Blame the Superdelegates!

As the seemingly eternal bloody fracas continues between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the ability of either to beat John McCain in the general election is diminishing. While it’s clear that at this point Obama is not going to be beaten in terms of the popular vote and certainly not the number of contests won, Clinton presses on with her unwinnable campaign. Now some may question the validity of that statement but let’s contrast the Obama/Clinton race with the McCain/Romney/Huckabee race.

According to Hillary Clinton, Obama isn’t able to finish this thing, right?

“Why can’t he close the deal?” Clinton said. “Why can’t he win a state like this one [Pennsylvania], if that is the way it turns out?”

But if losing a state was an indication of weakness then John McCain most likely wouldn’t have received the Republican nomination. After all McCain LOST in 17 different states including Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah, Arkansas, Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, Maine, Nevada, Wyoming, Iowa and West Virginia.

That’s quite a list but yet John McCain is still the nominee, why?

Well first of all it’s not a good analogy. Republican contests are winner take all and John McCain hasn’t had a challenger since early March. McCain’s also had a spoiler, a Ross Perot type candidate if you will in Mike Huckabee, who has drawn votes away from Mitt Romney. Furthermore, if McCain had to live life under the proportional allocation of delegates rule that the Democrats abide by, he’d be a bloody pulp by now and probably would not have won the nomination.

Don’t get me wrong, the rule of proportional representation is a good one except the participants, in this case the Democrats, need to understand the consequences of the law of diminishing returns. In this case the law of diminishing returns basically says that producing one more vote for the challenger in the nomination process consequently diminishes the ability of either Democratic candidate to win in the general election.

Hillary Clinton continues in this race not because of the voting of the majority of democrats which she has clearly lost, she continues in this race because of uncertainty.

What’s the source of this uncertainty?

Plainly and simply, the equivocation of Party insiders. If after it became readily apparent that Clinton didn’t have a chance of winning the popular vote the Superdelegates did the prudent thing and stopped supporting her, rallying around the popular vote winner, there wouldn’t be an impression that Obama can’t close the deal. The reality is that with the majority of Democrats Barack Obama has already closed the deal.

What remains to be seen is if the Superdelegates negate that outcome.

So as this unwinnable war that Clinton continues to wage rages on and the Democratic chances of winning the general election in November continues to dwindle, at least now you’ll know where to place the blame if the outcome isn’t what you expect; BLAME THE SUPERDELEGATES!!!

Agroterrorism and the Food Industry

According to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/agchron.htm) the number of actual biological attacks and their corresponding effects has materially been very small and ineffective. On the other hand the World Health Organization (WHO) (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs237/en/) estimates that in the U.S. alone an astounding 76 million cases of food borne diseases occur each year, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. WHO also reports that food borne diseases have been known to affect hundreds of thousands of people in a single outbreak. For instance, in 1994 an outbreak of ice cream contaminated with salmonella affected an estimated 224,000 people. And while the U.S. dairy and cattle farmers earn upwards of $50 billion a year, WHO reports that the medical costs and lost productivity associated with food borne illnesses due to just the major pathogens are estimated at $35 billion annually (1997).

The numbers of potential persons affected by a deliberate biological attack may or may not result in any more casualties than past contaminations. Additional problems arising from a biological attack on the food industry would be psychological and would result in nearly catastrophic domestic economic repercussions for an industry which comprises 9.7% of the GDP. Additionally, the economic effects would have detrimental international ramifications.

According to a Congressional Research Service report entitled “Agroterrorism: Options in Congress,” (http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/crsreports/crsdocuments/RL31217_12192001.pdf) it is a “widely accepted view among scientists that livestock herds are much more susceptible to agroterrorism than crop plants.” (CRS-4) The reason for this is that plant pathogens are technically difficult to manipulate and even skilled plant pathologists have difficulty in creating diseases in optimal conditions. Plant infections are also relatively easy to contain. Conversely, livestock pathogens are relatively easy to obtain and disperse. Once a contamination occurs it is difficult to pinpoint the origins and track and contain the outbreak especially within the disorganized, decentralized and wholly unregulated industry.

Unfortunately, closing the gaping industry wide security holes isn’t going to be easy. There are a whole host of problems that the domestic and international food industry must overcome before they can begin to address the problems posed by a potential terrorist attack. First of all, the industry must address the very real problems posed by the non-deliberate outbreaks. In order for there to be continued long term confidence in the food industry, national standards for preparation, production, tracking, sanitation and security must be enacted and enforced by the federal government. Additionally, governmental, academic and industry groups including the CDC, USDA, AVMA, NCBA, WHO, etc. should collaborate and centralize its methods of security breach, outbreak and threat tracking communications. A system should be created that rewards industry for early acknowledgement of outbreaks so that they can be more readily isolated and identified.

Given these recommendations it may seem that the problems are insurmountable but they must be overcome for the economic and physical security of the U.S. and the safety and health of its citizens. In fact, more resources have been spared on policies that have yielded less of a return on investment than required to implement these recommendations. The present unwarranted circumstances and the future potential threats are just too great to ignore.

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