By Thomas I, Palley
Des Moines Register, Wednesday December 26, 2007
 
Many people now believe the United States cannot afford to continue with the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. Those policies have undermined global support for America - a key part of national security - and have produced an economic expansion that has bypassed working families and looks as if it will bequeath years of house-price pain.
 
However, if there is agreement that the heavy-fisted Bush-Cheney agenda is no longer acceptable, the question remains what will follow. Among Democratic presidential candidates, although there is much talk of change, its meaning remains unclear.
 
Beginning some 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan initiated a fundamental repositioning of American politics that was later completed by Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom Delay. That repositioning shifted the entire political spectrum to the right. [read more]

This fascinating graphic shows the words candidates use in the debates, and how many times.   

Why are more candidates talking about trade this year?  It shifted the majority of the House in 2006 from the Republicans to the Democrats.  Many House races did not have Iraq as an issue, but focused on trade and the economy.  The pro-sane trade candidates tended to win.  The freshman Senators and House members were most likely to oppose the Peru FTA in November and December 2007.

A Gallop Poll this month found only 28% of respondents saying the economy is in excellent or good condition. 

“The economic mood is grimmer than it has been since 1992,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

The economy is a perennial top voting issue.  We all care about a lot of things, but "voting issues" are a rare breed that move elections.  So here is the kicker.

But a more likely cause of the anxiety among those polled appears to be related to globalization and technology, and the failure of public policy to keep up with those changes.

I'm not sure what "technology" means.  There are not a lot of poll results saying people don't want new technology.  But virtually all polls on the topic find much distrust of the wacko free trader policies.

Your food is not safe if it contains actual biological organisms called bacteria.  Or if it has actual molecules of poison or harmful antibiotics when you eat it.  If a company or country has issued papers saying the food should be safe, those papers mean nothing if those biological organisms or molecules of poison are still in the food.

That is why the physical food is inspected, or should be inspected.  A study by the Coalition for a Prosperous America shows the contamination found when actual inspections occur.  Food and Water Watch released a report in 2007 showing that less than 2% of our imported seafood was inspected. 

China likes breakneck economic growth more than food safety.  Their seafood export growth has slowed.  Those exports are still growing, but not as fast.  So the country has written some papers saying seafood will be safer.  Those papers are claimed to  be "production standards to imporve safety and guard against the use of illegal veterinary drugs."

The China seafood industry is the very, very large.  Issuing pieces of paper and making claims is not good enough.

China produced about 54 million tons of seafood this year, more than the world’s next nine largest seafood producers combined in 2006. By comparison, the United States produces only about five million tons of seafood a year.

I like seafood.  I like Chinese food.  But my son got sick after eating Chinese seafood about 18 months ago.  I can't prove the connection between the food and the vomiting.  But between that incident, the lack of inspections and the proven contamination, my dining dollars are going elsewhere now.