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elfsSo, it seems that our beloved Attorney General is on a one-man whirlwind show-and-tell, out to promote the USA PATRIOT Act as a necessity and to tout its successes. I'm sure there have been successes under the PATRIOT act, but they come at such a high price that now even the conservatives are starting to question the legtimacy of Ashcroft's mission. According to section 215, for example, the FBI can request any personal records the FBI deems "relevant to a terrorist investigation" without the need to produce a warrant or a subpeona.
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that while Ashcroft tours Middle America and tells the good citizens that if they're good citizens they have nothing to fear from the FBI, his buddy Orrin Hatch has introduced the VICTORY act, which would further diminish our civil rights with such requirements as: eliminate the regional requirement on wiretapping of cell phones on the grounds that users could "be anywhere," allowing the FBI to shop the nation for a tolerant court; futher ease restrictions on accessing medical and other personal records; strengthen the gag order on librarians and archivists when such "sneak and peek" jobs are performed; put the burden of proof on the defendant when trying to prove that a wiretap request was illicit; and so on.
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omahas might want to read carefully this article. It's a strong condemnation of the food section of that venerable magazine, Consumer Reports. CR apparently reports correctly that the introduction of irradiated meats would eliminate 8,500 hospital visits, 6,000 serious illnesses, and 350 deaths per year in the US, touts the economic benefits such changes would have, and then spends the rest of the article convincing Americans not to buy the stuff.
In terms of risk analysis, irradiated meat presents a lower overall risk to the consumer than non-irradiated meat, yet CR, guided by its parent company Consumer's Union, recommends against it. The author of this scathing review correctly points out that, when it comes to things that matter, such as food and water and health care, Consumer's Union has become strongly informed by an ideology many of us would find foreign.
This is sad. It would seem that, after some high school kids cleaned up a creek that had become filled with abandoned tires, the local Service Employees Union is suing to get paid for the clean-up. They claim that they should have been given a first shot at "volunteering" for the work, would have accepted and been paid for it, and so should be paid for it anyway.
As it is, the matter is in arbitration and the county has to pay for the arbiter.
It's amusing to see the Christian Right whine about how the "liberal" press is constatly trying to lump "Fundamentalist Christians" with "Fundamentalist Muslims" and "Fundamentalist Hindus." Apparently, Pat Robertson wants to point out that his people are "different" in their blind devotion to a literal and tribal interpretation of their beliefs. I'm not sure how that works.
What's frightening, however, is their adoption of the strategy of "individual rights" and "consumer rights" in pursuit of their cause. The 700 Club is apparently gearing up to portray such things as the Internet Child Protection Act and so forth as "protecting the rights of consumers to not see what they would not wish to see," and their fight against gays and the Boy Scouts as "helping parents get the services they pay for" with their Boy Scout dues.
Whoof!
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that while Ashcroft tours Middle America and tells the good citizens that if they're good citizens they have nothing to fear from the FBI, his buddy Orrin Hatch has introduced the VICTORY act, which would further diminish our civil rights with such requirements as: eliminate the regional requirement on wiretapping of cell phones on the grounds that users could "be anywhere," allowing the FBI to shop the nation for a tolerant court; futher ease restrictions on accessing medical and other personal records; strengthen the gag order on librarians and archivists when such "sneak and peek" jobs are performed; put the burden of proof on the defendant when trying to prove that a wiretap request was illicit; and so on.
omahas might want to read carefully this article. It's a strong condemnation of the food section of that venerable magazine, Consumer Reports. CR apparently reports correctly that the introduction of irradiated meats would eliminate 8,500 hospital visits, 6,000 serious illnesses, and 350 deaths per year in the US, touts the economic benefits such changes would have, and then spends the rest of the article convincing Americans not to buy the stuff.In terms of risk analysis, irradiated meat presents a lower overall risk to the consumer than non-irradiated meat, yet CR, guided by its parent company Consumer's Union, recommends against it. The author of this scathing review correctly points out that, when it comes to things that matter, such as food and water and health care, Consumer's Union has become strongly informed by an ideology many of us would find foreign.
This is sad. It would seem that, after some high school kids cleaned up a creek that had become filled with abandoned tires, the local Service Employees Union is suing to get paid for the clean-up. They claim that they should have been given a first shot at "volunteering" for the work, would have accepted and been paid for it, and so should be paid for it anyway.
As it is, the matter is in arbitration and the county has to pay for the arbiter.
It's amusing to see the Christian Right whine about how the "liberal" press is constatly trying to lump "Fundamentalist Christians" with "Fundamentalist Muslims" and "Fundamentalist Hindus." Apparently, Pat Robertson wants to point out that his people are "different" in their blind devotion to a literal and tribal interpretation of their beliefs. I'm not sure how that works.
What's frightening, however, is their adoption of the strategy of "individual rights" and "consumer rights" in pursuit of their cause. The 700 Club is apparently gearing up to portray such things as the Internet Child Protection Act and so forth as "protecting the rights of consumers to not see what they would not wish to see," and their fight against gays and the Boy Scouts as "helping parents get the services they pay for" with their Boy Scout dues.
Whoof!
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More things change...
Date: 2003-08-22 09:21 pm (UTC)Two Tramps In Mudtime
by Robert Frost
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
[...]
Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
The full poem is here.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-24 11:41 pm (UTC)I'd be hard-pressed to recognize the actual CR article (http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=322725&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=162689&bmUID=1061767582923) under discussion here from his description of it. The CR article is a fairly lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of irradiation, and while I'm not entirely sure I agree with their conclusions, I hardly came away from it with the impression that C.U. had been taken over by mad ecoreligionists.
Also, the general theme being expressed here is that it's unfair to ask the meatpackers merely to disclose their use of irradiation, on the grounds that those horrible organic farmers have scared consumers into not wanting to buy irradiated meat. While it may well be true that the eco-lobby is spewing nonsense about irradiation, I can't even begin to express my lack of sympathy for the "we can't sell this product unless we tell half-truths about its manufacture" argument. Free markets cut both ways: if increased transparency of your business process makes consumers avoid you, perhaps you should re-evaluate your product, not demand state sanction for opacity.
Metacomment: When a capitalist starts phrasing and argument about the merits of one specific product in terms of "human progress", your reaction should be the same as when a socialist starts talking about "the people": put one hand on your wallet and take the safety off your weapon. The meatpacking industry doesn't choose its sanitation methods based on some extropian cum leninist vision of maximum societal benefit, they choose them based on simple cost/benefit analysis, and any time someone argues differently, they're engaging in propaganda.