Letters | 10-30-14

Enough with the glossy mailers and slam ads

I feel special each time I get yet another glossy, pricey mailer from Ron Gonzales who wants to be my County Council representative in Kohala. Last week I got three, and today I wasn’t disappointed either. In one, he told me he loves me. That is so generous coming from a guy who doesn’t know me from Adam. Heck, Margaret Wille never told me that — and I even gave her money. In another mailer I am inspired by all the union shop endorsements. Even though they are mostly on Oahu and the mainland, they still go to the trouble to endorse a man they don’t know running in a district they have never seen. Now that’s brotherhood.

What is going on here? Why is our obscure little district, for the first time ever in local politics, attracting such wildly disproportionate attention from such far flung brokers of power? Where is all that money coming from? You could ask Gonzales, but he’s not telling — that’s the beauty part of “dark” money.

So here’s what‘s really going on: Our current councilwoman, Margaret Wille, who is the hardest working, grass roots go-to-meeting council member I’ve ever seen, and who supports sustainable farming with a passion, has been targeted by multi-national corporations such as Monsanto because she is standing up to the genetically modified organisms propaganda machine. These are the very bullies who have chosen Gonzales as their poster boy. They are trying to nip this uppity anti-GMO thing in the bud by unseating the occasional trouble maker no matter how remote or obscure.

But the cat is out of the bag. Here’s the real science on GMOs: Just like their DDT predecessors, GMOs are “doubling down on, not freeing us from, the pesticide treadmill that contaminates our food and water while lining the pockets of the chemical companies that both make the GMOs and the pesticides used on them.” Check out retired EPA senior scientist Ramon Siedler’s recent study documenting the devastating facts at bit.ly/1tPDHhl.

Brooks Thomas

Hawi