XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: democrat.donor@cbs.com   
      
   Even if they are not the hippest foodies, most people who buy   
   hamburger for a late summer cookout want to know the source of   
   their ground beef. If not the specific farm or state or even   
   region, whether the meat is American-raised or has traveled   
   across the globe from who knows where matters to a lot of   
   Americans. That insistence on our right to know about our food   
   is why federal law requires that meat be labeled with the   
   country of origin. Or it used to do that.   
      
   In Washington, a corporate lobby called the American Meat   
   Institute filed a federal lawsuit in support of an effort by   
   foreign countries and international lobbyists to block our right-   
   to-know law. The corporate lobby claims that the “country of   
   origin” rule violates the corporations’ First Amendment “right   
   to refrain from speaking at all.”   
      
   Undaunted by rejection in a federal court in Washington, the   
   global meat lobby is weighing an appeal. But that is not all it   
   is doing. With millions of dollars in lobbying and political   
   spending, the meat industry pressured more than 100 members of   
   Congress on July to ask the secretary of agriculture in a letter   
   dated July 30, 2014 to drop the country-of-origin law “if the   
   WTO finds” the rule to be objectionable.   
      
   Days later, reports began circulating, including in the Wall   
   Street Journal, that the WTO – the World Trade Organization –   
   indeed has decided that the American law violates global trade   
   rules. So even though the right-to-know law was upheld in court   
   – so far – lobbyists opened up a loophole to shut down the   
   country-of-origin meat-labeling rule.   
      
   The ongoing battle by global corporations for a new mandate that   
   you must blindly eat whatever mystery meat shows up on the   
   grocery shelf is only the latest step in the rapidly shrinking   
   right of Americans to decide what information we want about our   
   food, and our eroding freedom to enact laws we think are best.   
      
   The pervasive American wish not to be guinea pigs or blind   
   “consumers,” rather than citizens, explains the insistent demand   
   for a right to know if our food contains genetically modified   
   organisms (GMOs).   
      
   In 2012 and 2013, Monsanto and other global corporations spent   
   $67 million to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California and   
   the state of Washington. Even so, more ballot initiatives now   
   are proposed, and Vermont defied threats of litigation to enact   
   a GMO labeling law earlier this year.   
      
   With sad predictability, litigation promptly followed.   
      
   Do we still have the right to know whether genetically modified   
   organisms are in our food? Do we still have the freedom to   
   decide for ourselves what we want to feed our families or what   
   kind of agriculture we wish to support? Not according to   
   Monsanto and the global corporations backing the lawsuit against   
   Vermont.   
      
   A corporate lobby called the Grocery Manufacturers Association   
   has filed a complaint in federal court. It uses the exact   
   language of the industrial meat lobby: The corporations demand a   
   constitutional “right to refrain from speaking at all.” While   
   the lawsuit is in its early stages, a similar corporate   
   litigation tactic in the late 1990s snuffed out an early effort   
   of Vermont’s citizens to enact GMO labeling laws. A federal   
   court ruled then that a “constitutional right not to speak” for   
   corporations trumps citizens’ rights to the facts.   
      
   In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme   
   Court famously created a new right for corporations to spend   
   unlimited money in elections.   
      
   In Hobby Lobby Inc. v. Burrell, the Court expanded this new   
   theory of constitutional rights for corporations. Now   
   corporations have religion, and the “freedom of religion” of a   
   business corporation such as Hobby Lobby Inc. requires the   
   override of the rights of its 13,000 employees.   
      
   In both cases, the 5-4 decisions used radically new theories of   
   rights for corporations to empower the powerful, while   
   disregarding the voices, freedom and rights of the many.   
      
   This brave new world of corporate rights means not only secret   
   food, but also secret money in elections and mandatory   
   observance of your employer’s religion.   
      
   Since Citizens United, federal courts have struck down updated   
   cigarette warnings in a lawsuit by tobacco corporations claiming   
   a constitutional “right not to speak.”   
      
   Corporations successfully attacked a law that the employee   
   notices common in most workplaces include the right of employees   
   to discuss workplace conditions and decide whether to organize.   
      
   The Supreme Court used the “corporate free speech” theory to   
   strike down state prescription drug privacy and health care cost   
   laws.   
      
   Wall Street rating agency corporations assert that the   
   Constitution blocks any accountability for bogus ratings that   
   contributed to the financial collapse in 2008, because the false   
   ratings were mere “opinions,” protected by the new corporate   
   speech rights under the First Amendment.   
      
   And so it goes, as relentless streams of corporate lawyers and   
   activist judges create ever more imaginative theories of   
   corporate constitutional rights.   
      
   Or so it goes, until the growing constitutional amendment effort   
   and work in the courts to overturn the Court’s folly succeed.   
      
   And they will succeed. The only thing more relentless than   
   corporate money paying corporate lawyers to create corporate   
   rights is the centuries-long demand for liberty and our own,   
   very human, rights.   
      
   Jeff Clements is co-founder and board chair of Free Speech For   
   People. He is author of the book, "Corporations Are Not People:   
   Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money and Global Corporations."   
      
   http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/29/what-in-your-summer-   
   burger-why-your-government-doesnt-want-to-know/   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)