Originally Posted by The_Jazz

OK, who's going to pay to find out? Who's going to pay to do the monitoring? Do you expect a neighborhood of folks making $50,000 a year to pay a scientist $25,000 for his time and equipment to trace back the pollution? This is a nice sentiment, but it's the exact setup that the Soviets had 20 years aog and we all saw how that worked out.

No, they'll just buy more insurance from the likes of me. I'm all for this, but it would never happen. If anything, the Consumer Protection Commission would just be absorbed by some sort of similar entity to the Insurance Institute of America who already makes pronouncements on car safety. However, it's unrealistic for the IIA to do product liability safety on ever single product out there since there are huge differences between cars, paper bailers, ice fishing equipment, concrete mixers and childrens toys, just to name 4 accounts on my desk right now.

The discovery of failure to maintain standards of safety will only occur after an accident, not before. As a frequent air traveler, you will de-federalize the ATC's over my dead body, most likely literally. If the federal government is not responsible for a uniform standard of safety, who will be? How am I, as a consumer, going to know which airports are safe and which aren't?

What are the other issues? I'm all for food safety, and I've got evidentiary proof sitting right in front of me on failure to properly prepare and maintain food.

The burden of proof has been taken off of parents for generations. I suppose you harken back to the days when doctors were self-taught too.

Yes, you might be familiar with their work in Europe, Asia and Africa. The modern navy is rarely in US waters. The burden of keeping the Coast Guard as a separate branch is minimal in the greater scheme of things. I suppose that you would also hand over water safety on our nation's lakes and rivers to the Navy as well? Would you then bitch about the unconstitutionality of military use of police powers on US soil?

Using exactly what for money? You live in Texas, so I assume that you've made it over to Louisiana to see how well they managed this idea after they were left out of the federal highway bill in the 80's.

Um, thanks, I'd rather have trained professionals looking at my construction jobsite safety, if you don't mind. My wife, who would count as one of those angry housewives now that she's home with our son permanently, thinks that individual rolls of roofing felt should be loaded onto a roof as needed so that it won't collapse. Experts exist for a reason.

Those with deep pockets don't necessarily win. They may have done absolutely nothing wrong but they're going to end up paying anyway. Ask Anheuser-Busch and Clear Channel how their defense of the RI nightclub fire is going. The latest rumors that I've heard are that they're both willing to put up $10M each just to get out of it since they don't want it in front of a jury. Neither one even had an employee at the club the night of the fire.

Wow, I feel so much better now. Thanks for the softball lob there, dk!