Category Archives: Corporate Greed

Industry Study Withheld Data on Carcinogen: Report

Posted on March 2, 2006 by bfiacarolinevernon

   Industry Study Withheld Data on Carcinogen: Report by Deborah Zabarenko Published by Reuters.com   Workplace watchdogs and industry advocates agree: too much hexavalent chromium — the same chemical at the heart of the movie “Erin Brockovich” — puts people … Continue reading →

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New Bankruptcy Law Fails; Vast Majority Can’t Repay Debts

Posted on February 23, 2006 by bfialindathieman

 New Bankruptcy Law Fails; Vast Majority Can't Repay Debts

Hastings Group

At the time that Congress passed the infamous bankruptcy law, Chuck Grassley said the bankruptcy changes would clean up “a convenient financial planning tool where deadbeats can get out of paying their debt scott-free.”

NACBA Analysis of More than 60,000 Consumers Processed Under New Law Asks:  “Where Are the Deadbeats” Congress Expected to Find and Stop With Onerous Rule Changes?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The first analysis of tens of thousands of consumers seeking protection since a new federal bankruptcy law went into effect last October concludes that the changes put in place by Congress are not working as intended.  The report by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) finds that of the 61,355 consumers seen so far by credit counseling firms – the required first stop under the new bankruptcy law – nearly all (97 percent) are unable to repay any debts and that four out of five would-be filers (79 percent) were forced into dire financial straits by circumstances beyond their control, such as the loss of a job, catastrophic medical expenses or the death of a spouse.

Entitled “Bankruptcy Reform's Impact: Where Are All the Deadbeats?,” the NACBA analysis is based on data provided by a cross-section of six large and small credit counseling firms that have been authorized by the U.S. Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Trustees to provide bankruptcy screening.  The credit counseling firms responding to the NACBA survey were:  Money Management International (Houston, TX), GreenPath Inc. (Farmington Hills, MI), Springboard Nonprofit Consumer Credit Management (Riverside, CA), Hummingbird (Raleigh, NC), Institute for Financial Literacy (Portland, ME) and ByDesign Financial Solutions (Los Angeles, CA).  

Brad Botes, executive director, National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, said:  “Contrary to the claims of proponents of bankruptcy law changes that they would zero in on the alleged legions of 'deadbeats' who supposedly were crippling the U.S. economy with 'billions of dollars in losses associated with profligate and abusive bankruptcy filings,' the federal bankruptcy law changes that went into effect on October 17, 2005 are doing no measurable good whatsoever.  Instead, they have put new hurdles in the path of people who are already flat on their back due to financial crises over which they have no control, such as the loss of a job, catastrophic health care bills, and so on.”

Botes noted that bankruptcy filings are down because many Americans may mistakenly believe that the courthouse doors are barred to them.   The NACBA executive director said, “Credit counseling organizations now know what bankruptcy lawyers and other experts said all along: Congress got it dead wrong when it passed the bankruptcy law.  Even though the process is now more cumbersome, time consuming and expensive than before, consumers who need help should still seek out a bankruptcy attorney to explore their options and figure out how to navigate this trickier and more confusing process.”

John Rao, attorney, National Consumer Law Center, said: “Bankruptcy judges, attorneys, academic researchers and others warned Congress that the bankruptcy filing rate was a 'symptom' and not the 'disease' itself.  So long as people lose their jobs, have uninsured medical problems, and face other catastrophic circumstances, they will need the protection of the bankruptcy system. This data is evidence of that. All Congress has succeeded in doing with the new law is to delay and drive up the cost of bankruptcy protection for those who desperately need it.”
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Report on Health Care Lobby Day in Des Moines

Posted on February 16, 2006 by bfiacarolinevernon

   Report on Health Care Lobby Day in Des Moines by Caroline Vernoncontributions by Karen Metcalf On February 7th, many health care advocates from across the state came together in association with Democracy For America, Democracy For Iowa and Iowa … Continue reading →

Posted in Calls to Action, Corporate Greed, DFQC, Health Care & Medicare, How You Can Help, Iowa in the News, Local Events, Main Page, Progressive Community | Comments Off on Report on Health Care Lobby Day in Des Moines

This Week In Media

Posted on February 13, 2006 by bfiaarronwings

 This Week in Media  PATV.TV You Don't Know What You Got Til' It's Gone… Public Access Television is facing a number of battles in the House and Senate.  Today, February 13, is the last day for submitting your concerns to the … Continue reading →

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ETHICS HALL OF SHAME

Posted on February 10, 2006 by bfiacarolinevernon

    ETHICS HALL OF SHAME From publiccitizen.orgAn unprecedented wave of corruption, cronyism and special-interest sleaze has gripped our nation’s capital in recent years. To bring greater public attention to the individuals involved in these ethics scandals – in the hope … Continue reading →

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This Week in Media

Posted on February 6, 2006 by bfiaarronwings

 It is a Movement By Steve Macek & Mitchell Szczepanczyk, Zmag.org “The media business,” they used to say, “was a license to print money,” wrote the TV trade journal Broadcasting and Cable in 2001. As media mogul Barry Diller put … Continue reading →

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Big Media Has Big Plans for Privatizing the Internet

Posted on February 6, 2006 by Trish Nelson

  Big Media Has Big Plans for Privatizing the Internet The Nation   by Jeff Chester   The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet … Continue reading →

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EPA SAYS ALL IS FORGIVEN FOR SOME ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATIORS’ AIR POLLUTION SINS

Posted on February 5, 2006 by bfiamollyreagan

EPA SAYS ALL IS FORGIVEN FOR SOME ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATIORS' AIR POLLUTION SINS This week's IOWA Public TV program “Market To Market” just reported: “In what's being hailed as a major step forward, the US Environmental Protection Agency kicked off … Continue reading →

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Reprocessing Is Not the “Solution” to the Nuclear Waste Problem

Posted on February 1, 2006 by bfiacarolinevernon

  Reprocessing Is Not the “Solution”
to the Nuclear Waste Problem

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

This program is central to the Bush administration’s efforts to jump-start the moribund nuclear power industry.

Statement of Mary Olson, NIRS Campaign to Stop Reprocessing. Director of NIRS southeast office:

“[George W.] Bush’s misguided obsession with nuclear power has reached a critical and dangerous juncture. The administration has been desperate to find a nuclear waste solution in order to resuscitate the moribund and unpopular nuclear power industry by moving forward quickly on the scientifically-flawed Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada. Instead it has found itself spinning its wheels in the mire of Yucca Mountain’s geologic instability and the scandal of covering up these data. Faced with an industry impatient to move its on-site waste, the administration is now clutching at a new nuclear straw.”

“Its latest scheme is reprocessing of irradiated commercial fuel, one of the dirtiest and most proliferation-vulnerable processes in the nuclear fuel chain. Abandoned in this country for more than 30 years, countries where it has been done – including Britain, France and Russia – are now reaping its hideous environmental legacy of contamination and disease.”

“The price tag in dollars – as well as in health impacts – will be enormous if this country is allowed to venture back down the reprocessing road. The only U.S. commercial reprocessing site ever to operate – in West Valley, New York – is projected to cost more than $5 billion to clean up despite reprocessing only a fraction of the waste sent there between 1966 and 1972. Now Congress has awarded the U.S. Department of Energy $50 million of our money to set this debacle in motion once again although the totals are likely to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

“The existing nuclear reactors around the globe are already sitting-duck terrorist targets. Separating plutonium from nuclear power waste fuel – as reprocessing does – simply sets up new and inviting opportunities for terrorists to seize fissile, bomb-capable materials.  Support for a reprocessing program makes a mockery of statements coming out of this administration that protecting the American people from terrorism is paramount.  Instead, it will put more Americans in harm’s way.”

Reprocessing Is Not the “Solution” to the Nuclear Waste Problem

The Radioactive Waste Burden

Splitting atoms to make electricity has created an enormous problem: waste containing 95% of the toxic radioactivity produced during the Atomic Age. Nuclear weapons production, industrial activity, research and medicine combined, create only 5% of this problem.
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Most Offspring Died When Mother Rats Ate GM Soy Diet

Posted on January 27, 2006 by bfialindathieman

Most Offspring Died When Mother Rats Ate GM Soy Diet

By Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception

The Russian scientist planned a simple experiment to see if eating genetically modified (GM) soy might influence offspring. What she got, however, was an astounding result that may threaten a multi-billion dollar industry.

Irina Ermakova, a leading scientist at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), added GM soy flour (5-7 grams) to the diet of female rats. Other females were fed non-GM soy or no soy at all. The experimental diet began two weeks before the rats conceived and continued through pregnancy and nursing.

Ermakova's first surprise came when her pregnant rats started giving birth. Some pups from GM-fed mothers were quite a bit smaller. After 2 weeks, 36% of them weighed less than 20 grams compared to about 6% from the other groups.

But the real shock came when the rats started dying. Within three weeks, 25 of the 45 (55.6%) rats from the GM soy group died compared to only 3 of 33 (9%) from the non-GM soy group and 3 of 44 (6.8%) from the non-soy controls.

Ermakova preserved several major organs from the mother rats and offspring, drew up designs for a detailed organ analysis, created plans to repeat and expand the feeding trial, and promptly ran out of research money. The $70,000 needed was not expected to arrive for a year. Therefore, when she was invited to present her research at a symposium organized by the National Association for Genetic Security, Ermakova wrote 'PRELIMINARY STUDIES' on the top of her paper. She presented it on October 10, 2005 at a session devoted to the risks of GM food.

Her findings are hardly welcome by an industry already steeped in controversy.

GM Soy's Divisive Past

The soy she was testing was Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety. Its DNA has bacterial genes added that allow the soy plant to survive applications of Monsanto's 'Roundup' brand herbicide. About 85% of the soy grown in the US is Roundup Ready. Since soy derivatives, including oil, flour and lecithin, are found in the majority of processed foods sold in the US, many Americans eat ingredients derived from Roundup Ready soy everyday.

The FDA does not require any safety tests on genetically modified foods. If Monsanto or other biotech companies declare their foods safe, the agency has no further questions. The rationale for this hands-off position is a sentence in the FDA's 1992 policy that states, “The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.”[1] The statement, it turns out, was deceptive. Documents made public from a lawsuit years later revealed that the FDA's own experts agreed that GM foods are different and might lead to hard-to-detect allergens, toxins, new diseases or nutritional problems. They had urged their superiors to require long-term safety studies, but were ignored. The person in charge of FDA policy was, conveniently, Monsanto's former attorney (and later their vice president). One FDA microbiologist described the GM food policy as “just a political document” without scientific basis, and warned that industry would “not do the tests that they would normally do” since the FDA didn't require any.[2] He was correct.

There have been less than 20 published, peer-reviewed animal feeding safety studies and no human clinical trials' in spite of the fact that millions of people eat GM soy, corn, cotton, or canola daily. There are no adequate tests on “biochemistry, immunology, tissue pathology, gut function, liver function and kidney function,”[3] and animal feeding studies are too short to adequately test for cancer, reproductive problems, or effects in the next generation. This makes Ermakova's research particularly significant. It's the first of its kind.

Past Studies Show Significant Effects

Other studies on Roundup Ready soy also raise serious questions. Research on the liver, the body's major de-toxifier, showed that rats fed GM soy developed misshapen nuclei and other cellular anomalies.[4] This indicates increased metabolic activity, probably resulting from a major insult to that organ. Rats also showed changes in the pancreas, including a huge drop in the production of a major enzyme (alpha-amylase),[5] which could inhibit digestion. Cooked GM soy contains about twice the amount of soy lectin, which can also block nutrient assimilation.[6] And one study showed that GM soy has 12-14% less isoflavones, which are touted as cancer fighting.[7]
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