Solons create multi-agency confusion

As each Congressman with any seniority at all likes to protect his little sinecure, such as a subcommittee chairmanship, Congress and the government are massively duplicative and inefficient. There are literally thousands of examples that could be cited, but one in particular has reared its ugly head in recent days.

Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), inspect and govern food regulation. It is a crazy quilt, patchwork mess of who does what, on what food. It is such a byzantine, arcane mass of departments, agencies, rules and informal traditions, that no one knows everything. The latest time it has become readily apparent is in the E. Coli sickness outbreak that first was thought to be caused by tomatoes, now by jalapeno peppers, but no proof of anything.

This incompetent state of confusion comes about because you have Congressmen and Senators who want to protect their own power fiefdoms and refuse to bring legislative or regulatory sense to the process. You have two liberal old hack solons (and there are many others) in Rep. Rosa DeLauro of the great farm state of Connecticut and Rep. Mary Rose Oakar of an urban Ohio District, who have lots of seniority but no knowledge of agriculture--who continually pour sand in the gears.

They are Big Government leftwingers, even by Democrat standards, who want more money, more regulations, and most importantly, their own power bases, protected ahead of actually solving any problems. The bureaucrats at FDA and USDA, who must answer to these people, mainly want to cover their own hides and protect their jobs, obfuscate and crawl behind the Civil Service regulations that give them lifetime tenure.

Meanwhile, foods like tomatoes and peppers are slandered and drug through the mud, by nameless, faceless papershufflers, while their overseers in Congress fight for position and influence. Producers lose money with false accusations, while the cause of the sickness goes unfound and unlamented.

If this is hard to read and decypher, its because the whole "system" in food regulation is. And nobody's doing anything about it.