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and only one that bothered to look for the real story:

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This right here is how Clinton was defeated in 1993. Incidentally, it was also key in Al Gore's defeat in 2000. Are people that much smarter now than they were in '93, or our media that much better, or our Democrats that much more courageous?

This is why I still believe we'll see expensive, quality health care become the privilege of the rich before we ever see it made public. Everyone making less than $100k/year will eventually have access only to what the free/cheap clinics offer, which is not far from what people in Guyana, Malawi, and Virginia get from Remote Area Medical and Doctors Without Borders. People will convince themselves that they decided to go with these instead of real hospitals, too, that they found a great way to cut costs. That's how it always works.

Thanks, Blue Dogs!

it's like they're trying to kill us

Let's not forget two things:

1. The Republicans had $900 million for pandemic flu preparedness stripped from the Stimulus Bill, arguing specifically that it had no connection to the economy. The stock market this week has already tanked because of fears associated with swine flu. Nevermind how much better prepared we'd be had that money been allocated.

In their defense, as RNC chairman Michael Steele so persuasively puts it, had they known a pandemic flu was on the horizon, they might have voted for pandemic flu preparedness:


2. Flu vaccination and medical matters are handled by the Dept. of Health and Human Services. Now would be a great time for an HHS Secretary to take point on the swine flu outbreak, right? Nope, sorry. Not that the Administration is dragging its feet: President Obama nominated Kathleen Sebelius weeks ago. She's still not on the job, though, because the Republicans have been blocking her confirmation.

in Oregon, a s**ty October Suprise

Wow. From Matt Stoller at OpenLeft, on Republican Senator Gordon Smith:

I just got a Sierra Club press release with some very gross information about Gordon Smith's company, Smith Frozen Foods. Apparently, Smith Frozen Foods started storing partially treated sewage from the town of Weston into his company's wastewater pond in the 1980s, when Smith was directly controlling the company. That's fine, it's what companies do when they have lots of land and the ability to handle partially treated sewage. Here's what's not fine.

This water is then used to irrigate cropland, in violation of Department of Environmental Quality regulations. A mutual agreement between Smith and the [Department of Environmental Quality] indicates that this irrigation likely violated state regulations... On more than one occasion, Smith Frozen Foods, the company owned by Gordon Smith, has violated Oregon's laws against having coliform bacteria in their drinking water. The presence of coliform bacteria may indicate environmental contamination, fecal contamination or E. coli bacteria.

Ladies and gentlemen, a true e. coli conservative!

If true, this is quite the coup that the Sierra Club has just pulled. Smith had already fallen slightly behind Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley, but what do you think his chances are now?

John McCain's health care guy: all Americans are actually insured

From The Dallas Morning News:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

The guy who helped write John McCain's health care policy thinks you already have all the insurance you need, so you should just shut the f**k up. Yet McCain thinks it's an awesome idea to let him craft the policies that could decide whether your cancer gets diagnosed before it kills you, or whether you get the chance to take Lipitor instead of suffering a fatal heart attack (ahem, two things that don't happen for people who rely on the ER for their primary care). And he wants you to elect him president.

But hey, have you heard that John McCain was a POW?

that's you and me they're screwing

From The Washington Independent:

Well, there's a fine way to thank the U.S. government for its trouble: Bloomberg reports that investment banks may be packaging high-risk corporate loans into securities to use as collateral for borrowing from the Federal Reserve.

You might recall that the Federal Reserve last month opened its discount window for borrowing money at cheap rates to non-banks for the first time since the Great Depression. It was a radical step, aimed at easing the credit crunch and unlocking the markets.

Remember, folks, where does the Fed's money come from? Our taxpayer dollars. And what happens if the junk loans (aka. "Big Shitpile") go into default after they get turned over to the Fed?

If I had to guess, I'd say the financial institutions who used them as collateral will say to the Fed, "Actually, we're gonna pass on the whole 'paying you back' thing. You can keep our 'collateral.'"

And that, my friends, is the story of how we bailed out the banks and financial institutions who spent the last decade yoking us to permanent, crushing debt.

what's wrong with renewables?

Just read this article on the GOP candidates' response to climate change, and I noticed something new: several of the candidates were willing to admit that global warming is real, and several even laid out "comprehensive" solutions, but none included current renewable energy technology (wind/solar/tidal/geothermal) in their grand solutions to stop climate change. Not one.

Why is that? What is it about renewable energy that is so offensive to conservatives?

I have a theory: because they're actual solutions. Notice the other things McCain and Romney and the others mention to stop climate change: clean coal, nuclear power, drilling in ANWR, more refineries, ethanol. ANWR and more refineries don't do anything to solve climate change (those are energy independence fixes). Nuclear power and ethanol are boondoggles, as ethanol barely produces more energy than it takes to produce it (and, apparently, drives up the price of corn), and nuclear power is enormously expensive-- moreso than anything but photovoltaics-- when you include all the hidden costs. There's a reason why power companies that invest in nuclear often have to ask the government for handouts a couple of years later to recoup their "stranded costs."

And, of course, there is no such thing as clean coal. Clean coal with carbon capture and sequestration (coal burning that doesn't contribute to climate change) is still in the "experimental phase." Like hydrogen fuel cells (yet another popular GOP chimera), time travel, and establishing colonies on Mars.

They did also mention conservation, but Republican lawmakers will often say they want conservation, but when pushed they admit that they only mean making a public service announcement asking people to "turn off their lights when they leave the house."

Renewable energy, on the other hand, is real, it is viable right now, and in some forms, it's even cheap! It can be established, at least to a degree, on an individual basis; any shmoe can put a wind turbine in his backyard or a solar panel on his roof. Farmers and ranchers can use it to supplement their income, becoming small-time energy producers in their own right. It creates jobs (someone has to build the things, right?). And, most importantly, it produces no CO2, nor any pollution of any kind (only the generators themselves are left over).

Pushing renewables, however, means cutting into the profit margins of oil, gas, coal, and electric companies. It means making some real change in the fabric of our country that doesn't involve the reversion to some utopian caricature of the 1950's. It means admitting that liberals were right on the environment--and the worst kind of liberal: the hippies. It means admitting that what's best for big business is not always what's best for America.

Thinking about it, this is merely another aspect of e. coli conservatism, the willingness to sacrifice the health and safety of your own constituents to protect the profit margins of big business. Sometimes it's the natural consequence of the doctrinaire, free market fundamentalist belief that deregulation is always good. To these people, the unfettered market is like Divine Providence on X, giddily weaving its way around the room touching all the worthy people. Other times it's merely because the politician in question is a wholly bought-and-owned susidiary of the companies that lobby him/her. Whether it's meat infested with bacteria, lead-painted toys, or climate change-causing coal, these conservatives are more than happy to subject you to it all day long if it means shares of ExxonMobil or Conagra gain $.40.

Do you really want one of these characters in the White House? Correction: do you really want another one of these characters in the White House?

take back your pot pies

Unbelievable. ANOTHER recall, this time by (surprise!) big Ag company Conagra. From The Chicago Tribune:

ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled all its Banquet pot pies and store brand varieties Thursday after the products were linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak. The company included beef pot pies in the recall after initially saying only the chicken and turkey pot pies should not be eaten. ConAgra issued a consumer alert Tuesday and asked stores nationwide to stop selling the poultry pot pies, but the company stopped short of a recall until Thursday evening.
...
The pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 165 cases of salmonella in 31 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 30 people have been hospitalized as part of the ongoing outbreak, but so far no deaths have been linked to the pot pies. The company and federal officials warned customers not to eat the pot pies and to throw them away, and ConAgra is offering refunds. The store brand versions are sold under the names of Albertson's, Hill Country Fare, Food Lion, Great Value (sold at Wal-Mart stores), Kirkwood, Kroger, Meijer and Western Family.

And the USDA did nothing; Conagra had to initiate the recall themselves because so many people were getting sick and they were getting sued, but the USDA dragged their feet and failed to figure out the meat was diseased until after it had already been a) slaughtered b) cut up into small pieces c) blended into little pies, d) frozen, e)shipped to Wal-Marts all over the country, f) unpacked from trucks and moved into storage in the stores, g) moved to the front of the shelves after all the older pies were sold, h) bought, i) taken home, and j) baked.

But remember, folks: government regulation is bad for big business, and what's bad for big business is bad for America. Another win for e. coli conservatism!

Funny how every single one of these recalls, be they food, toys, or whatever, always seems to involve stuff sold at Wal-Mart.

Salmonella thrives best in conditions where lots of chicken are couped close to each other, exposed to each other's feces and whatnot, like in industrial feedlots. Free range chickens are far less likely to cause salmonella, unless, of course, they're processed in slaughterhouses/meat packing plants that also kill industrially raised chickens.

Salmonella also is found in eggs, which is just great news for those of us who like them sunny side up.

raw deal

More trouble in the massive meat recall we touched upon here. From The Chicago Tribune:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture waited 18 days after learning that millions of pounds of ground beef made by Topps Meat Co. could be contaminated with E coli bacteria before it concluded that a recall was necessary, an e-mail from an agency inspection official shows.

The Topps hamburger recall, which is now the third largest hamburger recall in USDA history, was first announced Sept. 25. The Elizabeth, N.J., company initially recalled 331,000 pounds of hamburger, but last Saturday expanded the recall to include 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger.
...
The USDA also announced its recall only as New York state published its own Sept. 25 consumer alert regarding possible E coli contamination in Topps hamburger. Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the New York Department of Health, said that state investigators confirmed the E coli in Topps beef on Sept. 24 during tests in its Wadsworth Center Laboratories.

New York state actually issued its Sept. 25 consumer alert before the Topps recall was announced by the company and USDA, according to Jessica Chittenden, a New York Department of Agriculture and Markets spokewoman.

The meat, as you probably guessed, was sold by Wal-Mart. The Trib also lists Indiana as one of the affected states.

I wonder how much longer the USDA would have waited to tell people there's shit in Topps' meat if the state of New York hadn't found out when they did. I wonder, also, why the USDA isn't compelled to tell the public when they find e. coli in meat, like the New York Dept. of Health. And I wonder most of all if voters really think it's worth risking e. coli to protect lazy, greedy meat companies.

It can't be said enough: this is what deregulation looks like. Have you seen enough yet?

Chicago Trib goes to bat for Big Ag

From Chicago's conservative rag:

Because of a little-noticed legislative change buried deep within the 2007 farm bill approved in July by the House, only state inspections would be required for some meat products.

The measure was planted in the farm bill by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), according to congressional staffers familiar with the bill. It would be a boon to small meat processing companies whose products must remain in the state of origin because they lack a federal inspection stamp.
...
The debate over the state inspections is unfolding during the recall of 21.7 million pounds of hamburger produced by Topps Meat Co. of Elizabeth, N.J., because of E. coli contamination.
...
Other large beef recalls include a 2002 action by Con Agra, which recalled 19 million pounds of ground beef because of E. coli, and a 1997 recall of 25 million pounds of beef made by Hudson Foods.
...
Topps is a large-enough meat processor to require the presence of one of the USDA's 6,500 meat inspectors in its plant. But many companies aren't that big. The requirement for a USDA inspection and stamp on meat that will be sold interstate hampers sales for smaller meat processors, according to beef industry advocates.

Shorter Trib: Big meat packing companies with federal inspectors on site abuse the public trust by using such skeezy practices that we have to recall 20 million lbs. of meat every year. Therefore, smaller companies should continue to be shut out of the market.

The agricultural market (in meat, especially) is not a capitalistic system; it's been rigged against smaller companies, farmers, and ranchers by decades of unfair regulation aimed solely at preserving their oligopolies. Smaller meat packers can't get their meat federally inspected because the inspectors won't give you the time of day unless you have a million dollar operation, yet they're blocked by federal regulation from moving their meat to more lucrative markets across state lines and thus making the kind of money it takes to get the inspectors. And that's only the beginning.

Michael Pollan writes in The Omnivore's Dilemma that one organic farmer he talked to in Pennsylvania was told that, if they wanted a single inspector for his operation, he would have to change to a purely indoor facility, even though the meat from his outdoor one always tested lower rates of E. coli than of the federally inspected facilities (at first that sounds weird, but when you think about it, an enclosed slaughterhouse is actually a cesspool, even if you could totally clean it regularly). He would also have to build the inspector his own bathroom, among other absurdities.

Yet despite this incredible burden on small companies, and the presence on site of federal meat inspectors at the big companies, how much safer is your meat compared to even 10 years ago (or at last year's rate, 2,500,000,000 lbs. of recalled meat ago)?

I can say this: when my parents were my age, they could eat rare steak without losing a wink of sleep over it. E. coli was virtually unheard of.

I think it's safe to say that the small-time companies aren't the problem.

Our food system is plagued by a whole myriad of deformities, most of them stemming from the monopolistic, exploitative, and negligent behavior of Big Foods, of companies like Topps and Conagra. It's long past time to start breaking down the old system and moving toward a more localized, sustainable way of producing food.

more from the e. coli conservatives

From AP:

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) -- Government regulators never acted on calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens after last year's deadly E. coli spinach outbreak, leaving the safety of America's salads to a patchwork of largely unenforceable rules and the industry itself, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The regulations governing farms in this central California region known as the nation's "Salad Bowl" remain much as they were when bacteria from a cattle ranch infected spinach that killed three people and sickened more than 200.

AP's review of data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that federal officials inspect companies growing and processing salad greens an average of just once every 3.9 years. Some proposals in Congress would require such inspections at least four times a year.

In California, which grows three-quarters of the nation's greens, processors created a new inspection system but with voluntary guidelines that were unable to keep bagged spinach tainted with salmonella from reaching grocery shelves last month.

Once again, this is what happens when you put people in power who don't believe the government has any warrant to enforce fair play or safety standards in the marketplace. People die so that companies can keep those pesky regulations from cutting into their bottom line.