Public Citizen News July-August 2010

Win! House passes election spending disclosure bill, page 16

U.S. Supreme Court again sides with business, page 6

Printed on 100% recycled paper (45% post-consumer material)

Hold BP AccountablePublic Citizen, Allies Protest BP in D.C.

Energy Staffer Travels to La., Witnesses Spill’s Effects

Wall Street Hires Former Lawmakers as Lobbyists

see Revolving door, page 4

see Journal, page 10see BP, page 8

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INSIDE

NEWSVol. 30, No. 4 • July/August 2010

By Dorry Samuels“We want safe jobs and clean

energy. No more oil spills — ARREST BP!”

A crowd of more than 100 peo-ple gathered June 4 outside BP’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to articulate Americans’ deep frustration with how the oil gi-ant has handled the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The protest was organized by Public Citi-zen, Friends of the Earth, Green-peace, Energy Action Coalition, 350.org, Chesapeake Climate Ac-tion Network, the Center for Bio-logical Diversity and the Hip Hop Caucus.

And there was an arrest, of sorts. The protesters organized a mock citizen’s arrest of BP CEO Tony Hayward. However, no BP representative descended from the building, which houses BP’s 22,000-square-foot offices.

At the base of a 13-foot-tall in-flatable oil barrel, group leaders read from a list of charges against

Editor’s note: Allison Fisher, an organizer with Public Citizen’s Energy Program, recently trav-eled to Louisiana for a firsthand look at how the oil spill was af-fecting residents. Excerpts from her journal entries follow.

6/17: Made right?On my first night in Baton

Rouge, La., I sat in an audito-rium on the Louisiana State University campus and watched a documentary on the legacy of Exxon Valdez called “Black Wave.”

I saw footage from a 1989 town hall meeting in Cordova, Alaska, where an Exxon spokes-person told the angry citizens that they were in good hands. “Exxon will make you whole,” he pledged.

The Valdez victims’ initial law-suit, involving 32,000 plaintiffs,

By Joe NewmanIf people needed a lesson on

how business is done in Wash-ington, D.C., all they had to do this spring and summer was keep track of the men and women in crisp black suits making the daily circuit between their influential K Street lobbying firms and the U.S. Capitol.

Although the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate ap-proved a sweeping financial reform package, it didn’t pass without a fight.

As Congress wrestled with reforming Wall Street, corpora-tions affected by the legislation were employing a virtual army of lobbyists to weaken or eliminate proposals that would rein in the financial services industry.

Many of these lobbyists had no problem navigating the hallways inside the Senate and House of-fice buildings. Analyses by Pub-lic Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics showed that the financial services industry lobbyists included at least 73

former members of Congress, of whom 17 served on the principal House and Senate committees that crafted the financial reform legislation.

Prominent former members of Congress who lobbied this year on behalf of the financial servic-es sector interests included two former Senate majority leaders (Bob Dole [R-Kan.] and Trent Lott [R-Miss.]), two former House majority leaders (Dick Armey

Public Citizen Photos/Bridgette Blair

Above: Organization leaders rally activ-ists at the June 4 protest in front of BP’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. (From left) Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program; Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth; the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip Hop Caucus; Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen; and Phil Radford, executive director of Green-peace. Right: A protester holds a figure depicting BP CEO Tony Hayward in a prison jumpsuit.

2 July/August 2010 PublIc cItIzEN NEwS

edit website content, e-mail action alerts and online fundraising appeals. I help with the technical, “behind-the-scenes” work of our website and e-mail programs. And I help strategize about how to make our website a better resource, our e-mail more useful, and our online outreach more engaging and popular.

Q: What sparked your interest in online communications?SIMPSON: Most of the jobs I’ve had boil down to making information available to peo-ple who need it. The Internet is a better tool for organizing and presenting information — and interacting with those who use that information — than any other form of com-munications humankind has so far developed.

Q: What recent call to action resulted in the largest response from our online supporters?SIMPSON: Our petition at www.DontGet Rolled.org calling for a constitutional amend-ment to prevent corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money to influence our political process has more than 50,000 signatures so far.

Q: What Public Citizen issues motivate you?SIMPSON: With a seemingly insatiable hun-ger for profits, corporations are devouring our democracy, our liberty and our lives. Ev-erything Public Citizen does is fundamentally about standing up for things that make life better for people and standing up to the ways corporations put profits before people. Along with every Public Citizen member past and present, I’m fighting on the side of justice and righteousness. And we’re going to win!

Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?SIMPSON: Contributing to the legacy and ongoing good work that is Public Citizen.

— Compiled by Arlene Tonoff

Glenn Simpson is a self-proclaimed “life-long radical.” As a high school student in the mid-1980s in Columbia, Md., he would frequently cut class to attend anti-apartheid and no-nukes rallies in Washington, D.C.

Now, he brings this free spirit and love of activism to Public Citizen, where he has worked for more than a year. Simpson, online communications coordinator, says the key to spreading the word about Public Citizen’s work is putting the power in the hands of Public Citizen members and supporters.

“Public Citizen’s 40-year track record and our reputation for doing what’s right are simply unparal-leled,” Simpson said. “The most effective way to introduce new people to our work and the benefits of Public Citizen membership is for people who already know and value what we do to tell their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues about Public Citizen.”

Prior to working at Public Citizen, Simp-son held jobs ranging from managing online communications at Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit organization with a goal of preserv-ing and promoting employee rights; to doing quality control for Internet search engine Google; to indexing, editing and publishing at the Alternative Press Index, a nonprofit with the aim of providing access to and increasing the public’s awareness of alternative press; to coaching high school badminton.

His interests include bicycle commuting, record collecting, playing Scrabble and fol-lowing the Washington Capitals.

Q: What does your job as online communications coordinator entail?SIMPSON: I help manage the online tools that facilitate the dialogue among Public Citizen, its members and the public. I help write and

IN thIS ISSuE Vol. 30, No. 4

Energy and climate

Hold BP accountable: Public Citizen, allies protest BP in D.C. ...... 1

Energy staffer travels to Louisiana, witnesses spill’s effects ............................ 1

Spending bill devotes $9 billion to nuclear loan guarantees .......................... 14

Government and financial reform

Wall Street hires former lawmakers as lobbyists .............................................. 1

Outnumbered: New report says bank shills exceed financial reformers 11-to-1 ............ 5

Win! House passes election spending disclosure bill ..........................................16

Litigation

Shutting the courthouse doors: U.S. Supreme Court again rules on the side of business .............................. 6

Win! Public Citizen scores victory in Maryland arbitration case ..................... 7

Claiming “personal privacy,” AT&T attempts to keep records from public .............................................. 7

Globalization and trade

Mining company case shows the need for a trade pact overhaul .......................... 11

Health and safety

Survey: Most support shorter medical resident shifts ............................12

Public Citizen to FDA: Unethical Avandia clinical trial should not continue ..............13

For your entertainment

Public Citizen crossword .........................15

“A Presidency in Peril” ............................15

“Casino Jack and the United States of Money” ..........................15

“The DeMarco Factor” .............................15

Other

Get to Know Public Citizen ....................... 2

President’s View ...................................... 3

Public Citizen News wins Apex Award ...... 3

In the Spotlight .......................................12

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Public Citizen is a national nonprofit membership organization based in Washington, D.C. Since its founding by Ralph Nader in 1971, Pub-lic Citizen has fought for corporate and government accountability in order to guarantee the individual’s right to safe products, a healthy en-

vironment and workplace, fair trade, and clean and safe energy sources. Public Citizen is active in Congress, the courts, government agencies and the news media.

Public Citizen does not accept government or corporate grants. Our fund-ing comes from our supporters throughout the country who believe there should be full-time advocates of democratic principles working on their behalf, from foundations and from the sale of our publications. Public Citizen is an equal opportunity employer. To become a member of Public Citizen and receive the award-winning Public Citizen News, please call (202) 588-1000 or send a check payable to Public Citizen for $20 (or $35 to add one year of Health Letter) to Public Citizen Membership Services at the address below.

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President Robert Weissman

Public Citizen Inc. Board of Directors Jason Adkins (chair), Barbara Ehrenreich, Joan Claybrook, Andrew S. Friedman, Jim Hightower, Joy Howell, Adolph L. Reed Jr., Cynthia Renfro, John Richard, Robert Weissman (ex officio)

Public Citizen Foundation Board of Directors Robert C. Fellmeth (chair), Jim Bildner, Mark Chavez, Joan Claybrook, Liz Figueroa, David Halperin, Annie Leonard, Steve Skrovan, Anthony So, Robert Weissman (ex officio)

Directors David J. Arkush, Congress Watch; Marilyn Berger, Chief Operating Officer; Angela Bradbery, Communications; Chris Helfrich, Development; Tyson Slocum, Energy; Tom Smith, Texas; Joe Stoshak, Chief Financial Officer; Lori Wallach, Global Trade Watch; Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D., Health Research; Allison Zieve, Litigation

Editor Bridgette Blair

Graphic Designer James Decker

Get to Know Public CitizenAn ongoing series profiling Public Citizen staff members

Glenn Simpson

July/August 2010 3 PublIc cItIzEN NEwS

combination of litigation, lob-bying, research and grassroots pressure. We are among the only

groups advocating in all branches of government.

And we get re-sults. We boast an unparalleled record of achievement over the past 40 years and continuing up to today. I’m very proud of our staff. They are passionate, committed, smart, strategic and more. We couldn’t do what we do without our

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succeed without our members, either. When we testify before Congress, lobby a member of Congress or meet with a govern-ment regulator, they know we represent more than 150,000 members and supporters.

Altogether, our voice is a counterbalance to the influence of corporate America. And, more and more, Public Citizen speaks not just through our staff. You — our members — are working together to carry strategic mes-sages and powerful demands to Congress, corporate execu-tives, executive branch officials and others. Through telephone calls, e-mails, electronic peti-tions and in-person meetings, thousands and thousands of you are responding to timely calls to action by becoming active public citizens. Of course, we rely on you for financial support, as well. Our staff does extraordi-nary things, and we operate as frugally as possible. But it takes money to do what we do. Your

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Then there is how we do it: No public interest group matches our breadth of work and depth of expertise. We frame broad public policy debates and then engage in disputes over the minute details of statutes and regulations, where a comma or “and” can cost the public billions of dollars. We bridge the insider-outsider dichotomy: We bring outsider pressure into the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Our advocacy draws on a unique

EDItorIal

Getting ResultsPublic Citizen Takes on Giant Corporations — and Wins

Public Citizen News Wins Apex Award

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We know from communicat-ing with so many of you over the years that you get it. You value what Public Citizen does, you know how unique our work is. You join Public Citizen to make your voice heard, to join together with others to build a powerful counterweight to the corporate lobbies, and to get information and incisive analyses of the key issues facing our country. You join to make change.

At press time, both chambers of the U.S. Congress passed Wall Street reform legislation, which President Barack Obama will sign shortly. We’ll tell you more about this in the next issue of Public Citizen News, but our work on Wall Street reform il-lustrates my point. Public Citizen worked very hard over the past year to make Wall Street reform as strong as possible.

When many said there was no point in talking about break-ing up the banks, we insisted the issue was too important to ignore. We didn’t win, but we helped forced the issue to a vote in the Senate. And, thanks in no small part to the advocacy by Public Citizen members, the vote was much closer than anyone imagined possible just a couple months before. We kept you in-formed about these issues along

the way, and thousands of you mobilized into action when the issue was before the Senate.

Despite the reform measure’s considerable shortcomings, Pub-lic Citizen is strongly supportive of it. It includes a number of very positive elements — foremost among them, creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and very little that is harmful. It’s a very imperfect victory, but it’s a big victory, and we should all be proud of the work we did to win it.

One of the defining features of Public Citizen is our stick-to-it-iveness. We won something important with Wall Street reform, but we know it’s not enough. We’re going to moni-tor the rules implementing the legislation, and we’re going to keep demanding that the giant banks be broken up, that out-of-control executive and top trader compensation be brought under control, and more.

Together, we are going to win a tamed financial system that serves the economy, rather than demands that everyone serve it. That’s what Public Citizen does. We stake a position on the merits, even if it seems “unrea-sonable” at first. But we keep plugging away, keep making the arguments, keep building sup-port — and, ultimately, we do win.


Former Lawmakers, Staff Lobby on Behalf of Financial SectorRevolving door, from page 1

[R-Texas] and Dick Gephardt [D-Mo.]) and a former speaker of the House (Dennis Hastert [R-Ill.]).

Since the beginning of 2009, the financial services sector had employed at least 1,447 former federal employees to lobby Con-gress and federal agencies, ac-cording to Public Citizen’s analy-sis of data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Wall Street hires former mem-bers of Congress and their staffs for a reason,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Con-gress Watch division. “These people are influential because they have personal relationships with current members and staff. It’s hard to say no to your friends, but that’s what Congress needs to do.”

Along with the 73 former mem-bers of Congress, at least 66 in-dustry lobbyists worked for the House or Senate banking com-mittees as staffers, while 82 ad-ditional lobbyists once worked for members of Congress who currently serve on these key committees.

Additionally, at least 42 finan-cial services lobbyists formerly served in some capacity in the U.S. Treasury Department.

At least seven served in the Office of the Comptroller of the

Currency, including two former comptrollers. These lobbyists have the inside track when it comes to dealing with members of Congress and agency directors. The six-figure and million-dollar salaries firms pay these lobby-ists are a small price to shape legislation.

Barricading the revolving door

Public Citizen has long called for stronger rules to slow down the revolving door between Congress and K Street.

Under current House rules, for-mer members of the House are prohibited from making any lob-

bying contact with their former colleagues for at least one year. However, they can participate in lobbying strategy and are free to lobby the executive branch.

Former senators are prohibited from making lobbying contacts with Congress for two years.

Senior House and Senate staff-ers also face restrictions when leaving their jobs.

Senior House staffers cannot make contact with their former office or committee for at least one year, while senior Senate staffers cannot make contact with any Senate office or committee for a year.

Public Citizen has advocated

that former members of the House and Senate should have at least a two-year cooling off period before they can make lob-bying contacts — and that period should also ban any type of lobby work, such as strategizing.

It’s one reason that Public Citi-zen called on the 47 lawmak-ers who are retiring this year to pledge not to take a job for two years with any business that lob-bied the lawmaker or his or her committee.

None of the lawmakers whom Public Citizen contacted agreed to take the pledge.

“If you’re a member of Con-gress, you’re very unlikely to clamp down on Wall Street if you’re planning on taking a job with a Wall Street firm,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “You’re not likely to hurt Big Oil if you’re contem-plating a job with the petroleum lobby. You’re going to be more inclined to do favors for Big Phar-ma if you think pharmaceutical companies will be signing your future paychecks. Our elected of-ficials should pledge their loyalty to their constituents by pledging not to take jobs with businesses that have lobbied them.”

Joe Newman is deputy direc-tor of communications for Public Citizen.

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New Report: Bank Shills Exceed Financial Reformers 11-to-1Outnumbered

By Barbara HolzerSince the beginning of 2009,

legions of lobbyists for financial institutions have fought tooth and nail on Capitol Hill to pre-vent the passage of any legisla-tion that would crack down on Wall Street.

On a much smaller scale, pub-lic interest advocates — includ-ing Public Citizen — battled back by calling for key reforms, chief among them breaking up the big banks and regulating derivatives transactions.

We now have a better sense of the degree to which advocates on the side of the public interest have been at a disadvantage.

Bank lobbyists pushing to re-tain as little oversight as possible of their lucrative and secretive derivatives business have out-numbered pro-reform public in-terest lobbyists 11-to-1, according to a new Public Citizen report, “Eleven to One: Pro-Reform De-rivatives Lobbyists Vastly Out-numbered by Opposition,” re-leased May 18. The report is the result of Public Citizen’s analysis of lobbying disclosure data filed with the U.S. House of Represen-tatives between Jan. 1, 2009, and March 31, 2010.

Because of the subjectivity of lobbying reporting and its less-than-stringent requirements, Public Citizen cannot claim to know all of the lobbying work that has transpired on financial regulation reform in the past 18 months.

But we do know this: At a mini-mum, nearly 1,000 lobbyists worked on at least one of nine key bills in 2009 or early 2010 — all bills designed to rewrite the rules governing derivatives, the complex financial instrument cit-ed by many experts as one of the chief causes of the 2008 financial meltdown.

In the report, Public Citizen shows that anti-reform lobby-ists representing opponents of strong derivatives reform num-bered 903, compared to only 79 pro-reform lobbyists. Among the 223 clients represented by the anti-reform lobbyists were the nation’s five largest banks, sever-al major financial trade associa-tions and the “Godzilla” of busi-ness lobbyists, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We always knew we faced an uphill battle to reform the finan-cial system. This report confirms that we are vastly outgunned by Wall Street,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.

The report also shows that nine of the 10 organizations hiring the most financial lobbyists oppose financial reform on principle.

The organizations with the most anti-reform lobby-ists were the American Bank-ers Association (30), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (29) and the National Association of Manufacturers (28).

Not all businesses were anti-reform, however. For instance, airlines want predictability in the future price of fuel, something they can use derivatives to man-age, but the current opaque and mostly unregulated derivatives market leaves them vulnerable to price-gouging, fraud, manipu-lation and excessive speculation by Wall Street banks.

In fact, two of the top three pro-reform organizations with the most lobbyists are part of the airline industry — the Air Trans-port Association of America (27) and Delta Air Lines (9).

The Environmental Defense Action Fund (13) rounds out the top three.

Of the 14 organizations lobby-ing for reform, all but the Envi-ronmental Defense Action Fund

are members of at least one of three public interest coalitions: Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), the Derivatives Reform Alliance or the Commodity Mar-kets Oversight Coalition. (Public Citizen is a member of all three coalitions.)

More than two-thirds of all the lobbyists in the study — pro- and anti-reform — worked on the De-rivatives Markets Transparency and Accountability Act of 2009 (H.R. 977).

That act called for requiring most over-the-counter deriva-tives to go through organiza-tions regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trad-ing Commission (CFTC). This translates to increased author-ity for the CFTC to intervene in derivatives transactions, which historically have been shrouded in secrecy as private transactions between parties.

The U.S. Senate’s version of the Wall Street reform bill included relatively aggressive derivatives regulation. The bill would have required that most derivatives be cleared and traded on open ex-changes and would have denied federal deposit insurance to de-rivatives traders.

This latter requirement would have forced commercial banks to spin off their derivatives trading operations, making them inde-pendent companies but still al-

lowing them to remain under the same holding company.

Wall Street pushed to under-mine these provisions, desper-ately lobbying for its old way of life.

The House passed a final ver-sion of the bill in late June, and the Senate followed suit in July. Portions of the derivatives provi-sion remained intact.

Most important, the resulting bill makes the $600 trillion de-rivatives market transparent by requiring that transactions be handled through clearinghouses and exchanges.

Among other measures, this legislation imposes new limits on credit card compa-nies’ merchant fees and estab-lishes a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“The lobbyists may have over-run Capitol Hill but, in the end, they did not prevail,” said Rob-ert Weissman, president of Pub-lic Citizen. “Certain provisions have been weakened or had their effective date delayed, but ulti-mately, public interest champi-ons did a remarkable job beating back those horrible 11-1 odds. We will continue that work and push for additional reforms that should have been included but weren’t.”

Barbara Holzer is Public Citi-

zen’s broadcast and marketing manager.

“We always knew we faced an uphill battle to reform the financial system. This report confirms that we are vastly outgunned by Wall Street.”

David Arkush director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division


Shutting the Courthouse DoorsU.S. Supreme Court Again Rules on the Side of Business

By Angela BradberyThe U.S. Supreme Court once

again has sided with corpora-tions, this time in a case involv-ing an arbitration clause in an employee’s contract.

In one of its last decisions of the 2009-2010 term, the U.S. Su-preme Court on June 21 ruled 5-4 in Rent-A-Center v. Jackson that a company can force a person to go to an arbitrator, rather than a judge, to challenge the fairness of an arbitration clause. Because arbitration systems favor the companies that impose them, this decision will put workers, consumers and others at a great disadvantage, essentially giving them little recourse if they dis-agree with the terms of an arbi-tration clause.

Public Citizen attorneys Deepak Gupta and Scott Nelson served as co-counsel for respondent Anto-nio Jackson, the Nevada resident who brought the lawsuit.

“The court’s decision effective-ly puts the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Gupta said. “Under the court’s logic, the company’s hand-picked arbitrator can de-cide whether it’s fair for the com-pany to hand-pick the arbitrator. That’s absurd.”

Retiring Justice John Paul Ste-vens agreed. In a stinging dis-sent, he wrote that neither party had recommended the rule the court adopted, and he charac-terized the court’s reasoning as “fantastic.”

Several U.S. senators expressed outrage. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called the Rent-A-Center de-cision “a blow to our nation’s civ-il rights laws and the protections that American workers have long enjoyed under those laws.”

Citing the decision, Sen. Shel-don Whitehouse (D-R.I.), dur-ing confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena

Kagan, said, “For all the talk of umpires and balls and strikes at the Supreme Court, the strike zone for corporations gets better every day.” Added Sen. Al Fran-ken (D-Minn.), “Talk about not getting your day in court. Now you can’t get your day in court to get your day in court.”

Arbitration clauses are often buried in the fine print of paper-work people receive when they take a job, buy a cell phone or new home, start a small busi-ness franchise or admit a rela-tive to a nursing home. The clauses require people to give up their right to sue the company if disputes arise; instead, dis-putes must be decided through binding arbitration — a system that stacks the deck for the corporations.

Rent-A-Center is another ruling in the corporate interest, against the public interest.

In January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court dramati-cally expanded corporate rights when it said that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. In doing so, the court upended a century of precedent and gave corporations the ability to have a bigger voice in government than voters.

The Rent-A-Center case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Jackson, of Sparks, Nev., who was hired in 2003 as an account manager for Rent-A-Center, a rent-to-own company that pro-vides furniture, electronics, ap-pliances and computers. When he was hired, Jackson signed pa-pers that included an arbitration agreement as a condition of his employment.

Jackson, who is African-Amer-ican, sought a promotion several times but was denied it, he said in a 2007 lawsuit alleging race discrimination and retaliation. Rent-A-Center asked the court to dismiss the claim because the ar-bitration agreement said that any dispute would be resolved by an arbitrator, not a court.

The arbitration agreement Jackson signed also said that an arbitrator would have exclusive authority to resolve any dispute about the agreement itself, in-

cluding any claim that the agree-ment was unfair. Jackson’s law-yer argued that the arbitration agreement was unconscionable because, among other things, it was one-sided in favor of his em-ployer and was presented to him as a non-negotiable condition of his employment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with Jackson that the fairness of the agreement was a question for the courts. The company then ap-pealed to the Supreme Court.

Next step: CongressThe court’s ruling further high-

lights the need for Congress to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act, Public Citizen says.

That bill, which is pending in both the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives and the Senate (H.R. 1020, S. 931), would allow parties to a dispute to choose wheth-er to go to arbitration or court, rather than forcing people into arbitration.

“At Public Citizen, we don’t give up,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “We will be spearheading aggres-sive efforts to get this legislation passed in Congress.”

For more information, visit www.citizen.org/arbitration.

Angela Bradbery is Public Citi-zen’s communications director.

Public Citizen attorney Deepak Gupta will argue another key arbitration case before the U.S. Supreme Court in November. In the case, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the court will consider the extent to which com-panies can ban class-action lawsuits in the fine print of their contracts with consumers and employees. Class actions provide criti-cal recourse when consumers are victims of wrongdoing but the individual claims are too small for people to sue the company individually. Companies have increasingly included class-action bans in their stan-dard mandatory arbitration agreements.

Arbitration clauses are often buried in the fine print of paperwork people receive when they take a job, buy a cell phone or new home, start a small business franchise or admit a relative to a nursing home.

Deepak Gupta


Public Citizen Scores Victory in Md. Arbitration Case

“Forced arbitration contracts push people into a system where the deck is too often stacked against them. The court’s ruling in this case is a victory for all consumers.”

Deepak Gupta Public Citizen attorney

By Bridgette BlairPublic Citizen has won a ma-

jor victory in the effort to curb the pervasive corporate practice of inserting forced arbitration clauses in the fine print of nurs-ing home contracts.

Dickerson v. Longoria raised the issue of whether one person (a relative or friend) can sign an agreement on behalf of another person who is being admitted to a nursing home, waiving the rights of the admitted person to resolve disputes in court and requir-ing instead that any disputes be submitted to arbitration. Public Citizen argued that the forced ar-bitration agreement in question, which gave the nursing home the unfettered right to choose the ar-bitrator, should not be enforced.

In a decision issued in May, the Maryland Court of Appeals — the highest court for the state of Maryland — agreed.

The court held that the au-thority to make health care and financial decisions on a nursing home resident’s behalf does not give that person authority to sign away the resident’s right to go to court.

“Admitting a family member to a nursing home can be a stress-ful experience, and most people have too much on their mind to concentrate on the fine print,”

said Deepak Gupta, a Public Citi-zen attorney who worked on the case. “This decision makes it harder for nursing homes to force people into signing away their right to seek redress in court for abuse or neglect.”

The nursing home resident, Carter Bradley, died from in-fected bedsores that spread and deteriorated while he was a resi-dent at St. Thomas More Nurs-ing and Rehabilitation Center in Hyattsville, Md., operated by the nursing home company Heritage Care Inc.

Bradley’s niece, Carman Dick-erson, filed a medical malprac-tice claim against Heritage Care and two doctors, but Heritage Care said that the case had to be arbitrated because Dickerson

had signed the forced arbitration agreement when Bradley was ad-mitted to the nursing home.

When Bradley was being admit-ted to the facility, he was groan-ing in pain and suffering from dementia. At the time, Dicker-son signed a “large stack of ad-missions documents, including Heritage Care’s arbitration agree-ment,” according to court docu-ments. The appeals court ruled that Dickerson did not have the legal authority to sign away Brad-ley’s rights.

The ruling means that Dick-erson can now pursue the legal claim in court.

Most people don’t realize that when they sign contracts to pur-chase a cell phone, accept a credit card, open a retirement account,

sign a home building contract, or, as in this case, admit someone to a nursing home, they may be signing away the right to go to court if they are harmed by the company.

Forced arbitration provisions require people to use corpora-tion-friendly arbitration panels instead of the court system.

In addition to fighting forced arbitration in the courts, Pub-lic Citizen is pressing Congress to pass the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act (H.R. 1237, S. 512) — legislation that would bar forced arbitration provisions in nursing home, assisted living and other long-term care facility contracts.

Public Citizen also is calling for passage of the Arbitration Fair-ness Act (H.R. 1020, S. 931), which would protect millions of other consumers from forced arbitra-tion by allowing parties to a dis-pute to choose whether to go to arbitration or court, rather than forcing people into arbitration.

“Forced arbitration contracts push people into a system where the deck is too often stacked against them,” Gupta said. “The court’s ruling in this case is a vic-tory for all consumers.”

Bridgette Blair is editor of Public Citizen News.

WIN!

Claiming ‘Personal Privacy,’ AT&T Attempts to Keep Records From PublicBy Bridgette Blair

Recently, corporations have been asserting that they have First Amendment rights, just like people. And in its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.

Now, a major corporation is claiming that it has personal pri-vacy rights, just like people. In a recent decision, a federal appeals court agreed. Public Citizen and other groups want the Supreme Court to overturn this decision.

In Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, AT&T in-voked “personal privacy” to prevent the government from disclosing records about the cor-poration to the public.

Under the Freedom of Informa-tion Act (FOIA), the public has a right to access documents of gov-

ernment agencies unless those records are classified or other-wise exempt.

In this case, a FOIA request was submitted to the Federal Com-munications Commission (FCC) for certain records relating to AT&T. The agency determined that FOIA required it to release some documents related to an agency investigation of AT&T for overbilling the government. AT&T sued the FCC to stop the release and claimed that mak-ing the records public would violate the company’s “personal privacy.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in AT&T’s favor.

The FCC filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the decision. In May, Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsibility and

Ethics in Washington, the Na-tional Security Archive, OpenThe Government.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Re-porters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief, supporting the agen-cy’s petition and urging the court to hear the case.

“Corporations’ valid competi-tive interests are already pro-tected under FOIA,” said Mar-garet Kwoka, the Public Citizen attorney who wrote the brief. “They should not be allowed to circumvent the limits of those protections by shoehorning their fears of bad publicity into a FOIA exemption meant to pro-tect only the intimate details of individuals’ lives.”

What could be hidden from the public?

Records pertaining to federal

investigations involving the eco-nomic downturn, the BP oil spill and the Massey Energy mine explosion might potentially be withheld as a result of the ap-peals court’s ruling, according to the brief.

“If this lower court ruling stands, the number of now-pub-lic records that agencies and cor-porations may claim can be kept from the public is breathtaking,” Kwoka said. “We urge the Su-preme Court to grant review and not allow important records to be withheld based on the idea that corporations have personal pri-vacy interests.”

The Supreme Court is expected to decide this fall whether to re-view the case.

For more information, visit www.citizen.org/documents/FC CAmicus.pdf.


the corporation, including a dis-regard for worker safety, criminal negligence, the price-gouging of consumers and taxpayers, and violations of environmental laws. The groups found Hayward guilty as charged and held aloft a pris-on jumpsuit for him. The crowd waved signs with Hayward’s face atop prison garb, as well as with BP’s logo dripping with oil. Po-lice officers shut down the street in front of BP’s offices during the energetic protest.

“If you were driving a car, you look away, you were on your cell phone … you were tired, you didn’t drink enough coffee, and you swerve … and you hit some-one [and] you kill them, the dis-trict attorney is coming after you. He’s going to charge you with negligent homicide. BP was far more reckless than that,” Public Citizen President Robert Weiss-man said at the protest. “[BP] shouldn’t have been drilling there in the first place. They didn’t in-vest in modest safety precautions that could have stopped this. They bullied their contractors not to take safety measures. They ignored test data coming in … the rig exploded. Eleven people are dead from their recklessness. They have got to be criminally prosecuted. And it’s up to us … to take the first step.”

Public Citizen has organized a nationwide boycott asking peo-ple to avoid buying gas and prod-ucts from BP and its subsidiar-ies for three months to show BP what consumers think about its negligence and the environmen-tal devastation in the Gulf. The boycott has earned worldwide attention, ranging from The New York Times to NPR, The Guardian (U.K.) to Al Jazeera.

A petition Public Citizen posted online asking people to pledge to boycott the company has gar-nered more than 22,000 signa-tures, and more than 13,000 peo-ple have joined Public Citizen’s Facebook group, “1,000,000 Strong to Boycott BP.” (Find more information about the boycott at www.BeyondBP.org.)

The making of an environmental disaster

Following the April 20 explo-sion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig — which is owned by Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drill-ing contractor, and leased by London-based BP — the world’s attention focused on the millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

While the exact amount of oil that has poured from the broken well is still unknown, experts es-timate that as much as 4.2 million

gallons poured into the Gulf daily since the explosion.

The oil spill has caused un-told environmental damage and robbed many in the fishing and tourism industries of their livelihoods.

Birds, sea turtles and other ani-mals have been found drenched in thick, sludgy oil; now even manatees are being monitored. Tar balls litter the beaches in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mis-sissippi and Texas.

The disaster also has focused attention on BP’s abysmal work-er and environmental safety re-cord, which is the worst of any oil company operating in America. In just the past few years, BP has pleaded guilty to two crimes and paid more than $730 million in fines and settlements to the U.S. and state governments, and in civil lawsuit judgments for envi-ronmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules and pen-alties for manipulating energy markets.

Despite all this, BP still man-ages to successfully navigate the government. Since the beginning of 2009, BP has employed 49 lob-byists at a cost of $19.5 million. Of these 49 lobbyists, 35 — or 71 percent — previously worked for federal agencies and members of Congress, according to a Public Citizen analysis released in June.

One is Kenneth Duberstein, who was chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan; another is former U.S. Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas).

The trouble doesn’t stop there; the revolving door between the oil industry and the former Min-erals and Management Service (MMS), the government agency tasked with overseeing offshore drilling operations, was spinning out of control.

In fact, just a few years ago, Jim Grant, the MMS chief of staff overseeing the government’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico region, left to take a job with BP. And that’s not all. Some MMS regulators even allowed drillers to fill in their own safety inspec-tion forms in pencil, only to trace over the words themselves in pen later, according to news reports. Regulators readily accepted gifts from Big Oil, allowing BP and other oil companies to continue to manipulate the system.

Pattern of negligenceBP failed to install a backup

safety device that could have prevented the explosion — a valve that would have cost only $500,000. Now, BP is faced with fees and penalties that could amount to tens of billions of dollars.

“BP made a conscious decision not to install a $500,000 safety

BP, from page 1

Public Citizen Organizes Protest, Boycott of BP


Clockwise, from left: TV cameras surround organization leaders — including Robert Weissman (center), president of Public Citizen — during the June 4 protest in front of BP’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Protesters hold a “Crude Awakening” sign. Allison Fisher, an organizer with Public Citizen’s Energy Program, participates in the protest. Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, takes part in the event.


device that could have prevent-ed the Gulf disaster,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citi-zen’s Energy Program. “A compa-ny that made $14 billion in profits in 2009 — and that was a bad year — refused to spend a fraction of a percent of its profits to safeguard against the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The sheer greed at the expense of safety and the envi-ronment is mind-boggling.”

Power to the government

“Hey, Obama, who’s in charge? BP oil is livin’ large!” shouted the crowd at the June 4 protest.

It’s time to take power back from the corporations and restore it to the regulators that are sup-posed to monitor the industry, protest leaders said.

A recent inspector general au-dit of the MMS found widespread cronyism, ethical breaches, deci-mated auditing staff and overreli-ance on information provided by Big Oil, all of which contributed to a culture of cozy relationships and lax regulation.

There must be more regula-tion of oil companies and drill-ing procedures, Slocum said. The Obama administration unilater-ally announced that it would di-vide MMS into three parts to bet-ter regulate and enforce drilling practices: the Bureau of Ocean

Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental En-forcement, and the Office of Nat-ural Resources Revenue.

But this plan doesn’t go far enough, Slocum said. It still con-centrates too much authority in the tainted Department of the Interior, he said. Public Citizen advocates moving regulatory oversight functions to the Na-tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environ-mental Protection Agency so that scientists — not government em-ployees who maintain close ties to the oil industry — are in charge of conducting the scientific re-views of oil drilling requests.

With Obama’s prodding, BP established a $20 billion escrow fund over four years to pay for claims resulting from the oil gusher. The oil giant will contrib-ute $100 million to support job-less oil rig workers.

A look toward the futureThe Obama administration

must focus on developing clean, sustainable alternative energy sources, not rely on dirty energy resources that threaten the en-vironment and lives of workers, Public Citizen maintains.

President Barack Obama, who had supported efforts to expand offshore drilling, took a step in the right direction May 27 when

he extended a moratorium on drilling until a commission com-pletes its investigation of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and makes recommendations.

However, amid pressure from Gulf Coast states over the loss of jobs and income resulting from the moratorium, the Obama ad-ministration indicated June 7 that it would move quickly to release new safety requirements that would allow the reopening of offshore oil and gas explora-tion in shallow waters.

On June 22, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled against the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, sug-gesting that the administration’s suspension was “arbitrary and capricious.” The White House ap-pealed the ruling, but a federal appeals court upheld it.

The White House then issued a new order July 12, banning most new deepwater-drilling activities until Nov. 30.

This latest order, amended to address the court’s “arbitrary” ar-gument, takes into account new evidence regarding safety con-cerns, shortcomings in industry equipment to control blowouts and capabilities to respond to spills, according to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

Slocum said that Congress must act immediately to ensure that

future deepwater drilling does not compromise the health and safety of oil rig workers and Gulf residents.

“Deepwater drilling currently represents a fraction of our do-mestic oil production. Banning this practice won’t lead to higher gasoline prices or force us to im-port more oil — but it would help ensure that our environment is protected,” Slocum said. “Deep-sea drilling poses catastrophic risks to workers and the environ-ment. It is bad policy to allow the practice to continue.”

Public Citizen will continue to denounce offshore drilling and advocate clean energy alterna-tives to fill our energy needs. You can help. Sign the Beyond BP petition. Join the Facebook group, “1,000,000 Strong to Boy-cott BP.” Urge President Obama to ban the expansion of offshore drilling.

Most important, tell your friends. For more information, visit www.BeyondBP.org.

Because, as the June 4 pro-testers said, “Oh, BP, don’t you know? Dirty oil has got to go! My, my, my, my. BP ain’t got no alibi. Oh, BP, don’t you know? Dirty oil has got to go! Hey, hey, hey, hey. We are not a-goin’ away!”

Dorry Samuels is Public Citizen’s press office coordinator.

Public Citizen Organizes Protest, Boycott of BP


Clockwise, from left: TV cameras surround organization leaders — including Robert Weissman (center), president of Public Citizen — during the June 4 protest in front of BP’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Protesters hold a “Crude Awakening” sign. Allison Fisher, an organizer with Public Citizen’s Energy Program, participates in the protest. Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, takes part in the event.


Clockwise, from left: A 13-foot-tall inflatable oil barrel bears the message “Boycott BP.” Tyson Slocum (left), director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, protests alongside other activists. James Ploeser, senior field organizer with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division, leads chants. Protesters, including Rick Claypool (right), online organizer with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, stand outside BP’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.


The Oil Spill’s EffectsEnergy Organizer Witnesses the Gusher’s Impact on La. ResidentsJournal, from page 1

found Exxon “reckless” and rendered an award of more than $5 billion, $5 billion of which was for punitive damages.

Over the course of the next 14 years, Exxon’s onslaught of appeals eventually landed the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2008, the court ruled that Exxon could not be required to pay more than $507 million (equivalent to the total compensatory damages paid to the plaintiffs) — one-tenth of the original punitive award.

The American people have heard the same promise from BP — a promise to “make it right.” If “make it right” is a different version of the same “make you whole” playbook, the communi-ties that surround the Gulf of Mexico have reason to be ner-vous. If the government can in-tervene and laws can be enacted to ensure just compensation for victims and full accountability for environmental clean-up and restoration, some level of wrong could be made right.

6/19: Beauty and the Beast

My first day driving down the bayou to Louisiana’s coast pre-sented a dichotomy of the area’s vast beauty and the consequenc-es of the beast that has long dominated the local economy.

My first stop landed me at a BP Claims Center in Chauvin. Before arriving in Louisiana, I thought that compensation meant BP ac-countability — that those harmed

by the disaster would receive a stipend to supplement their lost incomes. We all want BP to pay for the environmental disaster and economic upheaval it has created. And to some extent, the claims process ensures an immediate infusion of cash to those who have bills to pay and mouths to feed now.

The downside is that the monthly payments feel more like welfare checks than restitution for those who want their way of life back. The claims officer I spoke with could not speculate how long the checks would be administered. The claims pro-cess was triggered by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill. The act seeks to address both the re-sources necessary to respond to spills and damages compensable to those impacted by a spill. But the act did not anticipate a spill of this magnitude. Some analysts estimate the total cost of reim-bursement at more than $40 bil-lion over the next two decades.

Whether BP will be able to shell out the necessary reim-bursements over the long haul

is unclear. What is evident is the need for economic diversity — without which the beautiful wet-lands of Louisiana will only be known as the oil and gas fields.

The BP Gulf of Mexico disaster should yield its own set of les-sons that warrant new amend-ments to the Oil Pollution Act. To that end, funding should be set aside not only to remediate the impacted area but to invest in new clean energy infrastructure, manufacturing and generation.

6/20: Beyond a price Local sentiment toward BP in

Grand Isle, La., the large bar-rier island located on the Gulf of Mexico, is understandably harsh, but the sentiment toward offshore drilling is generally favorable. While fishing, shrimp-ing, crabbing and oyster har-vesting were declared dead by the arrival of oil in the bays and wetlands that surround Grand Isle, offshore drilling remains a large part of Louisiana’s tenuous economy. Louisiana and other states that line the Gulf rank among the bottom 10 U.S. states in per-capita income.

One needs only to take in the billboards that line the one road that leads to the coast to under-stand the limited opportuni-ties of those who reside there. The landscape is dominated by advertisements for offshore oil jobs, interrupted only by the oc-casional personal injury lawyer services — a suitable companion or harbinger of these high-risk jobs. Below the glossy billboards are hand-painted signs that read “live crabs” and “fresh shrimp,” but since the waters have closed, these signs are less about en-couraging passers-by to stop for local seafood and more a stark reminder of an extinct livelihood.

While the rest of the country is measuring the oil crisis in the time since the Deepwater Hori-zon explosion, Raleigh and Kay Leseigne are measuring the crisis in the days since they discov-ered oil in their oyster beds. The Louisiana Department of Wild-life and Fisheries closed waters in the Grand Isle area on May 22. A sign outside their Grand Isle home, addressed to BP, notes the number of days since their busi-ness was shut down. It reads, “[O]n 5.24.2010 your oil got into our inshore waters … you robbed us of making a living with crabs-oyster-shrimp. How much longer? Months or years?”

Sixty-five-year-old Raleigh, who has been crabbing and har-vesting oysters for 50 years, has no illusions about his livelihood. He told me over lunch that he doesn’t think he’ll ever work the waters again. The couple already received their first compensation check for their crabbing busi-ness, but the money will never replace the way of life that they have lost. Raleigh told of loving to wake in the morning to look over the heaven that is Grand Isle. Now he feels that BP has brought hell to his community.

These days, Raleigh is un-sure how to spend his time. His health and age preclude him from seeking a job as a contract worker for the clean-up operation.

As I prepared to leave their home, I commented on their good nature and smiling faces despite the disaster. Kay replied that I would need to visit them again in the coming months to see if the smiles were still there.

To see Fisher’s full journal about her trip, visit http://citizen vox.org/2010/06/30/five-days-in-louisiana/.

The BP Gulf of Mexico disaster should yield its own set of lessons that warrant new amendments to the Oil Pollution Act. To that end, funding should be set aside not only to remediate the impacted area but to invest in new clean energy infrastructure, manufacturing and generation.

Public Citizen Photos/Allison Fisher

Louisiana residents post signs, like the above, telling passers-by their viewpoints about BP and the effect the oil spill has had on them.


Mining Co. Case Shows Need for Trade Pact OverhaulBy Angela Bradbery

A mining company’s attempt to use a trade agreement’s foreign investor rights to squeeze hun-dreds of millions of dollars out of the El Salvadoran government over a cyanide leach gold mine the company sought to open there provides yet another example of why trade agreements must be dramatically overhauled.

In making the claim, the Ca-nadian-based multinational firm, Pacific Rim Mining Corp., brought the first environmental case to date under the investor-to-state arbitration mechanism of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This system allows foreign corporations to sue governments and demand compensation when they believe their investor rights, as spelled out in the trade pact, have been violated. A World Bank tribunal heard initial arguments in the case in early June.

Pacific Rim Mining planned to use hundreds of tons of cyanide and hundreds of millions of liters of water per year to recover gold from ore in the basin of El Salva-dor’s largest river. This proposed project, as well as applications filed by various companies for 28 other gold and silver mines, gen-erated a major national debate about the health and environ-mental implications of mining in El Salvador, a densely popu-lated country the size of Mas-sachusetts with limited water resources. Leaders of El Salva-dor’s major political parties, the Catholic Church and a large civil society network expressed con-cerns about contamination of water resources on which mil-lions of people rely.

The firm never completed its application process. Instead, shortly after the government formed a commission of experts to review the country’s mining policy, Pacific Rim Mining turned to CAFTA, using it to demand hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and claiming that El Salvador had violated its trade pact investor rights.

The case spotlights the con-cerns that have led Public Citi-zen, environmental and human rights advocates, and many in Congress to demand changes to the past model of trade pact for-eign investor rights and their pri-vate enforcement.

Tribunals have ordered more

than $200 million in payments to investors under similar terms in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“At stake is whether the op-erations of the fragile democracy that emerged from 12 years of civil war in El Salvador and the policies by its elected leaders to ensure mining does not further damage the country’s ravaged environment will prevail — or whether CAFTA will allow the de-mands of a multinational mining firm to reign supreme over the rule of law in El Salvador,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch di-vision. “It also shines a spotlight on the extreme foreign investor rights provided in NAFTA, CAF-TA and now in the leftover Bush trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama that the Obama ad-ministration recently announced it wants to complete.”

Public Citizen has been out front in publicizing the case and its ramifications. In May, the or-ganization held a press briefing with Friends of the Earth and two Salvadoran community lead-ers from the region where the proposed mine would be built: Miguel Rivera, founder of the As-sociation of Friends of San Isidro Cabañas, whose brother was murdered last year after speak-ing out against the project, and Vidalina Morales de Gámez, with

the National Coalition Against Metallic Mining.

In addition, Wallach organized congressional briefings with the visiting Salvadorans for staffers in the U.S. House of Representa-tives and the Senate. Public Citi-zen has urged activists to contact President Barack Obama and de-mand a better trade model.

Pacific Rim Mining’splans

A 1996 Salvadoran law estab-lishes a two-step process for companies wishing to establish a mine. Pacific Rim Mining com-pleted the first step when it ac-quired an exploration permit and began exploratory drilling for gold in 2002. However, to oper-ate a mine, the company needed an exploitation permit, which requires an environmental im-pact assessment and a feasibility study.

In 2005, Pacific Rim Mining submitted its environmental impact assessment to the gov-ernment. A geologist hired by a local community group found it lacking detail about the amount of water required for the project and the prospect for cyanide con-tamination. The region is subject to earthquakes and torrential rains, which heightened con-cerns about the proposed mine’s safety. A 4.7-magnitude earth-quake occurred directly below

the proposed Pacific Rim mine site in 2001.

Public concerns grew about this project and the dozens of other mining permits being sought. In March 2008, then-Sal-vadoran President Elias Antonio Saca, leader of the conservative ARENA party, announced that he would establish a commission to review the country’s mining law and would not grant mining permits until the commission reported.

Meanwhile, Pacific Rim Min-ing, a Canadian company that would not have standing under CAFTA because Canada was not a party to the trade agreement, reincorporated a subsidiary as a Nevada corporation, Pac Rim Cayman LLC. The U.S. subsidiary, newly covered by CAFTA, filed its CAFTA claim in December 2008.

The company claims that the Salvadoran government capri-ciously halted progress on ap-proving the proposed mine for political reasons. The Salvadoran government argues that it has a right to set the terms for mining in its country.

CAFTA’s investor-to-state dis-pute settlement provision is very similar to NAFTA’s investor-to-state provision and those in the Bush-era free trade agreements (FTAs) the Obama administra-tion has said it will send to Con-gress, Wallach said. This system empowers foreign corporations to demand government compen-sation in foreign tribunals, skirt-ing domestic courts and laws, for government actions, includ-ing environmental regulations, that the investors believe violate their trade pact rights. Under NAFTA, corporations have chal-lenged dozens of environmental and other public interest laws in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“This problem extends beyond El Salvador. Increasingly, multi-national companies are invoking trade-agreement investor rights in situations where natural re-sources and public health are at stake,” Wallach said. “As the Obama administration launches new trade talks and considers whether it will renegotiate the leftover Bush FTAs, negotiators need to close the door to the kinds of outrageous challenges to essential environmental laws like we now see in the Pacific Rim case.”

“Increasingly, multinational companies are invoking trade-agreement investor rights in situations where natural re-sources and public health are at stake. As the Obama administration launches new trade talks and considers whether it will renegotiate the leftover Bush [free trade agreements], negotiators need to close the door to the kinds of outrageous challenges to essential en-vironmental laws like we now see in the Pacific Rim case.”

Lori Wallachdirector, Public Citizen’s

Global Trade Watch


The following are some highlights from our recent media coverage.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Survey: Most Support Shorter Medical Resident ShiftsBy Arlene Tonoff

A new study — the first of its kind — shows that most Ameri-cans object to medical residents working longer than 24-hour shifts and favor tighter regula-tions for resident work hours.

The study, released June 1, was published by the online journal BMC Medicine and showed that 90 percent of those surveyed be-lieve the maximum shift duration for medical residents should be 16 hours or less. (A 2008 Institute of Medicine [IOM] report said that resident physicians who work more than 16 consecutive hours without sleep pose a safety haz-ard for themselves and patients.)

In contrast, current work hour rules permit residents to work up to 30-hour shifts twice weekly.

These long shifts result in fa-tigued residents who are more prone to errors.

The research was conducted by Lake Research Partners and spon-sored financially by Public Citizen and the Committee of Interns and Residents/Service Employees In-ternational Union (SEIU).

The study authors included representatives from Public Citi-zen, Harvard Medical School, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center at Al-bert Einstein College of Medicine and the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU.

These groups have pressed the body overseeing resident physi-cian training, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), to improve

medical resident work hours.In June, ACGME did propose

some slight improvements to its guidelines for medical resident work hours. An ACGME task force is recommending that the maximum length of shifts for new doctors in their first year of residency training programs in hospitals be cut from 24 hours to 16 hours. The group also is rec-ommending closer supervision by experienced doctors.

However, maximum work shifts for residents in their second year and beyond would still be very long — 24 consecutive hours plus an additional four hours for transitioning care. These 28-hour shifts can be scheduled ev-ery third night. Maximum work weeks would remain at 80 hours for all hospital residents. The weekly hours may be averaged over one month, meaning that a resident may work 60 hours one week, followed by 100 hours the next week. The long shifts still would lead the residents to a chronic state of fatigue.

The ACGME is accepting public comments on the recommenda-tions until Aug. 9 at www.acgme.org. The new standards are sched-uled to go into effect in July 2011.

Public Citizen and other patient safety advocates will continue to push for further improvements to medical resident guidelines.

“The improvements in the new ACGME guidelines are largely swamped by the failure to cover the majority of medical residents with the protection of not hav-ing to work more than 16 hours continuously,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group. “This is the second revision of ACGME requirements in the past seven years, and the organization still does not get it right.”

Survey says: fewerhours for residents

Respondents to the study pub-lished in BMC Medicine said that patients should be informed if the doctor treating them has been working for 24 hours. Most of the respondents to the study, which surveyed 1,200 people, also said that if told that their doctor had been awake for a day, they would request care from a different doctor.

Other findings include:Only 1 percent of the gen-•eral public supports shifts longer than 24 hours for

medical residents;The majority of respon-•dents said they believe that resident physicians work shifts of less than 12 hours;81 percent of the general •public believes that reduc-ing resident physician work hours would be very or somewhat effective in reducing medical errors; When asked about specific •recommendations of the IOM, four of five respon-dents support limiting the duration of individual work shifts to 16 hours, capping weekly work hours at a maximum of 80 hours in any single week and ensur-ing that medical residents have at least one day off per week;68 percent favor the IOM •recommendation that resi-dent physicians not work more than 16 hours over an alternative IOM proposal that would permit resident physicians to remain in the hospital for 30 hours, as long as they were provided the opportunity to sleep for five hours without inter-ruption after 16 hours of work.

“Working for 24 hours with-out sleep impairs performance to a degree that is comparable to being legally drunk,” said Dr. Charles Czeisler, a senior author of the study and professor of sleep medicine at Harvard School of Medicine. “Patients have a right to be concerned for their safety when doctors work mara-thon 24-hour shifts. Reducing resident physician work hours is an effective way to improve pa-tient safety.”

Currently, New Zealand and most European countries have restrictions that limit the number of consecutive hours residents are allowed to work.

“The leaders within academic medicine who are resisting these sensible changes are out of step with the public, and that jeop-ardizes the notion of patient-centered care and threatens the health of patients as well as doc-tors,” Wolfe said.

For more information, visit www.wakeupdoctor.org.

Arlene Tonoff is an intern in Public Citizen’s communications office.

Robert Weissman, Public Citizen president: On the June 4 BP protest: The New York Times, The Baton Rouge Advocate, PBS’ “Nightly Business Report,” Bloomberg, Bloomberg Busi-nessweek, The San Francisco Chronicle. On the call to boy-cott BP: The Philadelphia Daily News, Los Angeles Times. On the financial reform bill: PBS’ “Nightly Business Report,” ABC’s “World News Tonight.” On the case for implementing a financial speculation tax: The American Prospect.

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program: On the call to boycott BP: Financial Times, USA Today, CNN’s “An-derson Cooper 360,” The Guard-ian (U.K.), NPR. On the June 4 BP protest: Fox News, MSNBC with Chris Jansing, NPR. On the BP oil spill: NPR, The Dallas Morning News, The St. Petersburg Times.

David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division: On the revolving door between Congress and Wall Street: The Boston Globe, CNN Money, Politico, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Businessweek, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, The Huffington Post. Featured in Time magazine on the lobbying culture in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group: On the need for more transpar-ency and disclosure from the Food and Drug Administration: Reuters, The Associated Press, Fox Business, Bloomberg Busi-nessweek, San Francisco Chron-icle, The Charleston Daily Mail (W.Va.), FDA Week, The Akron Beacon Journal. On the safety of the diabetes drug Avandia: ABC News.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch divi-sion: On fixing the U.S.-Domin-ican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement: BNA Daily Report. On former trade czar Rob Portman’s ties to former President George W. Bush: The Columbus Dispatch.

Allison Zieve, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group: On the Department of Justice keep-ing secret the names of people whose applications for pardons were denied by Bush: The Na-tional Law Journal, Legal Intel-ligencer, The American Lawyer, Texas Lawyer.

Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office: On reconciling Texas air quality with new national standards: The Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express, The Texas Tribune.


Public Citizen To FDA: Unethical Avandia Clinical Trial Should Not Continue

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sAfe?Many drugs that come to market have risks that outweigh their benefits. Others, found to have risks only after they are approved, are left on the market for dangerously long periods of time. Find out which drugs are safe — and which you should avoid — with Public Citizen’s WorstPills.org and Worst Pills, Best Pills News.

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By Kate ResnevicPublic Citizen is calling for the

immediate halt of an unethical diabetes drug trial aimed at as-sessing the heart risks associated with the diabetes drug Avandia, saying that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has seen enough research to know that the drug is more dangerous than the closely related drug Actos.

“The price of such definitive proof will almost certainly be measured in the lives of study subjects who have been incom-pletely informed about the risks and benefits of participation,” Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, and Dr. David Juurlink, a Toronto researcher who has published one of the studies finding Avan-dia to be more dangerous than Actos, wrote in a May 11 letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The drug company Glaxo- SmithKline began the Thiazoli-dinedione Intervention in Vita-min D Evaluation (TIDE) trial in May 2009 at the request of the FDA. The study involves 14 coun-tries, including the U.S. and de-veloping countries such as Mex-ico, Chile, India, Pakistan and Colombia, and is intended to in-clude as many as 16,000 subjects. The targeted completion date is 2015.

A major objective of TIDE is to compare the safety risks of Avan-dia (generic name: rosiglitazone) with those of Actos (generic name: pioglitazone).

“Surely no patient would will-ingly participate in a trial in which they have a substantial likelihood of taking a drug that, in the opin-ion of a large group of experts, has no role in present day therapeu-tics because of its risks,” Wolfe said. “The trial shouldn’t contin-ue because the question has been answered. If the trial continues, the health of thousands of pa-tients will be jeopardized. It is unethical to continue this trial.”

A large body of research has shown Avandia to be more dan-

gerous than Actos. Avandia is more likely to cause heart fail-ure; even FDA scientists estimate that the risk of heart failure with Avandia is roughly 50 percent higher than with Actos. Avandia also is associated with a higher risk of death than Actos.

Avandia and Actos have both been associated with a host of side effects, including fluid accumula-tion in the eye and other places, anemia, congestive heart failure, heart attack, bony fractures and acute liver injury — some cases of which have been fatal.

And in mid-July, Wolfe testi-fied before an FDA advisory com-mittee and urged members to ban the drug. The committee gave no clear recommendation on how the FDA should proceed; the final decision lies with Hamburg.

In 2008, expert committees from the American Diabetes As-sociation (ADA) and the Euro-pean Association for the Study of Diabetes, the European equiva-lent of the ADA, advised against using Avandia, and the Saudi Arabian drug regulatory agency has recently removed Avandia from the market. The FDA has ordered a black box warning to be placed on Avandia (but not Actos) because of concerns about heart attacks.

Juurlink led a study, published in 2009, comparing adverse ef-fects in 39,000 people who be-gan using either Avandia or Actos between 2002 and 2008. Juurl-ink and his colleagues found a significantly higher risk of con-gestive heart failure and death from any cause in patients taking Avandia. The authors estimated that one additional hospitaliza-tion for heart failure would occur annually for every 120 patients prescribed Avandia rather than Actos, and that one additional death would occur each year for every 269 patients treated with Avandia rather than Actos.

Kate Resnevic is managing editor of Worst Pills, Best Pills News.


To become a leader, contact Alice Butler in the development office at (202) 588-7753, or via e-mail at [email protected].

Public Citizen is proud to recognize new and renewing Torchbearers and Partners in Citizenship. These donors provide a critical source of funding for our most important work.

In each issue of Public Citizen News, we will recognize new and renewing donors to our leadership giving programs. This list includes donations that were received in April and May 2010.

TorchbearersPeter G. AngelosThe Attias Family FoundationJere BeasleyAllan W. BernatElspeth G. BobbsPeter & Alice BronerPhilip Harnett Corboy, Jr.Thomas DemetrioJeffrey L. DennisRichard EpsteinLouis F. Farese Jr.Ronald & Mary ForthoferJordan FoxAndrew FriedmanPaul FriedmanMarie Lee GaillardFrancis HaganFrances HarmonJohn IrsakDavid IrwinMilnor & Miriam JonesSydney K. KayShannon Liss-RiordanDonna LitowitzRoyceann MatherPatricia McSweeneyThomas J. MethvinLisa MezzettiNicholas & Barbara MillhouseWilma S. MillsNancy & Herbert MilsteinVictoria NugentJean NunesWesley H. QuigleyEugene & Jeanne RondeauMary M. RussellJoseph SellersMarlowe SteegeHarold L. Stokes

Ailene S. TaylorMurray TobakRobert Van RyGibson VanceBarry & Elisa WaxmanJ. Dix & Barbara WaymanHenry W.H. WeisF.R. Wollaeger ParTners David Arpi & Natalie GubbWilliam & Ilene BirgeDavid & Kay BrennanGuy CoheleachMarie L. FarrAudrey GersonRobert GinsbergBarbara GroddClara HarariWade C. JohnsonStewart & Sherry KahnCharles L. KersteinDonald L. KnutsonEdgar LyngholmJanet MorrowPaul & Margaret NelsonMichael NimkoffCarol D. NorbergDavid Pinkham Jr.Juliet SabitPeter & Judith SagerMichael ShannonRobert ShermanGeorge & Sheryl SinasAndrew E. SteinGeorge & Glenna StewartMargaret E. TrumanJ.P. VilledrouinMary B. Williams

Thanks for Your Leadership support

By Dorry SamuelsA closed-door deal between

President Barack Obama and Congress would put taxpayers on the hook if companies invest-ing in nuclear reactors default on their loans.

In the current version of the 2010 Supplemental Appropria-tions Bill (H.R. 4899), $9 billion in loan guarantees (on top of $18.5 billion already allocated by the Obama administration) would be devoted to building new nu-clear reactors that could include two reactors at the South Texas Project (STP) in Bay City, Tex-as, and two reactors in Calvert Cliffs, Md.

But all hope is not lost — this measure has yet to pass Congress, as of press time.

Public Citizen is fighting hard to stop the new reactors. Generat-ing nuclear energy contaminates soil, air and water, and produces dangerous, long-lasting radioac-tive waste.

In addition, not only are cost overruns all too common in nucle-ar reactor construction projects, but with the loan guarantees, tax-payers will end up footing the bill when costs skyrocket and inves-tors can’t make up the difference. Chances are high that companies will default — according to a May 2003 Congressional Budget Of-fice report, the risk is “very high — well above 50 percent.”

With the STP plans, for exam-ple, no shovel has hit the ground, but costs have ballooned from around $5 billion to more than $18 billion because developers underestimated costs. This proj-ect is expected to be completed by 2016 — still plenty of time for costs to rise even higher. And this is for a project whose inves-tors have already flirted with the idea of backing out; one reduced

its share in the project more than five-fold.

To block the STP, Public Citi-zen appeared in April before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to contest the project’s en-vironmental impact statement. Public Citizen, along with other environmental groups, also filed comments with the NRC contest-ing the need for the plant and have intervened in the licensing process.

“There is no need for the plant. The energy needs can be provid-ed by renewables and energy ef-ficiency for only a fraction of the cost,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office. “STP is a poster child for why we shouldn’t be giving nu-clear loan guarantees. It has more than tripled in cost before con-struction even begins and there are no buyers for the energy.”

Even more loan guarantees?

Of the original $18.5 billion in nuclear loan guarantees allo-cated by the Obama administra-tion, $8.3 billion will go to South-ern Company for two reactors in Georgia. The remaining $10.2 billion is widely expected to be offered to Unistar, a consortium of Constellation Energy and the French government-owned util-ity Électricité de France, for two reactors in Calvert Cliffs, Md.

The administration is request-ing more money to finance both the Calvert Cliffs reactor and STP.

Further, even more govern-ment (read: taxpayer) funds are likely to be allocated to nuclear energy in the near future. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lie-berman (I-Conn.) proposed $54 billion in nuclear loan guarantees in their proposed American Pow-er Act, which was released to the public on May 12. That’s a lot of taxpayer money on the line.

Call your representative and senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them not to support taxpayer-fi-nanced nuclear power — or nucle-ar power in general.

Spending Bill Devotes $9 Billion To Nuclear Loan GuaranteesPublic Citizen is battling to stop loan guarantees and nuclear reactors.


For Your ENtErtaINmENtPublic Citizen Crossword By Sam Bellotto Jr.

Public Citizen Recommends ...

‘The DeMarco Factor’By Michael Pertschuk; Vanderbilt University Press; $24.95

‘Casino Jack and the United States of Money’Written and directed by Alex Gibney; for more information, visit www.takepart.com/casinojack

‘A Presidency in Peril’By Robert Kuttner; Chelsea Green; $25

To order books, contact the publisher or visit your local bookstore or library.

Answers are on page 16.

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ACROSS 1 Seize illegally 6 Runway safety org. 9 St. Louis landmark 13 “Got it” in radio-speak 14 Robbins of ice cream fame 15 Senate investigation 16 Deepwater Horizon event, in the news 19 City on the Ouse 20 Japanese affirmative 21 Facades 22 Zero in on 24 Recyclable item 25 Subject of the Kyoto Protocol 30 Garlicky condiment 31 Treasure of mine 32 Nuke 34 Art teacher’s deg. 35 La Brea attractions 39 Golf phenom Michelle 40 Fax cover-sheet letters 42 Fed. drugbusters 43 Downsizing phase 45 Off ___ (led to 16 Across) 49 Dedicatory words 50 Grand Central arrival 51 In abundance 55 Place to pay and stay 56 Cycle starter 59 They contribute to 25 Across 62 Ramshackle 63 Test for master’s entrants 64 Letters without envelopes 65 Bombay housemaid 66 Former Border Patrol agcy. 67 Part of NRA

DOWN 1 Implore 2 Motown music 3 Not pretty 4 KO counter 5 Place a ban on 6 Of a child 7 End of a drunk? 8 Part of an Israeli city 9 Atomic number 33 10 Habitual 11 Radio-active trucker? 12 Miss-marked 15 Vintage travel bag logo 17 “___ lineman for the county ...” 18 Off-the-record 22 It merged with Time Warner 23 Type of question 25 Shower items 26 Unwilling 27 Former press secretary Fleischer 28 Kind of situation 29 On one’s way 30 Org. for court figures 33 St. Bernard’s burden 36 “Why, thou owest God ___”: Shak. 37 Election Day state color 38 Kennedy press secretary Pierre 41 Phrase used to describe feel-good laws 44 Mark a ballot 46 Cox in “RoboCop” 47 Perennial flowers

48 Interstate division 51 Taj Mahal city 52 Hyde Park baby buggy 53 “___ Smile Be Your Umbrella” 54 Bear who is smarter than average

56 Boeing Co. customer 57 First name on the moon 58 Ocean oasis 60 Starbucks dispenser 61 Pierre’s pal

The Obama administration has had an opportunity to make strong progressive change but thus far has failed to do so.

In “A Presidency in Peril,” Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and distin-guished senior fellow at progres-sive think tank Demos, critiques the administration’s missteps — whether they were policies developed with influence from

Wall Street (financial reform) or insurance companies (health reform).

President Barack Obama needs to get a little partisan and stand up for the American people, says Kuttner, who spoke about his new book at an April event held at Public Citizen’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

However, after laying out a sharp critique, Kuttner ends the book optimistically.

“Despite a year of disappoint-ment and disillusion, we have three things on our side,” Kutt-ner writes. “We have reality—most people are not experienc-ing the economic recovery being enjoyed on Wall Street. We have a clever but empty opposition—a right-wing Republican Party offering nothing to solve this severe crisis. And, in Barack Obama, we have a president who has only begun to realize his full potential as a leader. Whether he does will be a test of his charac-ter—and ours.”

— Bridgette Blair

Vinny DeMarco has made dreams of social justice come true. The relentless and tireless public interest advocate has won against the gun lobby and big tobacco companies, and has obtained health care coverage for Maryland’s uninsured.

In this book, author Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, details DeMarco’s history and provides an insider’s look at public advocacy. The book offers lessons in reaching out to media, framing messages, organizing communities and securing tech-nical and financial assistance.

It promises to inspire all those who seek to fight for the greater good.

— Arlene Tonoff

Jack Abramoff was not just the ultimate Washington lobbyist but a political “fixer” on a grand scale — that is, until he became the poster child for the very worst aspects of political life: the buying and sell-ing of influence over lawmakers.

The docu-mentary follows Abramoff’s early escapades with high-profile conservatives to his big-time fleecing of American Indian tribes and his downfall. With interviews from reporters, watchdogs, former Abramoff colleagues and ex-congressional staffers, filmmaker Alex Gibney connects the many ugly dots of Abramoff’s sordid career.

One of the choicest moments in the film — and there are many — is when one of Abramoff’s

former allies said that he was so slick, he could talk a dog off a meat truck.

— Barbara Holzer


WIN!

Crossword Answers (from page 15)

U S U R P F A A A R C H

R O G E R I R V P R O B E

G U L F O I L D I S A S T E R

E L Y H A I V E N E E R S

A I M A T C A N

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A I O L I O R E C O O K

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G R E E N H O U S E G A S E S

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A M A H I N S R I F L E

By Joe NewmanThis summer, Congress took its

first steps to counter the U.S. Su-preme Court’s disastrous Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates for unlimited corpo-rate spending on elections.

The U.S. House of Representa-tives in June passed the DISCLOSE Act (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections), a measure that would require corporations, unions and other organizations to identify how much they spend on elec-tions and from where the money is coming.

Election-related advertise-ments purchased by these groups would have to list the top five donors to their election-activity accounts and contain a stand-by-your-ad disclaimer, in which an organization’s top official and its biggest funder must declare on camera that they agree with the content of the ad and are respon-sible for its airing.

Under the DISCLOSE Act, groups would have to iden-tify their major donors. In the House-passed version of the bill, that means disclosure of donors of $600 or more for cam-paign ads, while in the Senate bill, it means disclosure of those

House Passes Election Spending Disclosure Billwho donate $1,000 or more for campaign ads.

Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s government affairs lobbyist and expert on campaign finance re-form, said the measure closes gaping loopholes in current law that allow corporations to hide their campaign spending by fun-neling their money through front groups.

“Revealing the funders behind these groups is perhaps the most valuable tool voters can use in evaluating the merits of the cam-paign messages that are about to besiege them,” Holman said.

The act also would ban major government contractors and for-

eign corporations from paying directly for such ads.

The Senate is expected to vote on the DISCLOSE Act before the end of July.

Its fate there is uncertain be-cause of fierce opposition from Republican leaders and efforts to defeat the bill by the U.S. Cham-ber of Commerce and other big business lobbyists.

In May, Holman testified about the need for the DISCLOSE Act before the House Administration Committee.

“Today, corporate lobbyists can walk into a lobbying meet-ing carrying a big stick to intimi-date lawmakers,” Holman said. “A healthy democracy is going to have a hard time surviving this corporate onslaught without meaningful measures to mitigate the corrupting role of unlimited corporate money.”

While Public Citizen lobbied hard to get the DISCLOSE Act through the House, the measure by itself falls far short of repair-ing the damage done by the Citi-zens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.

In that Jan. 21 decision, the Su-preme Court ruled 5-4 that cor-porations should have the First Amendment rights of people

when it comes to spending on elections.

Public Citizen maintains that Congress must pass the Share-holder Protection Act (H.R. 4790) to ensure that corporations do not spend shareholders’ money on elections against their wishes. And lawmakers must pass the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826 and S. 752) to ensure that candi-dates who do not have corporate backing have a foundation to run viable campaigns.

But even if those measures be-come law, they won’t be enough, said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman. Ultimately, there needs to be a constitutional amendment specifying that for-profit corporations are not enti-tled to First Amendment protec-tions, except for freedom of the press, he said.

“Democracy is rule of the peo-ple — real, live humans, not arti-ficial entity corporations,” Weiss-man said. “Now it’s time for the people to reassert their rights.”

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