Corrupt Tomatoes

For the past nine years we've been told that one of our biggest threats just might be terrorist attacks on our food supply. It turns out that the threat came from an entirely different source: big business. From the Los Angeles Times:

In a series of court filings starting in 2008, federal prosecutors in Sacramento allege that Rahal, nine others and SK Foods of Monterey, Calif., used more than $330,000 in bribes from 1998 to 2008 to subvert competition and nail down deals to sell the company's tomato paste, peppers and other products to Kraft Foods Inc., Safeway Inc., Frito-Lay North America and B&G Foods, among others.

All but one of the individuals have pleaded guilty to offenses typically associated with organized crime: racketeering, collusion, bribery, money laundering and bid-rigging. Five of the people worked for SK Foods; four were employed by its customers. SK Foods' sales plummeted as the case unfolded and it was sold out of Bankruptcy Court last year to a Singapore firm.

Federal prosecutors, however, say the investigation into SK Foods is just the beginning as the government ramps up its scrutiny of the food sector.

Behind the push are growing concerns that, as the industry becomes increasingly consolidated, the public's grocery bills are getting bigger in part from corrupt or monopolistic practices among food processors, distributors or farmers.

Step into a grocery store these days and on almost every aisle there's an item tied to a federal investigation: dairy distributors, egg producers, citrus firms and seed developers are all the targets of federal lawsuits or investigations. Starting next month, the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will hold meetings to gather complaints and hear concerns over lack of competition in the dairy, grain, livestock and poultry sectors. [Emphasis added]

What is noteworthy about the SK Foods cases is that there was corruption in the company which depended on the corruptibility of certain employees in their customers' operation. Apparently that was no problem at the big-name food companies listed in the article.

That the Department of Justice has been aware of these shenanigans for several years and has aggressively pursued them is good news. That the jerks working for Kraft and Frito-Lay and the other food giants got nailed for taking the money is also good news.

I don't think we need to worry as much about foreign grown terrorists as we do our own corporate giants for whom the bottom line is more important than providing safe and affordable food.

Insurance In Name Only

David Lazarus' most recent column in the Los Angeles Times is entitled "When healthcare coverage is insurance in name only." No, he's not writing about some fly-by-night scam preying on working class people. He's talking about the highly rated for-profit health insurance company Anthem (Blue Cross) which last week announced double digit premium increases for its individual policies. Some of the beneficiaries got hit with increases over 20%, and the only option they were given was to purchase policies with less coverage and higher deductibles. Mr. Lazarus pointed to one couple, the L'Esperances, who faced just that choice:

The L'Esperances have been covered by Anthem for about a dozen years. At first they had a $1,000 deductible on their policy, but they had to raise it to keep their monthly premium at a manageable level.

They were paying about $1,250 monthly last year with a $2,500 deductible each. Then Anthem said their premium would rise to almost $1,400.

To deal with that, Paul said he and Jan raised their deductible yet again to $5,000 in return for an $834 monthly premium.

Now that amount's going up to nearly $1,000 -- almost as much as they'd been paying with a deductible half as big.

Anthem claims the increases are necessary, given the higher costs of medical care, yet the company made quite a tidy profit in the last accounting year, a profit they decided needed protecting and even increasing this year. In all likelihood, they will succeed. The California Insurance Company is investigating the premium hikes, but the department has no real authority to challenge the increases in most cases.

So, the L'Esperances really had little choice in the matter. Now they have what might be called catastrophic coverage: a policy that will be helpful only if they are diagnosed with cancer or have a heart attack. For that they are paying nearly $12,000 a year in addition to the $5,000 deductible.

Anthem gave its group coverage clients the same kind of news last summer and then again last month. I know, I got hit with it. Because I am essentially a part-time employee I don't get the benefit of the employer-provided benefit. I pay for my participation, but at least I am covered under a policy I couldn't get as an individual plan because I have pre-existing conditions and because I am 63 years old.

That's why the health care reform promised by President Obama is such a big deal, and that's why the hideous plan developed by the Senate is such a huge disappointment. Rather than let that plan die, the president has now invited leaders from both sides of the aisle to meet with him to revive even that mess of a plan. The GOP indicates it will participate, but only if the idea of reforming health care starts from scratch.

That's fine with me. Start from where the reform should have: with a single-payer Medicare-for-all plan. Cut the blood sucking insurance companies out of the action completely and develop a bill that will rein in costs from the major health care providers.

I'm not holding my breath for that one, however. I don't wear blue effectively.

Sunday Poetry: Kenneth Koch

The Boiling Water


A serious moment for the water is
when it boils
And though one usually regards it
merely as a convenience
To have the boiling water
available for bath or table
Occasionally there is someone
around who understands
The importance of this moment
for the water—maybe a saint,
Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy
man, or just someone
temporarily disturbed
With his mind "floating"in a
sense, away from his deepest
Personal concerns to more
"unreal" things...

A serious moment for the island
is when its trees
Begin to give it shade, and
another is when the ocean
washes
Big heavy things against its side.
One walks around and looks at
the island
But not really at it, at what is on
it, and one thinks,
It must be serious, even, to be this
island, at all, here.
Since it is lying here exposed to
the whole sea. All its
Moments might be serious. It is
serious, in such windy weather,
to be a sail
Or an open window, or a feather
flying in the street...

Seriousness, how often I have
thought of seriousness
And how little I have understood
it, except this: serious is urgent
And it has to do with change. You
say to the water,
It's not necessary to boil now,
and you turn it off. It stops
Fidgeting. And starts to cool. You
put your hand in it
And say, The water isn't serious
any more. It has the potential,
However—that urgency to give
off bubbles, to
Change itself to steam. And the
wind,
When it becomes part of a
hurricane, blowing up the
beach
And the sand dunes can't keep it
away.
Fainting is one sign of
seriousness, crying is another.
Shuddering all over is another
one.

A serious moment for the
telephone is when it rings.
And a person answers, it is
Angelica, or is it you.

A serious moment for the fly is
when its wings
Are moving, and a serious
moment for the duck
Is when it swims, when it first
touches water, then spreads
Its smile upon the water...

A serious moment for the match
is when it burst into flame...

Serious for me that I met you, and
serious for you
That you met me, and that we do
not know
If we will ever be close to anyone
again. Serious the recognition
of the probability
That we will, although time
stretches terribly in
between...

Kenneth Koch

A Bit Of A Surprise

I rarely am shocked by the stuff I find at Watching America, but I must admit I blinked a couple of times yesterday. I just didn't expect to find an opinion piece in the English-language version of Al Jazeera co-authored by a US Congressman. The piece, a well-written essay on what the US really needs to do in Afghanistan, was written by Hekmat Karzai (the director of the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies based in Kabul, Afghanistan) and US Congressman Michael Honda (D-CA) (Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Afghanistan Taskforce). Their advice is right on the money, in my opinion.

Here are a couple of their points:

The precedent of pursuing solely military solutions in a country where insecurity runs rampant across political, economic and social spectrums is being rethought and revamped. This is a good thing.

What must also remain front and centre in all decision-making, however, is the constant query for what Afghans want and how to move operations quickly towards Afghan ownership. Most policies fall far short of these two goals.

A failure to win the hearts and minds of Afghans is a failure to win the security the US is seeking at home and abroad. On three critical fronts - security, governance and development - these shortcomings are evident.

Security, arguably the Afghan and foreign governments' primary objective, is seriously struggling, but not for the reasons that one is led to believe. ...

A primary reason why the security sector is struggling is because the attrition rate is dangerously high due to poor wages, soaring casualty rates, insufficient training, and the fact that the soldiers and police are deployed away from their homes to other provinces where they are viewed as outsiders.

The low recruitment rates for Pashtuns in the south and southeast hardly helps either.

Additionally, some 2,000 US trainer positions for the Afghan army and police have remained unfilled for the second year running. ...

Lastly, the development agenda needs rethinking as Afghans see a foreign disinterest in the building of their country's capacity. ...

Afghan alternatives - like the government’s Community Development Councils, which fund locally elected councils to design and manage their own projects - should be the focus instead.

In order to build Afghan ownership and capacity, contractors may need to forego the actual building and instead redistribute the funds into Afghan institutions and initiatives like the CDCs as foreign affiliation with the CDCs will put council members at immediate risk. [Emphasis added]

What Mr. Karzai and Congressman Honda are urging is that the US actually listen to the people of Afghanistan and tailor our plans accordingly. This war cannot be won militarily: the Soviets learned this the hard way, as did the British before them. The most we can hope for is the rebuilding of the country in ways that are acceptable and even desired by the people of that country. And then we should go home.

I am both pleased with and proud that Congressman Honda has shown the courage to provide this essay to Al Jazeera. He will clearly be a target by every conservative on both sides of the aisle for his efforts. He did the right thing, however. His advice is not radical, it is commonsensical.

From your lips, Mr. Honda, to the president's ear.

Sunday Funnies

(Cartoon by Mike Luckovitch and published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Click on image to enlarge.)

Bonus Critter Blogging: Damsel Fly

(Photograph by Dennis Stewart and published at National Geographic.)

Something In The Water

I've been following the National Teabaggers' United Party in Nashville only half-heartedly. After all, only about six hundred people are in attendance, although those six hundred paid a lot of money for the privilege of listening to people like Sarah Palin (who apparently received $100,000 for the privilege to talking to the brave six hundred). Are the teabaggers getting scammed? Probably. Do they mind? Probably not. They're angry and need to vent with like-minded angry people. It's understandable.

Most of us are angry and with good reason. Many of us worked hard and gave money to elect candidates who made all sorts of promises about changing the way government does business only to watch the economy swirl down the commode. Then we got to watch the government reward those who caused the economic failure to the tune of billions of dollars of our tax money. The elected officials who comprise our government showed us quite clearly how they, well, do business.

Blame Bush, blame Obama, blame Congress. They all had a hand in it. What's so interesting at this point is that the American electorate as a whole is fed up with the politicians we have. The conservatives are angry at the Republicans. The liberals are angry at the Democrats. Those who classify themselves as "independents" are angry at both parties.

Tim Rutten's latest column in the Los Angeles Times details just how angry we are by citing multiple recent polls. Mr. Rutten chose a pretty good example of why we're all so disenchanted with the sausage makers:

In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess? The legislative drama du jour is the standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state. One involves tens of millions of dollars for an FBI laboratory focusing on improvised explosives -- something the bureau doesn't think it needs. The other involves contract specifications for an aerial tanker that Northrop Grumman and Airbus would manufacture in Alabama, if they win the deal. (Boeing also is competing for the plane, which it would build in Topeka, Kan., and Seattle.)

Unless the administration agrees to give Shelby what he wants, he intends to invoke an archaic senatorial privilege that allows him to prevent the chamber from considering any of the administration's nominees to executive branch vacancies, no matter how crucial. Without the 60 votes to force cloture -- another archaic convention -- there's nothing the Democrats or the White House can do.

Outside the Senate, Shelby's conduct would be called extortion; inside the chamber, it's a "parliamentary tactic."

It's also the sort of shabby situation that brings into sharp focus both the sources of congressional dysfunction and the popular discontent on both the left and right with the congressional parties. Earmarks and pork are anathema to a majority of conservatives and independents; the Senate's outdated, made-for-obstruction rules and susceptibility to special interests are a source of increasing frustration to liberals and some independents. Yet, here we have one senator from one Southern state obstructing with impunity an entire nation's business -- purely for his narrow constituency's financial interests. {Emphasis added]

Shabby? I think that a polite understatement, but Mr. Rutten has nailed it. Sen. Shelby is just the current poster boy for the dysfunctional government in action. There are Democrats from all parts of the country engaged in the same tactics, as the give-aways in the health care reform process highlighted. It's the way they all "do" business, and that's why so many of us are so angry.

A pox on all their houses.

Friday Catblogging

Well, He Got That One Right

President Obama did the right thing this week, and it's about time.

From the Washington Post:

The Department of Defense will begin making the morning-after pill Plan B available at all of its hospitals and health clinics around the world, officials announced Thursday.

The decision came after a recommendation by the Pentagon's Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, an advisory panel that voted in November to include Plan B and the generic Next Choice on the list of drugs all military facilities should stock. The Pentagon accepted the recommendation Feb. 3, a spokeswoman said.

It might look like a small step, and it might indeed be a small step, but it is an important one. The last administration forbade the drug on military installations, thereby depriving women serving in the military of a drug that most physicians consider simply another drug in the armament of women's health care. It is emergency contraception. To the Religious Reich, however, it is a form of murder and the anti-abortionists had President Bush's ear.

I anticipate that howls of outrage will emanate from the National Convention Of Teabaggers United in Nashville and, sadly, from the usual suspects in Congress today and for at least another week.

Pass the popcorn.

Aafia Siddiqui

Either I have suffered from a serious inability to pay attention, or there hasn't been much coverage of the Aafia Siddiqui trial, at least not outside of New York City. The last information I noted was back in November. Since then, Ms. Siddiqui's trial has gone forward and is now in the hands of the jury.

Ms. Siddiqui, who has been characterized as a very dangerous member of Al Qaeda by our government, is not on trial for any terrorist related activities but rather for attempted murder. She stands accused of firing on soldiers and FBI agents with one of the soldier's own rifle. That certainly is at the very least quite suspicious.

This article in the Los Angeles Times reports on some of the information on the trial. We learn, for instance, that apparently Ms. Siddiqui settled down and actually cooperated in her defense. She testified that she did not grab a rifle and begin shooting. She admitted that she tried to escape from the jail in which she was being held and interrogated. She claims that it was during her attempted escape that she was shot in the abdomen.

The article also notes some of the mysteries still surrounding her case: no one knows where two of her children are; no one knows where she was for three years (detained at Bagram? in training with Al Qaeda?); and no one will explain why she was not hit with any terrorist charges (although the article does indicate that she was designated as an Al Qaeda operative by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed while he was being questioned in 2003).

What the article makes clear, however, is that a lot of people in Pakistan are watching the trial proceedings carefully:

In Pakistan, however, Siddiqui is a victim and a hero, a courageous patriot who has withstood years of torture at the U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. Pakistanis insist that the charges are fabricated and the U.S. has only one option for righting the wrongs it's committed: Send their beloved Aafia home. ...

Siddiqui's case, however, has given Pakistanis a face to rally around. Demonstrations on her behalf have been attended by thousands, from Lahore to Karachi to Islamabad. Activists have sought intervention by the Pakistani government, which has agreed to pay for Siddiqui's defense team and has pushed the U.S. to repatriate her to Pakistan.

This does add an interesting element to the mix. The US depends on Pakistan a great deal in its war in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government has cooperated, albeit grudgingly, with US forces, even putting up with intrusions into Pakisan by missile- firing drones and special forces. What happens if Ms. Siddiqui is convicted of attempted murder? Will the notably weak government lose what little control it has over large portions of its nation? Will the US find itself at war with yet another nation?

And what happens if the jury doesn't buy the government's story about the circumstances surrounding her detention and interrogation and acquits her? Will President Obama find that she is too dangerous to set free even after acquittal and order her indefinite detention? And if he does that, what will that do to our system of laws?

I know, I know. I'm still posing questions for which there are no immediate answers. What worries me is that some of those questions will never be answered, even though they could be.

I do know this, however, from start to finish, even under the "official" story of Ms. Siddiqui's case, this story stinks of illegality. And I am ashamed of my country for that.

UPDATE:

The above was written last night before the verdict hit the wires: Ms. Siddiqui has been found guilty. Sentencing is set for May.

Hopey Changey Stuff, Or ...

...Been down so long it looks like up to me.

Welcome to America, brown brothers and sisters, and welcome to the table, the one that you will set but will not be allowed to sit at. It's not your time.

Like African Americans, women, and gays, you will have to wait your turn, and that will be years from now because more important issues will take precedence. The economy which brought lower billion dollar profits to the mega-corps, health care reform to fully fund insurance companies, Wall Street bailouts for the dim bulbs who lost billions but were paid millions: they are more important than your piddling concerns about legalization of your status after you have paid huge amounts into government accounts you will never be able to access, or about deportation splitting your families at the drop of a hat at the whimsy of a county sheriff who is all about padding his hours on prime time television.

You are simply not that important, even though hundreds of thousands of you spent ten times that number to become citizens so that you could introduce this country to its latest citizens by electing a man who promised to give you a break, to level the playing field. He isn't interested, nor are those members of Congress you turned out for in November, 2008. They have a crisis, or several crises, or something, to deal with, and a bunch of Mexicans, Central Americans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Haitians, Armenians will have to do what my Polish ancestors and my colleague's Japanese parents did. Sit back and wait your turn.

Or you can do something about it, as Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) hinted at recently in Los Angeles:

Many Latinos are furious at President Obama for failing to deliver on promises to push immigration reform legislation and may stay away from the polls during this year's midterm elections if they don't see concrete progress, including legalization of undocumented immigrants, a key Democratic legislator said Monday.

“People are angry and disillusioned,” U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) said in an interview with The Times.

Gutierrez said that Obama’s failure to push immigration reform was symbolized by his State of the Union address last Wednesday, when he devoted only 38 of about 7,300 words to the issue. The “throwaway line,” Gutierrez said, was the final straw for many activists who have been perturbed by the continued pace of deportations and other enforcement actions without concomitant progress in moving reform legislation forward.

Gutierrez said he was short at least 12 votes in the House to pass his immigration legislation, which would legalize most of the nation’s 12 million undocumented migrants, provide more family visas, increase worker protections and offer other reforms. He acknowledged that selling the bill to the American public at a time of double-digit unemployment would not be easy.

Of course it won't be easy, but it's not impossible. It took just a couple of brave students to sit in at a Woolworth's lunch counter and one woman to refuse to sit in the back of the bus to get the nation's attention. Two years ago, a million of you hit the streets in Los Angeles and got the same attention. That wasn't quite enough then, but it might be now.

A hundred thousand of you, along with those of us who know your time has come, showing up in Washington, DC might get a little attention. But if those hundred thousand of you make it clear that you are willing to stay home in November, 2010 rather than vote for the Democrats who sold you out in the 111th Congress maybe, just maybe, the Democrats will have to pay attention. Barbara Boxer is in for a serious fight. President Obama's "safe seat" in Illinois doesn't look so safe anymore. Harry Reid may find himself on the board of some mining company come January 2011.

Don't let them kid you: this is your time, just like it is the time for those of us who believe in the promise of this nation. We just have to stand up and shake our fists. Given the condition of the spines of those in elective office, that should be enough.