Eideard

The Heartland Institute, the libertarian thinktank whose project to undermine science lessons for schoolchildren was exposed this week, faces new scrutiny of its finances – including its donors and tax status.

The Guardian has learned of a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service about Heartland’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status…

The unauthorised release of internal documents indicated Heartland had received $14 million over several years from a single anonymous donor as well as tobacco and liquor companies and corporations pledged to social responsibility, including the General Motors Foundation.

The release of the donors’ list led a number of environmental organisations to demand GM, which gave $30,000, and Microsoft, which gave $59,908 in free software, to sever their ties with a thinktank that has a core mission of discrediting climate science…

Others are focusing on Heartland’s support from the tobacco industry as well as major health and pharmaceutical companies for a thinktank which has opposed smoking bans and healthcare reform.

John Mashey, a retired computer scientist and Silicon Valley executive, said he filed a complaint to the IRS this week that said Heartland’s public relations and lobbying efforts violated its non-profit status. Mashey said he sent off his audit, the product of three months’ research, just a few hours before the unauthorised release of the Heartland documents.

Mashey said in a telephone interview that the complaint looked at the activities of Heartland and two other organisations that have been prominent in misinforming the public about climate change, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, run by Fred Singer, and the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, run by Craig Idso. Both men were funded by Heartland, with Idso receiving $11,600 per month and Singer $5,500 a month, according to the 2012 budget…

“I believe there was a massive abuse of 501c(3),” Mashey said. “My extensive study of these thinktanks showed numerous specific actions that violated the rules – such as that their work is supposed to be factually based. Such as there was a whole lot of behaviour that sure looked like lobbying and sending money to foreign organisations that are not charities.”

Mashey later published his audit of Heartland finances in Desmogblog, which was the first outlet to run the trove of Heartland documents.

Overdue. Creeps like this violate federal law on non-profit status all the time when they serve as a lobbying front for corporations with a vested interest in Heartland’s comments – whether that be climate, tobacco or fronting for pharmaceutical companies.

Call centre workers in Norway are protesting against a hi-tech surveillance system that triggers an alarm if they spend more than eight minutes per day in the lavatory. Managers are alerted by flashing lights if an employee is away from their desk for a loo break or other “personal activities” beyond the allotted time.

But unions and workplace inspectors have branded the practice at insurance company DNB as “highly intrusive” and a potential breach of their human rights.

Norway’s privacy regulator called Datatilsynet has now written to DNB telling them the monitoring system is “a major violation of privacy”. It said: “Each individual worker has different needs and these kinds of strict controls deprive the employees of all freedoms over the course of their working day.”

The employees union Finansforbundet described the rules as unacceptable…

A spokesman added: “Surveying staff to limit lavatory visits, cigarette breaks, personal phone calls and other personal needs to a total of eight minutes per day is highly restrictive and intrusive and must be stopped.”

The firm said the aim of the checks was not to measure the breaks taken by individual workers but to assess staffing needs to ensure all calls from customers were answered and it would now be reviewing the policy. Hogwash!

It is the latest example of lavatory rules in Norwegian companies.

Last year the country’s workplace ombudsman said one firm was reported for making women workers wear a red bracelet when they were having their period to justify more frequent trips to the loo.

Another company made staff sign a lavatory “visitors book” while a third issued employees with an electronic key card to gain access to the lavatories so they could monitor breaks.

Norway’s chief workplace ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon said: “These are extreme cases of workplace monitoring, but they are real. Toilet codes relating to menstrual cycles are clear violations of privacy and is very insulting to the people concerned…”

Bosses who have a fascination with anything in an employee’s life – below the navel – really should be required to spend some time in therapy. Maybe get a life.

Is this a Norwegian thing? I’ve only had one supervisor in my life who seemed to have this sort of demented fixation on my life in the crapper. Harvey – are you still out there somewhere?

Wyoming house big enough to house 2000 corporations?

Two companies incorporated at a little house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, won Pentagon contracts after their owner took advantage of the state’s liberal incorporation laws to create the firms using an alias, and then represented them as minority-owned to win favorable treatment as a military supplier. The firms and their owner were later banned from doing business with the Pentagon for providing knock-off parts.

A Reuters investigation has found that more than 2,000 companies are registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne, the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business incorporation company that specializes in corporate anonymity.

Among the firms incorporated there is a small subset that make their money from government contracts.

A Reuters review of federal contracting databases found nine firms registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue have been awarded 93 contracts worth more than $1.6 million by a half dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 90 percent of the contracts were awarded by the Department of Defense…

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Waiting for the Market to open this morning I came across Margaret Carlson’s excellent analysis.

“It isn’t fair!” is a cry we try in kindergarten and never give up. To tamp down this thirst for instant justice, the nuns at my school invoked the sweet hereafter, where all wrongs would be righted, as a reason for us to suck it up at recess.

As an adult, and a lucky one, the last thing I want now is fairness. I could be waiting on tables instead of being served at them, delivering the papers instead of writing for them.

In that, I’m like Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker. He didn’t want fairness to kick in after he assumed power in January and used the rubric of “budget repair” to bully the folks who clean his office and guard his prisoners.

The sweet hereafter made an early appearance in Wisconsin on Tuesday. A Democrat, Chris Abele, cruised to victory in the race to fill Walker’s former post, Milwaukee County executive. And state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, part of a 4-3 conservative majority seen as likely to support Walker’s assault on unions, ended up in a too-close-to-call election that may result in a recount. Just six weeks ago, Prosser was expected to coast to victory over JoAnne Kloppenburg, an assistant attorney general. Only five incumbent Supreme Court judges have been defeated since 1852.

Ordinarily it takes four years to right an electoral wrong. Not this time. Liberal and conservative groups descended on Wisconsin to turn what would normally be a ho-hum election into a referendum on Walker…

Regardless of the eventual outcome, Kloppenburg’s out-of- nowhere showing is a cautionary tale for those governors following in Walker’s path by curtailing workers’ bargaining rights, and for the Tea Party, which you’d think would be fighting for the little guy, not the big bully…

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Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Up to 100,000 people protested at the Wisconsin state Capitol on Saturday against a new law curbing the union rights of public workers that is seen as one of the biggest challenges in decades facing U.S. organized labor.

Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain estimated the crowd at 85,000 to 100,000 people, which would top the size of protests in Madison during the Vietnam War…

Republicans say the measures are needed to gain control of deficit-ridden budgets. Democrats and their union backers say Republicans are ramming through union-busting proposals.

Protesters on Saturday cheered the Democratic state senators who returned to Wisconsin after fleeing to Illinois for three weeks to try to stall the Legislature’s consideration of the measure.

“It’s so good to be home in Wisconsin,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller told demonstrators, who chanted, “Welcome Home” and “We’re With You.”

“Our fight to protect union rights has become a fight to protect all our rights — a fight to protect democracy,” said Miller. “You have inspired the nation with your passionate and peaceful protests…”

Restrictions on public sector unions have been introduced in a number of other U.S. states with Republican governors, including Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Florida. Some Democrats see it as the opening salvo of the 2012 presidential election because unions are the biggest single contributors to the Democratic Party.

Who knows. This may herald a return to the days when unions provided a much-needed backbone to the Democratic Party.

Yes, you know how much of a cynic I am. Optimist; but, cynic. Lighting a fire under the barely-Left half of America’s political establishment may ignite a matching fire in the eye of politicians who like to say they are allied to the mass of American voters.

A new University of Maryland study finds that when average Americans are presented the federal budget in some detail, most are able to reduce the budget deficit dramatically and resolve the Social Security shortfall.

Through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, on average, respondents cut the discretionary budget deficit projected for 2015 by seventy percent. Six in ten solved the problem of the projected Social Security shortfall through adjustments in payroll taxes, premiums, and benefits. The projected Medicare shortfall was also dramatically reduced…

Unlike conventional polls [Program for Public Consultation] PPC consults with the public by first presenting respondents with information on policy issues and a range of options for addressing them. “When given information and a chance to sort through their options, most Americans do a pretty good job of dealing with America’s budget problems – better than most politicians,” says…Steven Kull, who directs PPC…

On average respondents made net spending cuts of $145.7 billion. The largest cuts included those to defense ($109.4 billion), intelligence ($13.1 billion), military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq ($12.8 billion) and the federal highway system ($4.6 billion) – all of which were cut by majorities.

On average respondents increased revenues by $291.6 billion. The largest portion was from income taxes which were raised by an average of $154.8 billion above the levels currently in place. Majorities increased taxes on incomes over $100,000 by five percent or more, and increased them by 10 percent or more for incomes over $500,000.

Majorities also increased corporate and alcohol taxes, and turned to new sources of revenue, including a tax on sugary drinks, treating ‘carried interest’ income as taxable (also known as the hedge fund managers’ tax), and charging a crisis fee to large banks. A plurality (49 percent) favored a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. But a sales tax was rejected by 58 percent of respondents…

Most respondents also successfully dealt with the problem of Social Security. Respondents were presented eight possible steps for dealing with the Social Security shortfall that will occur as the baby boom generation retires.

Six in ten respondents selected enough steps to resolve the problem. This was the case even though many of them also chose to make the problem more difficult by increasing benefits to low income retirees.

This parallels the study done by readers of the NY TIMES a little while ago. Time after time, when Americans are presented with simple objective information about taxes and policies they come up with common sense solutions that escape the petty analyses of our payola politicians.

The Americans surveyed suggested increased spending on education and social security. The total deficit reduction was over $437 billion.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
You get to know “this much”

Tony Blair made made a profit of at least £710,000 last year from a mysterious web of companies set up to further his business interests, it can be revealed.

The former prime minister’s companies also declared net assets of £2.2 million – four times what they were worth last year – suggesting Mr Blair’s “pulling power” is as strong as ever.

The profits, funnelled through an “opaque” and highly complex web of financial structures, was declared to Companies House as it closed for business for Christmas last week.

The money is believed to have come from his often controversial private work, including his six-figure speaking fees, his banking and insurance consultancies, including work for JP Morgan, and his pay from advising Middle Eastern and African regimes.

Mr Blair – who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street – has a commercial consultancy, called Tony Blair Associates, plus paid jobs advising a US bank and a Swiss insurer.

In addition, millions of pounds have passed through two parallel company structures, called Windrush Ventures and Firerush Ventures, in the last three years.

Mr Blair has so far refused to discuss what these financial structiures, centered on a pair of mysterious limited partnerships, are for…

The public declarations come in the wake of claims that Mr Blair is earning up to £100,000 for making guest appearance and was paid a reported £600,000 signing on fee by the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau…

He is also said to have earned around £6 million in consultancy fees, including £500,000 a year from Zurich Financial Services, £2 million from JP Morgan, the investment bank, and another £1 million from the Kuwaiti Royal Family…

The accounts give no indication of how much Mr Blair pays himself from the fees and other money channelled through his companies.

The profitable sleaze that follows upon time in office is no surprise. No doubt, some of this may be legitimate charity, legitimate enterprise. I wonder, though, how much is payment for services rendered while in office?

Tea Party rally – in Beverly Hills
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The US midterm elections are on course to become the most expensive in history next month, estimated at well over $5bn – an indication of how much is riding on the outcome of the biggest test of US public opinion since the 2008 White House race.

With the Democrats facing electoral disaster and Barack Obama battling to save his presidency, the Republicans are resurgent, their campaign chests bursting with money from big corporations whose spending power has been unleashed by a supreme court ruling earlier this year providing anonymity for donors.

The estimated $5bn dwarfs the $1bn spent on the White House race.

Public Citizen, a non-profit organisation that tracks corporate spending on elections and lobbying, said today Republicans had received six times more cash than the Democrats last month, and this could rise to 10 to one this month. Much of the cash had come from Wall Street, banking and the health and pharmaceuticals industry, it said.

“We are going to see record amounts. This is the first year in which all limits are removed. The supreme court ruling reverses a century of political tradition in the US in which corporations are not supposed to get involved,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s representative on Capitol Hill…

Some of the biggest individual groups channelling money to the Republicans are American Crossroads, run by George W Bush’s former political strategist Karl Rove, and the pro-business advocacy organisation Americans for Job Security. Under the supreme court ruling, they do not have to disclose who is giving.

On the left, organisations such as Move On are only able to match the funding they provided for the 2006 midterm elections; and, while the trade unions have raised a bit more, they have not even remotely been able to match the big corporations…

Although I’ve seen signs of Democrats developing a bit of backbone, I think it’s too little, too late.

Meanwhile, the Roberts Republican Supreme Court has made it open season on fair elections. Republicans will buy elections like never before – from voters with the attention span of crickets.

Drug companies have been accused of conning the public in a report that claimed more than four fifths of new medicines offer few benefits.

An estimated 85 per cent of drugs coming onto the market offer only slight advances on existing treatments while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, the study concluded…

”Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs’ benefits,” said Prof Donald Light, a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.

”Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It’s really a two-tier market for lemons.”

He alleged that the pharmaceutical industry owned companies in charge of drug testing and provided ”firewalls” of legal protection behind which information about dangers or lack of effectiveness could be be hidden.

Companies were assisted by the ”relatively low bar” for effectiveness that had to be crossed to get a new drug approved…

”A few basic changes could improve the quality of trials and evidence about the real risks and benefits of new drugs. We could also increase the percentage of new drugs that are really better for patients.”

In his paper, Prof Light concluded: “The evidence here indicates that the two-tier market for prescription drugs is the largest and most dangerous market for lemons in modern society. Neither wars nor used car injuries come close.

Nothing that a lot of us haven’t recognized for years; but, it’s always helpful to see legitimate studies provide some ammo against the greedy bastards running the pharmaceutical industry.

I’ve long felt the barrage of advertisements in the mass media for prescription drugs should be outlawed like cigarettes. If they’re beneficial, your physician will have learned about them. Otherwise, the pharma giants are just building artificial demand with their propaganda.

The White House wants states to take the lead in consumer protection

Faced with the need to review insurance rates and enforce a panoply of new rights granted to consumers, states are scrambling to make sure they have the necessary legal authority to carry out the responsibilities being placed on them by President Obama’s health care law.

Insurance commissioners in about half the states say they do not have clear authority to enforce consumer protection standards that take effect next month.

Federal and state officials are searching for ways to plug the gap. Otherwise, they say, the ability of consumers to secure the benefits of the new law could vary widely, depending on where they live.

Meanwhile, state governments that have for years allowed insurers to set premiums virtually at will are gearing up to establish procedures to review rate increases.

Does that sink in to voters around the country? The bureaucrats and elected officials in your state may have been happily trundling along rubber-stamping whatever rates insurance companies requested.

It certainly happened here in New Mexico. In fact, a mid-level bureaucrat in the state insurance commission granted Blue Cross a 21% rate increase – the day before the public hearing on whether it was legitimate or not!

States have the primary role in enforcing many of the new standards. If a state fails to enforce a standard, the federal government will step in to do so — as it did in several states after passage of a health insurance law in 1996.

Some state regulators said they would ask state legislators to expand their authority by putting the federal standards into state law next year. Others said they would rely on their powers of persuasion, the good will of insurers or general state laws that ban unfair or deceptive trade practices…

Arizona said it was unlikely to pass legislation authorizing any state agency to enforce federal insurance standards, in view of its participation in a lawsuit challenging the federal law. Moreover, it said, Gov. Jan Brewer has “instituted an indefinite rule-making moratorium, so we have no plans to adopt rules related to enforcement” of the law…

Yup. Republicans truly have an unusual style when it comes to law enforcement.