Deregulation killed the cats

[dorkulon]

A short piece about how the Reagan/Bush/Bush deregulation agenda is ultimately responsible for the cat food recall, as well as many other food-and-drug outrages. Made relevant today by this thread about mad cow testing being relaxed even further. Good, horrible stuff.

The big problem here is that the tainted wheat gluten was listed as “food grade”—that is, suitable for human consumption, and shipped to plants that make products for humans as well. Of course, the FDA says it has “nothing to indicate” that the stuff is in our food supply, but how can anyone believe that now, when they have been so slow to acknowledge the scale of the scandal so far?

This is the result of year after year of the Bush administration doing everything possible to cripple its own regulatory bodies—we are not safe from our own food, and the government is moving to obscure, not address, that fact. That sandwich you ate for lunch may be poisoning you, and you may never find out about it. You surely won’t if the FDA has any say in the matter.

This is deregulation. Sleeping pills that cause people to cook and drive while unconscious. Usurious interest rates that force careless youths into a lifetime of debt. An EPA that is illegally shutting down and dismantling its own libraries. Fish that give you brain damage. Pet food that kills pets. Spinach that kills people. This is the magic of the free market. This is the Reagan revolution in full ascendance. Massive multi-merged companies are in the clear. You and me? We’re on our own.

[whistle]

1. Also the E.coli outbreak recalls in PA and CA

[G_Leo_Criley]

2. k&r

:kick:

glc

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. First they came for the cats; next, they came for the dogs, then they

came for the pigs and then they came for us.

[intheflow]

4. Many Reagan legacies popping up on DU's Greatest Page today:

In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South is the logical outcome of the "welfare queen" stereotype.

Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Powerless is surely tied to Reagan's successful union-busting.

Another American media Sunday... is the legacy of of the Fairness Doctrine.

And Power bills soar after electric deregulation is yet another example of deregulation gone wrong--just as many of us predicted it would.

[cosmicdot]

5. Reagan Executive Order 12615

Performance of Commercial Activities. Ronald Reagan, November 20th, 1987
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33711

~snip~

While most presidential administrations of the twentieth century gave lip service to government regulation of corporations, a new era dawned in the eighties with Reagan's "war on government." It was the beginning of the dismantling of government regulation of industry in America, and it was further exacerbated by a momentous Executive Order signed by Reagan. Executive Order 12615 required departments and agencies to "establish full and ambitious privatization goals." It also created the Office of Privatization within the Office of Management And Budget to oversee the program and established an independent Commission on Privatization to study and recommend opportunities for privatization within the federal government.

from "Godfather Government: a way of life is not a scandal"

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_carolyn__070318_godfather_government.htm


wonder if anyone knows 'just what' all the executive orders ever issued have done to us?

Did Reagan re-write the Constitution in E.O. 12612 - Federalism

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33607


http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php?year=1987

[area51]

6. kick. (n/t)

[Vidar]

7. Capitalism without regulation is updated feudalism.

[and-justice-for-all]

8. Time to plant a garden..

...Im a vegatarian anyway so I could grow most of my own food. And when you plant, you almost always over produce, so then you could be saving other people from injesting poison.

Looks like we will kill ourselves after all. Our own Government, the one that is suppost to protect us from this shit, is cyanide...I fucking hate bush.

[hang a left]

9. Reagan started the deregulation but I can't help but believe that

Clinton accelerated the damage with NAFTA.

It is like 40-43 each had their own part to play.

[MonkeyFunk]

10. How did

removal of tariffs with Canada cause this?

Come on, let's stop blaming NAFTA for EVERYTHING.

[hang a left]

11. I didn't blame it for EVERYTHING....

But is sure was a building block, not the foundation, but definately an a continuing assault...

Look for yourself...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-22,GGGL:en&q=deregulation+Nafta

[LiberalEsto]

12. People don't matter

Only corporations matter