Puffs

“Red Dye No. 3.”

You have to be of a certain age to remember all the commotion this caused some years ago. Seems it was used in a wide variety of consumer products from cosmetics to food to who knows what else. It was considered a serious cancer risk.

I don’t know about you, but I have not heard of Red Dye No. 3 for a lot of years. Up until last week that is.

Seems the federal government has now banned the use of the dye from food just this past week. It went on to read that it was just 15 years ago when they banned its use in other, non-food items.

That, I don’t understand. Just why wasn’t it banned from food 15 years ago? Wouldn’t it have been sensible to ban it from all items 15 years ago?

We don’t allow the dye to be put into cosmetics, but we allowed everyone to digest it in our food.

To me it’s a good example of how a Socialist government will work if we ever allow it to come into full being.

Or, could it be something like Mr. Biden seems to be trying to do with other things. Things like making sure his administration distributed at least $27.6 billion to finance clean-energy companies. Something he knows will most likely disappear once he is gone from office. Something like all the “pardons” he is giving as only a president could.

Whatever he does, I feel he thinks citizens will think kindly of him and his time as president of the United States.

A O

I have made comments at times about our federal government and how it does things. Mostly examples of mistakes, errors and just plain bad administration of our governments.

I have also tried to report on things that are good, even if they are few.

One example came to light last week. The headline of the information was: “Treasury recovers $31M in payouts to the dead.”

Seems the Social Security payments were improperly sent to dead people and the recovery of the $31 million was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Seems that two government agencies, Treasury and Social Security, historically don’t work together all the time. Social Security has the master file of deaths and the Treasury has the responsibility to pay out death benefits, and it took an act of Congress to get them to work together.

The beginning of the recovery effort just started with the 2021 omnibus appropriations bill. It is a three year program that goes from 2023 to 2026.

I’d guess that by 2026 a much larger amount of money will be re-claimed and the program will continue.

It all comes down to determine how all those dead people were still receiving money and just who was using all that money.

A O

I have time to include a brief comment on the inauguration of President Trump on Monday.

I did not take up the whole day watching all the activity in Washington D.C., but I did watch the swearing in of Mr. Trump and his speech. One thing caught my attention.

He did not spare any time in telling us just what his intentions are going to be. He told us what he wanted to do, and change, from the designs of the former president. To me it was out in the open and people can decide if they like it or not.

The advantage of this compared to what the Liberals did is that we don’t have to have the problem of reading hundreds and hundreds of pages in a law the Liberals wanted to pass . . . all in a day or so.

Remember when the leader of the House of Representative said: “We have to pass the law first in order to know what was in it.”

That sure seemed backwards to me.

I’m not sure I’ll like everything that is about to happen, but it will be interesting.

Maybe our political environment will keep us warmer than Mother Nature.

Stay warm.

A O