OT Yep, what we need is another agency

"Steve" wrote ...
Epidemiologists also warned consumers last week to stay away from some
bottled carrot juice after a Florida woman was paralyzed and three
people in Georgia experienced respiratory failure, apparently due to
botulism poisoning.

Also on Friday, an Iowa company announced that it was recalling 5,200
pounds of ground beef suspected of having E. coli. The government said
no illnesses have been reported from consumption of the beef.

The outbreaks have sparked demands to create a new federal agency in
charge of food safety. Sens. Charles Schumer and
Hillary Rodham Clinton, both New York Democrats, are sponsoring
legislation authored by Sen. Richard Durbin D-Ill., to create the
unified Food Safety Agency.

"This recent outbreak must be a wake-up call to get our food safety
house in order, because right now it's in pure disarray," Schumer said
at his Manhattan office. "We need to have one agency take charge to
ensure the next outbreak isn't far worse."

What they are calling for, and what is described in your own post, is a
single agency that will be responsible for food safety. Have a look at
http://www.foodsafety.gov/~fsg/fsggov.html for a list of the myriad agencies
currently in "control" of food safety in this country. So, contrary to what
your post's subject line indicates, this would *reduce* the number of
agencies involved at the federal level from approximately 15 to one. I know
trhe "new math" has been repuidated of late, but that still seems like a
reduction to me.

My feeling is that like the DHS, this will put responsibility at the feet of
one individual agency. To me, this is not a bad thing. And... this is *not*
in response to any recent outbreak. The bill Durbin introduced is called the
Safe Food Act of 2005. Note that 2005 is generally accepted to be *prior* to
2006, when the e.coli outbreaks have occured.

Dan
....by the way, where'd you cut-n-paste that from?

"Steve" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:14:05 GMT, "Daniel-San"
(Rot13) wrote:

...by the way, where'd you cut-n-paste that from?

Yer probably right, the government always does eliminate redundant
agencies upon the creation of a new "overseerer", as your link proves.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061008/...ted_lettuce_13

Um, no. My link points out the current situation, proving precisely nothing
with regards to the elimination of "redundant agencies." However, doing a
little more than cut-n-paste research (just a little, by the way) shows that
all food safety inspection agencies would, in fact transfer those food
safety functions to this new agency, eliminating those parts of the previous
agency "that relate to administration or enforcement of the food safety law,
as determined by the President." It would not create an "overseer." It would
*eliminate* the parts of the various federal agencies in charge of food
safety today.

So, I guess, if the act passes (a big "if" as it contains the GOP-dreaded
"whistleblower protection" section,) and unless the President creates
another signing statement effectively saying he will not enforce the law, it
would, as I stated earlier, *reduce* the number of agencies responsible for
food safety inspections.

Really. It's true. I swear. Read the [proposed] act he
http://www.theorator.com/bills109/s729.html It's exciting stuff, legislative
action. Much more fun than arguing from a cut-n-paste blurb.

Dan

On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:14:05 GMT, "Daniel-San"
(Rot13) wrote:


"Steve" wrote ...
Epidemiologists also warned consumers last week to stay away from some
bottled carrot juice after a Florida woman was paralyzed and three
people in Georgia experienced respiratory failure, apparently due to
botulism poisoning.

Also on Friday, an Iowa company announced that it was recalling 5,200
pounds of ground beef suspected of having E. coli. The government said
no illnesses have been reported from consumption of the beef.

The outbreaks have sparked demands to create a new federal agency in
charge of food safety. Sens. Charles Schumer and
Hillary Rodham Clinton, both New York Democrats, are sponsoring
legislation authored by Sen. Richard Durbin D-Ill., to create the
unified Food Safety Agency.

"This recent outbreak must be a wake-up call to get our food safety
house in order, because right now it's in pure disarray," Schumer said
at his Manhattan office. "We need to have one agency take charge to
ensure the next outbreak isn't far worse."

What they are calling for, and what is described in your own post, is a
single agency that will be responsible for food safety.

Naw, what they are doing is trying to find anything at all to get in
front of the camera and microphones...anyhoo...

Have a look at
http://www.foodsafety.gov/~fsg/fsggov.html for a list of the myriad agencies
currently in "control" of food safety in this country. So, contrary to what
your post's subject line indicates, this would *reduce* the number of
agencies involved at the federal level from approximately 15 to one.

Oh, you poor naive child...let's look at some other, past, um
"reductions" or other instruments of governmental efficiency...

You had the FSLIC, but things got FU'ed, so it was replaced by RTC,
whose sole job was to put itself out of business, but instead, it
transformed into the SAIF, and made a part of FDIC...

FEMA, which was once generally its own thang, was folded. along with all
sorts of other stuff, into the DHS, where instead of doing a fair job
while only wasting millions, it became a bog of bureaucracy, where it
could do nothing, all the while wasting billions...(and no, Bush and his
administration is not to blame, but neither are Dems)

And one of the biggies...ladies and gentlemen, children or all ages,
Dingaling brothers and P.T. Barnum are proud to present the one, the
only...drum roll, please....TA-DA!!!! The Social Security Act, ch. 531,
49 Stat. 620, 1935, supposedly meant to prevent the truly elderly, the
truly disabled, children, and a few others from starving during the
depression...now, 62-year-old retired millionaires and "disabled" folks
cash SS checks on their way to the golf and tennis club...and best of
all, this safety net does all of this wonderful stuff and only needs
some 65,000 employees to do it...

By-the-by, in its first year, 1936, $250,000USD was the admin
budget...run that through a historic or relative value calculation...

Here's a pop quiz...don't panic, it's easy...

Question 1. List all the involuntarily unemployed bureaucrats that you
know.

See, wasn't that easy?

HTH,
R

wrote:
And one of the biggies...ladies and gentlemen, children or all ages,
Dingaling brothers and P.T. Barnum are proud to present the one, the
only...drum roll, please....TA-DA!!!! The Social Security Act, ch. 531,
49 Stat. 620, 1935, supposedly meant to prevent the truly elderly, the
truly disabled, children, and a few others from starving during the
depression...now, 62-year-old retired millionaires and "disabled" folks
cash SS checks on their way to the golf and tennis club...and best of
all, this safety net does all of this wonderful stuff and only needs
some 65,000 employees to do it...

The SS system has always been a welfare system disguised as
a retirement system in order to make it acceptable. But most folks
with a lot of amount of money naturally never have enough, so the
fantasy was forced into a highly warped reality in which the former
is used to justify the latter.

By-the-by, in its first year, 1936, $250,000USD was the admin
budget...run that through a historic or relative value calculation...

Congratulations, that's a fine example of "neocon"-style "history."
It
really doesn't matter what the hell the budget was in 1936 because
the hiring to support year 1 operations - year 1 to begin in January
of `37 -
wasn't started until November 1936. At the end of 1936 there were
2,500 employees, the majority of whom had been at work for well under
a month at that point.

On 9 Oct 2006 14:08:30 -0700, "
wrote:


wrote:
And one of the biggies...ladies and gentlemen, children or all ages,
Dingaling brothers and P.T. Barnum are proud to present the one, the
only...drum roll, please....TA-DA!!!! The Social Security Act, ch. 531,
49 Stat. 620, 1935, supposedly meant to prevent the truly elderly, the
truly disabled, children, and a few others from starving during the
depression...now, 62-year-old retired millionaires and "disabled" folks
cash SS checks on their way to the golf and tennis club...and best of
all, this safety net does all of this wonderful stuff and only needs
some 65,000 employees to do it...

The SS system has always been a welfare system disguised as
a retirement system in order to make it acceptable. But most folks
with a lot of amount of money naturally never have enough, so the
fantasy was forced into a highly warped reality in which the former
is used to justify the latter.

I think it is simply yet another bureaucracy run amok, and since most
folks (or those that vote, anyway) either do or think they will get
something out of it, there is much more momentum carrying it forward
than attempting to stop it from lurching along like a hippopotamus, on
four too many Martinis and all dolled up in some Paris-Hilton-does-Tokyo
goofball getup...or blotzed on mango-and-squid-ink half-vodka, half-ouzo
Rob Roys, if one prefers...

By-the-by, in its first year, 1936, $250,000USD was the admin
budget...run that through a historic or relative value calculation...

Congratulations, that's a fine example of "neocon"-style "history."

It may be that, but it's a much finer example of someone simply glancing
through the Act and noticing the beginning admin budget...

It
really doesn't matter what the hell the budget was in 1936 because
the hiring to support year 1 operations - year 1 to begin in January
of `37 -
wasn't started until November 1936. At the end of 1936 there were
2,500 employees, the majority of whom had been at work for well under
a month at that point.

I'll take your word for it. I don't care enough to research it - see
above drunken hippos...or if one prefers, Paris Hilton...

TC,
R

wrote:
...I don't care enough to research it....

A fitting epitaph......all those wasted hours on Google
notwithstanding.

Wolfgang
who will be watching the obits with bated breath.

wrote:
......................
I think it is simply yet another bureaucracy run amok, and since most
folks (or those that vote, anyway) either do or think they will get
something out of it, there is much more momentum carrying it forward
than attempting to stop it from lurching along like a hippopotamus, on
four too many Martinis and all dolled up in some Paris-Hilton-does-Tokyo
goofball getup...or blotzed on mango-and-squid-ink half-vodka, half-ouzo
Rob Roys, if one prefers...


A heck of a lot of large human organizations are bureaucracies run
amok, including General Motors, Enron, the US military, the Catholic
church (at least when it came to shuffling priests around so that
they'd have fresh supplies of young boys to bugger), the UAW, and
various gov't agencies at all levels of gov't. I'm not sure, though,
to what extent the SSA falls into that category or the one, shared
with the IRS, of responding to congressional mandates driven by
various interests. On the other hand, SS is the biggest accounting
scam of all time by a very wide margin.

On 10 Oct 2006 17:21:37 -0700, "
wrote:


wrote:
......................
I think it is simply yet another bureaucracy run amok, and since most
folks (or those that vote, anyway) either do or think they will get
something out of it, there is much more momentum carrying it forward
than attempting to stop it from lurching along like a hippopotamus, on
four too many Martinis and all dolled up in some Paris-Hilton-does-Tokyo
goofball getup...or blotzed on mango-and-squid-ink half-vodka, half-ouzo
Rob Roys, if one prefers...


A heck of a lot of large human organizations are bureaucracies run
amok, including General Motors, Enron, the US military, the Catholic
church (at least when it came to shuffling priests around so that
they'd have fresh supplies of young boys to bugger), the UAW, and
various gov't agencies at all levels of gov't. I'm not sure, though,
to what extent the SSA falls into that category or the one, shared
with the IRS, of responding to congressional mandates driven by
various interests. On the other hand, SS is the biggest accounting
scam of all time by a very wide margin.

Er, no - you are confusing at least three different type of entities.
General Motors, the Catholic Church (buggery or otherwise), and the UAW
are for-profit organizations (regardless of US taxation status - meaning
that they expect, even demand, that the purse, regardless of "the
books," show more at the end of year than at the start). Enron ain't
anything. And any military is arguably, by definition, "run amok"
because you really can't politely or cheaply kill people and break their
**** according to nice little formulas - the budget is subject to wild
swings (and no, I'm not defending _all_ expenditures). The
aforementioned, with the exception of militaries, might have or have had
bureaucracies, but at the end of the day, there has got to be some
semblance of making money.

OTOH, neither the IRS or the SSA really has to even pretend to answer
the same questions or the same produce "profit" such as public
corporations or a military force.

As to the IRS compared to the SSA, it makes the SSA look like a bunch of
pickpockets in a diamond mine.

TC,
R

wrote:
.....
Er, no - you are confusing at least three different type of entities.
General Motors, the Catholic Church (buggery or otherwise), and the UAW
are for-profit organizations (regardless of US taxation status - meaning
that they expect, even demand, that the purse, regardless of "the
books," show more at the end of year than at the start). Enron ain't
anything. And any military is arguably, by definition, "run amok"
because you really can't politely or cheaply kill people and break their
**** according to nice little formulas - the budget is subject to wild
swings (and no, I'm not defending _all_ expenditures). The
aforementioned, with the exception of militaries, might have or have had
bureaucracies, but at the end of the day, there has got to be some
semblance of making money.

OTOH, neither the IRS or the SSA really has to even pretend to answer
the same questions or the same produce "profit" such as public
corporations or a military force.

As to the IRS compared to the SSA, it makes the SSA look like a bunch of
pickpockets in a diamond mine.



I believe that for the majority of the folks steamrollered by one or
more
of these, the distinctions you draw are largely moot. And all of them
share an overriding similarity: their primary motive is
self-preservation
and perpetuation. All else is secondary.

On 11 Oct 2006 19:33:18 -0700, "
wrote:


wrote:
.....
Er, no - you are confusing at least three different type of entities.
General Motors, the Catholic Church (buggery or otherwise), and the UAW
are for-profit organizations (regardless of US taxation status - meaning
that they expect, even demand, that the purse, regardless of "the
books," show more at the end of year than at the start). Enron ain't
anything. And any military is arguably, by definition, "run amok"
because you really can't politely or cheaply kill people and break their
**** according to nice little formulas - the budget is subject to wild
swings (and no, I'm not defending _all_ expenditures). The
aforementioned, with the exception of militaries, might have or have had
bureaucracies, but at the end of the day, there has got to be some
semblance of making money.

OTOH, neither the IRS or the SSA really has to even pretend to answer
the same questions or the same produce "profit" such as public
corporations or a military force.

As to the IRS compared to the SSA, it makes the SSA look like a bunch of
pickpockets in a diamond mine.



I believe that for the majority of the folks steamrollered by one or
more
of these, the distinctions you draw are largely moot.

Anyone who gets or got "steamrollered" by GM, Enron, or any other equity
investment got what they set themselves up for - good, bad, or neutral.
They went in by choice, and if they got hammered, they knew the risk.

Although IMO, "military" is a category unto itself, if it is the
military you accuse of "steamroller(ing)" anyone, unless they were an
innocent bystander with "clean hands," again, they went in knowing it
was possible.

OTOH, Social Security and the IRS allow those subject to them no
(practical) choice in the matter - the can and will put yer ass in jail
if you cross them. GM can't do a flockin' thing to anyone who simply
chooses not to be a stockholder, and really, doesn't care if this or
that person chooses to or not to be a stockholder.

And all of them share an overriding similarity: their primary motive is
self-preservation and perpetuation. All else is secondary.

Not really. A corporation's primary motive is (and should be) profit -
look to many corporations that are willingly, if the profit motive is
satisfied, taken over/bought/merged into others. Again OTOH, the IRS
and SSA are extremely concerned with self-preservation (and as such,
perpetuation) and have no concern for "profit" as it traditionally
thought of. They are primarily concerned with being supported by,
rather than answerable to, the "investors," and in fact, have legal
power over the people they are supposed to serve.

And if you're not just trolling, you seem to have a real persecution
complex. Corporations and militaries, unlike the IRA and SSA, really
don't have any "self-interest" or "feeling" one way or the other for any
particular individual and as such, really don't have any interest
whether any particular individual "participates" or not.

TC,
R