Death Of All Marriages As We Know It Watch - Day One

In the first day A.M. (After Marriage), amazingly enough not every couple in California spontaneously divorced as a result of city clerks handing out licenses with "Party 1" and "Party 2". There actually are still married people out there, and now they've been joined by thousands of LGBT couples. And here are some of the highlights from today:

• It seems like every couple has an accompanying news article chronicling their wedding, but I think it's a good thing for now (though I long for the day when this is unexceptional and not a news event). Putting a human face on what can often be an abstract discussion about legal rights seems to me to be vital. There's a great series of videos featuring couples in the LA area at this link.

• There are of course detractors, although most of them are staying quiet for now. One group who isn't is the LA Archdiocese, which posted a statement denouncing "redefining marriage, which has a unique place in God’s creation." Maybe this is just me, but after the events of the last decade, I don't think the Catholic church should be making any statements about sexuality whatsoever.

• True Majority and The Human Rights Campaign are but two of the organizations delivering petitions in support of marriage equality. I expect many more.

• In Bakersfield, where Kern County clerk Ann Barnett has halted her office from officiating all weddings, an under-the-radar recall campaign has commenced. By the way, there's nothing new about such actions; historian and author of "Nixonland" (which you all need to read) Rick Perlstein reminds us that this is exactly what school districts in the South did after the Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka decision, shutting down entire school systems rather than integrating them. They called it Massive Resistance.

Of course, the people who thought like that then—here's an excellent article on one of them, Lester Maddox—are now looked upon as history's losers, as monsters, as embarrassments, and have no defenders. Now, every conservative claims to have always been on the opposite side of the Lester Maddoxes of the day. The people who think like this now will look just as bad to history as Maddox did then. I try to mention this every time I speak to a conservative audience: that I pity them. They should take care to stay off the record when they oppose basic human rights, because it will eventually come back to bite them on the ass.

But ultimately, I'm not worried about them (though if I were a Christian, I'd worry for their immortal souls), because, twenty years down the road, most will successfully maintain they were for marriage equality all along. Moral relativism has its advantages.

• Finally, this is the video of the day (h/t AmericaBlog)

A Government Without A Head

There are these two big scandals looming under the surface that are affecting people right now, and they cannot be twisted as political, they cannot be explained away by blaming Democrats or Bill Clinton or whatever trick the executive branch wants to use. They are the pet food scandal (I should say human food too at this point) and the student loan industry scam, which was well-known to this government for six years and yet they did nothing to stop it, allowing predatory lenders to buy their way into university's favor and limit choices for consumers. These aren't political scandals; they're simply the obvious outgrowth of an ideology that views the mechanisms of government with contempt, and perceives power as a way to make money for cronies and friends.

In the case of both the student loan industry and the pet food industry, oversight was non-existent, and companies were allowed to subvert the rules at the expense of taxpayers. This is not incidental - it's what Republicans call "good, solid American enterprise." This is exactly what they want, and they turn a blind eye to the consequences. As someone said to Bill Kristol in his embarrasing display of a debate with Robert Kuttner at yesterday's "Failure of Conservatism" conference, "Why is it that, 6 years after 9-11, this government can't guarantee the safety of my cat's food supply?" The answer is because they have no interest in it. And Republicans usually won't tell you that, although sometimes they'll slip up and tell the truth:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today joined an exodus from President Bush's first-term Cabinet, announcing his resignation at a press conference in which he also warned that the world faces a potentially catastrophic flu pandemic and that the U.S. food supply is vulnerable to terrorists [...]

Thompson said he also worries constantly about food poisoning.

"I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," he said. "And we are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that."

Although inspections of food imports have risen sharply in the past four years, "it still is a very minute amount that we're doing."

That idiot wants to be President, after he admitted that in four years as Health and Human Services Secretary he made no effort to inspect the human food supply coming into the country.

But there are even more examples of this failure of governance that have come out in the last couple days. The White House used a rural Internet financing program to reward rich companies, and did nothing to actually finance Internet infrastructure in rural areas, which was its intent:

Members of a House committee charged yesterday that a five-year, $1.2 billion program to expand broadband Internet services to rural communities has missed many unserved areas while channeling hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized loans to companies in places where service already exists.

The Post reported that since 2001 more than half the money has gone to metropolitan regions or communities within easy commutes of a mid-size city. An Internet provider in Houston got $23 million in loans to wire affluent subdivisions, including one that boasts million-dollar houses and an equestrian center.

Congress created the rural broadband program in 2002. To date, according to Andrew, 69 loans for $1.2 billion have been approved to finance infrastructure in 40 states. Only 40 percent of the communities benefiting were unserved at the time of the loan, Andrew said.

They can't implement laws they've passed because they have no interest in doing so. And the laws they don't like, they try to change, if the change can reward big businesses or their own pocketbooks:

An Interior Department official who was recently rebuked for altering scientific conclusions to reduce protections for endangered species and providing internal documents to lobbyists resigned Monday, officials said.

Julie A. MacDonald, a deputy assistant secretary who oversaw the Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species program, also faced conflict-of-interest questions in a report issued by the Interior Department's inspector general in March. [...]

In 2004, MacDonald was criticized for overruling field biologists on the habitat requirements of the greater sage grouse, disputing their conclusion that oil and gas operations could interfere with the birds' breeding and nesting.

The inspector general's report outlined instances where MacDonald, a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences, advocated altering scientific conclusions in ways that favored development and agricultural interests.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, told investigators that MacDonald overrode field experts on designating habitat for the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.

Hall, a wildlife biologist, told investigators he was in a "running battle" with MacDonald over the issue. Hall said MacDonald had a particular interest in endangered species rulings that affected California because her husband had a ranch in the state.

California property records show that MacDonald and her husband, Charles, own 80 acres identified as crop land in Yolo County near Sacramento.

McDonald was about to face a House committee on this issue, so she did the brave thing and resigned first.

Right wingers like to call the anger that comes from hearing these stories "Bush Derangement Syndrome." Actually, the anger comes from living in a country where anarchy is reigning. The government doesn't exist for any primary function other than profit-taking. This makes principled, reasonable people furious, because it's our government, and we're paying the price. I guess those who would rather spin the truth and dismiss the effects, one must conclude, enjoy being ripped off this way, and don't care that their government has been turned into a cash register for the rich and connected. I do care, and so do a lot of people. At the roots, this is the real reason that conservatism is a dirty word nowadays. People actually want a government they can count on to be minimally competent in carrying out its mission and its policies. That is sadly lacking today.

They Don't Care About What You Eat

The crisis in food safety has just grown larger, and this is a slow-motion train wreck that is laying bare the failure of conservative government to fulfill any of its obligations. Now we've learned that millions of chickens were fed melamine-tainted feed, and that millions of consumers ate those chickens.

People have eaten millions of chickens that were given feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal officials said Tuesday, though they said the threat to human health is minimal.

The announcement came after an investigation of chicken farms in Indiana found that 38 of the facilities had given contaminated feed to poultry raised for human consumption, and that 2.5 million to 3 million people ate them.

The officials added that they expect to discover that chickens on possibly hundreds of farms in other states were also given tainted feed.

In a teleconference with reporters, an official with the Food and Drug Administration said no recall has been issued because "the likelihood of illness after eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low."

This is of course what the FDA says now, although last week they said that no consumers ate anything tainted with melamine, and they also said it was only a couple hundred pets that have died when it was actually tens of thousands. So what will next week bring?

Well, don't worry, because there's now a food safety czar. Isn't that supposed to be the head of the FDA?

The Bush administration appointed a new "food safety czar" yesterday and directed him to develop a plan for addressing shortcomings exposed by recent scares in the human food supply.

Dr. David W.K. Acheson, a former University of Maryland medical school professor who had been chief medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration's food safety center, immediately stepped into the job.

The creation of the new position underscored the extent of public concern about the country's food safety system over a dangerous chemical found in pet food entering the human food supply, in addition to recent outbreaks of bacterial contamination in bagged spinach, Taco Bell lettuce and Peter Pan peanut butter. But Democrats said fears have intensified to a degree that a new appointment alone won't quell.

You're darn right it won't quell those fears. You hire a "czar" when you have admitted that you can't handle the problem. It's a way to place blame apart from the system itself.

Conservatives care nothing about government, and yet they act surprised when the mechanisms of government breaks down. They will somehow try to blame liberals for dismantling the public safety apparatus that has served the country well for decades. But this is an obvious conclusion to the consistent attempts to delegitimize government, drown the funding of public programs in a bathtub and staff regulatory agencies with the lobbyists for the industries they mean to regulate. I'm watching Robert Kuttner take down Bill Kristol in a conference called "The Failure of Conservatism." Bob, don't forget the food.

UPDATE: The audience didn't. A sample question from them: "Why is it that, 5 years after 9-11, the Bush Administration cannot guarantee my cat's food supply?"

Watch What You Eat

When I finally had to buy my dog her food last week, for the first time since the pet food contamination scandal, I actually had to worry about it. And apparently, I need to worry about my own intake as well. The whole thing is due to spiking food with melamine to make it look like it has more protein and more nutritional value than it actually has. And this has been well-known for some time by the FDA. I haven't written about it, but Goldy has:

Months after dogs and cats started dropping dead of renal failure from melamine-tainted pet food, American consumers are beginning to learn how long and how wide this contaminant has also poisoned the human food supply. Last week, as California officials revealed that at least 45 people are known to have eaten tainted pork, the USDA announced that it would pay farmers millions of dollars to destroy and dispose of thousands of hogs fed “salvaged” pet food.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Through the salvaging practice, melamine-tainted pet food has likely contaminated America’s livestock for as long as it has been killing and sickening America’s pets — as far back as August of 2006, or even earlier. And while it may seem alarmist to suggest without absolute proof that Americans have been eating melamine-tainted pork, chicken and farm-raised fish for the better part of a year, the FDA and USDA seem to be preparing to brace Americans for the worst. In an unusual, Saturday afternoon joint press release, the regulators tasked with protecting the safety of our nation’s food supply go to convoluted lengths to reassure the public that eating melamine-tainted pork is perfectly safe.

We don't have a federal food inspection system in this country anymore. We have a federal cover-up of problems with food inspection system. Rick Perlstein calls them E.Coli conservatives. The systematic de-fanging of our regulatory agencies is a legacy of Reagan-Bush conservative rule.