The Republican Party stands up to provide radioactive pig shit to all Americans

[Bjorn Against]

Dear Senator Thune,

I wanted to write to thank you and your organization for standing up for what you believe in no matter how unpopular your position may be. You see Mr. Thune, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee which you head took a http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?txtName=Luter%2C+Joseph&NumOfThou=0&txt2006=Y&submit=Go%21">$24,800 contribution from Joseph W Luter III of Smithfield Foods.

Mr. Luter is a man who represents your party quite well. Here is what a recent article in Rolling Stone Magazine had to say about him:

When the Environmental Protection Agency cited Smithfield for thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act, Luter responded by comparing what he claimed were the number of violations the company could theoretically have been charged with (2.5 million, by his calculation) to the number of documented violations up to that point (seventy-four). "A very, very small percent," he said.

This is an impressive track record Mr. Thune, this is a man who admits that he can literally break the law millions of times and only get charged on seventy-four counts. Considering the number of crimes your party has committed, you can learn a lot from this man.

By standing up for people like Luter your party is really taking some bold stances. Here are a few more quotes from the Rolling Stone article that I think will really help you to see just what your party is providing to Americans by getting behind a man such as Luter.

Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America's thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield's total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company's slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.

Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do -- even if it came marginally close to that standard -- it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility, ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield's business model.

A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1

That is right Mr. Thune, your party and organization is helping to provide us all with radioactive pig shit. It is great to see you standing your ground no matter what the public may think if they find out about your position on this issue. You know Mr. Thune, because you are taking such a brave a stance I think you need to stand up and make this an issue in the 2008 campaigns, because it is very likely that your Democratic opponent will oppose radioactive pig shit. And we all know that everyone who opposes toxic pig shit must hate America.

This is an issue the clearly the differences between the two parties Mr. Thune, and I think it is about stand up and declare the Republican Party the Radioactive Pig Shit Party.

Thank you for your consideration, I look forward to hearing you take this issue to the voters of America.

Sincerely,
A fellow member of the Radioactive Pig Shit Party.

[baldguy]

1. It doesn't matter if a crime has been committed, what matters is getting caught.

To a Republican, if you haven't been caught, you haven't committed a crime.

[Bjorn Against]

3. They don't even care about getting caught, they only care about not getting convicted

Notice this guy brags that he may have broken the law 2.5 million times, he is proud of that. He has been caught, they just refuse to prosecute.

They actually wear their crimes as a badge of honor, as another example look how much the Bush Administration has bragged about their illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

[baldguy]

6. and Rumsfeld gets a medal.

Was that for murdering 650,000 Iraqis, or getting 3000 American soldiers killed in an illegal war?

[betterdeadthanred]

2. I read that article

last week. I have no desire to ever eat pork again. Ever. The descriptions of what they do and pump into a dying pig to get it to the slaughter house on it's own four feet did me in. What ARE we eating? How the people in NC put up with it, I just don't know. If enough of them were pissed off and vocal about it, something would be done.

[Critters2]

10. Same problems in Iowa, but the legislature has removed from local communities

and counties any legal right to fight "Big Hog". The Iowa General Assembly, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Smithfield Foods.

[bambo53]

4. That's pretty negative

You might have provided a more positive message if you had suggested to Mr. Thune that Smithfield relocate it's operations in Iraq, thereby creating job opportunities and a sense of hope for the Iraqi people.

I'm sure Mr. Thune and his friends would gladly consider it.

[Bjorn Against]

5. I could just see George Bush standing up and delivering that speech...

"Today is a great for the people of Iraq, today they have lagoons of pig shit that show us the tremendous economic growth that the country has experienced."

[sam sarrha]

7. they need CoOp bio-mass methane generators, that produce methane out of the shit and sell it at a

discount to the members to operate farm vehicles, machinery motors and heat in the winter and share in the sale of excess methane the group doesn't use.. but no one ever listens to me..

the system would not only make energy put produce high grade fertilizer after the processing.. to be used on their fields they grow feed for the hogs in..

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

13. Exactly. It needs to be converted to methane as the by products treated

It should be required for big livestock producers to use this technology and to clean up after themselves.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. It says a lot that when I see a phrase like "radioactive pig shit", I now ASSUME...

that it should be taken literally. How far this country has degraded itself.

[TheMadMonk]

9. One evil irony is that all that pig shit can be turned into money,..

...Disposing of it need not be a cost at all. With bio-reactors it is possible to extract a good deal of energy from that much pig shit, plus a lot of sterile fertiliser, and return clean water to the piggery. Offal from meat works can be disposed of the same way.

The sad truth is that this sort of "farming" is not going to go away, the best that can be hoped for is to improve conditions for the animals and the workers. And flow on environmental effects should benefit all regardless.

[Critters2]

11. Or we could stop eating the "product". That's what I've done.

None of this is on my conscience.

[truedelphi]

12. I am curious about the statement that the waste is being

called radioactive...

I think the reference is an analogy that is being used. I mean, the waste is NOT radioactive - I am fairly sure that you could use a geioger counter on the waste and not notice a significant reading.

So this statement is an analogy, right?

The waste is very much a destroyer of life on a grand scale. It pollutes the ground that it touches to such a huge degree that remediation of the soil for grazing or planting is probably a hugely expensive, and hugely time consuming proposition. Perhaps close to impossible.

And the effluvia does not merely affect the land.But through travelling down streams and creeks and then out to the deltas and estuaries of the bays on the ocean, it affects the water of not just one community but often an entire state.

I am trying to remember the name of the most excellent book written in the early or mid nineteen nineties about the destruction of the waters of coastal Carolinas. The pig efflvia from MASSIVE SUPER Pig Farms triggered the growth of several microorganisms that were deadly - not just to the fish and thus the livelihood of fishermen, but to the immune systems of the people who happened to be out in their bopats or on their docks nd who inhaled the spray of the baty.

If someone knows the book I mean, its name would be much appreciated.

[Bjorn Against]

14. Yes there was a bit of sarcasm in my post...

What Rolling Stone said is that on a continuum it is probably closer to radioactive waste than it is to organic manure. So no it is not radioactive, it just has all kinds of toxic chemicals in it that organic manure does not.