Tag: corruption

Reading Around on January 26th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading January 26th from 10:22 to 22:31:

  • The Washington Monthly – This Explains a Lot– “On the one hand, the Bush administration released some detainees who apparently turned out to be pretty dangerous. On the other, the Bush administration refused to release other detainees who weren’t dangerous at all, and were actually U.S. allies.How could this happen? In light of these revelations about the lack of files, it starts to make a lot more sense.But to put this in an even larger context, consider just how big a mess Bush has left for Obama here. The previous administration a) tortured detainees, making it harder to prosecute dangerous terrorists; b) released bad guys while detaining good guys; and c) neglected to keep comprehensive files on possible terrorists who’ve been in U.S. custody for several years. As if the fiasco at Gitmo weren’t hard enough to clean up.”
  • The three primary roles your local website should play | yelvington.com– “Journalists tend to gravitate to only one of these roles: the town crier, the quaint colonial-era village character who walks around ringing a bell telling you what’s happening. It comes naturally. This is why 24×7 coverage teams and the “continuous news desk” concept take root so quickly when newsrooms suddenly awaken to the urgency of taking the Internet seriously.
  • But the other roles aren’t secondary. They’re coequal, and they’re grossly neglected by most local news websites.Moreover, they consistently surface in qualitative research as poorly met needs. The language people use is a little different, but recognizable: “Help me connect with people.” “Help me get answers I need.” “Help me find people like me.” “Help me pursue my interests.”
  • drop.io: simple private file sharing, free internet file sharing – Hmm, seems useful
    “Use drop.io to create drops and privately share your files by web, email, phone, fax, and more. Drops are protected from search engines so you can conveniently share what you want, how you want, with whom you want.”
  • Undercover Black Man: Bad news for David Milch fans– “Now I hear that HBO has pulled the plug on Milch’s latest project, a New York City cop drama set in the 1970s called “Last of the Ninth.”They filmed a pilot episode… with British actor Ray Winstone (pictured) as one of the leads. Evidently HBO was not digging it.That’s a show I wanted to see. Since the ’90s, Milch has talked about creating a series based on Bill Clark’s early career in the NYPD.

    Clark spent two years undercover as a white radical. He hung out with Black Panthers (including Tupac’s mama).”

  • Food Is A Weapon
  • Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Errol Morris Blog – NYTimes.com– Awesome! “Photographs make this somewhat more difficult. They are a partial record of who we were and how we imagined ourselves. …The traveling pool of press photographers that follows presidents includes representatives from three wire services — AP (The Associated Press), AFP (Agence France-Presse) and Thomson Reuters. During the last week of the Bush administration, I asked the head photo editors of these news services — Vincent Amalvy (AFP), Santiago Lyon (AP) and Jim Bourg (Reuters) — to pick the photographs of the president that they believe captured the character of the man and of his administration. …. It is interesting that these pictures are different. They may be of the same scene, but they have different content. They speak in a different way.(The photos are reproduced here with their original captions, unedited.)”
  • Tijuana Bibles– “If you are offended by depictions of sodomy, bestiality, “alternative sexual practices,” racial and ethnic stereotypes, or just about anything else, you should leave now.Tijuana Bibles were pornographic tracts popular in America before the advent of mass-market full-color glossy wank-fodder such as Playboy. A typical bible consisted of eight stapled comic-strip frames portraying characters and celebrities (eg. John Dillinger, Popeye, Disney characters) in wildly sodomistic situations. Many could be considered grossly racist, sexist, and otherwise wholly “politically incorrect.” Browser discretion is advised.”

Danny Davis Asked Feds to Prop Up National Bank of Commerce

Seth Anderson2 Comments

My Moony-loving Congressman, Danny Davis1, is in a wee bit of controversy himself.

Reserved Light

Two Illinois congressmen urged the Treasury in October to avoid taking any regulatory action against a struggling bank in their state, illustrating the aggressive efforts some politicians are taking to help hometown lenders during the bank crisis.

In a letter they sent, Democratic Reps. Danny K. Davis and Luis Gutierrez also asked government officials to provide financial aid to National Bank of Commerce, based in the Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Ill. (Read the letter.)

Democratic Reps. Danny Davis and Luis Gutierrez wrote Treasury in late October asking the government to help a struggling bank in their state and halt any regulatory action against the lender. Read the letter.

Regulators rebuffed the request, and the two-branch bank failed on Jan. 16.

Lawmakers often seek to help home-state interests, and there is nothing illegal about forwarding requests to regulators and other government officials. But legislators normally stop short of action that might appear to be interfering in the way regulators examine and supervise banks, a process that is supposed to be impartial.

[From Politicians Asked Feds to Prop Up Ailing Bank – WSJ.com] [non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

Too early too ascertain if this is a real scandal, or simply trumped up gossip the Rupert Murdoch version of the Wall Street Journal likes so much. We shall see.

Footnotes:
  1. see also an archived portion of an article from Rich Miller’s essential Capitol Fax Blog [↩]

EPA veils hazardous substances

Seth Anderson0 comment

Oh, just lovely. Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger write:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency routinely allows companies to keep new information about their chemicals secret, including compounds that have been shown to cause cancer and respiratory problems, the Journal Sentinel has found.

The newspaper examined more than 2,000 filings in the EPA’s registry of dangerous chemicals for the past three years. In more than half the cases, the EPA agreed to keep the chemical name a secret. In hundreds of other cases, it allowed the company filing the report to keep its name and address confidential.

This is despite a federal law calling for public notice of any new information through the EPA’s program monitoring chemicals that pose substantial risk. The whole idea of the program is to warn the public of newfound dangers.

The EPA’s rules are supposed to allow confidentiality only “under very limited circumstances.”

Legal experts and environmental advocates say the practice of “sanitizing,” or blacking out, this information not only strips vital information from the public, it violates the agency’s own law.

Section 14 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the foundation for all the EPA’s toxic and chemical regulations, stipulates that chemical producers may not be granted confidentiality when it comes to health and safety data.

“The EPA has chosen to ignore that,” said Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin.

The newspaper’s findings are just the latest example of how EPA administrators more often than not put company interests above the needs of consumers.

[Click to continue reading EPA veils hazardous substances – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online]

not really news, just further confirmation that the EPA hates humanity.

Enron Example Continues

swanksalot0 comment

Frank Rich notes how pervasive the lessons of Enron actually were, to Wall Street and the business class, contrasted to Blagojevich’s politics for cash crimes.

But the entertainment is escapist only up to a point. What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

…

As our outgoing president passes the buck for his failures — all that bad intelligence — so do leaders in the private and public sectors who enabled the economic debacle. Gramm has put the blame for the subprime fiasco on “predatory borrowers.” Rubin has blamed a “perfect storm” of economic factors, as has Sam Zell, the magnate who bought and maimed the Tribune newspapers in a highly leveraged financial stunt that led to a bankruptcy filing last week. Donald Trump has invoked a standard “act of God” clause to avoid paying a $40 million construction loan on his huge new project in Chicago.

After a while they all start to sound like O. J. Simpson, who when at last held accountable for some of his behavior told a Las Vegas judge this month, “In no way did I mean to hurt anybody.” Or perhaps they are channeling Donald Rumsfeld, whose famous excuse for his failure to secure post-invasion Iraq, “Stuff happens,” could be the epitaph of our age.

[From Frank Rich – Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich – Editorial – NYTimes.com]

Wait, what? Trump is weaseling out of a construction loan? First I’d heard of that.

and this is how history will judge Still-President Bush, as a Forest Gump figure, without the redeeming sweetness:

Bush had arrived in Washington vowing to inaugurate a new, post-Clinton era of “personal responsibility” in which “people are accountable for their actions.” Eight years later he holds himself accountable for nothing. In his recent exit interview with Charles Gibson, he presented himself as a passive witness to disastrous events, the Forrest Gump of his own White House.

Continue reading

Illinois Corruption

Seth Anderson0 comment

I wonder if the media obsession with Illinois being corrupt has anything to do with the President-elect? Ya think? Because Illinois is no more (or less) corrupt than other states. Politics is a dirty, full-contact sport, and the lure of power and money lead politicians to do many questionable things, some of which are illegal, and some of which they get caught doing.

How many times does the rest of the world need to be reminded that three of our last seven governors went to prison or that at least 79 of our elected officials have been convicted since 1972? Yes, there was a time when it was a very big deal that an entire year had passed without a Chicago alderman going to jail. Do we have to trot that out every couple of weeks?

It was refreshing, then, to learn that USA Today had done some original reporting on the subject and determined that Illinois is not, in fact, the most corrupt place on the planet or even in the United States. That distinction belongs to North Dakota.

That’s right, governor—North bleeping Dakota. Illinois is No. 18.

If you visit the USAToday.com Web site, you’ll find a nifty little interactive map that allows you to roll your cursor over any state and see how many public officials have been convicted of corruption there since 1998. The map is color coded, based on badness, and Illinois isn’t even one of the dark blue ones. Based on an analysis of Justice Department statistics, North Dakota (population 639,715) had 8.3 federal corruption convictions per 100,000 residents; Illinois (population 12.9 million) had 3.9.

[From We’re No. 18 — chicagotribune.com]

Since even the new-look Chicago Tribune refuses to link to other news sources, the USA Today article reads:

On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Department of Justice statistics.

Louisiana, Alaska and North Dakota all fared worse than the Land of Lincoln in that analysis.

Alaska narrowly ousted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens in the election in November after he was convicted of not reporting gifts from wealthy friends. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. William Jefferson was indicted in 2007 on racketeering and bribery charges after the FBI said it found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer. Jefferson, who has maintained his innocence and will soon go to trial, lost his seat to a Republican this year.

Blagojevich a Sociopath

Seth Anderson0 comment

Since I’ve already quoted this line a couple of times already, and even sent it to my mom, I should set it down here, in my publicly available scrapbook1


[photo by Brian Kersey]

Anyway, Eric Zorn remembers a fairly recent article about our sociopathic gov in the Chicago Magazine:

In a profile of Blagojevich in last February’s Chicago Magazine, writer David Bernstein reported:

Privately, a few people who know the governor describe him as a “sociopath,” and they insist they’re not using hyperbole. State representative Joe Lyons, a fellow Democrat from Chicago, told reporters that Blagojevich was a “madman” and “insane.”

That struck me at the time, as over the top. Today it strikes me as brave and prescient.

If these allegations are true, Blagojevich is not just sleazy and venal, he’s also recklessly compulsive. But an allegedly recklessly compulsive sociopath cannot and does not act alone — his abetters and enablers included his major donors and his advisers. They, too, should be called to account.

[From `Staggering’ allegations, even by Illinois standards | Eric Zorn’s Change of Subject]

Footnotes:
  1. is that what a blog is? I still have yet to come up with a good explanation of what it is I am attempting here [↩]

Blago in Handcuffs, and All I Got Was This Lousy Newspaper

Seth Anderson0 comment

There does seem to be some sort of connection, in spirit, if not in wiretap goods, between Blagojevich and Zell. I’m not the only one to notice it:

Las Vegas Showgirls

But really, you know Blagojevich moved into an entirely different realm of awful when, as the Chicago Tribune reported in early November, his people called Tribune owner Sam Zell and demanded the firing of editorial board members in return for assistance in selling the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs.

…

There was no possibility of jeopardizing Fitzgerald’s investigation, because this story didn’t need it; the wiretap wasn’t involved: Blagojevich called them! The Tribune could have and should have run the story of Blagojevich’s call to Tribune Tower in 200 point type. They should have printed it in Rod’s own blood. They would have brought down a sitting governor the same week that they were trumpeting the win of Obama. They would have pushed the Tribune’s brand into the stratosphere, at just the time that it needed it.

But they didn’t. Faced with a defining moment in journalism–this was the kind of story that we would have taught in journalism schools for years–Sam Zell decided not to do the right thing. It’s not surprising–the guy is a waxed mustache away from tying a damsel in distress to a railroad track after all–but it’s still a shock.

When you walk into the lobby of the Tribune Tower, you’re dwarfed by the etched words of legends. They speak of the importance of journalism for a functioning democracy; of the imperative to speak truth to power. One, from Thomas Jefferson himself, reads “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that can not be limited without being lost.”

That lobby is for sale now. Zell wants to turn the building into condos.

[From Daniel Sinker: My Governor Got Lead Away in Handcuffs, and All I Got Was This Lousy Newspaper]

So why did the Chicago Tribune hold off on the story?

think about this: You’re a newspaper. The governor of your state–a governor who has had the stink of corruption on him for years–has his people call you up and directly state that they’ll help you out if you fire members of your editorial board. It is a phone conversation that not only wipes its ass on the ethical lines it crosses, it also treats the First Amendment like it’s optional. And you don’t report it? Why?

There’s only one reason: Zell was entertaining the offer.

Rod The Paler

Seth Anderson0 comment

I’m sure Governor Blah Blah feels like there’s a spike in his gut after the transcript of the Criminal Complaint (PDF) gets read by the public.1

One person it most likely won’t affect is Obama himself, who appears to have been inadvertently cleared by Blagojevich. The Democrat was allegedly captured on a wiretap in multiple conversations in which he discussed an Obama advisor he believed the president-elect wanted appointed. But Blagojevich said he wasn’t willing to do that without some benefit for himself.

“I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there,” Blagojevich said in one conversation, according to the complaint. Elsewhere, the complaint reads:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.”

The next day, according to the complaint, Blagojevich allegedly said, “he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but ‘they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.’“

[From Rod Blagojevich has had better days – War Room – Salon.com]

Impeachment proceedings? Sure, where do I sign.

The Senate Candidates are not names, but there are clues as to their identity:

Unsurprisingly, since this investigation is in U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s district, and since he’s known for this sort of thing, multiple contenders for Obama’s seat are named as “Senate Candidate 1,” “Senate Candidate 2” and so on. It’s hard to say for sure who any of these candidates are, but as with any good blind item, there are plenty of hints. Senate Candidate 1, for instance, appears to be Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. And based on the complaint’s discussion of a deliberate leak from the Blagojevich administration to a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, it appears that Senate Candidate 2 is Lisa Madigan, the state’s attorney general.

It’s Senate Candidate 5, though, who might end up being the most interesting contender, because of this passage from this complaint:

In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: “We were approached ‘pay to play.’ That, you know, he’d raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator.”

Another passage gives a hint as to the identify of Senate Candidate 5:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated he was “elevating” Senate Candidate 5 on the list of candidates for the open Senate seat. ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided ROD BLAGOJEVICH with something “tangible up front.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH noted he was going to meet with Senate Candidate 5 in the next few days.

One intriguing possibility? Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who met with Blagojevich about the job just yesterday.

Except that the Sun-Times columnist is probably Sneed, who wrote:

Sneed hears Gov. Blago, who will choose Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate, privately feels there may be only one choice that makes sense: His buddy, outgoing Senate President Emil Jones.

• • To wit: Jones is this/close to Blago, who may pay his pal back for being such a staunch ally. Jones would also be a strong ally in the Senate for his political godson — Obama.

• • Hmmm: Isn’t it true Gov. Blago, who truly believes a federal indictment is not in his future, is hoping Jones would be a placeholder until 2010 — when Gov. Rod could opt for a Senate seat or another run at the governorship? Is someone smoking posies?

[From 2 yrs. to dream? Rahm ’em . . . :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Michael Sneed]

Rich Miller has lots more speculation at The Capitol Fax Blog including:

Later on December 4, 2008… ROD BLAGOJEVICH noted he was going to meet with Senate Candidate 5 in the next few days…

ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that Senate Candidate 5 was very much a realistic candidate for the open Senate seat, but that ROD BLAGOJEVICH was getting “a lot of pressure” not to appoint Senate Candidate 5. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a problem with Senate Candidate 5 just promising to help ROD BLAGOJEVICH because ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a prior bad experience with Senate Candidate 5 not keeping his word.

As Ambinder reported earlier, that dateline matches up with Jackson’s planned meeting with the governor. Also, I’m not aware of any instances of the governor complaining that Emil Jones had broken his word. It’s time for somebody to come clean. So far, there’s still no response from Congressman Jackson’s office.

oh, and this Tribune page of web coverage is pretty cool

Footnotes:
  1. I have a copy, but have been too busy this morning to read it. [↩]

Buh bye Blago

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Blagojevich always seemed a bit smarmy. Even as my Congressman, when I lived in the Congressional 5th District, I couldn’t understand his motivation for being a politician. Some become politicians to help people, some get elected to help their friends, some just for the power, but Blagojevich apparently did it for the cash.

I'll Buy You A Drink

Gov. Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested at their homes this morning in a probe involving the governor’s quest to fill Sen. Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

The charges also include alleged attempts by the governor to influence the Tribune editorial board.

The governor threatened that if the Tribune didn’t support the governor, he wouldn’t approve the sale of Wrigley Field.

The complaint contends Blagojevich threatened to withhold substantial state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical of Blagojevich.

…

In Nov. 10, in a lengthy telephone call with numerous advisors that included discussion about Blagojevich obtaining a lucrative job with a union-affiliated organization — in exchange for appointing a particular Senate Candidate whom he believed was favored by the President-elect — Blagojevich and others discussed various ways Blagojevich could “monetize” the relationships he has made as governor to make money after leaving that office, the complain alleges.

“The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said. “They allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States Senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism. The citizens of Illinois deserve public officials who act solely in the public’s interest, without putting a price tag on government appointments, contracts and decisions,” he added.

Robert Grant, in charge of the FBI office in Chicago, added: “Many, including myself, thought that the recent conviction of a former governor would usher in a new era of honesty and reform in Illinois politics. Clearly, the charges announced today reveal that the office of the Governor has become nothing more than a vehicle for self-enrichment, unrestricted by party affiliation and taking Illinois politics to a new low.”

Federal agents today also executed search warrants at the offices of Friends of Blagojevich at 4147 N. Ravenswood.

[Continue reading Gov. Blagojevich taken into federal custody :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Gov. Blagojevich and Operation Board Games]

The Tribune adds:

Blagojevich also was alleged to be using a favors list, made up largely of individuals and firms that have state contracts or received taxpayer benefits, from which to conduct a $2.5 million fundraising drive before year’s end.

Even Blagojevich’s recently announced $1.8 billion plan for new interchanges and “green lanes” on the Illinois Tollway was subject to corruption, prosecutors alleged. The complaint repeatedly makes reference to conversations secretly recorded by federal authorities.

The criminal complaint alleges Blagojevich expected an unnamed highway concrete contractor to raise a half-million dollars for his campaign fund in exchange for state money for the tollway project. “If they don’t perform, fuck ’em,” Blagojevich said, according to the complaint.

[Copy of the Criminal Complaint here, a 78 page PDF]

FDA Likes the Taste of Melamine

swanksalot0 comment

Melamine – it’s what’s for breakfast!

The Food and Drug Administration said it found “trace levels” of the industrial chemical melamine in one sample of U.S.-made infant formula and in a few samples of other products like nutritional and medical supplements made by U.S. manufacturers of infant formula.

The FDA said, however, the formula and the supplements were safe to consume. “These are extremely low levels,” Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said. “It didn’t cause any concern at all, not from a health standpoint.”

[From FDA Tests Find Melamine Traces in Baby Formula – WSJ.com]

Yeah, why don’t you drink a big glass of melamine then, and we’ll watch.

Eight years (or longer, really) of downsizing the FDA, and similar watchdog agencies has had a real effect: the FDA doesn’t even pretend to be on the side of consumers anymore.

Dr. Sundloff said the melamine detected was tiny. Out of 87 samples, it found one sample with 0.137 parts per million and 0.140 parts per million on a verification test.

Even so, the findings are likely to upset parents who feed formula to their babies. But just how much is at stake for the manufacturers isn’t certain. Infant nutritional businesses are lucrative properties for some big U.S. drug makers, including Abbott, Wyeth and Bristol-Myers, though Wyeth doesn’t make or market its infant formula in the U.S. Mead Johnson’s revenue from its Enfamil infant formula has totaled $872 million so far this year.

Money over public health.

Freddy Goodwin Hides Drug Company Funding from NPR audience

Seth Anderson0 comment

Dr. Goodwin sold his ethics, and NPR, for such small amounts.1 Petty greed. Is the money really worth it?

Neon - NH Ballin Drugs Prescriptions

An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular NPR program “The Infinite Mind” earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program.

The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drugmakers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Dr. Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first news media figure to be investigated.

Dr. Goodwin’s weekly radio programs have often touched on subjects important to the commercial interests of the companies for which he consults. In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, he warned that children with bipolar disorder who were left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view.

“But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin told his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”

That same day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. In all, GlaxoSmithKline paid him more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given to Congressional investigators show.

[From Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties – NYTimes.com]

Kudos to Senator Grassley, by the way, who isn’t all bad.

My radio-listening mornings have been replaced by sleeping in, so I cannot verify or deny NPR’s claims to be canceling the show as soon as the current episodes are aired, but the controversy first emerged way back in May of 2008. NPR’s Ombudsman tried to spin the fact that technically, The Infinite Mind is not an NPR show:

But more importantly, the show didn’t disclose that the guests and host had some financial ties to makers of anti-depressants. “To me, it’s not terribly relevant whether there’s a clear scientific link between anti-depressants and suicide,” said Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview, an independent website that evaluates health coverage. “Bill Lichtenstein does good work. But he should have disclosed the financial ties.”

One of the guests was Peter Pitts, a former Food and Drug Administration official. The show’s host doesn’t mention that Pitts is senior vice president for global health affairs at a public relations firm. That firm represents drug companies that make anti-depressants. Lichtenstein acknowledged that Pitts’ business ties should have been mentioned. He said Pitts didn’t disclose them while the Website Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, where Pitts is president, says he did.

“If we had known, and (full mea culpa here) we should have, we would have disclosed that connection,” wrote Lichtenstein in a response on Slate’s, The Fray. “Pitts apparently didn’t disclose it elsewhere, either – he’s appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation as well as PBS’ News Hour with Jim Lehrer, without either of those programs mentioning the PR company ties.” (Slate responded to Lichtenstein on May 12.)

Lichtenstein is correct about Talk of the Nation. Pitts appeared on the show in June 2005, one year after joining the public relations firm Manning Selvage & Lee, according to the firm. The call-in show identified him only as with the Pacific Research Institute, which lists itself as a non-profit educational charity promoting free market policy solutions.

Another issue is The Infinite Mind’s funding. According to Lichtenstein, he takes no more than 15 percent of the budget from any one sector. In 2006, he told me, the program got $100,000 from Eli Lily, which makes the anti-depressant, Prozac.

All that said: Is The Infinite Mind an NPR show?

Technically, it depends on what you mean by an NPR show.

but then recommended NPR add disclaimers:

a few things should happen. On NPR’s website listing “popular public radio shows,” NPR should make it clear which are distinctly NPR-produced shows and which ones are not. For instance, the site lists Prairie Home Companion and provides a link, even though the popular show is produced and distributed by American Public Media, a competing public radio service.

The Infinite Mind, particularly since it deals in the controversial world of science and medicine, should include information on its website about how it is funded. It should also add Peter Pitts’ public relations job to the link for the “Prozac Nation” episode and to any related transcripts.

Being upfront about real or potential financial conflicts of interest is key to establishing credibility. Financial associations don’t mean that experts should necessarily be disqualified as commentators, but the public must be told about them.

With the Internet, it is much easier for news operations to be transparent, and they should take advantage of the ability to be more transparent if they ever want to win back the public’s respect and trust.

Again, I don’t listen to the show, but it seems as if NPR never followed this advice:

Margaret Low Smith, vice president of National Public Radio, said NPR would remove “The Infinite Mind” from its satellite radio service next week, the earliest date possible. Ms. Smith said that had NPR been aware of Dr. Goodwin’s financial interests, it would not have broadcast the program.

and Dr. Goodwin was very concerned about maintaining his home in Aspen, and wasn’t going to let any damned ethics get between him and that sweet, sweet drug corporation cash…

In the fine print of a study he wrote in 2003, Dr. Goodwin reported consulting or speaking for nine drugmakers, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis. Mr. Grassley asked for payment information only from GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Goodwin said that in recent years, GlaxoSmithKline paid him more than other companies.

He said that he had never given marketing lectures for antidepressant medicines like Prozac, so he saw no conflict with a program he hosted in March titled “Prozac Nation: Revisited.” which he introduced by saying, “As you will hear today, there is no credible scientific evidence linking antidepressants to violence or to suicide.”

That same week, Dr. Goodwin earned around $20,000 from GlaxoSmithKline, which for years suppressed studies showing that its antidepressant, Paxil, increased suicidal behaviors.

Footnotes:
  1. well, $1,400,000 isn’t petty cash, but Dr. Goodwin wasn’t hurting for cash [↩]

Still President Bush Still wants to Kill Us All

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Still President Bush still wants to kill us all using his proxies in the EPA to gut any and all regulatory restrictions on polluting. Rebecca Clarren has written a compelling overview of the problem in Salon.

the story of the hundreds of sick people who live near the former Kelly Air Force Base illuminates an entirely new manner in which the Bush administration has diluted science and put public health at risk. This year, largely in obeisance to the Pentagon, the nation’s biggest polluter, the White House diminished a little-known but critical process at the Environmental Protection Agency for assessing toxic chemicals that impacts thousands of Americans.

As a coalition of more than 40 national and local environmental organizations put it in a letter to EPA administrators [4 page PDF] this past April: “EPA, under pressure from the Bush White House, has given the foxes the keys to the environmental protection henhouse.”

[From Environmental Protection Agency The Stalin Era Salon ]

Mechanics at the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio used a toxic chemical called tetrachloroethylene (or PCE for short) to degrease parts on the various airplanes serviced at the base. The chemical was discarded haphazardly, and seeped into the ground and water everywhere.

Although it has conducted limited testing, the EPA acknowledges that it’s possible for PCE vapor to rise from groundwater into people’s living rooms and kitchens. Yet it says the Alvarados and their neighbors have nothing to fear. Based on EPA air quality tests inside five area homes, the nation’s environmental guardian claims that it’s safe for residents to live above the plume for the next 40 to 100 years, or the amount of time it will take for the chemicals to naturally dissipate.

The fact is, EPA scientists haven’t completed an updated scientific assessment of PCE, including its health risks, for a decade. Worse, a comprehensive review of the carcinogenic chemical may never be coming. Anti-regulatory crusaders inside the Bush White House have peopled the EPA with top officials apparently more concerned with limiting government spending than public health. According to critics within and outside the EPA, the agency has stifled independent research and compromised scientific assessments of all manner of toxins and carcinogens that Americans breathe, drink and touch.

“It feels like Stalin-era Russia, like the administration set themselves up to decide what’s allowable science and what isn’t,” says a high-ranking staff scientist at the EPA, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Until the recent economic crash, this has been such an anti-regulatory administration. One of the ways to undermine regulations is to undermine the science behind them. It’s absolutely shocking what’s going on.”

Public health officials say this attempt to derail the scientific evaluation of toxins is one of the most damning legacies of the Bush administration. In late September, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing critique of the EPA’s new toxic-assessment procedures. It concluded that the secretive procedures compromise scientific credibility and sacrifice the public’s trust in government. Despite such hefty criticism, public officials fear that because the new procedures have been instituted at the EPA so far below the public radar, their harmful impact will survive long after Bush leaves office. It will take a bold and expedient move by Barack Obama or the next Congress to curtail the influence of the Pentagon and other government agencies on the EPA.

There is also the national scourge of perchlorate, an ingredient of rocket fuel that has been found in the water supply of most states.

Since the early 1990s, the EPA has been conducting a toxic assessment of perchlorate, a major component in rocket fuel, used by the military and its contractors in bases throughout the country.

The chemical is incredibly widespread. It shows up in the groundwater of 35 states from New England to California; it has contaminated 153 public water systems in 26 states. Between 17 million and 40 million Americans are exposed to perchlorate at a level many scientists consider unsafe. According to a 2006 CDC study, 36 percent of American women are iodine deficient, putting them at risk for perchlorate-related thyroid problems. Due in part to perchlorate-contaminated irrigation water, most Americans who eat lettuce in the winter ingest the chemical. It has also appeared in melons, spinach and milk, according to 2005 and 2006 studies by the Food and Drug Administration.

A 2002 IRIS assessment led the EPA to call for a safe exposure dose of one part per billion — roughly the equivalent of a drop of water in a home swimming pool. That finding was expected to propel a stringent cleanup policy, one that could cost the Department of Defense billions of dollars.

That did not happen because the Pentagon has an ally in the EPA, an ally that decided that the budget of the Department of Defense was much more important than the health and safety of the nation.

In 2005, the EPA distributed a proposal to revise the chemical assessment process; officials at the Office of Management and Budget sat down with the IRIS blueprint and pulled out a red pen.

The plan that emerged calls for expanding the role of other federal agencies in determining which chemicals are assessed each year. It allows agencies like the Pentagon, Department of Energy and NASA to identify “mission critical” chemicals to the agency’s operations.

Significantly, the new process affords OMB more oversight and involvement in what critics say should be a purely scientific assessment. Now OMB and other non-health agencies have three additional opportunities to comment. Such comments are off-limits to public scrutiny and not available to congressional review unless subpoenaed. If OMB doesn’t agree with certain scientific findings, it can effectively block EPA from moving forward with the assessment.

Obama’s administration could reverse this crap, if they wanted. The question is, do they want to?

With a flick of a pen, Obama could reinstate the old IRIS process. Whether this will happen remains to be seen. His transition office didn’t return calls and e-mails asking if it would be likely to reverse the Bush administration changes to the IRIS process.

“If the Obama administration is serious about protecting poisoned communities, fixing the IRIS program is the place to start,” says Jennifer Sass, a toxicologist at Natural Resources Defense Council. “This should be the top priority at EPA. It’s really fundamental.”

Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has taken matters into his own hands. In September, he introduced legislation that would make EPA solely responsible for the IRIS process. The agency would be barred from consulting with any agency, including OMB, that had a conflict of interest in the scientific review.

Read the entire article here.

McCain First, Second, And Always

Seth Anderson0 comment

John McCain could have been expelled from the Senate for ethics violations, but was able to quash and obfuscate the investigations, at least until the statute of limitations expired. Sahil Mahtani has an extensively researched article in The New Republic

Yet the Ethics Committee’s was not the only investigation into the scandal. There were two other probes at the time that got barely any public attention–both of which largely focused on McCain himself. These were probes into illicit leaks about the proceedings of the Ethics Committee–leaks that repeatedly benefited McCain and hurt his Keating Five colleagues. One of those senators described the leaks at the time as a “violation of ethical behavior at least as serious as anything of which we senators have been accused.”

The leaks, if they were coming from a senator, were also illegal. All five senators–including McCain–had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps. The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body. These, then, were not the usual Washington disclosures: Discovered, they could have stopped the career of any Washington politician in his tracks.

The two investigations into the leaks suggested McCain’s involvement but were officially inconclusive. New evidence, obtained in recent weeks, again points back to the McCain camp. The investigator of those leaks now says that he does not doubt that they came from McCain or his team. A reporter who possessed evidence in the Keating case now says he believes that McCain was the source and got away with it. Finally, a senator who has emerged as a key backer of McCain’s presidential campaign turns out to have authored a letter stating flatly that McCain was the source of the damning leaks. Put together, a large record of evidence now points in the direction of Senator McCain. Far from McCain’s reputation of putting “country first,” these leaks depict a formidable politician willing to go through great lengths to maintain his standing. More than McCain’s relationship with Keating, it is the story of the Keating investigation leaks that voters should know.

[From McCain First, Second, And Always]

McCain leaked to incriminate the other four Senators, and exonerate himself. Classy.

The Senate Ethics investigation into the Keating Five scandal would last over a year, between 1989 and 1991. But before the actual hearings even began, carefully timed leaks featuring information from Committee deliberations–which were secret–began to appear. Committee members were privy to the information that was ending up in the leaks, but so were the five senators and their staffs, who received Committee documents in order to safeguard their due process rights.

The leaks had instant impact. One source close to the case described them as “backfires lit in the beltway press and in the states where the five senators were from.” There were nine in all, some correct, some incorrect. Almost all of them–eight to be precise–either exonerated McCain or implicated the other senators.

Essentially, the leaks deflected public attention away from McCain and toward his colleagues. One leak, the week of DeConcini and Riegle’s appearances before the Committee in October, 1990, described the probe against them as having “broadened,” and accused Riegle, then Banking Committee chairman, of improper regulatory intervention. Neither part was true, yet the leak ricocheted in the press instantly. One headline from the Washington Post blared, “Panel Reveals Riegle-Keating Meetings; Senator Said to Have Maintained Contact After Start of S&L Probe,” and another from the Los Angeles Times read, “Panel Action is Seen as Prelude to a Full-Scale Investigation of Sens. Cranston, DeConcini and Riegle.” Meanwhile, approval ratings for Riegle and DeConcini began to tank in their home states. Later on, the leaks investigation would conclude that the leak “[could] only be described” as an attempt to “influence the deliberations on DeConcini and Riegle.”

Read more

Plastics industry has FDA in their pocket

Seth Anderson0 comment

Corruption in the FDA? Really? Who woulda-thunk?

A government report claiming that bisphenol A is safe was written largely by the plastics industry and others with a financial stake in the controversial chemical, the Journal Sentinel found.

Although the Food and Drug Administration will not reveal who prepared its draft, the agency’s own documents show that the work was done primarily by those with the most to gain by downplaying concerns about the safety of the chemical.

That includes Stephen Hentges, executive director of the American Chemistry Council’s group on bisphenol A, who commissioned a review of all studies of the neurotoxicity of bisphenol A and submitted it to the FDA. The FDA then used that report as the foundation for its evaluation of the chemical on neural and behavioral development. The American Chemistry Council is a trade group representing chemical manufacturers.

The FDA’s draft, released in August, found no cause for worry about bisphenol A, which is found in thousands of household products, including baby bottles, infant formula containers and the lining of aluminum cans.

That finding is at odds with the conclusions of the FDA’s own advisers from the National Toxicology Program. The NTP announced in September that the chemical is of some concern for effects on the development of the prostate gland and brain, and for behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children. The NTP also found some concern for the neurodevelopment of young children, infants and fetuses.

Last week, the government of Canada declared that bisphenol A is a toxin and is banning its use in baby bottles and other products used by children.

The FDA draft finding no harm is under review by a subcommittee, which will decide if the conclusions need to be amended. That assessment is expected to be released any day and will be presented Oct. 31 in Washington

The Journal Sentinel reported earlier this month that subcommittee chairman Martin Philbert is founder and co-director of an institute that received $5 million from a retired medical supply manufacturer who said he considered bisphenol A “perfectly safe.” The donor, Charles Gelman, told the newspaper that he has expressed his views to Philbert in several conversations.

Philbert at first denied ever having been contacted by Gelman about bisphenol A. He now says that he is aware of Gelman’s views but is not influenced by them.

[From JS Online: Plastics industry behind FDA research on bisphenol A, study finds ]

Keep away from children

Not surprising, but despicable. The FDA should be ashamed, and those corrupt officials who are behind this latest travesty should lose their jobs, and be banned from working for any plastic-related corporations for 20 years.

The newspaper reviewed the body of evidence that the task force considered. It found memos with entire sections blacked out, reviews commissioned by the American Plastics Council, an arm of the American Chemistry Council, and reviews completed by consulting firms with clients who havefinancial interests in the sale of bisphenol A.

Many of these reviews of individual studies are at odds with the NTP’s reviews of the same studies.

For example, one study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense looked at the effects of bisphenol A on prostate development in rats.

The FDA called it “severely limited,” in contrast to the NTP’s review, which labeled it of “high utility.”

Another government-funded study, which also looked at the effects of the chemical on the prostate, again was considered of “high utility” by the NTP for its evaluation, and it was deemed “very limited” by the FDA.

Much of the science that the task force considered was 20 years old or older, including a study commissioned in 1976.

The older studies are not as sensitive as modern tests. They used high doses of the chemical and did not consider the unique effects on the endocrine system.

See also
Plastic fantastic

Clash on Safety of BPA

Plastic Soup of the Pacific

or more or even more

Duped into being a Republican

Seth Anderson0 comment

Is there any other reason one could reasonably claim to be a Republican? Other than being duped? Really?

– Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

“I am not a Republican,” insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. “I certainly . . . won’t sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again.”

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party — a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states — has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.

The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

[From Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans – Los Angeles Times]

Headaches

Seriously, are the Republicans that hard up for new voters that the only way to inflate their numbers is through lying? Wait, don’t answer.

and the real repercussions to this slimy act:

Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them — more than 80% — said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

Read more before the article goes behind pay-wall.