Senators and lobbyists to America's voters and their kids: "Drop dead!"

Has your home turned into

a killing jar for humans? 

This cranky post will tell you 

whom to thank.

I was eight years old when I learned about trapping and killing butterflies and other insects. It involved a killing jar — essentially a glass jar containing some wadded up cotton soaked in an awful-smelling chemical. The summer camp nature counselor who taught me about this stuff also taught me the name of the chemical. Formaldehyde.

Killing bugs with formaldehyde is no longer the most popular method. The professionals would rather use ethyl acetate, chloroform, or cyanide. Those are considered less harmful to you than formaldehyde. But there is one place where formaldehyde is still wildly  prevalent.  Your home.

Turns out that the glue that holds layers of laminated furniture together – not to mention laminated flooring and even certain items of clothing – is generously laced with formaldehyde, and those items gradually give off formaldehyde fumes. 

No, you’re not likely to keel over dead, like a bug in a jar, after a few seconds . But exposure to formaldehyde over time, even in small amounts, is associated with leukemia, especially myeloid leukemia, nasal cancer, and for good measure, asthma, according to the National Cancer Institute.

So the Environmental Protection Agency has been tying for the past five years to limit how much you can be slowly gassed to death by formaldehyde-laced products. Unfortunately, a small — shall we call it an impediment? — has cropped up: corruptible law makers under the sway of lobbyists with fists full of money.

Start with a guy who has already been labeled “Senator Formaldehyde,” — Republican Senator David Vitter from Louisiana. Although Republicans will tell you they’re not scientists and don’t know diddley squat about climate change, some of them suddenly turn to experts when it comes to formaldehyde. 

Vitter is a case in point. By his actions and things he said, he is implicitly in favor of poisoning of Americans with this subsance. Not a huge surprise considering that since 2009 he has graciously accepted approximately $900,340 in campaign contributions from the chemical industry and other industries that use various poisonous chemicals in the products you, I, and your children use and inhale the gasses from. Hey, the Supreme Court says it ain't bribery. It's merely freedom of speech.

Sad for this cranky old Democrat to say, it’s not just Republicans  like Vitter and Roger Wicker of Mississippi who are guilty of allowing industry to poison us and our kids to make a grubby buck. Senator Barbara Boxer and even the current White House are effectively co-conspirators, the way I read information recently published in a New York Times article.

One of he poisoned furniture and floor lobby’s arcane arguments is the cost of the illness and death their products spew into America. Under the pressure of the poisoners, reports the New York Times…

“the estimated benefit of the proposed rule dropped to $48 million a year, from as much as $278 million a year. The much-reduced amount deeply weakened the agency’s justification for the sometimes costly new testing that would be required under the new rules, a federal official involved in the effort said.’’

In other words, if the lobbyists manage to whittle down the value of your life and health, after a while you and your kids just aren’t worth saving. You're  just another bug in a killing jar. After all, a senator who graciously accepted close to a million bucks from America's Lucrezia Borgias doesn't need to worry about you. Or your stinking vote. You'll be dead anyway.

Uh oh! If you blow the whistle on sleazy Republican sinners, here’s where you might end up:

So, uh, in case you’ve been napping for very long time, there was yet another hooker scandal in Washington, this time involving a madame named Deborah Jean Palfrey.

Once again, it involved political bigwigs. Republicans, in this case. There was the threat that a lot of Republican officials would get exposed. (Let the puns fall where they may.)

Johns? What johns?

But surprise, very few of the involved Republican vice customers got outed. (Democrats seem to patronize a different classs of hookers. Viz former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.)

One of the few unfortunate johns whose name did see the light of day would be Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter, who “apologized” for committing “a very serious sin.” Another potential “witness” in the trial was Harlan Ullman, the military "genius" who invented shock and awe as the cool thing to do in Iraq.

Oh yes, still another would be one of Condi Rice’s boys, a dude with the title Deputy Secretary of State. However, Deputy Secretary Randall Tobias hastily, umm, “resigned” last April.

It was starting to appear as if we'd really have a show once the rock finished getting turned over. Who knew what else would crawl out? But somehow, a huge trove of details concerning Palfrey’s business and clients never surfaced during the trial. Or after it.

Hey folks, this was an operation that had been doing business in D.C. for 13 years and had “at least” 132 women working for it. And we're asked to believe that only three Republicans in government used them? Who were the rest of the johns? Door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen?

Oh my gracious! There's no one left
to write a tell-all book!

Vitter was facing up to 55 years in prison just for helping Republicans get laid. With all that time on her hands, she could have written one hell of a best-selling book from her cell.

But suddenly — poof! She committed suicide. And at almost exactly the same time, the trial judge sealed records identifying the women who worked for Vitter and didn’t testify. Of course, what they might have testified to is with whom they did what, when and where they did it, and in which position. Alas, now we’ll never know.

But wait! There’s more!

It turns out that a University of Maryland professor was “employed” by Vitter. Tch tch! You know, those professors are notorious for their publish-or-perish attitude. And if they testify in court, they can be so damningly articulate.

Except, the professor, Brandy Britton, also “committed suicide” before her trial could begin.

Coincidence? Well, if you say so. But it’s starting to feel a tad creepy to me.