Hillary As Inevitable - Ok, Now Promise America a Food-Safety Czar

At some point when John Edwards was claiming that it's too early to declare any candidate As Inevitable and reminded us about Howard Dean's implosion, Hillary passed over to The Inevitable.  It's her election to lose.  She won't lose.  She played everything right, including how to bounce back after setbacks.  Part of the bounce includes her new-found ability to laugh at herself and Dave Letterman's comments about her pants suits.

So, it's time for Hillary to start promising us stuff.  At the top of that promise list is to put in-place a food-safety czar.

Why is this more urgent than ending the war and fixing health care?  Here are the two lead sentences from two influential publications.

Today, BUSINESS WEEK's opening sentence  reads: "ConAgra Foods Inc. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are defending their decision not to recall pot pies linked to a salmonella break."  That means that neither business nor government are sticking out their necks to protect consumers.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL's opening sentence reads: "U.S. officials are preparing to acknowledge that there isn't just one type of E. coli bacteria that is making consumers sick" and it's one that "most inspectors weren't looking for."  That means that government can't do the job of protecting us.

And, eat food is something every American does. 

I have someone in mind for the job of food-safety czar.  It's Bill Marler of Marler Clark Law firm. Actually Hillary might already know Marler, a plaintiff attorney specializing in food-borne diseases.  Marler was among the coalition of experts who helped create a new system after the E-Coli outbreak early in Bill Clinton's first administration.  The new president was delivering a televised town meeting when a couple whose child ate some of that contaminated meat spoke up. That child later died.

That system fix, which Marler describes on his blogs, worked for a number of years.  But then it came undone.  As we're seeing, neither the private sector nor government has the will to create the kind of system needed for a global food supply chain.

At the Waxman food-safety hearing, Marler made some recommendations.  Here are the key ones:

• Actually, inspect and sample meat.  What pretends to be that isn't. It it were, the government would have picked up the new strain of E-coli.

• Give government, both federal and state, mandatory recall authority. Right now, they're fiddling while lots of contaminated chicken pot pies could be out there.

• Make the meat industry document where specific lots of food are sold.  That makes recall fast and efficient, saving lives and preventing lawsuits [Marler asks to be put out of business].

• Create one independent government agency whose mission is solely to deal with food-borne pathogens.

The Hillary Message Magic can make this happen if she appoints Bill Marler Food-Safety Czar.  This speechwriter-ghostwriter is volunteering her skills to help Hillary and Marler help America.