EITC: Do you qualify? Thursday, January 26, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in finances.Tags: EITC, IRS, taxes
add a comment
Happy Earned Income Tax Credit Day!
The EITC is a very helpful way for low-moderate income working Americans to get extra money on their taxes. EITC is a financial boost for working people in a recovering economy. Unfortunately, not all Americans who qualify take advantage, but it’s getting better — last year four of five eligible people claimed and got their EITC!
The IRS says: You earned it. Now file, claim it and get it. It’s easier than ever to find out whether you qualify.
Low-income consumers can also take advantage of the IRS FreeFile service to avoid the high costs of tax preparation software or the risk of using a fly-by-night tax preparer.
Saying goodbye to Hull House Monday, January 23, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in Sally Greenberg, social justice, Uncategorized.Tags: Frances Perkins, Hull House, immigrants, Jane Addams
add a comment
By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
We learned to our great sadness at the National Consumers League that Hull House in Chicago is closing its doors, though thankfully the Museum will stay open. The historic settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889 in a rundown, largely immigrant Chicago neighborhood was inhabited for years by the first head of the NCL, Florence Kelley. Kelley did much of her earliest pioneering work from Hull House and was inspired and supported in that work by her dear friend Jane Addams and many other notable residents.
Hull House was the first of-its-kind settlement houses in America and was home to some of the most renown Progressive-era reformers in addition to Kelley – including Grace Abbot, Frances Perkins, Julia Lathrop, and Alice Hamilton, and of course Jane Addams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Addams bought the Hull House property and staffed it with a community of colleagues that helped thousands of immigrants adjust to life in America, providing classes in English, teaching about American customs, cooking, sewing, infant care, and conducting dance classes and other forms of recreation. Today Hull House provides equally critical services, including foster care, domestic violence counseling and prevention services, child development programs, and job training to about 60,000 children, families and community groups each year.
But now it appears that Hull House will be forced to close because of lack of funds. Stephen Saunders, Hull House’s chairman, issued a statement indicating that growing deficits have plagued the institution for several years.
In a nation with as much wealth as we enjoy here in the United States, it is indeed a sad commentary on our values that a historic institution like Hull House that has throughout its history provided basic services to the poor would be forced to close its doors.
We at the NCL, with our deep historical connections to Hull House and its mission, are greatly saddened at this news. We wish the institution well and we thank those members of the Hull House Board who worked so hard all these years to keep a historical icon working so long and so hard to provide assistance to those in greatest need.
Fungicide, orange juice, and what you should know Thursday, January 19, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in food and nutrition, Teresa Green.Tags: carbendazim, fungicide, orange juice
add a comment
By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow
In the past week, orange juice has spent a lot of time in the headlines due to the detection of low levels of a fungicide called carbendazim in the orange juice. Carbendazim is not approved for use in either the United States or the European Union but is widely used in other parts of the world to combat fungus that grows on fruit. At high levels, the fungicide has been correlated with liver cancer in animal studies.
Coca Cola alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the presence of carbendazim after finding it in samples of juice it tested. Orange juice from Brazil was implicated as the source of the residues. In response to the alert from Coca Cola, FDA began to test imported orange juice for the presence of the fungicide. The agency announced that it would ban any juices that contained more than 10 parts per billion (ppb) of carbendazim.
While the US and EU both ban it, only the EU has set a threshold for how much carbendazim is allowed in foods. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that carbendazim at less than 80 ppb is not harmful. Furthermore, FDA stated in a letter from January 9 that the “EPA has concluded that consumption of orange juice with carbendazim at the low levels that have been reported does not raise safety concerns.”
While FDA has stated that the level of carbendazim found in orange juice is not harmful, the issue still raises concerns for consumers. There are three major things that need to happen here if consumers are to be protected. First, FDA should issue limits on the amount of carbendazim that can be present in orange juice, a move that would get rid of the current ambiguity surrounding the issue.
Second, country of origin labels (COOL) on juice allow consumers to decide whether or not they want to buy a product which comes from a country with a history of using chemicals not approved in the US. Unfortunately, our entire COOL system is under attack by the World Trade Organization (WTO). In order to protect consumers, the Obama administration should appeal the WTO’s recent ruling and fight to protect COOL.
Finally, FDA, which is responsible for the safety of much of the food in this country, should be adequately funded so that it can carry out its expanded mandate as prescribed by the recent Food Safety Modernization Act. Only with increased funding can FDA continue to do the work that protects our food supply.
While FDA has so far not found excess amounts of carbendazim in any of the samples it has tested, consumers may still want to avoid orange juice that contains this chemical. There are two ways to do this. First, if you want to avoid many pesticide residues, drink orange juice that is certified 100% organic. Second, look at the label to see where the orange juice comes from and drink only U.S. orange juice. For now, FDA has stated that it will not recall any orange juice and that the juice available is safe to drink.
Honoring MLK Monday, January 16, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in NCL History, Sally Greenberg, social justice.Tags: Martin Luther King
1 comment so far
By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
Today as we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. it’s helpful to look around and see where we are in 2012 in the battle against racism and the poverty that is a direct byproduct of racism. I recently heard an astounding statistic: the United States imprisons more Black men today – often for nonviolent drug offenses – than were enslaved in 1850 before the Emancipation Proclamation.
A historical look back is helpful. NCL’s founding in 1899 dates back to the Progressive Era, which was a time of historic reforms in America, but also a time of incredible backlash against former slaves and freedmen and women. Southern governments imposed a wide range of Jim Crow laws – laws and policies requiring Blacks to use different public facilities, live in different neighborhoods and go to different schools, during the Progressive era, often using the rationale that segregation resulted in a more orderly, systematic electoral system and society. Many of the steps that had been taken toward racial equality during the Reconstruction period were undone. The result is that Blacks were denied access to decent schools, housing, and good jobs that paid a living wage.
The founding of the NAACP was precipitated by this series of events. The Jim Crow practices of Southern leaders were regrettably given the blessings of the American judicial system, as in the famous case upholding the principle of racial segregation in the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy found that as long as blacks were provided with “separate but equal” facilities, Black and White segregated schools were acceptable. The problem is, they weren’t equal at all. They were inferior school facilities.
Black leaders were divided on how best to respond cases like Plessy. Booker T. Washington urged that blacks should not actively agitate for equality, but should acquire craft skills, work industriously, and convince whites of their abilities. W. E. B. Du Bois insisted instead (in The Souls of Black Folk, 1903) that black people must ceaselessly protest Jim Crow laws, demand education in the highest professions as well as in crafts, and work for complete social integration. They didn’t like each other much, and their enmity grew. DuBois, who was close to Florence Kelley, NCL’s leader for our first 33 years, was the driving force behind the formation of an organization to fight for the rights of Black Americans. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded to advance these ideals and Florence Kelley was involved in these early gatherings and today continues to be a vital and critically important organization as does the NCL.
Indeed, as I listened this week to financial guru Suze Orman, Harvard Professor Cornell West and media personality Tavis Smiley continue on their Poverty Tour of America this week, I was flanked on either side by friends from the NAACP. As we continue to work together to battle poverty and racism here are some stark statistics to contemplate:
- the black unemployment rate is twice that of whites.
- the average Black family’s household income fell 3 percent from 2009 to 2010, while white and Latino income fell only 1.7 and 2.3 percent, respectively.
- While poverty rates for all ethnic groups were in the double digits in 2010, the African-American community was faring the worst, by far. More than one in four Black Americans is now living below the poverty line.
- The economic gains made by African-Americans since the end of World War II and into the aughts have now been mostly decimated. Beyond that, the longer people are unemployed and poor, the less likely they are to be able to take advantage of educational opportunities, and the more likely the are to fall into bad habits
So while we celebrate the life of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. we can’t look at these terrible numbers and do justice to his memory unless we rededicate ourselves to fighting against the effort to destroy the middle class in America, to dismantle union and the decent jobs they provide paying good wages and benefits.
A local minister, Rev. William Lamar, the senior pastor at Turner Memorial AME Church in Hyattsville, Md says it well:
“When it comes to political discourse, during this presidential campaign season, I don’t hear the language that I think honors Dr. King. I don’t hear much talk about poverty, policy solutions to help with the large number of children in American who are living in low income situations. To really honor King, we need to reinvigorate King’s message of uniting Americans around solving the poverty and vast income inequality that exists in America.”
Thank you for those words, Reverend Lamar, and we join you in honoring the work of Dr. MLK Jr. by speaking out against poverty and encouraging our leaders to do so as well.
You go, Suze! Friday, January 13, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in finances, Sally Greenberg.Tags: Approved card, Cornel West, Kardashian Kard, Ron Lieber, Suze Orman, Tavis Smiley
add a comment
By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
Financial guru Suze Orman launched her “Approved Card” this week to much fanfare – on Sunday Ron Lieber profiled the card in the New York Times. Orman appeared on the daytime television show, The View, hosted by Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg, and she strolled through the Paramus, NJ mall on camera and talked with average consumers. Lieber is a columnist with a bias in favor of consumers who are getting slammed by big corporate interests. His response to Suze’s card was mostly high praise; he ended the column with this:
“…I asked her to put her hand on one of the money bibles she has written and swear not to raise Approved card fees in the next 24 months. She said she would shut the card down before that happened. ‘I am not going to make money off the 99 percenters’ backs,’ A pledge like that takes guts, and anyone who has browbeaten TransUnion into even considering a big change deserves praise. Here’s hoping that she succeeds in her credit mission — and that other media personalities like Dave Ramsey and Jim Cramer put the heat on companies in other high-fee, low-service industries and make them sweat, too.
If you’re like me, the Suze Orman you know is the very charismatic – and bossy – TV personality who tells Americans to stop spending beyond their means, to figure how to improve their FICO scores, and get a budget you can afford and stick to it.
But yesterday another – and equally admirable - Suze Orman appeared at the National Press Club – flanked by radio talk show host Tavis Smiley and the Harvard Professor Cornel West and the topic was poverty, the disappearance of the middle class and how big banks and credit card companies with their hidden and predatory fees are taking money from the pockets of poor people. And that scenario, Suze said, is what motivated her to develop a prepaid debit card that isn’t out to earn its namesake – the card is called “The Approved Card from Suze Orman” – big bucks, but instead has a salutary goal: first, you can’t spend beyond your means as so many consumers do with credit cards because the Approved Card is like cash – you only load the cash you have onto the card, and second, and more important, over time if consumers use the card wisely, those who don’t have a FICO score or have a low one, and are thus punished by exorbitant fees on insurance, house or car loans, can get build up their credit and get a decent FICO score. The card has minimal fees – $3 a month maintenance and ATM usage charge of around $2 a transaction, none of those hateful Kim Kardashian card -fees which charged you to load the card, to cancel the card, and a huge monthly maintenance, etc etc etc
Orman, Smiley and West were heading to George Washington University last evening for a forum on poverty in America and how to get America – and our presidential candidates – talking about it again. Suze Orman – who understands financial products better than anyone – and preaches personal financial responsibility like no one else– also says that many Americans have been driven into bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty often through no fault of their own – they were directed to subprime loans, they are underwater on mortgages they didn’t understand (by design) they were issued credit cards and opened bank accounts that imposed every sort of fees and penalties that eventually ate away at their savings. It’s a narrative that rings true for so many of the people we represent at the National Consumers League.
So I’m with the New York Times: Go Suze! Here’s hoping that your card puts the heat on companies with high fees and low services, and ultimately helps consumers climb out of debt and build back their credit. And keep doing it: help build back the middle class and using the bully pulpit to talk about poverty in America and what can be doing to fight it – you have the floor – and the microphone – and we thank you for using it on behalf of those who voices are so rarely heard.
Cephalosporin prohibition a step in the right direction Monday, January 9, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in food and nutrition, health.Tags: antibiotics, drug resistant bacteria, extra-label, FDA, livestock
add a comment
By Teresa Green, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow
Last week, the FDA made an important decision to prohibit the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs in certain kinds of livestock. This means that these drugs can no longer be used for purposes other than their intended use. This is an important decision and one NCL supports.
When considering the issue of antibiotics in food-producing animals, it’s important to understand just how widespread antibiotic use is. 80% of the antibiotics used in this country are used in animals. Why is this number so astronomically high? There are several reasons why farmers use antibiotics in their livestock.
- Farmers use antibiotics when their animals become ill.
- Farmers raising large herds of animals will often put antibiotics in their feed preemptively. Because disease can spread quickly and widely in a crowded setting like a feedlot, many farmers see preemptive treatment with antibiotics as a necessary part of business.
- Farmers also give their livestock antibiotics for growth promotion. In these instances, antibiotics are given to a healthy animal to promote faster and more widespread growth. This treatment with antibiotics helps farmers’ bottom lines.
Unfortunately, the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock is leading to the development of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria. This is especially problematic when animals are treated with the same drugs that doctors give us when we become ill. Bacteria develop resistance to these medications, creating a situation where a doctor must utilize another treatment option, often one that is less effective, more expensive or has more negative side effects. The result is increased health costs and more people succumbing to illness.
FDA’s decision to prohibit the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs is an important first step in the fight to maintain the efficacy of drugs critical to treating human illnesses. The FDA should continue to examine this issue and consider further banning the use of other important antibiotics in animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the government department in charge of meat safety, should also make it illegal to sell meat that is infected with drug resistant bacteria. These two steps would go a long way towards protecting the efficacy of crucial antibiotics Americans use everyday.
Good way to start the New Year Friday, January 6, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in consumer rights, Michell McIntyre.Tags: CFPB, NLRB
add a comment
By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft
What a way to start the New Year! This week saw three exceptional events that signal an optimistic outlook for 2012. President Obama not only decided to use his executive power to make recess appointments but he used them to appoint Richard Cordray to the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and filled the three vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
With Cordray’s appointment to the CFPB, the Bureau can finally begin its vital mission of standing by consumers, demanding greater transparency about consumer financial products and pursing enforcement actions against financial firms who have defrauded consumers or otherwise violated federal rules. Without a director, the CFPB could not have moved forwarded with its critical work and consumers would be left at the mercy of financial institutions.
Later that same day, President Obama appointed three very qualified individuals to the NLRB – Sharon Block, Terence F. Flynn and Richard Griffin. With these appointments the NLRB can continue to police employers, unions, and workers. Without these bipartisan appointments the five seat NLRB would not have had a quorum, having only two seats filled as of January 3rd, and would have been paralyzed until the Senate confirmed the nominees.
None of these events could have happened without President Obama taking the step to stop the nullification of these federal agencies by the minority in the Senate. According to USA Today, when the Senate minority filibustered Cordray’s nomination last month, it was the first time in history the Senate blocked an appointment in an effort to effectively shut down an agency. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “We won’t support a nominee for this bureau – regardless of who the president is.” While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called it “the first time in Senate history a party blocked a qualified nominee solely because it disagrees with the existence of an agency that was created by law, through a bipartisan vote.”
When President Obama stepped up to the plate on Wednesday and used his executive power to make recess appointments, he not only hit it out of the ballpark but he hit a grand slam for American consumers and workers.
A big welcome to Mr. Cordray, the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau! Friday, January 6, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in consumer rights, Sally Greenberg.Tags: CFPB, Richard Cordray
add a comment
By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
A big thumbs up to President Obama for his bold recess appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is a federal agency created by and Act of Congress no less – that sets up a bureau of protection for consumers in their financial transactions with banks, pay day lenders, student loan companies, and many more entities. NCL strongly supported the establishment of the CFPB and we were enthusiastic supporters of its first interim director, Elizabeth Warren. The conservatives in Congress wouldn’t vote to confirm her so she left town and returned to Massachusetts, where she is running for Senate.
Richard Cordray delivering his speech at the Brookings Institute Yesterday
Cordray, however, believes in the same simple goals that Warren was so adept at articulating. I was fortunate to be in attendance yesterday when the Brookings Institution hosted Mr. Cordray’s “virgin” speech shortly after his appointment as he spoke on importance of the new bureau: “Consumer finance is a big part of our economy and it plays a large role in the daily life of almost every American,” said Cordray. “We are rightly concerned about these things because consumer finance clearly has become more complicated and more risky in recent years. Hidden fees and exploding interest rates have infected more products and services, novel and exotic mortgages, battered housing markets, and triggered the financial crisis that wrecked the economy and hurt millions of people,” he continued.
It’s as simple as that – consumers are faced with myriad financial decisions as a fact of daily life in America; unfortunately, the instruments they must sign, and the documents they agree to are far too complicated – indeed, they are a minefield. The Bureau aims to reduce these overly complex documents to a few pages of understandable prose and keep consumers out of trouble and financial institutions on the up and up.
I like Cordray; he’s a “steady-Eddie,” and though I must say that he lacks charisma or charm, he is utterly solid and thoughtful. How Congress gets away with not even holding a hearing on this very accomplished public servant and lawyer—Cordray’s a former Ohio States Attorney General, a former state treasurer, clerk to two Supreme Court justices, and a partner at a white shoe law firm—is beyond me. All consumers – left, right or center – will benefit from Cordray’s leadership at the Bureau to help set a model for uncomplicated financial documents and oversee financial institutions, from banks to pay day lenders.
If it has to be a recess appointment, so be it. We’re glad to have a leader at the Bureau and we wish him all the best in this tough but critically important new role.
New year, new (minimum wage) rules Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Posted by savvyconsumer in Michell McIntyre, state issues, worker's rights issues.Tags: Department of Labor, wage theft
add a comment
By Michell K. McIntyre, NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft
Thanks to some state legislatures, the start of the New Year means new rules for some workers. Eight states helped their workers with an increase in their state minimum hourly wage. Washington continues to lead the nation with the highest state minimum wage and is the only state with a minimum wage higher than $9. As of January 1, 2012, its minimum wage is $9.04 per hour. Seven other states also increased their minimum wages at the first of the year: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, and Vermont.
|
State |
Increase |
New Hourly Minimum Wage |
| Arizona | $0.30 | $7.65 |
| Colorado | $0.28 | $7.64 |
| Florida | $0.36 | $7.67 |
| Montana | $0.30 | $7.65 |
| Ohio | $0.30 | $7.70 |
| Oregon | $0.30 | $8.80 |
| Vermont | $0.31 | $8.46 |
| Washington | $0.37 | $9.04 |
As of the first of the year, San Francisco leads nationwide minimum hourly wages – federal, state, county, and city; and is the first in the nation to top $10 an hour. The minimum hourly wage increased by 32 cents from $9.92 to $10.24 per hour.
With the start of the New Year, California’s new Wage Theft Prevention Act and Employee Classification Act went into effect. The main points of the new Wage Theft Prevention Act:
- requires employers to provide workers, at the time they’re hired, a written disclosure of their basic terms of employment (the pay rate, the pay day, and the name and address of the legal employer)
- strengthens misdemeanor criminal penalties for employers who willfully fail to pay wages due in 90 days after final judgment
- allows a worker to recover attorney’s fees to enforce a court judgment for unpaid wages.
Some of the main points of the new Employee Classification Act include:
- making it unlawful for any persons or employer to engage in willful employee misclassification (classifying an employee as an ‘independent contractor’ rather than an ‘employee’)
- making it unlawful to charge any fees or make any deductions in a worker’s paycheck for expenses (space rental, services, repairs, good or materials, etc.) where such deductions would have been unlawful had the worker been classified as an employee
- increasing penalties that can be assessed against any employer for willful employee misclassification
- requiring employers who have been found to have committed employee misclassification to display a notice to its employees and the general public on their Web site and/or each location where it occurred.
This New Year, please take the time to examine your paystub and double-check that you’re being paid the correct amount. Remember, the Department of Labor has tools to help you track your pay, overtime and vacation time – an app for your smartphone and a printable work hours calendar in English and Spanish.
Sugar contents in popular cereals not so sweet Friday, December 30, 2011
Posted by savvyconsumer in food and nutrition, Sally Greenberg, Uncategorized.Tags: cereal, Environmental Working Group
add a comment
By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director
Hats off to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) for its unmasking of the atrocious amounts of sugar that cereal makers are putting into their products. EWG found that servings of three cereals—Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, Post Golden Crisp, and Wheaties Fuel—contain more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie! Another 44 contain more sugar than three Chips Ahoy cookies. Sugar is more than a third of cereal by weight in more than 36 types.
This is particularly galling since the industry came down like gangbusters on a mere voluntary series of guidelines proffered by four federal agencies (FTC, CDC, USDA, and FDA) in a report that suggested reducing levels of sugar in cereal would be a healthy move by the manufacturers. The guidelines are, in fact, pretty moderate. They would allow 13 grams of added sugar per 50 grams of cereal, amounting to one-quarter of the sugar by weight. Two in three of the cereals EWG tested exceed that level. The cereal industry hired lobbyists galore, and the authors of the report were forced to revise it.
Industry’s response to the EWG report? Once again, manufacturers cry that the report is unfair because only two of the 10 worst cereals are marketed to children. So their argument is that eight of the 10 are marketed to adults—2/3 of whom are overweight as it is? (Obesity rates have doubled for children age 2-11 and more than tripled for teens 12-19.) By industry reckoning, I guess its okay to throw the whole bowl of sugar into cereal as long as it’s being marketed to those of us who should know better. No, we Americans need to be weaned from our expectation that everything we eat needs to be extra sweet or extra salty (see NCL’s recent comments on FDA’s proposal for sodium reductions). Excessive amounts of sugar and salt contribute to obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke and industry clearly won’t reduce those levels on its own.
Thanks to EWG for its report, and shame on the cereal industry for pandering—indeed helping to create—the American sugar addiction. I hope this study serves as a further wake up call to an industry needs to reform its ways.
