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Wire SENATOR PRYOR TO HOLD
HEARING ON NHTSA ROOF CRUSH STANDARD And Senator Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas) is not at all happy with it. He has scheduled hearings on the issue for June 4. Pryor is chair of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Insurance, and Automotive Safety. The current roof crush standard requires the roof to support 1.5 times the weight of the vehicle. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) new proposed standard would require roofs to support 2.5 times the weight of the vehicle. Auto safety critics say such a standard won’t do the job – that 75 percent of automobiles currently on the road could meet the 2.5 standard. They are calling for a standard that would require roofs to support at least four times the weight of the vehicle. And they are outraged because the auto industry has slipped into the proposed standard a provision that would preempt state product liability tort law if the automaker meets the new standard. “This is a terrible provision,” said Byron Bloch, an auto safety design consultant based in Potomac, Maryland. “This is treachery by the auto companies and NHTSA. The proposed preemption rule would deprive car crash victims of their rights to pursue justice and compensation – to present their case in court to a jury.”
BP CRIME VICTIMS’
RIGHTS VIOLATED But the appeals court refused
to block the plea deal, instead remanding it back to the district court. “While we are gratified that the Fifth Circuit acknowledged that the U.S. Attorney illegally violated the rights of the victims, we are shocked at the decision of the 5th Circuit panel that the government can illegally violate the rights of criminal victims as specified in an Act of Congress with impunity,” said David Perry, an attorney for the BP victims. “These victims were first injured by BP illegal conduct, then again by the illegal actions of the U.S. Attorney in violating their victims rights under the congressional statute, then again by a plea bargain imposing no more than a slap on the wrist to BP, and now once again by a ruling effectively approving the illegal conduct of the U.S. Attorney and negating an Act of Congress.”
CORPORATIONS BAD FOR
PUBLIC HEALTH And that asbestos is bad for public health. And that guns are bad for public health. And that pollution is bad for public health. That junk food is bad for public health. But you rarely hear that corporations themselves are bad for public health. That’s about to change. A group of academics and activists are starting to push the idea that corporations are bad for public health. At Hunter College, Nicholas Freudenberg has set up a web site to discuss the issue. And now comes William Wiist. Wiist is chair of the Health Sciences Department at Northern Arizona University. Last year, he authored an article for the American Journal of Public Health titled “Public Health and the Anti-Corporate Movement.” And now he’s working on a book for Oxford University Press tentatively titled Bottom Line or Public Health.
FARM BROADCASTER OUSTED
AFTER RIPPING MONSANTO’S GOON SQUADS The Jefferson City, Missouri based Learfield is one of the nation’s largest broadcasters of college sports. But it also produces news programming heard throughout the farm belt. Learfield was started 35 years ago by Clyde Lear and Derry Brownfield. Lear went on to be the chairman of the company. He bought out his friend and partner Brownfield in 1985. Brownfield went on to do market news reports for the Learfield news division until 1997 or so, when he started broadcasting a daily call-in show called The Common Sense Coalition. Derry Brownfield would broadcast The Common Sense Coalition from the studios of Learfield Communications. Learfield would subsidize the program and allow Brownfield to use its studios and satellite hook-up. Monsanto happens to be a big advertiser of the Learfield news division – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Brownfield happens to think that Monsanto is an evil corporation. Therein lies the rub.
SUSPENSION AND DEBARMENT
CZAR MEUNIER TALKS IBM He’s the debarring official at the Environmental Protection Agency. And he heads the federal government’s Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee. On March 20, 2008, Meunier was at a debarment conference in Charleston, South Carolina. He was called into a hotel room and shown a set of documents. The issuance of an $84 million contract to IBM was imminent. Meunier was presented with evidence of serious wrongdoing – IBM allegedly had secured protected source selection information from an EPA employee. For seven days, he studied the documents. And asked questions. On March 27, Meunier took an action that sent shockwaves through the federal contracting community. He suspended IBM from all government contracts. The suspension lasted eight days. |
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Corporate Crime Reporter Interviews, 1987 to 2008
Sample Interviews Mary Jo White, Partner, Debevoise Plimpton, New York, New York
Interview with David Pitofsky, Partner, Goodwin Procter,
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