From hurricanes to earthquakes: be prepared for anything – National Consumers League

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By Mimi Johnson, NCL Director of Health Policy

Nearly the entire eastern seaboard felt the quake on Tuesday, and nearly the entire eastern seaboard will feel the effects of Hurricane Irene later this week.  This is a great time to get your emergency plan in place, assemble an emergency kit, and stay informed.

Every home and business should have a disaster kit in place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the following items be placed in an emergency kit in your home, office, car, and/or school:

  • Water—one gallon per person, per day (3­ day supply for evacuation, 2 ­week supply for home)
  • Food—non­perishable, easy-­to-­prepare items (again, 3­ day supply for evacuation, 2­ week supply for home)
  • Flashlight
  • Battery-powered or hand-­crank radio (NOAA Weather Radio, if possible)
  • Extra batteries
  • First aid kit
  • Medications (7­ day supply) and medical items
  • Multi­purpose tool
  • Sanitation and personal hygiene items
  • Copies of personal documents (medication list and pertinent medical information, proof of address, deed/lease to home, passports, birth certificates, insurance policies)
  • Cell phone with chargers
  • Family and emergency contact information
  • Extra cash
  • Emergency blanket
  • Map(s) of the area

Consider the needs of all family members and when gathering supplies for your kit. Suggested items to help meet additional needs include:

  • Medical supplies (hearing aids with extra batteries, glasses, contact lenses, syringes, cane)
  • Baby supplies (bottles, formula, baby food, diapers)
  • Games and activities for children
  • Pet supplies (collar, leash, ID, food, carrier, bowl)
  • Two­-way radios
  • Extra set of car keys and house keys
  • Manual can opener

Additional supplies to keep at home or in your kit based on the types of disasters common to your area:

  • Whistle
  • N95 or surgical masks
  • Matches
  • Rain gear
  • Towels
  • Work gloves
  • Tools/supplies for securing your home
  • Extra clothing, hat and sturdy shoes
  • Plastic sheeting
  • Duct tape
  • Scissors
  • Household liquid bleach
  • Entertainment items
  • Blankets or sleeping bags

It is especially important to keep your kit current, and if you have a chronic condition, PLEASE keep a supply of meds in the kit.  Dealing with a disaster and unknowns can be stressful and chaotic, which makes it all the more important to maintain your health and keep a clear head.  The CDC has great resources for specific chronic conditions and what kits should look like for different conditions. For more information on managing your chronic condition, visit www.scriptyourfuture.org

While the likelihood of another moderate earthquake hitting the East Coast anytime soon is slim, it was a good reminder that natural disasters and emergencies can strike at any time, and often without any warning.  If you would like to learn more about how to best to prepare for possible disasters in your community, contact your local public health department for more information.

Politicians, please take note: regulation works – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Today’s New York Times featured a piece about conservatives attacking the Environmental Protection Agency. Never mind that a substantial majority of Americans are concerned about air and water pollution and largely trust the E.P.A.

Conservative presidential candidate and member of Congress Michelle Bachmann drew applause ten days ago at a rally in Iowa when she declared: “I guarantee you the EPA will have doors locked and lights turned off, and they will only be about conservation. It will be a new day and a new sheriff in Washington, DC.”

Sorry to upset your apple cart, Ms. Bachmann, but it just so happens that regulation works. One of my favorite examples is the dramatic reduction in highway deaths over the past decade. Have we become safer drivers? I don’t think so. Have cars become safer and have we been more successful in cracking down on drunk driving? Absolutely.

How’s this for a statement of fact: Americans are less likely to die on the highway today than at any time since the middle of the Truman Administration (that was 1948-1952, 59 years ago) The number of people killed in accidents dropped to 32,788 in 2010, the lowest since 1949, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In fact, the 3 percent decrease in traffic fatalities since 2009 occurred even as drivers put nearly 21 billion more miles on their cars than they had the year before. Imagine: the death rate has declined by 25 percent since a peak of 43,000 in 2005. The reason for this reduction: stronger drunk driving laws, mandatory safety standards on vehicle for both crash protection and crash avoidance, including head and side air bags, better seat belts, head rests and crush zones in cars. Add anti lock brakes and rollover prevention (known as “stability control”) have all contributed to safer cars and thousands of lives saved. And guess what – all of these safety features came about as a result of regulation. EPA prevents our cities from being engulfed by smog and keeps our water clean and safe to drink, especially for children.

This talk about closing the EPA or any other regulatory agency is reckless, ill-informed, and not supported by the American people. Politicians should look elsewhere in their quest to garner votes.

First lesson of the school year: planning healthy lunches – National Consumers League

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As the first day of school looms closer and the school year routine begins to reassert itself, the age-old question returns: what to put in those school lunches?

Rather than sending your kids off with healthy items you hope they’ll eat, packing lunch with your child is a great way to ensure you include not only healthy items, but healthy items that get eaten. Whether you pack on a daily basis, or only occasionally send your child with a homemade lunch, keep these important points in mind:

  • Pack a safe lunch. Ensuring a safe lunch means keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold, from the time your child leaves the house until he/she sits down to eat. Use a thermos for hot foods, such as soup, and include a cold pack with foods that need to stay chilled. If possible, pack your child’s lunch in an insulated bag.
  • Meet your child’s caloric needs. Children’s caloric needs vary greatly, depending on age, activity level, and other factors. Talk to your child’s pediatrician to get a general estimate of what his/her caloric needs are, and aim to provide one third of those calories at lunch time.
  • Pack foods your child will eat. The nutritional quality of the lunch you pack means nothing if your child refuses to eat it (or trades components away for more appealing options). Brainstorm with your child to come up with healthy options that he/she wants to eat. See if dinner leftovers, soups, or salads appeal to your child. If he/she is tired of sandwiches or more traditional lunches, think in terms of smaller “snacks” that together create a healthy meal.

If your child buys lunch at school, view it as an opportunity to talk about choosing healthy options when faced with a range of choices.

For a complete set of tips on planning healthy school lunches, click here.

Brand Yourself: Running your own personal public relations campaign – National Consumers League

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By Alex Scheider, LifeSmarts and Public Policy Intern

It’s the Internet age. Who do you want to be?  As it turns out, you have choices.  Take a look at these tips on how to brand yourself in the age of social media.  Making a conscious, informed decision about what kind of Internet user you want to be will save you from potential embarrassment and disappointment down the road.

What goes in the cloud, stays in the cloud

It’s a truism of the digital world we live in: adding information to the ‘cloud’ is easier than removing it.

Automated archive robots at archive.org are hard at work every day keeping a record of what was online in the past, with the goal of never losing data.  Newspaper archives now stretch back to the early 1990s and most websites no longer delete old content, leaving it live for Google to retrieve at a moment’s notice.

As editor of my college newspaper, I often receive requests from alumni to remove certain information from our newspaper’s archives. Our ethics policy disallows such action in order to promote our newspaper as a community paper of record, but the onslaught of such requests acts as a reminder that what goes online really does not go away anytime soon.

Take a proactive approach

Taking a proactive approach to your online presence is crucial as employers increasingly Google first, interview later.

Google is the gateway to first impressions.  Ideally, you should be the only person who appears in the top ten results in that search, giving others a positive impression of your work.

There are many ways to do this.  The easiest is to own a website, although avoid vanity.  A clean website that tells a bit about you and some well written, researched and edited blog posts or articles would be great.

Avoid poor representations of your work.  Journalists should avoid professional or ethical quandaries such as mixing opinion and news writing, artists should only post their best work and employees should avoid negative comments about current and past employers.

Use social media responsibly

Opening a LinkedIn account and choosing a recognizable user name will help you gain visibility on the web.  On the other hand, Facebook and Twitter can work against you.  Never post anything you wouldn’t want your boss to see and always attend to privacy settings.

American resumes do not often include pictures, due to the possibility of discrimination.  But no one will know if an employer takes a look at your online photos. Keeping this in mind, avoid posting pictures on the Internet that give a negative impression of yourself or your work.

News stories and the press

On the off chance that the media comes knocking on your door, possibly because you won the Lifesmarts competition, speak as though every sentence you say could be a quote because every sentence could in fact be a quote.  This includes high school or college newspapers.  Even if you support an opinion that could be considered controversial, think to yourself, should I share such an opinion and if I do share it, am I ready to be defined by this opinion on an Internet search?

Avoid at all costs

Whatever you do, remember that when you publish something publicly, anyone can see it, so proofread everything and avoid spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Strengthening the American middle class – National Consumers League

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By Michael Finch, NCL Public Policy Intern

Earlier this month, three of the NCL interns (me, Alex and Ben) attended a hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee called “Building the Ladder of Opportunity: What’s Working to Make the American Dream a Reality for Middle Class Families.” For the first part of the hearing, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis spoke about the Department of Labor’s efforts to rebuild a strong middle class.

Secretary Solis emphasized the importance of education and training in the effort to rebuild the middle class. A company represented in the second part of the hearing was a perfect example of this. IceStone, a recycled glass and concrete surface manufacturer, provides their workers with a living wage (starting at $10 an hour), and stresses the importance of professional development. All workers are given opportunities to improve their job skills (whether relevant to their current position or not) and therefore earn an even higher wage shortly after joining the company. The wage gap between their lowest-earning employee and their CEO is only ten times, an impressively small difference in an economy where the gap is usually closer to 300 times. Although IceStone only has a small number of employees, hopefully this model can be refined and used by more businesses in the future, both small and large.

One issue that Secretary Solis stressed that was of particular interest to us was the high youth unemployment rate. Young people are entering the workforce at much lower rates, and those who do manage to find employment encounter a high turn over rate. She pointed out that the lack of jobs for young workers is most likely caused by older workers having to wait longer to retire. This is just one entry in a long list of reasons young people should support bolstering our country’s safety nets for older Americans, but that’s an issue I could write a whole separate blog post about.

Back on the topic of young workers: Secretary Solis highlighted a heartening story about the company Jamba Juice, which agreed to provide 2,500 jobs to young workers as a part of the Department of Labor’s *Summer Jobs USA challenge. When Secretary Solis visited Jamba Juice, they informed her that they have actually provided 2,700 jobs to young workers so far and would be willing to participate in similar programs in the future. As Secretary Solis put it, “I think once we begin a discussion with businesses about what we’re faced with, people will give it some thought and open up to those opportunities.” The Department of Labor had hoped to facilitate opening up 100,000 summer jobs for young people, and they’ve so far reached 80,000.

Another dismaying effect of the decline of the middle class mentioned by several hearing participants is the increasing wage gap between white workers and their minority counterparts. According to a new Pew Research Center study, white workers make around 20 times more than African-American workers, and 18 times more than Hispanic workers. This gap is the largest it has been since the government started collecting this data 25 years ago.

Secretary Solis suggested that increased training and professional development could also be a solution to this specific problem. She also emphasized the importance of helping workers to pinpoint and develop important skills and credentials that could make them more valuable to employers. This way, workers will be able to obtain, and retain, stable employment.

As Committee Chairman Tom Harkin pointed out, politicians on both sides of the aisle understand that the middle class is a vital part of keeping America great, and they acknowledge that a lack of opportunity for the middle class is bad for everyone. While the parties may vary on the specifics of cause and solution, they need to work together to figure out the best way to solve this pressing problem.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Consumer concerns emerge with yet another food illness outbreak – National Consumers League

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By Alex Schneider, NCL Public Policy Intern

Last Wednesday, at the request of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), food manufacturer Cargill announced a massive recall of 36 million pounds of ground turkey due to possible contamination from Salmonella.  Already, a 65-year-old Northern Carolina woman died due to the outbreak, and 77 people have reported falling ill, with one-third ending up in the hospital.  The outbreak has highlighted two consumer concerns related to detection of Salmonella and the use of antibiotics in the food supply.

The need for new testing procedures for salmonella

As reported by CBS News, after the first illness was reported in March and the first signs of an outbreak appeared in May, investigators were able to determine a link between Cargill ground turkey and the outbreak in July.  Inevitably, consumers, industry observers and the media will question why the recall was announced five months after the first reported illness.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) sent a petition to the USDA in May that would have declared four strains of Salmonella to be ‘adulterants.’  The four are – Salmonella Newport, Salmonella Hadar, Salmonella Typhimurium and the strain present in the current outbreak, Salmonella Heidelberg –and  have all been the cause of serious food illness outbreaks.

Under this classification, testing before the product goes to market would be required to identify potential contaminants, as is currently required in testing meat for E. coli O157:H7.  The classification would also mean that selling products with these strains of Salmonella would be illegal, the goal being to stop contaminated meat from ever reaching the marketplace.

Concerns over livestock antibiotics

The second big concern is that Salmonella Heidelberg is resistant to several antibiotics, including ampicillin, streptomycin and tetracycline, as described in a report by NPR.  Today, farmers use 29 million pounds of antibiotics, or four times those prescribed to humans, to get animals to grow more efficiently before their entrance into the food market.

The side effect – antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria  – poses considerable risks, as evidenced by this most recent outbreak of Salmonella.  Although alternative antibiotics exist to treat people who do get sick, this problem has the potential to get worse.  As the Food and Drug Administration has stated, medically important antibiotics should be avoided in the food industry.

NCL strongly supports the CSPI petition calling for a “test and hold” program for the four strains of Salmonella before meats are shipped out to consumers and make people sick, or even worse, kill them. NCL also calls upon the FDA to prohibit the use of medically important antibiotics in animal feed because of the very problem we see with Salmonella Heidelberg,  it’s resistant to treatment by specific antibiotics.

The lasting relevance of the Fair Labor Standards Act – National Consumers League

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By Ben Judge, NCL Public Policy Intern

Last month, in the Education and the Workforce subcommittee on Workforce Protection in the House of Representatives, there was much talk about the changing times, with and certain members calling for “modernization” of one of the most important workers rights laws ever passed—the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). FLSA was passed as one of the New Deal provisions of 1938, covers over 130 million workers, and controls how many hours someone can be required to work in a week.

If you benefit from overtime, minimum wage, or have children who are not working in heavy industry, then this law directly affects you.

How the FLSA protects workers and why the Republicans find it wrong
The FLSA protects workers by limiting the number of hours that can be worked under a normal hourly wage to 40 hour a week.  Whenever someone works over 40 hours they are entitled to overtime.  However, Republicans believe that the traditional 40-hour workweek outlined in the act isn’t flexible enough for the 21st century worker, although the FSLA already allows for a pretty flexible schedule.  Republicans would like the see the act “modernized” by allowing companies to exempt more workers from the FSLA, and bring more workers on as independent contractors.  Republicans says that with more workers exempt and their schedules more flexible that there will be an increase in employment and an increase in economic growth.  To counter that argument, although there could be an increase in employment, the wages of those employees would be much lower and the amount of time they work would be much high.

Moving forward
As attempts to roll back regulation and workers rights, it is important that those who are covered by the FLSA stand up and unite to prevent it from being “modernized” to fit the Republican agenda.  Do not let this important law be weakened!

Luxury goods sales highlight rich-poor gap – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

A front page New York Times story that ran yesterday, Aug. 4, begins like this:

“Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin ‘Bianca’ platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years.”

In the perverse world we live in, the 9+ percent unemployment rate for millions of Americans won’t budge, more than 50 million of us are without health insurance, and more than 5 million citizens are living solely on food stamps – that’s right, they have no other resources, so food stamps are their only safety net.

And the gap between rich and poor in America continues to grow. In 1915, an era in which the Rockefellers and Carnegies dominated American industry, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned roughly 18 percent of all income. Today, the top 1 percent account for 24 percent of all income. During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent. That’s because the increase in productivity wasn’t shared; it was commandeered by the rich and the very rich.

Today, sadly, the vast majority of Americans live a far more modest existence, and many are poor.

Meanwhile, the Times article quotes a designer brand that sells shoes that cost $2000 each. That’s hard to fathom – or to justify – in this economy.

Ramming Legislation Through…. – National Consumers League

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By Michell K. McIntyre, Project Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

As a child, when something doesn’t go our way we may pout, throw a tantrum and sometimes even break our toys.  As a teenager we may slam the door or walk out, but as an adult, we’re supposed to suck it up and deal. But what do members of Congress do when something doesn’t go their way?

In the case of a few Republican members of the House, you respond by creating a piece of legislation that guts an independent federal agency and strips away the rights of American workers. When the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled against Boeing for moving their plant from Washington state to South Carolina as retaliation to union workers in Washington, these members crafted H.R. 2587, “Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” as a way to protect Boeing and other Fortune 500 companies from facing the consequences when they trample on their employees’ rights.

“The legislation (H.R. 2587) is nothing more than a rush to protect one special interest to the determent of all American workers,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.  “The bill presents American workers with a choice: you can have your rights or you can have your job.  But you can’t have both.”

H.R. 2587 would remove the only meaningful remedy available to workers if a company illegally moves operations or eliminates work because workers engaged in protected activities such as organizing a union.  An employer can outsource for any reason, except for an unlawful reason.  Retailing against workers for exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act is one unlawful reason.

“These rights to organize and collectively bargain are meaningless if there is no effective remedy when they are violated,” said Miller.  “The impact of this change would be wide-ranging.”

H.R. 2587 was pushed through the House Education and the Workforce Committee last week by a party line vote in less than 48 hours after it was introduced and is expected to be up for a full House this week.  If passed by the House, the Senate will hopefully put a stop to this troubling and dangerous piece of legislation.

It’s time that ALL Members of Congress stop acting like children and act like the adults they’re supposed to be. After all, they were elected to uphold the Constitution, protect American workers and serve their constituents—not to protect and serve the special interests’ of Fortune 500s.

In support of the “Bittman tax” – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Last year, DC City Councilwoman Mary Cheh introduced legislation to place a one-penny tax on sugary drinks sold in the District.  NCL supported Cheh’s bill, which passed the DC City Council unanimously. The proceeds from the tax would have been directed to fighting obesity in the District.  The sugar lobby went all out to defeat the bill, throwing millions of dollars into ads on billboards, television and radio. I even received a robo call message on my home answering machine warning me about this “dangerous” legislation. This industry onslaught succeeded in killing the bill. The defeat occurred despite these facts:

  • 43% of students enrolled in DC public schools are overweight or obese — one of the highest rates in the nation.
  • The District government spends more than $400 million annually to treat obesity.
  • For children, each extra can or glass of sugar-sweetened beverage consumed per day increases their chance of becoming obese by 60 percent
  • Of the 278 additional calories Americans consumed on average, per day between 1977 and 2001, more than 40% came from sugary drinks.

In a recent New York Times article, Mark Bittman, the food writer and chef, proposes something similar to Cheh’s legislation: a 20% increase in the price of sugary drinks, which would cause a 20% decrease in consumption, which would prevent about one and half million Americans from becoming obese and 400,000 cases of diabetes, saving an estimated $30 billion.

His proposal makes a lot of sense to me. The average American consumes 44.7 gallons of soft drinks annually, including diet drinks. The Bittman tax would add $1.44 cents to a six-pack of Pepsi. That money would be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonable greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit. Bittman argues that the government should play a much stronger role in public health. He’s right. This country is facing a public health crisis, with rapidly rising rates of obesity among adults and sadly, children. Why not make it more expensive to consume the stuff that’s nutritionally bereft and use those funds to subsidize the provision of healthy foods, especially in those communities where fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to find? The only thing stopping us is the junk food lobby, but in time, a strong enough push from a groundswell of Americans who are convinced we need to take strong steps to reverse obesity rates – and the diseases that rise – can overcome even that junk food juggernaut.