TheAgitator.com
Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008
Monday, July 7th, 2008Now under consideration in Congress: a bill appropriating $50 million per year through 2012 to fight . . . bed bugs.
Yes, that’s the actual name of the bill.
28 Responses to “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008”
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Interesting that it ends in 2012…the same year the Aztec Calendar ends…hmmm.
Heh, talk about the gov’t getting into the bedroom.
I’m guessing this is specifically for hotels, motels, and public housing?
@ thehim – The bill mentions motels and hotels specifically. From wikipedia:
“There are at least twenty-seven known pathogens (some estimates are as high as forty-one) that are capable of living inside a bed bug or on its mouthparts. Extensive testing has been done in laboratory settings that also conclude that bed bugs are unlikely to pass disease from one person to another. Therefore bedbugs are less dangerous than some more common insects such as the flea. However, transmission of trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease) or hepatitis B might be possible in appropriate settings.”
So from a public health standpoint, I’d consider this defensible, aside from the silly name.
Well, hell, applying that logic they should legislate every last nook and cranny of our lives. Clean sheets do smell better than freedom.
I’ve had bedbugs. It’s basically like having herpes for your house, except with the added bonus of 8-legged bloodsuckers crawling around your bed and leaving little black poop stains everywhere.
Does congress need to get involved? I think so, because I hear their banning of DDT was somewhat responsible, so my bedbugs are their fault.
Htownguy:
I dunno. Seems to me there might be room in public health for some middle ground more nuanced than Regulate Everything! or Laissez Faire Epidemics!
These are facilities used by large segments of the traveling public, crossing state lines. This is hardly equivalent to the BedBug police serving a No-knock warrent at 3am.
It seems to me that the industry could develop an anti-bedbug protocol itself, then offer certification to hotels that meet its standards. People might prefer to go to these hotels.
Crazy?
Chance, Its only a matter of time before the War on Bedbugs begins. The gov’t is like a mouse. Give them a cookie next thing you know they shoot you for betting with them. It is through gradulism such as this at the Federal level that our behemoth of gov’t was morphed from its constitutional beginings.
Chris, sounds like a fine idea. You should run for office.
http://www.scottoverpeck.com
This is probably a waste of money, but I really don’t see it being anything worse than that. Apparently, bedbugs are starting to become resistant to some of the more common insecticides used on them, so I would guess that this is more for pointless government research money than spot checks for infestations.
False dichotomy:
The government fixes it / it goes unfixed.
People. Solve. Problems. Regardless of whether the government is there or not, the bedbugs-in-my-hotel issue will be resolved. But I’ve got ten bucks that says it’ll get solved a lot faster and cheaper under the latter condition..
Any takers?
The notion of capitalism is antiquated.
Sure everyone wants a better mousetrap. The modern method is for Congress to demand it, spend a lot of time on legislation requiring it, tax the remaining productive sector to pay for it, develop lengthy and contridictory regulations for it, create new crimes for deviations from it, and create enforcement agencies. When the moustrap doesn’t work and costs too much, repeat the above steps, but harder.
So, why hasn’t the market already fixed the problem?
@12
Any takers?
I might take that bet, but I doubt it will be possible to really know who won. The reality has been that the American Lodging and Hotel Association has been (understandably) downplaying the problem with bed bugs in order to make sure that their businesses don’t suffer. Now that the problem is starting to get more and more attention (people who get bed bugs at a hotel can certainly make a big stink), people have been demanding that government gets involved. Here’s an interesting blog here:
http://bedbugger.com/
Anyway, now that the government’s getting involved, the American Lodging & Hotel Association will now all-of-a-sudden start addressing the problem, not necessarily because government is more effective than a hotel at killing bedbugs, but because government is putting up the money to do it. In the end, the problem will get fixed by mechanisms that the hotels could have devised on their own, but it’s also possible that government will have forced their hand on the issue much faster than it would have otherwise.
I’m not one to believe that government also does the right, or even the smart, thing. But I’m also not one to believe that government is completely incapable of influencing a positive outcome.
Public health initiatives have been hugely beneficial to the health and prosperity of americans. There is no reason to believe a priori that this will not be one of those. Sure one can posit that perhaps private industry could do a better job, but that hasn’t happened. Just like clean water and sanitary sewer systems that have helped greatly improve the life span of americans, private interested COULD have done it, but they didn’t step in and do it.
I suppose the (too?) obvious point is that: If YOU are concerned about potential bed bug infestations in YOUR hotel rooms, you should be doing the legwork and research necessary to make sure that you stay in hotel rooms that are infestation free. The potential costs of an activity (staying in a hotel room) should be borne by the people who participate in the activity (those who operate hotels and the customers who stay in them). If the people who are staying in hotel rooms and who are worried about potential bed bug infestations are NOT so concerned about the issue that they are willing to say, read hot reviews for their locations online, ask the appropriate questions about bedbug infestations, do a prior inspection of any mattresses before laying down on them, etc and so on, WHY ON EARTH should they be legitimately allowed to coerce _everybody else_ who may or may not care about the issue, into paying for something that they don’t want, don’t care about, and would rather not pay for?
#16:
As an initial matter, there ARE private water companies.
But more importantly, governments maintain effective monopolies on municipal sewer and water systems by force. Local governments claim (illegitimate) ownership of local water sources and only provide rights of access to government (or quasi-public) municipal water facilities. Local governments also frequently prohibit the installation of additional distribution channels (more pipes in the ground). So considering that government prohibits access to local water sources by private companies and outlaws the most feasible methods of distribution, it’s no surprise that private sector alternatives are not as forthcoming as might be expected.
Not to mention that the same people who rob from the general populace to subsidize artificially cheap “public” water then turn around and decry the excessive amount of water people “waste” through overuse (no surprise that people don’t value goods that they receive at enormously subsidized rates).
We have public water monopolies because private entities did not step and deliver. Why Not? The technology and resources at the time were just as available to them as to public entities. There are private water companies now because public entities have demonstrated the importance and benefits this infrastructure provides and some are NOW trying to profit from it. But they didn’t do it first.
Most municipal water system are funded by user fees directly billed for usage. This is not “robbing” anyone, but charging a fee for service.
Who do you think should own local water sources, since a pump on my property will deplete water from my neighbors property without any boundaries it is illogical to assign ownership to property owner.
Bobzbob:
“We have public water monopolies because private entities did not step and deliver.”
This is an interesting assertion – but where’s the evidence? It’s not, even though you seem to think it is, self-evidently true that the fact that a local water monopoly exists is by itself evidence of some kind of market failure. If you’re going to make the claim, the burden is on you to substantiate it.
“Most municipal water system are funded by user fees directly billed for usage. This is not “robbing” anyone, but charging a fee for service.”
Most municipal water systems are not at all fully self-funding. Most importantly, they certainly aren’t _built_ out of productive revenue, but rather stolen wealth. Municipal water systems are subsidized by a variety of local, state, and federal (like the EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program) programs. The artificial monopoly “fee for service” represents a highly subsidized fraction of the cost that the provision of water would normally entail.
I suppose the (too?) obvious point is that: If YOU are concerned about potential bed bug infestations in YOUR hotel rooms, you should be doing the legwork and research necessary to make sure that you stay in hotel rooms that are infestation free.
Bed bug infestations happen to any hotel, cheap or expensive. Even high end hotels can have this problem because bed bugs are normally brought in by guests. You can do all the research you want, but that does absolutely nothing to ensure that you won’t encounter them.
“Most municipal water systems are not at all fully self-funding. Most importantly, they certainly aren’t _built_ out of productive revenue, but rather stolen wealth.”
If you are going to make the claim you are going to have to substantiate it. Here is indianapolis’ most recent fiscal report from the water agency. Guess what – its fully funded from “sale of water”.
http://www.indianapoliswater.com/ContentEngine.aspx?PageName=IW3WaterworksBoard
““We have public water monopolies because private entities did not step and deliver.”
This is an interesting assertion – but where’s the evidence? It’s not, even though you seem to think it is, self-evidently true that the fact that a local water monopoly exists is by itself evidence of some kind of market failure. If you’re going to make the claim, the burden is on you to substantiate it. ”
Absent any evidence of pre-existing water companies being forced out to make way for municipal monopolies, then the statement IS self-evident. Fact: the US market is dominated by municipal monopolies. Fact: there is no evidence of widespread displacement of private utilities by public entities.
2+2 = municipal water utilities are the result of private entities failure to provide this necessary service.
#21: TheHim
Bedbugs are observable by simple visual inspection, which is why anyone who is so concerned about them should be sure to look over any hotel room sheets and bedding for signs of the bugs themselves or an infestation. If you find evidence of bedbugs, you should ask for another room or get a refund and find another hotel. If you __can’t even be bothered to take such a simple step__ before sleeping in a hotel room bed, why on Earth should you be allowed to foist the costs of your activity onto me?
Prior to the advent of municipal water systems, most people in cities got their water from private wells. As cities got bigger, this became a larger and larger public health problem. Up until about 100 years ago, there were frequent outbreaks of water-born diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
I think this is one place where government – at the local level, not federal – is appropriate.
“Prior to the advent of municipal water systems, most people in cities got their water from private wells.”
This is a curiously broad overstatement in need of substantiation.
In NYC, for example, at around the 1830s, the majority of the City received their repulsive and contaminated water by poorly maintained City-owned public wells (about 2/3 of the population). This was the same decade as one of New York’s notorious cholera epidemics. Those who could afford to buy water from private sources, like the privately owned Tea Water Pump, were far less likely to succumb to cholera than those obtaining their water from the publicly-run sanitation system (such as it was).
Advances in water-safety have more to do with advancing scientific knowledge than the form of ownership.
I can understand why some people might think this is silly (and why they’d think government shouldn’t get involved), but bedbugs are no laughing matter. They are hardy and they can travel great distances; it is very, very easy for an infestation to spread, and it is very, very difficult to wipe out an infestation. If you have ants or roaches, for example, or mice, they’re pretty easy to get rid of, or at least control. Bedbug infestations, however, are a massive headache, and getting a handle on them takes months, sometimes even years. Research into how to get on top of them is definitely wise (not saying necessarily that government should do it, just that it definitely should be done).
Regardless of what the gov’t does, the best thing you can do right now is learn to protect yourself. http://www.bedbuginfo.com/home-bed-bug-prevention-tips.php has some ideas. Also, check your accommodations on sites like tripadvisor, hotelchatter and bedbugregistry before making reservations. Learn how to inspect your room. And be careful of what you bring into your home. Be especially suspicious of second-hand goods. Simple things can save you a lot of trouble.