Watchdog Blog

The CPSC and Voluntary Safety Standards

In a Washington Post article yesterday noting a 46 percent drop in the number of toy recalls, Consumer Product Safety Commission Acting Chair Nancy Nord partially attributed the significant decrease of dangerous toys on the shelves to stronger voluntary safety standards. Ironically though, at a conference last month, Nord told her audience that the agency’s voluntary standards work will be scaled back, and data reports and important “safety work” would be delayed. She blamed the cut back on the agency’s implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was enacted this summer. According to Nord, the CPSC is unable to implement the new law and conduct other important safety activities at the same time. 

D.C. residents can die in combat but have no say in Congress

originally posted by Joe Newman on Citizen Vox

Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left.

You can march off to battle,

But steer clear of the polls.

Fight for us, die for us

but don’t forget your role.

– from “The New Cadence” by Estilito Diaz

Unlike previous rallies in support of D.C. voting rights, the one today in front of the U.S. Capitol was different. There was a sense that the fight to give the District of Columbia a seat in Congress might be gaining momentum. As people all over the country are saying, it’s a new day.

It doesn’t hurt that the D.C. Voting Rights Act has supporters in high places. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated he’ll support the act, D.C.’s Delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, told the supporters gathered for the Veteran’s Day rally.

“He told me he will sign the bill,” Norton said. “It’s up to us to get him a bill to sign.”

FDA Puts BPA Under Further Review

A couple of weeks ago, we decried the FDA's cozy relationship with industry in its announcement that the safety of products containing BPA was "adequate." It looks like we weren't the only ones who noticed. Friday, an advisory panel agreed that the FDA's report created "a false sense of security" regarding the safety of BPA. According to the Washington Post, the toxicologists on the panel "said the FDA had relied too heavily on studies funded by the chemical industry to make its decision." The FDA deserves credit for taking a second look at the science behind its decision, but this whole episode only further demonstrates that the danger of our federal agencies outsourcing their work to the industries they regulate – a trend the Obama administration should look to reverse.

Editorials, Conn.'s Experience Suggest Pro-Public Funding Sentiment

Barack Obama's $150 million haul in September so dramatically exceeded the $84 million grant he would have received had he opted in to the presidential public funding system that many pundits have declared the system moribund.

But a recent spate of newspaper editorials, the successful implementation of a public funding system in Connecticut and general disgust with the current regime among politicians suggest that sentiment in favor of public funding lives on, and may be increasing.

JAMA Editorializes Against Preemption in Wyeth Case

The Journal of the American Medical Association has joined the New England Journal of Medicine (published by the Massachusetts Medical Society) in urging the Supreme Court not to grant immunity to pharmaceutical companies for lapses in FDA-approved prescription labels. 

Public Citizen Files Complaint for Violations of Franking Privilege

U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) appears to have abused his franking privileges and violated U.S. House of Representative rules against using taxpayer funds to pay for political mailers promoting himself within 90 days of the general election, Public Citizen charged today in a complaint filed with the House Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards.

Members of Congress are allowed to distribute mass mailings to their constituents at taxpayer expense touting their legislative records ("franked" mail), but not within 90 days of an election. A bipartisan Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards, known as the "Franking Commission," is responsible for oversight and regulation of the franking privilege in the House of Representatives.

McCain-Feingold Reality Clashes With WSJ Narrative

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board on Wednesday leveled an oft-repeated but misleading attack on the law commonly known as McCain-Feingold. The Journal, an opponent of campaign finance reform, took a measure of satisfaction in arguing that John McCain's fundraising deficit is due to the very legislation he sponsored: 

The ultimate irony – perversity, if you're a Republican – is that the great champion for today's system is none other than John McCain. Having pushed for the government to limit money in politics, he is being outspent – and, should the polls hold, beaten – thanks in part to the laws he worked tirelessly to put on the books.

What the Journal and other drive-by critics of campaign finance reform miss is that McCain-Feingold was not really intended to limit money in politics and certainly was not intended to limit campaign contributions to candidates. The law actually doubled the maximum amount an individual could contribute to candidates, from $1,000 to $2,000 per election (a figure since adjusted for inflation to $2,300). 

What McCain-Feingold did was stop the political parties from accepting corporate or union contributions, which candidates were already prohibited from doing. An honest attack on McCain-Feingold would have to start with a claim that the country was better off with the political parties trading favors in exchange for corporate and union contributions of hundreds of thousands – and sometimes millions – of dollars (in 2002, for example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lavished $4.2 million in soft money on the two major parties). 

If the Journal wants to make that argument, we would welcome the debate.

Whistleblower Trapped in Arbitration

An opinion issued earlier this month by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shows how willing the courts can be to uphold binding mandatory arbitration clauses even if the courts find elements of them unfair.

The case involved Linda Guyden, who was hired by Aetna Inc. in January 2004 as the company's internal audit director. Guyden soon concluded that Aetna's internal audit department was ineffective, leaving the company susceptible to violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. After receiving unsatisfactory responses from various members of Aetna's senior management team, Guyden took her concerns to the firm's CEO in August 2004. A week later, the firm's chief financial officer gave Guyden a withering performance review that conflicted with a positive review he had given her only a month earlier. Along the way, Guyden won an intra-company battle to hire an outside auditor. In November, ten days before Guyden was slated to present the outside auditor's report to the firm's audit committee, she was fired.

Bush Taxman Calls for Making Corporate Returns Public

In an op-ed in Saturday’s Washington Post, former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson offered an interesting short-order proposal to respond to the financial crisis. Along the way, he articulated a rebuke to the sanctity of corporations that one might not expect to hear from a former Bush administration official.

To increase businesses' transparency, "a proper starting point is to make corporate tax returns available to the public, not just to the IRS," wrote Everson, who served as commissioner of the IRS from 2003 to 2007, following a six-month stint as a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Bad Court Ruling Could End Checks on Industry Funded 'Science'

Yesterday, the Washington Post noticed a disturbing trend that we have been following for a long time – the corporatization of scientific research ostensibly conducted by unbiased and trustworthy sources like, in this case, the Food and Drug Administration. Science has been twisted to serve corporate ends for decades – see the tobacco industry's "studies" showing that smoking is not dangerous. Most of the time, these justifications for unhealthy or dangerous products are given precisely the credibility they deserve – none. Perhaps realizing this, the new trend is to funnel money behind the scenes to get disreputable science published by reputable sources.