by Kara Altshuler

I really want this blog to be about the free-loading Stricklands and how they're getting paid to do absolutely nothing.  However, Audra offers so little on her website (no current photos of her in the district, no news items, and no legislation to speak of during years 2007 or 2008) that it's pretty slim pickings.

So, in total boredom, I turn to the federal news.  I'm sure this is just what Grover Norquist had in mind when he argued that there should be complete deregulation of the economy.

Peanut Corp. of America files for bankruptcy

By KATE BRUMBACK and GREG BLUESTEIN - 4 days ago

ATLANTA (AP) -- The peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak is going out of business. The Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Virginia Friday, the latest bad news for the company that has been accused of producing tainted peanut products that may have reached everyone from poor school children to disaster victims.

"It's regrettable, but it's inevitable with the events of last month," said Andrew S. Goldstein, a bankruptcy lawyer in Roanoke, Va., who filed the petition.

The salmonella outbreak was traced to the company's plant in Blakely, Ga., where inspectors found roaches, mold and a leaking roof. A second plant in Plainview, Texas was shuttered this week after preliminary tests came back positive for possible salmonella contamination. So far, the outbreak has been suspected of sickening more than 630 people and may have caused nine deaths. It also has led to more than 2,000 product recalls, one of the largest recalls in U.S. history.

The president of the company, Stewart Parnell, pleaded the Fifth, in front of a House subcommittee that really wanted to know why he instructed his employees to continue selling his toxic products after they discovered they were contaminated.  I'd like to know, too.

I'd like to know why the American public is repeatedly faced with food recall after food recall, year after year after year.  After all, isn't it the job of the FDA to check on food production in the US, to ensure the safety of products we buy and eat every day?  Do we need another Upton Sinclair to write a 21st century version of The Jungle? 

One really obvious, really bad outcome of shrinking the federal government and cutting back on regulation and oversight is that people die.  And isn't it amazing that this peanut company was able to file for bankruptcy to protect itself from wrongful-death lawsuits, when our Republican Congress and President George W. Bush made that impossible for people with that wonderful bankruptcy/credit card law in 2005?