Don Marti

Tue 27 Jul 2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

I'm from the New York Times and I'm here to help you

Another bizarre opinion piece at the newspaper of record for the "too big to fail" crowd. Eric Schlosser writes, of a proposed new law that would expand the food-regulation powers of the FDA, that it would somehow crack down on large, politically connected multinational food corporations and spare the farmers' markets. Honest! "The bill’s wording can still be clarified so that mom-and-pop producers aren’t threatened by heavy-handed government regulations." And there's lead in the pasta! Somebody think of the children!

If new regulations affected the multinationals more than small business, it would be a nationwide first. Is Times management really that out of touch with the reality of regulatory capture in the US market for food? Or the US market for anything?

Regulations become the "private property" of the best lobbyists, and this increase in FDA power will mean in increase in the trend of raids on small-scale food producers and sellers, while the CEOs of the companies that import that scary lead-tainted pasta are chilling in Gstaad with Thomas Friedman.