Paul Krugman, The New York Times, May 21, 2007 Yesterday I did something risky: I ate a salad. These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know, there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich. Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But I blame Milton Friedman. Now, those who blame globalization do have a point. U.S. officials can’t inspect overseas food-processing plants without the permission of foreign governments — and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited funds and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage of imports. This leaves American consumers effectively dependent on the quality of foreign food-safety enforcement. And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially when it comes to imports from China, where the state of food safety is roughly what it was in this country before the Progressive movement. The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found that last month the agency detained shipments from China that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.” You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and disgusting food ends up in American stomachs. Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its records without a written authorization. According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration. Read More Here

Great piece by Kevin in today's Philadephia Inquirer on Democrats and the 2006 mid-terms.  In it, the author spotlights NY Senator Chuck Shumer's role in the Senate victories of last year.  Here's some excerpts:

Schumer long ago figured out that Democratic boilerplate - abortion, affirmative action, welfare - didn't cut it with middle-class voters. They wanted to hear about safer neighborhoods and basic pocketbook issues. As Schumer put it, Democrats were good at talking to the middle-class, but not so good at listening. So he's listened. And, in return, the (middle class) voters have been very good to him. They helped guide Schumer to upset victories in 1998, both in the Democratic primary and later against Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. Once elected senator, he kept the Baileys' concerns in mind, enough to win re-election in 2004 with 71 percent of the vote. During that time, other Democrats weren't so creative. Republicans won Congress and the White House - often with the votes of the middle-class. But then there was last year, when Schumer led the Democrats' successful fight to retake the Senate. The keys to victory?  "We recruited great candidates, spoke to the middle class, and drew a sharp contrast with Bush's failures," Schumer writes in "Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time." With the needs of his imaginary friends in mind, Schumer pushed candidates who could connect with real-world middle-class voters in places like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Montana. Next up: 2008, and Schumer once again runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. While the goal is to win the White House and hold onto congressional majorities, Schumer wants more. "I would like the base of the Democratic Party to expand so we can govern at 60 or 65 percent," he writes. Not for one election cycle, but for a generation, to put an end to rule by what he calls the "theocrats" and "economic royalists" of the Republican Party. That will require reaching out, while keeping a lock on the base, particularly the minority groups who have been so overwhelmingly supportive. Democrats can't assume the inroads of `06 are enough for a long-term majority. Some of those gains, Schumer points out, were from anti-Bush votes, not pro-Democratic ones. He wants the party thinking beyond the president's term. He sees a pivotal political moment, a time when the middle class is up for grabs. And he naturally prefers that his party seize the moment, just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did for Democrats in 1932 and Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in 1980. If much of Schumer's argument sounds familiar, it's because Democrats and pundits have been warning for decades that a narrow liberal agenda and a message of class warfare prevent the rebuilding of a governing coalition. The Democratic Leadership Council started making that case after Reagan's 1984 landslide victory and seemed to have won the debate, at least temporarily, with the election of two of its founding members, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia issued a scathing reminder about the party's narrow, self-destructive ways with his 2003 book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat." But where Miller was throwing up his hands in disgust, Schumer, with similar concerns, is willing - and clearly able - to take his party by the hand and lead it down a new path. It will be a crowded path in '08. Even some in the GOP, dubbed "Sam's Club Republicans," are seeking ways to address the same issues Schumer writes about: providing access to health care, improving K-12 education, making college more affordable, reducing the tax burden, and, of course, fighting terrorism. The more creative the better. As Schumer showed, real results - real change - require imagination.

The Nation, once a respected resource of liberal opinion and journalism, has seemingly declared war on Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Their recent pieces on the Senator from New York contain at least two factual inaccuracies, casting doubt on the veracity of the entire series of articles and the motives of the author.When discussing the 2005 bankruptcy bill, for example, Ari Berman tries to build a case for Sen. Clinton being in favor of that legislation because she voted for a similar bill in 2001 that did not pass and because she missed the vote on the 2005 version. What the author either neglects to mention (or just did not know) was Clinton not only opposed the 2005 bill as indicated in a speech the day before, she was also one of only 29 Senators to vote against cloture on it. Few faulted Clinton for missing the vote - she was by her husband's side during his open heart surgery. And of course, Berman fails to mention John Edwards who voted for the 2001 bill and voted for cloture on the 2005 bill. Why is this important to note? Because John Edwards has quickly become the favored candidate on the left. Compounding Berman's misrepresentation of Clinton in regards to her position on the 2005 bankruptcy bill is his flat out lie about her concerning the 2002 welfare reform legislation. Berman writes that Clinton "backed a harsh position on welfare reform reauthorization that put her at odds even with conservative Republicans like Orrin Hatch." But that isn't the whole story. According to the NY Times:

"Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat, has joined a group of moderate and conservative Democratic senators in supporting a bill to increase the work requirement for welfare recipients to 37 hours a week, a significant increase over the current 30 hours. Mr. Bush would require 40 hours. "In an interview this afternoon, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she had initially been reluctant to back the new work requirements. But she said she decided to support them after the bill's two main Senate sponsors, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, agreed to tie them to $8 billion in child care funding. "Mrs. Clinton and her aides also noted that she had secured more money for Medicaid, immigrants' benefits, and education and training for welfare recipients. In addition, Mrs. Clinton noted that the Senate bill maintained limited exemptions from work requirements for mothers of children under 6. "...Mrs. Clinton pointed out that the Senate bill was far better than one that the Republican-led House had advanced at Mr. Bush's urging. The House bill imposes a work requirement of 40 hours a week, and does not provide nearly as much money for child care. 'It's a vast improvement,' she said. 'It's not even comparable.'" (The New York Times, May 22, 2002 - - tip to nodular at dailyKOS.)

Remember, in 2002 the GOP controlled both houses of congress and the presidency. A welfare authorization bill was going to be passed. Clinton, working withing the political system, was able to compromise and get a bill much better than what the House proposed. Should Clinton be faulted for that? Only if you subscribe to black or white thinking. These two examples alone, examples offered up to prove what a bad Senator Clinton is, should be enough cast doubt on the author's motivations. But the irony doesn't stop there. The series begins with a criticism of Clinton's adherance to polls and her hiring of controversial pollster Mark Penn. But today another writer from the Nation, John Nichols, sticks a virtual foot in his mouth by reporting on a new poll out of Iowa. Nichols writes:

The latest and best poll of likely Democratic caucus goers in the first state that will weigh in on the 2008 nomination race has Clinton falling to third place. (link)

What would make a writer on the left, a faction on the political spectrum who are typically suspicious of polls, declare this one to be the best? Why, it shows Clinton trailing in Iowa. Ponderous. Simply ponderous!