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I know some of you were a bit concerned with Goldy’s claim that he was “planning to blow up SeaTac.”

And I understand your concern. It wasn’t about the safety of SeaTac. I mean, really, even the dopiest brainwashed rightwing wackjob couldn’t read Goldy’s post and seriously believe he was out to get SeaTac. Rather, the concern was the possible ramifications for Goldy’s liberties (and, who knows, maybe Goldy will yet announce that he is taking a “break”). It seemed conceivable at first glance that Goldy might get himself into deep trouble, because we now live in an America where “security concerns” are allowed to override common sense. We’ve been hoodwinked into believing that being “safe from terrorism” has a higher priority than our freedoms.

Here’s how it happened. After the initial overreaction to the attacks on 11 September 2001, an insidious erosion set in because the Bush Administration was constantly fear-peddling. America’s collective psyche sank into some kind of post-9-11 cowardly funk. Now some significant portion of our population is actually fooled into believing that their safety is tangibly threatened by terrorist acts. Sure, acts of terrorism very slightly increase ones risk of death or injury in the actuarial tables. But, this risk is trifling compared to every-day risks like crossing a busy street daily or driving an hour a day in a car.

The real injury from terrorism is the fear; the larger tragedy of terrorism is that people limit their life and willingly give up their liberties to accommodate those fears. You know who I am talking about. They’re the cowards who say things like, “I don’t care if they listen to my calls and read my emails—I have nothing to hide.”

Pussies!

I’ve written lots of negative stuff about Mike McGavick, but I completely concur with his statement from two days after 9/11 (Seattle Times, Sep 16, 2001. pg. D.2, [my emphasis]):

“I guess now I know more about the evil humans are capable of than I did before, and I’m sadder for it.”
[…]

“There is nothing a coward can do to change my behavior,” he said, anger filling his voice, “and that’s a rule I’m not going to start to break.”

That’s American Spirit! But the Bush administration will have none of it. It has methodically undertaken the pussification of America (as Jon Stewart might put it)—and they’ve done it to consolidate and hold domestic political power.

Now, in our “post 9/11 world,” every time some group of crackpots, oppressed street persons, or angry youths talk to an undercover FBI agent about “the revolution,” the FBI sets up a sting operation. Someone “offers” funding and support…they bite…a bust is made. The news headlines play up the “thwarted attack” of “horrific proportions” on the skyscraper or an airport.

“But it was more aspirational than operational.” (Doesn’t the idea of an “aspirational crime” have the look and feel of a “thought crime?”)

And a few more persons of color are sent off to jail for a long, long time.

Now, when Goldy makes a point through an outrageous statement, we stop to contemplate whether this might trigger some kind of “security concern” that gets him thrown in jail. A student at Purdue University learned about this the hard way. He is in deep shit because he “threatened” Bush administration officials in a chat room:

A judge refused to throw out a Purdue University student’s indictment on charges alleging he urged the assassination of President George Bush and made threats against other administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife.
[…]

Buddhi, an Indian national who was attending advanced engineering classes at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, faces an 11-count complaint for alleged comments he made in an Internet chat room in 2005 and 2006.

Oh…and do you think that being a foreigner with a non-Christian-sounding surname had anything to do with it?

What were those egregious threats he made?

“It is now legal under international law to bomb key sites in the USA. Iraqis! Give Anglosaxons the tit reaction for the tat action of Bush and the Republicans,” Buddhi wrote in one posting, according to federal court records.
[…]

For example, on a message board pertaining to defense contractor Halliburton, Buddhi posted that “Bush is a President of Mass Destruction” and “should be electrocuted.”
[…]

[He called for] for someone to “Kill GW Bush” and “Rape and Kill Laura Bush”

So there you have it…”threats.”

In the past, these statements would be dismissed as sophomoric, heated rhetoric, but rhetoric that falls under the protections of free speech:

… a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case in which an 18-year-old war protester told a crowd at the Washington Memorial, “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ (President Johnson).”

The high court ruled the protester’s comments were simply crude political speech and overturned his conviction.

Unfortunately, the post-9/11 pussification of America means that Mr. Buddhi will lose his liberties for some time until a court throws out the charges.

I look forward to the day that Americans get past this post 9/11 bedwetting-chickenshit-scared phase, take a little advice from McGavick and grow a pair! Because giving up parts of the Constitution out of fear—and fear that is largely manufactured for political gain—is just so…fucking un-American!

Postscript:

On a lighter note, and just to demonstrate that I haven’t completely lost my sense of humor this evening, here is an instructional video on the topic of forbidden speech:

Standing Tower Guard on a 6′ scaffold at the Federal Building in downtown Bellingham, Iraq Veteran Evan Knappenberger, 1st BDE, 4th Infantry Division, started a week-long vigil on June 1st to draw attention to the US military’s STOP-LOSS and INACTIVE RESERVE policies, which he submits are being used as a substitute for conscription in a political war.

More…

This morning I thought I might write about the oil stain on my garage floor. Or, perhaps, the blue fuzzy lint I cleaned out of my navel this morning. But I was just a little too lazy to write on a topic of such irrelevance.

Besides, Alicia Mundy beat me to it this morning. In her Letter from Washington column in the Seattle Times, Alicia writes about Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8)…and his utter irrelevance:

The annual power rankings from Congress.org have dropped Reichert, now a sophomore Republican, from 168th among 439 members to 419th. That puts him lower than emissaries from the District of Columbia (100), Guam (177) and Puerto Rico (377), none of whom represent a state or have actual voting rights in the House.

Reichert ranks lower than most Republicans, and every Democrat except Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA-2), who has been marginalized ever since the FBI filmed him taking bribes.

In short, Reichert has no recent accomplishments (well…he did successfully pretend to get a school bus driver fired). Furthermore he has shown no capacity to adapt—to find some kind of functional niche—in a House controlled by Democrats.

“But…but…but, what do you expect, Reichert is only a sophomore!” Sophomore, indeed…but, Reichert ranks 38th out of the 41 Representatives in his class of 2004.

So I guess Ms. Mundy was having one of those “I think I’ll write about something completely irrelevant” days, and she reported irrelevant old news about Washington’s 8th Congressional District’s irrelevant Representative.

If Ms. Mundy had been in the mood for a little more relevancy, she might have written about, say, sophomore Rep. McMorris Rogers (R-WA-5), with a ranking of 231 of 439, or 12th of 41 in the class of 2004 (and she spent the session pregnant until giving birth last month and missed much of May as a consequence).

Ms. Mundy could have done that…but, then again, McMorris Rogers doesn’t have that head of rich, silvery hair, bulging biceps, and those washboard abs….

Microsoft CEO and kajillionaire Steve Ballmer wants the state to spend more money on education:

“If you’re the CEO of the state of Washington, the first thing that you have to do is recognize that there is a capacity problem in our four-year institutions,” Ballmer said, when asked what he would do to help more people take advantage of job openings in high-skill fields here.

[…] “We have some issues about traffic … but at the end of the day, the most important thing in the context that we’re talking about here is education.”

Wow. Great minds think alike. In fact, way back in July of 2004 (before HA became a must-read blog) I lamented the UW’s decision to stop accepting community college transfers due to lack of capacity, warning that higher education is the economic engine that drives local economies.

Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and even rust-belt poster-child Pittsburgh, survived the collapse of their manufacturing industries — and prospered — due largely to the influx of talent attracted to their prestigious colleges and universities. The best and the brightest don’t just grab their degrees and leave; many settle in their adopted cities, creating new businesses and industries, or attracting existing ones to the growing pool of qualified workers.

My question is, which schools are going to be the economic engines for Washington, when we won’t even spend the money to educate our own children, let alone attract talent from out-of-state?

I moved to Seattle as an adult about 12 years ago, so I don’t have the same provincial pride in local institutions as most of you natives. And I’m not ashamed to admit that from my snobbish, east coast, elitist perspective there is not a single undergraduate program in the state that I could brag to family about my daughter attending.

Or rather, I am ashamed to admit this, because I’m a Washingtonian now, and I’m embarrassed to see my neighbors talk about how hard it is to get into the UW — like it’s some kind of west coast Harvard — when in fact increased admissions competition is due to declining funding not rising academic standards.

The state Labor Market and Economic Analysis Branch projects about 4,400 new job openings a year for computer specialists through 2014, while Washington is graduating fewer than 700 a year in this field.

“The state does not need to produce 4,400 computer and math occupation workers every year,” Weeks said. “The state needs to hire that many every year. … Some of them are going to come from Ohio or overseas.”

Yeah, or, some of those jobs might eventually move to Ohio or overseas. It’s not like you need to invest in a multi-billion dollar factory to hire a keyboard jockey. This is an industry with a lot of inherent mobility, and if I understand my Adam Smith, our region’s high-tech industry might easily move these jobs to where the qualified labor is.

And don’t put it beyond companies like Microsoft to do exactly that. Indeed, Ballmer’s statement is more than a touch ironic considering that Microsoft already maintains a corporate headquarters in Nevada — presumably for some tax advantage — and while it’s not really fair to single out Microsoft for its tax avoidance strategies (apparently, that’s what wealthy corporations do,) I wouldn’t mind hearing Ballmer talk a little about how we might raise the extra dollars he advocates investing in education.

That said, Ballmer’s insight should not be lightly dismissed. When the CEO of our state’s most prolific millionaire mill says that increasing capacity at our four-year institutions is more crucial to the region’s economy than increasing capacity on SR-520, lawmakers might want to take notice. Washington state has a lot of amenities that makes it uniquely attractive, but our university system is not one of them. As I concluded back in 2004:

The UW is a good state university… but it is only that.

And it is not going to get any better unless we fund it properly. That doesn’t simply mean more tax dollars. We also need to build the kind of multi-billion dollar private endowment that all the best schools rely on. And we need to move away from subsidizing all students equally, towards a means-tested system where tuition approaches market prices, and students receive generous financial aid based on need.

Either that, or we can continue exporting our best and brightest out-of-state.

Not to mention our best paying jobs.

A former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was sentenced to death today, for taking bribes to approve untested medicines. Um, a former director of China’s FDA, that is.

The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods — from pet-food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with industrial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Zheng Xiaoyu for taking bribes in cash and gifts worth more than $832,000 when he was director of the State Food and Drug Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The court then issued the death penalty, the report said.

[…] In one instance, an antibiotic approved by Zheng’s agency killed at least 10 patients last year before it was taken off the market.

On the bright side, China’s burgeoning organ transplant industry just gained another healthy donor.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Please join us for the first DL of the post-Charles Nelson Reilly era.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

It is so hard to keep up with all the Republican scandals these days. One almost needs an instant message service just devoted to these scandals. Admittedly, quite a few came to light even before Congress jump-started its dormant oversight functions early this year. Now that the oversight machine has gotten warmed up, expect a new scandal to surface every couple of weeks or so.

One recent junior-level scandal is about to get bigger. Remember Lurita Doan, the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA)? She recently gave testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigating GSA misconduct. If you don’t remember, here is an exchange between Ms. Doan and Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) over a meeting she attended, on GSA property, in which the White House Office of Political Affairs presented strategies for winning the 2006 elections. The presentation included things like a list of targeted Democratic seats. Multiple witnesses reported that after the presentation, Ms. Doan stood up and said “How can we use the GSA to help the Republicans in the next election.” She, of course, had no recollection of the presentation or her own statements afterward.

The problem for Ms. Doan is that the activity, on the face of it, violates the Hatch Act of 1939. That isn’t just the opinion of a spiteful liberal like me; in fact, it’s the opinion of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (here is a pdf version of their report).

The report has gotten Ms. Doan a second date with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on June 7.

The Chair of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (R-CA), just gave an interview to the Center for American Progress to explain the rationale for asking her back for a second date. In summary:

By pressing forward with the investigation, investigators have revealed a disturbing pattern by Doan to mislead and cover-up her true intent regarding these partisan briefings. Some examples:

• When asked by the OSC investigators about her role in the briefing, she said “she was uninterested in the topic” and “was on her Blackberry…reviewing emails…and only periodically looked up and down.” But a review of her e-mail use during the meeting failed to corroborate that she was checking or sending email via her BlackBerry.
• Doan claimed the GSA employees who spoke out about her were employees who were poor performers. The OSC investigators said that Doan’s claim regarding the witnesses “appears to have been purposefully misleading and false” since none of the seven employees had “between a poor to totally inferior performance.”
• Doan claimed “she does not care about polls or election results.” But investigators report that Doan contributed $226,000 to Republican candidates and Republican organizations. Doan responded by testifying that the contributions had been “taken out of context.”

Here’s the thing. It is possible that this is an isolated case of a senior Bush appointee just not understanding the rules.

It’s possible…but why is it that every time something suspicious is investigated, it turns out that Republican appointees are breaking the law (or at least bending the law to the point of breaking) in order to squeeze out partisan advantage? And they never remember a thing about it afterward!

I’m talking Gonzogate (“I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons”), Monica Goodling (“I crossed the line of Civil Service policy”), Plamegate, the Armstrong Williams & Maggie Gallagher propaganda scandals, a fake reporter in the White House press corps, GAO-gate, and so on and so forth. And we’ve just scratched the surface.

Collectively, it is clear that (1) these people think they are above the law, (2) the GOP comes before country to them, (3) they feel being in power entitles them to use their power to keep power at any cost, (4) this abuse of power is systematic. The Bush administration’s great innovation has been to refine the concept of distributed power abuse it in a way that hasn’t been seen in generations (if ever before). It’s a pernicious, distributed, largely low-level abuse of power at all levels of government. And we have only scratched the surface.

When it comes right down to it, this current pack of criminals in the White House makes Richard Nixon seem like a real amateur.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Join us for some hoppy beer and hopped up debate.

I’ll be a little late, but don’t despair, I’ll get there by 9PM. Or do despair, depending on your perspective.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

It’s no secret: the working poor don’t have things easy. The Food Stamp Program, which has existed since the 1930’s, was enacted nationwide in the 1974 to supplement the diets of America’s poor. So, who gets food stamps:

The Food Stamp Program is targeted toward those most in need. Of all food stamp households in FY 2003 (the year for which the most recent detailed USDA data are available), 55 percent contain children; households with children receive 79.3 percent of all food stamp benefits. Roughly 18 percent of food stamp households contain an elderly person and 23 percent containa disabled person. Approximately 88 percent of food stamp households have gross incomes below the poverty line ($18,100 for a family of four in 2002). Approximately 38.4 percent of food stamp households have gross incomes at or below half of the poverty line.

The food stamp benefit translates to about 3 bucks a day, or 21 bucks a week. Though the program was meant only to supplement their nutrition needs, these days food stamps recipients are more likely to rely entirely on the program. As inflation eats away at the buying power of the minimum wage, the working poor are earning less. Things have to change.

Some in Congress are trying to bring light to this problem:

Today, four members of Congress conclude the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge, in which lawmakers chose to live “on three dollars of food per day, the same amount an average participant in the Food Stamp Program receives.”

One of the participants, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), “stuck to the challenge” even as he traveled to speak at his alma mater’s commencement exercises, bringing along his “pasta and sauce, as well as the last of my jelly, peanut butter, and bread.”

But when Ryan had to go through airport security, things got dicey:

When I arrived I decided just to carry my bag on so I ran over to the security gate with my carry on. I step up to the metal detector, take my shoes off, place my bag through the scanner and come out the other side to the most dreaded words in travel, “Bag Check!”

As the agent sifted though my bag, I tried to recount what could possibly be in there that was threatening…my mouthwash? Toothpaste? Yeah, it was those two, but it was also my peanut butter and jelly.

He politely put the peanut butter and jelly to the side, closed my bag and gave it back to me. I was too astonished to talk. I took my bag and walked towards the gate thinking about the 4 or maybe 5 meals that she had taken from me. What am I going to do now? It’s not like I can just go to Safeway and grab another jar. I have .33 cents and a bag of cornmeal to last today and tomorrow.

A few congressfolks and the Governor of Oregon took the Food Stamp Challenge. Then again, millions of Americans take that challenge every day. Unlike these pols, it doesn’t end with a flank steak, red skin potatos, and a bottle of pinot noir.

UPDATE:

Many families do things like buy in bulk to keep costs down. This is impossible for most poor folks on a tight budget. Bulk is cheaper per person, but the upfront costs at the cash register make bulk buying impossible. Also, poor folks can get more food if they buy lower quality, hence the fatty ground beef versus the more expensive leaner beef. No wonder obesity is an epidemic for poor kids.

Futurewise and SEIU 775 are filing a complaint in King County Superior Court this morning, asking the courts to block Tim Eyman’s I-960 from the ballot, on the grounds that it is outside the constitutional scope of the initiative process. And, well… I just gotta laugh.

I know what Timmy’s reaction will be. He’ll be outraged, he’ll tell us, at this cynical attempt to prevent the people from voting on a citizens initiative. This is insulting. It’s undemocratic. It’s unprecedented.

In fact, it is not unprecedented, and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to skewering Eyman and his sanctimonious supporters in the press and elsewhere who echo his self-righteous condemnations of the complainants and their attorneys. For if these hypocritical defenders of the status quo are truly outraged by the prospect of such pre-ballot review, they had every opportunity to speak their minds concerning a similar case four years ago, yet remained strangely silent. Indeed the most sanctimonious of the sanctimonious — the Seattle Times editorial board — actually urged the courts to bar an initiative from the ballot on just such a scope challenge.

Of course I’m talking about I-831, my private joke cum baptism in hardball politics, a constitutionally protected initiative seeking to proclaim Tim Eyman a horse’s ass, that was summarily barred from the ballot by a stick-up-his-ass Assistant AG and an angry judge.

The Times and others cheered the judge’s actions, but it was absolutely clear to me at the time the precedent he was setting. Indeed, the brief my attorney presented before the injunction hearing seems downright prescient in light of today’s news:

Many initiatives are presented to the people that are arguably unconstitutional or beyond the scope of the legislative power. For example, Tim Eyman’s Sound Transit Initiative would prevent Sound Transit from spending money on a “Link Light Rail” system. This proposed initiative is clearly beyond the scope of legislative power under Ruano v. Spellman and other cases holding that initiatives cannot seek to prohibit administrative actions. The Attorney General has done nothing to prevent Mr. Eyman from going forward with his initiative. Proposed Initiative 824 is a statement. The Attorney General has taken the position in the present case that statements are not legislative, yet nothing has been done to prevent Initiative 824 from going forward.

Allowing the Attorney General discretion to select initiatives for challenge based on their palatability would violate the First Amendment. If pre-ballot review is to be applied to some initiatives, it should be applied to all initiatives that are arguably unconstitutional or beyond the scope of legislative power.

We concluded our brief by demanding that if the court engages in pre-ballot review, a “writ of mandamus” should issue requiring the Attorney General to seek pre-ballot review of all initiatives that are “arguably unconstitutional or outside the scope of the initiative power.”

Eyman, the self-proclaimed champion of direct democracy, had every opportunity then to take a principled stand in defense of the initiative process, but he refused. So forgive me if four years later I shed no tears for the legal predicament in which he finds himself. That his own unconstitutional initiative should face a pre-ballot scope challenge is the logical, legal consequence of the court order that ended I-831. My only surprise is that it has taken this long for an enterprising attorney to build on the precedent.

“I-960 is not a valid initiative and it will never become the law, so we shouldn’t be wasting tax moneys counting signatures and placing it on the ballot. I-960 seeks to amend the constitution by initiative, which the Courts have repeatedly said you cannot do,” noted Knoll Lowney, lead attorney on the case.

Specifically, I-960 seeks to modify the referendum powers defined in the State Constitution by creating a mandatory non-binding referendum process for all tax and fee increases not already subject to constitutional referendum, and, it attempts to modify the constitutional process for enacting legislation, by requiring a two thirds majority for raising taxes. I-960 is arguably unconstitutional, and, since it intends to amend laws that cannot be amended, it is also arguably not “legislative,” and thus outside the scope of the initiative process.

Unlike the Times, I’m not going to urge the court to rule one way or the other. I’m not a judge. And much to my mother’s chagrin, I’m not an attorney.

But I’ve read the complaint and I’m familiar enough with the case law from my own legal adventures to understand that this is not a frivolous complaint, and that it should be taken very seriously by the courts. Pre-ballot scope challenges are permissible, and indeed, I would argue, are long overdue. In fact, even while defending my own initiative, I argued for “a statutory mechanism for reviewing the constitutional sufficiency of initiatives prior to the ballot.” All I wanted from the AG and the courts was that such pre-ballot review be conducted with fairness and consistency.

Still, consistency is not something we’ve seen from my friends in the media in terms of how they have routinely approached Eyman and his initiatives, and I don’t expect to see consistency now. I fully expect Eyman to cry outrage, and I fully expect the editorialists — eager to prove that they are not aligned against him — to join him in his hypocritical sanctimony.

So come on Seattle Times… I dare you to prove me wrong. Four years ago you editorialized against a joke initiative, urging the court to bar I-831 from the ballot simply because it offended your delicate sensibilities. Do you have the balls to stand by your defense of pre-ballot scope challenges as a legitimate legal exercise?

I don’t think so.

UPDATE:
Andrew has more at NW Progressive.

In the last several months I’ve talked to several people who are supporting Hillary Clinton for president primarily because she is a woman. Personally, I can’t overlook a candidate’s stand on the issues, but when female friends say they want to see a woman president in their lifetime, I don’t blame them.

But, why Hillary Clinton? I totally dig how she stirs up hate by the right-wing mental midgets who comment on this blog. That said, Clinton would be a continuation of her husband’s two terms in office. While I loved the 90’s, I think we need to move forward with some new blood. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is at least one Democratic woman out there who will one day be on the national stage.

I’m talking about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is sticking it to President Bush:

For months, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and other governors have warned that their state National Guards are ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado a flash flood or a terrorist’s threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then, last Friday night, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map. With 80 square blocks of the small farming town destroyed, Ms. Sebelius said her fears had come true: The emergency response was too slow, she said, and there was only one reason.

“As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, said Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

While the Governor and the White House have cooled the war of words, the issue still stands. When resources from states like Kansas are sent to the occupation in Iraq, our local authorities won’t have the ability to respond to disasters like they would if they were fully equipped. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but governors all over the country have been sounding the alarm for years now.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could be on the ticket in 2008. With good reason. She’s ready for prime time. Of all the women in politics today, she’s the toughest. Kansas tough. And whether it’s an incompetent president in DC or a tornado, she proves she can deal with anything.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Join us for some hoppy beer and hopped up debate.

Join us for some yummy, gluten-free beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

“FDA and USDA believe the likelihood of illness after eating such pork is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that any of those are currently in the human food supply as a direct ingredient.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that anything other than the rice protein concentrate or the wheat gluten have been a problem in the United States recently.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“But overall, we believe the risk to be extremely low to humans.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We believe that the likelihood of illness from such exposure is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“One of the reasons we believe that this is very low in humans is due to the dilution effect.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the situation in the poultry is very much like that for the swine.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We do not believe that there is any significant threat of human illness from consuming poultry.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the likelihood of illness to humans, including infants, is extremely small.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We believe the likelihood of a human illness is very remote.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We have no reason to believe those animals are any risk to the public.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

—

“There’s no tolerance for any of these compounds, either melamine or cyanuric acid. […] We just don’t know when we get these mixtures together. So there is no, really no acceptable level.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

I’m not a very spiritual person, but I’m having a crisis of faith.

Twice a week I sit in on the FDA’s media teleconference regarding our growing food safety crisis, and twice a week I come away struck by the difference between what officials believe and what they actually know. As a born agnostic and a fan of science, I can fully appreciate the FDA’s reluctance to express absolute certainty. But as a devoted father and pet owner, I can’t help but find their reassurances less than reassuring.

First we were told that none of the adulterated wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate had made its way into the human food supply, and then we were informed that a mere 6,000 hogs had eaten feed contaminated by “salvaged” pet food. Next it was chickens. 3 million of them. Slaughtered, butchered and eaten by unsuspecting Americans.

Then 20 million more chickens, and today another 50,000 hogs… not to mention the God-knows-how-many fish in the US and Canada raised on farms now known to have received Canadian fish meal manufactured from contaminated Chinese flours.

Still… not to worry, we are told, because large manufacturers are “unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products.”

Uh-oh. Qualified statements like that set off alarm bells, and every bell this scandal has rung thus far has been answered a few days later with another revelation. The practice of selling salvaged pet food for livestock feed is more widespread than previously acknowledged, encompassing nearly the entire US pet food manufacturing industry. Given what we know of these practices, and the nature of the livestock and feed industries, it is reasonable to speculate that hundreds of millions of U.S.-grown hogs, chickens and fish have been contaminated, dating back to November or July of 2006, or perhaps even further.

But not to worry, we are told, for even that only represents a small percentage of the 9 billion chickens raised in the U.S. annually, a number the FDA bizarrely considers to be “a small part of [our] overall diet.” Affected hogs and chickens “appear to be healthy.” Even if the boneless breast in your freezer does contain melamine, it’s only a tiny amount. And besides, we are told, “we have no reason to believe” this poses a risk to human health.

Uh-huh.

I know I sometimes come off as a tad alarmist, but before you dismiss my skepticism lets first review what we know versus what we believe.

What we know:

• Tainted pet food has killed or sickened tens of thousands of cats and dogs, some dropping dead within a meal or two of first ingesting melamine and related compounds such as cyanuric acid.
• Autopsies have discovered “plasticized” cat kidneys, clogged with crystals comprised of equal parts melamine and cyanuric acid.
• Laboratory tests have have reproduced the formation of these crystals in a test tube by mixing melamine and cyanuric acid in the presence of urine.
• Tainted pet food containing melamine and cyanuric acid was “salvaged,” and sold as livestock feed, contaminating untold millions of hogs and chickens.
• About three million chickens and several hundred hogs are known to have been slaughtered, butchered and presumably eaten. At least another 20 million chickens are known to have consumed contaminated feed.

What we believe:

• Tainted meat poses little risk to human health.

I would love to join my friends in the legacy media in reporting that our food supply is safe. I love food. I eat it every day. But I’m having trouble taking that leap of faith, not simply because of what we know, but because of what we don’t know. For example, we have no idea if melamine/cyanuric acid crystals bio-accumulate in human kidneys over time, and we’re not even sure exactly how long or how widely these toxins have contaminated our food supply.

And… despite USDA/FDA’s recent assurance that contaminated meat is safe to eat, this “most extreme risk assessment scenario” was conducted without ever bothering to test melamine and cyanuric acid levels in the meat of contaminated hogs and chickens.

At least, that’s what they told me. FDA spokesperson Julie Zawisza explained that “identifying these compounds in high protein environments (eg, muscle/tissue) is not that simple” and that they “are still working on a valid test.”

Fair enough. So I asked Midwest Labs, a widely respected testing facility, if they could test “a pork chop or piece of chicken” as reliably as they could test, say, a can of dog food. Their response?

“We can certainly test a food item or a pet food item for melamine. Their is a bit of prep work involved in testing a food sample for melamine, but this is certainly not a problem. Testing muscle tissue will only give a different consistency to the prepped sample. Neither should be a problem.”

When USDA/FDA released contaminated animals from quarantine, and approved them for market, they did so without ever directly testing the meat, and with no restriction on the sale or consumption of organs such as liver or kidney, where the melamine/cyanuric acid crystals are known to accumulate… organ meat that millions of Americans do consume on a regular basis, sometimes knowingly.

USDA/FDA say they believe the melamine level in meat would be very low, but they haven’t bothered to test it. They say they believe melamine is nontoxic to humans, but then, a few months ago we believed it was nontoxic to dogs and cats too. They say they believe that there have been no human health problems due to eating tainted pork and chicken, but admit that the Centers for Disease Control has “limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds.”

And while USDA/FDA have focused their efforts almost entirely on inspecting imports of vegetable protein concentrates, and on tracking contaminated product through the animal and human food supply, the import of processed foods, meat and farmed seafood products from China has continued unchecked and unabated, despite the obvious potential of contamination within China’s own, largely unregulated, agriculture and food industries.

According to recent studies, 81-percent of America’s seafood is imported, and about 40-percent of that is farmed. China is the world’s aquaculture leader, accounting for about 70-percent of global production. It is also a major U.S. supplier of farm-raised shrimp, catfish, tilapia, carp, clams, eel and other aquaculture products.

We now know that it is common practice in China to spike the nitrogen level of livestock feed by adulterating the product with both scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid. And it has also been widely reported that this contaminated feed is routinely used in China’s burgeoning aquaculture industry.

The chemical producers said it was common knowledge that for years cyanuric acid had been used in animal and fish feed. […] “Cyanuric acid scrap can be added to animal feed,” says Yu Luwei, general manager of Juancheng Ouya Chemical Company in Shandong Province. “I sell it to fish meal manufacturers and fish farmers. It can also be added to feed for other animals.”

Fish physiology can leave them particularly prone to bio-accumulating certain contaminants, and the nature of common aquaculture practices tends to exacerbate the problem. Farmed seafood raised on a steady diet of contaminated feed would surely retain some of the toxins in its flesh. But as far as we know, no imported, Chinese aquaculture products have yet been tested.

The fact is, due to greed, negligence and uncontrolled Chinese capitalism our food supply has been widely contaminated by melamine and related compounds, and USDA, FDA, CDC and other government agencies have no idea what the long term human health effects might be. Throughout this unfolding crisis, the regulatory agencies tasked with assuring the safety and purity of our food supply have consistently downplayed the risk to humans — a somewhat understandable attitude considering Chinese and American consumers have apparently been eating melamine-tainted food for months, if not years, with no known epidemiological impact. But given the harm to our pets, and the fact that kidney damage is cumulative and can remain asymptomatic until renal function is mostly lost, I wonder how many Americans would be willing to accept on blind faith USDA/FDA’s reassurances that products containing “low” levels of melamine are perfectly safe to feed to our children?

Personally, I find it hard to believe.

Via the General, a message from Tom Wales’ brother-in-law:

Anonymity is a fine thing. Many an evening I have rafted down the Internets Tubes, safe and secure in my anonymity: unafraid to speak up and unafraid of consequences. Toes have been stomped. Feathers ruffled (my tactfulness is not legendary). Well, mea culpa.

Today I risk nakedness, my fig leaf Googleable.

In testimony Thursday, James Comey, former #2 at the Department of Justice under Ashcroft, testified to the House Judiciary Committee (actually brought up first by Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), while Watt was questioning him) that John McKay, one of the fired USA’s, got in hot water in 2005 for agitating with the bigwigs in DC for more resources in hunting the assassin of Tom Wales, an assistant DA in Seattle killed on October 11, 2001.

Tom was shot a half-dozen times in the neck and head with hollow-point bullets (aka “cop killers””) as he sat at his home computer, answering an email. Sitting as we do, now. He prosecuted white-collar crime in Washington State, and was also a visible and dedicated gun-control advocate. I watched him debate Wayne LaPierre once, on Good Morning America, and thought Tom ate Wayne’s lunch. He headed Washington Cease Fire until murdered with a handgun.

His slaying has never been solved.

The FBI has a team, permanently investigating…they’re on record as saying they know the killer. They released a letter to the press, purportedly from the suspect, and asked the public’s help in identifying him. The FBI has, they say, ruined the suspect’s life, and hassled many a gun owner.

Now I learn through these Internets Tubes that John McKay may have been fired for paying too much attention to the assassination of his fellow federal prosecutor, instead of filing bogus voter-fraud suits.

It appears the DOJ (who sent no reps to Tom’s memorial service, btw, even though he was the first active Federal DA to be murdered, and this just one month after 9/11) was directed to minimize the hunt for Tom’s killer because it would harm the Republican Party’s NRA base, and inflame gun-control advocates.

I don’t speak for the Wales family. Several of them still lose sleep when the case re-makes the news, fearful for the safety of Tom’s children, now grown. And I see their point, though the children are as brave as he.

But if the DOJ is now in the business of ignoring the murders of dedicated prosecutors who spent a career contributing to the community and standing up for the powerless to better win the next election, then it’s time to clean house. If I had been murdered, instead, and my case swept under the rug, Tom would have charged in like an angry wolf.

I married his sister, you see.

And so I ask you, gentle reader, to call or write your Congresspersons, especially if they sit on the Judiciary Committees; demand they ask each DOJ employee, parading through in this shameful affair, what they know or knew of reasons for McKay’s firing.

If this White House is willing to murder Justice for power, we should replace them. Now.

UPDATE:
Tom Wales’ brother-in-law has asked that I post the following correction and clarification:

Monday, I posted re: the unsolved Tom Wales case, and did so in anger. In allowing my anger and resurgent grief sway, I stupidly misstated details that upon reflection deserved more perfect accuracy. No matter the threats to it, or from whence they arise, justice and truth will win out; they must, eventually. I believe that, as Tom did and worked toward. The FBI, DOJ, and law enforcement are filled with public servants as dedicated to justice as Tom. I deeply regret putting my two cents in on a case already so difficult and emotional for so many of them.

To be more specific: the FBI is NOT on record as saying they have but one suspect; though it’s true they have one who is particularly a focus, and has been the subject of public appeals. Also, Mr. Comey only responded to Rep. Watt repeating earlier testimony, as noted in the link. I knew that, and simply erred.

My post showed insufficient respect to Mr. Comey, and to the FBI, and the rank and file at the DOJ, respect I continue to have. My deepest and heartfelt apology for any trouble or confusion I have caused.

It can be tough being both a liberal Democrat and a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. The National Rifle Association doesn’t make this any easier. A group that once concerned itself primarily with gun safety, the NRA has taken a sharp turn to the right over the last twenty years. Sometimes, the position taken by the NRA defy all common sense.

The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., “would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ‘suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.”

“As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word ‘suspect’ has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties,” Cox wrote.

NRA flacks like Cox turn into civil libertarians whenever guns are involved. But other constitutional rights? Silence from the gun rights lobby.

Dan Savage:

Gun nuts talk and talk about needing guns to protect the rights and freedoms that all Americans enjoy, but when the rights and freedoms of Americans are under siege, guns nuts are nowhere to be found. I don’t recall seeing any NRA members, for example, ever protesting an assault on the free speech rights of Americans by the feds—or the federal government’s successful efforts to undermine our constitutional protections against government surveillance and unreasonable searches, their attempts to regulate speech on the Internet, limit abortion rights…

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns.

Pro-gun politicians who defend ALL constitutional rights can be hard to find. The only two I know are both from Montana- Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. Jon Tester. Tester, who is totally pro-gun, also favors repealing the Patriot Act. Schweitzer just signed a bill that tells the federal government to go to hell over Real ID.

I’m certain the NRA will continue to be a Republican puppet organization for years to come, but with Democrats like Schweitzer and Tester on the forefront, real civil libertarians can sleep easier.