Privatizing your food-borne illnesses

Jim Hightower, in the latest issue of the Hightower Lowdown, writes about how the government has failed the people relative to food safety.

Deluded as we are, we tend to believe that our representatives in government really care more for our well-being than for the corporations who pay to put them in office. Silly us! Nothing could be further from the truth!

Hightower explains:

"In March 2008, the official inspector's report unequivocally concluded, 'The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR.'

"The facility in question was the Peanut Corporation of America's processing plant in Georgia -- the very one that then shipped salmonella-contaminated products all across American last year, killing nine people and sickening more than 22,000.

"How could that inspector not see that a factory was alive with deadly salmonella?"


Aha. The inspection system didn't work. Here are a few of the reasons.

* Corporation honchos were told ahead of time that an inspector was coming, an inspector was coming!

* The inspector had just "one day to check a plant that handles millions of pounds of peanuts a month."

* The inspector knew nothing about peanuts. He was a fresh produce guy.

* The inspector didn't know that peanuts could contain salmonella.

* The inspector's job did not including testing for salmonella.


But...there's another problem, as Hightower points out. "...[T]he inspector doesn't work for the public. Instead, he works for a private food safety audit firm. He gets his inspection gigs by soliciting food processors directly, and the processors pay his salary. Cozy, no?"

It get worse! "More than 200 companies are in business doing safety audits for food processors. Because Washington has privatized government work and slashed federal inspection budgets, these for-profit companies now perform the bulk of America's food-safety inspections--essentially letting the processors buy a phony seal of approval."


All of this, of course, courtesy of the faith-based administration of George W. Bush and Dickie Cheney who operated at all times under the mantra that's what good for the corporate nogoodnikes who put them in office is good for the country. Who gives a damn whether a few people die?

Privatizing has been a pivot point of Repugnican platforms for a long time. They "believe" (so much of what Repugnicans do is based upon "belief" rather than reality) that private firms can do a better job than government agencies. That's the song they sing when it comes to government-provided health care (even though many of them revel in their own government-provided health care which seems to work just fine, thank you.)

Now that these snake-oil salesman have gone (at least some of them), it's time for Obama and company to make some changes.

Before more people die.


For more information, go to the Hightower Lowdown here.

The auto bailout and the working people

Jim Hightower, in the latest issue of his newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, issues a biting critique of congressional wingnuttery as regards the auto bailout.

"Republican lawmakers, backed by a raucous chorus of right-wing pundits and corporate lobbyists, have turned Motor City's economic woes into an excuse for launching a mendacious and pernicious assault on America's hard-working, highly-skilled, unionized working families--and on the middle class ideals that they embody."

Hightower notes that the "purple-robed princes of Citigroup, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and other bailees from The Street" were gifted a huge financial bonus by Secretary Paulson, who "unilaterally, secretly, and illegally nullified a federal law because it was in the way of his unauthorized plan to help big banks take over smaller ones. Hank's autocratic decree allows banks to use off-shore tax dodges that Congress banned 23 years ago. This executive maneuver provides an under-the-table tax subsidy for predatory banks wanting public financing to absorb their rivals--a subsidy that will cost our national treasury upwards of $140 billion even as it reduces bank competition."

And all this was done without hardly a murmur from those we elect to protect us from these greedy and degenerate nasties!

Isn't unfettered capitalism wunnerful?


But, when it came to Detroit, out elected poohbahs sang a different tune!

"Right-wing senators from the South and West were suddenly baring claws and hissing furiously that to get aid these supplicants had to restructure their businesses in accordance with government dictates. These congressional one-time free-market holy rollers made a demand that was specific and blunt: Whack your unions."

Hightower is referring to Bob Corker, a multimillionaire from Tennessee, Jim DeMint, an unredeemed clown from South Carolina, and John Kyl, McCain's buddy from Arizona. In fact, Kyl grabbed onto the myth perpetrated by the right that Detroit was going down the tubes because of those terrible unions. Why, union workers in the auto plants make $73 a hour, said the man from Arizona who suffers from sand on the brain.

Not so. As Hightower notes, "the $73 figure is a hoax. The right-wing contrived it by lumping in all of the health-care and pension costs of retirees, plus ... training costs and ... payroll taxes that the companies owe."

The truth is much different: "...the base wage of a veteran UAW member in a Big Three auto company is about $29 per hour, compared to $26 per hour for a non-union worker in Toyota's Kentucky factory."

Hightower has more. "In fact, it's not wages that burden the auto companies--it's the skyrocketing cost of health care in America. Japanese, Korean, European, and other carmakers don't pay this cost because their countries have national health care for all, financed by taxpayers."

And isn't it strange, asks Jim, that none of these self-righteous right-wingers support universal health care in our country, "which would drastically improve the global competitiveness of all of our industries"?

One more thing. These "union-busting senators don't mention" that "the share of a made-in-Detroit car's price tag that goes to cover all labor costs" is 10%! Labor, as Hightower notes, is not a burden so much as it is an asset, for "unionized workers bring award-winning productivity to the industry."

It isn't the fault of the workers that Detroit cars don't sell. The blame rests solely on the heads of those who fly corporate jets when they're not drinking coffee and complaining about the "bad" times in their corporate boardrooms: Rick Wagoner of GM; Alan Mulally of Ford, and Bob Nardelli of Chrysler.

Furthermore, as Hightower explicates, "90% of what we consumers pay for cars goes to bankers, bondholders, investors, executives, suppliers, dealers, and a myriad of others who are part and parcel of every vehicle we drive.

"The senators could force UAW members to work for free, but that would not begin to solve the industry's financial problems."


Once again, when it comes to our right-wing congress people, ideology and power trump common sense and true concern for the nation every time!


Hightower has much more to say and you can read it all here.