paintinginacave

Hello Mr. Taubes. In your article "Sweet Little Lies" you talk a lot about the history of the sugar lobby, especially one report that was stacked with sugar industry lobbyists and came to the conclusion that sugar was regarded GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe). I have a few questions about this.

1. You claim that there was plenty of evidence at the time that sugar should NOT be labelled as GRAS. Do you think that it should not be? As in, it is toxic enough to be banned as an added substance in our food?

2. On a related note, do you think it would be realistic at this point to partially or completely ban sugar?

3. What do you think about mayor Bloomberg's large-size soda ban in NYC?

4. If government intervention/regulation is not the answer, what is? Education?

We all seem to be missing why this case matters... It's about money going to PACs and Super PACs, not campaigns themselves.

"Super PACs, officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns. Unlike traditional PACs, they can raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size.[19]

Super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions: the aforementionedCitizens United v. Federal Election Commissionand, two months later, Speechnow.org v. FEC. In Speechnow.org, the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that PACs that did not make contributions to candidates, parties, or other PACs could accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for the purpose of making independent expenditures."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

It doesn't matter too much if that ad money is spent directly by a candidate's campaign or someone working in their interest, but it sure as heck matters that corporations and unions now can make unlimited political "speech" ($$).

This is derived from two nuggets of legal wisdom, boiled down to Corporations = people and money = speech. Therefore, limiting corporate political spending constitutes an infringement of the 1st Amendment, according to the Supreme Court.

IMO, if we want to get money out of politics, we need to make a change in the basis of this legal reasoning (corporations are not people, money is not speech to most people).

Edit: sauce