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sirlamre
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Posted: 01:41 am

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I'd like EVERYONE to post a sentence-by-sentence LIST
of the things you WANT the Federal government to do FOR you!

ie, what I'm after is a LIST of the things each of you thinks the FEDERAL government should be doing.

Bulletted would be nice just for readability.

In your post, please do your list first, and then make any comments below your list, just so it's easy for people to read the one-liners

If enough people participate and give enough line items,
I'll try to put them all into a poll and we can vote, so we see how many of the things we all agree upon.

Here's a few of mine to give you an idea of what I mean:

I'm NOT saying I think the Fed actually DOES any of these right, or ever will.
The point is a list of "what would be nice", irrespective of reality (for the moment)

I'm going to say "Tax us" because that's essentially what it is --- things that I'd agree to help PAY for...

Tax us to provide the funding for a strong military to defend our national interests around the world.
Tax us to provide funding for an effective diplomatic agency, to negotiate the best in trade relations, avoid wars, and settle disputes without resort to wars
Tax us to provide the funding for a strong Border Patrol to keep illegals and terrorists OUT of this country
Tax us to provide the funding for effective inspections of food products, toys, and other imported prodcts for safety and drug/other smuggling searches
Tax us to regulate and enforce companies IN the US to be required to do things like provide airbags and child safety locks and things like that on domestic products like cars and other things. (Most US carmakers were NOT willing to provide door safety locks until required to by law)
Tax us to provide regulation of corporations, in terms of their finances (Enron), ecological responsibilities (impose and enforce fines and penalties on Exxon Valdez, Superfund sites, that sort of thing),
Tax us to provide across the board nationally effective laws and regulations regarding public safety types things (FAA, NTSB investigations to ensure airline/aircraft/train safety and inspections)
Tax us to provide the same level of maintenance and reliability of the Federal Interstate system
Tax us to provide for the protection of National Parks and Monuments, National Historic Sites, to protect these from developers, and wide variance in state standards of how well these kinds of places are protected and maintained.
Tax us to provide for effective and nationwide port and airport security (this could be seen as Border Security, but since it's Coast Guard, it's different and wider scale)
Tax us to provide funding for disasters that are beyond the scope and scale that any single state could handle. (eg, operate the Coast Guard)

These are things that, for the most part, strike me as the kind of thing we DON"T want 50 different versions of --
For example, I don't want to buy my car in New York, because that's the only State that makes all cars sold there requires side-airbags, etc. Or pay more for a car in MY state because GM says cars cost 50% more in NC because of laws in NC.
Or to find out that when I get hurt by a badly manufactured tool, that if I had lived in Virginia, I could sue the company for damages, but in NC I cannot sue.
Things like that need to be nationwide, not per state, IMHO.

Last edited on 01:47 am by sirlamre


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Brian
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Posted: 02:26 am

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Tax us for military defense.
Tax us for food and drug safety regulation.
Tax us for transportation infrastructure.
Tax us for public transportation.
Tax us for product safety.
Tax us for protection of national parks and monuments.
Tax us to provide emergency management for interstate national disasters.

You'll notice that I didn't put border security on my list. That's because I consider border security a defense issue. It should be handled by the military, not by police officers. No offense to police officers intended, of course. I just think that if you're going to task someone with defending a perimeter, they should have some experience doing it. Airport and port security would be the same deal.

I don't think technological safety regulations should be mandated by the government, because I don't think it's necessary. Things like OnStar and passenger-side airbags are selling points that car manufacturers should want to put in their cars, because they'll sell more cars if they do.

I also put public transportation on there. As a handicapped person,, I've had the occasion to use public transportation, and it's a big pain in the ass. Basically, the handicapped version of NJ Transit ends when you reach the NJ border. You have to deal with a whole different entity in NY, who may or may not be accommodating. (I've been told by several agencies even in other counties in NJ that because I'm not a resident of their county, I can't use their services.) Whoever you are, you should be able to board a bus on the east coast and take public transportation to the west coast.

"It's been a long December, and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last."

-- "A Long December", Counting Crows

sirlamre
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Posted: 05:01 am

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It shouldn't be necessary

But it often is.

There are _thousands_ of cases where manufacturers have NOT chosen to do the right thing.

OnStar is a selling point -- they can, and do charge extra for that. And market it.

Being required to change the dimensions and metallic content of a long threaded shaft in all future versions of the DC-10 is NOT something McDonnel Douglas is going to be able to recoup in selling more airplanes.

That was the reason for several crashes (google for it)

The FAA and the NTSB had to FORCE MDD to change that-- they were NOT willing to go to the expense, even when it was PROVEN that the shaft failed and was the reason for crashes.
Of course, the media release from MDD was that they were already doing it--- and the threat of fines is not publicly known -- unless you're a pilot.

Most US manufacturing is NOT safety driven until AFTER there's an incident and it would clearly affect sales.

Same goes for:

"Just take Ford for example ---

Remember those early automatic windows in cars?
For FOUR YEARS or more, Ford designed them so that the button to roll UP the window was pushing DOWN.
(instead of pulling up).

That meant that kids would stand in the window, put their foot on the button, push it down, and roll up their head in the car window.

Ford had to be SUED successfully, all the way up to losing appeals ... and succeeded in sealing all court records of the lawsuit against them --

in order to decide to make the button have to be PULLED UP in order to make the window go up --- setting it up so that kids wouldn't be able to roll their head up in the window.
They claimed it would cost them MILLIONS to fix the problem -- Know what it took? Switching two wires in the switch in the door, in most of the cars.
They just didn't WANT to, because the retraining of assembly line workers and some redesign of car doors would cost them a little bit of their sacred PROFITS.

More cases:
Pharma companies --- SUED and LAWS had to be passed before they were willing to put into TV ads what the side effects of their drugs might be. SUED and LAWS passed before they would put it in the insert (it's still often in the finest print on the very back page of some inserts)

Tobacco -- SUED and LAWS passed before they agreed to put the Surgeon General's warning on packs of cigarettes.
Same goes for selling tobacco to minors, and for putting cigarette ads on during children's TV programs"

Last edited on 05:03 am by sirlamre


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Brian
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Posted: 05:29 am

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sirlamre wrote: It shouldn't be necessary

But it often is.

There are _thousands_ of cases where manufacturers have NOT chosen to do the right thing.

OnStar is a selling point -- they can, and do charge extra for that. And market it.

Being required to change the dimensions and metallic content of a long threaded shaft in all future versions of the DC-10 is NOT something McDonnel Douglas is going to be able to recoup in selling more airplanes.
I understand where you're coming from with that, but I was looking at technological innovations like the safety locks you were talking about. If I sell a car, and say, "Now with special safety locks so that Little Jimmy can't accidentally open the door", that's a selling point. I agree that mechanical fixes and such have to be regulated (an example being when a company does a recall for a safety defect). If there's no commercial advantage to a safety feature (because that feature is either hidden, or is really just a fix from an unsafe configuration) that needs to be mandated.

I do think that there are ways to force companies to do the right thing without government intervention, though. If I make a DC-10 that is is 50% more likely to avoid spontaneous combustion because it has some fix, isn't that marketable? What kind of numbers are we talking about here? (I plead ignorance. I'm just trying to understand why a more reliable plane can't be used as a selling point.)

sirlamre wrote:
That was the reason for several crashes (google for it)

The FAA and the NTSB had to FORCE MDD to change that-- they were NOT willing to go to the expense, even when it was PROVEN that the shaft failed and was the reason for crashes.
Of course, the media release from MDD was that they were already doing it--- and the threat of fines is not publicly known -- unless you're a pilot.

Most US manufacturing is NOT safety driven until AFTER there's an incident and it would clearly affect sales.

Same goes for:

"Just take Ford for example ---

Remember those early automatic windows in cars?
For FOUR YEARS or more, Ford designed them so that the button to roll UP the window was pushing DOWN.
(instead of pulling up).

That meant that kids would stand in the window, put their foot on the button, push it down, and roll up their head in the car window.

Ford had to be SUED successfully, all the way up to losing appeals ... and succeeded in sealing all court records of the lawsuit against them --

in order to decide to make the button have to be PULLED UP in order to make the window go up --- setting it up so that kids wouldn't be able to roll their head up in the window.
They claimed it would cost them MILLIONS to fix the problem -- Know what it took? Switching two wires in the switch in the door, in most of the cars.
They just didn't WANT to, because the retraining of assembly line workers and some redesign of car doors would cost them a little bit of their sacred PROFITS.

More cases:
Pharma companies --- SUED and LAWS had to be passed before they were willing to put into TV ads what the side effects of their drugs might be. SUED and LAWS passed before they would put it in the insert (it's still often in the finest print on the very back page of some inserts)

Tobacco -- SUED and LAWS passed before they agreed to put the Surgeon General's warning on packs of cigarettes.
Same goes for selling tobacco to minors, and for putting cigarette ads on during children's TV programs"

The only thing I can really fault there is the pharma laws about side effects/adverse events. I've worked in the pharma industry, and I've read the safety studies. Almost every drug has to be said to cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea, because it's almost impossible to conduct a legitimate scientific study (i.e., one that's long enough, with enough patients) where someone doesn't contract those symptoms at some point -- whether it's related to the drug or not. I'm not saying that the drug companies shouldn't be required to disclose any side effects. What I'm saying is that the side effects reported ought to have some causal relationship to taking the drug.

But as I said, I think the government should regulate food and drugs. Companies can't be allowed to just do like they did in the 19th century, releasing everything with secret ingredients and expecting the consumer to take their chances.

"It's been a long December, and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last."

-- "A Long December", Counting Crows

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