponent of allowing the Postal Service to deliver beer and wine, could instead lobby the Obama Administration to allow the USPS to deliver medicinal marijuana in all 21 states including the District.

If Obama were really concerned with all of the issues legal marijuana has spawned, he would not focus his attention solely on dispensary banking, but to also include protections for the people who we have been changing the law to accommodate: the consumer, the patient, the client.

It is the client that is left holding the bag when it comes to transporting legal marijuana in the U.S. If marijuana is in the vehicle and alcohol is present on the driver's breath, nearly every single state have laws that categorize these conditions as an open-shut D.U.I. conviction. Transporting marijuana - as a medicine - is not safe anywhere.

By permitting marijuana USPS delivery service, such exclusively generated revenue could conceivably propel the Postal Service into a manageable portfolio - and quite possibly defy congressional condemnation.