Greene is Depending on N.P.R. Readers

The official mainstream media like the Newcastle News, and to a lesser extent, the Seattle Times, will play an important part in this election since the overwhelming majority of voters in Newcastle will get their news about the election from them.  However, Northern Pacific Report, with our handful of readers, will fill in the gaps that the mainstream press may leave out for one reason or another.  We are happy to report that the readership of N.P.R. has increased over the last month by an extra 150-or-so page views, and an aggregate 600 per month, more or less.  We need to do much better in order for Mark Greene to win a seat on the Newcastle City Council, even though our main goal is not the election, but to give Newcastlers an in depth look at their city government and the main players within it.  More about doing better with circulation a little later in this essay.

We congratulate the News on trying to drum up more interest in this year's elections.  In their reports, John Drescher is a chairman of a commission and Greene is merely a citizen.  Nonetheless, Greene runs the Democracy In Election Process organization that enrolls citizens for voter registration, informs them about civic affairs, and helps them with rudimentary legal and governmental matters.  This is a private organization, and not a governmental one as Drescher's commission is.  Greene is a legal assistant and the editor of this Northern Pacific Report.  However, it is not so much titles that should influence the electorate as fundamental philosophies, and Greene's philosophy can pretty much be summed up as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."  That will tell you a lot about why Greene will be outspent by at least one and possibly more candidates for Position No. 6 as far as fundraising is concerned.  In other words, Greene's campaign won't be getting any money from big shots who are more interested in shaping policy for their own narrow special interests than in general, good government. 

A signal that more likely than not narrow special interests will play a part in any election: the fancier the advertising and the more abundant the campaign materials that particular candidates have.  Not necessarily through PAC money, however, because they are getting smarter as PAC money, generally, becomes more of a negative in campaigns as time goes by.  So they may get around that in the future by getting well-compensated executives, and some underlings, to contribute to the candidate of their choice as individuals. 

About Drescher's ascendancy to the chairmanship of the Planning Commission, isn't it odd as to how it all came about in an odd time of year for governmental transitions, last September, a few months before the election season, and the predecessor that stepped down didn't even leave the commission, but became part of the rank-and-file?  We won't go so far as to call it pre-election year planning, however, which could bring up the term "double entendre."  One thing is for sure, Mark Greene didn't have to wait for "Bellevue-centric" Councilman Bill Erxleben to announce his intentions before running, but his opponent's announcement came after Erxleben's public decision not to run.

Back to the circulation business: we need readers of N.P.R. to spread the news about this blog to other Newcastlers through their social media or otherwise, so that our readership will at least quadruple, and hopefully increase by tenfold before the August Primary or the November General Election.  If N.P.R. gets over 5,000 page views per month by time voters cast their ballots, Mark Greene will win.  If not, it is going to be a struggle. 

[revised on 5/6/2013]
 

Why Voting for Washington's I-522 Is Very Important

The Monsanto Corporation, the primary producer and sponsor of genetically modified (GM) food, is the nation's albatross.  They are presently trying to trick Washington into thinking that GM food is not harmful and thus trying to keep I-522 from being passed.  522, after all, is no more than labeling so that consumers can decide for themselves whether or not they want to eat and drink GM products, but it could lead to monumental changes in the entire nation's agricultural policies -- which Monsanto realizes.  Despite the sleight-of-hand that Monsanto and their supporters often use in saying that genetically modified or engineered food is normal, GM food is not the ordinary cross-pollination of crops, a technique that farmers have used for centuries, but instead is something that started over the last quarter century-or-so: a new scientific experiment in which the molecular structure, itself, of plants is manipulated, deformed and changed, an experiment in which human beings are the unwitting guinea pigs. GM food is a long-term health hazard to humans according to many top scientists, and tests have shown that animals (whose senses are often sharper than humans) instinctively avoid it when given an equal choice between natural food and GM food.  These animals, including birds, instinctively know better than to eat Monsanto's stuff when given a natural option.

If Monsanto and the lesser known companies that do essentially the same thing as Monsanto are not stopped, agriculture across the U.S. will inevitably be ruined further than what it already has been, and America will have to import much of her food from countries that have enough sense not to let this albatross on their farms.  The corrupt U.S. Congress has long let Monsanto have their way in devising our nation's farm policy, and the current Secretary of Agriculture (Tom  Vilsack) is Monsanto's #1 sympathizer.  Therefore the effects of Monsanto's and Vilsack's policies have caused  much of America's plants and crops to be despoiled, including alfalfa which was fairly recently unprotected from the GM frenzy, and these effects could be long lasting.  Now, however, Washington (trough Initiative 522) has a chance to be the first American state to trip up the albatross and Vilsack, and hopefully, lead the rest of the nation to the side of normalcy and naturalness for the sake of the survival of American agriculture and humanity.  This debate is no less critical than that.

[First written on 10/18/13, revised on 10/20/13 and updated for this post on 10/23/13. ]

 

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Our federal representatives are awash in do-nothingism in the famously "Do-Nothing 113th Congress," which is why it is up to the People in the States to make the changes necessary.

 

I-522 requires the mandatory labeling in Washington state of most genetically modified food/beverages.



Congress is really more dubious than we really knew, so why does America keep voting the same guys back in when at least "cleaning house" every couple of years until we get it right would be better than keeping them around in office session after session?  As everybody knows, the majority votes like clockwork, unfortunately, and thus the congressional elections are very predictable.  The GMO (genetically modified organisms) tragedy is a case in point.  When researchers and scientists have continually pointed out the agricultural dangers and health risks of GMOs, and Congress and the Obama govt. continue to prop up the purveyors of GMOs without so much as requiring labeling of their Frankensteinian products, then we know for sure that these elected officials are just lining their pockets (or campaign treasuries) with the money of the corporate behemoth rather than serving the public interest.

For more information about the ill effects of GMOs as well as information about better eating, see the Seeds of Deception site by Anti-GMO specialist, Jeffrey Smith.  Also, see the Institute for Responsible Technology site, "Buy Non-GMO."

[Originally published on Commoner on 4/30/2013; revised on 10/23/2013.]