The ticket marketplace: A scalper’s paradise – National Consumers League

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This week I braved the ticket buying process for Roland Garros, otherwise known as the French Open. I wasn’t sure what I was in for, but I had heard from those who had attended in the past that you have to buy as soon as the tickets become available, as they sell out immediately. I hadn’t realized that tennis was so popular and that so many people would get online to buy those tickets up.

So at 2 am EST, 7 am French time, I logged on to the French Open website and was put in queue for 80 minutes. I sat with a book on my lap reading and whiling away the time in the middle of the night. About an hour later, the purchase page popped up, I put in my info and got my 3 tickets. I was delighted that the French seemed to be effective at preventing scalping and appeared to be doing their best to make tickets available to as many people as possible at a reasonable price.

How foolish I was to believe these modest measures would prevent scalping. Two days after I bought my face value tickets, I saw seats in the same section as ours going for four times what we paid. I can’t help feeling angry about scalping. My son, who helped orchestrate the buying process, thinks I’m hopelessly naïve. He claims that when a hot Nike shoe goes up on a website, it’s gone in 10 minutes, only to quickly show up online for $5,000.

The National Consumers League has been working to prevent bots, illegal ticket buying software, from being used to scoop up in-demand tickets that then get sold at far higher prices. We’ve looked at many creative ways to prevent scalping, but it’s a difficult problem to solve when there’s more demand than supply. We can make it illegal to sell a ticket for more than face value, but then the worry is that the secondary market goes underground. At least with some of the official secondary market services, you have some consumer protections built in to guarantee that you’ll get the ticket you paid for.

My experience this week reinforces my frustration with scalping. Many people are making a lot of money by buying up face value tickets, then charging triple or quadruple the price. I think that’s unfair. What we need are creative solutions that ensure fair access to tickets, as opposed to the exorbitant markups that the scalpers too often charge. Yes, I’m hopeless naïve, but I can’t help but want average people to get a fair shake in the ticket market.

March is National Nutrition Month and it’s time to get informed. Do you know where your calories come from? – National Consumers League

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March kicks off National Nutrition Month – a good time for us to reflect on our diets and physical activity.  We all know the importance –and the challenges — of maintaining a healthy weight.  A third of Americans are obese and another third are overweight.  That means that two thirds of Americans are at increased risk for certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and other life threatening illnesses that accompany excessive poundage.

There are a few promising signs that the nation’s health is improving, however. Just this week, a major federal health survey reported that the obesity rate among two-year-old to five-year-old children has dropped 43 percent. Children who are overweight or obese are five times more likely to be overweight or obese as an adult. There is a strong focus nationwide on improving eating habits and being more conscious about what we put into our bodies.

In pursuit of sound eating practices, we recommend watching portion sizes, looking at nutritional labels and moderation above all else.   It is easy to overeat when we are surrounded by high calorie, high fat foods, many with surprisingly little nutritional value.  Americans’ top sources of calories, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), are cakes, cookies, and sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.  These foods are laden with fat and/or sweeteners and easy to consume in large quantities.  Surprisingly, some foods like candy contribute only 2.2% of calories to the American diet.    First Lady Michelle Obama says it well – it’s not that we can NEVER have certain foods like candy or ice cream, but that we should enjoy them in moderation.

We believe strongly in studying Nutrition Facts labels!  They are also being updated for the first time in 20 years.  Almost every packaged food item includes them: they provide calories per serving and help consumers monitor and control caloric intake for the recommended 2,000 calorie a day diet.  The updated labels will now reflect more accurate caloric information, provide larger font and a listing for added sugars, which is useful to know. Focusing on eating more foods that are nutrient dense and low in fat and calories is a critical step in the right direction if you’re looking to shed a few pounds.  As “My Plate” suggests, making half of your meal fruits and vegetables is an easy way to do this.  A few other tips to get on track are:

  1. Increase intake of whole grains, making half of all grains consumed whole grains.
  2. Reduce consumption of high fructose corn syrup-sweetened beverages like soda.
  3. Monitor and minimize calorie intake from alcoholic beverages.
  4. Be aware of how large portion sizes are, especially when dining out.
  5. Prepare more meals at home where you have control over the amount of added salt, sugar and fat.

A balanced diet is just that, balanced.  Eat a variety of foods:  it keeps your food choices interesting and satisfying.  And of course, partake in the occasional indulgence. A very restrictive diet can backfire.  A candy bar, piece of chocolate, or some other reasonably small treat can be helpful in curbing cravings.

Finally, physical activity can play a critical role in maintaining a healthy weight.  The Dietary Guidelines recommend that adults do at least 150 minutes, or two and a half hours of moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking at a brisk clip or riding a bike, each week.  The idea of fitting this in can be daunting for many of us, but it helps to know that walking to work or taking a quick stroll on your lunch break counts.  Any amount of physical activity – however brief – yields rewards and is better than none at all.  Taking these steps to better your health may be difficult at first, but with time and practice, they become habit and will surely enhance your quality of life.

Anti-union propaganda leads to defeat for UAW – National Consumers League

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Last Friday the workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted against joining the UAW. In the weeks and months leading up to this vote, VW had agreed to stay neutral and over half the workers had indicated they were in favor of union membership. But that all changed due to a sustained propaganda campaign lead by Bob Corker the notorious anti-union Senator from Tennessee and the Koch brothers.

They, and their right wing allies, believe that if Tennessee  – a right-to-work (for less) state – opens the door to the union, the rest of the South will open up to labor.

Other threats were lobbed – Senator Corker claimed to have been told by an unnamed top company executive that a vote against the union would guarantee that Chattanooga would be chosen as the production site for a new line of SUVs — the union denied it. State officials apparently said if the plant were unionized, the legislature would refuse to appropriate an estimated $700 million in state subsidies necessary to build out an SUV plant.

I don’t understand why these Southern politicians are so threatened by the union. European companies, like VW, which stayed neutral in this discussion, are used to the notion of workers and employers having a place at the table; they support the concept of worker representatives sitting down with management and arriving at mutually beneficial policies, including work rules, wages, safety and health requirements, and vacation benefits. Everyone understands that there’s money to be made  – a lot of it – by both workers and industry. What is so infuriating about so many American businesses, and this campaign against UAW so demonstrates this problem, is that they don’t get that sharing the wealth is GOOD for companies and workers. So many American companies are all about grabbing profits for their higher ups and skimping on wages and benefits whenever possible.  Here was a chance to change that paradigm with the company’s support.

But because this is the US, that wasn’t to be.

The anti UAW propaganda was effective, comparing Tennessee to Detroit and scaring the current VW workforce, which currently makes a good salary, by blaming the UAW for Detroit’s current financial disaster.  Talk about blaming the victim! Workers making decent wages and benefits are to blame for Detroit’s decades of mismanagement and white flight?  It makes no sense but it’s a potent sound bite.

Suppliers threatened to boycott TN if VW unionized. Is giving workers a voice really so scary? Yes, to Southern politicians and business. But Steve Pearlstein in the Washington Post points out that:

[I]n the faster-growing and more prosperous regional economies of the North and West, companies are trying to boost performance by increasing employee engagement and empowerment, not suppressing it. Their business strategies are based not on assuring a steady supply of cheap labor but on increasing the number of highly paid and highly skilled workers. Rather than trying to nullify federal labor law and crush what remains of the much-diminished union movement, these companies, like VW, are looking at new models of workplace cooperation and collaboration.

That’s more likely the wave of the future. And the South, and Senator Corker, the Koch’s, and their ilk – will be left behind If they continue this all out attack against empowering workers and giving them a voice.

50 years after LBJ declared a War on Poverty, progress but more work to do – National Consumers League

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In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty. Today, Martin Luther King Day – a day to celebrate equality, justice, and progress – we reflect on the status of struggling families. While there is still much work to do to ensure every American worker has enough money in her pocket to pay the bills, provide for for her family, and guarantee a stable household, we have made great leaps in the last 50 years. 

Johnson put in place a series of anti-poverty programs – VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services, and the Community Action Program the likes of which we’ve never seen again. These programs significantly tempered the impact of poverty for millions of Americans. Indeed, in the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty programs, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3 percent in the year the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1 percent in 1973. They have remained between 11 and 15.2 percent ever since.

We can be proud that the legacy of Frances Perkins and the New Deal programs of FDR’s administration – Social Security and Medicare and more recently Medicare Part D which covers the cost of medications – have vastly improved the lives of elderly Americans: the most dramatic decrease in poverty is among Americans over 65, which fell from 28.5 percent in 1966 to 10.1 percent today.

Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota Senator and the man who served as Vice President to LBJ, talks in his spellbinding book “A Public Man” about making a real dent in poverty with these programs. Sadly, the Nixon administration that came into power after LBJ’s reign dismantled many of them. There was a tide that swept over America that offered a few egregious examples that these programs made people “too dependent on government” and unwilling to work.  Yes, there are some lazy people looking for a handout; but there are far more who use these safety net programs to feed their families and get back on their feet so they can work and be productive members of society.

Today the biggest drag on the economy and the notion that “a rising tide lifts all boats” is that the gains in GDP have landed disproportionately in the wallets of the top 1 or 2 percent whereas in the 60s and 70s these gains were shared far more broadly. The number of union jobs that offer good wages and benefits has fallen dramatically. Unionization of the workforce today is at its lowest level since 1916, when it was 11.2 percent. Sadly, our labor laws do not favor union organizing and there’s been a steady drumbeat by the business community, including the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, against ceding any power to unions to organize and negotiate on behalf of workers.

So, the War on Poverty, though successful in offering relief programs to the poor, has been undermined by the lack of decent jobs and poor educational opportunities. There’s a little light at the end of the tunnel, however. I’m personally thrilled and delighted to see the wave of state laws increasing minimum wage and the bipartisan support from red and blue states alike in favoring these increases. More than 70 percent of voters in March of this year told Gallup pollsters they would like to see the minimum wage increase. By November that percentage had risen to 76 percent including 58 percent of Republicans supporting an increase.

If the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 is passed into law, 30 million Americans will see an increase in their paycheck. Providing an increased minimum wage may not be a panacea for these struggling Americans, but it will go a long way toward lifting families out of poverty.  It’s good for kids too, because they suffer the most when there’s not enough food in the cupboard. President Johnson had it right – we have to treat the problem of poverty in America like a war –and many strategies need to be deployed to combat the problem. With the recent gains in minimum wage in states around the country and momentum building, we may indeed be opening the next chapter in President Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Rates of tobacco use have drastically declined over the last 50 years. Another win for regulations. – National Consumers League

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I recently wrote about the miraculous number of lives saved by tough auto safety regulations. Some states today are recording the lowest traffic fatalities ever. Why? Because of safety devices (seatbelts, airbags, etc.) and designs that were lobbied for by consumer advocates like Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, CARS,  and Consumer Reports/Consumers Union beginning in the 1960s.

Now I’m writing about another miraculous success story also related directly to a sustained public health education and awareness campaign. Fifty years ago – in 1964 – the US surgeon general issued a groundbreaking report on smoking and health. The paper offered definitive proof – based on thousands of studies -that smoking causes lung cancer and is linked to other serious diseases. Tobacco companies had spent years denying and obfuscating the evidence. Research since then has shown that tobacco can cause or exacerbate a wide range of ailments, including heart disease, stroke, multiple kinds of cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, asthma and diabetes, and can cause disease in those who inhale the secondary smoke – including wait staff in restaurants and bars and children of smokers.

This sustained campaign to discourage Americans from smoking –including high taxes on cigarettes, banning smoking in bars, restaurants, workplaces, airports, airplanes, trains, and other enclosed spaces, requiring smoking in restricted areas, curbs on advertising, banning sales to minors, penalizing smokers with higher health care premiums, and local and state programs for smoking cessation  – all have  helped to dramatically reduce smoking in the US.

I’m one of those who had a two pack a day habit so I know about smoking. It was incredibly difficult to quit – I did it four or five times for months or years at a time but got hooked again immediately upon taking the first puff.

I did finally call it quits and don’t dare come close to a cigarette today. Why did I quit finally? Lots of reasons, including that I felt shockingly short of breath when going up just a few stairs, the ever escalating cost, and the unpopularity of puffing away and polluting the air I was sharing with colleagues and friends. Not to mention it’s about the stupidest thing you can do, given all the terrible health conditions caused by and exacerbated by smoking. Thirty years after quitting, I also am happy to report that all of the six members of my immediate family who smoked back then have all kicked the habit.

So we are part of the success story. The percentage of American adults who smoke dropped from 42 percent in 1965 to 18 percent in 2012. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that tobacco control measures adopted since 1964 have saved eight million Americans from premature death and extended their lives by an average of almost 20 years.

However, we still have 44 million smokers. To tackle this challenge, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have called for a new national commitment to drive down smoking among adults to less than 10 percent over the next decade. The groups also want to protect all Americans from secondhand smoke within five years by having every state enact laws against smoking in all workplaces, bars and restaurants; and ultimately eliminate death and disease caused by tobacco.

The power of the tobacco industry is a challenge. It spends $8 billion a year to market cigarettes and other tobacco products in the US, marketing too often aimed at young people.

The industry also enjoys profits from heavy smoking prevalent in so many developing countries. My recent visits to China and Cuba underscored the ubiquitous use of tobacco around the world. Happily we’re spoiled in the US by being relative smoke free in communal places.

Meanwhile, back in the US, many groups are rededicating themselves to driving rates of smoking down to under 10 percent. Federal, state, and local government health officials are working alongside these groups. So there we have it – another victory for sensible regulation and here’s to the millions of lives saved as a result.

Our roads have never been safer, car safety regulations work! – National Consumers League

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It’s hard to measure things that don’t happen. But the recent news that Americans killed in traffic accidents has declined to the lowest point since the 1940s – especially in certain states – is evidence that people have not been dying in nearly as large numbers on our highways as they once did. This truly great news can be directly attributed to the years of work by consumer advocates, groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and government regulators.

I would like to credit auto manufacturers but it’s hard to do, given that they fought very sensible and lifesaving technologies – like seatbelts and airbags –  tooth and nail  and still fight efforts like making backup cameras standard in all  cars and trucks.  They have developed some tremendous safety technologies – like Electronic Stability Control to prevent rollover in SUVs and cars – and for that we can all be grateful.

Back to these very promising numbers. According to the Iowa State Department of Transportation, there were only 317 fatalities in Iowa in 2013 the lowest number of traffic deaths since 1944. Similar results in Ohio: 982 motorists and pedestrians died in Ohio in 2013, the lowest number since the state began keeping records in 1936. In New Jersey, state police reported 542 traffic deaths on highways and main streets in 2013, another all-time low. Eighty-five people were killed in Wyoming traffic accidents last year, the state Highway Patrol said Monday. The last time there were fewer than 100 deaths in Wyoming was in 1945. The South Carolina Highway Patrol said traffic deaths dropped by 125 over 2012 figures, a decrease of 17 percent.

According to the Washington Post, the national statistics, compiled by the Department of Transportation, won’t be released until later this year. But the early data is encouraging: In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the number of fatalities for the first half of the year had declined 4.2 percent from the same period in 2012.

When I first worked on auto safety for Consumers Union, the number of people dying on our highways each year was well over 40,000. The falling fatality numbers of today are part of a national trend that experts attribute to stronger regulation and better built cars with many safety technologies standard equipment:  head, side and lower body airbags, side, frontal and offset crash testing of cars and awarding five stars to those that perform well and sharing that information with consumers so they can make informed buying decisions. Electronic Stability Control (ESC) to prevent often deadly vehicle rollovers. We have cars that are far better designed and today auto makers not only acknowledge that safety helps sell cars but they advertise that their car or van received five star ratings in crash tests. That is progress!

The reduction in numbers is especially good news when we consider that the number of vehicles in the United States has increased significantly. The Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported there were 253 million registered vehicles in the United States in 2011, compared with just 161 million in 1980.

The AAA says that younger drivers and passengers are less likely to be involved in fatal accidents than in years past. The number of fatalities among adolescents between age 10-15 fell by almost 4 percent between 2011 and 2012, the last year for which federal statistics are available, while the number of teens who died in accidents fell by 5.7 percent.

How many parents have their teenagers alive and well today? How can we count these priceless lives saved?  These are young people who might have otherwise died on the road  had we not had strong education campaigns about drinking and driving and cars designed to withstand crashes far more effectively.

Consumer advocates and those who support us should be shouting from the hilltops that sensible regulations requiring safer cars and testing of those cars and advertising which are safest has saved thousands of lives this year and will likely continue to do so in the future. NCL is proud to be among the groups that have long advocated for strong safety regulations for automotive vehicles  and we can see from these very uplifting reports, our efforts have paid off handsomely.

In a win for consumers, Volcker Rules take effect – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
This week marked a milestone for the Dodd-Frank law: a new set of rules to prevent banks from taking huge risks with other people’s money. The new regulations come under the umbrella of the Volcker Rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.  The Volcker rule was just approved by five of the nation’s Government regulators and is a sweeping set of new rules for the nation’s biggest banks. Thankfully, the Volcker Rule bans financial institutions from the kind of ultra-high-risk trading that nearly collapsed the world’s financial system.

Despite a fierce lobbying effort to prevent the new measure, it won out. The Volcker Rule will prohibit banks from trading for their own profit rather than on behalf of customers. We are pleased that the rules came out stronger than anyone expected. Commentators believe that consumers won this round. “Big banks lost,” said Mark Williams, a former Fed bank examiner who now teaches at Boston University. “Wall Street aggressively fought the Volcker rule.”

 

The new rule will ban federally insured banks from betting on risky investments such as private equity and hedge funds. Private equity funds buy companies and turn them around before selling them, while hedge funds often employ complex trading strategies. These investments have proved highly profitable in the past, but are also extremely risky because they are often so complicated that most of the world, including experts in this stuff, often don’t understand how these investments work. That is by design.

 

The Volcker Rule also closes a critical loophole. “The Volcker rule will make it illegal for firms to use government-insured money to make speculative bets that threaten the entire financial system, and demand a new era of accountability from CEOs who must sign off on their firms’ practices,” President Obama said in a statement. The rule goes into effect in April but banks have until July 2015 to comply.

 

Also, financial firms may buy and sell securities as a way to hedge bets, but they also take a lot of risks in the process and when they fail, they can bring down others with them. For example, JPMorgan Chase & Co. suffered more than $6 billion in losses from positions by a trader who was known as the “London Whale” for his oversized hedges. JPMorgan Chase is the nation’s largest bank and this risky trading has huge repercussions in the financial industry.

 

Now the Volcker rule will require banks to continually monitor and adjust hedging strategies to ensure they don’t become overly risky bets that damage investors.

 

Another feature of the new rule is that institutions will have to document rationales for hedges.  Fed Gov. Daniel Tarullo, who heads the agency’s bank supervision and regulation committee, said the “Whale” episode provided “a real-world example of what should not happen in a banking organization.”

 

Banks will be required to keep records to back up their positions, and chief executives will be required to sign off on their firms’ compliance. They are also being asked under the new rule to structure employee compensation so that it does not “reward or incentivize” engaging in prohibited proprietary trading practices or expose the bank “to excessive or imprudent risk.”

 

Two Senators who pushed for the rule back in 2010, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said they were pleased that it was tougher than what regulators originally proposed.

 

Merkley, who is a great consumer and worker champion, joined Levin in a statement on the new regulation, saying the Volcker rule “was intended to change the culture and practices at our nation’s largest financial firms, to prevent Wall Street and the big banks from making swing-for-the-fences bets that put depositors and taxpayers at risk. The regulators have taken a serious step forward in mandating critical changes.”

 

This is an important victory for taxpayers and the public and a defeat for Wall Street.

 

For that we need to thank the heads of the five regulatory agencies who hung tough in the face of strong industry lobbying and opposition, including Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry, who said at a recent FDIC board meeting, “Issuing a final rule is only the beginning of the process. The OCC will be especially vigilant in developing a robust examination and enforcement program that ensures our largest institutions will remain compliant.” It’s about time.

Another nominee for the US Court of Appeals in DC needlessly blocked – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
The US Senate has rejected President Obama’s pick to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia yet again. The nominee, Georgetown Professor Cornelia Pillard, is a highly qualified lawyer who has very strong credentials and a very moderate record.

Senate was not able to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP procedural blockade as the measure failed by a vote of 56 to 41. Two Republican women Senators – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted to support the nominee. Nina – the name Professor Pillard goes by – is a friend of consumers and a personal acquaintance. I know her to be moderate in every way.

Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated that he believes the minority in the Senate doesn’t want women on the Court. “Women are grossly underrepresented in our federal courts. So what kind of message are Senate Republicans sending by refusing to even allow a vote on three of the most qualified female attorneys in this country?” When I say Pillard is a moderate, I’m talking about the fact that she worked twice in the administration of President Bill Clinton — at the solicitor general’s office, which handles Supreme Court cases, and later in the Justice Department.

Democratic White Houses in the last 30 years, and democratic DOJs, in my experience, don’t hire anything but moderates or moderate liberals. Republican administrations, by contrast, tend to hire people far more on the right wing side of the spectrum than democrats hire on the left. For whatever reason, that is the reality. Yes, Professor Pillard supports a woman’s right to choose, a position held by the majority of Americans, but it doesn’t make her a radical of any description. She is utterly moderate in every way.

Nina also worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court.  How many lawyers can say they even argued one case before the Supreme Court? And several were cases in support of consumer’s access to the courts. Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Leahy, the chair are now saying the time has come to change the rules, perhaps requiring only a majority vote for confirmation. That has its pitfalls for the Democrats if they were to lose the Senate.

In the meantime, there are 18 vacancies in the US Courts of Appeals nationally and 74 vacancies in US District Courts that need to be filled. Holding up nominees for no good reason – they are all highly qualified and all are moderates who embody the President’s vision – could cause a showdown in the coming weeks. I hope the minority in the Senate comes to its senses and approves these qualified candidates.

Tuesday’s election results show moderation wins the day – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
Tuesday’s election results – Terry McAuliffe winning the governorship in Virginia and Chris Christie winning a second term as Governor of New Jersey, are both victories for moderation, in my view. McAuliffe’s opponent, currently the attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, is cut out of the Tea Party mold and is shockingly right of center. 

He supported a “personhood amendment” which granted full rights to “preborn human being[s] from the moment of fertilization”  as a state senator, and according to a  recent Washington Post editorial, “his motivating passions were God, guns, gays and abortion; as attorney general, he won notoriety mainly by fighting the Obama administration over health care and climate change.” Cuccinelli also bullied the State Board of Health into imposing such strict requirements on abortion clinics in VA that most, if not all, will have to close their doors. Well, Cuccinelli lost the election to McAuliffe by a margin of 56,000 votes, which isn’t huge,  but enough votes to give McAuliffe a decisive win.

The Governor-Elect is a democratic operative, close to the Clintons, he has never held elective office and has no governmental experience. Nevertheless,  the voters of Virginia, by and large a conservative lot, turned away from the extremism of Cuccinelli and his Tea Party beliefs. And the pundits agree that Cuccinelli would have been trounced far more decisively had the Obama Administration not managed to so badly bollix up the Affordable Care Act’s roll-out. Secondly, a more moderate republican, Chris Christie,  won a landslide second term  in New Jersey.

Christie is no liberal, far from it, but he is a pragmatist, which Cuccinelli is not. Christie was willing to accept the help of President Obama, welcomed him to the state,  and even hugged the president- much to the chagrin of Tea Party activists and other Republicans who have refused to work with Obama in any fashion –  after Hurricane Sandy destroyed big sections of the Jersey shoreline. Even Governor Christie was surprised, commenting, “President Obama came in, he did a good job, I said nice things about him, so all of a sudden, I’m a moderate.” Yes, in this environment and compared to many in his party,  that does make Governor Christie a moderate, though there are probably few ideas that NCL and Governor Christie would agree on,  he didn’t run scared from the Tea Party. So strike two votes for moderation.

It seems clear that American voters like candidates who want to get the job done, who don’t take orders from any one interest group, and who aren’t motivated by a rigid ideology. This election proves once again that moderation wins elections and is a cautionary tale as we approach the presidential race in 2016.

Across the Atlantic, finding common ground with consumer advocates – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
I’m spending the first part of this week in Brussels with colleagues from across the pond in a meeting with the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD). The TACD is a forum of US and EU consumer organizations which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to the US government and European Union to promote the consumer interest in EU and US policy making.

The TACD was launched in September 1998, at the end of the inaugural meeting which took place in Washington and gathered more than 60 consumer representatives from the US and the EU.TACD’s objectives are to provide a formal mechanism for EU and US consumer representatives to input to EU and US political negotiations and agreements as well as explore ways of strengthening the EU and US consumer view at the international level. TACD champions the consumer perspective in transatlantic decision making.

It is our mission to ensure that EU/US policy dialogue promotes consumer welfare on both sides of the Atlantic and is well informed about the implications of policy decisions on consumers. The TACD provides a common voice for EU and US consumer organizations ensuring that key consumer priorities are promoted and advocated within EU-US regulatory and governmental processes, helping to protect health and safety and assure truth and fairness in the marketplace. Through meetings and multi-stakeholder conferences TACD contributes to the exchange of information, dissemination of knowledge and sharing of expertise on key consumer issues in the EU and the US. 

TACD works with stakeholders such as the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue (TLD) and the Transatlantic Business Council (TABC) through the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), of which TACD is a member of the advisory group, to find areas of commonality and to seek increased consensus. It was a pleasure to be a part of this conference.