Yet Another Need For Smart Government
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Conservatives and libertarians make the argument incessantly that the only path to virtue is the elimination of the government, setting up a straw man in which the only supposed counter is “big government” pushed by liberals. But as President Clinton and Al Gore championed, liberals – and the majority of Americans – support not a big government or a useless, unresponsive one (like we saw in Katrina), but one that operates efficiently with a brain. Like keeping the food supply safe.
Food safety advocates are calling for stringent regulations, and they say a single agency should be in charge of making sure all food is safe.
“If you raise spinach in the Salinas Valley and it’s in 40 states in a few days, you can’t have a system that says we won’t do anything until somebody gets sick,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy for Consumer Federation and a former USDA official.
“Because look how many people get sick before you can even know it,” Foreman said.
24 Responses to “Yet Another Need For Smart Government”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Blaming Bush? Surprise. Not.
No, I blame conservatism. Bush is just the latest practicioner.
Well, gosh, if you die from eating spinach, next time, don’t buy spinach! The free market solves all problems. Think of how much better America would be if we privatized our police, our military and our legislators.
Until we can freely buy Congressmen, America will be a communist police state, as it has been ever since the New Deal.
Blaming Bush?
Where?
Quaker in his parents’ basement,
Oliver is blaming this ‘government’, currently being run by GWB.
Me thinks Oliver is planning a class action suit against McDonalds and the RNC.
You see why you get banned, Ian?
Why?
Oh, because you’re a fascist.
My b.
No, because either you’re some kind of neo-Dadaist or you just talk an incredible amount of bollocks for the sake of provocation.
OW, I do not necessarily agree with you or the food safety advocate on this one. The spinach outbreak is being handled by the FDA, CDC and USDA, each from their field of expertise. Consolidating those organizations leaves them isolated from conventional thinking. Creating a new organization separate from these doesn’t necessarily imply good or better government. I have seen this with the DOE, NREL and separate national labs.
What might be nice to see though is more advocacy on the part of the government. Growers are being left to handle their own solution rather than getting guidance and direction from the FDA or USDA. This is clearly a mistake for which you can effectively blame conservative montra.
Zadura- perhaps you can help us since you seem to be in the know here. Among the three agancies you mention, has there been a material change in the procedures of those three agencies in the last 20 or so years that may ahve been a factor in wither of these food borne illness outbreaks?
Let’s look at, for example, the e coli outbreak of 1993 via hamburger which killed four times as many people as the current spinach outbreak (sorry about the Oliver style hype.)
What changes in procedures have been implemented since then? (Of course, those were related to a very different food product.)
I mean since the U.S. averaged about 185 e coli cases per year from 1993 to 2000 and about 165 per year from 2001 to the present, there surely have been some changes.
Do you think that although the frequesncy of cases has increased, but the impact of the cases (as in number of who have suffered from this food borne illness) has dropped, that policies at these three agencies have helped the situation or made it worse?
(Keep in mind that the frequency of cases could also be due to an awareness and better detection of the illness since the first well known cases began to make headlines in 1988.)
Or do you just prefer to blame conservatives for the fact that the number of cases per year has dropped in the current administration?
Marty, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any major changes in the way these departments handle or process food cases in the last 2 decades. Local & state health departments are usually the first contacted about food-bourne illness. The sheer number of such outbreaks and false positives makes it impossible for a central agency to effectively handle this and it has always been that way. If a state or local agency feels that there is a wider public health threat, they assess and report findings to CDC. If it appears to be something national in scope, a rapid response team from each of the appropriate agencies is called in. There have certainly been small changes to this system, some brought on by higher levels of computerization and streamlining. Earlier assessment might probably be contributing to improvement in mortality and morbidity numbers.
I would oppose any effort to combine the CDC, USDA and FDA or to usurp power from local health authorities. Neither to me represent good governance.
The Republican contribution that I oppose is letting the farms come up with their own scheme to protect their crops and getting sign-off from said agencies. This is part of the frequent Republican approach which lets industry self-regulate. I belive this is a huge mistake, and one made for ideological rather than pragmatic reasons.
Great Ollie….when the democrats win here is what you do…
Every man woman and child in america gets their own food taster! From the government….UNION of course! Now the democrats can take credit for food safety AND increasing jobs in the US!
Damn, why do I GIVE these great ideas away!
Here’s the thing, these food safety agents have little to no power to recall defective products (ditto for auto manufacturers). At the very least, I think they ought to. Much of this is the after effect of Reagan-era deregulation that chopped off the federal government’s powers to do so (powers enacted after “The Jungle” caught on). This isn’t something that popped up overnight with George Bush and there wasn’t enough done under Clinton to roll it back, but don’t you conservatives agree with me that we should have a safe food supply and that just leaving it up to the food conglomerates is gambling with people’s lives?
(I’d also like to point out that while Marty disagrees he at least disagrees with a decent argument unlike Ian and Pedro – follow along, children)
Quaker in his parents’ basement,
Sonny, I’ve been in my own basement longer than you’ve drawn breath in this world.
Now did you have a point to make?
‘Sonny, I’ve been in my own basement longer than you’ve drawn breath in this world.’
For God’s sake, Quaker, at least come up and get some fresh air. Listen, Dewey didn’t win after all, there’s a vaccine for polio, man landed on the moon, the evil empire fell, and they now have computers that don’t have vacuum tubes and you don’t need a gymnasium to house them (IE: Get rid of your ENIAC!).
Its not a function of Bush government. Its a function of American Bureaucracy. It may be compounded by Bush policies, like the desire to have businesses police themselves, placing the Agriculture Department in the control of ConAgra, etc…
But some things are just Bureaucracy playing self politics over safety.
O-Dub:
George Bush = Current President
Ronald Reagan = Former President
Hohohehehaha.
Dugger | Oct 10, 2006 8:10:52 AM
“For God’s sake, Quaker, at least come up and get some fresh air.”
Dugs, did you miss this thread?
“Hugh Hewitt & The Question Of Irony
Hugh Hewitt, in one of his usual trap-attempt interviews makes the following statement.
“Why are you so reluctant, Eric Black, to call a lie a lie? Because most people understand a lie to be an intentional misstatement of fact and intentional deception. I mean, it’s not a complicated word. Why are you reluctant to use it?”
Of course, Hugh’s mindset says that a lie should be only called a lie when it’s applied to a Democrat, because if anyone calls George W. Bush (aka The Exalted One) a liar, Hugh is liable to literally flip out of his gourd.”
Oh jesus wait til dugger reads this …
frameone | Oct 7, 2006 1:10:36 PM
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!
Ohhh,sweet, sweet irony of ironies.
Duros62 | Oct 7, 2006 2:33:08 PM
Why can’t leftist hold a single consistent idea in their ideology?
Remember when OW and his band of reknown was screeching about how the republicans were afraid of all these little suicide bombers..and everything Bush did was because he was afraid?
Now, the leftists think we should all be in dire fear of our lettuce, and need the government to protect us! And why, well, have’nt you seen the scads of people dying in the street after eating a salad? Where is your humanity?
Geez, you knuckleheads are have just one trick pony….
No prob though, looking forward to where the country goes after the election…should nail down the ’08 presidents race for the republicans in any case.
Shorter Pedro:
Here is an (inevitably partisan, yet still over-distorted) interpretation of an argument someone made once.
Here is a similar interpretation of an argument someone is making now.
Here is a crude line I have drawn between them.
(SCENE MISSING)
I have proved all people to the left of John McCain to be inferior beings! Now I am your GOD! Fan me.
“This isn’t something that popped up overnight with George Bush and there wasn’t enough done under Clinton to roll it back, but don’t you conservatives agree with me that we should have a safe food supply and that just leaving it up to the food conglomerates is gambling with people’s lives?”
What a silly question. Do you ever think in terms other that campign slogan talking points?
If you are looking at the facts, the number of cases per year of food borne illnesses has decreased since 2000- but that isn’t even the point.
These cases are not always controllable by any agency. A simple case of one worker, chef, food handler not washing their hands at the right time can cause an outbreak.
This is an awareness issue that the food industry and governments (local and federal) work together on and do the best they can.
Why is self regulation an important part of the equation? Because I don’t know a single government agency that cares if the food industry makes a profit. However, I’ll bet you that the entire spinach growing industry is doing everything they can to avoid any more problems with spinach. (since they likely lost millions with this latest case.)
And Zadura- if the industry doesn’t self regulate, the industry gets killed Ask any spinach producer about that over the last several weeks or anybody who was a Jack-in-the-Box owner or Manager in 1998, or anybody who sold unpasteurized apple juice in the 90′s.
Now, the DLC might be for smart, responsible government, but I find that too many people in the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” tend to want government for it’s own sake. They may not consciously want that, but since they see all society’s problems as having a government solution, that is in fact their position.
To me the litmus test is simple. If you are confident that we can have government do everything you want with the spending it had under the Clinton administration(about 18% of GDP), then you are not a Big Government Democrat, but a smart government Democrat.
But if like say, Ezra Klein or Paul Krugman, you believe the government should take 25% or more, you are a Big Government Democrat, plain and simple.
So how about it, Oliver? Where do you stand? Was Clinton-era spending and revenue enough, or even after rolling back the tax cuts will you be seeking yet more revenue?