Aaaargh!
Do the folks at the Bush administration believe a word they say about economics? Or are they consciously lying because they know that just saying “we want to help the rich and powerful, and fuck all to everything else” might not fly with the voters?
I’d like to believe that there’s such a thing as an honorable opposition, but they make it so hard.
From Ezra:
In one of the more insane stories you’ll read today, the Department of Agriculture has banned a small beef producer named Creekstone from testing its cows for Mad Cow Disease. Why? “Larger meat companies worry that if Creekstone is allowed to perform the test and advertise its meat as safe, they could be forced to do the expensive test, too.” And when they say “forced,” they mean that Creekstone will attain a competitive advantage by investing in diagnostics which will give consumers information they value, and then the market will strongly suggest that other producers follow suit. Other producers don’t want to follow suit and so they bent the ear of their good friends in the Bush administration. Dean Baker makes the right point here, saying “This is just a wonderful example showing that the Bush administration conservatives have no interest in the free market or ‘you are on your own’ economics. They are prepared to use the heavy hand of the government to ensure that small meat packers do not win out over bigger more politically powerful meat packers.”
This also has the effect of cutting US beef off from foreign markets, particularly Japan. But, really, I’m not crying any tears for the beef producers. It’s the hypocrisy that drives me mad.
As I said over here:
In this case, their pose was, “we believe in the free market.”
—Myca
I really want to see whether anyone on this site will try to defend the administration’s position. Come on guys, anyone?
But to be fair, the hypocrisy of a subset of ‘the right’ does not mean that it’s OK to make a broad generalization like ‘the Right doesn’t have principles’. My boss is a right winger if anyone is, and he was foaming at the mouth over this.
Another load of bullshit for Obama to clean up.
Sure, but just as saying “your boss likes cheeseburgers” doesn’t mean “the right likes cheeseburgers” so saying “the right likes cheeseburgers” doesn’t mean “your boss likes cheeseburgers.”
The reason I’m saying this about ‘the right’ is that it’s ‘the right’ as a monolithic unit that has consistently supported and defended the actions of the Bush administration. That certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t members of ‘the right’ who are disgusted by it, but 1) the right as a whole hasn’t become disgusted enough to actually do anything about it, and 2) if an individual member of ‘the right’ is disgusted by these actions , but still supports Bush, that proves the point that it’s become more about power than principle.
Now, I’m sure that there are going to be plenty of folks on the right saying “DUH, it’s about power. It’s always about power! You expect principle from a politician?”
And yeah, I actually do. And they don’t. Which is my point.
—Myca
Are you saying that the mythical Left would abandon a politician if he was seen deviating from the principles the Left holds dear? Or are you talking just about yourself?
I may believe that you would stop supporting, let say, Hillary Clinton, if she were to, hypothetically, vote in favor of war, censorship, invasion of privacy, big business, etc… But I have trouble believing that the ‘Left’ would fail to support her in a presidential contest against Dick Cheney, no matter how many principles she had gone against.
In the same way, many people on the right are disgusted with the what Bush has done. They still will defend his administration, his party, and the candidate he endorses. Because they believe that the alternative is worse. And my boss, who owns the company, and has benefited from Bush’s administration, will complain about what Bush is going, and then go and vote for McCain.
Sticking to one’s principles is a luxury. Personally, I believe that the end sometimes justifies the means. Of course, if I did not, I could hardly live with myself… so at the end it all comes to selfishness.
I really want to see whether anyone on this site will try to defend the administration’s position. Come on guys, anyone?
I’ll come to a very partial, possible defense. Does anyone know if this test is reliable, reproducible, and has a low false negative rate? An earlier test that some companies were planning to do turned out to be basically as reliable as using an Ouija board to determine if the cow was prion infected or not. If this one is equally unreliable, then I would agree with the administration’s position. Otherwise…all the snickers about the defenders of the free market and believers in the invisible hand are quite in order.
FWIW, if I were a regulator in any other country, I would ban US beef and cow related products (cheese, leather, FBS, etc)unless and until all cows slaughtered in the US were tested by a reliable test and a clear plan for dealing with positives that would keep products from positive animals out of the human and animal food chains and decontaminate all equipment used on the animals was in place, tested, and proven. To do otherwise is to put one’s population at risk. And while we’re on the subject, I wouldn’t let any British food product into the country for the next few generations: they’ve proven themselves more interested in protecting their profits than protecting their customers.
Dianne, I agree; if the test were so unreliable that using it and telling consumers amounted to false advertising, then it would be justifiable to ban the advertising of the test (although probably not the test itself).
Petar, I don’t criticize conservatives for voting for Bush, if they feel the alternative is worse; I often do the same myself (well, not vote for Bush, but you know what I mean). But I blame the Bush administration itself, and I criticize conservatives who haven’t criticize the Bush administration for these things.
Would I criticize a Democratic administration, when it deviates from left principles? I hope we’ll have a chance to find out the answer to that question, starting next year.
A respectable try, Dianne, but there are at least 3 tests that managed 100%
negative and positive identification rates over 1064 healthy and 336 infected samples. The ‘testing of tests’ was commissioned by the EU, and the three winners are recommended for private use in Europe: the Biorad test, the Prionic check, and the Enfer testing system.
And while I can come with ‘for the common good’ reasons myself, those should still be rejected by people who firmly believe in the power of the free market. After all, it may be wasteful to test every single animal for a vanishingly rare disease. If so, the market will take care of it. It will be nothing more or less than advertisement, and it will be either worth it or not.
Ampersand, I had no problem with your post. I objected to Myca’s assertion that the Right does not have principles, and that the Left is somehow different… mostly because I have a rather low opinion of anyone who talks too much about principles, his or others’.
Many of the people with whom I spend my days are firmly on the Right. They make more excuses for the Bush administration than my liberal friends, but they are far from happy with what Bush and Co. are doing. ‘Hypocrite’, ‘incompetent’, and ‘betrayer of conservative values’ are thrown around… of course, when it is time to save our glorious nation from the liberal scourge, all is forgiven, and the ranks are dressed.
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Yes, folks, there definitely ARE things that need to change.
Dianne – leather? With all the processing that leather goes though, there’s danger of Mad Cow disease from it?
And while we’re on the subject, I wouldn’t let any British food product into the country for the next few generations:
I don’t know. I’ve done extensive field testing on their ales, and they seem fine.
Myca, most of the time I’ve seen anyone present comments on how “the left” or “the gay community” or “African-Americans” think “a” or feel “b” or do “c” I see someone else bring them up short and remind that person that these groups are made up of individuals and sub-groups that all have differences. Quite correctly, BTW. “The Right” is the same way. They are not daemons all marching to Satan’s commands.
Sure, there are groups of people who back just about everything he does. But not so many. Bush is pilloried for various stances and actions on the right. As far as doing something about him, as you may have noticed the man is rather stubborn once he’s set his mind to a course of action. “The left” is not the only group of people he doesn’t listen to much.
I agree that the Department of Agriculture should not have barred this test.
However, it seems odd to read this as primarily a condemnation of Bush administration hypocrisy on their free-market ideology. You can (fairly) condemn the administration for failing to live up to its ideology, but the problem here is that a regulatory body is forbidding the market to work, in response to a desire by larger businesses to protect themselves against competition from smaller businesses. The phenomenon is known as “regulatory capture” and is a regular feature of the free-market critique of the regulatory state.
The narrative I draw from this story is, “free marketers are correct, regulatory bodies eventually end up as tools of anticompetitive businesses, the solution is to deregulate and let the market work.”
I’m not sure I’m on board with Myca’s analysis about it all being about political power, but I do agree that this sort of dissonance arises when advocates for a side say one thing but secretly pine for another. This is by no means restricted to the Right, or only to political ideologies – but where it does occur, it should be called out and analyzed.
For instance, if a Right wing leader who claims to believe in the free market ends up violating it, it would be pertinent to ask in what direction do these violations tend to happen, and why that might be.
Violations will always occur in the direction of the entity with the most power. In this case, the large ag companies that can make big political donations to get the political system to follow their preference.
With all the processing that leather goes though, there’s danger of Mad Cow disease from it?
I’m not sure if skin has a high enough prion load to worry about anyway, but I wouldn’t count on the processing to destroy nvCJD. Virtually nothing deactivates prions: they are infective after exposure to heat, alcohol, cold, soap, hypotonic and hypertonic states, drying, and low concentrations of bleach. Very good autoclaving and high dose bleach are the only things I’ve heard of as being definitively able to get rid of prions. Besides which, who wants to wear a cadaver anyway?
I’ve done extensive field testing on their ales, and they seem fine.
If you say so…all ales/beers taste like yak piss to me, so I’ll have to take your word for the field testing. I do have some concern about whether the stuff in the bottle actually is what the label says it is though. The response of the British government to the mad cow thing pretty much convinced me tha tthey have no interest in protecting the food supply, which is why I simply avoid all British food products. Not that it’s much of a sacrifice.
there are at least 3 tests that managed 100%
negative and positive identification rates over 1064 healthy and 336 infected samples. The ‘testing of tests’ was commissioned by the EU, and the three winners are recommended for private use in Europe: the Biorad test, the Prionic check, and the Enfer testing system.
Oh, well, I’ve got nothing then. I’m not sure I’d trust a private company’s assertion that they’d done the test properly and it was negative, though, if I were considering whether to let their product into my country. I’d like to have an outside agency certify the beef before considering it safe: the company trying to sell the beef has, shall we say, a small conflict of interest.
According to the Volokh Conspiracy, the company *knew* the test they wanted to use would not predict the disease status of its cattle; the company merely wanted to be able to claim truthfully that they performed the test.
It is worth noting Creekstone did not maintain that such testing was necessary to ensure the safety of its beef. It was undisputed that the test they sought to use was very unlikely to detect the presence of BSE given the age of the cows at slaughter. Rather, Creekstone sought to test its beef so that it could export its meat to Japan and Korea, which have limited U.S. beef imports due to BSE fears.
So, this isn’t about the USDA preventing a beef producer from demonstrating the safety of its product. It’s about a company trying to make a claim that is at best negligently misleading and likely intentionally misleading.
No. That’s a symptom. The problem is the Bush administration’s hypocrisy, cronyism, and greed, and the citizens who support them in their corruption.
Put an honest administration in charge, one who would rather do what’s best for the country than put dirty money in his friends’ pockets, and the test will be allowed. Free market or no.
Dianne:
I’m not sure if skin has a high enough prion load to worry about anyway, but I wouldn’t count on the processing to destroy nvCJD.
Hm. Well, that’s worth investigating, then. I wonder if there’s any work out there on it?
Besides which, who wants to wear a cadaver anyway?
Lots of people. Me included; in fact, I’m may be in the market for a new leather jacket this Christmas, my old one having finally worn out. They’re a lot more durable than cloth and they break the wind better. I’ll miss that old jacket, I have some fond memories of wearing it. Right after I got it I got on the commuter train to go home from work in downtown Chicago. I got onto the car and saw that there were only 2 or three seats left. I was trying to figure out who to sit next to when I saw that one of them was wearing a very noticable PETA button. Decision made! Boy did she give me a dirty look. I was chuckling to myself all the way home.
the company trying to sell the beef has, shall we say, a small conflict of interest.
Very true. Note, though, that the country exporting the beef has a conflict of interest as well, so don’t expect them to be a neutral player either.
Bjmartmarr:
The problem is the Bush administration’s hypocrisy, cronyism, and greed, and the citizens who support them in their corruption. Put an honest administration in charge, one who would rather do what’s best for the country than put dirty money in his friends’ pockets, and the test will be allowed.
Unfortunately, “an honest administration” is more of a theoretical construct than a real phenomenon. Given the history of the party organization and governmental body that Sen. Obama owes his political career to I expect that the only change that will occur during his administration is who the bribes and contracts come from and go to, as opposed to getting rid of the process entirely.
No, what fixing this kind of thing depends on is the public bringing pressure on the administration (whoever is in charge) to change this kind of thing. If the public doesn’t give a shit about it’s food supply, then no administration is going to change the system.
If the administration is worried enough about its public image that they’re scared straight, that’s good enough. The current administration doesn’t seem to give a fig about their public image.
I can’t say I’m much impressed by your decision to try to make the PETA woman uncomfortable.