The tomato scare and the South Korean mass demonstrations over U.S. beef imports brought to mind, for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the case of Arkansas City’s Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, which in 2004 was prohibited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from testing all its cattle for mad cow disease “because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit. When push comes to shove, it seems,†Krugman wrote, “the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.â€
Krugman’s broader point was “that failure to regulate effectively isn’t just bad for consumers, it’s bad for business.â€
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Regulation is good for everybody. The Republicans do not mind if China sends over poison toys and pet food because the Republicans think money is more important than the health and lives of your children and your pets. But something funny has happened- and that is that retailers are suffering because people quit buying the poison. Toy sales are way down and Wal*Mart is worried to the point that they ask the Republicans for regulation and testing and when the Republicans said no, Wal*Mart has now set up its own testing lab to ensure that the toys they sell will not poison your children! The Republicans often talk about “security” from “terrorist” and they don’t want your children blown up by the Arabs but they don’t mind if your children are poisoned by the Chinese!
Regulation would also have helped the mortgage companies. The “off brand” mortgage hustlers have defrauded consumers since the 90’s. They should be outlawed and regulated by they are not. Until that happens there will still be hustlers out there taking advantage of low income people with so-called “lower than prime” loans.
LOOKOUT! INCOMING!
Those who adhere to the nondeist religion of no government regulation, no matter what, are going to apeshit over this one.
Hey, I’ll help!
To start with, why should we have that lousy FDA telling us what drugs should be on the market (that’s only half sarcastic, actually, as politics does enter into it–but I prefer imperfect regulatory agencies to the, say, unregulated snake-oil poisons that inspired the creation of the FDA in the first place).
And why have an SEC? Let the markets regulate themselves–that’s capitalism! Hallelujahgobble! Suckers who bought Enron, Worldcom, etc. stock got what was coming to them!
Surely the FAA is another needless government bureaucracy–can’t the airlines police themselves?
Because, you see, interfering with business is just plain wrong. The whole point of government, obviously, is to stay out of the way while some people make money. It has no other function: Everything it does is about money, and nothing government does matters if it isn’t ultimately about money.
Right?
P.S. More seriously, Krugman has a point. Sure, you can overdo regulations (like anything), but self-regulation in the age of multinational corporate greed has been repeatedly shown to be ultimately harmful to both Wall Street and Main Street. As Hope Man said in one of his better speeches, pain trickles up!
Gore sure nailed bush last night in his endorsement of Obamma.
When you import food and goods from third world countries, you consume like a third worlder!
“Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, which in 2004 was prohibited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from testing all its cattle for mad cow disease “because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit.”
Folks? If you could see first hand, as I have, what mad cow disease does, you would DEMAND that all beef be tested for this.
For older posters here forgive my repetition. This is important to me.
My Dad died of Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease. This is the human version of mad cow disease. No he did not get it from eating contaminated beef. Or so we are told anyway. He just won a very unlucky lottery. He was the one in a million that was affected by the human version of the disease.
The disease is so rare in humans that we did not have a diagnosis until a few weeks before Dad died. It was the first case his neurologist had ever seen.
This time three years ago, my Dad was healthier than me. He was fighting prostrate cancer but doing well.
First to go was his vision. He could see but not properly. His optometrist was clueless as to what the problem was.
Next, just a month or so later, balance started to fail. Dad fell more and more.
In a few more weeks, he was restricted to a wheel chair.
A few weeks later he could not even get out of bed.
We cannot guess how much he knew at the end. Was he blind? Could he hear us?
In July, he was fine. By one week before Christmas, he was mercifully freed from his suffering with death.
PLEASE contact your Representatives and Senators. Insist that this disease be screened for in our beef supply. No one should have to go through what my family did.
Sigh…
Nobody listens and nobody cares.
That’s how they do it to us folks.
“Eat, drink, and be merry!” Don’t worry about what you are eating or drinking or if you are happily ignorant.