Food and Farming
Rolling Up Some Common Sense with Willie Nelson
With marijuana prohibition finally ending in states and cities across the land — including full legalization in Alaska, Colorado, Washington State, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. — who could be better than my friend Willie Nelson to lead the way for weed quality and...
Monsanto Hits All the Wrong Notes
The Canadian rocker and master storyteller Neil Young says: "Music is a universal language." Yes, and when created by a people's champion like him, music can bring down the high and mighty — just as Joshua's trumpeters brought down the walls of Jericho. Or, in Young's...
Monsanto’s Boot Camp
One reason corporations get away with running roughshod over us is that America's mass-market media has been thoroughly corporatized — both in structure and mindset. Our daily news feed is largely a regurgitation of the corporate line. An upcoming food conference the...
Pope Francis Weighs In on Newfangled Crops
Does genetically engineering crops — creating seeds with the DNA of other species inserted in them, like a tomato with DNA that includes genes from a fish — violate religious principles? People with a vested interest have tried for years to speak on the Vatican’s...
Unhappy Meals
McDonald's is floundering. There's no other way to say it. The global fast food chain has experienced declining U.S. sales for well over a year now. But why? I'd love to gloat that Americans have finally caught on that the Golden Arches peddles terrible food, but that...
Dishing out Poverty Wages on Capitol Hill
In 2008 Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein declared: "There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like a business." For the first time, the Senate had voted to privatize the restaurants and other food services on the Hill. Sure...
Subsidizing the Idle Rich While Poor Kids Go Hungry
To hear some politicians tell it, America's welfare system is facing a grave crisis: Millions of poor people, they say, are idling away their time eating lobster and relaxing on cruises. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, for example, recently signed welfare reform rules...
Wisconsin’s Grocery Dictators
Republicans may like to rail against big government. But here in Wisconsin — where conservative lawmakers just introduced a bill to dramatically restrict what people can buy with their own food stamps — Republicans want to cook up a new kind of nanny state. This isn't...
Kraft’s Mac and Cheese: Less Toxic, Still Bad
Kraft made news the other day with this announcement: Beginning next year, its macaroni and cheese will no longer contain artificial preservatives or colors. That’s nice. One of the favorite foods of American kids will more closely resemble something that actually...
PETA’s Cruel and Unusual Crush
The provocative animal rights group PETA famously despises cages. Press statements from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have described birdcages as a "death sentence" for avian pets, likened crating dogs to incarcerating them, and condemned the cruelty...
