Wednesday Reads

Good Morning!! We had a big news day yesterday; I wonder what today holds in store?

Right now I’d say the top story is that millions of Americans are going to lose their unemployment benefits, because Congress failed to extend them.

Without a new program, by the end of the year about two million long-term unemployed will lose weekly benefits that are 100% federally funded. About 4.7 million people currently receive these special federal payments, and without an extension, all of these beneficiaries will eventually lose payments in coming months.

While Democrats have been pushing to provide additional benefits through emergency spending, Republicans have criticized widening the deficit.

Lawmakers may consider a new proposal from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, of Montana, to extend eligibility for federal benefits for one year. However, Republicans are expected to vote against that proposal.

You’d think the President would have been on every network and cable channel today excoriating Republicans about this outrage, but instead President Obama met first with Republican and then with Democratic Congressional leaders, and then he set up another committee. Their job will be to work out a “compromise” on extending the Bush tax cuts–and as a side note, he said maybe they could do something about the unemployment issue too.

President Obama suggested Tuesday that a group of congressional leaders he has asked to work out a compromise on expiring tax cuts will also try to work out a compromise on expiring unemployment benefits.

“We discussed working together to keep the government running this year — and running in a fiscally responsible way,” Obama said. “And we discussed unemployment insurance, which expires today. I’ve asked that Congress act to extend this emergency relief without delay to folks who are facing tough times by no fault of their own.”

Obama first asked lawmakers to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits at the beginning of October, but Congress has failed to prevent the benefits from lapsing at least temporarily. Now it looks as though a deal crafted by the four members of Congress tasked with compromising on tax cuts may be the only way to save the jobless aid.

Well, whoop-de-doo. A little leadership would help, but we don’t have a leader–just this spineless wimp the progs stuck us with.

I love this article from the Boston Globe on Senator Scott Brown’s (R-MA) “feisty speech” on the Senate floor.

imploring his colleagues to put greater emphasis on the economy and chiding Democrats for what he considers to be unwarranted diversions.

“We spent seven days on food safety!” the Massachusetts Republican said, referring to a bill approved earlier in the day. “Listen, I love to eat like the next guy, but give me a break! We should have spent seven days working on the one thing that the people in November sent a very powerful message — and that is getting our economy moving again. Focusing on jobs, jobs, jobs.”

So far so good. Brown continued,

“I have complete and total sympathy and understanding, and I want to help,” Brown said of those whose unemployment benefits could expire. “More than anybody here, I want to help. But to just keep throwing money that’s not paid for at a problem…makes no sense to me.”

“Are we going to do it from the bank account, or are we going to put it on the credit card?” he added. “I know what I want to do. I’ll use the bank account. Let’s use money that’s already in the system and put it to good use immediately, by 12 o’clock tonight. Let’s do it!”

But Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) punctured Brown’s balloon with a bit of reality:

“My colleague from Massachusetts has made a rather vigorous and passionate statement,” Reed said. “What I sense, though, is that he’s quite willing to put $700 billion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the credit card, but not extend unemployment benefits — as we have done decade after decade — without offsets.”

Brown supports extending tax cuts for everyone – and without including a method of payment for them – while Democrats want the tax cuts to continue only for those who make less than $250,000.

And so Congress continues to bicker while real people struggle to survive.

What about that food safety bill? I hope Sima will weigh in on this one. The Senate passed the bill today, and the Washington Post has a brief summary of the major parts of the bill. It:

l Would require farmers and food manufacturers to put in place controls to prevent bacteria and other pathogens from contaminating food.

l Would require the Food and Drug Administration to regularly inspect all food facilities, with more frequent inspections in higher risk facilities.

l Would allow the FDA to order a mandatory recall of any product it suspects may harm public health.

l Would improve disease surveillance, so that outbreaks of food poisoning can be discovered more quickly.

l Would require farmers and food-makers to maintain distribution records so that the FDA can more quickly trace an outbreak to its source.

l Would require foreign food suppliers to meet the same safety standards as domestic food-makers.

l Would exempt small farmers and food processors.

l Would add 17,800 new FDA inspectors by 2014.

But Les Blumenthal of McClatchy says the bill doesn’t deal with issues related to meat and egg safety.

…the measure does nothing to sort out the overlapping jurisdictions among the FDA and other federal agencies that regulate food safety. The new bill doesn’t cover meat, poultry and eggs because the Department of Agriculture regulates them.

The Senate bill would give the FDA new powers to recall tainted food, increase inspections of food processors and impose tougher food-safety standards on producers. The action came after contaminated eggs, peanuts and produce sickened hundreds of people this year, and more than 550 million eggs suspected of salmonella contamination were recalled.

But the measure requires the FDA to inspect what it defines as “high risk” producers only once every three years. The bill also exempts small farms from the new requirements.

That doesn’t sound so good.

At CNN, Elizabeth Landau says food safety advocates argue that the bill has “no teeth.”

This bill “clearly gives the FDA authority to prevent foodborne illnesses and not just react to them,” [ Sandra] Eskin (director of food safety campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts) said.

But the FDA cannot file criminal charges against producers who knowingly put contaminated food into the market. That’s something Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety in Washington, sees as a failing of this bill: that the FDA doesn’t get the “teeth” to regulate strongly enough.

A food producer who deliberately allows food to make people sick and even die is “as criminal as it gets,” he said.

It’s also hard to know exactly what kind of funding will end up going to toward these efforts. Greater appropriations are needed to accomplish the food safety goals outlined in the bill, but it’s unclear what dollar amount would support it, Kimbrell said.

An unfunded mandate without sufficient punishments to deter wrongdoing? That doesn’t sound so good either. Again, I hope Sima and others weigh in, because I know nothing about this bill.

The FCC is investigating Comcast based on a charge from

Level 3 Communications that Comcast had unfairly erected a toll booth that “threatens the open Internet.”

Level 3’s claims raise the specter of network neutrality, which the F.C.C. is preparing to take action on.

[….]

Level 3, which provides connectivity for Web sites like Netflix, made the charges in a statement on Monday, days after Comcast allegedly demanded a recurring fee to “transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content.” Comcast denied that the fee threatened the open Internet, chalking it up to a “simple commercial dispute.”

The dispute comes at a sensitive time. Mr. Genachowski [FCC Chairman] is gearing up for a debate about net neutrality, which posits that Internet traffic should be free of any interference from network operators like Comcast. The issue is thought to be on the December agenda of the F.C.C., which has a meeting scheduled for Dec. 21.

At the Daily Beast, Casey Schwartz has a post about an electostimulation device called the Fisher Wallace Stimulator that is supposed to relieve depression, insomnia, and other problems right in your own home.

The device, which is about the size of a Game Boy, is available with a prescription, which anyone with a license in electrotherapies, whether a doctor or a masseuse, can provide. Its fans include the singer Carly Simon, who has said it helps her stave off depression and mania.

[….]

An enthusiastic convert to the device, Dr. Richard Brown, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, characterizes the effect on brain waves as being similar to that of meditation.

Brown claims to be seeing an 80 percent success rate among the patients to whom he prescribes it, many of whom suffer from major depression that has not responded to any other form of treatment. If Brown’s experience is representative, the Fisher Wallace device has a big future. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs, or SSRIs, today’s go-to for treating depression, show a success rate of roughly 50 percent.

Research suggests that the electrical current from the Fisher Wallace device targets the limbic system, which contains brain structures linked to the experiencing of emotions, and that it stimulates the release of the feel-good neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.

No word in the article on how much the device costs.

I guess that’s about it for me. What are you reading this morning?