Things Getting Done

Today was a big day for the Pentagon. So much seemed to happen, but again, nothing seemed to get done. The Senate had an all night session, but still failed to pass any regulation to bring the troops home. White House aides told press that the anti-terrorism strategy in Pakistan had failed, and it was president Gen. Pervez Musharraf's fault. Scott Shane of the New York Times wrote a news analysis about how we aren't safer now than we were six year's ago, in response to a report published by the National Intelligence Estimate saying the same thing. The military released today that they had captured Khalid al-Mashadani, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

I could talk a lot about this, but other people do it better. I would recommend the always-amusing-and-sometimes-annoying Maureen Dowd's "Hey, W! Bin Laden (Still) Determined to Strike the US."

There was something in the news today that made me think that maybe things are getting done in this country. The article "Limiting Ads of Junk Food to Children" described how 11 big food companies, like General Mills, Pepsi and McDonalds, will no longer advertise non-nutritional food to children under 12.

The Senate also passed a bill a few weeks ago increasing the required mileage of cars, light trucks, and S.U.V.s to 35 m.p.h., instead of 25.

Although it seems like corporate America might be shifting, forced or voluntarily, into better practices, I think that many of these policy changes fall short of what actually could be done. The Senate bill, if it becomes law, will only require stricter automobile mileage and not fiscally promote alternative energy sources. I think that this bill is actually a victory for the automobile industry, as they could have lost a lot more if alternative fuel advocates got their way.

The new junk-food industry has set their own standards for what is "nutritional", which sets the cutoff at 12 grams of sugar, with some other stipulations. For example, Coco Puffs are considered nutritional, but Trix aren't.

Even though these two announcements, the Senate bill and the change of corporate food advertising policy, are important because of public acknowledgment of issues, they still aren't big enough changes. It seems like corporations are just responding to public protest and trying to take the heat off themselves, for a little while at least. They will concede small victories to different interest groups to improve their public image. And it's worked, so far.