An appeals court has revived a lawsuit against Bayer AG by a man who says his cancer was caused by exposure to Round Up weedkiller. Then, housing groups are begging the Biden administration to do something about out of control rent prices. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: An appeals court has revived a lawsuit against Bayer AG by a man who says his cancer was caused by exposure to Roundup weed killer. Well, first of all, you know, you and I have followed, matter of fact, I handled the, some of the first Roundup cases that were ever filed in the United States. I took the, probably the first three or four depositions in that case. These people are absolutely devoted to putting money ahead of everything. In, in the fifties, you, you and I have talked about this, they had clear indication that their weed killer would cause cancer, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The rats, the rat studies, they phonied them up. They took those studies, phonied them up and the EPA found out about the studies being phonied up and still didn’t do anything it.
Farron Cousins: Right. That’s what people need to understand. Because you look at it right now, the EPA says, no, no, no glyphosate, totally safe. Not gonna cause cancer. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Well, 30 years ago, the EPA was telling us a very different story. They were telling us that Monsanto who was making it before Bayer bought them out, Monsanto lied to you. They covered up these studies. Early nineties, EPA says this stuff will absolutely give you cancer.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Like unequivocally, our studies show it, their studies show it. And then a few years later, you know, you got some lobbying on behalf of Monsanto. They created this, you know, glyphosate task force to whitewash every horrible piece of news.
Mike Papantonio: Well, let me, you know, what people miss about this story is it was very evident when I was taking the depositions, this is all tied into globalism, you understand. Glyphosate was gonna be the thing that was going to save the planet from food shortage. You had the, you had the Clinton administration and the Bush administration say, we have to have this. We can’t put any kind of limits on these folks because we need food all over the world. Well, it was a big lie. It was an absolute lie. And instead of creating anything positive, they decimated the farming industry in places like India, Pakistan and places like that around the world.
Farron Cousins: Right. And, and again, totally money driven because after, you know, they’re marketing Roundup, they say, well, hey, at the same time, why don’t you buy our Roundup ready crops?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So that way you can just spray this stuff all over your fields. It’ll kill your weeds, but not your crop. And now we’re at the point where recent studies showed that 80% of people tested, you know, men, women, children across the board, 80% have glyphosate in their bodies right now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And the problem is it’s cumulative. It doesn’t, it, it’s, you may, it may get rid of part of it over a period of time. But every, you’re reloading all of the time. The biggest problem that we found in the case early on was the damage it does to children. When children are at a growth stage, it causes all types of possible cancers in that child, every thing from leukemia to cancer in the bone plates. They knew all this. And the, the thing, the, what I love that, what, what I love about this decision by the appeals court, it says, you know what? We don’t care what the EPA says. The, the argument was by the company was well, the EPA told us what we could and could not label. And therefore we’re protected. The appeals court says, hell no, we’re not gonna rely on this dysfunctional EPA anymore.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And the EPA as we know has been, you know, captured by the regulatory or by the agencies they’re supposed to regulate for 30, 40 years at this point. You can’t really trust what’s coming out of that agency whatsoever. I mean, we’ve got lobbyists, we’ve got industry insiders, all kinds of people that have headed up this agency and completely dismantled it and made it a joke from the inside out.
Mike Papantonio: The last three folks that have been at the very top of the structure of the EPA, all came from corporate in, they all came from the corporate side of it. They were either lobbyists for corporate. They were political for corporate. They worked with corporate where it came to chemicals and pesticides and herbicides. Every, every one of ’em had those ties and every president that appointed them knew that. And they had all the information they needed to know that this guy is nothing but a corporate whore that’s going to allow corporate America to do whatever they want. And this, that’s the Roundup story exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Housing groups are begging the Biden administration to do something about out of control rent. You know, Farron, the truth is Biden has plenty that he can do, but he’s doing nothing. And he’s doing nothing and people are asking the questions. You have these things right at your fingertips, go do ’em. Take your, gimme your take.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Obviously rent prices, housing prices all across the country, going through the roof post pandemic, even though we’re, we’re not even really post pandemic yet, but anyway, they’re begging Biden do something. The average national rent is now over $2,000 a month. This is unsustainable. Inflation’s still killing people. Gas prices coming down, but still bad. And Biden’s administration, whether it’s through the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission, they can unilaterally make moves that are either going to halt the rent increases or hammer them with the SEC to the point where they lose investors and lose money.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. We did this story a few weeks ago. Unbelievable, the fact that, you know, again, it’s the same thing. We can do a story that affects pocket book issues. Like this is gonna cost you money if you don’t pay attention. The stories people would pay attention to is I hate Trump. I hate Republicans. I hate Democrat. The hate stories. We know that because we’ve been doing this a long time. We did the story and we talked about that Wall Street is going out, buying up huge swaths of houses in neighborhoods. Probably most people watching this program have gotten a call, do you wanna sell your house? Do you have some property that you want to sell? What’s happening there? Explain it.
Farron Cousins: Those are the people working for these major corporations, the BlackRocks and all these other investment groups. And what they wanna do is they buy up entire communities, neighborhoods, subdivisions and we’re, again, we’re not talking one or two houses. We’re talking about every house in that area on that block.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So they can then rent them out, charge more than, of course, it should cost to live there because people have no choice. Housing is the number one expense in this country and you kind of have to have a house
Mike Papantonio: It’s the highest increase in 35 years. It’s increased $200. The median cost has increased $200 per month, six to 7% increase. The highest that it’s ever been. Evictions are higher than they’ve ever been. You’ve got 50 of the largest cities in the country, the largest cities in the country that they have followed and just in the last year is, it’s gone up now to 200, increased to 200 more than what you’re paying. If you’re paying a thousand, look for 1200, and they’re saying it just continues. And the, the reason Biden is not doing anything because it’s a Wall Street deal. And like it or not, this is a Wall Street president.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: And he has a Wall Street cabinet. And the Wall Streeters are right now trying to buy up as much property as they can to hold renters captive. That’s the simple story there, I think.
Farron Cousins: And, and what’s gonna end up happening is we’re gonna end up with a glut in the market once they kick people out, price them outta the market. Then suddenly these bankers who can’t think two months into the future.
Mike Papantonio: Are gonna be.
Farron Cousins: Are gonna realize, oh God, I’ve got all this property that is worthless because nobody can afford it.
Mike Papantonio: It’s already happening. It’s already parts of the country where that’s already happening.
