Nord Alert

The United Steelworkers of America are mounting an aggressive campaign to ensure product safety in our country. As part of this campaign they are providing, for the cost of shipping only, lead testing kits so people can make sure that the toys their children and grandchildren are using won't poison them. That's truly wonderful but…

Wait a minute. Isn't our government supposed to protect us from products which could kill us?

Not so says the Bush Administration!!! Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is lobbying Congress to ask them not to expand the Commission's authority, increase its shrinking staff and enhance its budget. Worse yet, she opposes increasing the maximum penalty for safety violations. She doesn't want to make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products. And she doesn't want to protect industry whistle blowers or prosecute executives of companies who willfully violate the law. The Bush Administration is playing Pontius Pilate while exploding tires, lethal pet food, tainted toothpaste, and poisonous toys continue to make their way onto our store shelves and into our homes.

Bankrupt....or not.

Shame on Dana Milbank! (Washington Post 10/16/07) Unnecessarily inciting panic, based on misinformation, is irresponsible. Social Security is not headed for bankruptcy. It is running a surplus. If no action is taken (such as raising the income subject to the payroll tax), by 2017, the surplus will be spent. Under current law, there will be ample funds replenishing the Trust Fund from payroll and other designated taxes to pay benefits at the current rate until 2027. By 2027, Social Security will begin liquidating its bonds. (Don't tell me the Treasury will honor bonds owned by banks in the US and abroad, but not to pay benefits to its elderly, disabled, and survivors, as required by law.) By 2042, the Trust Fund's reserve will be exhausted, but payroll taxes will continue to pour in to pay Social Security benefits, always designed as a pay-as-you-go program. At that point, benefits will be paid at 75% of the current formula, but those benefits will still be greater than current beneficiaries receive because of rising wages on which benefits are based. Moreover, the American economy will be able to support paying higher benefits.

Medicare is a different matter. Its benefits are unaffordable, not least because we waste $5.2 billion a year pumping tax dollars into private insurance companies, instead sticking with traditional Medicare (the Washington Post's figures, Dec. 1, 2006), and waste another $15 billion under the Medicare Part D program. Medicare should be fixed along with the entire health care system, most economically by enacting a single-payer comprehensive health care program for all Americans.

National Coming Out Day

Today is National Coming Out Day. So, I'm gay.

Who will capture the next "macaca" moment?

You know it's going to happen.

Lemmings

In May 2007, a group of 147 GOP House Members signed a pledge to sustain any veto issued by President Bush on any spending bill he thinks expands government spending.

Now, on the eve of a Presidential veto of SCHIP, a bill designed to provide health care to America's neediest children, these 147 iconoclasts seem determined to hold to their pledge.

ADA national director Amy Isaacs has dubbed the 147 the Lemming Caucus. "They are willing to follow President Bush blindly over the cliff of public opinion," said Isaacs who continue, "What's worse is they want to take America's children with them."

"If they want to jeopardize their own political careers, that's fine with us," said Isaacs. "They, however, have no right to jeopardize sound public policy in their blind loyalty to a failed President."