Good Saturday morning to you all.  We are about mid-way through October.  Our neighbor already has some Halloween decorations up.  We don't decorate much beyond putting up seasonal door wreaths.  Right now the fall wreath is up which will be replaced sometime in December with a Christmas wreath which will be replaced in January with the winter.  I like seasonal change even if I feel, sometimes, that the seasons are turning way too fast.  I like the connection to nature in a world where we seem to try obsessively to eliminate nature.

Why in the world anyone would believe that any industry can police itself is beyond me especially with the past and present fiasco of the financial industry.  But the story keeps being repeated as you can see here.  With the number of food poisonings and recalls, one would think we would not leave anything as important as food safety to a system that is concerned with profit above all.  But then our drug safety program isn't much better given that the FDA relies on studies conducted or contracted out by the pharmaceutical industry itself to make its judgements on effectiveness and safety.

It seems the Brits have the same kind fraudsters fiddling with their stats as we do over here.  I have always been amazed at how the cost of everything we buy on a daily or weekly or monthly basis have gone up by double digits while the inflation rate only goes up in the low single digits.

I absolutely adore Margaret and Helen.  They say exactly what I have been saying for sometime:  government is not business and the bottom line is not the major consideration for government.  And there are times where maximizing the bottom line shouldn't be the major consideration for business either.  Unfortunately, no-a-days it seems that nothing matters but the numbers.  As a good Catholic Paul Ryan should know better.  But they seem to have excised the story about the rich man and the camel getting through the needle's eye.

I have seen a couple of snippets on this issue.  We have, indeed, become a surveillance state and are becoming more so as time goes on.  Why aren't we up in arms?