The circle is complete where our food industries via the last Farm Bill have produced cheap, high profit, low nutritional value food for Americans vs promoting organic and/or better stewardship of our food chain. As the cost of living under Bush's rule goes up, so does the ability of Americans to put something besides Twinkies on the table.
Posted by mainsailset at May 16, 2007 07:08 AMDon't forget the lack of oversight on imported food products!
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 07:11 AMCoyote, a couple of weeks ago I had the misfortune of picking up a bag of frozen prawns...hey who knew?? Anyway after 3 days quite ill after eating only 3 prawns, I crawled to freezer and read the bag. Yup, product of Thailand. No expiration stamp on bag. And then I start googling aqua culture and find it's worse than I thought. Doctors say eat fresh fruit, now I find the apples (our winter fruit) have some of the highest levels of pesticide contamination; Doctors say eat fish, yup love the mercury and here in our 'pristine' river, the fish rarely even make it up the river to spawn anymore because the rivers have become carriers for the orchardists' pesticides. Apparently I'm still cranky over the prawns but hey, where to turn??
Posted by at May 16, 2007 07:59 AMYeah, I had a bad prawn adventure, too - I read the labels on everything now, but even labels can lie thanks to Bush cronies in every important chair in regulation. They're gonna push their agenda harder than ever these next few months, knowing their free ride might come to an end with a Dem admin. It damn well better!
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 08:06 AMMan, my mouse just took a beating!
Posted by Seven of Six at May 16, 2007 08:37 AMDon't forget the lack of oversight on imported food products!
NAFTA....they don't hafta.
Posted by ann at May 16, 2007 08:42 AMJesus Christ! What?
Posted by Mal Feasance at May 16, 2007 08:45 AMmary, truce? When you stop, I stop.
Fuck you, you chidlish moron. You want a truce? You have no tight to call for a truce, so fuck you. You are not at war, you are just simply not welcome. And you are bordering on illegal spamming behavior. Get that, spunkwad, what you are doing is illegal.
I also notice your jesus seems to have no power over anything. I'm sure you've been sitting there with your eyes rolled back in your head speaking tongues and calling down the wrath. There's a reason it hasn't worked. Your god knows you are a fuckhead. Not only have you been deserted by your god, it is ignoring the shit out of you.
Do the proper thing, stop your games and find a blog where you are welcome.
Posted by phidipides at May 16, 2007 08:53 AMAnd the way I would progress if I were the blog owners:
Record the IP address from each unwanted post. Contact the state AG and inform them of your complaint citing CAN-SPAM legislation. Contact the provider with the IP addresses and notify them of your complaint to the AG and the reasons for your complaint.
All of this is free, easy to do, and starts the process where you can get a fine of $250.00 for each unwanted post.
Just a suggestion.
Posted by phidipides at May 16, 2007 09:01 AMmary, truce? When you stop, I stop.
I find it amusing that he seems to think this is about him vs. Mary....as though the Steve and the other bloggers aren't in agreement and as if it's some kind of personal afront or assault of his democratic rights.
Posted by ann at May 16, 2007 09:03 AMGood idea, p-dip. I was going to get my computer buddies to try to track him down and maybe send a couple of his choice posts to John at Americablog and get his lawyer friends to give me some advice. I've saved his stalking and threatening posts, just in case. This guy is a time bomb, he needs to be watched.
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 09:06 AMann, he's attacking the women. I wouldn't be surprised if he has an assault record or sexual harrassment suits against him.
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 09:08 AM$3.07 a gallon in my neck of the woods and oil x-perts say we should expect $3.50 a gallon by July 4th.
I don't recall hearing much talk about the price at the pump from the presidential front runners? Oh, but they're all millionaires, so high gas prices have no impact on them.
Posted by Christopher at May 16, 2007 09:10 AMChristopher, They don't even know what eggs, bread or milk costs. Crap, when you don't have to do shopping who cares what it costs, right?
Posted by Seven of Six at May 16, 2007 09:15 AMChristopher's right - back to the topic.
We've finally gotten a headline about gas prices in our local papers; right next to the headline about Regence/Blue Shield raising rates on single insured 19% and on older people as much as 40%! WTF??
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 09:15 AMYeah, I had a bad prawn adventure, too - I read the labels on everything now, but even labels can lie thanks to Bush cronies in every important chair in regulation.
Oh ye of little faith in the faith-based FDA. They are praying for your food, and you should pray to your gods that those prayers work.
Inflation is running about 9%, and has been for several years. It's the use of hedonisitic regression that makes the calculation look lower than it is.
Posted by phidipides at May 16, 2007 09:20 AMYikes! I have no gods to pray (or fall prey) to. I guess I'll have to give up eating. I've been meaning to lose weight, anyhow.
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 09:29 AMI believe oil companies are using Chavez's renationalising Venezuelan oil deposits as an excuse to raise the gas prices too along also with the usual maintenance issues of corporate oil refineries during the summer season....
Personally, I believe these oil companies would use the sun rising in the east as an excuse to squeeze the consumer as much as possible....
We are all being held hostage by these companies who have absolutely no allegiance to any country, no matter where they have emerged from...
Posted by ticktock at May 16, 2007 09:30 AMticktock, I hadn't thought of the Chavez angle. Good catch!
Posted by iamcoyote at May 16, 2007 09:54 AMInflation is running about 9%, and has been for several years.
Posted by phidipides
Do you live in Nicaragua?
Here is an inflation table showing *United States* inflation 2000-2007.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/CurrentInflation.asp
In most cases, the hedonistic adjustments make sense. People won't substitued cat food for filet mignon, but if lettuce is too expensive, they will choose something else. And we are getting a lot more bang for our buck in technology products.
Folks often see their toll bridge token go up $1, and think that there's 25% inflation. But there are scores of things in the "market basket" of goods and services measured in the CPI. You can find out more about the CPI and what's included here:
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm
Regarding fuel prices, it's purely supply-demand. We haven't built new refineries in a loooong time, and the ones we have are running over 95% of the time. When one comes down for repair or to switch to the summer blend, it hits us.
Posted by muckdog at May 16, 2007 10:06 AMDo you live in Nicaragua?
No. I do things the old fashioned way. I understand where the cooked numbers are coming from. If you'll learn to use google, you could learn a lot about these things.
Why, you did use google! So I'm sure you fully understand hedonic regression and the process using OLS regression and a "pleasure" control to calculate inflation. You know, the price of tomatoes is $2.39 per pound, but since they are in prettier packaging your pleasure factor means you experienced $1.00 per pound in increased pleasure from the pleasing packaging, so the value of those tomatoes was actually $1.39 per pound. Sweet! Except some fucknut still paid $2.39 per pound for tomatoes.
The Feds use the exact same process to tell you that the $1,500.00 big screen you bought only cost you $400.00. Neat fucking trick!
When one comes down for repair or to switch to the summer blend, it hits us.
Oooo, that fucking summer blend. You know, dumping toluene into the gasoline at the cost of .02 cents per gallon. Oooooo, that splains it all! Ooooo, and it must be the labor costs! Ooooooo, except the refiners are switching to "contractors" to circumvent the unions and pay 60% of the union wages and save an assload in labor. Ooooo...something tells me you have your head so far up your ass that you wouldn't understand the economic failure in the model if I explained it to you using widgets and gewgaws.
Posted by phidipides at May 16, 2007 10:57 AMDid anyone else see the story over the weekend that while sales at discount retailers are down, sales at places like Needless Markup (neiman Marcus) are up? Go figure.
Posted by ann at May 16, 2007 11:09 AMRegarding fuel prices, it's purely supply-demand. We haven't built new refineries in a loooong time, and the ones we have are running over 95% of the time.
The reason we haven't built refineries is because peak oil in the US hit in the 70s. Refineries are more cost effective when located near the crude source. The reason our existing refineries aren't running at 100% is because the oil industry doesn't like to spend money on repairs, so the break down a lot.
Posted by ann at May 16, 2007 11:18 AMp-dip:
Can you elaborate a bit on this:
The Feds use the exact same process to tell you that the $1,500.00 big screen you bought only cost you $400.00. Neat fucking trick!
Or provide a link to a source for how the government manipulates CPI? It sounds like an interesting topic that I'd like to read up on.
Posted by ann at May 16, 2007 11:20 AMRegarding fuel prices, it's purely supply-demand.
And people in SoCal are dumping their SUVs as fast as they will sell (not very). There goes the demand of which you speak.
Posted by Dr. Wellington Yueh at May 16, 2007 03:25 PMCan you elaborate a bit on this:
Sorry, ann. I'm slow in revisiting previous posts.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_regression
I don't know how deep you want to go. If you will let me know, I can send you to some stuff that is heavily reliant on having a pretty deep background in statistics.
All hedonic regression does is estimate the increased pleasure you might receive with some good, thereby offsetting the purchase price of that good when calculated in the CPI. It's been suppressing the actual rate of inflation since Ray-gun.
And this is what it does: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpicamco.htm If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see that for a personal computer, regardless of what you paid for it, the government considers that you paid 6.5% less than you paid because you "liked" the computer more. It "felt" better. Ergo, you actually paid less regardless of what your checkbook says. Viola! The magic of 3% inflation when it really is about 9%.
Posted by phidipides at May 16, 2007 09:36 PMFascinating stuff, p-dip. Thanks for the extra info....I had no idea this was part of the equation.
Posted by ann at May 17, 2007 09:01 AM