Corporate Manipulation Part 342,012

If, like me, you pay attention to what you put into your body, accept the premise that pesticides, heavy metals, offal as fertilizer, cannibalistic feeding practices, etc. are not good for the body, then you have a stake in removing the psychopathic "person by law," the corporation, from influencing government to ignore its primary mandate--protect the citizenry (human beings, not chartered organizations):

"Lobbying by large food companies to weaken organic rules started when the U.S. Department of Agriculture fully implemented organic labeling standards in October 2002. Food producers immediately fought the new rules. A Georgia chicken producer was ultimately able to persuade one of his state’s congressional representatives to slip through a federal legislative amendment in a 2003 appropriations bill to cut its costs. The amendment stated that if the price of organic feed was more than twice the cost of regular feed--which can contain heavy metals, pesticides, and animal byproducts--then livestock producers could feed their animals less costly, nonorganic feed but still label their products organic." -- from a Consumer Reports report

(the red font is my emphasis)

The law was ultimately repealed in April of 2003, but corporations continue to spend money in order to weaken organic standards.

Full Article (CR is a non-soliciting organization that depends on subscriptions to pay for research so this article might become unavailable after a time)

"The proposed changes, which require congressional approval, would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical — the current limit is 500 pounds — or if they store it onsite but claim to release ''zero'' amounts of the worst pollutants.

The chemicals involved include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain. Companies must report any storage of dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none are released."

Poison the world and make a buck. That's what corporations do best. These sorts of things, pollution, health, resource recovery are called "externalities." Someone else pays and so the bottom line increases. In this case, all of us pay through less healthy environment, which in turn increases health costs.

This hasn't gone before the congress. Let your reps know it's not acceptable.

The Whole Article

Gold Mountain, River of Waste

"With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes."

Capitalism on the March!

Profane Purchase

"I believe in Christ, and I don't like the use of 'xmas' or the use of 'happy holidays,"' said Steven Van Noy, 39, as he left the store loaded down with packages. "The bottom line is that they had what I needed at Wal-Mart, so I went to Wal-Mart to buy it." -- Walmart Shopper and self-proclaimed Christian, Steven Van Noy, from AP article by Tom Chorneau, "Group Fights Wal-Mart on 'Happy Holidays"

The demonstrators adamantly insist they believe in Christ, but to believe demands one strive to live like Christ, to adhere to His teachings. Where in Christ's teachings can one find a call to ravenous consumerism? Where is there an admonishment to ignore the treatment of the less fortunate when it conflicts with the ease of shopping or the low price of purchases?

Demonstrating against entities that have completely eviserated the spiritual celebration of Christ's birth and replaced it with gluttony and avarice merely because these entities aren't using "Merry Christmas" in their advertising is indicative of spiritual bankruptcy. As long as Wal-Mart (or any other purveyor) has what one "needs," Christmas will remain uncelebrated regardless of what the famous greeter says when one enters his new temple.

High Above

Been invited to ski into a hut at 8400 ft for New Years Eve. It's about 14 miles into the mountains, and I am not sure I have the stamina necessary to make the trip, but the thought of being that far up and that far away sounds exciting so I'll probably accept.

In other news:

Globalization not the answer to poverty? WP Story

Duped Again

According to a poll taken in 2002 by Wirthlin Worldwide, ostensibly commissioned by the American Medical Assoc., revealed that "71 percent of Americans agree that a main reason health care costs are rising is because of medical liability lawsuits."

Obviously, the serfs are being duped yet again.

What the serfs don't know is that, according to John Hopkins University,

“There is a popular misconception that we pay much more for health care in the United States compared to European and other industrialized countries because malpractice claims drive up costs and there are waiting lists in most other countries,” said Gerard Anderson, who led the study.

“But what we found is that we pay more for health care for the simple reason that prices for health services are significantly higher in the United States than they are elsewhere,” he added in a statement.
Anderson also stated, “We have less access to most health services and higher costs associated with malpractice insurance have only a marginal effect on overall health spending.”

Also from the study:

- Americans spent $5,267 per capita for health care, $1,821 more than the next-highest spender, Switzerland.

- “Compared with other countries, the U.S. lags on such quality indicators as access to care, including waiting times for physician appointments. In the U.S., inequities persist between higher and lower income patients on almost every measure we look at, while other countries are able to assure access to care without creating disparities among patients according to income.”

- The study also found no evidence that U.S. citizens spend more for health care because they get more services.

- It found that Americans have less access to some services, such as hospital beds, time with doctors, nurses, magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, and computed tomography (CT) scans than citizens of other developed nations.

Reverse Robin Hood

From the Springfield News:

We Can Cut Deficit Without Sticking It to Kids, Poor Folks



The federal government will borrow $4 million in the time it takes you to read this opinion piece. Congress and the president have proposed a 2006 budget, which will mean borrowing $1.4 billion a day.Until the last month, the White House and Republican-led Congress have shown little interest in this problem. In fact, Vice President Cheney famously said, “deficits don’t matter.”I think they do. We are saddling our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt, which averages to about $24,000 each, as of today.

This week the House will debate and vote on a “budget reconciliation bill” that purports to cut $53.9 billion in spending over 5 years — about 2 percent of the projected deficit. The cuts will fall heavily on low-income and middle-class families. The biggest cuts are in student loans ($14.3 billion) and Medicaid ($11.9 billion). It also mandates reductions in school lunch, foster care, long-term care and child-support enforcement, among other items.

Spending restraint is admirable, but the $50 billion in cuts proposed by the Republican Congress will be offset by a companion bill that extends tax cuts to heavily favor the top 1 percent (those who earn more than $300,000 annual income), at a cost of $70 billion over the same time period. The White House says the tax cuts will trickle down to create increased investment, job creation and eventually cut the deficit. But real-world experience shows that the spending cuts along with the tax cuts will actually add $20 billion to the federal deficit.

There are better and bigger cuts that can be made to the federal budget, but they would inevitably be opposed by the powerful special interests who seem to dominate Washington these days: cut corporate farm subsidies and subsidies to farmers with over $100,000-per-year income, saving $25 billion; cancel the fanciful and defective “Star Wars” system and the Cold War-era F-22 fighter jet, saving a total of $60 billion; cancel the manned return-to-the-moon mission, saving $50 billion; reduce corporate subsidies in the new Medicare prescription drug program, saving $10 billion; reduce the number of consultants employed by the federal government by 150,000, saving $33 billion; and a planned end to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, redeployment of some troops to Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and bringing the rest of the troops home, which would save at least $50 billion a year.

Spending cuts for those few programs total almost five times the cuts proposed in the Republican-proposed “budget reconciliation,” without hitting struggling families.

But even the deepest cuts will not get the budget back to balance. If we eliminated all federal programs — agriculture, education, centers for disease control, federal courts, prisons, the IRS, etc. — except some Homeland Security agencies and the Department of Defense, we would still have a deficit. We simply cannot continue to finance tax cuts for big corporations and the top 1 percent (those who earn over $300,000 a year in income) with borrowed money. It’s time they begin to shoulder some of the load carried by America’s working families and retirees.

Instead of extending new tax cuts for earners over $300,000, restore the rates they paid during the booming 1990s. That would reduce the projected deficit by $327 billion in five short years. If we restricted offshore tax shelters we could reduce the deficit at least another $33 billion. If we reinstated the superfund tax so polluters paid to clean up their own messes, we could drop it another $10 billion. Limiting the estate tax exemption to $6 million and progressively taxing larger estates could cut the deficit by $31 billion a year.

If my proposals were adopted we would reduce the projected deficit by more than half a trillion dollars over five years. It doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but it doesn’t complicate the problem like the “budget reconciliation” does by adding $20 billion to the deficit. Better yet, it wouldn’t cut a single student’s college loan, reduce school lunches for hungry kids nor burden states with more Medicaid costs.

Federal budgets are about priorities and tough choices. This week, the priorities of the White House and Republican leadership in the House of Representatives are clear for all to see as they try to ram through a bill that will hurt working families while protecting elite, wealthy special interests.



Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat and member of Congress, lives in the Thurston area of Springfield with his family and his famous Dodge Dart.