Who will take responsibility?

Part 2 of 2Still think you can put your trust in the markets or in companies when it comes to what you and your family eat? These are the same people who think a pipeline across the world’s wheat bowl is without any risk whatsoever; the same people who said oil tankers don’t need double hulls because oil is a natural product even if the sinking ship pollutes 30 percent of Alaska’s fishable waters; the same people who decided to drill an oil well at one-mile-deep water pressures and were then unable to contain the spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the same people who deride science and fact in favor of dogma and belief and spout and hide behind the words “American people,” “freedom” and “liberty.”Look, even if the meat you buy is so cheap you may begin to suspect it was washed off the front of the MetroNorth train, you still have a right to know what you are putting in your mouth. And remember, the companies selling you this stuff — or the politicians telling you they “know” it is all safe — would never dream of feeding such cheap meat to their own family or buying a farm in Kansas the oil pipeline will pass over. They are the worst hypocrites. As with Obamacare, the strongest naysayers are always those who already have a freebee handout of medical care or are career politicians. Politicians are alright, on your tax dollar, forever. Yes, forever, and their families as well.We cannot get rid of these anti-science maniacs quickly enough. When you hear “fact of the matter” — what they mean is they want you to believe what they are saying is fact, even if it is unscientific, or they have been told what to say by their masters or it is an out and out lie. The “pro-industry” politicians have and want to continue to decimate the safety net between us and a nightmare dystopian America in the name of commerce and free enterprise at any cost. How could the FDA no longer be in charge of our medicines? Who allowed them to pass the safety testing to states to control all nation-wide medical testing?Who allocated drilling rights in deep pristine Gulf waters to hundreds of oil rigs and then cut the budget of the inspectors so that one inspector has to cover seven platforms a day (by helicopter) spread over an area the size of Rhode Island, and never has the time? Who gave permits for Long Beach, Calif.’s port authority to build the largest port in the USA handling over 154 million tons of cargo in over 32 million containers on 5,000 ships a year (yes, just a year) with only 2,654 inspectors — that’s over 12,000 containers, or an average of 52 three-plus-ton 40-foot containers each working day, for each inspector.Answer: Politicians with their fingers, hands, elbows deep into the trough of big business, caring not a bit about true Americans, people who pay their salary and work honestly every day. To use a metaphor, they have looked at the pistol that is America and decided it is too cumbersome — so they decided to saw off the safety catch and proclaimed it is now fit for use. When it goes off unexpectedly every now and again, they blame the user, the company making contaminated meningitis medicine, the company processing pink slime, the importer of unsafe meat, the farmer who allows his cows to contract mad cow disease, the architect who made an unsafe bridge, the plane manufacturer who puts fire-prone batteries in their planes, the shipping company that never knew what was in a container in the first place, the salmon farmer feeding rotten chicken parts to penned fish. When a politician tells you the nation, the budget or the economy is safe in their hands, that is a pretty sure sign they do not actually think so. That is like the babysitters telling you, as you go out to dinner, “Don’t worry, your kids are safe in my hands. I won’t beat them while you’re out.” If they have not already, they are planning to.Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.