More Musings & Observations

One advantage of aging is a longer perspective.  Food companies have been under pressure for decades to reduce the preservatives in their products. One doesn’t have to take a logic class to figure out that anything that prevents food from decaying would also make it hard to decay (digest) in your gut. Those on the left charge that corporate greed demands a long shelf life. The food producers have argued that consumers asked for longer shelf lives. The purer food people denounced that as pure bunk. But one of those requesting consumers was my mother. She was a liberal sticking it to big corporations to sell what she considered a better, longer lasting product.

Some years ago, Greece was too much of a fiscal mess to join the EU so they hired Goldman Sachs to cook their books for a multi million fee. After they did that they then shorted Greek debt and made another bundle. Today Greece is collapsing. I'm sure Hillary Clinton must feel horridly guilty every time she takes another donation check from Goldman Sachs. 

But no matter what happens its always business as usual in Washington. The Department of Agriculture recently received $17 million to inspect catfish despite the Food and Drug Administration already spending $7 million inspecting catfish. Please remember that although outside lobbyists play a major role in closed door Washington, the right of government agencies to lobby for themselves was part of FDR’s new deal for America. Now the two agencies have agreed to work jointly and to, over time, separate their respective seafood turfs. So there’s no need to worry that anyone will lose their cushy job or pension on our dime. It’s easy to understand that those in power want to maintain regulatory pressure on the population of catfish raising rural southern areas similar to what Obama did when reducing the number of auto dealerships during the car companies’ brief nationalization. “Coincidently” many big Republican donors lost their dealerships then. But catfish and similar type fish enter the USA from Southeast Asia with hardly any inspection. If this gives you shivers about the Trans-Pacific Partnership you are probably not alone.

Much of this product has been banned in Russia because it contains E. coli and listeria. But why worry? Certainly California will require a vaccination against those germs soon. And if you can’t wait, you can always become someone you are not. Two billion dollars of the world’s economy are Botox sales. But if the morality of extreme vanity bothers you, again why worry? The government is always there to lend a helping hand. When first quarter gross domestic product figures came in lower than expected the San Francisco Fed suggested changing the seasonal adjustment factors to create a higher number so we could all feel better.

D. Norman recently posted a discussion about entitlements here where in he calls for “complete and factual information.” Then this must include things he didn’t mention such as illegal immigrants who may have never worked a day in this county receiving benefits and the huge benefit provider industry. This includes J.P. Morgan EFS, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds. Since 2004 JPMorgan has been paid almost $6 million. The more they enroll the more they make. So there’s an incentive to get people on the dole.  As with too many government programs it’s not the cost of the benefit but the cost of and style of administration. Nobody in America wants to eat diseased fish or let the poor to starve.

Copyright 2015, Mark L. Bennett