Congress Protects Industry from Citizens

By Don Monkerud

After a mere five years of controlling both Congress and the Presidency, the GOP is riding high. Busy dismantling social, regulatory and environmental policies they and their corporate sponsors dislike, today's GOP is directing the reversal of government policies once supported by a hefty majority of Americans.

With the president under pressure for fumbling Iraq, GOP Senate majority leader Bill Frist under scrutiny for shady business dealings and de facto House leader Tom DeLay indicted for illegal campaign funds, one might expect the GOP to retreat, but they steam ahead. Four recent bills offer a microcosm of how the GOP pushes laws to increase their power and efficiently pay off their corporate sponsors.

Approved by the House and currently in a Senate subcommittee, a GOP reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would prevent non-profit organizations such as National Alliance on Mental Illness, Children's Defense Fund, Coalition for the Homeless, and the YWCA from voter registration, get-out-the-vote, or any other nonpartisan voter participation activities a year before applying for a grant from the new Affordable Housing Fund (AHF). Currently many states encourage nonprofits to promote civic engagement.

Although the bill includes safeguards to prevent organizations from using federal money for advocacy, it also bars nonprofits that receive grants from making public service announcements within 60 days of a general election and disqualifies any nonprofit that uses money from other sources or is even affiliated with an organization that politically advocates any position.

Meanwhile for-profit housing organizations and conglomerates are free to receive grants and support candidates. The GOP is so fearful that people in AIDS organizations, extremely low and very low income family groups and others that receive AHF housing money will vote against them that they bar them from participating in the political process.

On October 26, the president signed a new bill to protect the gun industry from lawsuits. A victory for the National Rifle Association, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms bill provides gun makers, dealers and distributors immunity from civil lawsuits filed by dozens of cities across the country. Last year the NRA blocked the renewal of a ten-year-old ban on military-style assault weapons, backing up their claim that gun control is a dead issue in Congress.

Lawsuits are one of the only safeguards citizens have against deadly products marketed to them - such as cigarettes - by companies that sell lethal, harmful or deadly products. Thanks to the GOP, the gun industry now has blanket immunity to sell products that cost the American public, according to the National Institute for Justice, 10,000 lives, 49,000 injuries, over 340,000 assaults and between $6 and $12 billion, possibly as much as $80 billion, in 2000 alone.

The NRA bragged during the last election that Bush's election would give them an office in the White House. Unfortunately, other corporate conglomerates exert similar influence. Pharmaceutical conglomerates recently directed Congress to eliminate their liabilities for injuries caused by faulty emergency vaccines.

Called the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005, the bill passed the Senate and is being rushed through Congress to strip citizens of the right to a trial by jury if they are harmed by an experimental or licensed drug or vaccine during public health emergencies. The head of the Department of Health and Human Services will have the sole authority to judge whether pharmaceuticals violate safely laws and citizens get no day in court. A new secret agency will insure that no information about deaths, faulty drugs or injuries will ever become public.

According to Barbara Loe Fisher, president of The National Vaccine Information Center, an educational organization, the legislation is an attempt by Congress "to give a taxpayer-funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs and vaccines the government can force all citizens to use while absolving everyone connected from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur."

The bill places citizens at risks, but even more importantly, when pharmaceutical companies know they are protected, there will be no incentive to keep vaccines safe or to prevent dangerous experimental drugs from being rushed to market.

The GOP and their corporate-backers increased their attacks on civil lawsuits when the House voted to free the fast-food industry from obesity suits and in October passed the bill to the Senate. Fearful of cases such as those brought against cigarette manufacturers, the powerful food conglomerates, which currently face only one such lawsuit, are clearly threatened by legal action, based on the premise that food conglomerates manufacture unhealthy and fattening foods. The mood of much of the nation supports this viewpoint, but there's another perspective.

Rather than giving citizens their day in court, the GOP trumpets "personal responsibility" at the same time as food conglomerates fight attempts to provide nutritional information on packaging, menus and fast foods. Just when fast food conglomerates are finally being pressured to offer healthier foods, better choices, and more nutritional information, Congress pulls the plug. With 61 percent of Americans overweight, is there a logical reason why this wealthy industry cannot defeat frivolous lawsuits on their own merits without running to Congress for protection?

With the passage of bills to protect the fattening food industry -so-called "Commonsense Consumption Act" bills have passed in 16 states and are pending in 22 more -Business Week Online reports that companies that were recently gearing up for more healthy food are instead switching to supersized meals. "Junk-food chains are now catering to people who have ignored the healthy-food movement of the last few years, and in fact have gotten sick of the focus on healthy living," reports Pallavi Gogoi. "No wonder the fast-food giants are fighting over who can come up with the most fattening food."

The GOP and Bush's White House hope to establish a dynasty in Washington well into the next decade. After five short years of such GOP legislation, one wonders how long Americans can afford legislative payoffs to campaign contributors that take away traditional rights.

The End

Copyright 2005

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