Common Sense...
...Is what is lacking here. An outright ban on an effective cleaning product, when there are treatment alternatives and other measures that could be taken (like finding out what the smallest effective amount of phosphates might be, and limiting products to that amount) is typical gummint thinking.
It's really getting bad. Gummints are taking away choice and effective technologies, playing nanny-state games. In New York, there is a ban on trans fats, and the official responsible for ramming it through says that it will result in a huge improvement in public health. I would think that if a huge improvement in public health is wanted, making it possible for every ill New Yorker to see a doctor would probably be one hell of a lot more effective than banning Crisco.
The new Federally-mandated digital TV transition is another bit of fresh hell visited upon Americans by gummint. We've had a working TV system for around 65 years, and it is being thrown out the window in favour of a hinky, glitchy technology that works when it feels like it and doesn't the rest of the time, which in actual practise, seems to be most of the time. Don't talk to me about better antennae and fringe areas; we're in metro Atlanta, have upgraded antennae twice and we're still plagued by pixelation, dropouts, freezing and "No Signal" messages. Who the F designed this crap - Microsoft? We have friends in fringe and semi-rural areas whose choices now consist of satellite, cable, or no TV at all.
Corporate America and Washington are so deep in each others' back pockets it's not funny. Big Business has evolved a business model that depends on eliminating jobs, benefits and manufacturing expense, leaving Americans without savings, pensions, health insurance and in some cases, a roof over their heads. Washington has yet to impose the drastic and realistic controls on corporations that are needed to keep jobs here and channel a reasonable portion of corporate income back into the community. A corporation's stock price has become the new God, worshipped by CEOs and Congress alike, and the public be damned. The only thing our gummint seems to "do" for us is to impose more and more rules on us that limit our ability to make our own choices and fend for ourselves.
We need, and right quick:
- A realistic national health care system of insurance funded by both individuals, their employers, and in the cases of those who are too disabled to earn, the government itself.
- A job retention program at the Federal level - a system of incentives to keep jobs here and a system of disincentives to ship them elsewhere. There could be tax relief for companies keeping manufacturing here instead of sending it to other countries. There could be a system of forcing corporations to share in the costs the government incurs when a community's "lifeblood" company shuts a plant. There could be a whole lot of things besides what is happening in former manufacturing centres all across this nation.
- There needs to be a system of national referendum or issue votes during mid-term election cycles when something affecting Americans as broadly as the digital TV issue comes up. Airwaves that belong to all of us were auctioned off to cellular carriers for a paltry sum, so that they could make more money. The elderly, the poor, those on fixed incomes, those in rural areas and those who just plain damn didn't like the idea of jettisoning a working system capable of reaching 99% of the population in minutes during a crisis (remember 9/11?) didn't get a voice. Big Business wanted, Big Business got, and the rest of us are picking up costs for converter boxes, new antennae, cable and satellite subscriptions, new TVs and video recorders just so they can make enormous profits. Do you think the poeple affected by all this got any direct say in the matter? Hell, no. That ain't right.
- Federal agencies need to be required to pick up the phone, and to respond to violations of Federal law (particularly wage and hour laws, consumer laws and OSHA violations) within a reasonably short time frame. Right now, trying to get help from a Federal agency - no matter how egregious the situation - is like something out of Kafka. All too often, people are told that their only recourse is through the court system - which for the average wage-earner, is tantamount to no recourse at all. If a Federal law is being violated, the Feds should step in, period. Now.
- The 30-year, fixed rate mortgage has to become the norm again, at least for the ordinary houses that ordinary Americans need over their heads. If someone wants a 6,000-square-foot monument to excess and has the income to back up the desire, fine - let them take their chances with a hinky ARM. But for houses 2,500 square feet and under, with no notable luxury features, fair and stable mortgage payments are needed if wage-earning Americans are not to continue losing houses. There is a lot of talk about the irresponsibility of people who took out ARMs, and some of it is quite true. But for many people with less-than-perfect credit scores, it was the ARM or nothing. Is an ARM the best this rich nation can offer to a wage-earning family whose only other choice is public housing, with all the appalling crime, gangs and drug activity that goes on in such places?
- Pension funds have to be made inviolable, with the most fearful penalties imaginable dealt out to anyone who plunders, mis-invests, squanders or steals money that is intended to provide retirees with financial stability. The loophole that exists when a corporation changes hands must be forever closed; Polaroid employees who'd worked for thirty years toward what they thought was a securely funded pension got the shock of their lives when that company was sold some years ago; people got "settlement" cheques of as little as seventeen dollars (yes, $17) - and it was all perfectly legal. We won't even go into what has happened with investments lately, due to the machinations of Madoff and his odious ilk. What are the old supposed to do when their money has been stolen - get a rice bowl and beg on the streets? This is America, folks.
- And last but certainly not least, lobbying should be seriously curbed if not outlawed outright (I'm personally in favour of making it a hanging crime). Under the lobbying system, too many favours and kickbacks and too much tit-for-tat stuff goes on, to the extreme detriment of this nation's civic business and its citizens. Decisions on what Federal laws are to be enacted and what Federal dollars are to be spent where should be the exclusive province of the American people, whose country this is. The influence of corporations' employees, members of special-interest groups, and CEOs should be limited to their individual votes as citizens and not a single damned thing more.
Okay, the old soapbox is about to collapse under the weight of all this, but what is going on in this country is obscene, and I personally want to see the Obama administration make huge strides in cleaning up a mess that has evolved over far too many other administrations, both Democratic and Republican.
Rant over. For the moment.
