Few things are as simple and straightforward as we’d like them to be.  In an ideal world a president with insight and compassion would always do the insightful, compassionate thing.  We don’t live in that world.  Beyond that, we don’t even live in a world where we can agree on what is insightful and what constitutes compassion.

I was reminded of the hideous complexity of the world and its laws in follow-up conversation with my friend who has been battling Monsanto for years.   He pointed out several inaccuracies in my presentation.  The Monsanto Protection Act, so-called, for example, does not prevent anyone from suing Monsanto, but Monsanto was rarely sued anyway, the government agency that had arguably failed to stop Monsanto from mischief was sued, Monsanto sent an army of lawyers to help their friends in the government regulatory agency out.  I’ll outline a few more here, to illustrate how thick this stinking plot actually is.

The protections Monsanto had written into the budget bill may or may not prove to be a great boon for the mega-corporation, it will play out in the courts, as always.  The Monsanto part of the law will only be in effect for the length of the budget bill, which covers only a certain fiscal period.  My friend pointed out that the president did not have the option of vetoing the budget bill, which funds the government going forward, for the sake of a few dozen rotten wormholes in it.   These riders and provisions are typically inserted into bills like this, and there is no line item veto.  The president either signs the bill or takes the heat for shutting down the government.  It would not be a rational act for him to say “the buck stops here” over a detail like the Monsanto Protection Act.

As for the respectful, pleasant colleagues, my friend told me not to go overboard.  As a corrective, he sent me a profile of one of these adversaries, Dick Cheney’s son-in-law.   A mild-mannered stone faced killer Win-Win Cheney must be awfully proud of.   Regarding my impression of friendship with his adversaries he wryly compared his imagined dinner companions to a pack of rabid Tasmanian Devils.   In light of that, it must be admitted (and the passive voice used) that the surface cordiality he’d once remarked on was overstated.  In my own law career I am now recalling several attorneys with the foam of rabies on their greasy lips.

If you want more of the real story of Monsanto’s treachery, and the great harm its single-minded pursuit of patenting and monopolizing the world’s seed supply is causing, watch this video of a talk given by the brilliant and courageous seed activist Vandana Shiva, I’ve cued up a nice bit of it here.