Poisoning Our Children for Corporate Profit

Study ties hyperactivity in kids to food additives

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“These findings show that adverse effects are not just seen in children with extreme hyperactivity (such as ADHD) but can also be seen in the general population and across the range of severities of hyperactivity,” the researchers wrote in their study, published in the Lancet medical journal.
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Bush Administration Mining Deregulation Program and Stickler recess appointment killed people in Crandall Canyon

Robert Murray insists that his company did not change the mining plan at Crandall Canyon after purchasing a joint interest in the mine last August.
But documents obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune clearly contradict Murray's assertion, and show that Murray's company sought and received approval from federal regulators to make a significant, and, experts say, risky change to the mining strategy.
Records of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) show that, after Murray acquired a 50 percent ownership in the mine on Aug. 9, 2006, his company repeatedly petitioned the agency to allow coal to be extracted from the north and south barriers - thick walls of coal that run on both sides
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The Unreliable Food Supply

The apple-blackberry sauce sold widely in Seattle supermarkets, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic seal on the label, says it comes from Chino, Calif. It also says "Product of Canada."

So how do you know where it's from? You don't.

Dried banana chips are labeled as being from Sumner. But banana trees don't grow in Sumner. Peanut butter from Canada? There are no peanut farms in that country.

Congress passed a law in 2002 saying that consumers were to be told where the food they buy comes from. But five years later, shoppers who try to determine the origin of meat, poultry, fruit, vegetables and frozen or canned food in most of America's grocery stores often enter an Oz-like land of obfuscations, omission or outright lies.

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Oil Companies Fixed Gas Prices in Violation of Trust Laws to drive prices artificially high

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Like the previous case, the plaintiffs in this case say chairmen of the three oil companies met privately nearly every month starting in March 1996 for the "purpose of forming and organizing a combination." The lawsuit alleges executives destroyed documents from the meetings, and a now-defunct joint venture violated U.S. antitrust laws and caused artificially high wholesale gas prices in nearly every state from 1999 to 2001.
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USDA Cracking Down on “Organic” Factory Farms

Earlier this spring the 10,000-cow Vander Eyk factory dairy in Pixley, California lost its organic certification after an investigation revealed numerous violations of federal organic rules. The industrial-scale operation had been publicly spotlighted by The Cornucopia Institute for organic management irregularities. The Vander Eyk dairy had been selling its milk to Stremicks (Heritage-Foods) and Dean Foods (Horizon).

Based on documents recently received by Cornucopia through an earlier FOIA request, the Vander Eck dairy lost their ability to market organic milk not only because they lacked pasture for their cattle but also because they violated requirements for careful record-keeping to assure that all cows milked were eligible for organic certification and all the feed they consumed was actually organically grown.

“It now appears that our concerns about the giant industrial dairy cutting corners by confining cattle in a ‘factory-farm’ setting was just the tip of the iceberg,” said Will Fantle, Cornucopia’s research director. “The foundation of the organic certification process is the maintenance of a comprehensive farm audit trail which can be reviewed by independent certification inspectors and the USDA. The fact that Vander Eyk could not produce the documents requested by his certifier, and that he did not appeal the enforcement action, is just damning.”

The controversy about the growing number of factory-farms producing organic milk has come to a head this year as the number of farmers transitioning to organic dairy production has dramatically increased causing a surplus of organic milk for the first time. That surplus, largely attributed to the mega-farms, is now driving down prices to family farmers around the country endangering their livelihoods. It’s also become a tragedy for some family farmers around the country who have gone through the arduous and expensive three-year transition to organic management but now have nowhere to ship their milk.

“With at least 15 of these giant dairies operating, mostly in the arid west, they have succeeded in jeopardizing the livelihood of the 1500 or so ethical dairy farm families who are doing this right,” said Merrill Clark, an organic livestock producer from Cassopolis, Michigan and former member of the USDA’s expert advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board.

“The good news for consumers is that in our survey of organic dairy brands, a full 90% of namebrand products received very high ratings in our scorecard that critiqued the environmental and animal husbandry practices used in sourcing the organic milk for the dairy products,” the Cornucopia’s Kastel said. “With a small amount of research, consumers who care about maintaining the integrity of organics can easily find organic dairy products they can believe in.”

Aurora is owned by some of the same conventional factory-farm operators that founded the Horizon Organic brand and then later sold it to Dean Foods. Aurora’s largest equity stake is controlled by CharlesBank of Boston, which invests capital for the Harvard endowment fund.

Save The Airwaves from Corporatists!

America's airwaves have been damaged by a series of rule changes the past two decades that have ushered in an era of bland commercial radio and television.

The time has come for the Federal Communications Commission to use its power to work in the public's interest and improve broadcasting so communities are better served. It is important the FCC hold its final hearing regarding how well broadcasters are serving their communities. Five of six required hearings have been held, the most recent in Portland, Maine.

At the sixth hearing, the commissioners will undoubtedly be told by the public — as they were in Maine — that local television newscasts are a distorted reflection of their communities, and that radio has turned to a homogenized formula that is cheap to run, big on return.

Oil Industry Wages Economic Terrorism

A push from Congress and the White House for huge increases in biofuels, such as ethanol, is prompting the oil industry to scale back its plans for refinery expansions. That could keep gasoline prices high, possibly for years to come.

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Democrats Press Plan to Channel Billions in Oil Subsidies to Renewable Fuels

Oil executives are protesting loudly, saying that the proposed changes would take money away from exploring and drilling in the United States and increase the nation’s dependence on imported foreign oil.
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The oil industry has ample reason to worry. With consumers seething about gasoline prices increasing to more than $3 a gallon and oil profits reaching record highs, oil companies would be short of friends in Congress regardless of the party in power.
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A reminder. Bechtel DISCLOSED Contributions to Republicans

Amazon toxic waste case may set a legal precedent

According to Amazon Watch, an environmental and human rights organisation based in San Francisco, “of 45 oil production sites inspected by court-appointed technical experts, many of which were part of an earlier remediation, several show concentrations of carcinogenic chemicals at hundreds and sometimes thousands of times higher than US norms.”
In November 1993, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of residents of the rain forest area known as ‘Oriente’ was launched in a US District Court in New York.
Although the plaintiffs wanted the case to be tried in New York, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that it should be conducted in Ecuador. But in a significant decision, the court also stated that any judgment against the oil company would be enforced in the US.
US courts will also reassert jurisdiction if Chevron refuses to co-operate with the litigation in Ecuador.
The suit charges that Texaco dumped nearly 70mn liters of toxic waste into hundreds of unlined open pits, and from there the waste seeped into estuaries and rivers thus exposing residents to carcinogenic pollutants.

The FSS Mess, Privatization and the Lack of Personal Responsibility

Somewhere, somehow, Marion Blakey and her Administration seem to have lost sight of their mandate to provide for the safety of American citizens who travel by air. Perhaps it was when she made the decision to get rid of those pesky general aviation aircraft by starting the user-fee juggernaut. Perhaps it was earlier, when someone saw that one of the portions of the FAA, the Flight Service Station system, was carrying out its designated function rapidly, accurately, safely, and generally working in a nearly flawless manner. Naturally the reaction was that such a situation was intolerable. Because ongoing competence in the field of safe aviation could not be allowed to continue, the FAA went through a grueling and expensive process to fix it. In October of 2005, ostensibly to save the taxpayers money, it entered into a $1.7 billion contract to "privatize" (is that really a verb?) a portion of the FAA that worked well. I know, children ... one would think that if private industry could do a government function better than the government, then the FAA would have privatized one of the parts of the FAA that doesn't work. Children, such a thought would require us to apply that evil concept, logic, to the operation of political machinery. Children, you know very well that logic should never be used when traveling through the looking glass into privatization land.

The $1.7 billion contract with Lockheed-Martin was to save 20% off the cost of having the work done by FAA personnel, who apparently were evil, money-grubbing government employees who had committed the mortal sin of competence. Of course, there were those sticks-in-the-mud who felt that the numbers didn't add up. After all, you have to pay enough to hire the kind of talent needed to staff the Flight Service Stations, located where the briefers could have detailed local knowledge of the prevailing weather patterns, and equip them with the latest computers, and finally allow for the kind of profit that shareholders will demand (on the order of 8-15%). How can Lockheed-Martin do this for less than the folks who have been doing it so very well for so many years without the cost of a return to the stockholding mutual funds?

Well, those who were skeptical were told to close their eyes, click their heels together and get with the program. Even when the FAA's own internal investigative folks looked at the contract and pronounced that there were grave doubts as to whether Lockheed-Martin could pull it off, Marion Blakey and her friends decided that such talk was defeatist and shouldn't be considered. Besides, Lockheed-Martin contributed nicely to the appropriate politicians, so a politically appointed sort doesn't want to make waves, even if she is in a job involving air safety. Nevertheless, for people whose sole purpose in employment is air safety, to shrug off an objective report by one's own agency that indicates that a critical safety function is imperiled is, at least in my opinion, reckless and irresponsible in handling our money. If someone dies as a result, it may become criminal.

Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime

Nigeria has filed charges against the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, accusing it of carrying out improper trials for an anti-meningitis drug in 1996.

Families were urged to take their sick children to Kano's infectious diseases hospital to receive treatment.

This is where Pfizer was testing a new antibiotic, Trovan, which was given to some of the sick children.

About 200 children died and more developed deformities.

The Nigerian government says these were caused by Trovan and says Pfizer did not get authorisation before giving out the drug. It wants $7bn in compensation.

Pfizer denied this, says the trials were carried out according to local and international law and that Trovan helped save lives during the meningitis outbreak.

Trovan has since been licensed for use by adults in the US but not Nigeria.