Wal-Mart, What's Wrong with These Peas?

Dear Wal-Mart,

The subject at hand is a can of peas that was purchased, by someone who was driving that way and volunteered to pick up "the heavy stuff" at a Wal-Mart...I don't know which one, but I'm guessing it was in Kingsport, Tennessee, on Saturday, 10.21.23. 

The label says these are "Sweet Peas." Well, they weren't the black-eyed kind or the split kind. Considering their flavor, "green peas" would have been more appropriate.

The label goes on: "No Salt Added." I should have warned person to beware of "No Salt Added" cans of anything; they're subject to spoilage. "Ingredients: peas, water. Product of Spain. 0 78742 35875 8" (below the bar code), and "070315" (above the bar code). The label also claims that the peas are "Gluten Free," which they certainly ought to be if the cans contian only peas and water.

But who knows. It seems that food manufacturers want to subvert the whole purpose of food labelling. They don't want labels that accurately inform people about what's inside. A solid majority of people who eat food want to know whether they're eating a normal, natural food as opposed to some sort of genetic experiment on food. They might be willing to try GMO food, but they want to know which genetic modification they're eating and why. 

(Well, actually, after years of bleeding ulcers from "Roundup-Ready" vegetables, some people wouldn't want to try any more genetic modifications, and can they be blamed? But clearly identifying different modifications might reduce the losses of sales caused by all that not-so-safe-as-the-manufacturer-claimed glyphosate that was sneaked into our food supply by "Roundup Ready" plants, all produce of which ought by now to have been rounded up and burned.) 

The contents of this can were not natural peas. They were not just natural peas that might have been on the firm side because they were picked green and not cooked enough to be safely canned, although they had that sort of feeling in the mouth. They were not just brackish-tasting from having grown near the ocean. They were not just natural peas that had somehow also failed to become sweet because they didn't get much sunshine, either. Fruits and vegetables that didn't get enough sunshine have a flabby, watery consistency from exposure to too much rain. That's natural, and easily fixed with a sprinkle of salt or sugar. But these pea-like objects were bitter. Not a level of bitterness that salt would cover up, either. Bitter enough that they didn't taste like peas at all, and hard enough that they didn't feel like sweet green peas in the mouth.

What kind of GMO (and/or novel pathogenic contaminant] was in this can of peas, Wal-Mart?

We need tighter food labelling laws, Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart is big enough to make them policies that would work for a lot of people:

If you plant GMO crops, the labels need clearly to identify the specific name of the GMO as shown on its patent. 

If you spray anything other than water on plants after the edible parts appear, the label needs to include that chemical as an ingredient.

If you pick food crops green and spray chemicals on them as "ripening agents," you need to be forcibly fed a liter of those chemicals. On television. 

From tasting these peas I can feel blisters forming on the roof of my mouth, as I type. I can feel my tongue swelling. 

You need to pull these peas off the shelves, Wal-Mart. You need to dump them back on the farm from whence they came. Call the filthy excuse for a farmer out on his front steps, yell "Eh tu! Con que intentaste matar a la gente norteamericana?" while the driver is backing the truck up to where he is standing, and then start dumping cans of peas, and the more of them hit his feet, the better. Keep him hopping. And then make him sign for receipt of a summons to court where you're suing him for selling this toxic waste as peas. And make sure he can never sell any kind of food crop again, in any market, and has to sell the farm. 

With all we know about how "pesticides" systematically breed bigger, more aggressive nuisance species while also making people ill, any farmer who's not out in the fields, rain or shine as long as lightning is not flashing, hand-picking nuisance species off unsprayed fields, deserves to lose per farm!

The whole world needs to pull a 180 on this whole business of chemical-dependent farming. Instead of letting the chemical companies compete to see how many different chemicals they can sell to farmersd, we need to have people telling farmers that their best course of action is to take the loss from going chemical-free now. Yes, the transition to really organic farming costs money. Yes, Wal-Mart will have to accept smaller amounts of produce from each farmer. The sooner we do it the sooner it's done, and the sooner the farmers take a year or two of losses, the sooner they can hope for profits again.

Wal-Mart is in a position to tell the farmers, "Hello? Smart farmers like Wendell Berry and George Peters were chemical-free in 1970, so what has been your problem? You deserve a couple of years pushing a mop or driving a bus!" 

In any case, even Wal-Mart cannot afford to sell any more toxic waste mislabelled as food. "Roundup Ready" crops can apparently be used as fuel, at least in well filtered indoor furnaces, because burning destroys most of the glyphosate. I've not heard of any safe use for the 2,4-D stuff, but there may be one. But in no case can you risk allowing human beings to eat this stuff. You need to crack down. 

If you can't sell me natural peas that are fit to eat, you can't. Just don't sell me (or anyone else) poisoned peas, which this batch so obviously are. You'd be on safer ground, legally, if you just burned the farm where these peas grew to the ground/ 

You need to recall these peas, and any other alleged food products that can't say it's GLYPHOSATE-FREE and GMO-FREE as well as gluten-free. 

It would be a good idea, unless you have more of the peas I've been eating in previous weeks this year, to leave your shelves completely bare of peas. Fill those shelves with notices "TO ALL PEOPLE WHO MAY HAVE PURCHASED THE RECALLED, POISONED PEAS FROM SPAIN: WAL-MART WILL RESUME SELLING PEAS WHEN WE ARE 100% CERTAIN THAT WE WILL NOT BE INADVERTENTLY SELLING ANY MORE PEAS LIKE THOSE." 

Cell Phone Stupidity in California

I'm not sure what to say about today's topic, Gentle Readers. 

Sunday's e-mail brought news of a plan being seriously proposed, in Southern California, to put more cell phone towers right in people's private yards. (The e-mail didn't mention whether all of these people live in private houses, or live in apartment towers, which would be even worse.) 

Earthquakes are going to destroy California some day, but for now, most of the time, most of the earthquakes are only a nuisance. What actually kill Californians and destroy their homes are fires. Every year they have fires that, as the state's become more densely populated, threaten more homes and harm more people. 

Some of those fires start from cell phone towers.

If I were going to put up a cell phone tower in California I'd want it to be surrounded by half a mile of treeless desert in all directions. I'd want fences to keep tumbleweeds out of that desert.

Yet, to enable more of the annoying stupidphone culture everyone hates so much, these people want to put cell phone towers in the places where the burned-out shade tree used to be? In schoolyards, on the baseball fields? 

I don't know what they were thinking. I don't know what they were drinking. I don't know how they propose to fund this, or what alternative funding plans the correspondents mentioned. 

I know that as a taxpayer I do not want my income tax dollars spent to fund anything cell-phone-related, because the cell phone industry has already died of greed and deserves no form of support from anyone.

I know that...as a human being I, personally, am not really affected by the destruction of houses in California, but I have emotional feelings about it. I have a feeling that I'd be less of a human being if I didn't have those feelings. I don't want Californians or their homes to burn. And I don't think Californians do, either, when they're sober. Even if, when they've had a few, they sit around discussing with their neighbors how much nicer some other neighborhood was when it was desert, they have to know that fires spread.

I think Californians would be better off if they limited their use of cell phones to the kinds for which they pay per minute, which teaches them to use cell phones just to meet face to face for the actual conversation. That way they wouldn't need so many fire-hazard cell phone towers, and although increasing population would increase the damage fires do, at least the total number of fires would not increase.

Here are excerpts from the e-mail: 

"

On Jan. 10, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (Board) will vote on changes to Titles 16 and 22 of the L.A. County Code. If the proposed changes pass, wireless facilities will be installed without any prior notice, public hearing or opportunity to appeal — without fire or safety scrutiny and without regard to critical environmental protections. 

We need you to stand up for our allies in L.A. by urging the Board to vote NO on the proposed changes and to safeguard due process rights.

"

"

Tell the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to safeguard due process rights by voting NO to the proposed changes to Titles 16 and 22 of the L.A. County Code. Complete the form below, submit a public comment here (agenda item 59) and call their offices to demand the following protections:

• Safeguard Due Process Rights: The radiation emitted from cell towers is not safe for humans or the environment. Therefore, the placement of antennas is a matter of urgent public interest. Cutting off debate, eliminating public input and ignoring environmental laws (including CEQA) is unjustified...
• Protect Us From Telecom Wildfires: In the last 15 years, there have been four major Southern California wildfires initiated, in whole or in part, by telecommunications equipment. Cell tower fires are electrical fires that firefighters cannot fight until the grid is cut, which can take up to 60 minutes. Cell tower placement close to homes or schools may not allow enough time for escape in the event of a fire. The proposed revisions enable cell towers to be too close to homes, schools and daycare centers.
• Stick to Facts: In case of emergency, should there be a loss of electricity, 911 calls would depend solely upon the macro towers that receive backup power per the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Order. The claim that hundreds of new small cell antennas are required for 911 calls is false and should not be used as an argument for the amendments.

"

The numbers and acronyms above should mean something to Angelenos. They don't mean anything to me. It's not appropriate for me to comment on yourall's county boards' agendas.

It is appropriate for me to say this much:

1. California readers, you have two days to burn up the Internet with this issue. Keep those phone lines jamming. Blitz your officials' e-mail in-boxes with short, polite, link-free, hand-typed e-mails that the robots won't block. Print your messages and stuff them under the door. If you can organize small groups of responsible adults to pack into the meeting hall until someone mutters about fire hazards, when you can politely and reasonably say "Fire hazards! That's what we're here about! We want you to vote out some fire hazards!", do that too

2. All readers, please join my town in shutting down the stupidphones. Let the companies know that, if you continue to carry a cell phone, it needs to have a small screen that displays letters and numbers only, no pictures, no Internet, no fancy apps. If you own a stupidphone, don't drop it on the ground or into water, because it will ooze toxic chemicals. Keep it in a drawer and use it as an emergency flashlight only.

3. If you anticipate using someone else's stupidphone or computer, carry an electronic stylus. Never touch a screen with your hands. It's ugly and unsanitary and it encourages snoops to build spyware that traces people through fingerprint scanning, which is an unwarranted search in violation of people's constitutional rights.

Formal Complaint: Police Should Not Be Used to Harass Pedestrians

I received a payment on a Friday. (Not last Friday. This complaint has been allowed to sit for a few weeks because it's a complaint about behavior that is not specific to one individual.) I wanted to pick up provisions for the weekend. Jane Doe, Joe Jones, and Jill Smith had already gone to the grocery store. John Roe wanted to go on Saturday. I did not particularly want to spend all day Saturday waiting on him. It was raining a little, but it wasn’t cold. So I started walking.

I had worn a pale beige London Fog overcoat. If it had been a human that overcoat would be old enough to vote by now. I had also worn a pair of pale beige fake leather shoes. If they had been humans those shoes would probably have been married with children by now. I thought the indestructible trench coat and the shoes that needed to be worn out and burned were a good choice to wear on a dark, wet night. The shoes gleamed almost white in the dark. I sometimes walk to the store in what I wore at work all day, which is often blue or black, but this evening for once I was at least wearing something nice and pale-colored for visibility.

As regular readers know, there’s not a great selection of grocery stores in Gate City, Virginia, since the young heir let the locally owned Thriftway store fail. (The young heir was in my class at school. Sometimes a town of active senior citizens is a weird place to be fifty.) There’s a Dollar Store. Some things Dollar Stores don’t sell are sold at Food Lion, but I’ve learned the hard way about the convenience of buying food at Food Lion. I don’t know what they spray in the store but even trusted brands in sealed packages have made me sick. So I buy some things in Weber City and some things in Kingsport. If anybody wants to revive the Thriftway store, count me in. Anyway I took the computer home for the weekend and parked it in the house, more than two miles, before heading back out to walk seven more miles.

So I walked out along Route 23.

Further along the route I had planned there is no alternative to walking on Route 23, but at that point there is a “business route” that runs parallel to the four-lane highway. “Don’t you find it safer than the highway?” people have asked me. For safe footing away from motor traffic, it has some good sections with real sidewalks and some bad ones with deep puddles and ditches, but on a Friday night, the main difference is that that “business route” leads past that drug treatment place where the drug crowd hang out. They are not local people. Gate City people are mostly related to me and their vices do not include beating up old ladies. About the druggies somebody got a grant to bring into one part of town, who knows? I definitely felt safer on the four-lane highway with only the wind behind me.

I was walking briskly along, thinking how nice it would be if Joan Brown were driving to Wal-Mart this evening, when a police car stopped.

It occurs to me that if the state trooper’s supervisor were listening to the conversation, the supervisor would have missed a very important part of the conversation. The trooper introduced himself by name, and my mind went off on one of those old-lady loops that form when people haven’t recognized an old childhood acquaintance on sight for a long time: "You do look just like one of my brother's classmates who had that family name. Is that who you are? But if that's who you are, why does your brother look more than eight or ten years older than you do? Are you an old acquaintance, or the son of one?" 

People who are fifty years old don’t say this kind of thing; I think the minimum age for saying it out loud is seventy-five.

It’s not, of course, the first time anyone’s ever called the police to report “a woman walking on the street who might be in some sort of distress, I was afraid to ask,” and it would be the first time if I hadn’t expressed my extreme disapproval of any police officer participating in this sort of thing.

If we want to reduce local warming and so on and so forth, the first thing we as a nation need to do is remind ourselves that walking is the default way humans move about. Some people feel afraid or ashamed when they’re questioned by the police about why they’re walking (down a public street at six o’clock in the evening), and some of them may have reasons. Certainly the idea that other people think walking is such odd behavior that they don’t even want to ask us why we’re doing it, or whether we want any kind of help, amounts to “peer pressure” applied to people who might feel inclined to save money or improve their health by walking instead of driving across town. I can deal with that because my family are about as solid a feature of the local landscape as the baby-faced trooper's family are. Someone less secure would have been humiliated...for doing something that is healthy and public-spirited.

People whose salaries are paid by the taxpayers need to be proactive about applying “peer pressure” in the opposite direction. They should be coming up with public campaigns to THANK PEDESTRIANS FOR NOT DRIVING. Instead of acting as if non-drivers were suspicious characters, they should be publicizing the statistics about how many resources we’re not wasting, how much we’re not contributing to local warming, how much our presence serves as a deterrent to street crime, and how many little children we’re not maiming or killing.

I've spoken much more severely to some other officers, who were also in my brother's class at school, than I did to baby-face; I wasn't sure whether he was an old acquaintance or not, and in any case he wasn't a relative like the one I positively scolded. The man with what I still saw as a younger-child face didn’t seem to know me and he did seem tense. He didn’t seem to understand why I was speaking severely to him at all.

I had time to wonder, while the trooper was bandying my real name about on the scanner, whether he was being set up. I wondered whether new state troopers get those “concern calls” to annoy me because their colleagues think it’s funny to get them scolded by a taxpayer.

I said, “I will be making a complaint about this harassment.”

He looked indignant—as if there were any question of his having behaved improperly toward a woman, which there wasn’t. I felt empathetic and elder-sisterly, or auntly, or whichever. Assuming sufficient reason for his believing it was appropriate for him to check whether I had a criminal record—which I don’t—he did that in a perfectly professional manner. He said, “Harassment?”

I said, “Yes, I don’t think you should participate in this kind of games. You have better things to do and so have I.”

He actually blathered about my not wearing any special reflective gear. Really. The only excuse for the existence of those dreadful pale-colored glossy fake-leather shoes, much less for anyone wearing pale-colored shoes in winter, was that they were reflective. I don’t normally wear white shoes, even in summer, but taxpayers have a right to walk down the street unmolested if they choose to wear solid black from head to toe.

Seriously, I don’t know whether there was a real “concerned citizen” call, or one was fabricated by another trooper as a sort of initiation prank. I do know this, though. In any town that’s big enough to have a drug treatment clinic, silly calls from “concerned citizens” are likely to be made when there is a special reason to want the friendly local policeman to keep away from a certain street. “Somebody’s walking down the street in the rain!” and “There’s a cat about fifteen feet up a tree!” are just the sort of distractions that make a caller sound stupid, but not so obviously suspicious as if the caller had reported an imaginary crime or fire.

I think it would be a good idea if all police departments were required by law to investigate these “concerned citizen” calls—not by checking the identity of the person walking down the street, but by checking the identity, and also the circle of association, of the callers. While baby-face was politely annoying me, it’s very likely that the druggies who hang around the clinic in the evening were waiting for a special delivery from Tennessee. The person they were waiting for would have crossed baby-face’s path about a mile past the point where he was checking my legal identity.

I think it would be a good idea if all police officers, and their families, were required by law to show respect for pedestrians’ rights by walking across town regularly, just to break up the perception that anyone is stereotyping pedestrians as suspicious characters.

I think it would be a good idea if all police departments proactively hired law-abiding pedestrians, especially women, just to break up the perception that we can ever afford to allow anyone to feel that our streets don’t belong to women—at all hours of the day and night. Or that employers can afford to discriminate against women who don’t drive because it’s acceptable for anyone to be able to imagine that women are more likely to be raped while walking to work than they are to be injured in car crashes while driving to work. (I’ve encountered overt discrimination for that reason, and I also think it would be a good thing if all employers were required by law to pay an extra road tax for any failure to prioritize hiring people who walk to work.) Public employees should be actively promoting the idea that “A woman’s place is out in the air and sunshine...a criminal’s place is behind bars.”

I think it might even be a good idea if all people who make “concerned citizen” calls were routinely told that, since they’re such “concerned citizens,” they need to show their good faith and public spirit by walking up and down the street. Every pedestrian on the street is a deterrent to crime; even the lookouts from drug gangs who make these “concerned citizen” calls would serve as deterrents to other types of street crime, and these “concerned” people might actually make themselves useful to some law-abiding person somewhere, as well as being made less available to criminal gangs. It’s even possible that, if required to walk fifteen miles a night for a few months, some sincerely concerned citizens might get lives.

For Those Who Don't Want WiFi Homes, Thanks...

Posted so that it can be tweeted, here from the Stop Smart Meters group is a tipsheet you can use if you DO NOT want wi-fi frequencies bombarding your home. We don't yet know that constant wi-fi access is safe for humans and domestic animals--and we do know that it can be used for evil purposes, when and as evildoers figure out how to use it. Let your people in Washington know that you want wi-fi for McDonalds, but not for your home...

"

Contact Congress Now Regarding HR2 - Prioritize Wired over Wireless Communication in Rural America - Call the Leaders of the Joint Conference Committee Today.

H.R.2 is a Farm Bill that has passed both the Senate and the House. Next Wednesday, September 5th it will be reviewed by a Joint Conference Committee of both the House and the Senate to work out differences before forwarding it to the President.

We are asking for reliable and safer wired DSL and fiber optics connection to the home, not undependable and unhealthy wireless in rural communities.

WE WANT THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS TAKEN OUT OF THE FARM BILL:

Sec. 6101. Establishing forward-looking broadband standards.

Sec. 6102. Incentives for hard to reach communities.

Sec. 6103. Requiring guaranteed broadband lending.

Sec. 6104. Smart utility authority for broadband.

Sec. 6105. Modifications to the Rural Gigabit Program.

Sec. 6106. Unified broadband reporting requirements.

Sec. 6107. Improving access by providing certainty to broadband borrowers.

Sec. 6108. Simplified application window.

Sec. 6109. Elimination of requirement to give priority to certain applicants.

Sec. 6110. Modification of buildout requirement.

Sec. 6111. Improving borrower refinancing options.

Sec. 6112. Elimination of unnecessary reporting requirements.

Sec. 6113. Access to broadband telecommunications services in rural areas.

Sec. 6114. Middle mile broadband infrastructure.

Sec. 6115. Outdated broadband systems.

Sec. 6116. Federal broadband program coordination.

Sec. 6117. Effective date.

House Joint Conference Committee

Wed, Sep 05, 2018

9:30 AM – SR-325

As listed on the agenda: Meeting of conferees on H.R.2, to provide for the reform and continuation of agricultural and other programs of the Department of Agriculture through fiscal year 2023.

Most Importantly, Please Call and/or Email the Following Chairmen and Ranking Members.

Ask that internet connections remain wired through fiber optics, landlines or ethernet to the home which is a much safer, faster and more cybersecure than wireless communication.

Agriculture Committee Chairmen & Ranking Members:

Chairman

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas - 202-224-4774

Chief of Staff - Jackie_Cottrell@Roberts.Senate.gov

Rep. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas - 202-225-3605

Chief of Staff - Mark.Williams@mail.house.gov

Ranking Members

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan - 202-224-4822

Chief of Staff - Matt_vankuiken@stabenow.senate.gov

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota - 202-225-2165

Chief of Staff - Allison.Myhre@mail.house.gov

(We have listed the staff emails for the 4 ranking members of the Agricultural Committee - access by clicking on their names)

You can also contact the rest of the committee attendees.

There are 56 attendees in total, listed below.

Their telephone numbers and staff emails are listed in the

Washington Directory

Log-in: CongressInformation@gmail.com

Password: 1620771415

Click HERE for instructions on how to use the Directory

Senate Conferees

Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas - See contact info above

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky - 202-224-2541

Senator John Boozman, R-Arkansas - (202) 224-4843

Senator John Hoeven, R-North Dakota - (202) 224-2551 Chief of Staff: Ryan Bernstein email: Ryan_Bernstein@Hoeven.Senate.Gov

Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa - (202) 224-3254

Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan - See contact info above

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont - (202) 224-4242

Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio- (202) 224-2315

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota - (202) 224-2043

House Republican Conferees

House Agriculture Committee Conferees:

Chairman Mike Conaway (TX-11) - See contact info above

Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (PA-05)

Bob Goodlatte (VA-06)

Frank Lucas (OK-03)

Mike Rogers (AL-03)

Austin Scott (GA-08)

Rick Crawford (AR-01)

Vicky Hartzler (MO-04)

Rodney Davis (IL-13)

Ted Yoho (FL-03)

David Rouzer (NC-07)

Roger Marshall (KS-01)

Jodey Arrington (TX-19)

House Education and the Workforce Committee Conferees:

1. Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (NC)

2. Rick Allen (GA-12)

House Energy and Commerce Committee Conferees:

1. John Shimkus (IL-15)

2. Kevin Cramer (ND-AL)

House Financial Services Committee Conferees:

1. Chairman Jeb Hensarling (TX-05)

2. Sean Duffy (WI-07)

House Foreign Affairs Committee Conferees:

1. Chairman Ed Royce (CA-39)

2. Steve Chabot (OH-01)

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Conferees:

1. Mark Walker (NC-06)

2. James Comer (KY-01)

House Natural Resources Committee Conferees:

1. Chairman Rob Bishop (UT-01)

2. Bruce Westerman (AR-04)

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Conferees:

1. Ralph Abraham (LA-05)

2. Neal Dunn (FL-02)

House Transportation and Infrastructure Conferees:

1. Jeff Denham (CA-10)

2. Bob Gibbs (OH-0)

House Democrats Conferees

Agriculture Committee

Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) - See contact info

David Scott (D-Ga.)

Jim Costa (D-Calif.)

Tim Walz (D-Minn.)

Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio)

Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) Filemon Vela (D-Texas)

Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) Ann Kuster (D-N.H.)

Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.)

Education and Workforce Committee

Alma Adams (D-N.C.)

Energy and Commerce Committee

Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.)

Financial Services Committee

Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

Foreign Affairs

Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)

Natural Resources

Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.)

Oversight and Government Reform

Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.)

Science, Space and Technology

Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas)

Transportation and Infrastructure

Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.)

For more information please contact Brenda at brenschl@gmail.com
"