The report urges Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a task force studying malpractice to focus on ways to improve patient safety and to resist pleas from the insurance industry and the state's doctors to pare back patients' legal rights.[...]The report debunks claims that a recent 14 percent hike in medical malpractice rates was caused by an increase in litigation.[...]Claims that increased rates have caused a doctor shortage in New York are patently false, Public Citizen researchers determined. The state's population of doctors --and of most types of specialists -- is the highest it has been in at least a decade.
And here's a blog entry over at the Consumer Law and Policy blog from PC's Barry Boughton.
MoveOn.org has joined the push against Facebook's newest privacy-invasive marketing technique, the one where Facebook broadcasts a "beacon" of your online shopping to all your friends. Oh, without your consent. As Ellen Nakashima reports in today's Washington Post story Feeling Betrayed, Facebook Users Force Site to Honor Their Privacy:
Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife.[...]Without Lane's knowledge, the headline was visible to everyone in his online network, including 500 classmates from Columbia University and 220 other friends, co-workers and acquaintances. And his wife.
In response to the 50,000 vocal MoveOn petition signers, Facebook has modified Beacon to apparently ask consent each time it would turn its light on. Yet, adding such a modest "each-use" privacy control isn't the same as offering you a choice of whether you want it as your headlight in the first place. In the story Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking by the New York Times reporters Louise Story and Brad Stone, a Facebook exec says this will all go away and users will "fall in love" with the product. Not this time, we think.
On November 12, we had joined the Center for Digital Democracy in a letter to FTC Chairman Deborah Majoras urging scrutiny of "ambitious new targeted advertising schemes on the part of both Facebook and MySpace."
As we say on U.S. PIRG's Right to know pages in the caption under this photo:
Without the Toxic Release Inventory Regulations, industrial facilities in or near our communities like this refinery could put toxic waste into our environment and even drinking water without informing the public.
Twelve states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, sued the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday for weakening regulations that for two decades have required businesses and industries to report the toxic chemicals they use, store and release.
The state PIRGs (San Jose Mercury News story quoting CALPIRG's Emily Rusch (full release)) have been longtime backers of the right-to-know law Toxics Release Inventory as a mechanism to help protect the safety of plant workers, first responders and people living near chemical plants and also secondarily as a way to cajole companies to use fewer dangerous, toxic chemicals in the first place. As the New York Times story continues:
Community groups across the country have used the program to track the amounts of hazardous chemicals in local neighborhoods. Under the program, companies must provide information about the types of toxic chemicals stored at plants and factories in each state, as well as the quantities discharged from each plant.
With help from Ericka Lewis of CBS4-TV (read story or watch video clip) and a lead expert, a Denver, Colorado mom found lead at levels of up to 98% in her kids' jewelry and toys.
Parents are taking a closer look at toys this year since many containing lead have been recalled and have already gone in the trash. Stacy Bush has two children and too many toys to count. So, with the help of lead tester Neil Staples, CBS4 checked to see which toys in her collection might be harmful to her kids. Most tested negative, but a few surprised Bush, including Hello Kitty.
The FTC has updated its 2003 survey on identity theft. The new survey finds that identity theft is still a big problem. FTC Releases Survey of Identity Theft in the U.S. Study Shows 8.3 Million Victims in 2005. The study found that 1.8 million adults, or nearly one in a hundred Americans, were victims of new-account fraud, which is the worst form of identity theft in many ways, because you never had a relationship with the institution where the fraud took place, and only find out when your name's been wrecked. The others were victims of fraud on existing credit and debit cards, cell phone accounts, etc. Industry apologists will try to claim that the 8.3 million is a decline from the 2003 report's 10 million plus victims. This FTC report makes it clear that the change is not statistically significant.
The new FTC study shows that all the corporate promises of stronger security measures appear to be failed promises, because they've failed to reduce identity theft. Until Congress enacts laws that gives consumers stronger rights to hold creditors and retailers accountable when their sloppiness contributes to identity theft and fraud, expect identity thieves to keep winning.
Mandatory arbitration provisions, forcing people to waive their legal rights, have become standard fare in consumer contracts. Now, Congress is beginning to push back--and the business community is mobilizing for a fight.
The FCC has several votes scheduled today on matters of public importance. The biggest is whether it will impose regulation on the behemoth cable industry under the 1984 rule known as 70/70. The PIRG-backed Media-Democracy Coalition is urging a yes vote on that proposal and also urging that the FCC protect the future viability of community-owned low power FM radio stations (our release). The key swing vote is longtime consumer champion Jonathan Adelstein.
A vote could begin a process resulting in a national cap on cable ownership, with no cable company allowed to have more than 30 percent of all U.S. subscribers, a ceiling that Comcast Communications is near. It could also reduce prices that cable companies could charge smaller or independent programmers to lease access on unused channels. The FCC has the authority to impose such regulations only if 70 percent of all U.S. households are able to subscribe to a cable service with at least 36 channels and if 70 percent of those households subscribe to such service. The first threshold was crossed years ago; nearly all U.S. homes are now "passed" by cable, to use the industry term.
Several years ago, we released a major report on the need for cable re-regulation. Among its findings, and among the changes that a yes vote could lead to today is that we could lower skyrocketing cable prices by unbundling channel packages and making individual channels available a la carte.
Over the weekend the Baltimore Sun ran a toy safety column Give product safety agency more clout jointly signed by by Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler and Maryland PIRG's David Kosmos. Also, the Vermont Times Argus has Wireless phone monopoly a bad deal by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders as a followup to efforts by him, Vermont PIRG and Vermont's Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce opposing efforts by the mega-monopoly Verizon to gobble up (one Thanksgiving pun is not too many) a wireless competitor.
Today's New York Times story Citizen Vigilance Leads to Toy Recalls by Louise Story points out that it isn't always redoubled testing and altruism by companies that leads to product recalls, it is reports by groups like PIRG, the Center for Environmental Health, and Judy Braiman's Empire State Consumer Association, a "small group of mothers based in Rochester, who regularly buy children's products to test them." And it is individuals, including two citizens highlighted in the piece: wildlife pathologist "Ward Stone and his 10-year-old daughter, Montana."
Then, the story goes on to point out the following:
The commission's recall releases sometimes mention other government agencies that discover hazardous products. But the commission does not generally credit individual people or nonprofit groups when they discover problems.
hazardous levels of lead in dozens of children's necklaces and bracelets sold at stores like Michaels and Big Lots after they tested jewelry that Montana had received at birthday parties.
We're not surprised, as we haven't been credited since Ann Brown ran the CPSC under the Clinton administration, although the CPSC has since informed us in letters of its actions taken on dozens of toys in our annual Trouble In Toyland reports. Often a press release is not even issued, because the manufacturer doesn't want one.
One problem is the general corporate bias of the CPSC's current leadership. A second is a wrong-headed provision of law known inside the beltway as Section 6(b), which allows manufacturers to control public disclosure of information about their products, even after action is taken. Among the weaker parts of generally laudable Congressional efforts by Congress to improve the CPSC in proposed legislation are modest proposals to modify, but not repeal, 6(b).
Britain's exchequer, ministry of silly walks, loses unencrypted data on 25 million of her majesty's subjects
Despite the lessons from two years of high profile data breaches in the U.S., with banks, stores and government agencies leaving unencrypted data on computer tapes and disks to be stolen, lost in shipping or on airport baggage carousels or left somewhere by a hapless intern, or using sloppy computer programs so data can be plucked out of the air, I guess not everyone has learned. Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer is fumbling through bumbling explanations, as the New York Times reporter Eric Pfanner explains in his story Data Leak in Britain Affects 25 Million:
The British government struggled Wednesday to explain its loss of computer disks containing detailed personal information on 25 million Britons, including an unknown number of bank account identifiers, in what analysts described as potentially the most significant privacy breach of the digital era.
The Times goes on to point out the robustness of this trove:
But the disks lost in Britain contained detailed personal information on 40 percent of the population: in addition to the bank account numbers, there were names, addresses and national insurance numbers, the British equivalent of Social Security numbers. They also held data on almost every child under 16.
The fallout was never going to be pretty but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has been savaged in the British press.
The Globe and Mail points out that the campaign against a British national ID card has been buoyed by the events:
Phil Booth, the national co-ordinator of the NO2ID campaign group, said the government should not only immediately halt development of the cards but carry out an audit of the information it already held about the public. "This data disaster shows up the madness behind the government's ID schemes," he said.
No, it's not Monty Python's John Cleese, from the ministry of silly walks, it's just another silly government. Silly governments, silly firms and other silly data collectors haven't yet learned their important responsibilities of protecting the good names of their subjects, citizens, customers or accountholders. Without strong data protection laws that limit the collection of personal information, require it be protected by fair information practices and that hold collectors accountable when they fail, it'd be silly to think they ever will.
Flying this holiday? Watch for passenger rights volunteers in the airports
Members of the PIRG-backed Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights or flyersrights.org are leafleting in airports around the country today. Here are some excellent video clips from FOX and AP from a news conference at JFK by Kate Hanni of CAPBOR yesterday. The AP clip includes excerpts from the CAPBOR Stranded Passenger Survival Kit. Stranded? Other hassles? Call the 24-hour Flyersrights Hotline: 877-FLYERS6 (877-359-3776). Here is a Youtube video blog I did with Kate, featuring that emergency kit.
Gift cards aren't necessarily the best gift, as we recently pointed out. Recipients may forget to use them. Worse, some gift cards, especially bank-issued cards (including many with the name of a mall or store on them) decline in value due to fees. Although many states have banned or limited the fees, the national bank regulator known as the OCC (our warning site OCCWatch) has aided and abetted bank lawsuits seeking to overturn state laws restricting gift card fees as they apply to bank-issued cards. Now comes the OCC press release: OCC Reminds Consumers to Read Gift Cards' Fine Print because of fees and expiration dates, which largely only occur on bank-issued cards. With regulators like these, who create the problem and then issue the warning about the problem, who needs enemies?
Along with Center for Environmental Health, which also issued a report on lead yesterday, PIRG got the message out yesterday that "The best holiday gift Congress can give children, America's littlest consumers, is strong product safety legislation." Here's the Washington Post story by Annys Shin: Groups Expose Hidden Toy Hazards. Hope Yen's AP story is running nationwide: Parents Beware: Are Those Toys Safe?.
As the Daily Herald reports in Joseph Ryan's story Parents' predicament: So which toys are safe?, both Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Bobby Rush, two key CPSC reform players on Capitol Hill, joined Illinois PIRG's Brian Imus at a news conference in Chicago:
"It might just be a good Christmas for books or movies," Durbin said, searching for an answer for toy shoppers. U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, a Chicago Democrat, said he just won't buy anything made in China. That blanket standard removes more than 80 percent of toys from the shelves. Plus, some toys simply don't have "made in" labels. Imus said adults should certainly avoid toys at dollar stores, because they have been the subject of numerous lead-related recalls. He pointed out a small metal jewelry piece the interest group bought at such a store in Chicago. It was 65 percent lead by weight, 1,000 times the federal limit.
You can even see a video of our news conference at CNN's video page-- it's near the bottom of the list. We've also got a nice oped by Colorado PIRG's Kirpal Singh in the Denver Post: Attack of the Toxic Toys.
PIRGs released the 22nd annual Trouble In Toyland report and annual survey of toy hazards including dangerous small magnets, choking hazards and lead-laden toys at 75 news events today. We had one piece of jewelry that weighed in at 65% lead by weight, or over one thousand times legal limits. That's NYPIRG's Tracy Shelton at her event (AP photo). You can download our full report, our Toy Tips brochure and our news release at toysafety.net. Here's an excerpt from the release:
U.S. PIRG called on Congress to pass the strongest possible product safety reforms under consideration:
-Ban lead except at trace amounts. The PIRG-backed HR 3691, the SAFE Consumer Product Act, sponsored by Rep. DeLauro (Conn.)and 153 co-sponsors, would reduce all lead levels – in paint or in the product -- to 40 parts per million -- the level recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
-Increase the budget and staffing of CPSC. CPSC has only one toy tester and a tiny force of 15 inspectors to check millions of toys at hundreds of ports of entry.
-Require companies to guarantee that their products have been subject to independent third party testing before they put them on toy store shelves.
"It doesn't matter whether a toy is made in China or made in Kansas," said Mierzwinski. "Companies have to make sure that it is safe."
Mierzwinski noted that two other bills, the CSPC Reform Act, S 2045 (Pryor-AR), which is ready for Senate floor action, and the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act, HR 4040 (Rush-IL, Stearns-FL, Dingell-MI, Barton-TX), which is awaiting full Energy and Commerce committee action after Thanksgiving, are "good steps that include many of our proposed reforms, but should be improved in several areas."
Jerry Brown sues companies for selling lead-laden toys
California attorney general Jerry Brown and LA city attorney Rocky Delgadillo have filed suit against 20 firms for selling lead-laden toys. From NBC 11:
Companies subject to Monday's lawsuit include: Mattel, Fisher-Price, Michael's Stores, Toys-R-Us, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, KB Toys, Costco Wholesale, A&A Global Industries, RC2 Corporation, Eveready Battery Company, Kids II, Kmart, Marvel Entertainment, Toy Investments. "Despite the lengthening global supply chain, every company that does business in this state must follow the law and protect consumers from lead," Brown said.
In other toy news, watch for our 22nd annual Trouble In Toyland report tomorrow.
In the face of the mounting safety scandal, the White House has issued its own "action plan" that, of course, favors allowing the private sector to solve the problem with voluntary reforms. Responsible business leaders are already demanding something stronger in government regulation. Members of Congress have to resist the industry lobbyists and the administration and pass a strong reform law that puts consumer safety first.
Food safety is likely to be considered next by Congress, when it completes action on the CPSC. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal (pd.subs. still req'd but maybe not for much longer) has a page one story Tainted Ginger's Long Trip From China to U.S. Stores backtracking, as far as they can, pesticide-laden ginger root from U.S. tables back to Chinese farms (hint: they get to the bulk supplier, but then the ginger from local suppliers and hundreds of farms all looks the same).
Industry analysts say many U.S. companies save money by sourcing in China but are reluctant to spend on vetting supply chains. "You can't just throw the [orders] over the Great Wall and hope it comes back good," says Kent D. Kedl, general manager for Technomic Asia, a consulting firm in Shanghai that advises U.S. and European clients. He says companies "need people camped out" in China.
Sounds like Mattel and the lead-tainted toys-- (paraphrase) "You know, we thought they did the tests, but the price was right." Globalization-- be careful what you wish for.
Last week I linked to an excellent new spoof website -- the Predatory Lending Association. Now, thanks to a tip from Bob Lawless over at the consumer blog Credit Slips, here's a link to a youtube video offering some amusing loans from the American Association of Payday Lenders. I think it's a parody. I hope it's a parody.
Many Chicago-area stores are routinely selling lead-tainted toys, including items with levels more than 10 times government safety limits, testing by the Tribune shows. In one of the most comprehensive inquiries into lead in children's products, the Tribune tested about 800 toys and other items sold in shops, department stores, supermarkets, discount outlets and on the Internet.
In our Congressional efforts to enact child safety reforms and improve the ability of the CPSC to protect us, the issue of lead is one of the biggest areas of dispute between advocates and industry. How much can we reduce its levels in children's toys, jewelry and other products, and how fast? What exceptions and alternate tests that could lead to loopholes will be allowed? The Trib discusses many of the important issues.
Post columnist misunderstands consumer groups on state laws
In his column Timely Mortgage Fix on House-passed mortgage legislation, the Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein praises Barney Frank (D-MA):
for standing up to consumer and housing advocates who opposed federal preemption of state laws and regulations, which in some instances are more stringent than in the House legislation.
But after extolling the supposed virtues of uniform national legislation, he goes on to say about those consumer and housing groups opposing the bill, including U.S. PIRG:
from a policy standpoint, it is more than a tad hypocritical for liberals, who for years have fought against "states' rights" on abortion and civil rights, to become their champion when it comes to consumer regulation.
Mr. Pearlstein misunderstands our views (and further, over-uses the tired pejorative "liberals").
Public interest organizations support the strongest possible laws protecting consumer wallets, health, safety and welfare. In our federal system, the best way to achieve those goals is to support the right of the states to enact laws that protect consumers better, but to always establish a federal floor of protections. The problem is that industry always seeks to have federal law become a ceiling, giving no rights to states, even rights to make things better.
So, certainly federal civil rights laws were needed when states failed to protect all their citizens or even had laws that treated some of them worse based on their skin color or sex. Those laws didn't make things better.
But there is a strong record of state innovation helping to make things better for everyone. After 40 states passed do-not-call list privacy laws, the FTC acted too (but stronger state privacy laws stand). After years of national inaction on global warming, states, led by California and the northeastern states, have taken the lead and Congress may follow. The states were doing the same thing on predatory lending laws, and want to continue to do so.
Increasingly, whether it is privacy protections, environmental laws or financial rules, companies claim that the national marketplace demands uniform national protections. Their claim, rarely demonstrated as a fact, is that it costs too much to have many laws.
Is there an economic cost to requiring colossal corporations to develop risk and other mechanisms to comply with non-uniform provincial or local laws? Perhaps a small one. But they are big enough to take the weight and still make money. They prefer, however, in their own form of rent-seeking, the certainty of only dealing with one Congress in thrall to special interests and one set of federal regulators captured by them. That's the true benefit they self-servingly seek, not the reduced administrative costs they complain publicly about. They'd rather deal with people in Washington because they control the political process in Washington.
Any true and legitimate business cost to them is far outweighed by the public policy benefit of having 50 active laboratories of democracy rather than that one federal system controlled largely by special interest money and revolving doors.
The only way Congress ever acts to protect the public's welfare is when there is a catastrophe (remember, even Enron wasn't big enough, it also took WorldCom) or when the states show the way. Let's let the states keep showing the way, as they have on this mortgage crisis. Kudos to the House for passing some improved protections, but the price is too high. More on federal preemption issues.
Here is our coalition news release opposing the mortgage bill passed by the House last week. Also, here is a news story from Financial Services Committee ranking member Spencer Bachus's (R-AL) home state. Finally, over at Consumer Law and Policy Blog, Deepak Gupta has commented several times on the bill.
In her story today Why Must ID Security Be So Hard?, New York Times personal finance columnist M.P. Dunleavey correctly points out that the best protection against identity theft, the PIRG-backed credit report security freeze, works differently in every state. In some of the 39 states (and DC) that have enacted it, the freeze is free or low-cost, and in some states very easy to use. But, in the states without laws, consumers face the worst regime -- a high-cost, clunky, hard-to-use system implemented by the credit bureaus themselves.
It's quite simple: despite their public statements to the contrary, the bureaus have always opposed the freeze, for two major reasons:
First, it works to stop identity theft, and even though this is a goal everyone should support, it works chiefly because it gives consumers, not them, control over who gets access to their own confidential information and they don't like that;
Second, it has the potential to eat into the profits of their lucrative cash cow protection racket-- over-priced, under-performing credit monitoring services ($8-$15/MONTH!) that don't stop identity theft.
Here's an article I wrote for the newsletter of the National Association of Consumer Advocates on the history of the freeze. The numbers are out of date, but the history and analysis are not. Of course, the sensible solution would be for the credit bureaus to simply adopt the strongest, lowest cost protection available nationwide. They won't. But the success of the states in giving consumers this protection shows why it's always best to allow the 50 laboratories of democracy to experiment with strong consumer and health and safety laws. Often, the state leadership provides Congress an impetus to adopt the strongest law nationwide. In practice, that rarely happens, but we seek that goal every day. Unfortunately, in most cases, Congress instead steps in to preempt the states with a weaker, industry-friendly uniform national law. So far, that hasn't happened here. We're doing what we can to make sure that it does not.
We're releasing our annual toy safety report Trouble In Toyland at news conferences around the nation Tuesday. Today's Washington Post has a nice preview story Playing It Safe by consumer reporter Annys Shin, who went out shopping with our toy consultant Alison Cassady in October.
Shoppers who want reassurance can adopt Cassady's technique of testing toys right in the store. For three weeks this fall, she scoured the shelves of Washington area toy retailers, armed with a lead-test kit, a choke-test cylinder and a sound meter.
Shin also points out that "Despite the record number of toy recalls this year, the vast majority of toys are safe." Also today, the New York Times reports in Kmart Items Marked Safe Had Lead that KMart is removing cheap jewelry marked lead-free that actually contained lead. Ooops.
NYPIRG issues Internet ID theft warning; VPIRG, Bernie fight Verizon
A New York PIRG report "survey of 275 airline, travel-agency, hotel and car-rental Web sites found that many of them ask for an excessive amount of personal information in the process of making a sale." according to the story Warning issued on identity theft by Dan Osburn in the Ithaca Journal. Also check out NYPIRG's website cyberstreetsmart.org.
Meanwhile, in the green mountains across the Hudson, VPIRG and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders {I-VT) are challenging plans by the mega-behemoth Verizon to purchase Unicel, a smaller wireless provider. This week, in response to a petition from VPIRG, the FCC granted a 90 day extension of the comment period on the sale. From the story FCC extends sale of Unicel by Neal Goswami in the Bennington Banner:
Verizon announced in July that it wanted to acquire Unicel, owned by Rural Cellular Corp., a smaller company that serves mainly rural areas in Vermont and 14 other states in a $2.7 billion deal.
The story goes on to quote VPIRG director Paul Burns and Senator Sanders:
Burns said VPIRG is seeking conditions that would require Verizon Wireless to provide universal coverage of the state, allow Unicel customers to exchange their phones for comparable Verizon handsets, and commit to national pricing standards and reasonable roaming rates for the state. Sanders, who has also been pushing for those conditions, said the two companies are the only cell phone carriers with significant resources in Vermont. If Verizon is allowed to take over Unicel's customers it will create a "de facto monopoly" in the state that could have a negative impact on the state's economy, he said. "Vermonters must take a very close look at what a Verizon Wireless monopoly would mean in terms of progress towards universal service at reasonable prices," Sanders said Wednesday.
Toy safety/CPSC reform bill moves to full committee
With all except small non-controversial amendments refused until full committee by the committee's bi-partisan leadership, the House version of CPSC reform, HR 4040, was approved today in subcommittee and is expected to go to full committee two weeks from today. The manager's substitute that was approved should be posted here at the Energy and Commerce committee soon. We are still reading the bill carefully. Positively, many of the changes from HR 4040 as introduced were pro-consumer. Lead limits were improved and clarified. Also, the definition of children's product was changed throughout the bill so products for children up to 12 years old would come under the bill's protections. Previously, the bill had some protections for children up to 12, but most were only for children up to 6 years old. But, remember, we are still reading the bill carefully. Full committee chairman John Dingell re-affirmed at the meeting that Speaker Pelosi wants the bill approved by the House before the December holiday recess.
Along with other advocacy groups, we've been working many months with House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) to craft a strong bill to prevent mortgage abuses. His efforts have been laudatory, but largely because the Congressional process is so dominated by special interests, his modified compromise bill HR 3915, sponsored with others including Brad Miller (D-NC), no longer achieves the goals he set out for it. In particular, its broad sweep of preemptive limits on state law remedies outweighs its benefits. We are joining with the National Association of Consumer Advocates and the National Consumer Law Center -- expert groups whose lawyers represent in court the low-income consumers who have been most hammered by abusive mortgage practices -- in a letter in opposition to the bill. I will post our letter when finalized. If the bill passes (and those special interests still oppose it from the wrong side so the outcome is not clear) we hope to improve it in the Senate.
Nice flash video effort "Spacey the Lead Elf" from the Sierra Club and cartoonist Mark Fiore on fighting lead in toys:
As the holiday shopping season gets under way after 70 product recalls of nearly 10 million items so far in 2007, parents across America still can't be sure that the toys they buy for their children are safe. To help us get the word out about what we need to do to keep our kids safe, award-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore created "Spacey the Lead Elf."
Poor Finder(tm): Pinpoint the Working Poor
It's easy to find the working poor, but our studies reveal that a difference in location of even a few city blocks can impact profits by as much as 45%.
In an op-ed column The Daily Show in today's New York Times, FCC chair Kevin Martin makes his pitch for busting the long-standing newspaper-television cross-ownership ban, but only in large markets:
A company that owns a newspaper in one of the 20 largest cities in the country should be permitted to purchase a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market. But a newspaper should be prohibited from buying one of the top four TV stations in its community. In addition, each part of the combined entity would need to maintain its editorial independence.
Martin says he will not propose to change any of the other ownership rules, and that the purpose of this proposal is to save local newspapers.
Allowing cross-ownership may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage by enabling companies that own both newspapers and broadcast stations to share some costs.
We've opposed changing any of the rules, especially this one. We'll have more after we see the full proposal.
Big banks: Too big to fail? What about too big to care?
Financier Henry Kaufman makes some valid arguments in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column called Who's Watching the Big Banks? (pd. subs. req'd) that a new regulator is needed for the biggest financial institutions:
Because their reach is so vast and deep, these financial behemoths are deemed too big to fail. In the wake of these profound structural changes in our financial system, who or what can provide oversight and supervision?
He also says the banks' proposed and vaunted (by them) Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) superfund "is neither needed nor likely to work."
What about the big banks' quest to get even bigger? Bank of America, for example, is pushing hard against the "10% of all deposits" national ceiling. It, and other big banks, seem to rely more on extracting wealth from their deposit account and credit card customers, and other consumers using their ATM machines, in the form of punitive fees for every little transaction or transgression. We should be watchdogging the big banks for their anti-consumer practices, as well as their risks. They're not only too big to fail, they're too big to care.
Over at On the Commons, David Bollier has a short provocative blog on outsourcing of public libraries. Excerpt:
This should not be entirely surprising, given how jails, highways and even military operations are being privatized these days. Yet it does raise the distressing question -- If libraries are vulnerable, where will this momentum for dismantling our civic institutions end?
Reporter Annys Shin of the Washington Post has a nice piece today -- Taking Lead Safety Into Its Own Hands --on the efforts of the Center for Environmental Health to use the tools provided by pioneering California toxics laws in its successful litigation and other advocacy against lead in lunchboxes and other children's products.
In the absence of government action, the environmental health group, along with a growing number of citizens and public officials, has sought to fill what it sees as a void left by federal regulators.
The story then goes on to point that many local groups, and governments, are using similar tactics to lead while Washington sleeps, or worse, does the bidding of powerful corporations:
In recent months, for example, the Food and Drug Administration warned against young children using over-the-counter cough and cold medicine -- only after Baltimore's health commissioner, Joshua M. Sharfstein, circulated a petition. New York's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, uncovered scandals in the student loan industry, charging that "the U.S. Department of Education has been asleep at the switch." Lisa Lipin, a Skokie, Ill., woman whose son was strangled by a yo-yo waterball, got Illinois to ban the toy after the CPSC determined it posed a "low risk" of strangulation.
And as we reported this week, a coalition of states, led by California, is suing the Bush EPA to gain the right to fight global warming by imposing more-stringent "clean cars" regulations.
These efforts all show that Washington only acts to preserve consumer health, safety and welfare when the states, or the people, lead it to do so. Why do you think that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Bankers Association and the National Association of Manufacturers have a massive phalanx of lobbyists and lawyers constantly lined up in Washington hearing rooms and courtrooms asking Congress and the courts to preempt state authority to enact stronger laws, to eliminate consumer rights to obtain compensation when harmed by their products and to take state Attorneys General off the corporate crime beat? It's pretty obvious that the benefits of a true public policy marketplace of ideas, with 51 innovative laboratories of democracy, not one; and 51 aggressive cops on the consumer beat, not one ineffective sleeping policeman; and the right of consumers and consumer groups to seek remedies and justice -- outweigh by far any of the so-called costs of a "patchwork" of rules. More at our state laboratories pages.
FCC rocked in Seattle-- 1100 citizens turn out to oppose media consolidation; FCC plans better move on cable
Despite FCC chief Kevin Martin's effort to stymie public participation with his last-minute announcement of the agency's final media ownership field hearing, as reform advocates at Reclaim the Media report:
LATE UPDATE: The Seattle FCC hearing was a phenomenal event. Over 1100 people from across the Northwest kept the Commissioners in their chairs from 4pm until 1am with articulate, often impassioned testimony opposing further ownership deregulation. More info after we get some sleep!
For those who say media ownership does not matter, I say look at one man from Seattle: Frank Blethen. His family has been here over a century. He owns the local newspaper [the Seattle Times], and he cares about this community. His newspaper gave this hearing the coverage it deserves every single day during this truncated advance notice period. And he had assistance on the ground from the dedicated and passionate advocacy of Jonathan Lawson and everyone at Reclaim the Media. If we let local voices like Frank Blethen's get bought up by voracious media giants looking to swallow up even more local outlets, voices like his will be snuffed out forever. Do you want big out-of-state companies to buy your newspapers and TV stations combined? Are you satisfied with your local media today? Do you think more consolidation is the answer?
In other FCC news, Steve Labaton of the New York Times reports that Martin is planning one step to use his power for good, against the "too-dominant" cable monopolists: F.C.C. Planning Rules to Open Cable Market:
It is a major departure for the agency and the industry, which was deregulated by an act of Congress in 1996. Officials say the finding could lead to more diverse programs; consumer groups say it could also lead to lower rates.
The story cites consumer advocates Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union and Andy Schwartzman of the Media Access Project rightly praising the plan, but the story also points out that some consumer advocates pointed out that the action may be intended to give Martin "political cover" for his efforts to deregulate other parts of the media. It goes on to explain the difference between this action and the media ownership proceeding -- the subject of the Seattle hearing -- which he is attempting to bring to a close by imposing massive deregulation during the holidays while he hopes no one will be looking (wrong there) that will make it harder for "local voices like Frank Blethen's" to compete with corporate conglomerates. As Blethen himself testified, from the Seattle Times story:
Concentrated absentee media ownership has resulted in "a disinvestment in journalism, causing serious erosion in America's public-policy literacy and civic engagement," Blethen said.
California files important clean cars, global warming lawsuit against EPA
Yesterday California sued EPA (AP via Washington Post, New York Times) to seek a Clean Air Act waiver so it could enforce its clean cars law to lower global warming emissions. Twelve states moved immediately to intervene in support. Here's a local AP story quoting Arizona PIRG's Diane Brown. Connecticut Attorney General Dick Blumenthal cites U.S. PIRG data in his release. And, by the way, we have a new home for U.S. PIRG's environmental work, Environment America. So here's a news release from the Environment America site applauding California's filing.
Aqua-dots, toy that dissolves into dangerous date-rape drug chemical, recalled
I first saw on the popular blog Boingboing yesterday that a story in the Melbourne Age reported that Australia had recalled the popular bead craft toy known there as Bindeez because when swallowed, the beads convert into a chemical ingredient used in a date-rape drug. Children in the U.S. and worldwide who have ingested the toys have become very ill or even unconscious:
The toy is produced by Melbourne company Moose and won this year's toy of the year award at the Melbourne Toy and Hobby Fair. Bindeez consists of colourful craft beads that are joined together to create designs. They are sprayed with water to fix them. The company yesterday ordered a nationwide recall of the Chinese-made product, saying a chemical had been substituted without the company's knowledge. The toy contains beads that have been found to contain a chemical that the body metabolises into gamma-hydroxy butyrate (GHB), also known as "grievous bodily harm". It should instead contain a non-toxic glue.
NY Times criticizes chemical industry's influence on plant safety regs
Today's New York Times editorial Chemical Industry 1, Public Safety 0 rightly questions new anti-terrorist chemical plant safety regulations, especially in light of Greenpeace research into the industry's "undue influence" over the rulemaking. Research by longtime Greenpeace toxics advocate Rick Hind is deservedly cited:
It is troubling that these industry-friendly rules were developed in part by Department of Homeland Security employees who previously worked for the chemical industry -- and who may one day work for it again. Rick Hind, the legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, contends that such employees have had an "undue influence." The department says it draws on former chemical industry workers simply because of their "relevant prior experience."
Steal Your Face: Facebook using friends as hucksters
Check out the the last three words in the subhead of Catherine Holahan's Business Week online story and you'll learn all you need to know: no opt out from your friend's ad feed.
Facebook's Zuckerberg doesn't appear to be anticipating a backlash. The company hasn't even provided a way for users to opt out of the Social Ad feeds, though Zuckerberg says the company will watch users' reactions.
Facebook users will not be able to avoid these personally recommended ads if they are friends with participating people. Participation can involve joining a fan club for a brand, recommending a product or sharing information about their purchases from external Web sites.
So, right now, you have a choice whether to become a huckster, but your friends don't have a choice whether to receive your ads. What about tomorrow? As the Times concludes:
Some privacy experts applauded Facebook for letting people choose whether or not to make product recommendations. But they also expressed concern that Facebook might one day change its policy of not sharing data with marketers. "That's been one of the historical problems in this field -- the shifting promises," said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior lawyer at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California in Berkeley.
Bush announces import action plan, House hearing held on CPSC
Despite 3 months of work, it is truly hard to say just what -- if anything -- is new, what is innovative and what is worthwhile in the Interagency Working Group on Import Safety's new "Action Plan." I guess what's new is they've got the president messaging on it. U.S. PIRG is particularly disappointed in the squishy, weasel-y language regarding safety certification of imported products. The way we read it, the administration is not supporting the concept that all imported children's products be subject to mandatory testing by a truly independent third party lab that is certified by the government for quality.
Also today, we joined Rachel Weintraub's testimony on behalf of her group, the Consumer Federation of America, and a coalition of organizations, in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on its CPSC reform bill, HR 4040. At the hearing, subcommittee chairman Bobby Rush (D-IL) committed to moving forward within two weeks on on a vote on the legislation.
NY Times: dubious foreclosure fees, weakening of Frank reform bill
Over at the New York Times today, Gretchen Morgenson reports that Borrowers Face Dubious Charges in Foreclosures. The story includes data from research of Iowa law professor Katie Porter (who blogs over at Credit Slips). According to the Times:
In one example, Ms. Porter found that a lender had filed a claim stating that the borrower owed more than $1 million. But after the loan history was scrutinized, the balance turned out to be $60,000. And a judge in Louisiana is considering an award for sanctions against Wells Fargo in a case in which the bank assessed improper fees and charges that added more than $24,000 to a borrower's loan.
Meanwhile, the Times editorial page weighs in with Watered-Down Mortgage Reform on last-minute PIRG-opposed changes made just before the House Financial Services Committee is to vote on mortgage reform legislation backed by Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA):
Mr. Frank's proposed change would not improve borrowers' ability to pursue legal remedies against Wall Street under federal law. In addition, it would prevent borrowers from seeking redress on the state level, which sometimes offers stronger protection than federal law. Specifically, state law would be pre-empted with regard to too common predatory practices.
Watch for White House import safety plan, too little and too late
Today, we are signed onto testimony of the Consumer Federation of America's Rachel Weintraub before the House Energy and Commerce Committee at its hearing on product safety reform. (Note-- the committee has even posted a front page link to The Year of the Recall, a new Consumers Union report.) Meanwhile, after years of administration attacks (not mere benign neglect) on protecting Americans from product safety hazards, expect the Michael Leavitt-chaired White House import safety working group to back some sort of modest reforms today (New York Times and AP via Washington Post). We expect it will overly rely on self-regulation and the sort of tortured risk analysis favored by the administration over the more sensible precautionary principle, although press reports indicate positively that it will recommend strengthened recall authority at FDA and CPSC. Don't know just what it will say about the hazards to the public of CPSC officials flying around on the industry's planes or the industry's dime. From the Washington Post story today CPSC's Ethics-Review Process For Travel Criticized by Experts by reporter Elizabeth Williamson:
The $3,730 tab for Faulk and Nord's trip was to be paid by the Toy Industry Foundation, whose mission, according to the ethics memo, is to help at-risk children "by meeting a vital, yet frequently overlooked, developmental need often missing in their lives -- play."
This trip, to some smelly Chinese toy factory? No, to San Francisco. Oh, and as the story points out, fellow traveler Page Faulk, who prepared the memo that approved the trip, is the agency's top lawyer and top ethics official:
The key ethics review memo states at the top that it came from Faulk, whom it describes as the "Designated Agency Ethics Official." But it was signed by someone the CPSC yesterday called "an alternate ethics officer" because Faulk was the traveler.
We need some alternate safety officers, is what we need.
In today's editorial Playing Games With Toy Safety the New York Times urges Congressional reform of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and expresses grave concern over the leadership by both the President and the agency's acting chief, Nancy Nord:
With the holiday season approaching, there is more bad news about the federal agency charged with protecting children from unsafe toys. Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, joined industry lobbyists in opposing a Senate bill intended to strengthen her enfeebled agency. That was followed by the revelation that Ms. Nord and her predecessor took free trips from the toy industry. President Bush came into office promising relief for industry, which he claimed was overburdened by government regulations. Too often, however, that policy allows unscrupulous businesses to put workers and consumers in danger.
The editorial includes a call to fix the current law's notorious Section 6(b), which allows manufacturers to control the release of information about their dangerous products:
Perhaps most important, the bill would require the commission to make consumers' complaints public almost immediately, as the National Transportation Safety Administration does for automobiles. The Consumer Product Safety Commission now keeps complaints and even results of internal investigations secret while industry has weeks or longer to respond. That might work for industry, but not for the consumer.
Our position is to repeal 6(b); we're working hard to make sure Congress at least adequately reforms it. At a minimum, any final bill must remove the right of industry to sue to block disclosure of known safety hazards. On Tuesday, the Energy and Commerce holds a hearing on its bill, HR 4040. It's a good start, but narrower than the Senate Commerce Committee-passed bill, S. 2045. It doesn't include all necessary reforms, such as the right of state Attorneys General to enforce the product safety laws. Its increase in CPSC civil penalty authority from $1.8 million to only $10 million is inadequate; the Senate would go to $100 million, a real deterrent to corporate wrongdoing.
The blog will be a little funky --missing graphics, some non-working links and maybe even hard to find for a few days while our web team remodels the entire U.S. PIRG site. Should be all fixed Monday, and soon, we also hope to upgrade the software so you all can even post comments, like on other blogs!
Court victory over debt collectors dressed up as prosecutors
It's illegal to impersonate a police officer. But dress up like a prosecutor so you can better threaten consumers into paying off small debts? Heck, the prosecutors actually let debt collectors do this-- why? In return for kickbacks of course! The debt collectors "rent out a prosecutor's name and authority."
Do the debt collectors then gain the right to break the debt collection laws, by arguing that the sovereign immunity of the government official extends to them? Over at Consumer Law & Policy Blog, Deepak Gupta, a Public Citizen consumer attorney who has been fighting these tawdry arrangements (which have even been legitimized by Congress) reports that important progress is being made in the courts.
Sovereign immunity, the court said, "has never been held to apply simply because an independent contractor performs some government function." The decision has potentially far-reaching implications for holding all sorts of government contractors--from private prisons to Blackwater--accountable in the federal courts.
titled "Prisoners of Debt," by reporters Robert Berner and Brian Grow. The piece focuses on how big lenders and credit card companies keep squeezing money out of consumers whose debts have been discharged in bankruptcy, and on the selling and buying of those discharged debts.
New report out on predatory credit cards: "an eating machine."
The National Consumer Law Center has a new report Fee-Harvesters: Low-Credit, High-Cost Cards Bleed Consumers. The report provides an excellent overview of the entire credit card industry, the history of its rapid growth under deregulation and preemption and how its staggering profits have been fueled by abusive practices affecting all consumers. It then focuses on the fee-harvester cards, which "represent an extreme version of the abuses by the card industry." It describes how the companies use sophisticated algorithms and access to credit report data to target vulnerable consumers, not for true credit solicitations, but for fee-harvesting. I could use the metaphor of a parasitic alien, jumping on the backs of consumers and sucking out their money, fee by fee, but the report does better.
In the 1975 movie "Jaws," a marine biologist played by Richard Dreyfuss makes this observation about the great white shark: "What we are dealing with is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution."
One of the fee-harvester cards featured in the NCLC report comes with a credit limit of $250. However, the consumer who signs up for this card will automatically incur a $95 program fee, a $29 account set-up fee, a $6 monthly participation fee, and a $48 annual fee -- an instant debt of $178 and buying power of only $72. Fee-harvesting is extremely lucrative for the industry. In 2006, Atlanta-based CompuCredit -- one company featured in the NCLC report -- collected $400 million in fees from a portfolio of fee-harvester cards that by mid-2007 had saddled cardholders with nearly $1 billion in debt.
The report points out that "fee-harvester cards have very little purchasing power" for the consumers who "use" the cards: "much of the unpaid balances represent fees rather than payments for purchases to third-party merchants." The report describes in detail how credit card banks, large and small, obscure (CorTrust) and well-known (Capital One and HSBC) have developed the fee-harvesting business model to target sub-prime consumers with low credit scores. The report provides a detailed explanation of the techniques used by fee-harvester cards to deplete millions of dollars annually from consumer wallets -- from down-selling and abusive debt collection to the slice-and-dice, used by the massive "What's In Your Wallet?" lender Capital One:
Slice and dice: Rather than increasing the credit available on an existing card with a low limit, a bank will sometimes issue an additional card that also has a low limit. That increases the odds that a cardholder will incur penalty fees or rates by exceeding the limits or missing payment deadlines on one of multiple cards. A 2006 report in Business Week magazine identified five consumers who ended up mired in debt after they were issued multiple credit cards by Capital One Bank. A Capital One spokeswoman told the magazine that the "vast majority" of Capital One cardholders had only one account, but that "a very small percentage" had three or more cards.
Another one of them is reverse redlining -- where low-income communities are targeted for credit offers, bad ones:
Reverse redlining. Lenders have historically denied residents of minority communities equal access to credit, a form of discrimination known as redlining. Some issuers, seeking to exploit that history, have launched "affinity" campaigns that market high cost products, including fee harvester cards, to minority communities. For example, a marketing company called Urban Television Network distributed the Freedom Card, a fee-harvester card that often had a credit limit of only $300. Promotional efforts for the Freedom Card included a contract with musician Queen Latifah.
It's an important report. It should be read by all policymakers. For more on credit cards, see our campus marketing campaign site truthaboutcredit.org.
No nirvana, FCC chief's action smells like mean spirit
It's tough to beat the statement by his fellow FCC commissioners and consumer champions Jon Adelstein and Michael Copps in response to the grungy official release and pronouncement from FCC chair Kevin Martin that the next and last FCC hearing on media ownership will be in Seattle, but next week.The full statement follows:
A hearing with only five days notice is no nirvana for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. This smells like mean spirit. Clearly, the rush is on to push media consolidation to a quick and ill-considered vote. It shows there is a preordained outcome. Pressure from the public and their elected representatives is ignored. With such short notice, many people will be shut out. We received notice of the hearing just moments before it was announced. This is outrageous and not how important media policy should be made.
DETAILS: 4:00 p.m. -11:00 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time), Friday November 9, Town Hall Seattle
Great Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca Street), Seattle, WA 98101
Jon Leibowitz, the commissioner, said he was concerned about ads being shown to children online and about the tactics advertisers are using to collect data about people. "When you're surfing the Internet, you never know who is peering over your shoulder or how many marketers are watching," he said.
Here is the commissioner's full speech: So Private, So Public: Individuals, The Internet & The Paradox Of Behavioral Marketing. At the event, PIRG's Amina Fazlullah and the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester were featured panelists who explained why we also yesterday filed a supplement to our November 2006 joint complaint to the FTC on Internet privacy and behavioral targeting. As Fazlullah explains in the Times story:
Another consumer advocate said that Web sites are asking visitors to provide excessive amounts of information, putting them in uncomfortable situations. Amina Fazlullah, a lawyer at the U. S. Public Interest Research Group, compared shopping online to visiting a used-car dealership. Online advertisers, she said, ask the kinds of questions about people's buying power and interests that they would probably choose not to tell a used car dealer, for instance. "In the brick and mortar world, if you're asked for information, you can say 'no,'" she said.
San Jose Mercury News and numerous other outlets have stories.
Dingell, Barton Introduce House CPSC Reform Bill; CPSC chiefs love to fly
Yesterday the bi-partisan leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced their omnibus CPSC reform bill, H.R. 4040, the "Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act of 2007" (the release, the summary and the bill itself). We're still examining it and expect to sign onto joint consumer group testimony by the Consumer Federation of America at a hearing next Tuesday. This bill is on the fast track for two reasons:
Speaker Pelosi and caucus chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) have both made recent public statements in favor of moving it to the floor this month.
It's bi-partisan, as Energy and Commerce chair John Dingell (D-MI) and consumer subcommittee chair Bobby Rush (D-IL) are joined in co-sponsoring it by their respective ranking members, Joe Barton (R-TX) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL).
Meanwhile, in other CPSC news, the Washington Post's Elizabeth Williamson exposes the cozy relationship between the CPSC and industry, which often pays the tab for CPSC travel, including by acting chair Nancy Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton. From Williamson's story Industries Paid for Top Regulators' Travel:
The records document nearly 30 trips since 2002 by the agency's acting chairman, Nancy Nord, and the previous chairman, Hal Stratton, that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufacturers of products ranging from space heaters to disinfectants. The airfares, hotels and meals totaled nearly $60,000, and the destinations included China, Spain, San Francisco, New Orleans and a golf resort on Hilton Head Island, S.C.
And that includes a whopper $11,000 trip by Stratton, paid for by the fireworks boys. Check it out. By the way, while government regulations may generally allow traveling on industry's nickel, most other agencies don't do it for obvious reasons. And under Ann Brown's watch as President Clinton's CPSC chair:
"We hated to have an industry pay for our staff for anything," said Pam Gilbert, a lawyer who was executive director of the agency under Brown.
In connection with today's FTC Town Hall meeting, "Ehavioral Advertising: Tracking, Targeting, and Technology," the two groups filed a 74-page supplemental statement in support of the formal complaint they filed last year which identified new technology designed to aggressively track Internet users and create data profiles used in personalized "one-to-one" targeting schemes. "Over the past 12 months, new tracking and targeting technologies have escalated the attack on personal privacy online. As our report documents, online marketers are creating digital dossiers on individual consumers ('behavioral profiling'), so they can be tracked when surfing the Web, watching a broadband video, or using their mobile phone," explained Jeff Chester, executive director of the CDD.
Both Chester and U.S. PIRG staff attorney Amina Fazlullah are featured panelists at the Town Hall today, which will be webcast. Here is what I said in the release:
"The new business models of the Internet and mobile commerce can stimulate the economy and offer consumers choices," observed Ed Mierzwinski, Consumer Program Director of U.S. PIRG, "but unless the FTC steps in now and sets some basic rules for privacy protection, the costs to consumers posed by so-called behavioral targeting, the manipulation of both surfing and price choices, and the 24/7 corporate surveillance and dossier-building will easily outweigh any supposed benefits to consumers."
The PIRG-backed Stopbigmedia.com has links to the testimony of reform colleagues who testified at yesterday's poorly-advertised but well-attended FCC hearing on the lack of localism in the media, which hurts democracy. The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens has a story Critics Turn Out To Protest Media Consolidation that also mentions the successful rally outside, which featured champ U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others, including the "Prometheus Radio Project FCC Cheerleaders," a group with chants that appeared in full costume for Halloween. The story noted that "A dog wandered around wearing a sign reading "Big Media bites." That dog, Indy, is a U.S. PIRG four-legged advocate, she's owned by our consumer advocate Paul Brown. Also yesterday, the PIRG-backed Media and Democracy Coalition released survey findings that show strong public concern over media consolidation.
FTC Town Hall on Internet Targeting of Consumers Today
Today, both U.S. PIRG staff attorney Amina Fazlullah and The Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester are featured panelists at the opening day of the FTC's 2-day Town Hall on Behavioral Targeting and Internet Advertising. Watch this space. At 9 am we will post the latest update to our fall 2006 CDD/U.S. PIRG complaint to the FTC outlining the scope of threats to privacy and consumer well-being posed by the Internet's unchained and unregulated search/advertising business model. Many trace the origins of this town hall to the issues we raised one year ago.
That's the key finding of a new Public Citizen report 
As we say on U.S. PIRG's 
Despite the lessons from two years of high profile data breaches in the U.S., with banks, stores and government agencies leaving unencrypted data on computer tapes and disks to be stolen, lost in shipping or on airport baggage carousels or left somewhere by a hapless intern, or using sloppy computer programs so data can be plucked out of the air, I guess not everyone has learned. Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer is fumbling through bumbling explanations, as the New York Times reporter Eric Pfanner explains in his story 
Members of the PIRG-backed 
PIRGs released the 22nd annual Trouble In Toyland report and annual survey of toy hazards including dangerous small magnets, choking hazards and lead-laden toys at 75 news events today. We had one piece of jewelry that weighed in at 65% lead by weight, or over one thousand times legal limits. That's NYPIRG's Tracy Shelton at her event (AP photo). You can download our full report, our Toy Tips brochure and our news release at 
Nice flash video effort 
entire credit card industry, the history of its rapid growth under deregulation and preemption and how its staggering profits have been fueled by abusive practices affecting all consumers. It then focuses on the fee-harvester cards, which "represent an extreme version of the abuses by the card industry." It describes how the companies use sophisticated algorithms and access to credit report data to target vulnerable consumers, not for true credit solicitations, but for fee-harvesting. I could use the metaphor of a parasitic alien, jumping on the backs of consumers and sucking out their money, fee by fee, but the report does better. 
It's tough to beat the statement by his fellow FCC commissioners and consumer champions Jon Adelstein and Michael Copps in response to the 
The PIRG-backed