Food Safety Rules: Rushed Deadlines Will Lead to Disaster

In 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law,[1] giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unprecedented power to regulate the country’s food supply.[2]  

This new power includes the first time that the FDA has the authority to establish standards for the production and harvesting of produce and to identify preventive controls for food facilities.  The FDA will also be able to place much greater restrictions on imported goods, establish programs for food testing, and conduct inspections of both domestic and foreign food facilities.  These regulations will have a major impact across the food system, and the potential to drive up food costs and place unnecessary and intrusive restrictions on safe and proven practices.[3]    

Unrealistic Deadlines

By setting up artificial and unrealistic deadlines in FSMA, Congress has effectively ensured that the regulations will be rushed and poorly considered. According to the FDA, it is required to “prepare more than 50 rules, guidance documents, reports and studies within strict timeframes.”[4]  Some of the rules had to be finalized in as little as 18 months, which was not enough time given the complex issues involved.

As should have been expected, the FDA was unable to meet several deadlines. In August 2012, two activist groups sued the FDA in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California to compel the agency to issue seven rules that were past deadline.[5] In April 2013, the court agreed that the FDA should issue the seven rules promptly.[6] On August 13, 2013, the court rejected another FDA attempt to delay two of the seven rules.[7] As of now, four proposed rules have been published with comment periods ending in November 2013.[8]

Via: Heritage Foundation

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Pivotal 2014 congressional races shaping up

Health care law, immigration could continue to be top issues of debate in elections nationwide

WASHINGTON — The battle for Congress won’t fully engage until next year, but it sure looks like election season now as political activity explodes this summer at America’s county fairs, town halls and campaign fundraisers.

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announces she will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014, during a news conference on July 1 in Frankfort, Ky. She is flanked by former Kentucky Governors Julian Carroll, from left, and Martha Layne Collins and her husband, Andrew Grimes, on the right.
(CHARLES BERTRAM/LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER/MCT)

From Alaska to West Virginia, what’s happening around the country as lawmakers spend a month back home might shape the 2014 political map.

Wyoming, for instance, where quiet workhorse Sen. Michael Enzi was expected to coast to a fourth term, was way off the political radar until Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, decided to challenge him for the Republican nomination.

Nor was Kentucky a particularly hot spot, despite Democrats’ eagerness to deny Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell another term. Today, though, the state is a political caldron, after Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes jumped in the race and suddenly was even with the five-term incumbent in one poll.

No ‘wave election’
The most closely watched contests involve Senate seats. Republicans are expected to need a net gain of six to win control in the next Congress. At this point, West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana are all seen as good bets to go from blue to red. The GOP would need to win just three more and hold on to seats in Kentucky and Georgia.

The three could come from Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and possibly Iowa. Republicans are buoyant.

“The Democratic majority is in serious trouble,” Rob Collins, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s executive director, wrote in a memo last month.

The House of Representatives, where Republicans have a 234 to 200 majority (there’s one vacancy), appears unlikely to flip to the Democrats, especially in the sixth year of the Obama administration. Sixth years often mean trouble for the presidential incumbent’s party.

“This doesn’t look like a wave election,” said Burdett Loomis, a congressional expert at the University of Kansas. “You need a huge issue, like health care, to make it a wave election, and I don’t see that so far.”

Impact of law
Outrage over the 2010 health care law helped Republicans elect 87 freshmen to the House that year and win control of the chamber. If there’s any issue that could spark a new Republican resurgence, it might be that same law.

By the fall of 2014, the law’s key provision — requiring most Americans to obtain insurance coverage or pay a penalty — will have been in effect nearly a year. If people are confused, think their own health care is suffering or think they’re paying more, Democrats might pay a price.

In close races, “health care implementation will be important,” said Jennifer Duffy, Senate analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Via: Florida Courier

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For Democrats, Turnout Trumps Honesty

Election “reform,” Democratic-style, is designed to protect and perpetuate voter fraud.

In Colorado, the results of Democrats valuing election “turnout” over electoral honesty — or even common sense — are becoming clear.

Among the many mindless laws passed on party-line votes during Colorado’s recent hyper-partisan legislative session — both chambers of the legislature being controlled by Democrats — is HB-1303, the “Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act.” The Act is a poorly considered measure designed to maximize Democrats’ advantage in elections, not least by maximizing the potential for voter fraud — which Democrats have proven far more adept at than Republicans for at least two generations.

HB-1303 was passed not only without a single Republican vote (on an issue that one would not assume should necessarily be partisan) but also without input from Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, whose office is responsible for ensuring an honest and efficient election process. Supporters of the bill claim that county election clerks widely supported the bill, but Wayne Williams, the Clerk and Recorder of El Paso County (the state’s most populous county) voiced a strong objection, later adding that “there is no way to run a check through federal immigration or a felon database on election day.”

Judge Robert McGahey, in his ruling in favor of a Libertarian Party challenge to part of the ongoing recalls of two state senators (one of whom was the senate sponsor of the election “reform” bill), used the politest term possible in describing HB-1303 as “flawed.” But that doesn’t begin to describe the horror that passes for election “reform” where Democrats are concerned — and not only in the Centennial State.

Via: American Spectator

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Coburn calls on Oklahomans to push for national constitutional convention

MUSKOGEE — U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn urged Oklahomans on Wednesday to join the movement for a national constitutional convention to cut down an oversized federal government and counter what he repeatedly referred to as a “lawless” Obama administration.

“I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions,” Coburn told about 300 people at the Muskogee Convention Center. “I have a great fear now of not having one.”

A national convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures is one of two ways the U.S. Constitution can be amended. Such a convention has never been called, largely because the Constitution itself was the product of a convention authorized only to amend the existing Articles of Confederation, but which replaced it entirely.

Thus, political leaders and scholars have long held that such a convention could be dangerous and even destructive to the nation.

But as conservative frustration with the Obama administration has grown, some factions have begun advocating for such a convention.

Coburn’s announcement that he had read what amounts to the national convention movement manifesto, Mark Levin’s “Liberty Amendments,” drew the loudest applause and reaction of the hour-long town hall meeting.

It might also have somewhat cooled the emotions of those in the crowd who were upset because Coburn has been so outspoken in his opposition to a proposal to “defund” the Affordable Care Act by holding the rest of the government’s discretionary spending hostage when current authorization ends on Sept. 30.

“If you’re going to do that, you’d be better off to do it through the debt ceiling,” Coburn said.

Pressed by questioners, Coburn said the proposal championed by conservative special interest groups such as Freedomworks and the Heritage Foundation — and Levin — would be “childish” and “intellectually dishonest.”

“I am 100 percent convinced it won’t work,” he said.

Via: Tulsa World

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