Facebook Lobbies Washington to “Like” Spying on Users

Friday, April 27, 2012 by CorpWatchby Pratap Chatterjee


Facebook, the social network behemoth that is about to become a multi-billion dollar company, has been lobbying for a proposed new U.S. law called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that would allow companies to share information with government agencies. Zaid Jilani at the Republic Report has been digging up details on the Washington lobbyists who are helping Facebook.

“Under CISPA, private companies may spy on user communications, whether stored or in transit, and freely pass personal information to the government as long as they claim a vague "cybersecurity" exception,” write Mark M. Jaycox and Lee Tien at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The bill also creates expansive legal immunity that makes companies and the government largely unaccountable to users. Companies ‘acting in good faith’ are also excused from all liability for engaging in potential countermeasures, even if they hurt innocent parties.”

This is not the first time that the U.S. Congress has tried to pass a dubious law on computer security in the name of stopping piracy. Last year, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act – backed by Hollywood and opposed by Facebook, Google and Wikipedia – was defeated after a huge backlash. Opponents noted that the law – as drafted - would threaten freedom of speech and support Internet censorship.

Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, and Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, are the sponsors of the new bill. Unusually for Washington, the two men work together well, according to the Washington Post. Rogers is a former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent who has been promoting the drone war, notes the Post, and the two men have the backing of people like Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. So it is small wonder that CISPA will help out the intelligence agencies by expanding their powers of surveillance.

Not surprisingly, activists like Avaaz are campaigning against CISPA and so is (surprisingly) the Obama White House, which has threatened to veto the bill if it makes it to the president’s desk.

But Facebook – which opposed the cyber-security bills last year – has decided to support CISPA. The proposed law “would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government,” Facebook’s Washington DC office posted on its blog. It would “impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.”

Well, many Facebook users would testify that the company actually does a very poor job of protecting user’s private information.

Zaid Jilani at the Republic Report points out that Facebook is actively paying a Washington lobby firm to lobby for CISPA. In his article titled “Dislike: Meet The Lobbyists Facebook Hired To Help The Government Spy On You” he reports on the people at Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock that are working the halls of Congress to get the bill passed.

“What’s particularly interesting about all of these individuals is that every single one previously worked somewhere in the executive or legislative branches of the Federal government. They were paid by taxpayers to get the training and connections that now allow them to have high-paid lobbying jobs representing corporations,” writes Jilani.

After all, Facebook has a lot to gain from this such as the ability to “freely pass personal information to the government” and to be “excused from all liability even if they hurt innocent parties.”

On Friday, when Congress gets to vote, we will find out which members “like” Facebooks plans.

Scientists Cry Fowl Over the FDA's Regulatory Failure

Friday, April 27, 2012 by the Guardian/UK
Overuse of antibiotics in factory farming kills thousands every year, yet the industry is force-feeding chickens pharmaceuticals
by Richard Schiffman


In 2005, the antibiotic fluoroquinolone was banned by the FDA for use in poultry production. The reason for the ban was an alarming increase in antibiotic-resistant campylobacter bacteria in the meat of chickens and turkeys – "superbugs", which can lead to a lethal form of meningitis that our current antibiotics are no longer effective against.

Antibiotic-resistant infections kill tens of thousands of people every year, more than die of AIDS, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. This problem is on the rise because antibiotics are recklessly overused, especially in the commercial livestock industry, where 80% of all antibiotics manufactured in the US end up.

Fluoroquinolone used to be fed to chickens primarily to stimulate their growth. But why did the banned substance show up recently in eight of 12 samples of "feather meal", the ground-down plumage leftover from commercial poultry production?

This was just one of the mysteries uncovered in a study conducted jointly by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State University. The research, published last month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, uncovered a whole slew of other drugs in the feather meal that the scientists had not expected to find there.

Traces of the arsenic compound Roxarsone, for example, were present in almost all of the samples. Farms administer arsenic to chickens to turn their flesh just the right shade of pink that consumers find attractive. Yet, in June 2011, the FDA gave Pfizer 30 days to discontinue selling Roxarsone, a proven carcinogen. So why is it still showing up in our chickens?

Other substances that the scientists found include acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, Benadryl, an antihistamine, even Prozac, an antidepressant. Farms feed chickens these mood-altering drugs to reduce their anxiety. Chickens are anxious because they are bred on overcrowded and filthy factory farms. Stressed-out birds develop meat that is tough and unpalatable, so they need to be sedated. Yet, chickens on tranquilizers sleep all the time and do not eat enough. So they are given high doses of caffeine (which was also found in the feather meal) to keep them awake at night to feed and fatten up.

So, here is the deal. We create hellish conditions for our livestock, then we drug them to keep them numb. Then we drug them again to wake them from their pharmaceutical stupor. Then we drug them to grow faster. Then we drug them so their flesh will look healthier. Then we drug them to withstand the disease epidemics that our overcrowding has created.

Then, of course, we drug ourselves every time we take a bite of factory-farmed poultry.

"We were kind of floored," Keeve E Nachman, a co-author of the study told the New York Times. "It's unbelievable what we found." While Nachman says that the levels of arsenic and the witches' brew of other drugs and chemicals in the chicken samples may not be high enough to harm humans, he is not betting his own health on it.

"I've been studying food-animal production for some time," the researcher said, "and the more I study, the more I'm drawn to organic. We buy organic [in my family]."

"So, here is the deal. We create hellish conditions for our livestock, then we drug them to keep them numb. Then we drug them again to wake them from their pharmaceutical stupor. Then we drug them to grow faster. Then we drug them so their flesh will look healthier. Then we drug them to withstand the disease epidemics that our overcrowding has created... Then, of course, we drug ourselves every time we take a bite of factory-farmed poultry."Organic chickens are bred without artificial growth hormones and antibiotics. They are fed organically grown vegetable foods rather than the ground-up animal products – bones, feathers, blood, excrement, fishmeal and diseased animal parts – which their conventionally grown brethren receive. They are also raised free-range with plenty of space, sunlight and opportunities for exercise to keep them healthy. A 2001 study conducted at the University of Perugia found that chickens produced this way actually taste better than conventionally bred birds.

Yet, organic poultry is a lot more expensive to raise. While the market is growing steadily for organic birds, it still comprises less than 1% of the poultry sold in the US today (pdf). So, food scientists argue that the standards for conventional chickens and turkeys need to be strengthened.

"We strongly believe that the FDA should monitor what drugs are going into animal feed," Keeve Nachman urged, adding that, based on what the researchers discovered, they had little confidence that the animal food production industry could be left to regulate itself.

Earlier this month, the FDA announced what looked at first glance like sweeping new guidelines on the use of antibiotics in livestock. The new rules, however, are strictly "voluntary", and, while they do recommend restricting the use of antibiotics to stimulate growth, they would still allow them to be prescribed by a veterinarian for animals that are "either sick or at risk of getting a specific illness".

Critics contend that the words "at risk of getting a specific illness" provide factory poultry farms a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. Margaret Mellon, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a press statement:


"The outlined process appears to give the companies the opportunity to relabel drugs currently slated for growth promotion for disease prevention instead. Such relabeling could allow them to sell the exact same drugs in the very same amounts."

Public interest groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists say the time has come for the FDA to stop proposing half-measures and demonstrate that it is serious about preventing a looming public health disaster. It needs to ban dangerous antibiotic use in the raising of livestock, and to conduct rigorous on-site inspections to insure that the ban is enforced.

Clarence Thomas’ Strip Search Fetish

The Naked Truth
by CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

Except for Clarence Thomas, things are not nearly as bleak as commentators would have had us believe after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the recent case of Florence v. County of Burlington. Strip searches, some feared, would run wild.

Albert Florence had received and paid a fine for a traffic offense some years prior to the incident that gave rise to the case that went before the Court. When his wife was stopped for speeding and he was in the car, his identification was checked and through a computer error the officer was led to believe Albert had an unpaid fine that had, in fact, been paid years earlier. Since it appeared to be unpaid, he was taken to the Burlington County Detention Center where he was forced to shower with a delousing agent and carefully examined as he disrobed prior to showering and again while nude. Subsequently he was transferred to the Essex County Correctional Facility and, since the Essex County folk lacked confidence in the Burlington folks’ strip search and showering admission procedures, he was strip-searched a second time. Following his release, Albert sued, among others, the government entities that ran the jails.

The Federal District Court that first heard the case entered a summary judgment in Albert’s favor, holding that strip-searching a “nonindictable offender” without reasonable suspicion deprived him of his Fourth Amendment right to be protected from an unreasonable search. The Obama administration was distressed at this holding and joined the defendants in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the actions of the jailers in subjecting Albert to two strip searches. The Supreme Court sided with the administration and held that the strip searches were just fine. Since the Court has now opened the door wide to strip searches of everyone admitted to a jail for whatever reason there are some who wonder if there are any arenas in which strip searches would be frowned upon by the conservative majority on the court that dislikes government intrusion in private lives except when it doesn’t. The historical answer is there is one sacred area-the school. We learn that from a case that involved then-13-year old Savana Redding, Safford Unified School Dist. #1 v. Redding.

Savana attended a school that has a zero tolerance for drugs. In 2003 a classmate told school officials that Savana had proscribed drugs in her possession. Without calling her parents, the school officials did what any reasonable school official would do under those circumstances. They ordered Savana to remove her outer garments and pull out her underwear to see if she was concealing drugs in her private parts, thus “exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree” as Justice Souter who wrote the majority opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court explained. In discussing whether the search was reasonable Justice Souter said: “Here, the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion. Wilson [the school official] knew beforehand that the pills were prescription-strength ibuprofen and over-the-counter naproxen, common pain relievers equivalent to two Advil, or one Aleve. He must have been aware of the nature and limited threat of the specific drugs he was searching for, and while just about anything can be taken in quantities that will do real harm, Wilson had no reason to suspect that large amounts of the drugs were being passed around, or that individual students were receiving great numbers of pills. . . . “In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.” The opinion in that case was, insofar as strip searches were concerned, eight opposed and one in favor.

Clarence Thomas, whose function on the Court is to arrive at such bizarre conclusions that they make his conservative colleagues seem to speak with the voice of reason, applauded strip searches. He lamented the fact that his colleagues did not apply the common-law view that “parents delegate to teachers their authority to discipline and maintain order,” a principal known as “in loco parentis.” When that rule was applied, he happily observed, parents transferred to teachers the authority to “command obedience, to control stubbornness, to quicken diligence, and to reform bad habits” a quotation from the 1837 North Carolina Supreme Court decision of State v. Pendergrass. In addition to looking to that case for support, he also cited, a 1765 treatise by W. Blackstone and an 1873 treatise by J. Kent. He observed that if the reasoning of these old authorities had been accepted by his colleagues, strip searches of school children would be fine. Since parents are not restricted by the Fourth Amendment, teachers and other school officials would not be restricted by that Amendment and would have “almost complete discretion to establish and enforce the rules they [believe] necessary to maintain control over their classrooms.” To that one can only say Wow!! and perhaps express gratitude that he’s a Justice and not a school administrator. On the other hand. . . .

Banks Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out

Strike! Strike! Strike!
by ROB URIE

It was nearly half a century ago that Noam Chomsky, in his book American Power and the New Mandarins, described the Pentagon as a “Keynesian distribution device.” What he meant was the Pentagon is an integrated part of the American economy that provides products and financial support to American industry. In fact, the myth that the American economy functions via free markets serves capitalist extraction but is a completely misleading description of reality.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars over resources, primarily oil. In the minds of war architects they may serve a broader geopolitical purpose, but that purpose is at its core economic–maintaining a ready supply of oil for multinational oil companies. The wars were estimated some years ago to cost several trillion dollars. This amount is to be borne by taxpayers, not to mention the human toll in lives and lost possibilities. Another way to phrase this is: “oil companies and military contractors got bailed out, we got sold out.”

When the bank bailouts began in early 2007 (earlier than the press has reported) they came at the end of nearly five decades of myth building about the American economy. They also came late in one of the greatest periods of capitalist extraction in history. Fifty years ago American workers produced most of the finished goods and services that we consumed and they were paid a proportion of what they produced that allowed a growing majority to live middle-class lives. Today American workers still produce most of what we consume but the wages increasingly go to a small group of economic elites who control the government through open graft and our national conversation through media ownership.

And the truth hidden in plain sight is the last thing the Koch brothers, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, Verizon or any other large corporation wants is free markets. All of these businesses were built on research funded by social wealth, products developed with social wealth, military excursions paid for with social wealth (and the blood of others) and bailouts funded with social wealth. The most effective revolution possible would “free” these organizations from the yoke of government by withdrawing social support and letting them fend for themselves.

The rest of the world has had few illusions about where American wealth comes from. The CIA has long functioned as an oil mafia undermining democratically elected and democratically functioning governments to control oil for private interests. The American military has been a tool of private American interests for most of its existence. And these government agencies are economies unto themselves receiving “black” budgets over which there is little oversight or accountability.

The bank bailouts fit neatly into this history—the transfer of social wealth for the purported purpose of providing a necessary economic function to the American people, the extension of credit. At an earlier period in history this claim might have been slightly less absurd. In the American economic system debt is money and money is debt. The problem today is that we’re full up on bank loans. Reviving private credit today only serves to further wealth extraction when debts cannot be repaid.

Despite their place in the national mythology, banks are only artifacts of this epic of capital consolidation. They are not the only, or even the main, protagonists. Were the banks to be successfully resolved, turned into utilities that do, for the first time in fifty years, serve a public purpose, the other modes of exploitative extraction would live on (e.g. the military). And the current critique of banks rests on the complaint that Americans are now being treated like America has long treated the rest of the world—like colonized citizens. For the benefit of the rest of the world this realization is probably a good thing. But or us, it is a rude awakening.

In reality, there was no resolution to the last crisis save bridging what could have been a temporary gap in banker bonuses. Many multiples of what anyone could ever pay has been gambled and only one banker need stub her toe or cut himself shaving and the gamble will be lost. The international financial system is as fragile as it has ever been and the only effective resolution before the next crisis hits would require rearranging the existing economic and political orders. This will not happen while so few are receiving so much of our social wealth.

Many bankers understand this. The race is on to take what remains before the next crisis erupts. News reports have the banks hiring private security forces, the new Pinkertons, to squash rebellion before it gains momentum. The surveillance state, built at our expense, is the servant of the bankers and corporate leaders. The bankers and corporations are the state. And even if one wanted to sit the next historical epic out, that option will be at the behest of history, not a choice that can be made by any one of us.

So, what to do? Step one is to stop contributing to our own demise. Strike May 1st. Strike May 2nd. Strike May 3rd. Strike until the power of economic extraction and exploitation is eliminated. Recognize that most of us have more shared interests with the poor and middle classes in other countries than we do with bankers and corporate executives in the U.S. Recognize that the values that the bankers and corporations have handed us are not our values, and are not even human values. Recognize that bankers and corporate executives can’t grow their own food, build their own houses, educate their own children or provide their own healthcare. Without us, they can’t do anything. Strike!

For to ponder at...

Profit-Driven Medicine Violates American Patients Young and Old

Thursday, April 26, 2012 by Common Dreams

by Donna Smith

 

Though my grandson and I are in two different sections of the country and both facing different cancer scares, we share one thing more prominently than anything else.  We are being violated as human beings in need of medical care by our health providers’ need to protect profits.  The money comes first; the patient is but a necessary cog in the healthcare revenue wheel.

I know that most of the time when those who advocate for a more sane system under an improved and expanded Medicare for all, for life model target their list of “evil-doers,” we tend to focus on the for-profit health insurance industry.  Clearly, having to fund all the administrative costs, shareholder profits, and CEO salaries for those companies is a driving factor in the ever rising costs of healthcare in America.

But the insurance companies aren’t the only ones targeting patients for profits.  The providers of care are right there in the middle of the mix with the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies.  Everyone wants their bite of the cash to be made, and the patients are caught in the middle of this epic struggle of financial giants in the U.S. economy.

Back to the two stories playing out in my own family as I write this since our family with all its glory and flaws seems pretty representative of people across the nation.  My 18-year old, not-yet-graduated from high school grandson was required to sign a guarantee of payment for his biopsy procedure before being treated, and I discovered one of my providers is creatively “unbundling” services provided in one appointment in order to collect a co-payment from me for each segment of my clinic visits.

"Oh, it’s all legal all right.  It just isn’t ethical or just."

For my young grandson, taking on this financial obligation before he is even out of high school is shocking and frightening.  He was born (along with his twin brother) in late November, so began school when he was just short of six years old.  He is preparing to graduate from high school in May, right on time.  He lives at home with his parents and siblings, and he is a really great, young man.  But a couple months ago, he started losing weight, and he found a lump just underneath his ribs.  The imaging studies show that the mass needs to be biopsied.  His mom, my daughter, made the appointment for his biopsy.  We were all upset and frightened.  But imagine our horror when not only was our daughter required to sign papers promising to pay the $1,000 deductible but our grandson also was asked to step up to the desk and sign his own set of promissory paperwork.  It’s all legal, they said.  He is 18, after all.  They both signed their own sets of documents. His biopsy is tomorrow and now he fears not just the results of the tests but also being dunned by the hospital where he’ll have his procedure.

On the other side of the country, I am still in the process of getting test results for my cancer work-up. After always paying my $15 co-payment required before I am treated, I began getting multiple billings from one of my providers (a large, teaching hospital with a world-class reputation) that showed me owing more co-payments of $15.  If I didn’t pay those multiple bills very quickly, the provider was almost instantly turning those $15 “debts” over to a very aggressive collection agency.  For $15, I was receiving calls several times a day.  When I called to ask why I am getting these bills when I always pay my co-payment at the front desk when I sign in for appointments, the billing clerk told me that the $15 I pay when I come in is only going toward the physician services portion of my visit and that the new bills I am getting are for the clinic charges for the same visit.  What?  They are splitting one doctor visit into two or even three bills and requiring me to pay a co-payment of $15 for each segment of that bill as if it were three separate visits? 

Yes.  That’s exactly what they are doing.  And before I even have final test results and treatment plans, the world-renowned provider is sending one of those split-billing co-payments to collection?  Yes.  I paid $30 more to stop the calls, and the clerk advised me that I should ask my insurance company if I am responsible for multiple co-payments and get reimbursed from them as the provider is billing legally for their services.

Oh, it’s all legal all right.  It just isn’t ethical or just.  Patients like me and my grandson – and millions of other people all over the country -- are being injured by our healthcare system and all of the profit-takers within that system.   This week we all learned about breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay of Herrin, Illinois, who was thrown in jail over a mistaken $280 medical debt.  But even if our debts are really ours or assigned to us in error, we have almost no recourse in the face of aggressive providers who hire aggressive collection agencies to aggressively collect their profits.  Yet, we often direct the outrage at collection agency practices and not back to the source:  the providers who stand right alongside the for-profit health insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants as they all injure patients and families in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

It’s ugly out here for patients in America.  And if any other nation thinks emulating our healthcare system is a better way, please think of your children and your grandchildren and imagine them standing at the front desk of the clinic signing legal documents to protect provider profits, and then think again.  Our profit-first healthcare system is brutal from top to bottom, and we won’t change that brutality until we identify all of the culprits and put health first over profits. 

A Remarkable Week for Corporate Crime

The 10 Ten Stories

by RUSSELL MOKHIBER

 

It’s been a remarkable week in corporate crime.

And it’s only Wednesday.

This week drives home the reality – corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.

Once again, it’s not the black kid with the hood on the street.

It’s the corporate executive with the lawyer in the suite.

So, without further ado, let’s go to the Top Ten Corporate Crime Stories of the Week.

Number Ten: Sunoco to Pay $2.2 Million to Resolve Double Dipping Charge. The Massachusetts Attorney General alleges that the oil company falsely sought reimbursement from a state reimbursement fund when it was also seeking reimbursement from its insurers.

Number Nine: Merck to Pay $322 Million Criminal Penalty. A federal judge in Boston ordered Merck to pay a $322 million criminal penalty for improperly marketing its Vioxx painkiller a decade ago.

Number Eight: Pharmacy Fraud Kills Three. Gary D. Osborn and his corporation, ApothéCure Inc., pled guilty in federal court in Dallas to criminal violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The pleas are in connection with ApothéCure’s interstate shipment of two lots of misbranded colchicine injectable solution that led to the deaths of three people in the Pacific Northwest.

Number Seven: Walgreens to Pay $7.9 Million to Settle Whsitleblower Lawsuit. Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the nation, has paid the United States and participating governments $7.9 million to settle allegations that it paid kickbacks to illegally induce the transfer of prescriptions to its pharmacies.

Number Six: Minnesota AG Takes Down Medical Debt Collection Agency. The Minnesota AG said that Accretive – one of the nation’s largest medical debt collectors – overstepped its bounds by embedding debt collectors as employees in emergency rooms and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment.

Number Five: Military Contractor Rips Off the Army. ATK Launch Systems will pay $36,967,160 to resolve allegations that ATK sold dangerous and defective illumination flares to the Army and the Air Force.

Number Four: Freeport-McMoRan Pays $6.8 Million to Settle Pollution Charge. Freeport-McMoRan Morenci will pay $6.8 million to settle allegations that it polluted areas around its Morenci copper mine in southeastern Arizona. Federal officials alleged that surface waters, terrestrial habitat and wildlife, and migratory birds have been injured, destroyed or lost as a result of releases sulfuric acid and metals at the site.

Number Three: Giant Construction Company Ripped Off NYC. Australian construction giant Lend Lease Construction LMB Inc. – formerly Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc. – and James Abadie, the former executive in charge of Bovis’s New York office, were criminally charged in a major fraud scheme. The company will pay $50 million and get a deferred prosecution agreement. Federal officials alleged that Abadie explicitly and fraudulently directed his subordinates to carry out the practice of adding unworked hours to labor foremen’s time sheets, knowing that these unworked hours were billed to clients who were unaware that they were the victims of fraud. Affected projects included – the United States Post Office/Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn, New York, the Bronx Criminal Courthouse in the Bronx, New York, Grand Central Terminal, the Deutsche Bank building deconstruction in New York, New York, Citifield in Queens, New York, and the very United States Courthouse in which Bovis was charged and Abadie pled guilty.

Number Two: First Criminal Prosecution in BP Case is an Individual, not a Corporation. Kurt Mix, a former engineer for BP plc, was arrested on charges of intentionally destroying evidence requested by federal criminal authorities investigating the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon disaster. David Uhlmann, the former head of the Environmental Crimes Section at he Justice Department is puzzled why the government has yet to bring criminal charges against BP and the other companies involved. “The government has a slam dunk criminal case against BP, TransOcean and Halliburton for the negligence that caused the Gulf oil spill,” Uhlmann told Marketplace Radio yesterday “They should bring those criminal charges.”

Number one: Wal-Mart Bribery. The number one slot goes to Wal-Mart. In a shocker, New York Times reporter David Barstow penned a major investigative report on Wal-Mart bribery in Mexico. Paying $24 million in bribes to fuel Wal-Mart expansion in Mexico is a big deal. How Wal-Mart covered up the bribery in Mexico is a big deal. Wal-Mart had a state of the art anti-bribery compliance program. The New York Times story will likely put an end to the Chamber of Commerce’s drive to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and drive public support for more corporate crime prosecutions.

One lesson after living through this week in corporate crime?

Support your local police. Urge a crack down on corporate crime.

Bank CEOs Gain as Millions Lose Dreams, Retirement to Foreclosure

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 by The Newark Star-Ledgerby John Cavanagh and Scott Klinger


Inside and outside of Wells Fargo’s annual meeting in San Francisco yesterday, thousands of angry protesters decried the bank’s leading role in the loss of millions of American homes to foreclosure.

If you want to know why the protesters are so angry, consider this double standard. For most Americans, retirement security lies in the value of their homes. Millions of these people have been losing that security as the nation’s largest banks have foreclosed on them. Yet the CEOs of these banks are reaping giant pay packages and padding their own retirement security with profits squeezed from ordinary people.

For many American families, a paid-off home is part of the dream of a secure retirement. The roof over their heads has long comprised the largest element of most families’ net worth. The housing crisis brought to us by the country’s biggest bankers has stolen the dreams of the nearly 4 million families who have lost their homes to foreclosure since the housing crisis began in 2007.

Of those who continue to live in their homes, more than a quarter have lost so much equity that they now owe more on their mortgage than their residence is worth. Even those who have never missed a payment on these underwater mortgages have found it all but impossible to refinance their loans to take advantage of record low rates that would cut hundreds of dollars from their monthly payments.

As American families struggle with their shrinking equity, Wells Fargo is enjoying record profits. Its earnings clocked in at more than $4 billion during the first quarter of 2012.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America are the country’s two largest mortgage servicers. Over the past three years, the number of homes foreclosed upon by the two giant banks has steadily grown. At the end of 2011, they reported to federal banking regulators that they held $22.5 billion and $19 billion worth of foreclosed houses, respectively.

While foreclosures have devastated the financial security of millions of American families, the CEOs of Wells Fargo and Bank of America have seen their retirement packages balloon.

The pension assets of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf stand at $16 million, according to the company’s proxy statement. The vast majority of these assets came from a special plan available only to the company’s top executives. As high as Stumpf’s retirement assets have soared, they’re exceeded by those of another Wells Fargo executive. Mark Oman oversees the company’s consumer lending division, where most of its ill-fated subprime loans were made and where many customers have lost their homes to foreclosure. His retirement assets top $17 million.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan’s pension assets now total $6.8 million. His nest egg came mainly from a special "supplemental" pension plan.

It’s long past time that banking regulators stopped these dream-stealers from laughing their way to their gold-plated retirements. Protesters are insisting that the corporate funds diverted to prop up the lavish lifestyles of those responsible for upending the lives of the millions of American families who have lost their homes be redirected toward principal relief for homeowners devastated by these banks’ actions.

The Wells Fargo action was just the start. Don’t be surprised when thousands more protesters show up when Bank of America shareholders gather on May 9 in Charlotte, N.C.

Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 by Black Agenda Reportby Glen Ford


The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. 

To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.For the last two years, the number of inmates held in state prisons has declined slightly, largely because the states are short on money. 

Crime, of course, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, but that has never dampened the states’ appetites for warehousing ever more Black and brown bodies, and the federal prison system is still growing. However, the Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.

The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. 

Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws." 

The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

But, there is something even more horrifying than the moral turpitude of the prison capitalists. If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them. Many of the same politicians that created the system of mass Black incarceration over the past 40 years, would gladly hand over to private parties all responsibility for the human rights of inmates. 

The question of inmates' rights is hardly raised in the debate over prison privatization. This is a dialogue steeped in slavery and racial oppression. Just as the old slave markets were abolished, so must the Black American Gulag be dismantled – with no compensation to those who traffic in human beings.

Nestlé Targets Developing Nations for Bottled Water, Infant Formula Sales

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 by Food & Water Watch Blogby Darcey Rakestraw


On Monday, Nestlé announced it had purchased Pfizer’s infant nutrition unit, which will strengthen their ability to sell infant formula in emerging markets, particularly in Asia. The move is not surprising, since 85 percent of Pfizer’s infant nutrition revenues came from developing countries, where Nestlé is also looking to expand its sales of bottled water.

How do we know this? Nestlé has declared both its Pure Life brand of bottled water and infant formula as Popularly Positioned Products (PPP) that target “less affluent consumers in emerging markets”. Two weeks ago, we mentioned Nestlé’s report outlining this strategy in this blog. For some reason, the report is no longer available on Nestlé’s site without the requisite log-in information. But we’ve reposted the document here.

Our executive director, Wenonah Hauter, released this statement in response to Nestlé’s purchase of Pfizer’s infant nutrition unit:

This renewed focus on growing the market for its infant formula products is troubling given the corporation’s track record of using dubious practices to market infant formula in developing countries, where it is often prepared in unhygienic conditions with unsafe water….Surely, it is no coincidence that many mothers will prepare the formula with bottled water—which will no doubt benefit Nestlé’s emerging market strategy. 

Selling bottled water to poor people, and pushing infant formula on poor but otherwise healthy mothers who may not have access to safe drinking water is doing what Nestlé does best: undermining public health in the name of profit.

For more on Nestlé’s plan to market bottled water in developing nations to offset the drop-off in sales from developed countries, read our report, Hanging on for Pure Life.

ALEC and ExxonMobil Push Loopholes in Fracking Chemical Disclosure Rules

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 by ProPublicaby Cora Currier, ProPublica


One of the key controversies about fracking is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what's in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can't thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination.

Disclosure requirements vary considerably from state to state, as ProPublica recently charted. In many cases, the rules have been limited by a "trade secrets" provision under which companies can claim that a proprietary chemical doesn't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public.

One apparent proponent of the trade secrets caveat? The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, a nonprofit group that brings together politicians and corporations to draft and promote conservative, business-friendly legislation. ALEC has been in the spotlight recently because of its support of controversial laws like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" provision.

This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC's political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted "model legislation" on fracking chemical disclosure, based on a bill passed in Texas last year. According to The Times, the model bill was "sponsored within ALEC" by ExxonMobil, which runs a major oil and gas operation through its subsidiary, XTO Energy. The advocacy group Common Cause, which provided the documents on ALEC's lobbying efforts to The Times, describes model legislation, in many cases identifying by namethe company that proposed it to ALEC's task forces.

ALEC has recently removed its list of model bills from its main website, and did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for XTO Energy confirmed that the company is a member of ALEC, but he did not provide details on the company's involvement with the disclosure bill.

The spokesman said ExxonMobil supports "full disclosure of the ingredients and additives in hydraulic fracturing fluids," but added that when vendors request it, ExxonMobil has "respected the trade secret status of their products." Last year, the company beganvoluntarily uploading chemical disclosures to FracFocus, a clearinghouse website run by the Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

In a recent blog post, ALEC claimed that legislators in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, New York and Ohio have introduced versions of its model bill, but many of those states vary in the level of disclosure required and how they handle the trade secrets provision. Laws in 11 states require at least partial disclosure, and the Bureau of Land Management recentlydrafted disclosure guidelines for drilling on federal land.

These laws have been relatively well-received by environmental advocates, though the trade secrets issue remains a concern for some. In Ohio, for example, proprietary chemicals don't have to be disclosed to regulators or the public. In Pennsylvania, they are disclosed to regulators, and the public can request information on them from the state Department of Environmental Protection on a case-by-case basis.

The Texas law, which ALEC cites in the post as its template, codifies the trade secrets exemption, and who can challenge it:

Otherwise, Texas' law requires that companies post disclosure forms for each completed well on the FracFocus site. They must disclose all chemicals but only report the concentrations of those that are hazardous. The law also requires that the companies give the total volume of water used in fracking.

The Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate fracking in order to protect groundwater, because in 2005 Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which controls how industries inject substances underground.

According to ALEC's blog, the model disclosure legislation is designed to promote "responsible resource production" and "aims to preempt the promulgation of duplicative, burdensome federal regulations" from the EPA, in particular. ALEC has consistently opposed any federal control over fracking. In 2009, the group adopted a "Resolution to Retain State Authority Over Hydraulic Fracturing."

Why Fukushima is a Greater Disaster Than Chernobyl

Warning Signs for the US
by ROBERT ALVAREZ


In the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over. After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential offsite consequences than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.”

This is why:

• Each pool contains irradiated fuel from several years of operation, making for an extremely large radioactive inventory without a strong containment structure that encloses the reactor cores;
• Several pools are now completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were demolished by explosions; they are about 100 feet above ground and could possibly topple or collapse from structural damage coupled with another powerful earthquake;
• The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding – resulting in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over hundreds of miles.

Irradiated nuclear fuel, also called “spent fuel,” is extraordinarily radioactive. In a matter of seconds, an unprotected human one foot away from a single freshly removed spent fuel assembly would receive a lethal dose of radiation within seconds. As one of the most dangerous materials in the world, spent reactor fuel poses significant long-term risks, requiring isolation in a geological disposal site that can protect the human environment for tens of thousands of years.

It’s almost 26 years since the Chernobyl reactor exploded and caught fire releasing enormous amounts of radioactive debris. The Chernobyl accident revealed the folly of not having an extra barrier of thick concrete and steel surrounding the reactor core that is required for modern plants in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere. The Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident revealed the folly of storing huge amounts of highly radioactive spent fuel in vulnerable pools, high above the ground.

What both accidents have in common is widespread environmental contamination from cesium-137. With a half-life of 30, years, Cs-137 gives off penetrating radiation, as it decays. Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in biota and the human food chain for many decades. When it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, with perhaps the most important muscle being the heart. Studies of chronic exposure to Cs-137 among the people living near Chernobyl show an alarming rate of heart problems, particularly among children.

As more information is made available, we now know that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site is storing 10,833 spent fuel assemblies (SNF) containing roughly 327 million curies of long-lived radioactivity About 132 million curies is cesium-137 or nearly 85 times the amount estimated to have been released at Chernobyl.

The overall problem we face is that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Dai-Ichi site is in vulnerable pools in a high risk/consequence earthquake zone. The urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around NE Japan in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 – 5.7 have occurred off the NE coast of Honshu in the last 4 days between 4/14 and 4/17. This has been the norm since the first quake and tsunami hit the site on March 11th of last year. Larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant.

Last week, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) revealed plans to remove 2,274 spent fuel assemblies from the damaged reactors that will probably take at least a decade to accomplish. The first priority will be removal of the contents in Pool No. 4. This pool is structurally damaged and contains about 10 times more cesium-137 than released at Chernobyl. Removal of SNF from the No. 4 reactor is optimistically expected to begin at the end of 2013. A significant amount of construction to remove, debris and reinforce the structurally-damaged reactor buildings, especially the fuel- handling areas, will be required.

Also, it is not safe to keep 1,882 spent fuel assemblies containing ~57 million curies of long-lived radioactivity, including nearly 15 times more cs-137 than released at Chernobyl in the elevated pools at reactors 5, 6, and 7, which did not experience melt-downs and explosions.

The main reason why there is so much spent fuel at the Da-Ichi site, is that it was supposed to be sent to the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, which has experienced 18 lengthy delays throughout its construction history. Plutonium and uranium was to be extracted from the spent fuel there, with the plutonium to be used as fuel at the Monju fast reactor.

After several decades and billions of dollars, the United States effectively abandoned the “closed” nuclear fuel cycle 30 years ago for cost and nuclear non-proliferation reasons. Over the past 60 years, the history of fast reactors using plutonium is littered with failures the most recent being the Monju project in Japan. Monju was cancelled in November of last year, dealing a fatal blow to the dream of a “closed” nuclear fuel cycle in Japan.

The stark reality, if TEPCO’s plan is realized, is that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Da-Ichi containing some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet will remain indefinitely in vulnerable pools. TEPCO wants to store the spent fuel from the damaged reactors in the common pool, and only to resort to dry, cask storage when the common pool’s capacity is exceeded. At this time, the common pool is at 80 percent storage capacity and will require removal of SNF to make room. TEPCO’s plan is to minimize dry cask storage as much as possible and to rely indefinitely on vulnerable pool storage. Senator Wyden finds that TEPCO’s plan for remediation carries extraordinary and continuing risk. He sensibly recommends that retrieval of spent fuel in existing on-site spent fuel pools to safer storage in dry casks should be a priority.

Given these circumstances, a key goal for the stabilization of the Fukushima-Daichi site is to place all of its spent reactor fuel into dry, hardened storage casks. This will require about 244 additional casks at a cost of about $1 mllion per cask. To accomplish this goal, an international effort is required – something that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called for. As we have learned, despite the enormous destruction from the earthquake and tsunami at the Dai-Ich Site, the nine dry casks and their contents were unscathed. This is an important lesson we should not ignore.

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

Friday, April 20, 2012 by ProPublica

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica 

 

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country's biggest media companies — which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations — are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but is not widely accessible because it is currently kept only in paper files at individual stations. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post on the Internet details of political ad purchases including the identity of the buyer and the price.

(ProPublica has been inviting readers and other journalists to send in the files to be posted as part of our Free the Files project.)

Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC is voting on the issue April 27.)

In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working "against transparency and against journalism."

The industry's opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of "'Soviet-style' standardization" of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format.

In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the "logistics and burden" of putting the political ad information online.

That same month, executives from Disney along with NBC and News Corp argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad file would allow "competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data."

Television stations must by law must offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that by making this information available online and not just at stations, it would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers.

Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. They have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations.

Albritton, NBC, and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman's charge that they have positioned themselves "against transparency and against journalism." News Corp. declined to comment.

Some media companies have also pushed a watered down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of on a central FCC website.
Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule — Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media, and Schurz Communications — lobbied FCC officials in February, March, and again this week.

The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week.

"What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what's being bought at what price, maybe there's a simpler way to do it,"Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. "Transparency is giving people information that is useful."

But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations' own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data.

Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27.

Among them are:

• News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News
• Walt Disney, which owns ABC News and ESPN
• NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast and includes NBC News
• Allbritton, which owns several TV stations and Politico
• Gannett Broadcasting, a division of Gannett, which owns USA Today
• Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcast division of the Washington Post Company
• Belo Corp, which owns 20 TV stations
• Cox Media Group, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Austin American-Statesman, and other newspapers and TV stations
• Dispatch Broadcast Group, which owns Ohio and Indiana TV stations
• Barrington Broadcasting Co., which owns several television stations around the country
• The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns TV stations and newspapers including the Commercial Appeal in Memphis
• Hearst Television Inc., which owns 29 TV stations
• Raycom Media, which owns TV stations
• Schurz Communications, which owns TV Stations and newspapers around the country