EDITOR'S NOTE: We don't often post political stories, but Geraldo Fuentes' comments are so timely that we couldn't resist. Sure, you may disagree with his opinion, but that's the whole idea of editorials. Your comments are most welcome!

Health Care died on the way to the hospital

There's a reason I don't watch CNN, or any mainstream news for that matter. It depresses me. But not for the usual reasons. Sure, there are wars, murders, hate crimes and atrocities enough to make a comedian like Robin Williams start balling. But that's not it. I could get over those stories. They change and last about as long as the average person's attention span. No, it's something else that makes me turn off the news.

Let's look at a typical day in mainstream news -- the day I wrote this story -- March 27, 2012. The Supreme Court is trying to kill Obama's so-called Health Care program because it is "unconstitutional". Forget that when he was running for president back in 2008, Obama promised that everyone in America would be covered by a health care plan similar to the members of Congress. Remember that? He didn't even try. Instead we got this watered down plan that is so weak and future oriented that we would do better for the health of our families by eating broccoli.

Ironically, the argument about eating broccoli was actually used today in the Supreme Court discussions, claiming that requiring everyone to have health insurance was equivalent to mandating that we should all eat this healthy vegetable. Opponents said that it is unconstitutional to make anyone pay for something they maybe don't want.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Excuse me? What about the money they take from my taxes to send to the Zionist state of Israel, who, by the way, are using this same tax money to drag us into WWIII... What if I happen to support the Iranians... or the Palestinians' side of the conflict and have to see my tax dollars used to cage them up in concentration-like camps for generations, pissing the entire Arab world off and making most every nation in the region hate America and what it stands for? Where is my constitutional protection?

You know, in school back in the 1950s I was taught that people form governments because there are certain things that the collective "we" can do that individuals cannot. The defense of our land is one of them, for sure, because we don't want to be subjugated by some "evil empire", as Reagan used to call them. But if the government cares so much that it defends our way of life -- how about life itself?

Ask anyone what is important to them and they will tell you it is their health and the health of their family. People can survive wars and attacks on their freedoms but, so far, no one has figured out how to cheat sickness and death. Surely, our Constitutional fathers knew this when they put the word "Life" in front of "Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Without life the rest is moot.

So it seems to me that the primary reason for any government is to ensure the health of its people. Heck, the government is supposed to be the people. Why can't we secure this fundamental human necessity? Someone?

This hits home for me. I am not a wealthy person and have just developed a hernia from trying to make ends meet by cutting and selling firewood. It took just a couple of minutes for that pain to happen, followed by the characteristic bulge near my groin. You expensive suit-wearing types will likely never get a hernia. It's a worker's problem and it's quite common among my friends. It causes pain, bowel problems and can even be fatal. It prevents me from doing any type of heavy lifting and further diminishes my potential for income. Fixing it costs over $10,000 USD in the average hospital. Health Insurance? Huh! That's about $800 a month for my family. Do we eat, pay rent or buy insurance... hmmm.

Pink Slime

Now the pink slime. If you don't know, our government has allowed your local butcher, McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell (and many more fast food chains) to sell you the parts of the beef that they usually would throw away or send to a rendering plant to make dog food. I'm talking guts, tendons, ligaments and... you don't really want to know what else... They grind it up like hamburger and then drench it with something called ammonium hydroxide. You know ammonia -- it's right under your sink in the locked cabinet (if you have small children) where the pipes are. Take a look at that ammonia bottle. It's toxic stuff and says so right on the lable.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is another part of our government -- to "protect and serve". It's funded by the same tax dollars that they take from us and it's supposedly 100% Constitutional. And that's how they use it? How does that benefit the collective "we"? You see, the government is not serving "We, the people", it serves "We, the corporations". But you already know this. That's part of what makes me depressed.

So let me get this straight now. It is unconstitutional for the government to protect the people's health by guaranteeing top notch health care to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for high priced insurance... but at the same time, the government can take our tax money for things we really don't need or want -- like decades of unjust wars (against poor people like me living in foreign lands), terrorist countries that promote racism and to fund a government agency that allows poisonous stuff to be in our school lunch program?

What? You didn't know about the school lunch program? Read on...

Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals (Huffington Post) Pink slime -- that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade -- may have been recently rejected by fast food joints like McDonald's, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation's school lunch program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the "slime" for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed "Lean Beef Trimmings," the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It's then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties. "We originally called it soylent pink," microbiologist Carl Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection Service for 35 years, told The Daily. "We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat." Custer and microbiologist Gerald Zernstein concluded in a study that the trimmings are a "high risk product," but Zernstein tells The Daily that "scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval" under President George H.W. Bush's administration. The USDA asserts that its ground beef purchases "meet the highest standard for food safety." Controversy surrounding "pink slime" stems from various safety concerns, particularly dangers associated with ammonium hydroxide, which can both be harmful to eat and has potential to turn into ammonium nitrate -- a common component in homemade bombs, according to MSNBC. It's also used in household cleaners and fertilizers.

UPDATE ON PINK SLIME!

September 13th, 2012

'Pink slime' manufacturer sues ABC News for $1.2 billion in damages

Beef Products Inc. announced Thursday that the company has filed a $1.2 billion lawsuit against ABC News, three reporters (Diane Sawyer, Jim Avila and David Kerley) and others, claiming damages as a result of their reports on BPI's lean finely textured beef product (LFTB) more colloquially known as "pink slime."

"There has to be some consequences for news organizations to be more truthful," stated Beef Products Inc. founder Eldon Roth in a video extolling the virtues of the product and outlining the company's case against the news outlet. "They hurt real people, and a lot of people."

ABC News was just one of many media outlets reporting on the controversial product earlier this year, but BPI has focused in on the media giant for what it calls a "concerted disinformation campaign" against LFTB.

Dan Webb, the company's lawyer, wrote in a public statement, "Through nearly 200 false, misleading and defamatory statements, repeated continuously during a month-long disinformation campaign, ABC and other individuals knowingly misled consumers into believing that LFTB was not beef and not safe for public consumption, which is completely false."

The company will be asking a jury to award BPI more than $1 billion in compensatory and statutory damages, plus punitive damages for "defamation, product and food disparagement, and tortious interference with business relationships."

Webb stated today in a phone call with reporters that, "The evidence is overwhelming that our product is 100% beef."

BPI makes the product by grinding together beef scraps and connective tissue. The company then uses a mixture of ammonia and water (ammonium hydroxide) to prevent the risk of E. coli or salmonella contamination.

While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) both consider ammonium hydroxide as GRAS (an acronym for "generally recognized as safe"), McDonald’s has since announced that it discontinued the use of, what the corporation calls, select beef trimmings (SLBT). The fast food chain came under fire after the episode for using the filler in its hamburger patties.

"For a number of years prior to 2011, to assist with supply, McDonald’s USA used some lean beef trimmings treated with ammonia in our burgers. We were among other food retailers who used this safe product," the fast food chain released in a statement.

"At the beginning of last year, we made a decision to stop using this ingredient. It has been out of the McDonald’s USA supply chain since last August."

Taco Bell and Burger King have reportedly also discontinued use of BPI's product. Safeway, SUPERVALU and Food Lion supermarkets also discontinued the product. In March, a blogger named Bettina Seigel started a Change.org petition asking USDA to stop the use of LFTB in ground beef destined for school food. As a result, the United States Department of Agriculture announced that starting in the fall of 2012 it would offer school districts a choice of beef either with LFTB or without the filler.

Sales declined from approximately five million pounds of LFTB per week to less than two million pounds per week, three BPI facilities closed and more than 700 employees lost their jobs, according to a company statement.

Food safety attorney Bill Marler, who has been asked to represent two former FSIS public employees named in the suit, explained in an e-mail, "I just do not get the liability. I just do not see it. The lawsuit is without merit."

Marler explained his understanding of the timeline, saying "The words 'pink slime' came from an internal email between inspectors at FSIS commenting on the product. Another inspector called it 'Soylent Pink' -- which I thought was even better. These documents came out during litigation I had with Cargill in 2009, which the New York Times used in part to get a Pulitzer."

"Then almost three years later The Daily writes a story that some chains had quietly stopped using LFTB, then a mom blogger puts up a petition asking that it be taken out of the school lunch program and ABC picks it up from there," Marler continued.

Jeffrey Schneider, Senior Vice President of ABC News said in a statement, "The lawsuit is without merit...We will contest it vigorously."

Whew!

Kim Kardashian

Why does this happen? Why does it make me sad? You won't like the answer, but after you read it you can go back to reading about Kim Kardashian who got a flour bomb in her face, or the x-ray she had taken of her ass to prove it wasn't silicon, or her new boob job... as comedian and seer George Carlin used to say, "We, the people" don't seem to care, as long as they don't come into our homes during "American Idol" and take our toaster oven. "We, the people" allow this to continue.

And that's depressing.

COMMENTS:

I'm soooooo glad I quit eating animal flesh way back in 1968. I took the cure (vegetarianism) when veggie wasn't cool. Even so, with all the vegetarians that exist today, there are still so many flesh consumers in the mix that I am still like The Lone Ranger. I am still generally treated by the folks I know as a "food eccentric" and when a stranger finds out I am a strict vegetarian, he/she just about always replies, "Wow! Really? I don't know any vegetarians. I've finally met a vegetarian." Everybody I know eats slime of some kind, pink or brown, but I have considered it all to be slime since 1968. Imagine how clean my system must be after 44 years of not assimilating any animal parts at all. The "pink" variety of slime has never been on my menu and never will, unless I can be tied down and force fed. I wouldn't rule it out, of course, as the government may decide it is illegal to be as healthy as I am and begin passing laws that sickness is health and that everybody over the age of 21 is legally required to be sick. 1984 may be just around the corner. If so, I may be doomed. Until then, may the veggies rule!

R.W.