Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[charlou]

It is NOT capitalism when the government, acting as an agent of big business, enacts regulatory and tax laws that specifically target small businesses. I paid corporate tax on my little operation, GE made 14 BILLION in profit and got a tax credit. How is that capitalism at work? I don't ask for special treatment, I only want to be able to run a small business and provide a niche product that big producers don't. However, the USDA is firmly in the pocket of Big Food and they do everything in their power to make it impossible for local producers to stay in business.

Yes, that's very wrong. I don't know how you can fight for change, either. Is there a way?

[charlou]

Bickering over trifles?

"Let them eat trifle ... "

[charlou]

It is NOT capitalism when the government, acting as an agent of big business, enacts regulatory and tax laws that specifically target small businesses. I paid corporate tax on my little operation, GE made 14 BILLION in profit and got a tax credit. How is that capitalism at work? I don't ask for special treatment, I only want to be able to run a small business and provide a niche product that big producers don't. However, the USDA is firmly in the pocket of Big Food and they do everything in their power to make it impossible for local producers to stay in business.

Yes, that's very wrong. I don't know how you can fight for change, either. Is there a way?

Actually, rereading your post, laklak, this bit stood out ...

However, the USDA is firmly in the pocket of Big Food

... and my rather awkwardly composed question (to anyone who cares to respond) is how is the USDA is firmly in the pocket of any company that is not paying its fair share of tax ... What incentive does the USDA have to give those big companies preferential treatment? I have some vague muddled understanding of the complexity of the relationship, but if anyone could lay it out in clear, concise terms, I'd be interested

[JimC]

If their regulations are designed to protect the public, then why did the listeria outbreak occur in the first place? The melons were grown on a farm in Colorado and were USDA inspected. In every major food borne outbreak in recent years, the offending products were already regulated by the USDA. Check this site out.

http://www.foodhaccp.com/outbreak.htm

There is also a level of personal responsibility here. Listeria isn't inside the melon, it's on the skin. Don't slice open the melon without first cleaning it with a chlorine solution. Don't buy pre-cut melons. If you're older or have a compromised immune system, do not eat raw or uncooked meats, don't buy preprocessed foods like hotdogs and make sure you follow the same sort of sanitation procedures that any responsible food producer (like me) does.

This is something that the new reportage COMPLETELY failed to address. They NEVER ONCE said that listeria bacteria are ON THE OUTER RIND of the melon, and it can be killed and/or washed off AT HOME before slicing the melon, and SHOULD BE (along with washing your HANDS after handling produce in the store...do you really want the checkout clerk's Hepatitis B or influenza viri on your vegetables). The FDA has been telling people for decades to wash their fruits and vegetables before consuming them.

The outbreak occurred because the company involved was using improper procedures for sanitizing the melons when they were packed, but you are absolutely right that they were violating EXISTING state regulations by doing so.

We don't need federal regulations, and we don't need federal enforcement, all we need is for the state to act on it's existing regulations and for the farm to be put out of business by being sued by the people it harmed. That will work more efficiently to convince other growers to make damned sure their equipment is up to snuff than any new regulations, particularly federal regulations that are duplicative, expensive and ultimately useless.

In fact, federal regulations probably CAUSED this outbreak in large part because due to the chest-pounding by the FDA, people think that their food supply is invariably safe and sanitary. In third-world countries, people WASH THEIR PRODUCE carefully before eating it precisely because they know perfectly well that there's no government agency out there "ensuring" a safe food supply...which is something that NO GOVERNMENT can possibly do 100 percent of the time, ever.

If the people who bought those contaminated melons had ASSUMED they were contaminated with listeria or e-coli, and had handled and sanitized the fruit before eating it, the outbreak WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.

It happened because people have been falsely lead to believe, by the FDA, that the food supply is always safe and sanitary.

If you get sick from hamburger or melons, it's your own damned fault, and no government regulation is going to prevent your own stupidity from being its own reward.

I agree with the analysis here. We even wash the stuff we grow!

[Tyrannical]

... and my rather awkwardly composed question (to anyone who cares to respond) is how is the USDA is firmly in the pocket of any company that is not paying its fair share of tax ... What incentive does the USDA have to give those big companies preferential treatment? I have some vague muddled understanding of the complexity of the relationship, but if anyone could lay it out in clear, concise terms, I'd be interested

The USDA is run by Presidential political appointees, and industry employs lobbyists and dishes out campaign contributions.

[JimC]

... and my rather awkwardly composed question (to anyone who cares to respond) is how is the USDA is firmly in the pocket of any company that is not paying its fair share of tax ... What incentive does the USDA have to give those big companies preferential treatment? I have some vague muddled understanding of the complexity of the relationship, but if anyone could lay it out in clear, concise terms, I'd be interested

The USDA is run by Presidential political appointees, and industry employs lobbyists and dishes out campaign contributions.

One of the big issues everywhere is how decisions about vital laws affecting whole communities are affected or controlled by sectional interests, primarily those with the deepest pockets...

Disgust at this corruption is at the heart of the current protest movement...

And this disgust is reasonable, and shared by increasing numbers of people from all walks of life.

Even if many of the solutions proposed by the "occupy" movement are sheer lunacy...

[Cunt]

We'll have to regain the knowledge and skills for localised community, family and individual food production that have been lost.

This reminds me of the 'Global Villiage Construction Set'

[laklak]

46% HIV infection rate? 35% unemployment? 70% live on less than a dollar a day? This is better than the US? Really?

OK.

HIV rate in Swaziland is higher than that, estimates from the folks on the ground are between 60 and 70%. The king is an idiot and I'd imagine there's going to be a revolution someday if the locals can be bothered to stop smoking dope. So its not the sort of basket to put all your eggs in. However, until it falls apart it's a great place to be an expat, loved the years I spent there and it's Mrs. Lak's home.

... and my rather awkwardly composed question (to anyone who cares to respond) is how is the USDA is firmly in the pocket of any company that is not paying its fair share of tax ... What incentive does the USDA have to give those big companies preferential treatment? I have some vague muddled understanding of the complexity of the relationship, but if anyone could lay it out in clear, concise terms, I'd be interested

Pretty much what Tyrannical and Jim C said. Some bad shit happens and a bunch of people die of food poisoning, so the public gets all hot and bothered and the USDA (and sometimes the Food and Drug Administration) steps in. They come up with a bunch of new rules that are developed in concert with industry reps. Small guys aren't represented, so the regulations and requirements are biased towards huge factory operations, hence requirements like providing separate office space for inspectors. Easy to do in a million square foot facility, impossible in a 600 square foot storefront. Meeting the requirements are a doddle for Kraft Inc, only takes a miniscule portion of their income, but to someone like me it's impossible. I was already $1.50 a pound higher on my bacon wholesale prices than the big producers, I only managed to sell any because none of the big boys make the same product. But to add another buck or two to the price puts me out of business, no one can afford it.

[Tyrannical]

It's not so much that the USDA or FDA can't do good work. It is just that the bureaucracy exploded so much that the cost is more than the value added.
if you starve a bureaucracy, you can force it to only do it's core mission. Maybe.

[Seth]

OK, it sounded to me like a lot of Republican rants I've heard. Glad I gave the space for you to respond reasonably, but you have to admit I couldn't expect it.

Lol, I'm FAR worse than a Republican, I'm a fiscal conservative, social liberal, otherwise known as a small "L" libertarian. Hope this doesn't mean we can't discuss things, I've enjoyed it so far.

The only question of note is whether you understand the power of money or not. The problem I have with big "L" Libertardians is they ignore that in the absence of government money will rule, and historically that has not worked out well. It's why there were a bunch of revolutions starting in the seventeenth century where they cut all the rich peoples' heads off. I'm not sure why they think going backwards is going to work.

Of course the problem with fuckwitted socialists is that they don't have an inkling of what Libertarianism actually is or how it works. Some particularly egregiously stupid fuckwitted socialists think that Libertarianism is synonymous with the absence of government, and they construct red herring fallacies based on their abysmal, and often willful ignorance of actual Libertarian philosophy, which make their arguments even more fuckwitted than your garden-variety socialist's.

I'm fiscally conservative, too, but you have to know when it's time to spend the money. It's there for a reason. It's good to be conservative with everybody's money, but the middle of a recession is not the time. We supposedly learned that in the 1930s, but the Republicans and Teagaggers and Libertardians all seem to have forgotten somehow. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it;

Actually, conservatives of all stripes learned from the history of the 30s, and the failures of that economic idiot FDR and resolved not to repeat the mistakes that extended the Great Depression by more than a decade. FDR was a fuckwit of the first water when it came to economic policy, and his Progressive contempt for the Constitution ended up with many of his policies being overturned by the Supreme Court...the one he tried to stuff with Progressives.

He was so very popular that the minute he kicked the bucket, the nation raced to pass the twenty-second Amendment to limit Progressive fuckwits to two terms max.

It's the fuckwit socialists and Progressives who have utterly failed to learn from history and keep dooming the country to repeating the fiscal nightmares that we face every time big-government tax-and-spend liberals are put in charge of things.

I'm perfectly content they should do so, but without the rest of us. Maybe we can put all the "rugged individualists" in fucking rockets to Mars where they can be as rugged as they like without fucking things up for the rest of us.

Easier just to put the fuckwitted Progressives on a ship and sink it at sea.

No choice. I don't think it quite got across what was going to happen if there wasn't a bank bailout.

Or what Progressives and liberal fuckwits thought would happen. What would have actually happened is that a couple of the big banks would have failed, along with a bunch of corrupt mortgage brokers and peddlers of toxic securities and the gamblers who bought them, and the fraudsters who lied on their credit apps to get mortgages they couldn't afford, and the FDIC would have covered Joe Average's losses, as intended, while leaving Wall Street risk-takers and fraudsters at every level to suffer the consequences of their actions and THEY would now be standing in soup kitchen lines and living in cardboard boxes.

Meanwhile, Joe Average would have transferred his money to his locally-owned bank, where it should have been in the first place, and things would have continued perking along quite nicely without the malefactors.

Instead, the Progressives in office (and George Bush II is a Progressive) bailed out the banks, who bailed out the overseas investors in toxic paper, and Joe Average had his mortgage forclosed upon even though he was still making the payments.

The problem with it was that there wasn't a penalty to the banks for fucking up, which there should have been;

Indeed.

but that wasn't the Democrats' or Obama's fault.

Shit of the bull, massive quantities thereof. It was the fault of Progressives in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Bush started it, but Obama perpetuated and magnified it to gargantuan proportions, so he's not free of blame.

The Republican Teagagger Party insisted there be none, then blamed it on the scary black man in the White House.

Bullshit. Barney Frank and every other Democrat/Progressive in Congress were right there behind bailing out the banks, so you're lying through your teeth and race-baiting when it has nothing to do with Obama's race and everything to do with Obama's politics and policies.

think there should be some sort of public option health care but not single payer,

Most people did. The Republican Teagagger Party had a temper tantrum to make sure there wasn't one.

You lie. Most people DON'T want Obamacare, by a seventy percent margin.

think Obamacare is fatally flawed,

It's not "Obamacare."

Sure it is.

If there was Obamacare there'd be a public option.

That's politics for 'ya. Obama didn't get everything he wanted on the first go-round, but he got a lot of it, and like every Progressive, he built in features to ensure that he gets what he wants down the road. Progressives are nothing if not patient, duplicitous and devious.

Oh, and "Obamacare" is propaganda.

Fucking right it is. Do you really thing that only Progressives can use Alinsky tactics and propaganda?

You're permitting contamination of your mind by the Republican Teagagger Party.

Truth hurts, doesn't it?

support abortion on demand and legalization of drugs, and believe in a modified free market.

I don't believe in anything except my own existence in something we can call "consensus reality." I know enough economics to know that trying to control every little thing is doomed to fail, and that letting it deteriorate into a free-for-all is doomed to fail as well. Our biggest problem is the destruction of regulation by Shrub and the Republican congresses during his administration who also fucked up the budget and brought about the recession we're currently in. They were a disaster and we're going to be paying for it for decades.

Um, Bush presided over the largest increase in the size of the federal government since...well...ever...until Obama came along and doubled-down on Bush's Progressivism.

and I own a bunch of guns

I won't have handguns in my house because of the actuarial statistics.

You lie. There are no such "actuarial statistics," you're just spewing Handgun Control and NIH propaganda manufactured by falsifying the data.

I keep a couple long guns around.

Why?

There are those that think positions like that are de facto evidence of insanity.

Not me. A couple of 'em are de facto evidence of unclear thinking and/or lack of research, easily rectified if you don't cling to god guns and gays. And you don't look like you do.

Except, of course, you're wrong, as usual.

[Seth]

... and my rather awkwardly composed question (to anyone who cares to respond) is how is the USDA is firmly in the pocket of any company that is not paying its fair share of tax ... What incentive does the USDA have to give those big companies preferential treatment? I have some vague muddled understanding of the complexity of the relationship, but if anyone could lay it out in clear, concise terms, I'd be interested

The USDA is run by Presidential political appointees, and industry employs lobbyists and dishes out campaign contributions.

One of the big issues everywhere is how decisions about vital laws affecting whole communities are affected or controlled by sectional interests, primarily those with the deepest pockets...

True enough, but that corruption takes place on both sides of the aisle I'm afraid, and Democrats/Progressives are every bit as culpable as anyone else in that regard.

Disgust at this corruption is at the heart of the current protest movement...

No, Marxist propaganda and lies are at the heart of this vacuous, ill-defined, ineffective, juvenile "protest" movement...and not very good Marxist propaganda either.

And this disgust is reasonable, and shared by increasing numbers of people from all walks of life.

Not really. Most people are mildly amused at the pathetic maunderings of a bunch of deluded, ideologically-deluded college students venting an unfocused wrath at not being given what they want. More and more people are becoming angry at their "revolutionary" tactics, which have every appearance of being mindless socialist propaganda without any discernible message other than "wealthy people ought to have their money taken from them and given to us."

Even if many of the solutions proposed by the "occupy" movement are sheer lunacy...

"Many?" Try "all."

[MattShizzle]

It was the fault of Progressives in both the Bush and Obama administrations.

What progressives in the Bush administration? Obama is at best a moderate and Bush was extremely regressive. If you think the Bush admin was even slightly progressive you must be an actual Fascist.

[MattShizzle]

Actually, I'd rather DESTROY Wall Street than simply occupy it.

[MattShizzle]

[George Bush II is a Progressive

I nominate this for stupidest thing ever said in the entire history of humankind.

[Coito ergo sum]

Actually, I'd rather DESTROY Wall Street than simply occupy it.

What do you think would be the end result of the destruction of Wall Street? How different would our society look if you destroyed Wall Street now?