Oak Park Newspaper

The Senate debate of the “Wall Street Reform Bill” (S. 3217) has started. Unfortunately, despite the length of this legislation, a major consumer safeguard is absent.

The single most important measure we can advance to protect consumers and taxpayers is embodied in an amendment drafted by Senator Charles Schumer. Senator Schumer’s amendment provides a facility to establish an independent non-governmental nonprofit Financial Consumers’ Association (FCA). FCA has broad support from leading consumer organizations.

Given the powerful influence of the financial industry over the legislative and regulatory processes, it is likely that consumers will continue to be short-changed unless Congress facilitates the creation of an independent, non-governmental organization to monitor the actions of financial corporations. A Financial Consumers’ Association would be voluntarily supported by membership dues. The members would elect a board of directors that could hire researchers, organizers, accountants and lawyers.

A Financial Consumers’ Associations could:

1. Represent consumer interests before regulatory agencies, legislative bodies, and the courts, and in negotiations with financial service providers;

2. Develop data that would provide consumers with the information they need to deal with financial institutions and provide a means of comparing the costs of financial services and products;

3. Address common consumer complaints regarding financial services;

4. Evaluate the performance of mortgage lenders;

5. Monitor the availability of financial services to less affluent and minority borrowers;

6. Advocate policies that will ensure reasonable access to credit for all consumers; and

7. Provide policymakers, consumers, workers, shareholders, taxpayers and the news media with timely information on the effects of financial industry and government initiatives.

It is time to give the millions of consumers and taxpayers who bear the brunt of Wall Street’s recklessness, avarice and crimes a chance to band together to watchdog the financial industry and the financial regulators.

For more information visit: http://wallstreetwatch.org

There are signs that some super-rich are revolting against their “wealth fraternity.” Last fall, mega-billionaire, Warren Buffet, traveled to Washington to meet with Democratic Senators and urge them to raise taxes on the wealthy like him. He pointedly said he pays at a lower rate than his secretary.

The liberal Senators were either bemused, or moved away from him as if he had a contagious disease. Buffett is not deterred. Earlier in this decade, he joined with a thousand other rich Americans led by lawyer William Gates, Sr. and Chuck Collins (founder of United For a Fair Economy) to successfully block the repeal of the estate tax (applied to 2% of wealthier decedents) by a Republican-controlled Congress.

Just last week, Mr. Gates, father of Microsoft’s Bill, Jr. launched an initiative campaign in Washington state to impose a progressive income tax on the wealthiest citizens (over $200,000 income) and roll back taxes on property and small business revenues. Initiative 1077 would net $1 billion a year for education and health care. Unlike most states, Washington has no state income tax at present. Any later downward expansion of such a tax would have to be decided by a vote of the people themselves, stipulates I-1077.

The “yes” on 1077 Initiative organizers have to collect 241,153 valid signatures by July 2 to get on the November ballot. This is a huge hurdle for a relatively small state, but when the super-rich are on board, the money will be there for the petitioners.

Last week, several megamillionaires held a conference call with reporters to express their desire for high taxes on people like them. “I would with pleasure sacrifice the income,” declared Jeffrey Hollander, CEO of Seventh Generation. Eric Schoenberg, possessing investment banking riches, bewailed his “absurdly low tax rates.”

According to the Washington Post, paper-mill heir Mike Lapham said that “We’re calling on other wealthy taxpayers to join us, send the message to Congress and President Obama that it’s time to roll back the tax cuts on upper-income taxpayers.” He was referring to the Bush-Cheney tax cuts which saved the then-White House rulers hundreds of thousands of dollars, personally, over the near decade of cuts. At the time, I requested Bush and Cheney have the decency to exempt themselves from their own tax cuts, but they declined.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll in March, a solid majority of Americans favor raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Then there is Dieter Lehmkuhl. Last October, he delivered to German Chancellor Angela Merkel a petition signed by 44 rich Germans urging a 5% wealth tax for two years to fund economic and social programs to aid Germany’s economic recovery. The petition asserted that “the path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice.”

Megabillionaires in our country are encountering their peers here and around the world to commit fifty percent of their estates to “good works.” They will grapple with the definition of “good works” as to whether that means charity or justice.

The difference is important. For example, soup kitchens are a necessary and human charity. Whereas justice goes to the causes of why rich economies have any hunger at all.

With some super-rich thinking about moving from soft philanthropy to advocacy, or to shifts of power, I hope my recent work of political imagination—“Only the Super-rich Can Save Us!” will spark their interest. Drawing on seventeen wealthy Americans in fictional roles, led by Warren Buffett and including George Soros, Yoko Ono, Bill Cosby, Ted Turner, Peter Lewis and others of an advanced age and broader perspectives, a massive, fast, well-funded campaign is launched in January 2006 to galvanize millions of Americans to restore their sovereignty over their government and the large corporations that have captured Washington, D.C.

One of the inspirations for this book was the history of the abolitionist movement against slavery—ably funded by rich Bostonians and New Yorkers—and the early civil rights movement in the Fifties and Sixties—significantly funded by rich people like the Stern and Currie families.

Justice movements need a lift, a shoehorn, resources to pay for organizers, facilities, transportation, litigation and media.

Today, with corporations able to amass trillions of dollars to advance harmful corporate interests, a small number of enlightened mega-rich elders putting their money and smarts behind broad redirections in our country supported by majorities can generate very compelling dynamics for a functioning democratic society.

If you want to see what I mean, just read my book (visit onlythesuperrich.org) and see if you agree with Leslie Stahl of CBS’ Sixty Minutes who read and found “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” “engrossing, creative and funny.” Leslie, I’ll take all three.

Dear President Obama, Senator Schumer and Senator Shelby:

On the eve of the portentous Senate debate over the extent to which the financial industry is to be so as to avert future megacollapses on the backs of taxpayers, workers and consumers, a great gap has been left unattended.

That gap pertains to the continued powerlessness of the investors and consumers—the people who bear the ultimate brunt of Wall Street’s recklessness, avarice and crimes and who have the greatest interest in strong regulatory enforcement.

Among all the amendments filed for the upcoming Senate debate, only amendment number 29, introduced by Senator Schumer, provides a facility to establish an independent non-governmental non-profit Financial Consumers’ Association (FCA).

Amendment 29 includes the following for funding this unique institution:

“…the financial industry has enjoyed virtually unlimited access to represent its interest before Congress, the courts, and State and Federal regulators, while financial services consumers have had limited representation before Congress and financial regulatory entities;” and

“…the Federal Government has a substantial interest in the creation of a public purpose, democratically controlled, self-funded, nationwide membership association of financial services consumers to enhance their representation and to effectively combat unsound financial practices.”

Anyone modestly familiar with the history of regulatory failures knows that the gross disparity of power and organized advocacy between big business and consumers outside of government leads to an absence of fair standards and law enforcement.

It also leads, as everyone knows, to massive taxpayer bailouts, subsidies and guarantees when these giant banks and other financial firms immolate themselves, after enriching their bosses, while engulfing tens of millions of innocent people in the subsequent economic conflagration.

Given all the privileges and costly rescues for culpable corporations that flow regularly from Washington, D.C., adopting ever so mildly the principle of reciprocity makes a powerful case for facilitating a nationwide Financial Consumers’ Association—one that would be composed of voluntary memberships by consumers who, through their annual dues, will sustain the FCA for an expert place at the table.

Senator Schumer, when he was a Congressman during the savings and loan bailout in the nineteen eighties, introduced such a proposal. But the bankers took the $150 billion bailout and blocked this reciprocal respect for depositors in the House Banking Committee.

Then Representative Schumer and his supporting colleagues on that Committee understood that without the supposed beneficiaries of regulatory authority being organized to make regulation and deterrence work, the Savings and Loan collapse could happen again. And so they became prophetic beyond their wildest nightmares.

Before he died in a plane crash in 2002, Senator Paul Wellstone recognized the need for such a facility, when he introduced the Consumer and Shareholder Protection Association Act.

A key enhancing feature in amendment 29 is a requirement that invitations to membership in the FCA be included in the billing envelopes or electronic communications of financial institutions with their customers. At no expense to these vendors, these notices would ensure that the maximum number of consumers are invited to join and fund such a democratically run, educational and advocacy organization.

In early 2009 I met with Chairman Christopher Dodd and explained the nature and importance of the FCA and Senator Schumer’s earlier role in advancing this civic innovation. He seemed receptive to the idea and urged us to have his colleague Senator Schumer take the lead, which he has done with amendment 29 just a few weeks ago. Senator Shelby and I have also discussed the FCA proposal.

The major valiant but overwhelmed consumer groups, who experience daily this enormous imbalance of power between corporations and consumers, presently stacked by unprecedented amounts of federal funds and bailout facilities for the misbehaving companies, support the creation of a self-funded FCA.

The Federal Government has long paid for facilities in the U.S. Department of Agriculture for agricultural businesses to band together and assess themselves to promote beef, corn, cotton and other commodities to increase their profits. By contrast the FCA, once launched, would be composed of consumers paying their own way to preserve their hard-earned savings from predatory financial speculators.

Allow one prediction. Even if the ultimate legislation comes out stronger than expected on such matters as derivatives, rating agencies, too big to fail, using depositor funds for speculation, and the consumer financial regulatory bureau, unless the consumer-investor is afforded modest facilities to band together with their experts and advocates, the laws will hardly be enforced with sufficient budgets, personnel and regulatory will power.

Give the consumer a modest round in this prolonged deliberation following the destructive events of 2008.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Within the burgeoning tonnage of business press—print and electronic—precious little has been written about the near zero interest paid on savings and money market accounts that total trillions of dollars.

The Federal Reserve periodically and proudly announces that it is determined to keep interest rates very low to help lending and the economic recovery.

As Washington’s most powerful regulator of money and interest rates, the Fed has the last word. The Fed’s budget comes from bank fees the Fed is really there to serve its banking patrons. Cheap money for the banks and steep interest rates for their borrowers means big profits for the banks.

Finally, a business columnist—a superior one at that—Floyd Norris of The New York Times has spoken up. He writes: “Aren’t low short-term interest rates wonderful? If you are a bank, the answer is yes….if you are a saver, however, your view might be different.”

Yes, savers of America, your prudence and loyalty to your friendly bank is being “rewarded” with interest rates that range from one-tenth to five-tenths of one percent! That’s less than half a cent per year on every $100 you deposit. I’ll leave it to you to figure what the banks charge to lend you money.

Mr. Norris has a way of driving his points home, to wit: “Chase, the retail operation of JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo were offering 0.05 percent…At that rate, if you wanted to put away enough to produce a retirement income of $50,000 a year, without touching the principal, you would need $100 million on deposit.”

Keep in mind, these and other large banks were bailed out for their reckless, avaricious behavior with your tax dollars. Some gratitude! Especially since the banks are now reporting roaring profits quarter after quarter on the backs of taxpayers and savers.

After putting “a large part of the blame for the mess…on bankers, who made the bad loans and invented all those strange securities that blew up,” Mr. Norris made his central point:

“Meanwhile, with little public attention, those consumers who acted responsibly, the ones who refrained from buying houses they could not afford and did not take out home equity loans to finance consumption, but instead saved their money for a rainy day, must feel like losers…..”

“And if they kept the money in cash, seeking to avoid all risk, this is their reward: 0.05 percent. Now does that sound fair? Of course not.”

This injustice is being felt every week day at the corner of Main and Elm Streets in Everytown U.S.A. Retirees and other Americans of very modest means, who once used interest income to pay some of their bills, now see their savings accounts getting little more than protection from robberies.

The finance bosses and their Washington servants have rigged the system against consumers. The bosses have the lobbyists and the campaign contributions. The small savers have neither.

The savers, however, vastly outnumber their gougers in votes, and their savings add up to quite a bundle of potential financial might. Current Federal Reserve figures put savings accounts at a total of $911 billion, not to mention money market deposit accounts totaling just under $3 trillion.

But without organization, the numbers and dollars of the savers don’t mean political power. How then to organize?

How about a little reciprocity for all the public monies and guarantees we have given to the banking industry? The financial reform legislation is about to reach the Senate floor. An amendment is ready to require banks to provide inserts or online notification inviting savers to band together and join a non-profit Financial Consumers’ Association (FCA) which these savers would fund through modest annual dues. Getting such an insert in your monthly bank statement reaches you when you are most attentive to such matters.

Based on returns with similar voluntary groups of residential utility consumers, several million savers would sign up to have full-time advocates—lawyers, economists, organizers and publicists—representing them before Congress, the regulatory agencies and the courts. Other benefits would include free advice and information to avert traps and reap better returns on savings.

Savers must have a seat at the table with skilled advocates to counteract the always present bankers.

Senator Chuck Schumer (Dem. NY) proposed this FCA back in 1985 during the savings and loan collapse. He supports it now, along, I hope, with Banking Committee Chairman Senator Chris Dodd.

But there are many amendments in the Senate debate starting next week. So let your Senator know you are supporting FCA and then let Senators Schumer and Dodd know that you want them to do likewise—now, without delay. (The Congressional telephone is 202-224-3121)

In the meantime, elevate your insistence that your local bank give more to local charities. It is the least the banks can do to compensate for paying you such low interest rates with cheap money.

The tragedy at the Massey Energy Company’s very profitable Upper Big Branch coal mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, which so far has cost 25 miners’ lives, is another reminder of the immense human and environmental cost of this fuel.

More coal miners have lost their lives from cave-ins, explosions and lung disease since 1900 than all the Americans who died in World War II. The devastation extends to chronic sickness from breathing coal dust and to maimed coal miners, often seen walking on crutches in the hollows of Appalachia.

During our struggle in the late sixties and seventies to get Congress to authorize the federal government to regulate these pugnacious corporations, and protect among the most defenseless workers in our country (try working 700 to 1800 feet underground six days a week), coal company executives perpetuated a culture tolerant of safety violations. Coal companies are known for greasing their way with political campaign contributions, gross underpayments of property taxes and intimidation of people in poor coal mining country who had few alternative employment opportunities.

Safety and health improvements finally came from the forces of the law (especially the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969) and from an awakened United Mine Workers union. The safety efforts have had to overcome industry lawyers, lobbyists, corporate cover-ups, refusals to pay fines and other misbehavior stemming from unaccountable corporate bosses sitting in fancy offices far from the coal fields.

Half of the nation’s coal companies were fined a modest total of $7 million under the first Bush Administration for faking coal dust samples in 847 underground mines. This is just a cost of doing business instead of a serious deterrent to an epidemic of deadly coal miners pneumoconiosis.

Until new leadership came under Joseph Main in 2009 to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Richard L. Trumka, former coal miner and head of the United States Mine Workers (UMW) union and now president of the AFL-CIO, said that George W. Bush converted “MSHA from an enforcement agency to a business consulting group” to King Coal.

With the sharp decline of UMW workers, as non-union strip-mining expands, studies have shown a consistently better safety record of unionized coal mines. The devastated Massey mine was non-union.

The media, which rushes to the scene of mining disasters while ignoring interim warning reports such as ours in 2008, knew who to interview. He was Massey’s defiant, outspoken, arrogant CEO Don Blankenship, whose Montcoal mine was cited by MSHA over 500 times in 2009-2010 for safety violations, including the kinds of violations suspected in the explosion on April 5th. Two citations came on the very day of the calamity. The paltry $1 million in fines covered more than 50 “unwarrantable failure” violations. Among the most serious were citations for problems with escape routes and air quality ventilation.

In 2006 another Massey mine, Aracoma Alma No. 1, was recommended for shutdown by a government inspector, who was over-ruled. The subsequent fatal fire killed two miners and led to a guilty plea for 10 criminal mine safety violations, a $2.5 million fine. Massey also paid the federal government $20 million to settle charges of violating water pollution controls in 2008.

J. Davitt McAteer, the former MSHA Administrator, called the Massey conglomerate “certainly one of the worst in the industry” from a safety standpoint. CEO Blankenship, of course, denies McAteer’s and other workers and inspectors’ assessments. “Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process. There are violations at every coal mine in America.”

Tell that to the grieving families, some of whom yelled at Blankenship while twelve protective police officers were whisking him away from the mine site.

People in West Virginia fear Blankenship not just because of his verbal belligerence, his intimidation of critics and workers, and his sway with campaign financed politicians and judges, but also because they believe he can get away with abuses of power, that he is beyond the reach of the law.

This time, however, the combative, anti-regulatory Blankenship is in a tight spot what with Massey’s stock dropping and his carefully cultivated image of tough guy sometime-philanthropist increasingly tarnished under a national media spotlight he cannot control or bully.

West Virginia law defines “involuntary manslaughter” as “the accidental causing of death of another person, although unintended, which death is the proximate result of negligence so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life.”

In the last month, MSHA has filed a dozen citations specifically alleging the mines failure to properly ventilate the lethal, highly volatile methane gas. That is why affected people are wondering whether any district attorneys will have the will and an adequate budget to charge Massey officials with “involuntary manslaughter”, should the findings of the completed investigation meet the statutory definition. For if Blankenship, who really should resign, has anything, he has a battalion of lawyers and accommodating judges with whom to fight back. Time will tell.

April 5, 2010

Why would Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, so mistreat and silence one of their top molecular biologists that a federal jury in Connecticut awarded her $1.37 million in damages last week?

The unraveling answer promises to tear open the curtain covering hazards confronting tens of thousands of scientists and assistants in corporate and university labs doing genetic engineering work with viruses and bacteria.

Becky McClain’s lawsuit against Pfizer claimed that the company’s sloppiness in 2002-03 exposed her to an engineered form of the lentivirus, a virus related to one that could lead to immune deficiencies. Pfizer denied any connection between its lab practices and Ms. McClain’s recurring paralysis and other illnesses.

Back and forth over three years came the scientist’s claims and Pfizer’s denials during which she had to leave her job amidst the increasing retaliatory behavior of her ten-year employer.

Pfizer is known for playing hardball and violating laws. Last year it had to pay the Justice Department one of the largest fines – half civil, half criminal – for illegal promotion of its drugs for unapproved uses. The fine -- $2.4 billion – avoided criminal charges and prosecution, either of the company or officials, and became just another cost of doing business.

Just last week, soon after buying Wyeth Labs for $68 billion, Pfizer’s CEO, Jeffrey B. Kindler, told a reporter for The New York Times that his company has “invented too few drugs and left its reputation in disrepair after two criminal cases.”

That record does not diminish Pfizer’s advantage over its imperiled lab workers, which is built on the absence of any available risk assessments, the very nature of possible latent, silent violence, and the cruel refusal to give afflicted employees their own exposure records on the grounds that they are company trade secrets.

Pfizer offered Ms. McClain a paltry sum with a gag order, which she promptly refused. She wanted her freedom of speech and her whistle-blowing rights under federal law. Her lawsuit was filed in 2006 in Hartford.

By dismissing the third count, which might be appealed, in her complaint alleging Pfizer’s wanton misconduct, U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant ruled that the plaintiff did not have available the evidence of causality and it was a worker’s compensation matter anyway. Herein started the chicken-egg problem. How could Ms. McClain obtain the evidence in order to prove her case when Pfizer said it was proprietary and secret?

The Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG), started by Harvard and MIT scientists, does not believe laboratory exposure records of workers should be trade secrets. Life, health and remedial rights should trump any such alleged, bizarre property right.

Becky McClain has already exhausted any remedies or assistance from the woeful Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This agency has been without any regulations or disclosure requirements about biohazards in laboratories. This inertness might change with the appointment of David Michaels to head OSHA, which should bring the agency closer to its mission of preventing or diminishing tens of thousands of fatalities and injuries each year.

Mr. Michaels told the Times that “new biological materials, nanomaterials, there are many things where we don’t have adequate information, and we think workers need to have protection.” He indicated that OSHA will take another look at the McClain case.

Both Jeremy Gruber, president of CRG, and Steve Zeltzer, chair of the California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day, believe the McClain case will lead to broader scrutiny of biologic laboratories, where research is expanding rapidly with heavy federal funding.

It is well known that workers in these labs are inhibited from speaking out, either inside or outside their workplace, for fear of losing their jobs. OSHA has long known that companies in old and new industries often do not come close to fully reporting cases of their injuries and sickness either to their insurers or to state or federal job safety agencies. Some have been found to keep two sets of books.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data are not at all comprehensive. Under-reporting can hide half or three-fourths of the actual traumatic injuries.

Mr. Zeltzer has denounced what he calls “the failure of top company officials to even report to OSHA and other government agencies that many workers were getting sick numerous times in their laboratories although this is required by the law.” He called on the US Attorney in Hartford to begin a criminal investigation. (see workersmemorialday.org)

As for Becky McClain, this is just the end of the beginning. She says she has lost her career, her health and her health insurance. But she recognizes her case is in the vanguard of many other cases and worker protests to come before enforceable and openly accessible standards and practices become the way of doing business for these labs.

For when it comes to developing materials that are inherently latent, subvisible forms of silent violence, business as usual can become cruel and unusual punishment for innocent, defenseless scientists, lab technicians and other workers.

Such is the weighty responsibility of David Michaels and the new managers of the long moribund, underfunded OSHA in the coming months.

March 29, 2010

A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops illusion.

One yardstick by which to measure the decay in our country’s political, economic, and cultural life, is the answer to this question: Do the forces of power, which have demonstrably failed, become stronger after their widely perceived damage is common knowledge?

Economic decay is all around. Poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, job export, consumer debt, pension attrition, and crumbling infrastructure are well documented. The self-destruction of the Wall Street financial giants, with their looting and draining of trillions of other people’s money, have been headlines for two years. During and after their gigantic taxpayer bailouts from Washington, DC, the banks, et al, are still the most powerful force in determining the nature of proposed corrective legislation.

“The banks own this place,” says Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), evoking the opinion of many members of a supine Congress ready to pass weak consumer and investor protection legislation while leaving dominant fewer and larger banks.

Who hasn’t felt the ripoffs and one-sided fine print of the credit card industry? A reform bill finally has passed after years of delay, again weak and incomplete. Shameless over their gouges, the companies have their attorneys already at work to design around the law’s modest strictures.

The drug and health insurance industry, swarming with thousands of lobbyists, got pretty much what they wanted in the new health law. Insurers got millions of new customers subsidized by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars with very little regulation. The drug companies got their dream—no reimportation of cheaper identical drugs, no authority for Uncle Sam to bargain for discount prices, and a very profitable extension of monopoly patent protection for biologic drugs against cheaper, generic drug competition.

For all their gouges, for all their exclusions, their denial of claims and restrictions of benefits, for all their horrendous price increases, the two industries have come out stronger than ever politically and economically. Small wonder their stocks are rising even in a recession.

The junk food processing industry—on the defensive lately due to some excellent documentaries and exposes—are still the most influential of powers on Capitol Hill when it becomes to delaying for years a decent food safety bill, using tax dollars to pump fat, sugar and salt into the stomachs of our children, and fighting adequate inspections. Over seven thousand lives are lost due to contaminated food yearly in the US and many millions of illnesses.

The oil, gas, coal and nuclear power companies are fleecing consumers and taxpayers, depleting and imperiling the environment, yet they continue to block rational energy legislation in Congress to replace carbon and uranium with energy efficiency technology and renewables.

Still, even now after years of cost over-runs and lack of permanent storage for radioactive wastes, the nuclear industry has President Obama, and George W. Bush before him, pushing for many tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer loan guarantees for new nukes. Wall Street won’t finance such a risky technology without you, the taxpayers, guaranteeing against any accident or default.

Both Democrats and Republicans are passing on these outrageous financial and safety risks to taxpayers.

Congress, which receives the brunt of this corporate lobbying—the carrot of money and the stick of financing incumbent challengers—is more of an obstacle to change than ever. In the past after major failures of industry and commerce, there was a higher likelihood of Congressional action. Recall, the Wall Street and banking collapse in the early 1930s. Congress and Franklin Delano Roosevelt produced legislation that saved the banks, peoples’ savings and regulated the stock markets.

From the time of my book, Unsafe at Any Speed’s publication in late November 1965, it took just nine months to federally regulate the powerful auto industry for safety and fuel efficiency.

Contrast the two-year delay after the Bear Stearns collapse and still no reform legislation, and what is pending is weak.

Yet the entrenched members of Congress, responsible for this astonishing gridlock, are almost impossible to dislodge even though polls have Congress at its lowest repute ever. It is a place where the majority is terrified of the corporations and the minority can block even the most anemic legislative efforts with archaic rules, especially in the Senate.

Culturally, the canaries in the coal mine are the children. Childhood has been commercialized by the giant marketers reaching them hour by hour with junk food, violent programming, video games and bad medicine. The result—record obesity, child diabetes and other ailments.

While the companies undermine parental authority, they laugh all the way to the bank, using our public airwaves, among other media, for their lucre. They can be called electronic child molesters.

We published a book in 1996 called Children First!: A Parent’s Guide to Fighting Corporate Predators in the Media. This book is an understatement of the problem compared to the worsening of child manipulation today.

In a 24/7 entertained society frenetic with sound bites, Blackberries, iPods, text messages and emails, there is a deep need for reflection and introspection. We have to discuss face to face in living rooms, school auditoriums, village squares and town meetings what is happening to us and our diminishing democratic processes by the pressures and controls of the insatiable corporate state.

And what needs to be done from the home to the public arenas and marketplaces with old and new superior models, new accountabilities and new thinking.

For our history has shown that whenever the people get more engaged and more serious, they live better on all fronts.