A delicious E. coli and artichoke dip
April 25, 2007
Rick Perlstein’s been reporting on the food safety hearings held by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
There’s a lot to be learned from the goings-on that take place away from the media spotlight, and this hearing is no different. The Republicans on the committee are downplaying the problem, and trying to change the subject. It’s the sort of thing that creates low-level anger with conservatism, but there’s nothing abnormal about any of this.
George Bush appoints the people who run the Food and Drug Administration, which means the FDA leadership is currently staffed by Republicans. And this is the sort of thing you get.
It’s not that George Bush was elected on a “no food safety” platform. Indeed, to the extent that he’s ever thought about it, he would no doubt be in favor of keeping E. coli and salmonella out of our spinach. If asked about it at a press conference, he would purse his lips, and say “What people need to understand, is, is that this is unacceptable to me”. The Republican congressmen at the subcommittee hearings aren’t in favor of salmonella, either.
The problem is that they don’t give a shit. And none of the people they hire do, either. They didn’t become Republicans because they cared about running the FDA more efficiently, or because they had experience or expertise in overseeing government agencies. “Heck of a job, Brownie Donald Alberto”.
They went into Republican politics because they cared about tax cuts and getting rid of business regulations. The fact that business regulations are directly responsible for keeping the salmonella out of the food supply might have occurred to them, but it’s just not that important. No doubt the free market will sort things out by itself.
And this is going to be the case for any Republican administration, no matter how moderate its president might be. The top ranks of the civil service will be drawn from a pool of people who think, like Ronald Reagan did, that “government is the problem”.