I The Person
columnist: John Armstrong

Topic: Campaign for Liberty
FDA's Rotten Tomatoes and the Raping of America

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A perfect example of the safety myth.

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by John Armstrong
(libertarian)
Friday, July 18, 2008

In case you haven't heard, the FDA just said it was safe to eat tomatoes again. So Tomatophiles everywhere rejoice! This is also the agency that said it was safe to take Vioxx and Celebrex. And the one that won't allow terminally ill patients to take promising drugs in the late trial stages unless they are on the government approved list of people participating in the FDA trials. Of course if those people had the luxury of not dying of the disease which the medicine could have cured, they would have lived long enough for the FDA to say that it was indeed safe and could have received the drugs. But they died. And so is America.  Because of agencies like the FDA.

Last year your government spent $276,090,000 of your money on food "safety" alone.   I won't even tell you the drug safety number, but you can look it up easily; they hide this stuff in plain sight.  This year the budget for this function increased nearly $20,000,000, but that wasn't enough to keep 1100 Americans from getting sick from eating not tomatoes.  And it wasn't enough to keep those poor tomatoes from being improperly accused.  

It's a shame tomatoes don't have due process rights, because if they did have those rights, the crime for which they were accused would have ebbed as unceremoniously as the stomach flu and the tomatoes who grew and died in vain could have enjoyed their freedom and retirement on an Independence Day burger. Of course in a major crisis like this one, those tomatoes would have probably been declared enemy combatants and stripped of their due process rights anyway so they still would have gotten the short end of the bun.  But tomatoes probably don't care that much, since the ending's basically the same anyway for them.  But by not caring about silly things like constitutionally protected rights and strict limitations of government power, guess who does swallow the wiener, pays for avoidable errors, and faces a much different ending because of this apathy?

The farmers who grew them, the restaurants who bought and then threw them away, and the people of the United States of America.  While $300,000,000 is only a one buck a year per person in America and probably won't kill you if it insures the safety of your food (this doesn't include state or local spending of your money by the way), one gunshot to a fingertip probably wouldn't kill you either.   It's agencies like this one that are killing America because several gunshot wounds left untreated will kill you.

So what happens when the government agencies get it wrong? Well in this case tomato farmers lose $450,000,000 and there aren't 300 million of them to spread the cost.  Worse yet, the farmers have no recourse to recover their losses.  In the case of drugs like Celebrex and Vioxx, the government screws up and then the manufacturers get sued for selling something the government said it was safe to sell. Another government department hell-bent on safety, just requested a $7 Billion budget increase to, among other things, educate consumers about the effect of tires on fuel efficiency, safety, and durability.  Of course if the public isn't educated, and some tires blow out, we know from a few years ago with Firestone and Ford what happens.  The company gets sued.

Let me pause for a second here to help you see the absurdity of this.  You see, there is no such thing as a "company" being sued.  When a "company" is sued, what that means is that the owners of that company (in America these are called shareholders, and anyone can be one if it's publicly traded as most major companies are) lose money (stock value) that they could have used for retirement to pay lawyers to defend them or to settle cases brought against the company.  This also means the company can't pay its employees the money it spends in cases like this and may have to cut jobs or move out of the country entirely in order to escape the high taxes it pays so the government can inspect its products and tell the people who choose to buy them but ultimately die from them that they are safe to use or consume.  And when I say the company pays taxes, what I mean is that money that could have gone to American individuals as profit for stockholders, increased safety research (a company has an economic incentive to manufacture safe products), or to job creation is instead sent to a government to chase after an illusion and support a myth called safety.

And before you start posting comments about how victims should be able to sue the companies who produce the products that injured them, let me say that I agree with you.  Not only would there be an even higher incentive than there is now to produce safer products since now they only have to meet government guidelines instead of consumer guidelines, they'd have more money to settle lawsuits when this expectation wasn't met if not for government interference which must be paid for by all.  And more importantly, innocent people like the tomato farmers wouldn't suffer when this interference fails.

While we're at it, let's go ahead and address some other questions and comments these agencies you have come to believe are so vitally necessary.  By the way, have you ever stopped to think about why you believe that?  That's a different question for a different time I suppose.  Let's continue.

"But what if there's an ebola outbreak", you may ask. If the FDA can't identify the source of a sickness that can be cured with antibiotics with a $300,000,000 budget, do you really think they can stop an ebola outbreak?

"But Americans want to know that the products they are buying are safe", you may say.  And to that, I would say that you're right.  But it's pretty obvious that even with this ridiculous government intervention which harms every American, and some more than others if they happen to be associated with the company or product blamed even if incorrectly blamed, you can't "know" that what you're buying is safe.  

This perceived safety may actually be more dangerous than no safety at all.  Kinda like a con-artist.  If someone with a menacing demeanor approaches you in a dark alley, common sense tells you to steer clear.  But if someone gains your confidence (the "con" part of con-artist) as our government has done with so many sheep in this country, they can rob you blind right from under your nose, and you won't realize it until it's too late.  And the sad part is that even when sane people who see what's happening try to tell the person being conned what's going on, they still can't see it until it's happened because they want so badly to believe that the empty promises are true.

While Americans may want to be safe or know what they are buying is safe, the government has no Constitutional right to tackle those problems until we give them the right to do so.  Go read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.  The reason the powers of the government are enumerated is so they can't be construed in a way which would expand the power of the government with the people's consent.

If people actually wanted the government to take on these and other issues (like national healthcare or bailing out investment banks) we could give it to them.  By Amending the Contract.

A woman can place rape charges against her husband, and justifiably so.  If he all of a sudden thinks it's okay to tie her up and perform acts to which she in no way consents, it is rape. On the other hand if she asked him to do these things, it could make for a really fun night and they'd both benefit from this agreement.  Until that consent is given, "I thought you wanted this and you never explicitly said I couldn't do it unless it was when I had you gagged and couldn't hear you" is not a defense that would hold up in court.  

Unless it happened to be the New Deal Era Supreme Court which, in this crazy metaphor, would be the equivalent of packing the jury of the rape trial with friends of the husband that told him he should try it to begin with because it would be good for her in the end and she'd appreciate it.  To carry this a little bit further, as if it hasn't gone too far already, imagine a ruling from that jury that not only acquitted the husband but also stated that the woman couldn't file for divorce and must consent to the will of the husband all the way up to the point just prior to when his decisions literally killed her.  

And that's where we are today.  For over 70 years now we've been repeatedly raped without our consent.

What can we do about it?  It is an election year.  The First Amendment enables the media to be the watchdog of our government so we can know when they get bright ideas to enhance our relationship with them by doing things to which we haven't consented. In our metaphor gone wild, the media is supposed to be the person standing in the closet the night of the first rape who pulls the fire alarm and turns on the sprinklers before things get out of hand.  Unfortunately, they seem to get their jollies from watching it happen and then writing about what color the rope was that was used to tie up the victim. This is evident by their running stories about satirical magazine covers, or discussing electability as if this were some sporting event, or what the institution responsible for high gas prices can do to correct them by doing more of what made the prices so high to begin with.

You can't be blamed for being raped.  In fact for many of us, it's all we've ever known. This same premise is why child pornographers lock away the children they abuse and never let them see the outside world and why the FCC licensed media doesn't report things that really matter. But you can do something about it now that you're grown up.  It may take years for the scars to heal and to set things right.  It may take a lot of private education (counseling) before you can understand what's happened to you.  The damage can't be undone this day or this election, but the journey can begin, and in fact already has begun.

It probably won't be long until the internet is regulated and sites and stories like this can no longer be found.  But until then, educate yourself.  Join the Campaign for Liberty. www.campaignforliberty.com.  Elect politicians that will honor their oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.   

Unlike the people in Washington, D.C. who take a perverse pleasure in watching this happen after they lose an election so they can wait four-eight years, say "I told you so", and then jump right in and do the same thing; the people who are a part of this revolution never want to say "I told you so" which is why we are so passionate about helping inform our fellow citizens about what's really going on.  And even the founders we all seem so fond of knew this day would come.  Thomas Jefferson wrote nearly 250 years ago, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."  George Washington told us that people would think we were idiots when he said in his farewell address, "Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite [political policy of the day in favor of a constitutional government] are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people." If enough of you decide to join us, we'll never have to say "We told you so" other than in the sense of, "See this whole freedom thing really does work, pretty cool isn't it?  And to think, we almost threw it all away for a con-artist's promise of safety because we didn't think we could do anything about it." If you prefer to be, in the words of Washington, "dupes", and allow the raping to continue, we may all soon be uttering very different words along these lines:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the former United States of America, and to the totalitarian social regime for which it stands, one nation under government, with safety and security for whomever the government chooses.  

Are you really going to let that happen? 

Your fellow American,

John Armstrong

strongarmedjohn@yahoo.com

As always, unlike the NFL, you have the author's permission to rebroadcast, retransmit, reproduce, or do anything else you'd like with this article to promote the Restoration of our Republic. 

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©2008 John Armstrong, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Friday, July 18, 2008
Last modified: Friday, July 18, 2008

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