Among the many things that drive me up the wall (I’m close to the ceiling most of the time) is the common inability to distinguish between bigger government and inappropriately intrusive government. What the Founders feared was a government that invaded the individual liberties of citizens, not a government that established new agencies to deal with new problems.
This isn’t, I hasten to say, a misconception held only by Republicans. I still remember a friend who worked for the state during the Evan Bayh administration. His small agency was addressing the then-emerging problems of HIV. The federal government instituted a program that would have paid to place two more desperately-needed personnel in his agency–including the overhead costs of their employment. He was told he couldn’t take advantage of that program because Bayh didn’t want exposure to the accusation that state employment had increased during his term in office.
I think about that persistent bias against numerical growth–the very common inability to differentiate between the growth of power and authority and an increase in manpower–whenever I read about Musk’s determination to slash the size of government while blithely erasing limits on its authority.
In the late 19th century, the government chemist Harvey Washington Wiley proved several shocking suspicions about the American food supply as correct: Milk was routinely thinned with dirty water, coffee contained bone, ground pepper was full of dirt, cocoa was packed with sand, and cayenne was loaded with brick dust.
The findings turned Wiley into a crusader for food safety, and by 1906 Congress finally agreed that regulations were needed. With the passage of the Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act, the United States created the framework for a federal system to test ingredients, inspect food factories and recall unsafe products.
This system has been criticized as seriously underfunded and often overcautious. But it has prevented a return to the fraudulent and poisonous food supply of the 19th century, which one historian called the “century of the great American stomachache.” That is, until recently, when the Trump administration began to unravel that safety net.
When this nation’s Founders wrote the Constitution, most Americans still grew their own food. If mom wanted to cook chicken for dinner, she was likely to go out in the yard and wring the neck of one of her flock; if that chicken was ill, the consequences were her responsibility. When food preparation became an industry, responsibility for product safety became a communal issue. The representatives of We the People decided (properly, in my view) that government had an obligation to regulate that production.
Our mad king doesn’t recognize that responsibility, and we are all endangered by the heedless effort to reduce government employment and responsibility.
Along with its other ill-considered actions, the administration has been targeting food safety programs for “downsizing.” As the linked article notes, last month two Department of Agriculture advisory committees that had provided guidance on fighting microbial contamination of food as well as meat inspection protocols were simply shut down. (If that wasn’t dangerous enough, the administration also expanded the ability of some meat processors to speed up their production lines–a provision that makes it more difficult to carry out careful inspections.)
The administration also delayed a rule that would have required both manufacturers and grocery companies to quickly investigate food contamination and pull risky products from sale. At the start of April, thousands of federal health workers were fired on the orders of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; a plan called for terminating 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration — a move that he welcomed as a “revolution.” Consumer watchdogs and others described it as a safety blood bath.
Of course, it isn’t just food safety. Or drug efficacy. The Founders didn’t envision an FAA, either. Forgive me for wondering whether the recent rash of air mishaps is connected to the “downsizing” of that agency. And while the MAGA morons dispute the reality of climate change–okay, the utility of science generally–the EPA also protects the water we drink and the air we breathe from industrial pollution, among other things that didn’t exist in the 1700s. The list goes on.
The threat to individual liberty doesn’t come from the employment of officials to monitor food and drug safety, or oversee air traffic. The threat comes from autocrats unwilling to respect the constraints of the Bill of Rights.
Sheila’s last sentence reminds me of a passage in the Declaration of Independence:
“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
In fact, the DoI originally addressed all of the grievances and cures for today’s problems. The cure was laid out as such:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
As in Indiana and Washington, most of our agencies were fronts for industry to give the appearance of regulation. However, they only provided minimal restraint, and many were the result of lawsuits outside of those agencies against the Industry.
For instance, where was the FDA during Purdue Pharma’s opioid-pushing days? Where were the EPA and IDEM when our waterways became polluted? The rivers and streams where I fished growing up all have restrictions today based on the mercury in the water. A nonprofit in Indiana trains and uses volunteer water testers across the state to test our rivers and streams. Most of the toxins are released during the night. Why doesn’t the government test our water? Our air?
Industry capture of our government has been a problem for a very long time in this country. The greed and corruption have gone on for so long that we have sunk to the level of Trump – a kakistocracy and kleptocracy combined.
Happy 4/20, everyone!! 🙂
Fun Hoosier facts: Harvey Washington Wiley was born in Kent, IN. He earned his BA from Hanover College, his medical degree from IU, taught Greek and Latin at Butler, and taught chemistry at Purdue.
It’s a sad commentary when you have to continuously add to government to watch over basic decency in manufacturing and production of necessities. The clean water act passed by the Nixon administration, came after continuous river fires in Chicago and various areas in Ohio. The rivers would spontaneously combust because of all of the chemicals and other pollutants in the water. I remember as a kid, walking across the bridges in the neighborhood we lived in, around Ravenswood and Lincoln square in Chicago. The water or whatever you call it, stunk to high heaven and was actually more like the consistency of syrup. I don’t think fish except maybe carp lived in that slop. Because of the clean water act, people can kayak, fish, they even swim for some odd reason in the rivers. The Riverwalk is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Chicago. A far cry from architecture designed to keep windows away from facing the river. So the stench wouldn’t permeate throughout the interior of those buildings.
One of the big reasons for the FDA, was the ketchup issue. When Heinz was using red paint as a coloring agent in its ketchup. Or the expiration dates of meat, which there was none at one time, not to mention the infestation of parasitic worms in that meat. It also protected people against the snake oil salesman, which gave rise to the pharmaceutical industry. Remember, lognum was one of the biggest medicines out there, and no matter what you had, that concoction of flavoring and cocaine mixed with alcohol, made a lot of discomfort disappear while you were being poisoned by the food you ate.
The ATF, to make sure you weren’t drinking methyl alcohol, or smoking something other than tobacco but it was labeled as such. Making sure the weapons that were purchased function appropriately and that those that shouldn’t have them didn’t get them. Of course, the reach of these organizations have expanded over the years, because people try to find ways around regulations to make more profit. I mean, red paint is probably cheaper than processing tomatoes? Don’t you think?!
There’s a whole bunch of other stuff, including the department of education, which attempted to standardize school related material, so you didn’t have a bunch of dances not being able to acquire any level of discernment or knowledge about anything.
The FAA was created to stop companies from flying outdated and unmaintained aircraft falling out of the sky in droves. And those pilots were to have appropriate licensing and training. I mean, we could go on forever. And this is from stuff that I can remember writing about years ago, and I’m not sure I’ve touched on things that I should have. This has to do also with the health and welfare clause, to keep people protected from dishonest brokers trying to make a buck off the lives of citizens. Now of course it’s going back the other way.
I mean, look at the FDA stopping certain shrimp coming in from China, or, other farm raised aquatic life to be eaten, that was raised in human sewage! But these things were good for other countries in the world because, if these countries wanted to export fruits and vegetables meats and whatever else, they had to raise their standards, and their own population benefited from this. An example of some of this, is in China again, they were cooking with what was called gutter oil. Where they would open the grease traps in the streets and boil down the slop until they could skim oil off the top. They would sell that gutter oil to hotels and businesses. Doesn’t that sound scrumptious!
Everything that you see now is designed to get rid of any sort of regulation or any sort of watchdog departments so the profit margins can continue to go through the roof. And I’m wondering how and why the promise of cheaper groceries has not been met yet. Promise everything and deliver nothing. Pretty sad! How long do you think society as we know it will exist in any form or fashion. Because if they can’t get what they want, they’ve already said martial law will be declared. Everybody knows it! Then they won’t have to worry about habeas corpus because everything will be military tribunals. And that’s why it keep running a lot of these commanders out of the military. Because they need sycophantic believers in positions of judgment.
Yeah, if you can’t remember the movie “Don’t Look Up,” I suggest you watch it again, it’s very appropriate! Oh yeah, I also understand that they’re trying to redefine what human rights are, I thought that was a basic!?! I guess, everything’s open to being reinterpreted. You can’t love your neighbor when you treat them like an infestation of vermin.
When I hear those who complain about the size of government, I want to tell them that the size of the various agencies that have been put in place to deal collectively with serious problems that we as individuals in a community or even businesses cannot resolve alone have evolved and grown to meet the dramatic increase in population.
The U.S. had 76.3 million residents in 1900. (BTW, approximately 10.4 born outside the country.) Today the population is 340.1M. One of the reasons for that increase is the collective action of government, elected by We, the People, to address the ever more complex and growing challenges to the health, safety and environment, problems that would be impossible for individuals and single businesses or even states to confront and begin to manage alone.
How many of those complaining have benefited from that collective action? I would say that most have. Consider at a minimum, being born in a hospital, living in a structure with running water, sewage disposal and electricity, going to a school, traveling on roads, over bridges to work, having garbage collected, depending on EMS, fire and law enforcement to respond to emergencies, fly anywhere safely, breath clean air, etc., all required collective and coordinated actions by government. The Founders lived in a world so much smaller and less complex in so many ways. Even 100 years ago, people could not imagine how many people there would be and what time and technology would bring in a century. Neither can we, today, imagine what a century of change will mean.
I hope that we can at least understand that collective planning and some degree of concern for the lives and safety of us all today will help my children and their progeny live in a safer, healthier, cleaner world.
To depend on individuals acting alone or businesses that put profit before all moral or ethical concerns, that may fail or leave at any time, to meet the huge demands of even more of us makes no sense when view through the lens of our past history.
My last professional job was for a company in Switzerland, which gave me ample time to learn how the Swiss economy works compared to ours. Of course, it is theirs and not ours because it is a simple artifact of the Swiss vs our culture.
Swiss culture accepts that government and culture are partners, not competitors, based on mutual respect and joint management of the country, which both depend on to function.
They also believe that it’s not the government’s role to be responsible for individuals, but it is the job of every person to take care of themselves. Thus, if you insist on driving too fast on curvy mountainous roads, well, going off the road on the cliff side was probably not preventable but just an unfortunate result of your lack of personal responsibility.
The company did business all over the world, so the people at the plant had experienced people of other cultures, beliefs, and languages. They treated all with respect and viewed them as benefiting from exposure to Swiss culture and appreciation for their precision and scrupulous honesty. Never promise what you cannot do, and consistently deliver what you have pledged to both corporately and individually.
Our national problem stems from a lack of appreciation for the different but complementary roles of personal, corporate, and national, which are separate but distinct, but work together to create the whole.
Our dysfunctional national culture created the authoritarian government we are experiencing now. We are losing what we once had because we didn’t defend it when we had it.
I was up early this morning and on the web at Youtube when Max Velocity popped up live. Seems there was a large tornado on the ground down in Texas easily verified by radar and storm chasers. I watched as the storm moved across the land. Max had called it. It was live for anyone to see. Yet no warning from the weather service. Nada. Nothing. There it was for all to see on the screen. This went on for over five minutes before an official warning was given. I don’t know about you, but this is unacceptable.
When MAGA people start getting killed because of the cuts to government will the mourners rebel?
The republicans have argued that the government should be run like a business. Except that growing businesses invest in upgrades/modernization to keep them competitive. Republicans can’t/wont distinguish between spending and investing and argue that “we” can’t afford to upgrade the agencies that do the important work that keeps us safe and maintains our standards. The current iteration of government is, in Trumps words, a hoax.
Pete – you are “write on” regarding a key root cause of our “troubles” being culture as much or more than politics or government.
“Our mad king,” and his henchmen do not recognize ANY responsibility! They are all myopically focused on only their own particular agendas.
John, you want basic decency? Don’t look to capitalism for it.
What Lester said, but do not think that culture is distinct from politics, or government; interplay is the reality.
I don’t have a problem with government growing. I have a problem with enslaving our children with debt to pay off a burgeoning government who can’t seem toagree on a path to a balanced budget.