The Senate just passed a Food Safety Bill and it has me wondering something. Is there anything that a party in Washington can do that won't become a reason to slam them? I mean, food safety is clearly a great thing and we all gain from it but to hear the Right's chatter boxes, you'd think that they just passed some kind of Grandmother Concentration Camp bill....WTF? These scum in Washington are simply (and increasingly) out for their own interests and not ours. With the GOP in lock step saying that they won't address don't ask don't tell, 9/11 rescue workers relief act, spending bills for 2011, nuclear treaty or anything else until we prevent the tax increase for the wealthy after the Bush tax cuts run out......what the fuck fo the rest of us do? The 99% of us who
aren't millionaires just get to fuck off apparently. So we have an ineffective, spineless party on one side, a blantantly self serving party on the other and a giant gap in the middle which I like to call "Go Fuck Yourself Canyon". Nice. Ahhhh, Democracy.
Jon Stewart on the GOP's "line in the sand":
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-1-2010/lame-duck-soup?xrs=share_copyOn the food safety act:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-1-2010/the-food--the-bad-and-the-ugly?xrs=share_copyFrom Examiner.com:
Quote:
Even in these hyper-partisan times, it seemed as though Congress could agree on something as simple as improving food safety. As Jon Stewart illustrates in the video to the left, a number of people have been sickened or even killed because of contaminated food over the past two years. Approximately 325,000 are hospitalized each year from food-borne illnesses, and 5,000 people die each year. SB 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, would theoretically improve the situation by giving the FDA more authority to improve food safety.
Among other things, SB 510 allows the government to order mandatory recalls of contaminated foods. Under current law the FDA must rely on voluntary recalls of companies. Technically, if a company wanted to keep a packaged salad on the market, even after dangerous amounts of E Coli were found, they could. In addition, the bill would give the FDA the authority to inspect food producers more often. Right now many companies are only inspected once every year.
Still, despite the obvious reasoning behind the bill, ultra-conservatives have objected once more to an apparent "government overreach." Glenn Beck claims that the United States' food system is the safest the world. The United States has one of the safer systems in the world, but this is largely because of the food safety laws passed by the "progressive" Teddy Roosevelt, who established the FDA. Beck also conveniently ignores the statistics on illnesses and deaths caused by food-borne illnesses. Others have argued that the bill will drive smaller growers and sellers out of business, but the bill only regulates large companies. Provisions within the bill also exempt smaller farms from some of the more stringent requirements.
Despite all the conservative hysteria, which included threats from Beck that the bill was about "starvation," it did manage to pass the Senate with a 73-25 vote. However, as Stewart points out, under the Constitution, all bills implementing a new tax must first be passed in the House, and the House has yet to vote on the bill. What this practically means is that the bill must be passed again through the Senate in order for it to become law. Given the limited time in the Senate, that scenario is unlikely at best.