The Corn Ultimatum – A Trilogy
The following is a work of fiction. Though much of the information is documented fact certain elements have been fictionalized.
Des Moines, IW
The year is 2007. Illinois Senator Barrack Obama tells attendees of the Iowa Democratic Primary Debate, “. . . we can also improve the economic engines in a lot of these rural communities, and that is something that I’m absolutely committed to doing as President, but it’s going to require overcoming the excess influence of agribusiness lobbying.”
Campaigning on a platform of change and promising an end to business-as-usual politics Obama says, “I don’t take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am President, they won’t find a job in my White House.” Based mainly on this promise Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States.
Before taking office, the President was sent a list of 12 highly qualified experts in food safety and/or conscientious farming by environmentalists and sustainable food activists. They called them the Sustainable Dozen.
On December 17, 2008 President-elect Obama named former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as his nominee as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. As head of the USDA, Vilsak will be making policy that greatly effects the bottom line of Monsanto and other agribusinesses and their lobbyists.
Obama’s other candidates for USDA chief were Representative Collin Peterson (D – Minnesota) a conservative Democrat who has on occasion championed Monsanto and Representative Charlie Stenholm (D – Texas) another conservative Democrat who has, from time-to-time been a proponent of Monsanto.
So why did the President choose Vilsack? Apparently because the other two were not pro-Monsanto enough. While leading the state of Iowa, Vilsack was often ridiculed for betraying voters in favor of Big Ag companies and was even named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a GM seed lobby group. For years Vilsack has traveled in a private jet “on loan” from Monsanto.
Vilsack’s appointment came as a slap in the face to the very people that elected the President. Letters were written, favors cashed in and e-mails did whatever it is e-mails metaphorically do. As a peace offering President Obama created the toothless position of Sustainable Foods Czar and appointed one of the Sustainable Dozen, Kathleen Merrigan to fill it. The appointment means little except a salary and a nifty parking spot. Clearly a waste of a talented and dedicated person.
However, President Obama wasn’t done. He has added more Big Ag goons to the US Government than the past three Presidents combined:
- Islam Siddiqui – vice president of CropLife America a PR firm representing Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and DuPont. Siddiqui also was a Barrack financial contributor who donated the highest legal amount to the ’09 election.
- Roger Beachy – a scientist who actually helped develop GM corn and recently questioned the safety of organic foods. Beachy was another campaign contributor.
- Dr. Michael Osterholm – vehement defender of food irradiation (the largely untested practice of dosing food with Gamma radiation). His research facilities are financed by CFC Logistics – a maker of food irradiation equipment.
- Dr. Regina Benjamin a “consultant” for Burger King, was paid $10,000 by the fast food giant just prior to being named the nation’s latest Surgeon General.
- And the most agredious appointment – July 7, 2009, Michael Taylor returns to DC as President Obama’s hand-picked “senior adviser” to the FDA.
Taylor, whose position is technically under that of FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, took it upon himself to create a new division of the FDA called the Office of Foods in August of 2009. This new department will employee 350 people, none of whom have any real duties to perform. Humorously, the FDA’s web site has a section entitled Meet Michael R. Taylor which spends an entire page detailing Taylor’s numerous token appointments and meaningless board of trustees seats but only dedicates one half of one sentence to his 30 plus years of service to Monsanto.
So now with a gaggle of Big Ag henchmen as part of his administration the President is set to attack the long list of problems assailing the country. Surely he would address the nation’s dire unemployment numbers or prosecute the Wall Street executives who broke the law and as a result needed the American tax payers to save their industry. At the very least he will attempt to wrangle the growing national debt. No, instead he turns his full attention towards nationalizing the health care system.
The President and First Lady also begin a campaign against childhood obesity. Obesity it would seem has been the primary cause of increasing health care costs. The chief cause of obesity is GM products (food is too liberal a word) and the chemicals derived from them like HFCS.
On that point the First Lady plants an organic garden at the White House that will provide produce for the First Family and their guests to enjoy. A staff is hired to maintain the garden for the Obamas. They also suggest that schools plant similar gardens. After all GM foods are poisonous and drive up health care costs.
Then the First Lady announces her new initiative, Let’s Move. The program’s goal is to, “give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.” Mrs. Obama made her plans public on February 9, 2010 in a live broadcast that aired on WhiteHouse.gov.
At the First Lady’s side were Tom Vilsak (Secretary of the USDA and Monsanto lobbyist) and Dr. Regina Benjamin (US Surgeon General and Burger King employee) making the entire program appear little more than window dressing. Also joining Mrs. Obama at the announcement was hypocrisy. After all Vilsack has worked for decades for the company that invented the chemical responsible for the obesity epidemic, HFCS and Benjamin advices a company that puts HFCS into virtually everything it sells.
Just as Monsanto had told President Carter in those smokey backrooms of the 1970’s, if their genetically modified corn turned out to be unhealthy then all is well. It would likely cause a health crisis giving some future President ammunition to pass the long sought after state-run health care system.
The first President Bush left a crack in the door for Monsanto to plant a genetically modified seed of corruption. President Clinton opened the door all the way, Bush Jr. took the door off the hinges and President Obama has unlocked the backdoor and smashed out all of the windows.
There is no savior for our food system. There is no one in Washington DC we can trust. The only thing DC politicians care about is fortifying their own coffers.
If this whole ordeal has shown us anything is that this issue is not about party affiliation. Those who align themselves along party lines are fools. Both Democrats and Republicans have betrayed the American people for the pursuit of the all mighty dollar. From Bush Sr. to Obama all have put more stock into the desires of Monsanto than they do the voter.
Politicians will never change things unless it is profitable for them. The only way we get out of this is by doing it ourselves. Re-elect no one. Impeachment is a tool the founding fathers gave us in case we were betrayed. Let’s use it; after all we’ve been betrayed. Write letters, make phone calls, send e-mails, organize petitions and write “call to arms” blog posts just like this one. Do something to save us from the Monsanto Revolving Door.
Make yourself heard.
Get caught up by reading The Corn Identity and The Corn Supremacy.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday: an Indictment of the Corporate Restaurant Industry, pt. 3
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This is part three of a three part series (dare I say exposé?) on the corporate restaurant industry.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday: an Indictment of the Corporate Restaurant Industry
The closing of so many chain restaurants is one of the few bright spots in an utterly dreary economic state. Corporate restaurants are a bane to American society. Making a buck is never wrong, but these companies have done so by enslaving workers, knowingly poisoning their customers and sabotaging small business. We should not be lamenting the fall of the corporate restaurant industry, but rather celebrate it by be prosecuting the CEO’s and politicians who conspired to create the nefarious beast.
America’s Modern Slave State
The onslaughts on the general public and small business are not the only transgressions of corporate restaurant chains as their workers (servers, bar tenders and the like) are the only profession in the entire nation that are not paid minimum wage. Try, if you can, to imagine how your life might change if the state you live in passed a law that said your employer now only has to pay your profession $2.50/hour. The rest of your income is solely up to the generosity of strangers. Additionally, the government makes you pay taxes on these charitable contributions regardless of whether or not you actually receive them. As if that were not enough, you also have to work every holiday without receiving overtime or holiday pay. And you can forget about sick-leave all together.
Now let’s sweeten the pot a little by informing you that if someone who is inebriated happens to enter your work area you are now personally responsible for every action that person takes until they sober up. Regardless of whether you provide them with alcohol or even conduct business with them in any manner you are still criminally liable for their actions.
It sounds preposterous does it not? This is the 21st Century; the conditions just described sound like something out of a Dickens’ novel. At best this is an extreme example of the deplorable human rights violations in some war-torn African nation. One thing is for sure, this could never happen in America, not with all this change and hope floating around.
Sadly the circumstances illustrated do exist today and right here in River City.
As it turns out the restaurant industry is exempt from US Federal minimum wage laws. Each state is free to set whatever minimum wage they deem for bartenders, bussers, servers, and even hostesses as little as $2.13 an hour. A few states are enlightened enough to guarantee these workers the same minimum wage as any other profession. Most do not. In fact only eight states currently require the same minimum wage for restaurant workers as everyone else. The remaining 42 states allow companies to legally pay their workers less than what economists and society have agreed is a fair wage.
In Alabama for instance the server wage is $2.13 an hour or one third the current minimum wage. Florida is scarcely better at $3.50 an hour. Montana and Minnesota have two minimum wages for servers (both are below the national minimum) – one for big business and a lower one for small. The corporations argue that this punishes them for being successful while small businesses insist the better servers opt for the chains leaving them to pick through the leftovers. In Nevada full time restaurant workers are actually forced to choose between a fair wage or health insurance.
A gratuity is a bonus for a job well done; a little something extra for going beyond the norm, or at least it used to be. By making servers rely on tips to pay their wages and then taxing those tips, the government has in effect made it a law that everyone must tip at least 10% regardless of the quality of service. Whether a 10% tip is left or not the server still pays taxes on it. Consequently, anyone who fails to leave 10% is in reality stealing from the server.
Some people do not know that the bulk of a server’s pay comes from tips and assume that restaurant workers make a fair wage like everyone else. And why wouldn’t they? After all, there is a federal minimum wage and excluding one profession from having to adhere is unethical.
Lobbyists working on behalf of the large restaurant cartels rely heavily on the argument that servers make very good money in the form of gratuities. In fact, that is the entirety of their argument – servers earn so much money on tips that their bosses should not have to pay them for their toil. So this begs the question, just how much money are we talking about?
If the money servers earn is as good as argued then surely they make in excess of $75,000 a year, maybe as much as $174,000 – the annual salary of a US congressmen. According to the US Department of Labor in 2006 the median hourly wage-and-salary earnings (including tips) of servers was $7.14/hour. In most cases, the hourly wage does not even cover their tax burden leaving them still owing the government money at the end of the year. The same government that says that their effort is not worth as much as other professions apparently does not feel likewise about their tax obligation.
Still many may contend that servers make great money for no more work than they do. After all, all they do is take your order and bring you food that someone else cooks and drinks that someone else mixes, right?
In addition to clearing their tables and cleaning them for the next party, they also have what is called side work. Side work consists of tasks that must be performed to keep the restaurant running smoothly. Many of these duties are simple and occupy little time like rolling silverware into napkins. Others include considerable labor like hauling heavy buckets of ice from one end of the building to the other, vacuuming large sections of food-embedded carpet, mopping floors, preparing foods, cleaning bathrooms, and scraping bubblegum from underneath tables.
Side work comes in three forms and almost every restaurant requires its servers a certain amount as part of their daily performance. The three types of side work are opening (performed before the shift), running (performed during the shift), and closing (performed after the shift). Although the restaurant must pay the server a regular minimum wage for side work performed prior to opening the same is not said for closing side work which typically constitutes the most arduous and time consuming chores. Federal law states that one hour after a server’s final customer leaves the employer must then pay the employee the standard minimum wage.
Thanks to the way the wage law is written employers are actually allowed to pay less than minimum wage for one full hour despite the fact that the employee makes no tip for that labor. Some companies deliberately exploit this loophole by piling extra work on the tip earners that previously was performed by higher wage earners. Although this practice is entirely unethical, remarkably it is legal.
Some families are on budgets that prevent them from spending very much. These people may actually tip the standard 20% but they are forced to streamline their order. A standard 20% tip on the least expensive item is better than nothing, but it requires the same amount of effort as the most expensive dish and in some cases more. A server at The Olive Garden for instance actually does more work for customers who order the economical soup, salad, and breadsticks than for those who order a more expensive entrée.
The Olive Garden is one of the concepts owned by dining conglomerate Darden Restaurants, Inc. out of Orlando, FL. Darden also operates Red Lobster, Smokey Bones, Longhorn Steaks, and Bahama Breeze making it a classic example of the typical restaurant corporation. Darden owns and operates more than 1,700 restaurants across North America employing roughly 160,000 people. Darden is, in terms of revenue, the world’s top restaurant operator.
But Darden is hardly the only player in the ultra-competitive multi-unit market. Brinker International, Inc. out of Dallas, TX which owns Chili’s, On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina, Maggiano’s Little Italy, and Romano’s Macaroni Grill is another titan of the industry with more than 1,800 restaurant locations in 20 countries. They, too, are one of the largest restaurant cartels in the US and as such are one of the largest employers of restaurant workers in the country.
Despite working nearly 30 hours this Olive Garden employee took home nothing after state and federal taxes were applied.
On average a server who works roughly 30 hours a week and earns 15% in tips will have a weekly paycheck totaling zero after taxes. Not only does Uncle Sam dip into servers’ tips, but many restaurants make them “tip out” their fellow employees. Servers must share their hard earned money with hostesses, bussers, dishwashers, and even bar tenders. Tipping out allows business owners to also under pay non-tip earning employees by classifying them as tip-earners. A server’s “tip out” is determined by a percentage of their sales for the shift and ultimately denies them of anywhere from 15% to more than 50% of their daily earnings.
So if the same argument used to justify paying servers a substandard wage is applied to other professions then school teachers would have to choose between making a living wage and having medical insurance. Corporate executives would be making $3.50 an hour with the rest of their pay coming from board members stuffing dollar bills into an old pickle jar. That would include men like David Goebel, the former CEO of Applebee’s International Inc. who took home $2.7 million in 2006 while paying his servers less than $3 an hour.
Be sure to check out the first two parts of this series The Big Bad Wolf – Mom and Pop Under Siege and Biting the Hand that Feeds.
