Bloated Bureaucracies Don't Produce Good Watchdogs
Or even adequate ones. The Comptroller of the Currency, supposedly the watchdog against bank misconduct, has not investigated Bank of America, despite my repeated complaints about their lies to the press about their bank's "security"...complaints I made not just as a citizen but as a reporter; complaints accompanied by 19 pages of typed, faxed documentation. I even called their press rep, Kevin Mukri, and begged him to get somebody to look into my reports and start an investigation.

Monday night, I read a piece by "public health correspondent Andrew Schneider" that many sunscreens may be accelerating cancer, and hopped my way to a short piece by Environmental Working Group about what the FDA actually does for us:

FDA: 32 years (and counting) after its first draft sunscreen standards, still no final rule.

The FDA first issued draft sunscreen regulations in 1978 and last updated the draft in 2007. The regulations are still not final, despite multiple announcements of impending completion. Until the agency formally issues its rule, companies are not required to verify that their sunscreens work, including testing for SPF levels, checking waterproof claims or providing UVA protection. Nearly 1 in 8 sunscreens does not block UVA rays. Buyer beware!

The proposed regulations would require sunscreens to be labeled with a UVA star rating along with its SPF value. In the meantime, consumers should skip reading the claims and turn straight to the ingredient list looking for a mention of zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, Mexoryl or avobenzone. Buying products with those ingredients offers some assurance that the user will get at least some protection from UVA rays.

Think government's going to protect you? Think those tax dollars are actually buying you something? Well, besides hefty pensions for the government employees who employed by the FDA, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other government watchdog agencies whose greatest concern is...certainly not you, me, or the best interest of the rest of the citizenry they're charged with looking out for. Scumbags.

Fire them all.

And as Ron Kaye writes about our elected officials:

They are part of a system that itself is corrupt, from our cities to our state's to our nation's capital. Corruption is the business of politics. The two parties have divvied up the graft from the broad array of special interests and legalized it. They have turned political discourse and debate into a war of divisive messages meant to segment us into antagonisms while lulling the masses into passivity and helplessness.

Trust, honesty, courage are passé. We now look for no more than their abstractions in integrity and transparency as if the coherency of their behavior and its visibility alone were the real stuff of leadership.

Personally, I long ago reduced my own political philosophy nothing more, or less, than right of everyone to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as they see fit, just as long as they respect those same rights for others.

When I go to the polls June 8, I will vote against who holds public office almost without exception. My judgments have nothing to do with Democrat or Republican or any other party or their positions on any particular issue.

It has solely to do with my sense of their character, whether there is any reason to believe that they might show courage, honest and are trustworthy.

There may be dozens of great people running for office but I only have come across four of them that I believe are people who strive to be honest, have shown the courage of their convictions and just be worthy of our trust.

I'm with him on Mickey Kaus -- all the way:

At the top of the ticket, running for the United States Senate is Mickey Kaus, a journalist who became one of the first great bloggers with the Kaus Files and became a mainstay at Slate.com.

Kaus is a maverick Democrat who believes Barbara Boxer is the worst kind of political hack who achieved little or nothing in her three terms except wasting a seat in the Senate and pandering to the party faithful's prejudices without actually achieving what they want or looking after the interests of her state.

I know Mickey, and have read him for years, and went to hear him speak on Saturday, and agreed with almost all of what he said. He's principled, highly intelligent, honest, and reasonable, and a good guy, and he has my vote, and if you live in California, I hope you'll give him yours.

Back to the sunscreen, here's the deal from EWG on the form of Vitamin A, retinyl palmitate, that may be harmful. According to EWG, the highly protective, Mexoryl-based Anthelios (which protects against both UVA and UVB) doesn't have it, and is one of the healthier brands, but it does have plenty of other stuff in it!