Stories Of Government Working

After a minor stumble, the House today passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which would bolster the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to ensure food that's not contaminated and vomit-inducing. La Vida Locavore has more. Basically, the bill would properly fund the FDA to carry out their mission, paid for by the food producers, and would enact stringent performance standards for food producers, with mandatory trace-back systems and frequent inspections of facilities. And it would apply the standards for domestic food safety to imported food as well.

Given how pretty much almost everyone in America eats food, and given the high profile of food outbreaks during the age of e.coli conservatism, if this gets through the Senate I would hope that somebody would let the public know. It ain't health care reform, but it's an important measure with a tangible effect on people's lives. I'll give you a couple others. The stimulus package provided $100 million dollars for the nation's food banks to make sure the truly needy could find food this year during these economic struggles. Food assistance is up about 30% this year over last year, and so providing some stimulus funds to feed people has a real human benefit, in addition to allowing the hungry some breathing space to get back on their feet. And the House pumped in some more money for highway and unemployment funds, so that people who are jobless can continue to access benefits and construction projects in the states can continue.

We have a problem with the conservative demonization of government, mainly because too few people are out there telling the story of government when it works. It makes it easier to lift the heavy policy objects when you restore a little bit of trust that when government is properly organized and managed it can actually help people.

This is another failure that liberals would be wise to counteract.

UPDATE: The roll call. The food safety bill passed 283-142. A few House liberals voted against it, I'd be interested to hear their thoughts.

UPDATE: The President:

"Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, legislation that will raise food safety standards, allow the FDA to issue mandatory recalls of harmful products, and enhance our oversight of imported food.

This action represents a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system and protecting Americans from foodborne illness. Those are the goals of the Food Safety Working Group I convened in March and charged with making recommendations to improve our food safety system. And that is why we announced a new rule to control Salmonella contamination in eggs and are working to reduce the presence of harmful pathogens such as E. coli in meat and produce; strengthen our capacity to trace the source of outbreaks; and update our emergency operations procedures.

I commend the House of Representatives for its action today and look forward to working with the Senate to enact critical food safety legislation."

This stuff matters too.

Hunger Strike For CEO Parnell

I thought that the banksters' hearing would be the best in the House yesterday, but actually the hearing with the Georgia peanut plant owner was much more interesting - and enlightening.

As salmonella illness began spreading across the country last fall, the owner of a Georgia peanut plant that was causing the outbreak railed against the cost and delays that the contamination was causing his businesses, according to internal company documents obtained by Congress.

Stewart Parnell, president of Peanut Corporation of America, also pressed federal regulators to allow him to continue using peanuts from the tainted plant and shipped contaminated products to customers with a homemade certificate that falsely attested to their purity, according to e-mails and memos made public yesterday at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Parnell, whose Virginia-based company is at the center of a massive food-contamination scandal and a federal criminal investigation, was compelled by subpoena to appear before lawmakers but refused to answer questions [...]

Federal regulators at the hearing called Parnell's actions "unconscionable"; several lawmakers called them criminal.

"This is a company that cared more about the financial bottom line than it did about the safety of its customers," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) held up a large jar wrapped in yellow police tape stamped "Caution" and filled with some of the 1,900 peanut products that have been recalled as a result of the contamination. "I'm going to ask Mr. Parnell if he'd like to open this and sample some of the products that he thought it was okay for others to eat," Walden said.

Parnell, who showed no emotion, did not respond to Walden's invitation. Instead, he repeated the only line he spoke at the hearing: "Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer your questions based on the protections afforded me under the U.S. Constitution." (emphasis mine)

Parnell was actually on an advisory board on PEANUT QUALITY under Bush's Department of Agriculture.

If nothing else, the change in Administration portends a return to federal agencies and watchdogs actually performing their core functions again. President Obama has already called for a full review of the FDA and said that the government is too slow in tracking tainted food. I believe the President values competence and will do his best to remedy this.

One thing, though... this hearing took place in Henry Waxman's House Energy and Commerce Committee. Clearly it's more of a job for the Oversight Committee, though obviously the commerce of food makes it germane. These are the types of hearings Waxman held all the time at Oversight. Does he have to hold two gavels now? Is Ed Towns alive?

Death By Tax Cut

Rick Perlstein, who's obsessed over sinkholes and the connection to our broken infrastructure, highlights this bit about which I was unaware:

When I read this on this weekend's floods in today's New York Times I did a double take:

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty said six people had died, some of them when their vehicles fell into sinkholes in roadways...

The astonishment: As many as six more! That would make for a death toll from faulty roadways in Minnesota of possibly a dozen in Minnesota over a three-week period alone—two years after Tim Pawlenty put on a dumb show for Grover Norquist style conservatives, holding up a giant prop "VETO" stamped as he cancelled an extra $300 million a year for the Minnesota Department of Transportation because it involved a small tax increase. As I wrote two weeks ago, he addressed himself at the ceremony to the public-spirited Minnesota legislatures who dared suggested that Minnesota's roads and bridges needed work: "How dumb can they be?"

In fact, we now know that this love of ideological conservatism over public safety stopped the bridge in Minnesota from being fixed even after they knew it was in bad shape:

The men and women whose job was to ensure the safety of Bridge 9340 were meeting once again. Just after noon on Dec. 6, they filed into a conference room in Roseville to divvy up the final prep work for a dangerous steel reinforcement project high above the Mississippi River.
A senior engineer was going to pull property records in order to contact landowners beneath the bridge. Detours were coming for West River Road. The Coast Guard was about to get heaps of paperwork on what tasks would be done from the river channel. Truck drivers would soon learn of pending weight restrictions.

It appeared that the most studied bridge in Minnesota, the focus of worrisome inspection reports for a decade, was finally going to have its most glaring weaknesses fixed.

But five weeks later, all those preparations stopped. In a single conference call on Jan. 17, the same consultants who said reinforcement plates were needed to strengthen the bridge cautioned MnDOT that drilling for the retrofit could weaken it.

"That was the turning point. That's where we turned the ship 180 degrees," said state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan.

Internal MnDOT documents reviewed by the Star Tribune reveal that last year bridge officials talked openly about the possibility of the bridge collapsing -- and worried that it might have to be condemned.

They knew. And if you read the whole article you'll see suggestions that money was a consideration in halting the fixes. So we can now put a price on the 6 lives that were lost when the bridge collapsed. As if it's less expensive now to rebuild the whole thing.

Conservatives are the least patriotic people imaginable. A patriot would actually try to do something for their fellow American, rather than leaving them in danger. Right-wing policies of abandoning responsibility have led to deaths and suffering, and also a need to spend MORE to fix the responsibilities previously abandoned. It's dangerous and stupid.

It Should Be Noted

That while Erin Burnett didn't deserve on-air sexual harrassment, her statement that Chinese toys with lead and food with poison are good for the US economy shows that she's just another let-the-buyer-beware free-market bot without an ounce of concern for, you know, the people that die from ingesting poison or lead.

One can take it a step further and suggest that if we weren't such food wimps and if we had stronger stomachs, the Chinese could make bread from algae and excrement and sell it for a penny and a half and we'd all be rich rich rich!

The boss in charge of selling the toys with lead hanged himself, which according to Ms. Burnett was just stupid because he was an economic warrior king.