california prop discussion

[WhistlinDave]

I'm not philosophically opposed to the death penalty if there was a way to ensure 100% that an innocent man will never be executed, but in practice it's terrible in California. People might as well be in prison for life, as long as it takes to execute them. I think more death row inmates in California die of old age than from actually being executed! And they get seemingly endless appeals if they're sentenced to death, which costs the state a lot more than the next guy who's serving a life sentence. It's like having the worst of both worlds. I think just for purposes of being slightly more practical, I'm voting yes on 34.

 

[Zack]

No, we are accusing the current FDA guidelines of being misleading, the companies are simply required to follow their guidelines and regulations.

I was just responding to someone else who I believe suggested that most food makers and sellers in the country were guilty of fraud. As for the FDA, I feel like your description could apply to just about everything they do. That's kind of what they're there for, so I guess they continue to do an excellent job.

I don't feel like a single person has really answered my questions about what it is they want, as far as the general civic principles behind labelling laws are concerned. Maybe that alone should be considered informative.

 

[tsai3904]

Still though, the only intention and function of this proposition is to cripple the political power of unions, while leaving big corporations untouched. It seems like a bad idea to me. Unions are, after all, groups of individuals, and at least their political maneuverings usually are intended to benefit those individuals in some way, whereas corporations' political contributions rarely have the best interest of individual citizens in mind. So I am not going to vote to limit one while the other is still free to run rampant.

I agree with you 100% that the intention and function of the prop is to cripple the power of the unions. That does not mean it's not worth voting for though.

You say that you don't want to vote to limit one while the other is free to run rampant. The way I see things now is that unions are free to run rampant while corporations are limited. Public unions take money from people who are forced to join their union because they want a govt job. They then use that money to benefit their political interests. What prop 32 does is level the playing field between unions and corporations by giving union members a choice in how they want their money spent. If union members want to support their union's political interests, they can give money to their union's political fund in the same manner as everyone else does, through voluntary means such as a credit card, PayPal, etc.

The fact that people think prop 32 will cripple unions means that people are assuming union members do not want to support their union's political fund. Why is that? Why can't people assume that the unions will raise more for their political funds after prop 32 passes? I'm guessing it will cripple unions because once people are given a choice how to spend their money, some will choose not to support the union they were forced to join.

By the sound of things, you don't seem to like the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United. Am I right?

 

[GunnyFreedom]

I was just responding to someone else who I believe suggested that most food makers and sellers in the country were guilty of fraud. As for the FDA, I feel like your description could apply to just about everything they do. That's kind of what they're there for, so I guess they continue to do an excellent job.

I don't feel like a single person has really answered my questions about what it is they want, as far as the general civic principles behind labelling laws are concerned. Maybe that alone should be considered informative.

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Perhaps that may be why you haven't gotten a satisfactory answer.

All I want from GMO regs (bearing in mind that such regs are only Constitutional at the State level not the Federal) is to allow people who conscientiously object to consuming GMO to have a clear choice to avoid them. That's it. That's all. The obvious and logical route would be to make it possible for companies to certify GMO-free without being bankrupted by Monsanto et al in frivolous lawsuits. The problem with the obvious and logical route is that Monsanto et al owns the regulators, the judges, the legislators, and the congressmen, so until we fix that problem, litigation immunity is just a placebo, therefore labeling requirements for GMO products becomes the only remaining path available. I would MUCH prefer to be able to sunset any labeling requirements upon release of the Monsanto death-grip, but that sunset trigger is fairly impossible to legislate.

 

[Zack]

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Perhaps that may be why you haven't gotten a satisfactory answer.

All I want from GMO regs (bearing in mind that such regs are only Constitutional at the State level not the Federal) is to allow people who conscientiously object to consuming GMO to have a clear choice to avoid them. That's it. That's all. The obvious and logical route would be to make it possible for companies to certify GMO-free without being bankrupted by Monsanto et al in frivolous lawsuits. The problem with the obvious and logical route is that Monsanto et al owns the regulators, the judges, the legislators, and the congressmen, so until we fix that problem, litigation immunity is just a placebo, therefore labeling requirements for GMO products becomes the only remaining path available. I would MUCH prefer to be able to sunset any labeling requirements upon release of the Monsanto death-grip, but that sunset trigger is fairly impossible to legislate.

I don't have any idea where your confusion could come from about my questions, so you'll have to explain what you don't understand about my questions in more detail. The only question I got answered was about whether or not food sellers are all guilty of fraud because they don't label foods as having GMOs. I believe I got 2 yes's and a no. None of the questions are rhetorical. I'll paste them here for your convenience:

I do have a question for anyone that supports food labelling laws, or no, let's make it about GMOs in particular to keep it simple. Do you think Coca-Cola and Monsanto and all these guys are guilty of fraud? If so, what exactly would it have taken, as far as labelling is concerned, to make them NOT be guilty of fraud? What if Coke just put a parenthetical in the ingredients? Like this: INGREDIENTS: CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP (GENETICALLY MODIFIED), CARAMEL COLOR. Would that have been enough for you? What exactly is the fundamental basis of what you want, and does it absolutely have to involve hostile bureaucracies?

In response to the Yes's to fraud, I asked:

If they are really criminals, do you think the feds close up every food company and restaurant in the country tomorrow, gangbusters style, and quadruple the population size of our prisons overnight? Can you give me an example of what a theoretical, oh let's say a small candy maker, could have been doing to make them not be criminals? What would their packages of candy have to say? Their food is essentially already toxic because sugar is. the fact that it's GMO sugar, well, I doubt even the biggest consipracy theorist would suggest that adds much toxicity by percentage, into the mix. So what could they have been doing to be a good company instead of criminals? Is the ingredients example I gave above enough to keep them out of government cages?

Then:

What do you want? Not what do you want to happen to Kraft or Pepsi or Monsanto, but on general principle, what do you want the state to do to people on your behalf, and what would it have taken through peaceful self-regulation to have made the states' armed incursion unnecessary?

So the biggest question is that I'm asking what people want the regulations to force the labeling to say, and in what way. And on principle, because I think we can all argee that it's unwise to depend on sunset provisions, even if you could legislate them, so a law has to reflect what you want the guys with guns to enforce in perpetuity. So what should it say? Just give me the simple bullet points of the regs. For example, when I hear people say they want to know what's in their food, I just think of the tiny ingredients list on the back label that nobody reads, so is that cool with you? It has usually been enough for things with a great deal of likely toxicity. Your not bound to anything on prop 37. You can have things be your perfect way, so go crazy. By all means, include laws regarding marketing and advertising if you think labels aren't sufficient. Should there be cozy exemptions for restaurants or the like?

So, anybody? I'm giving you an army of armed men with mustaches and shiny badges to do your bidding, at least in the specific fields of labeling laws and related marketing/advertising laws.

 

[ClydeCoulter]

@Zach, you know exactly what they want. They want to eat healthy and by their choice. Instead they feel like guinnea pigs at the disposal of Monsanto. They want to know, to the best that they are able, that they are feeding their children with food that is not going to decrease their lifetime or make them dependent on drugs and painkillers in the future. They want the best for themselves and their children, to the extent possible for them.
It's not a trick desire, nor is it perverted. They want others to stop being assholes, especially when it concerns them and theirs.
Will this prop do it? Nope.

 

[Zack]

@Zach, you know exactly what they want. They want to eat healthy and by their choice.

Well yeah, everybody wants that, which is why it would have been a waste of my time to ask such a question. People also don't want their flights to be hijacked, but again the question is what do you want governments to do (or in my way of thinking, STOP doing) to your fellow countrymen on your behalf, in order to make matters better?

By saying "you know what they want" it makes it sound like I'm speechifying and asking rhetorical questions, or maybe setting people up for something else, when I'm sincerely curious about how far people want to go, and have asked technical questions. Nobody seems to want to put their name to any specific government actions, but they still want there to BE government actions, as long as they somehow might hurt companies like Monsanto. A lot of what Monsanto does, and in partnership with various governments, is so outlandishly villianous that it really sounds like stuff out of a James Bond movie or comic book. I don't argue that for a second, but again, that's not what I'm asking about either, because it's already known.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

I don't have any idea where your confusion could come from about my questions, so you'll have to explain what you don't understand about my questions in more detail. The only question I got answered was about whether or not food sellers are all guilty of fraud because they don't label foods as having GMOs. I believe I got 2 yes's and a no. None of the questions are rhetorical. I'll paste them here for your convenience:

Is it fraud to NOT label GMO's? LOL no, fraud is deliberate misrepresentation, and generally has a positive requirement. Fraud only comes into play for failures to disclose when disclosures are cited as a positive requirement (ie many states have positive disclosure requirements that disclosure failures do constitute fraud.) Therefore, failure to disclose GMO ingredients would only become fraud if there were a positive requirement (GMO labeling law) that mandated it.

In response to the Yes's to fraud, I asked:

First, any GMO labeling laws are only Constitutional at the State level. The US Constitution does not grant the Federal Government authority over any food labeling, period, much less mandatory GMO labeling. So any Federal involvement is wrong from the start, so to begin with the premises of the question are in error.

The methodology of GMO labeling would be up to the individual states would it not? Your example would certainly satisfy me. You could even have a tiny little symbol somewhere that only the non-GMO people understand if that is too much for some people. I really don't care, and I don't think most non-GMO people care either, they just want to have the ability to avoid eating GMO food against their will.

But another broken premise is the argument on whether or not GMO is really poison. It doesn't matter whether you do or do not think that GMO's are poison, a LOT of people do think they are poison, and government regulators are actively assisting Monsanto et al in denying those people their own right to conscience to avoid GMO if they so choose.

If someone is denied their right to avoid the consumption of something that THEY PERSONALLY believe is poison by government-driven shenanigans, then that constitutes a denial of their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and if GMO's are eventually discovered to be harmful in reality then an argument can be made on a denial of life also.

But it doesn't matter if they are actually poisonous in reality. People believe they are poisonous and want to avoid them. Government has basically been leveraged by corporatist backers like Monsanto to make that freedom of consciousness impossible, to those people's rights are being denied by government action and fiat.

Likewise, there is a pretty heavy debate on whether HFCS is good or bad, and the actual health effects of HFCS are completely irrelevant to the fact that a significant portion of the population wants to avoid them and should have that ability.

Then:

All anybody wants is the ability to avoid eating GMO. That's it. That's all. At this point, the state's armed incursion is actively preventing that ability, and so long as Monsanto et al holds the captured regulators and controls legislators through special interest lobbying that will not change.

With the way it is currently operating, your government is already holding a gun to our head and forcing us to eat GMO whether we want to or not. If the special interests are too powerful to prevent that gun from being used,at the very least I'll turn it around to favor the people instead of the lobbyists special interests and corporatist powers. Taking the gun away altogether is obviously the better option, but until Constitutional government is restored and Monsanto et al is frozen out, that's just not going to happen.

So the biggest question is that I'm asking what people want the regulations to force the labeling to say, and in what way.

Who cares what and how? All we want is the ability to avoid eating GMO ourselves. The freaking font of the text or symbol is completely irrelevant.

And on principle, because I think we can all argee that it's unwise to depend on sunset provisions, even if you could legislate them, so a law has to reflect what you want the guys with guns to enforce in perpetuity. So what should it say? Just give me the simple bullet points of the regs. For example, when I hear people say they want to know what's in their food, I just think of the tiny ingredients list on the back label that nobody reads, so is that cool with you?

LOL you may not read the ingredients, but I do not eat anything that I do not know the ingredients. Frankly, I'd be happy with just a "∆" symbol in the vicinity of the ingredients list, or modifying the actual ingredient modified. And I can give you a pretty specific piece of legislation as an example:

http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2011&BillID=H446

It has usually been enough for things with a great deal of likely toxicity. Your not bound to anything on prop 37. You can have things be your perfect way, so go crazy. By all means, include laws regarding marketing and advertising if you think labels aren't sufficient. Should there be cozy exemptions for restaurants or the like?

I dunno, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Come on, get serious. And whether YOU think something is toxic doesn't matter to someone else. Muslims and Jews think pork and shellfish is toxic. Do you really think we as a society have the right to hold Muslims and Jews at the point of a rifle and shove pork down their throats?

So, anybody? I'm giving you an army of armed men with mustaches and shiny badges to do your bidding, at least in the specific fields of labeling laws and related marketing/advertising laws.

First and foremost how about telling your army of armed men to stop shoving GMO down my throat, since you obviously control them.

 

[Zack]

@GunnyFreedom

So any Federal involvement is wrong from the start, so to begin with the premises of the question are in error.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I don't advance the premise that labelling laws have to be handled by the federal government. I just asked what would be ideal, as far as labelling laws are concerned, in the minds of people that support a new law, but nobody except you seems to want to answer. If someone supports extra-constitutional federal action, or extra-constitutional state-level action (there of course is such a thing, depending on the law and state), then they would be free to say so. If not, then not. They could even propose a federal constitutional ammendment for all I care. I give free rein.

Your example would certainly satisfy me

interesting

I really don't care

sweet

I don't think most non-GMO people care either

Kirk Lazarus: Pump your breaks, kid.

At least as far as the people that support government-enforced GMO labelling on these boards are concerned, I think you're almost as far removed from what most of them want as I am. Surely, they would support legislation like that, but the question I'm curious about is how much further they want to go, if at all. I could be wrong, I'm just making a guess based on the tone of the pro label law comments I've read, and since nobody seems to want to put their name to what they consider ideal in a labelling law (excepting you), that makes it more difficult. You seem to be satisfied with giving the current anti-GMO niche market some government-enforced tools, and most people on here seem to see the end goal of legislation as being to enlighten those that aren't already anti-GMO, or just to generally hurt Monsanto. I can run through all the comments in this thread and quote from them all if you really want, but I hope we can agree that's not really necessary. I believe you even suggested that your ideal would be to allow GMO-free food sellers to advertise the fact without fear of frivolous lawsuits. Again, judging from the pro label law posts I've read, I think that would be utterly unsatisfactory as an end solution to most "non-GMO" people around here, and again, believe it or not, you're actually probably closer to me than them, as far as the law is concerned.

But another broken premise is the argument on whether or not GMO is really poison.

Again, I'm not sure what you mean here. I never even said whether or not I even thought GMOs, or some portion/kinds of GMOs, were appreciably toxic.

It doesn't matter whether you do or do not think that GMO's are poison

Exactly.

completely irrelevant to the fact that a significant portion of the population wants to

If we're talking about such a serious subject as laws regarding what you eat, about what portion would be considered insignificant? I guess I generally like to speak about proposed laws on something closer to a principle that can be expressed on individual terms.

All anybody wants is the ability to avoid eating GMO. That's it.

Some people want that. I am one of those people.

Who cares what and how? All we want is the ability to avoid eating GMO ourselves. The freaking font of the text or symbol is completely irrelevant.

I don't understand at all how you could be so dismissive of the topic. I've seen many pro labelling law people on the web use the word "warning label" to describe what they want. That's very different than changing laws regarding how ingredients are described. Seems like a reasonable topic for discussion to me, so I don't understand your stance.

I dunno, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Come on, get serious. And whether YOU think something is toxic doesn't matter to someone else. Muslims and Jews think pork and shellfish is toxic.

Agian, I'm not sure what this all means. I never said, and still haven't said, whether or not I think GMOs, or some portion/kinds of GMOs, are appreciably toxic. My best guess is that the wife-beating comment is a reference to my use of the word "cozy" to describe label exemptions? Is that even right? I tend to think about laws in terms of principle, so I guess it never occured to me that someone on these boards would object to that adjective in describing the way legislators add exemptions to regulations. I just thought almost everyone here was of a like mind on that point.

Do you really think we as a society have the right to hold Muslims and Jews at the point of a rifle and shove pork down their throats?

I'm generally against that.

First and foremost how about telling your army of armed men to stop shoving GMO down my throat, since you obviously control them.

If you'll recall, I only gave theoretical control over labeling and marketing laws, for the purpose of the question, since labelling laws were the general topic. And I still only got a partial answer, since you didn't go into the finer points, like exemptions, unless of course your answer is complete ambivalence, which I guess counts as an answer.

 

[sailingaway]

Well yeah, everybody wants that, which is why it would have been a waste of my time to ask such a question. People also don't want their flights to be hijacked, but again the question is what do you want governments to do (or in my way of thinking, STOP doing) to your fellow countrymen on your behalf, in order to make matters better?

By saying "you know what they want" it makes it sound like I'm speechifying and asking rhetorical questions, or maybe setting people up for something else, when I'm sincerely curious about how far people want to go, and have asked technical questions. Nobody seems to want to put their name to any specific government actions, but they still want there to BE government actions, as long as they somehow might hurt companies like Monsanto. A lot of what Monsanto does, and in partnership with various governments, is so outlandishly villianous that it really sounds like stuff out of a James Bond movie or comic book. I don't argue that for a second, but again, that's not what I'm asking about either, because it's already known.

Monsanto's one time legal eagles head up Agriculture and FDA. They have slanted the playing field beyond the ability of consumer action to impact imho and until that can be undone, I'm in favor of at least KNOWING what is in the food so we can make choices, even if it takes government action to get that information.

In a vacuum Ron Paul wouldn't have approved Glass Steagall, but as warped with cronyism as goverment had let and encouraged the system to be, Ron Paul didn't want it removed. I see this as a similar circumstance

Prime principles are super important in crystalizing where we want to go, but you can't just remove half an equation sometimes, or it just becomes even worse with all power on one side, due to government intervention already existing. Each circumstance has to be evaluated. With GMO labeling, and Monsanto's uneven power using our government to regulate US and our food producers, I am for labeling.

 

[ClydeCoulter]

The problem with laws that attempt to compensate for federal usurapation is that those laws would need to be removed once the usurpation stopped, or they could end up being laws for the sake of law in the future. Perhaps a clause or note in the laws would help with that.

edit: but yes, these things are circle jerks because our federal government is out of hand and unconstitutional and fraudulent

 

[sailingaway]

The problem with laws that attempt to compensate for federal usurapation is that those laws would need to be removed once the usurpation stopped, or they could end up being laws for the sake of law in the future. Perhaps a clause or note in the laws would help with that.

edit: but yes, these things are circle jerks because our federal government is out of hand and unconstitutional and fraudulent

I agree, if I were writing it, but in this case I weigh the benefits better than the damage. We can end it by referendum as we are adding it by referendum. Not at all perfect, but this time on this bill I come out this way.

 

[Zack]

Monsanto's one time legal eagles head up Agriculture and FDA. They have slanted the playing field beyond the ability of consumer action to impact imho and until that can be undone, I'm in favor of at least KNOWING what is in the food so we can make choices, even if it takes government action to get that information.

In a vacuum Ron Paul wouldn't have approved Glass Steagall, but as warped with cronyism as goverment had let and encouraged the system to be, Ron Paul didn't want it removed. I see this as a similar circumstance

Prime principles are super important in crystalizing where we want to go, but you can't just remove half an equation sometimes, or it just becomes even worse with all power on one side, due to government intervention already existing. Each circumstance has to be evaluated. With GMO labeling, and Monsanto's uneven power using our government to regulate US and our food producers, I am for labeling.

So I take it you wouldn't be satisfied with non-GMO companies simply having the ability to advertise that fact to potential customers? It seems to me that there are a number of ideas people have about what is the right thing to do, and that the ideas are really, really different at a conceptual level. They represent different ideas about government.

1. That would be the first idea, and seemingly, the most libertarian idea.

2. Then there is the idea that the government needs to force food companies to list food ingredients in a specific way, and that GMOs are always (or sometimes?) different enough that this needs to be mentioned as a part of the minimum ingredient listing requirements.

3. Then there is the idea that the government needs to have special labelling schemes for certain dangerous materials/foods, or maybe even foods that the government scientists honestly DON'T think is dangerous, but that is considered so by some politically significant portion of the population. The legal battles over cigarette labelling over the last couple decades is maybe the most famous example. Some argue that GMOs need some kind of "warning label" along those lines. Most anti-GMO websites I've visited seem to take this position and/or the next one.

4. Then there is the idea that GMOs should be either outlawed outright, or buried under enough regulations and/or taxes to make them unprofitable, effectively banning them from being sold.

As best I can make out, those seem to be the main concepts I've heard, although there is maybe some bleeding between numbers 2-4.

What bothers me is people not thinking in terms of principle. I don't mean principle as in morale, I mean principle as conceptual. It sometimes seems like every law and regulation I see is less about the regulations, and more about the exemptions. That's why regulations sincerely designed to rein in big business often lock in the big businesses because the new businesses don't have the legal muscle or political connections to work around them. I see it in everything. Laws about car exhaust ar a good example. They always exempt old, expensive "vintage" cars, of course largely owned by wealthy, more politically connected people, and alway go after car of some poor guy trying to get back and forth from his hourly wage paying job. There's often a malevolent, divide-and-conquer tone to it. For example, let's just exempt restaraunts from some labelling law, pretending that its for some practical reason, thereby not having a unified front against us, then come after them 5 or 10 years down the line when the packaged food sellers have already lost and can't stand with them.

Along the same line, the other thing that bothers me is what I would call intellectual dishonesty. The sort of Orwellian doublethink. I would probably say that's the reason that as soon as a pro-prop 37 person freely and reasonably contrasts the imperfect nature of his position with a rightly maligned quote of Paul Ryan, you took exception to the idea. He was right to make the connection, if we're really thinking conceptually, but because of the larger context, his correct conceptual comparison wasn't satisfactory to hear. There are better examples, but that probably qualifies as one.

And finally the other thing that bothers me is intellectual incuriosity. You can see that clearly enough in a couple of the posts in this thread, where some people have said that the only thing they need to know about prop 37 is that Monsanto is against it. Following that line of reasoning to it's logical conclusion and applying it to companies/politicians/etc. that are guilty of previous wrongdoing would lead to something like Hell.