Thom Hartmann: Does Seton Motley believe in Spontaneous Generation?

[thomhartmann]

Run time: 08:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_j9VAYsOEA   Posted on YouTube: August 05, 2011 By YouTube Member: TheBigPictureRT Views on YouTube: 48   Posted on DU: August 05, 2011 By DU Member: thomhartmann Views on DU: 1001

 
Don't eat the turkey! Giant, transnational agribusiness corporation Cargill announced yesterday that it is recalling 36 million pounds of contaminated ground turkey - that has killed at least one person and sickened 76 others across 26 states. Cargill is just now announcing the recall even though the outbreak started back in March. Coincidentally - back in June - House Republicans passed legislation that gutted the federal food safety budget - slashing $87 million from the FDA - and another $35 million from the USDA’s food safety inspection programs. As Republican Congressman Jack Kingston said in defending the bill, “The food supply in America is very safe because the private sector polices itself.” Right - go tell that to the family of the person who died or the scores sickened from Cargill’s contaminated turkey. Or tell it to the other 50 MILLION Americans who get sick from food-borne illness every year - or the 3,000 other Americans who DIE every year because of contaminated food. So isn't this a wake up call? Isn't the idea of food producers policing themselves just as absurd as the idea of Wall Street or big oil policing themselves? Here to throw his two-cents into this debate is Seton Motley - President of Less Government

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. These anti-regulators seem to always not realize that while Homer Simpson might

not work at your local nuclear plant he probably does work at the food processing plant. The work force is full of people who are stupid, lazy, careless or even malevolent. That's why we need regular inspections, to make sure these people are doing their jobs, and doing them correctly, from the line worker who gets drunk on the job to the manager who fires workers, leaving the line 'sped up' to the point of being inefficient, allowing contamination through.

[saras]

2. And you, of course, are not one of those people - it's always "those others"

In every food processing job I've ever worked in (over ten - it's good temp work), what the employees do is strictly controlled by management and regulations. The entire system is set up to make it as difficult as possible to do anything other than what you are supposed to. If you are supposed to throw away spilled food, for example, there will be no tools available to help you recycle or reuse it, only the tools necessary to get it into the appropriate disposal container. And there will be big signs telling you to do exactly that. The farther back you get from the public performance spaces like retail meatcutting, the less concession the environment makes to aesthetics.

The things I've seen done badly have almost always been policy, and that's also true for ones I've read about in the news recently. It's always the way the owners run things, not the actions of a particular worker. The big peanut recall was partially because the company wouldn't maintain the roof of the building - hardly something a line worker could take time off to do. If you've seen a modern large-scale meat processor, you'll understand that what is done to the meat is done smoothly and evenly to all the meat. There's no way a single incompetent worker contaminated thirty-six MILLION pounds of meat. This was policy, not a mistake.

[PurgedVoter]

3. K&R

Sadly I expect that if I played this to several conservatives, they would either clearly see that Seaton won this hands down, or would notice a few of the things he said were wrong and yet agree with him anyway.

Thank you Thom for so clearly giving this fool the opportunity to show the rest of us, what he is.

Across a wide range of subjects, Seaton always argues strongly and fervently for the rights of the wealthy to be able to do whatever they desire, in order to make more wealth. Wealth and the acquisition of wealth, without consequence, is the common thread of all of his arguments. As Thom's video so clearly shows, facts, even facts that will, not might, cause death, disease, brain damage and pain, are to be ignored, even ridiculed in the pursuit of his ideals.

From this, it becomes clear, he does have a religion,it guides and informs him and is more important than fact or compassion. No sacrifice from the common man or statistical masses is to great a price when it come to feeding his god. Seaton might as well worship Baal. The outcomes would be the same.

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, had a parable in the first half that led up to the simple enough concept that your ideals and deeds direct your prayer more so than the name that you invoke. C.S. Lewis argued by parable that compassion and honor would essentially be directed toward Heaven.

While saying that Seaton is a priest of Baal is a bit over the top, what remains is the same. There is no difference in outcome, and I suspect that if he could get more respect, influence and money by dressing up as a priest of Baal, he would do so as quickly as he could.

[baldguy]

4. What the RW fool doesn't seem to realize

is that salmonella contaminated food doesn't have to be "left out overnight" to make you sick. It certainly would go bad, but it wouldn't be bad from salmonella.