NY Times backs consumer groups' call for White House consumer czar
In today's editorial A Voice for the Consumer, the New York Times backs the recent call by U.S. PIRG, the Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and other leading groups to restore the long dormant White House Office of Consumer Affairs. From the NYT:
The time has come to give the American consumer a much stronger voice in Washington. President-elect Barack Obama has already named what amounts to an energy and environmental czar in the White House, and America’s beleaguered consumers deserve no less.[...] Presidents Johnson and Carter both recognized the need for a strong person to do that job. Both chose Esther Peterson, who during about eight years in office pushed for then-radical ideas like nutritional labeling on food and truth in advertising. As the Reagan anti-government era began, the consumer protection job steadily lost clout until it was shuttered in the late 1990s.
Consumers Union's and the AFL-CIO's Esther Peterson pages. In recent columns, David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times (syndicated, here it is in the Allentown (PA) Morning Call), Sheryl Harris of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and James Love of the Huffington Post have echoed many of our concerns and described some of our other goals. Chief among these is restoration of the authority, leadership and resources of the many federal consumer agencies that have done such a dubious job over the past eight years. Here is our full platform:
Read the details here:
1. Restore the United States Office of Consumer Affairs; Put a Consumer “Czar” In The White House.
2. Rein in Wall Street Excesses, Protect Consumers from Abusive and Predatory Lending.
3. Protect Consumers from Price-Gouging in Oil, Gas and Electricity Markets, and Take Steps To Provide Households With Access to Alternative Energy and Efficiency.
4. Improve Consumer Access to Justice By Reinstating Legal Rights.
5. Guarantee Safe, High Quality, Affordable Healthcare for Everyone.
6. Ensure our Food and Products are Safe.
Joan Claybrook, the dean of public interest advocates, will "step down" (release) after 27 years as Public Citizen President at the end of January to "move on to other adventures." We wish her well. Except for a stint as head of the National Highway traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under Jimmy Carter, Joan has been at Public Citizen in various capacities since circa 1970. She was one of the very first of the institutional (as opposed to the summer-only) "Nader's Raiders."
During my tenure, we have achieved so much for the people of this nation. Every consumer in America has benefited from our advocacy work. I am proud that Public Citizen under my leadership has played such a significant role in Congress, in government agencies and in the courts to protect the public health, safety and democracy for everyone in the U. S. In the past 27 years, we have helped pass significant laws benefiting consumers, opened access to government information, enhanced congressional ethics and campaign reform, as well as stopped some of industry’s most egregious efforts to rollback public protections.
The release goes on to list some well-deserved highlights of these accomplishments over the years. Good luck.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund and the New Democracy Project have released a joint book with recommendations for the new administration. The book Change for America has several sections available online here. Among these is the chapter CPSC: Safety First written by Pamela Gilbert, who was executive director of the agency under President Bill Clinton; Pamela is a longtime public interest attorney who has also worked both at U.S. PIRG and Public Citizen. From her report summary:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission over the past eight years was run by political appointees who let the agency languish, promulgating few new regulations, announcing few new programs, and rolling back existing rules.
The most important thing that the new president must do to restore confidence in the safety of consumer products is to appoint a chair of the CPSC who has a proven commitment to consumer safety—not industry preferences. He or she should quickly address the shortage of experienced staff and low staff morale, follow through on congressionally mandated improvements to the agency’s authorities and testing laboratory, and establish new partnerships to enable it to do more with its limited resources. CPSC must also address new challenges, including the meteoric rise in imports of unsafe consumer products and any hazards associated with new technologies,
such as nanotechnology.
1. Climate Change. Require all federal agencies to measure, report, and reduce their carbon footprints.
2. Climate Change. Direct all federal agencies to consider the climate change-related implications of their actions as part of their obligations under the National Environmental Protection Act.
3. Protecting Children from Toxics. Require all federal agencies to develop plans implementing an affirmative agenda to protect children from toxics, to account for the unique attributes of children when conducting risk assessments, and to stop discounting prospective benefits for children and future generations when conducting cost-benefit analyses.
4. Environmental Justice. Clarify key terminology for understanding environmental justice issues and require all federal agencies to conduct meaningful analyses of the environmental justice impacts of their actions, undertake steps to ameliorate environmental injustices, and commit to carrying out an affirmative environmental agenda.
5. Transparency in Government. Restore the presumption of disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, limit the ability of agencies to avoid the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and introduce greater transparency into the regulatory review process conducted by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
6. Victims’ Right to Sue. Establish a strong presumption against federal agency preemption of more protective state health and environmental laws and institute a rigorous procedure for agencies to follow in order to overcome that presumption.
7. Public Lands. Establish the goal of ecological integrity as the baseline for making public land management decisions, revoke two Bush-era Executive Orders that improperly prioritized the goals of energy development over the statutory goals of sustainable land use, and broaden opportunities for public participation in land management decisions.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz made a number of important points in his testimony today before a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. It is truly a must-read, and it is in English, unlike the gibberish spoken by many of his colleagues. Among numerous other important points, he opposes the notion being pressed hard by the banks to eliminate "mark-to-market" accounting. He also suggests that the recent death-bed conversion of the two remaining at-risk Wall Street investment banks into bank holding companies poses risks to the deposit system and requires better "ring-fencing" to protect the taxpayer-backed insurance funds:
The fact that two investment banks have converted themselves into bank holding companies should be a source of worry. They argued that this would provide them a more stable source of finance. But they should not be able to use insured deposits to finance their risky activities.
Further, he backs establishment of the Consumer Credit Safety Commission proposal first made by Professor Elizabeth Warren and introduced recently by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). There's a lot more in his comprehensive analysis.
Durbin introduces Professor Warren's "CPSC for financial products" idea
Lost in the shuffle of the bailout news, on Friday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) filed legislation, S. 3629, to "establish a new Consumer Credit Safety Commission, to provide individual consumers of credit with better information and stronger protections, and to provide sellers of consumer credit with more regulatory certainty." More information is not yet available at Thomas.loc.gov but should be in a few days. Over at Consumer Law and Policy blog, Professor Jeff Sovern explains the concept. Here's a working link (Jeff's in his post doesn't work) to one of several available articles where Professor Elizabeth Warren, one of the nation's leading consumer credit and bankruptcy experts, explains her idea. It's a good one. If the CPSC can ban dangerous toys, shouldn't there be a companion CCSC with the power to ban dangerous financial products? From Professor Elizabeth Warren:
It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance your home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the street—and the mortgage won’t even carry a disclosure of that fact. Similarly, it’s impossible for the seller to change the price on a toaster once you have purchased it. But long after the credit-card slip has been signed, your credit-card company can triple the price of the credit you used to finance your purchase, even if you meet all the credit terms. Why are consumers safe when they purchase tangible products with cash, but left at the mercy of their creditors when they sign up for routine financial products like mortgages and credit cards?
From the website of a new youth advocacy group and online community jump-started by SEIU: Qvisory is a new nonprofit online advocacy and service organization that supports the health, financial well-being, and career goals of young adults from 18 to 34 years old. Our mission is to help this generation build their future and gain more control over their lives. We do this by providing the information, tools, and services young adults need to make sense of the challenges they face. We are also looking out for this generation in Washington and will fight for policies to protect their best interests.
We invite you to explore our community: learn from and comment on our blog, participate in our advocacy actions, make or join a pact, explore our services, and become a member. FAQs.
Fed Richmond Bank President Jeffrey Lacker and Fed Philly Bank President Charles I. Plosser both gave speeches yesterday (Washington Post and Bloomberg via New York Times) criticizing the bailout of the investment bank Bear Stearns by the New York Fed. The Post story lists a number of other insider critics of the action, which could lead to greater risk-taking. When financial companies can count on the fact that they are seen as too-big-to-fail, they take bigger risks. It's also called moral hazard. Our previous Bear blog.
As long as we're on the topic of the Fed, Professor Robert Auerbach of the LBJ School at the University of Texas has a new book out-- Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank. Auerbach served as chief economist under Chairman Gonzalez (and other chairs) of the old House Banking Committee. The book is getting good reviews. I look forward to reading it, as among the events it chronicles are the first five years, 1989-94, that I spent in Washington, while Henry B. -- a consumer and community champion -- supervised the savings-and-loan cleanup. Excerpt from the book:
The Fed could not silence or intimidate Gonzalez. Greenspan and his staff of lobbyists made the rounds in Congress without making any sales that mattered to Gonzalez. The congressman saw to it that the Banking Committee would maintain an arm's-length relationship with Greenspan and institute actual checks and balances. Gonzalez wanted action taken on issues that were important to the country. The heat generated by the Fed and its sympathizers never caused Gonzalez to stop an investigation.
Post's Broder on Senator Kennedy: No Other Like Him
The Washington Post columnist David Broder has a fine and well-deserved tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy today: No Other Like Him.
Along with Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America, who led the consumer-civil rights-labor coalition against the bill, and many other advocates, I had the privilege of working with Senator Kennedy during part of the long (8-year) rear-guard battle against the draconian bankruptcy bill, which ultimately was enacted in 2005. For the first several years of that effort, the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) led the fight, but after he and his wife died in a tragic plane crash, Senator Kennedy took over the fight.
As Travis pointed out in a note to some of us today: "Senator Kennedy got his entire senior staff involved in the effort to stop the bill, called almost-daily strategy meetings with advocates and other Senators who opposed the bill, contacted the media repeatedly and spent many hours on the Floor offering amendments, coordinating opposition efforts and speaking against the bill."
This is all true (although Travis could have added that Senator Kennedy also frequently brought his two dogs to these meetings to ensure that we had all angles covered).
What's also true is that Senator Kennedy surely knew we had no chance to win against the phalanx of credit card company lobbyists who were buttressed by record campaign contributions and a friend on the White House. The bill eventually passed overwhelmingly, in the Senate 74-25 and the House 302-126.
But, in fact, Senator Kennedy knew that opposing that bill was the right thing to do, and as in so many of his other battles for justice, it simply had to be done.
But in losing that 2005 battle, he may have helped win the war. Today, the bankruptcy bill is belittled as the ultimate giveaway to an ungrateful special interest. It has resulted in headaches for its Capitol Hill proponents. The credit card companies took that victory, and instead of acting gratefully and humbly, turned around and squeezed their customers even harder. Now, the rest of the Congress and even the Fed and FDIC all recognize the rapacious nature of the credit card industry's practices and are turning against the credit card companies for their excesses. We have a tough road ahead, as we always do, but we may win real reforms against their worst practices.
So, Senator Kennedy fought that battle and while it looked at one point as if he'd lost, he's now winning. We wish him and his family luck in his latest battle. (Thanks to Travis Plunkett for the idea for this blog entry.)
A soft-spoken 30-year-old PhD candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet. "There have been policy moments in the past when the market has been shaped by decisions made in Washington -- radio in the 1930s, television in the 1950s and cable in the 1980s. That moment is now for the Internet," said Scott, who runs a nine-member office.
Check it out and check out the work Free Press is doing on internet freedom (net neutrality) and other media reform issues. The story mentions the recent FCC hearing in Cambridge, where cable giant and enemy of Internet freedom Comcast hired seatwarmers so there would be no room for the concerned public to sit. As you can see on this youtube video, some of the seatwarmers fell asleep.
When I first came to Washington, I had the privilege of working with Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) on a variety of consumer protection efforts, including proposals to require federally-insured and lavishly subsidized banks to offer more affordable accounts to working Americans. He was a passionate defender of justice and the public interest. Senator Metzenbaum's wins on behalf of workers and their families were important, but just as important were his tireless efforts to stop the worst, most self-serving corporate scams and dodges from becoming law. He was a master of the Senate's arcane parliamentary processes and not afraid to push the limits of its "be nice to other Senators" rules, if a powerful speech about a special-interest package inserted into legislation in the dark of night with no hearings or public discussion would help stop or delay it. After he retired in 1995, he became unpaid chairman of the Consumer Federation of America and continued to lobby his former colleagues into his eighties. Many of his fiercely loyal former staff now work with other public interest organizations. Howard Metzenbaum was a consumer champion. (Associated Press via New York Times, Columbus Dispatch.)
Colorado governor Bill Ritter has nominated Matt Baker for a seat on the Colorado PUC, the state agency which regulates utility rates. Matt's a longtime PIRG staffer and former Colorado PIRG director who has most recently been director of our sister organization, Environment Colorado. In 2004, Baker ran the successful and pioneering Amendment 37 ballot campaign to require utilities to dramatically increase use of renewable fuels. Here is the Denver Post story on his nomination.
New staff at the Consumer Federation of America, National Consumers League
The Consumer Federation of America has announced that Susan Grant, a longtime consumer advocate who previously ran the National Consumers League's Fraud Center (fraud.org) is its new Director of Consumer Protection. It's an expansion, since the current director, Jean Ann Fox, is assuming the new title of Director of Financial Services at CFA. Also, earlier this fall, another longtime colleague and senior counsel at Consumers Union, Sally Greenberg, became executive director of the National Consumers League, replacing Linda Golodner, who retired. We wish them all well in their new posts.
Last week, Neely Tucker of the Washington Post reported the story of 75-year-old Mona Shaw Taking a Whack Against Comcast. After a several-day long debacle where Comcast apparently left her "Triple Play" installation in disarray then cut off all phone, cable and Internet service, Shaw and husband Don went to Comcast's Manassas (VA) office for a customer service rep to hear her service complaint. Reasonable. There, the reps left her and husband Don sitting outside the office for hours, then all went home. Unreasonable. Not to worry, Mona came back the next day with her hammer. From the Post:
Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone! "They cuffed me right then," she says. Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
I also am encouraged to find out that consumers are organizing their complaints about Comcast at the website ComcastMustDie.com.
Go to the site and read their stories. The growth of these "mycompanysucks.com" Internet sites -- and this isn't the only one (See cybergriping.com) -- shows the power of the Internet to give small speakers an unfiltered voice and an opportunity to organize at low-cost. It also shows, of course, that consumers are getting fed up with the impersonal, arrogant, over-priced and nuisance-fee-laden so-called services of banks, airlines, cable companies, phone companies and other behemoth firms. And while companies use phalanxes of lawyers to try and take down the sites using copyright and other legal arguments (but mostly blustery threats designed to intimidate), Paul Levy of the Public Citizen Litigation Group has been leading efforts to protect the First Amendment free speech rights of consumers to complain.
Under deregulation, market competition, rather than pesky bureaucratic regulators, is supposed to restrain the most unfair tendencies of large, powerful corporations. But it doesn't seem to be working. Many firms use Early Termination Penalty fees and other tactics, including counting on consumers not wanting to pay the high switching costs (lost time in phone calls, getting new account numbers and new email addresses, waiting on new equipment service calls, or whatever) of switching providers, to establish a virtually captive customer base so they don't need to have good service to compete.
But Comcast at least, didn't count on Mona, who took the hammer into her own hands. She's not the first, and she won't be the last, consumer to take direct action. Corporations need to wake up. Consumers who pay good money for service deserve a better deal than the pathetic, impersonal treatment many get. Consumer complaints about bad service are not isolated incidents -- bad service is economy-wide (previous blog).
Home buyers in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City were more likely to get their mortgages last year from a subprime lender than home buyers in white neighborhoods with similar income levels, according to a new analysis of home loan data by researchers at New York University.
While the story includes the obligatory quote from the Mortgage Bankers Association that the report does not prove discrimination, the article cites to numerous studies with the same results.
"There's no question that if you live in a predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhood you're going to be paying more for your mortgage," said Sarah Ludwig, executive director of the nonprofit [Neighborhood Economic Development] Advocacy Project, which is based in New York.
Next, the story Group Plans to Provide Investigative Journalism by Richard Perez-Pena reports that the bankers-turned-philanthropists, Herb and Marion Sandler, are backing a new investigative journalism project, Pro Publica: "The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations." The Sandlers have invested their money in a lot of interesting and important public interest projects, after doing a lot of thinking and investigating of their own, so watch this one.
Member-owned worker, producer and consumer cooperatives play an important role in our economy, promote the welfare of members and the communities that they live in and help act as a competitive yardstick against other businesses that may not put the customer first. If you're not a member of a credit union, the outdoor product co-op REI, a neighborhood food buying club, or a farm or worker co-op, or don't live in a housing co-op, get out and celebrate Co-op Month by joining a co-op today! More at www.go.coop. (Yes, cooperatives have their own Internet top-level domain.) As I often say, bank at a credit union, not at a bank.
Sally Greenberg, our longtime ally as a Consumers Union senior attorney specializing in product safety and the corporate crime beat, has a new gig. On October 1, she takes over the nation's oldest consumer group, the National Consumers League, with the retirement of Linda Golodner. In Annys Shin's Washington Post story New Boss for Consumers League, consumer advocate Pamela Gilbert says it well: "With her at the helm of NCL, the consumer movement will get a great big shot of adrenaline." We wish Linda well in retirement and look forward to working with Sally and NCL.
U.S. PIRG Video Blog: Air Passengers' Bill of Rights
We're excited to announce the first of our occasional U.S. PIRG video consumer blogs. Episode 1: An interview with Kate Hanni of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, who explains what passengers should know about tarmac strandings and what to do if stranded. We go through the items -- from diapers to water purification tablets to emergency phone numbers -- in the coalition's Stranded Passenger Emergency Kit. Click on the Youtube picture to watch the video. (It's a little long, I know, but it's our first! Thanks to my producer/cameraman, U.S. PIRG administrative director Rick Trilsch.)
A new California law extends lemon law protection to military personnel based in California, even if their car was purchased in a different state. The bill was pushed by long-time lemon rights and car safety champion Rosemary Shahan and her group Citizens for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS). The legislature enacted the law after the debacle faced by Lt. Nathan Kindig when Chrysler refused to grant him rights under the lemon law for his 2004 Dodge Dakota lemon truck.
In 1982, when I was with Connecticut PIRG, we helped pass the nation's first new car lemon law. At the time, we were only a few weeks ahead of passage of California's law, where Rosemary Shahan was leading the way.
Lemon laws have now been enacted in every state. They solved the myriad legal problems consumers faced when they bought a car from a dealer that didn't work. Lemon laws generally define a lemon (a new car that has the same major unfixable defect 3-4 times during warranty, or is in the shop 30 days during warranty, for example) so consumers no longer have to prove their particular car is a lemon in court (previously, they did). Lemon laws also give consumers an explicit legal right to sue a manufacturer, something that they didn't have, which also crippled many lawsuits. Lemon laws also streamlined the legal process. A few states have enacted similar laws for used cars.
The new California law is the latest example of laws designed to meet the special needs of our underpaid military personnel, who are often targets of unfair predatory practices. The law simply provides the same protections to in-state military personnel that other residents enjoy. Recently, the Congress has recognized that in some cases, military personnel need even greater rights. In 2003, stronger rights for military personnel to prevent identity theft (active duty military fraud alerts) were established. In 2006 rights against predatory lending (although rules on this are not yet final and aren't as good as we would like) were enacted.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has quickly emerged as a leading champion of working families both on the House Financial Services Committee and on the House floor. Here's an excerpt from his column Saving the golden goose: preserving America's middle class today in The Hill:
As more working families turn to credit, more are subject to unfair and abusive practices by some elements of the credit industry. From unfair high-interest credit cards, to payday loans and tax-refund anticipation loans, a whole industry has spawned to take advantage of working families trying to make ends meet. My passion for consumer justice issues stem from my belief that we must help return economic prosperity to working families. Ensuring that working families are protected from credit abuse will help Americans have more money in their monthly budgets to afford healthcare, college for their children and food for their table.
The column goes on to describe some of the important legislation he is working on, including a bill to ban credit card company universal default schemes.
For the past 25 years [...] Greenstein & Co. have been there for every hearing, every amendment and every budget reconciliation, ensuring that the interests of the poor and working class are considered. Their weapons in these battles are reliable data, sound analysis and an ability to deliver it when needed.
And in a story From Voice of the Bottle Bill to Keeper of the Green in the New York Times, Robin Finn profiles Judith Enck, who served first as environmental advisor to New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer and is now Deputy Secretary for the Environment for Governor Spitzer.
In the interests of full disclosure, Enck is not only a former NYPIRG official, as the story explains, but also, when I worked for Connecticut PIRG, I too worked on Enck's signature issue: helping to pass the Connecticut version of returnable beverage container deposit legislation, aka, "the bottle bill." The bottle bills have cut solid waste, reduced litter and saved energy in nine states. There's no reason that the laws shouldn't be expanded nationwide. Further, doing more to encourage the use of refillables, not just returnables, would cut energy use even more.
Our longtime colleague Blair Horner, NYPIRG's Albany-based legislative director, who is perhaps the nation's leading voice for legislative ethics reform as well as one of the nation's most effective, and most quotable, consumer advocates, is taking on a new job next month. Yesterday, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced that Blair Horner would be a Special Advisor on Policy and Public Integrity, and
"oversee the development of "Project Sunlight," New York State’s first-ever comprehensive Internet database tracking donors, lobbyists, special interests, state contracts, and elected officials, and the links between them." Attorney General Cuomo said, "I can think of no individual more qualified to lead "Project Sunlight" than Blair Horner. Blair is a preeminent authority on government ethics and reform, and brings singular expertise and invaluable experience.
From NYPIRG executive director Rebecca Weber's statement:
For two decades Blair has been an uncompromising force for government openness and accountability. Blair’s unique understanding of how Albany works makes him exactly the right person to help the Attorney General usher in a new era of accountability in New York. NYPIRG stands ready, willing and able to work with Blair, the attorney general, civic groups and others working for reform in New York.
For decades, Mr. Horner has kept an eye on politicians’ press conferences, blown the whistle on slippery legislative fine print and dispatched memorably scathing sound bites to reporters. But on Thursday, he described his jump to public service as a kind of acid test of his political principles. "If I really believe that it’s important to the state to have independent ethics watchdogs walking the beat, which you’ve all heard me say that the state needs, and the attorney general wants to make that happen, I should be willing to help," he said at a press conference.
I've had the privilege of standing up for consumers alongside Blair for 25 years. I know he won't change: he'll continue as an "uncompromising force," he'll keep questioning authority, he'll keep speaking truth to power, he'll keep exposing miscreants who abuse the public trust, and he'll keep changing business as usual in Albany-- only this time, from the inside. This is exciting.
I didn't know Father Robert Drinan, a consumer champion, Congressman, longtime dean of Boston College Law School and founder of the National Consumer Law Center, but I was present Thursday when one of his former students, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), told the CFA Consumer Assembly about him. A brief summary of Mr. Markey's actual heartfelt remarks is here. Also, National Consumer Law Center Executive Director Will Ogburn has posted a nice remembrance here.
Although I never met her, I did know Molly Ivins, the longtime populist columnist and muckraker who also passed away this week. Molly covered a variety of political shenanigans down in Texas, and, when Texans came to Washington, here, too. But she was also an important consumer champion who covered the savings-and-loan scandals, the Congressional bankruptcy wars and other sordid tales. She'd call me up and ask: "Ed, what in the hell are the damn banks up to these days and what can I tell people to do about it?" She cared about the little guy, and gal, too, and it came across in her passionate writing that exposed the abuses of corporate power and government chicanery. Here's a nice piece -- Ivins loved the rabble-rousers -- by the next generation rabble-rouser and muckraker, her friend John Nichols, in the Madison (WI) Capital Times.
We'll miss both these consumer champions, but they both left important legacies.
The New Press has a nice page up on our colleague Jeff Chester's new book Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy.
The celebrated media advocate's clarion call for new media to serve the public instead of corporate interests--and what's involved in this high-stakes struggle.
My previous blog has links to Jeff's Center for Digital Democracy, where you can also buy the book and read an excerpt.
NCMR2007 Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein on stage with bands
We're still here in Memphis at NCMR2007, the National Conference for Media Reform, where one of the highlights, in addition to the many experts and activists, is the musical entertainment. Here are a few pictures of FCC commissioner and blues harmonica player Jonathan Adelstein, who had a chance to jam with the incredible North Mississippi All-Stars (top left) and also with the Austin Lounge Lizards (bottom right). The All-Stars played Friday night at the Memphis Music Showcase Concert and Rally, where the Rev. Al Green's Gospel Choir kicked off the show with a powerful set. On Saturday, the Austin Lounge Lizards headlined the Consumers Union Freedom of Expression Celebration.
A little more on the Austin Lounge Lizards: The Austin Lounge Lizards are great musicians who write funny songs and also make soundtracks for Internet organizing flash videos for progressive groups including Consumers Union and the PIRG-backed ExxposeExxon campaign. Their 2006 album The Drugs I Need is named for their powerful song for CU's prescription drugs campaign (See the flash video The drugs I need with music) and includes ExxposeExxon's Toast The Earth With ExxonMobil (See the flash video with music).
Here at NCMR2007, people have been snapping up signed copies of my good friend Jeff Chester's acclaimed new book, Digital Destiny. That's Jeff making a typically emphatic point outside the meeting rooms. Jeff directs the Center for Digital Democracy, where you can order the book. We've worked with him for many years on a variety of media and privacy projects. It was great to see Bill Moyers, in his keynote, recommend the book. Here's a short excerpt:
The changes we are witnessing in our media system are occurring at a dizzying pace. Each day, there seems to be some new technological innovation or an even bigger industry merger announced. It's hard for anyone to keep up with these developments, let alone have a clear understanding of what they will ultimately mean for our society.
But decisions are being made today about our country's digital future by the biggest media companies, advertisers, technology manufacturers, lobbyists, and politicians. The U.S. public, sadly, has not been invited to participate, even though these decisions will affect everyone here and--since the United States is so dominant--around the rest of the world. The corporate media know where they wish to take us. If they are successful, we are likely to live with a communications system that offers us dazzling entertainment and seeks to fulfill our every consumer desire. Yet it will not meaningfully contribute to improving our lives or our democracy. We run the risk of merely serving as observers while special interests determine America's "digital destiny."
Read more here, but buy this book if you care about our digital destiny and want to learn more about how we got into the mess we are in, and how we still have a powerful potential digital future, if we fight hard to achieve it.
NCMR2007 Consumer champ Ed Markey will be here tonight
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), incoming chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications will be here tonight for his keynote address at NCMR2007. He did miss his morning panel but won't miss the National Conference for Media Reform. From his page:
Rep. Markey, who has served on the Telecommunications subcommittee since his first election in 1976, has been the Ranking Democrat on the panel since 1995 and previously served as its chair from 1987 to 1995. He is the author and co-author of numerous landmark telecommunications laws, including the Children's Television Act, the Cable Act of 1992, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, including provisions establishing the "E-rate" rate for schools and libraries and the V-Chip for parental control of TV violence. He has repeatedly led efforts to protect consumer privacy and to defend public television and public radio from crippling budget cuts and creeping commercialization. His most recent legislative focus has been on the need to keep the Internet an open platform by adopting strong rules for "net neutrality" and to promote policies to make broadband services competitive, available and affordable to all Americans.
Reporter Bruce Mohl has a profile of Massachusetts state senator Michael Morrissey in today's Boston Globe. Morrissey discusses his proposal -- modeled after new and used car lemon laws-- to allow consumers to cancel cell phone contracts without paying punitive early termination fee penalties (ETFs):
The bill requires wireless companies to publicly disclose their coverage gaps and allows consumers with poor service (five or more dropped calls in a month) to terminate contracts without paying hefty financial penalties. Industry executives say the termination provision is the first of its kind in the nation. "The industry says no state's ever done this. Well, so what?" Morrissey said.
In today's Washington Post, Annys Shin profiles Robert Krughoff, founder/publisher of the Consumers Checkbook non-profit consumer guides published first in DC and now in several other cities. I recommend the story on this consumer champion and also that you subscribe, if you live in DC, the SF Bay, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Twin Cities (MN) or Delaware Valley areas. The semi-annual guides offer recommendations from auto repair shops to health plans.
Robert Krughoff can't remember the last time he used the Yellow Pages to find a plumber or a dentist. As far as he's concerned, the phone book is for gamblers...Checkbook relies on its readers and those of Consumer Reports to answer written surveys on businesses for the Checkbook's ratings charts. Krughoff won't list and evaluate a business unless he has a minimum of 10 ratings. Ratings also include complaints filed with local consumer protection agencies and the Better Business Bureau.
There's a lot happening at consumer blogs around the blogosphere: Over at the Consumer Law and Policy mega-blog: Ira Rheingold of NACA comments on Senator Tim Johnson's (D-SD) recent disparaging comments in the trade paper American Banker, where Johnson attempts to scare fellow Senators into backing a bank-friendly, consumer unfriendly "fix" to landmark legislation signed by the President this fall banning predatory lending to our military families. The Senator has also made disappointing comments this year that he was disappointed that the Senate hadn't yet rolled back strong state laws in a few courageous states (New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Carolina) that still protect all their consumers from predatory rent to own stores.
Still at the Consumer Law and Policy mega-blog, see a post by Deepak Gupta of Public Citizen on credit card debt and the recent showing of the forthcoming documentary Maxed Out at the NCLC conference in Miami last weekend. Some of the most powerful performances in the movie are by people you've never heard of, including Janne O'Donnell. At the conference, I had the privilege of renewing my acquaintance with Janne, who has couragously spoken out against credit card company practices since 1998, when her son, college student Sean Moyer, committed suicide while distraught over looming credit card debts. (PIRG truthaboutcredit.org site.)
At her Washington Post blog The Checkout, here's reporter Annys Shin with a post on Mastercard's new product: plastic for kids as young as ten years old. It's a reloadable debit card ("starter" plastic) with parental controls, and it comes loaded up with fees. "Get 'em young, just like the tobacco industry does," appears to be the credit card industry's mantra.
At his Digital Destiny blog, our colleague Jeff Chester of Center for Digital Democracy has a followup entry commenting on some of the issues surrounding our joint CDD-U.S. PIRG complaint to the FTC about out-of-control online advertising.
"How much do these companies earn by taking aggressive positions with the expectation the consumer will just give up over a small dollar amount? It's only $50 to us, but when the companies take thousands of aggressive positions with thousands of customers, it adds up to real money for them."
It's a great point Bob makes and I'd like to see more academic analysis on how HMOs, banks, cell phone companies and others use various techniques to guarantee the "stickiness" of their customers and prevent them from shopping around for better choices. Once we're trapped, they squeeze us for fees because they can. Banks absolutely count on this effect, knowing that hassle of switching accounts may outweigh the "small" fees, which then add up. It works even better (for them) if they make it harder to avoid the fees. See, for example, our work on how cell phone early termination fees allow the companies to offer everything but world-class service, once they have you locked in a cell.
consumer scams, credit cards, health insurance, fees, nickeled and dimed, broadband, privacy, bank fees, predatory loans, payday loans, military families, rent-to-own
Along with other PIRG consumer staff, I will be attending the National Consumer Law Center's Consumer Rights Litigation Conference in Miami over the weekend. It's an exciting event for anyone who cares about access to justice. All the consumer top guns on predatory lending, credit bureaus, identity theft, debt collection law and similar topics should be there.
People often ask me: "Ed, how can I fight the credit bureaus? They've ruined my life." Well, here's one way to learn more. Buy this new book. Denise Richardson is a credit-bureau-victim-turned consumer advocate who has been fighting the good fight against the credit bureaus for years. She's got a new book and I recommend it: Give Me Back My Credit! I owe her a longer book review, but here's the cover blurb I wrote for the book, which gives you an idea of my views:
"Denise Richardson's story has important lessons for all Americans. It's the story of a consumer who faced hardships created by credit bureau errors, mortgage servicing errors, abusive debt collectors and identity thieves. She learned, fought back and won. Now she's a consumer champion with a book that's a first-person story and a consumer handbook in one, with lessons for everyone who wants to win against corporate and financial predators. Buy it and then fight back yourself!"
I wrote this weekend that if Grameen Bank can make microloans in the under-developed world, why can't U.S. banks and credit unions? Here's one: The North Carolina State Employees Credit Union (SECU) has developed a low-cost salary advance product: contrast its 12% APR (16/cents a day) interest to borrow $500 with the $75 bucks that the payday lender takes from your wallet for a $500 payday loan.
Just a thought: Now that Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank have been deservedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below," will U.S. banks and credit unions wake up and do a better job of offering fairly priced loans and overdraft protection to American consumers being ripped off by both their own shoddy "bounce protection" products as well as by the payday lenders and other loan sharks out there? From the Nobel Committee: MORE:
Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Grameen Bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world.
Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.
Some law professors -- including some from universities in Europe and Africa -- and consumer advocates I know have a new Consumer Law and Policy Blog hosted by Public Citizen Litigation Group. I've worked with and am working with a lot of them on various projects, so check it out. We know there are a lot of other blogs. We try to keep track of a smaller universe. First, we link to consumer policy and consumer complaint blogs. Second, we link to blogs that assess the role of consumers, citizens, corporations and markets in an increasingly digital and wired world. That's the world we're living in now.
While the blogs in our blogroll sometimes include general political commentary, in both categories we try to focus on blogs that primarily push worthwhile ideas and policy recommendations.
With this new blog, along with the new bankruptcy and credit blog creditslips.org and a coming-soon new blog project from Consumers Union, the blogroll in this narrow self-defined category is starting to fill up, and that's exciting. We're starting to fill the blogosphere with consumer information and policy ideas. It's about time.
This week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, well-known for its no-strings-attached individual "genius" grants to activists, academics, musicians, authors and others, announced that Knowledge Ecology International (formerly CPTech) was among the first winners of its new round of organizational genius grants. (Well, they're actually called MacArthur Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions.) It's a well-deserved award. MORE:
We've been fortunate over the years to work with the organization Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) in campaigns designed to balance intellectual rights claims with the broader public interest. Among other goals, KEI/CPTech and the PIRGs and others seek to preserve access to knowledge and access to medicine. The group, which is in the process of changing its name to Knowledge Ecology International, is led by the indomitable Jamie Love.
CPTech has led many important and visionary fights, including its successful WTO battle against the powerful prescription drug lobby PhRMA and its sycophants in the U.S. State Department and European Commission, which made it easier to bring critical low-cost AIDS drugs and malarial and other necessary medicines to African and other less-developed nations. More recently, CPTech/KEI is leading the fight against a proposed broadcast treaty which invents then preposterously grants for 50 years a whole new set of property rights -- including rights to materials already in the public domain -- to webcasters (our previous blog on the proposed WIPO treaty).
For more than a decade, KEI led the successful campaign to lower prices of medicines essential for treating AIDS and other diseases through "compulsory licenses." It brought about numerous changes in international trade policy, working with nongovernmental organizations and academic partners to design a new trade framework and new financing mechanisms for medical research and development.
More recently, KEI has called on the World Intellectual Property Organization to take a more balanced approach between promoting intellectual property rights and serving the public interest. It seeks to slow or stop work on treaties that could restrict severely access to knowledge.
As the Washington Post story on the award notes, CPTEch/KEI is also working with U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders on innovative proposed legislation, HR 417, that would change the way we reward inventors of new medicines to "drive down the price of drugs by changing how research and development are financed. The goal would be for development to be based on drugs' potential health benefits, not on their potential market value."
This week's Anchorage Press has a very nice cover story profile by Casey Grove -- Pushing for Change -- on Alaska PIRG's director Steve Cleary, shown here riding his bike to work.
While lawyers and politicians are often viewed as the successful ones, the ones who have made something of their lives, success can also be measured in terms of idealism and commitment. Sometimes the rebels don't tune the world out completely, living on the fringes and complaining about what could or should be changed. Sometimes they find a way to join the system without compromising their ideals, instead putting them to work.
And Paul Gores at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a nice story last week on UWisconsin Law professor Steve Meili and how he and his consumer clinic law students "smash scams" and "provide a voice for lower-income consumers." From the Journal-Sentinel:
[The consumers got their money back but] the real payoff for Meili was that vulnerable people who were taken advantage of got some justice. And for Meili and students at the Consumer Law Litigation Clinic he runs at UW-Madison's law school, justice for consumers is the top priority. "I have an interest in seeing justice done in the marketplace, and I see a lot of instances where it's not being done," said Meili...
Henry Gilgoff was a great consumer reporter who wrote for Newsday for many years. He forced me to be a better consumer advocate, because he always wanted to know "why" or "how" a particular sleazy practice was either illegal, unfair or otherwise anti-consumer. And when he was done asking questions, his stories, and then his columns, would use the details he'd gathered to build an insurmountable wall of evidence showing "how" and "why" the consumers he wrote about were being ripped-off and lied to and treated unfairly.
I knew him for many years as a voice on deadline over the phone. I'm glad I finally got a chance to meet him, at a NYPIRG event, just a few years ago. From his obituary, in Newsday today:
In the years that Gilgoff covered consumer affairs for Newsday, he wrote about everything from lost luggage to a run on a Waldbaum's Thanksgiving promotion that left several customers one turkey short for the holiday. Recently he profiled the travails of an East Atlantic Beach family whose house -- which had been converted to natural gas over a decade ago -- was flooded with 222 gallons of heating oil because of a botched delivery.
"Henry strongly believed that consumers need a voice and needed somebody to take up their cause," said Steve Sink, former Newsday business editor and a colleague of Gilgoff's for more than 15 years.
"There was no question that if a business or a company got a call from Henry Gilgoff, he got results -- it inevitably led to a change in the policy or how they dealt with customers."
Joan Claybrook, the dean of public interest advocates, will "step down" (
Over at the Washington Post, Cecilia Kang profiles our colleague Ben Scott of 
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U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), incoming chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications will be here tonight for his keynote address at 
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There's a lot happening at consumer blogs around the blogosphere: Over at the 
People often ask me: "Ed, how can I fight the credit bureaus? They've ruined my life." Well, here's one way to learn more. Buy this new book. Denise Richardson is a credit-bureau-victim-turned consumer advocate who has been fighting the good fight against the credit bureaus for years. She's got a new book and I recommend it: 
This week's Anchorage Press has a very nice cover story profile by Casey Grove --