Do you find that you’re spending a lot of money on digital services? I think that if most people sit down and review where they are spending money, they will notice that expenses such as the telephone, cable, internet, fax, and cell phone are taking up an increasingly large portion of their monthly income. The New York Times ran an article the other talking about how people might go about cutting the costs of their digital services. A quick clip from that article: [Read more…]
President Obama To Make Food Safety A Priority
President Obama has taken up the mantle on food safety. In his latest radio address to the nation, Obama said, “In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent.” Let’s hope so. In yesterday’s post I included a link to one of my previous book reviews on “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan. In the book, Pollan talks about how the nature of “food” in America has changed to the point where you can go to the store and buy a block of cheese that is actually imitation cheese. In other words – cheese that is not really cheese!
Thirty-five years ago, the F.D.A. did annual inspections of about half of the nation’s food-processing facilities. Last year, the agency inspected just 7,000 of the nearly 150,000 domestic food facilities, and its oversight of foreign plants, which provide a growing share of the nation’s food supply, is even more spotty.
Experts have long debated whether the F.D.A. should increase inspections or rely instead on private auditors and more detailed safety rules. By calling the limited number of government inspections an “unacceptable” public health hazard, Mr. Obama came down squarely on the side of increased government inspections.
These pieces of information – garnered from a recent New York Times article – show just how low America’s food safety standards have become. We’ve gone from inspecting 50% of the nation’s food processing facilities to inspecting just 4.6%. Come on. That’s clearly not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination.
And what do you get from this type of lackadaisical approach to food safety? Well, for one, you get the gigantic peanut recall that the country is now experiencing. The New York Times article also commented that some, “76 million people in the United States are sickened by contaminated food, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and about 5,000 die.” That’s no joke. Hey – I was one of the people who got food poisoning over the last year, too.
I hope that President Obama radically alters our current food safety system. If you’re interested in getting better quality food as a government mandate, think about sending your own message to President Obama</a> on this topic.
No More “Healthy Tax” in New Jersey!
The state legislature passed a budget yesterday that does away with the “healthy tax” that was ridiculously instituted last year in New Jersey. This tax imposed a monthly 7% surcharge on the cost of gym memberships. Some people thought that we should all shut up and be quiet about it because of various theoretical explanations on the need to tax all expenditures equally.
Bullshit on that!
America’s health care system is overburden by people who are unhealthy because of their lifestyles. How can someone sleep at night when they openly and freely choose to tax the method by which people can free themselves from this sedentary lifestyle? Maybe getting into that car crash knocked some sense in Governor Corzine because he was all for this tax last year at this time.
Rolling back this tax is a good thing and I think New Jerseyans will be very happy to have this “healthy tax” finally taken off of the books and put to rest where it belongs.
Now let’s start working on restoring that 6% sales tax… 🙂
