Love Still In the Air? – National Consumers League

Still munching on conversation hearts? Still enjoying just-beginning-to-droop fresh cut flowers or romantic meal leftovers? Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but for some unfortunate consumers, the sting of falling for a sweetheart swindler can last months – emotionally and financially!

It’s been more than a year since the fraud experts at the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center first identified a new trend in consumer scams: the Sweetheart or Friendship Swindle. While NCL’s Fraud Center only started tracking this type of scam in July of 2007, the Sweetheart Swindle scams gained enough momentum in the second half of that year to propel it to the 2007 top 10 scam list, which is annually released by NCL. According to complaints logged at www.fraud.org in 2007, the average sweetheart lost more than $3,038 to con artists disguised as friends or loved ones.

The trend seems to be holding up. In 2008, Friendship/Sweetheart swindles were the 10th most-reported type of scam to NCL’s Fraud Center, and – even worse – the average loss for such scams was nearly $12,500! Four times the previous year’s average loss. This average loss made friendship/sweetheart swindles the third-most costly type of scam, on average, for their victims.

Love stinks, doesn’t it? With so many of us turning to the Internet to find dates, friends, community activities, and more, it’s no wonder that scammers have cultivated a new way of taking money from their victims. Think you’ve found a new friend online but something’s fishy? Here are some warning signs that your new beau or gal may not be the real deal:

  • The person asks you for money, to cash a check or money order.
  • Your online sweetie says, “I love you” almost immediately.
  • The person claims to be a U.S. citizen who is abroad, and or claims to be well off, or a person of important status.
  • The person claims to be a contractor, and needs your help with a business deal.

The Washington Post’s Michelle Singletary wrote a great piece on the scam last year. Read it!

Happy Birthday, NAACP! – National Consumers League

Just a few days ago, on February 12, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) celebrated its 100th anniversary. What a great time, during Black History Month – and within the first few weeks of our first African American President having taken office – to reflect on this organization’s achievements. The Baltimore Sun has a good feature on the org’s history, and National Public Radio has covered the anniversary as well, including with an interview with the new NAACP president and CEO, Benjamin Jealous.

According to its Web site, “the NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln.  Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.”

Many readers may not be aware that the National Consumers League, which was founded just a few years before, in 1899, has some history in common with the NAACP. Back in the early days of NCL, which was founded by activists emerging from the suffrage, abolition, and settlement house movements, many activists for labor and women’s suffrage didn’t yet see the need to represent the interests of black Americans, who were often paid the lowest wages and worked in the dirtiest jobs. But the National Consumers League was different. NCL leadership argued that black workers were the most vulnerable and needed protections as much if not more as other workers. Throughout the League’s 109 years of activism and leadership in social justice, NCL’s leaders have had close ties to African Americans and the civil rights movement.NCL’s great first leader, Florence Kelley, was a strong supporter of early black civil rights. Although the early work of the League focused on the plight of urban workers in the American Northeast at a time when more African Americans lived in the South, Kelley had strong goals of racial equality. In her role in the suffrage movement, Kelley was critical of the National Woman’s Party for its friendly acceptance of white supremacist southern women members. A friend of W.E.B. Du Bois, Kelley was herself a founding member of the NAACP. At Kelley’s death, DuBois gave a eulogy for her, saying: “Save for Jane Addams, there is not another social worker in the United States who has either had her insight or her daring, so far as the American Negro is concerned.”

Hats off to the NAACP for its first 100 years of important contributions to American social justice and history. Three cheers from your friends at the National Consumers League!

Is common sense returning to Washington, DC? – National Consumers League

by Reid Maki, NCL’s Director, Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards

When Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act and President Obama signed it into law January 29, a nonsensical decision of the Supreme Court was effectively overturned. The court had ruled previously that a worker who wanted to sue his or her employer for illegally discriminating against them by paying them less wages based on their sex or race must do so in the first six months after the initial discrimination occurred.

In cases like that of Ledbetter, who worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber for 19 years, workers do not always know when they are being treated unfairly. Ledbetter only found out that she made less than all the other male supervisors because someone (in the months before her retirement) left her note telling her about the unequal pay. It wasn’t a trifling amount either: the lowest paid male supervisor made $550 more a month than she did. Over a nearly 20 year period, that kind of pay disparity adds up.

Ledbetter filed a complaint that year and was told by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that she had grounds to sue. She won in a U.S. district court in 2003, but an appeal went to a higher court that ruled she had filed her cases years too late.

In a decision announced in early 2007, the Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, agreed that workers who suffer from an employer’s illegal action have only six months from the time the discrimination began to initiate legal recourse—whether or not they knew about the illegal action! As writer Richard Thompson Ford noted in Slate, “Ledbetter basically grandfathers in longtime pay discrimination.”

Thankfully, Congress set about reversing the decision—as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had called for in her dissenting opinion. The National Consumers League endorsed these efforts in a letter to Congress last August.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, allowing workers to bring a lawsuit within six months of any paycheck—not just the first—that discriminates against them was the first law enacted under the Obama presidency.

President Obama signaled the importance of balancing corporate power and employee rights by inviting Ledbetter to be one of 16 guests to accompany him on his train ride into Washington before he took office. He also danced with her on the night of his inauguration!

“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of. In fact, I will never see a cent from my case,” said Ledbetter at the signing. “But with the president’s signature today, I have an even richer reward. I know that my daughter and granddaughters … will have a better deal. That’s what makes this fight worth fighting.”

SCHIP: ‘A Great First Step’ – National Consumers League

by Mimi Johnson, NCL Health Policy Associate

President Obama recently signed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) into law, making what he calls ‘a down payment on [his] promise to cover every American.’ This reauthorization means that 11 million low-income children will now have health insurance, covering four million more children than before. SCHIP works to cover children in families who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to purchase private insurance.

This issue is very important to the National Consumers League. For over 100 years we have worked to improve the lives of children, from improving child labor laws to ensuring medication safety. The League strongly believes that all citizens have a right to adequate and affordable health care.

While SCHIP has been around since 1997, the reauthorization brings some exciting changes. For the first time, coverage will extend to children and pregnant women who are legal immigrants. Another revision includes a 62-cent increase in the cigarette tax, which will hopefully discourage kids from starting to smoke in addition to encouraging adults to quit. Still other preventive measures in the new SCHIP include programs to promote healthy lifestyles and help reduce childhood obesity.

We applaud Congress and the Obama Administration for acting swiftly to protect America’s children. Still, nearly nine million children remain uninsured in this country, a number that is most certainly rising. Almost two-thirds of Americans are insured through their employer. And with the recent announcement that nearly 600,000 jobs were lost in January alone, the number of uninsured is rising at an alarming rate.

Reauthorizing and expanding SCHIP is a great first step towards an improved health system, but we need to work quickly towards broader reform that ensures we can all receive the quality care we need.

Props to Congress for Move to Delay DTV Transition Date – National Consumers League

The National Consumers League has issued kudos to the U.S. House of Representatives for voting to delay the official date of the federal transition from analog to digital television.

You’ve probably heard of the impending transition, which is set for Feb. 17. Consumer advocates are concerned, however, that there are still many consumers out there – an estimated 6.5 million! – who are unprepared for the switch. Those rabbit-ear-relying TV watchers would be in for a rude awakening when the analog signals stop airing. If they haven’t yet subscribed to cable or satellite, swapped their TV for one with a digital signal, or purchased a converter box, they may be baffled when their sets go blank later this month. Unless, that is, the delay is made official, and advocates, government, and others are given more time to reach those millions of consumers with the info they need to make the switch.

Sally Greenberg, NCL‘s Executive Director, had this to say about the move by the House:

“The decision by the U.S. House of Representatives to approve a four-month delay in the shutdown of analog TV signals is a victory for the estimated 6.5 million U.S. households that remain unprepared for the DTV transition. Consumers in these unprepared households are disproportionately elderly, low-income, rural, and minority. The delay will allow time for governmental, private, and non-profit educational efforts to have greater effect and for more converter box coupons to be sent to consumers currently on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s waiting list. The delay will also help avoid the nightmare scenario of consumers, particularly older ones, climbing their roofs in February to adjust TV antennas due to the transition. We urge President Obama to sign the bill to law as soon as possible.”

Mahalo, Hawai’i LifeSmarts! – National Consumers League

Our LifeSmarts program in Hawai’i is making headlines, as their state competition is just a few days away. As recently reported in the Honolulu Advertiser, young savvy consumers will battle it out this weekend for a spot at nationals. The defending state champs from Kea’au High School will defend their title Saturday at the state Capitol auditorium.

In Hawai’i, LifeSmarts is coordinated by the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and enjoys local support from partners including the Better Business Bureau Foundation, the Hawai’i Credit Union League, and the state Department of Education.

Good luck, guys! We’ll see the winners in St. Louis!

Contaminated peanut butter? Is nothing sacred? – National Consumers League

by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

The all American sandwich, peanut butter and jelly, defiled by the potentially deadly Salmonella pathogen?

More than 500 people in 43 states have been sickened, and eight have died, after eating crackers and other products made with peanut butter from  a plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). More than 100 children under the age of 5 are among those who have been sickened.

The good news for consumers is that none of PCA’s products are sold directly to consumers. 
The bad news is that apparently PCA distributed potentially contaminated products to more than 100 companies for use as an ingredient in hundreds of different products, such as cookies, crackers, cereal, candy and ice cream.
 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initiated an inspection of PCA’s Blakely plant on January 9 shortly after learning that the firm might be linked to the ongoing Salmonella outbreak that was making people sick in states across the country.  But what should outrage consumers is that isn’t the first time the PCA has been implicated  – far from it. According to the New York Times, over the last two years  there were 12 instances in which the company’s own tests of its product found contamination by salmonella. In each case, the report states, “after the firm retested the product and received a negative status, the product was shipped in interstate commerce.”

It is illegal for a company to continue testing a product until it gets a clean test, said Michael Taylor, a food safety expert at George Washington University.

The FDA’s report describes a plant that was poorly constructed, with gaps and holes in the walls and flaking rust that could get into food products. “There were open gaps observed” near air-conditioner intakes that were as large as a half-inch by two and one-half feet long, the report said.  Previous inspections of the plant by the Georgia State Agriculture Department found dirty surfaces, grease residue and dirt buildup throughout the plant. They also found rust residue that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to enter, and numerous other problems.

Ingesting foods containing the Salmonella virus can be deadly in the very young, the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.

The plant sells its peanut paste to some of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, including Kellogg and McKee Foods. As a result of the contamination, more than 100 products have been recalled, mostly cookies and crackers.

In a press conference Tuesday, Michael Rogers, director of the division of field investigations at the FDA, said that the company’s tests showing salmonella contamination should have led the company to take actions to eliminate the contamination. “It’s significant, because at the point at which salmonella was identified, it shouldn’t be there, based on the manufacturing process that’s designed to mitigate salmonella, actually eliminate it,” Mr. Rogers said.

But the firm took no steps to clean its plant after the test results alerted the company to the contamination, inspection team found problems with the plant’s routine cleaning procedures as well.

The plant also stored pallets of peanut butter next to supplies of peanuts, the inspection report says. Finished products should be stored far from raw materials to reduce the chances of re-contamination of the finished goods, according to federal rules.

What is wrong with this picture? This Georgia plant is a clearly a serial violator– the feds found numerous violations but so did the state of Georgia. Why wasn’t the plant closed down after the Georgia State Inspection? Restaurants that are dirty and violate municipal rules are routinely closed down until they fix safety violations. What is the point of federal and state safety procedures if a company is permitted to flout them and send contaminated products into the marketplace? and shouldn’t we have tough criminal penalties for a company that knowingly ships contaminated products?

Certainly, Congress will be demanding answers, but consumers should demand them as well. Our food safety regime is broken. President Obama needs to appoint a tough new FDA Commissioner immediately. But the job of the FDA is overwhelming; FDA regulates food, drugs, and medical devices. We agree with our friends at the Center for Science in the Public Interest – our food safety system needs to be overhauled.

We need legislation to bring the food safety program at the FDA and Department of Agriculture and all the other federal agencies that regulate food into the 21st century. Representative Rosa DeLauro has introduced legislation to create a new Food Safety Administration at Health and Human Services.  That approach would bring the program elements together and put an expert in charge. We ask Congress and the Obama Administration to pass this legislation quickly, and begin to overhaul our food safety regime and make it work for consumers.

Don’t Let the Economy Make You Sick – National Consumers League

by Mimi Johnson, Health Policy Associate

An article in last week’s NY Times outlines just how dangerous the poor economy can be on our health. A study, conducted nationally via telephone, reported that one in seven Americans under the age of 65 went without prescribed medication because they couldn’t afford it. What’s more alarming is that this number has likely grown since the survey was conducted in 2007 due to the current economic slump.

Among those surveyed, uninsured, working adults with at least one chronic condition were the most unlikely to fill a prescription.It is most important for this group of people to take their medications as directed, or their health will deteriorate and the cost of treatment will only increase.

It’s not only the uninsured who are affected by the rising costs of health care. The NY Times article states that “nearly one in four adults on Medicaid or state insurance programs said they’d had difficulty affording drugs.” And American veterans are among those most likely to forgo treatment as their co-pays rise.

Growing medical costs and diminishing medical coverage affect a majority of this nation; the National Consumers League is optimistic that a new Congress and Administration will address this serious problem. NCL is a member of Health Care for America Now, which calls for Congress to cover everyone with adequate insurance.

If you are among those who CAN afford to fill your prescription, it is important not only that you fill it, but that you also take the medicines as directed. It may seem like a good idea to conserve the meds in order to stretch the prescription between refills. But the costs – both to your health and your pocketbook – associated with NOT taking your prescribed medications are far greater than the costs of filling your prescription and taking your medications at the onset.

If you have questions, talk with your doctor. A study by the American Academy of Family Physicians found that doctors are often not very good at communicating the importance of taking your medicines as directed. As a consumer, it is your right and duty to ask the questions, prepare a medication list, and to work with your health care providers to understand how to incorporate the medication into your life. (You can learn more about this at the National Council on Patient Information and Education’s site here.)

The appropriate use of medication has long been an important issue to the League.In fact, we are currently in the planning phase of a national medication adherence campaign.If you would like to learn more about this campaign and our work on adherence, please contact NCL at (202) 835-3323, and ask to speak with our health policy department.

Recycle Your Cell Phone and Maybe Save a Life – National Consumers League

by Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

Each week, more than 2 million phones are de-activated. Did you know that fewer than 20 percent of them are recycled each year? According to Earthworks, a group involved in cell phone recycling, there are 500 million used cell phones either in landfills or sitting in drawers.

The phones are an environmental time bomb. “Cell phones contain toxic materials such as lead, mercury, beryllium, arsenic, cadmium, and antimony,” notes Earthworks. “If incinerated these substances can pollute the air, in landfills they can leach into groundwater. Many of the materials found in cell phones are also on the EPA’s list of persistent bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs). Because PBTs accumulate in fatty tissue of humans and animals, the toxins are gradually concentrated, putting those at the top of the food chain at the greatest risk, especially children.”

But there is another reason to recycle these de-activated phones: you may be saving a child’s life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the central African nation formerly known as the Belgian Congo, where rampant war and violence have cost between five and six million lives in the last decade. More lives have been lost in the Congo through violence and war than in any other country in the world since World War II. And the nature of the violence has shocked the world. Rape has become a weapon of the civil war that grips the country to the extent that advocates in the country say it has become a “norm” — an estimated 200,000 women, including many children, have been raped in the conflict, according to the United Nations.

What do phones, war, and child safety have to do with each other?

The DRC’s mineral resources are among the richest in the world. According to one estimate, the Congolese—who on average earn less than 50 cents a day—are walking on ground containing more than $300 billion worth of minerals. And many of those minerals—Coltan, copper, and tungsten—end up in electronic equipment like cell phones and laptops.

Many human rights advocates believe that the DRC’s vast resources are the underlying cause—and sometimes the direct cause—of the wars and violence that have ripped through the country in waves for decades. Many of the warring groups finance their armies with trade of the mined materials. In some cases, children are forced to mine the minerals—as well as gold and diamonds—out of the earth. Some work willingly, but are far too young to perform work as dangerous as mining, especially in a war zone. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, 40 percent of boys and girls between age 10 and 14 work in the DRC, despite laws that say no child under the age of 15 should work.

Often the children are re-victimized when they are forcibly turned into child soldiers.

The constant war has led to a breakdown of society, causing a witches’ brew of lethal health problems that, according to the New York Times earlier this year, was killing 45,000 Congolese every month. “The mortality rate in Congo is 57 percent higher than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the survey found. Particularly hard hit were young children, who are especially susceptible to diseases like malaria, measles, dysentery and typhoid, which can kill when medicine is not available,” reported Lydia Polgreen in January. Nearly half of the more than five million dead were children under the age of five.

In addition to the human toll, the mining of these minerals has also led to a reduction of gorilla habitat, endangering some of the world’s most magnificent animals.

The world, for the most part, turns a blind eye to the turmoil in the Congo. However, there are groups—at least a couple of dozen around the country—doggedly pushing the mining companies and the electronics companies to set up a mineral tracing system so that minerals from areas of conflict can be barred from the world markets. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) introduced legislation in the last Congress toward that goal. The National Consumers League (NCL) has recently joined the effort to bring about a tracing system along with the International Labor Right Forum, a member of the NCL-coordinated Child Labor Coalition and one of the lead organizers of the effort.

Before you throw that old cell phone in the trash, remember the true value of the mineral contents in terms of the lives lost and damaged in mining areas. Please recycle.

[If you can’t find a recycling site in your area, Earthworks provides free shipping for recycling phones. EPA also has links to corporate recycling programs at its site.]

1/20/09: A Day of Reflection – National Consumers League

by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

The crowds in Washington DC were thick with people from all over America, indeed, from all over the world and all roads led to the Mall on this historic day in Washington DC and in America, the swearing in of America’s first African American president, Barack Obama. The sense of optimism and hope for a new direction was palpable in those streaming downtown as I walked with my friends and family from Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood toward the Mall. The night before, I and many Washingtonians, whose city was virtually shut down for the four-day weekend that included Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 19, followed by the Inaugural Day, had attended parties and events from the National Archives to the Washington Convention Center to the National Portrait Gallery to the many hotels and restaurants.

I couldn’t help thinking of Florence Kelley, the National Consumers League’s first leader and General Secretary. One hundred years ago, in 1909, Kelley helped to create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and thereafter became a lifelong friend and ally of W.E.B. DuBois, the black visionary and leading voice for civil rights at the beginning of the 20th century. At Kelley’s death, DuBois gave a eulogy for her, saying: “Save for Jane Addams, there is not another social worker in the United States who has either had her insight or her daring, so far as the American Negro is concerned.” Kelley came by her civil rights ideas naturally; her father, a Philadelphia Congressman and impassioned abolitionist, William “Pig Iron” Kelley, and her great aunt Sarah Pugh was a Quaker and fierce opponent of slavery.

The League, under Kelley’s leadership, was unique among both union and women’s groups in championing the cause of equal rights for black Americans. League leaders argued passionately for better pay and working conditions for blacks and particularly for black women, who were the lowest paid workers of all.

The spirit and great works of Kelley and the other leaders of the National Consumers League throughout our 109 year history – from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and consumer and labor leader Esther Peterson – are with us on this historic occasion as we welcome our new President and his family to Washington DC and look forward to working with him on behalf of workers and consumers across America.