As the salmonella outbreak panic continues to grip the nation, it looks as though an effort is being made to block the import of Mexican tomatoes as one possible source of the outbreak. Of course, that’s pissing off Mexico, since there’s really no proof whatsoever that their ‘maters are the source of the bug:

Worried U.S. buyers block Mexican tomatoes at border | Reuters

“I’ve had phone calls from producers saying their tomatoes are being blocked, not all varieties but some varieties,” Alberto Cardenas said, stressing that U.S. officials had found no evidence so far that Mexican tomatoes were unsafe to eat.

Twenty-five people have been hospitalized as a result of the U.S. outbreak, which is being linked to raw plum, Roma and round tomatoes. Investigators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, have not ruled out Mexico as the source of the infection.

I suppose that there’s wisdom, despite the irritation, in at least cutting down the number of potential sources while the true culprit has not been identified. There seems to be no really good way to track the progress of crops through the supply chain, therefore this may be a long process, if they ever find an answer the government is willing to share with us (don’t hold your breath).

I know those of you who are either teachers or administrators in schools will probably not see the humor in this that I do.  Never the less, it’s freakin’ funny.

Apparently, someone got a hold of both the letterhead and the mailing list of Portland, OR’s Lincoln High School and sent out a nominally official letter to all the parents actively encouraging them to open their liquor cabinets to the attendees of the prom as a way to promote “a safe, secure place for students to have fun.”  Condoms were included in the letters.

OMG, whomever pulled this off is my freakin’ hero.

I have a friend who just lost his job and is in need of medical insurance because of existing conditions.  He was checking into Healthy New York and discovered something that should raise more than a few eyebrows out there: HealthyNY does not cover mental health.  At all.

So, after all those television commercials featuring our former governor Pataki, where does one go to get mental health issues covered if they’re out of work?  Even better, our supposed lifeline for health insurance in this country also goes on in its website to state the following:

Pre-Existing Condition Limitation

Coverage under the Healthy NY program is subject to a pre-existing condition waiting period. This means that if the applicant has a medical condition that they have been either diagnosed with or treated for in the last six months, services for the treatment of that condition may be excluded from coverage for up to a year.

Republicans and Conservatives can say what they want about the government not getting involved in people’s lives.  But I think a big question we all have to ask ourselves is: if they’re going to get involved, what are we going to get for our tax dollars?

More coverage to come. . .

There’s been quite a bit of news lately about Monday of a few weeks back, when ambulances were piled up waiting on available space at emergency rooms in Rochester. Apparently, E.R.s have been operating in “Code Red” over-capacity for months, now. It looks as though this problem is getting quite a bit of discussion within the medical community as well, as 13WHAM.com reports:

Emergency Care Investigation - 13WHAM.com

Mark Tornstrom, of Monroe Ambulance, said, “Monday, quite honestly, we ran out of resources and if there had been a catastrophic event, we really would’ve had difficulty and that is a major concern and one that has sparked a lot of discussion in our community.”

The last I knew, while Genesee was closed, it’s E.R. was to remain open. Does anyone know if this changed? Is that contributing to the problem? If not, what is? Nothing is mentioned in the report.

However, one thing that is in the report which gets scant mention elsewhere:

Emergency Care Investigation - 13WHAM.com

While ambulances backed up, an alert from an incoming airplane added to the chaos. Tornstorm said, “There was an alert for an airplane crash, and the normal amount of resources that we put on standby were not available.”

Exqueeze me? What the hell happened there?

NOW has an interesting article up about freelancers/temporary workers/contractors and the role they (eh-hem, we) play in our current economy.  I have long believed that the rise of the service economy has been used by Corporate America to break down the relationship between workers and the benefits that unions have worked so long and so hard to give us.

Things like holidays and weekends become “floating holidays” and a couple of arbitrarily arranged days off during a week in the face of the “24/7 Help Desk.”  Benefits become something you get at “good jobs” and don’t expect to be able to pay for at your current job.  And those “floating holidays” always seem to float away before you’ve used them, over the “use them or lose them” horizon for another year.

Many of us who work as non-staff employees like or even love our jobs.  For those in IT or other “knowledge industry” professions, working contract jobs is a matter of course, anyway.  Like the woman in the NOW piece, we have nothing personal against our employers.   But we are perfectly capable of becoming sick somewhere during our time at our jobs, and when that happens, who will pay for the health care we need?  How can we maintain our health if we cannot get days off like normal people?  I only barely was able to get a mortgage because of my status as a contractor, even though my status is no less stable than your average manufacturing worker and perhaps more so.

This is of course one more argument for universal coverage.  In other countries, such as Holland, most people work in as informal arrangements as us temps here in the states.  The difference is that their government provides the benefits instead of the employer.  With this one rather imperative duty lifted from both workers and employers, the system works much better and allows both parties more freedom.

Such an arrangement here would do incredible things for all of us, but especially small businesses and start ups.  Imagine not having to worry about providing benefits for your family, only concentrating on working at the best gig you can find and doing your best work.

The toy industry is bending over backwards to at least appear responsible when it comes to the safety of their products. They promise: no more date rape toys!

Do you feel safe, yet?  This is the world we live in when deregulation is pursued at all costs.  Lou Dobbs is a fat, blowhard dolt, but if you’d like to see him being a blowhard dolt on subjects with which we can all agree, click here.

And since I have nephews and nieces, I’m on the Toys-R-Us mailing list, and I got the email directly from Gerald L. Storch, CEO of Toys-R-Us, outlining what they plan to do in the new year to deal with the problem.  For the benefit of my readers and those of you not on the Toys-R-Us mailing list (I’m sure there must be one or two of you out there) I am passing along the content of the email.  The questions is whether or not they actually follow these guidelines:

February 15, 2008

A Message From Gerald L. Storch,
Chairman and CEO, Toys”R”Us, Inc.

Dear Valued Guest,

At Toys“R”Us, Inc., kids are central to who we are and to what we do. Our commitment to their safety is non-negotiable. I wanted to share with you today some of the decisive and proactive changes we have made recently to our already rigorous quality assurance standards:

NOTIFICATION TO MANUFACTURERS OF INCREASED QUALITY ASSURANCE STANDARDS AND OVERSIGHT:

* We have instructed all manufacturers who produce items for Toys“R”Us, Inc. that products shipped to the company on or after March 1, 2008 must comply with strict new standards, which include:

• Significantly increasing the frequency of third-party testing, including each batch of product imported to the United States by Toys“R”Us, Inc.;
• Ensuring all product samples submitted for testing are selected by the company’s third-party, certified laboratory;
• Date-coding all products;
• Applying a more stringent standard of 90 ppm for lead in surface coatings versus the current federal standard of 600 ppm for all products manufactured exclusively for Toys“R”Us, Inc.;
• Requiring substrate materials to meet a standard of 250 ppm for lead versus the company’s current standard of 600 ppm for all products manufactured exclusively for Toys“R”Us, Inc.; and
• Using lead-screening equipment to conduct company auditing of all products at their point of origin and at various points in the supply chain.

REDUCTION OF PHTHALATES AND POLYVINYL CHLORIDE (PVC) USE:

* All manufacturers have been notified that by the end of 2008 juvenile products sold in any Toys“R”Us or Babies“R”Us store in the United States must be produced without the addition of phthalates that have raised concerns about infant safety.

* Additionally, as we move closer to our goal of offering PVC-free products, we have already begun replacing PVC and phthalates in juvenile products manufactured exclusively for Toys“R”Us, Inc.

ELIMINATION OF NICKEL-CADMIUM BATTERIES FROM ALL PRODUCTS MANUFACTURED EXCLUSIVELY FOR TOYS“R”US, INC.

* We have instructed manufacturers to immediately take steps to eliminate the use of nickel-cadmium batteries from all items manufactured exclusively for Toys“R”Us, Inc. This process is expected to be complete by the end of 2008.

We know that you trust and expect that we will always do the right thing when it comes to the safety of children, and we take that responsibility very seriously. At every turn, we will continue to look for ways to provide the safest shopping environment for the children and families we serve. We love kids and babies – and safety in all we do for them, and for you, is an imperative.

Sincerely,
gerald sig
Gerald L. Storch
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Toys”R”Us, Inc.

Dean Baker has an interesting discussion of the differences between the health care plans of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. While ultimately, I think that either plan will necessarily undergo huge changes before it reaches any as yet unproduced bill, it is interesting from a nuts-and-bolts perspective to see what the real effects of each plan might be:

Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect

Actually, even a mandate will not get to universal coverage, as Leonhardt notes. The purpose of the mandate is to prevent gaming of the system. If everyone has the option to buy into the system whenever they want, and to pay the same price regardless of any pre-existing conditions (a part of both candidates’ programs), then healthy people have no incentive to buy insurance. They can pay minor expenses out of pocket and hold off buying insurance until a point where they actually do have major medical expenses.

I don’t see this as a particularly huge concern in the first place, to be honest. I think most people would recognize that, even if you can wait a few more years before the Parkinson’s really kicks in, no such timeline exists for your next motorcycle accident. What might happen is that people stick with their current employer-provided health care systems until they realize those systems cannot pay for what they need and then swap over to the national system. THAT could be a real problem.

And beyond that, we need to begin to realize that we are all responsible for and we all pay for the health and wellbeing of our neighbors. This isn’t some fluffy-white-clouds Liberal ideal, but a very practical reality of our health care system. Universal Health Care is not an entitlement system, it is a nation-wide infrastructure in the exact same way roads and bridges are. In the exact same way that broadband and wireless Internet access aught to be considered, but that’s another story.

We don’t discriminate between who can and who cannot use the roads based on income, and all of us pay for the upkeep and maintenance of those roads. You don’t need to imagine what the costs might be if only those who can afford to pay for roads got to use them, you only need to walk into the emergency room.

Via the American Prospect’s Dean Baker, the New York Times does an outstanding job of shining up an Insurance industry turd and making it look like solid gold. You would think that, with a title like “Insurers Seek Bigger Reach in Coverage,” this would be a story about insurers really making an effort to make sure everybody got covered under their plans. Ha! You would if you were a sap.

Instead, the plan is: let those who can afford the good stuff pay for private insurance, and let the po folk and the sick folk go beg the gubbamint for their lives:

Insurers Seek Bigger Reach in Coverage - New York Times

The proposals, approved by a board of the industry’s main trade group, would make it harder for insurers to cancel policies or deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. The steps would also limit the premiums that could be charged for such people. The trade group also called on states to provide individual coverage for people who were likely to incur very high medical bills.

About the only bright spot in this discussion is the fact that this points out a certain inevitability factor for universal health care. Big Insurance has figured out the game, and like all good business men, is seeking to lose on their own terms, which is the same as winning.

It’s been a remarkably busy day today, what with the holidays coming up, and all. One thing’s for certain: you will never find yourself with a lack of work as a web designer for a consumer product corporation around the holidays!

But I wanted to speak briefly about a particular theme of Republican and Conservative politics that deserves some exploration. This is also in relation to the theme of “Government as a Public Square” that I’ve been meaning to return to and haven’t.

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