News & Articles

Years ago the delightfully-naughty movie star, Mae West, said: “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”
Less delightful are some of the purity claims of such food manufacturing giants as PepsiCo, which has long marketed a line of its Frito-Lay snack foods as “Simply Natural.” Natural? Anyone who’s even looked at one of the company’s strangely-puffed, caterpillaresque, cheese-powdered, “Cheetos” would have a hard time believing nature had anything to do with the concoctions. Sure enough, PepsiCo has quietly dropped the volatile “natural” claim from its snack packages, rebranding them with just the word “Simply.”
The multibillion-dollar food maker says the shift is merely a routine adjustment of its marketing scheme – but it comes only after consumer groups have taken Pepsi, Campbell Soup, and other manufactures to court in the past couple of years, successfully challenging their use of the “natural” phrase as deceptive hype.
PepsiCo settled one of its cases last year by paying out $9 million to the challengers and agreeing to stop labeling its Naked Juice brand as “all natural.” A marketing pitch for these drinks had bragged that they were “the freshest, purest stuff in the world.” The naked truth, however, was that they were not only juiced up with artificial vitamins and synthetic fibers, but also included an additive made from formaldehyde – a cancer-causing compound.
The conglomerates say that advertising terms like “natural” are widely-misunderstood by us stupid consumers. Well, there they go again, drifting from the truth and perverting plain English. “Natural” simply means what it says: Natural. As in, go squeeze an orange, and don’t dose it with formaldehyde and lies. To keep up with the industry’s drift from purity, link up with Organic Consumers Association: www.organicconsumers.org.
“PepsiCo rebrands ‘Natural’ products with ‘Simply,’” www.bostonglobe.com, January 25, 2014.
“Pepsi Forks Over $9 Million Settlement, Agrees to Stop Calling Naked Juice ‘Natural,’” www.organicconsumers.org, July 30, 2013.
“PepsiCo curbs ‘natural” label,” Austin American Statesman, January 25, 2014.

Sen. Pat Roberts puts on his crazy pants

In the Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy assessed the odd things she was experiencing and said to her little dog, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Lately, Sen. Pat Roberts has gained a new understanding of what Dorothy meant. The Kansas Republican has been in the US Senate for 18 years and was in the House for 16 years before that. So he’s been away for a long time, and now that he’s running for another six year senate term, Roberts has learned that the Kansas he thought he was from – a state of relatively-moderate, Eisenhower-style Republicans – has become the Political Land of Right-Wing Oz.
A rabidly-extremist, Koch-headed, tea party Republicanism has taken hold of the GOP’s primary process and blown out the moderates. The upshot for Roberts is that Republican voters are now hard-right, howl-at-the-moon lunatics who demand ideological purity over everything else. Worse for Pat, they’ve put up one of their own to run against him in the August primary.
But, By Gollies, the senator is fighting back! Unfortunately, not by standing on principle and refusing to be intimidated by crazies. Instead, Roberts has put on his crazy pants, altered his beliefs, and is dancing like a fool with the ideologues. He recently opposed the farm bill he helped write, he joined the certifiably-goofy Ted Cruz of Texas in the silly political stunt that shut down the government of the USA last October, and he even became part of the tinfoil hat club by voting against a United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities.
Come on Pat, you’ve been in Congress for 34 years, you’re 77 years old, and you’re getting a gold-plated pension for the rest of your life. Is six more years in the senate really worth selling out people with disabilities – and selling out your own integrity?
“Lacking House, Senator Renews His Kansas Ties,” The New York Times, February 8, 2014.

The psychic pain borne by the rich

One thing about the tea party Republicans in Congress is that they do know who butters their biscuits. Several have recently rushed forward with an anguished plea in defense of Wall Street barons, CEOs, and billionaires: “Stop the vilification of wealthy people,” is their cry.
A crusade to protect pampered plutocrats from having to hear the public’s scornful words about them is not likely to draw much support from… well, from the public. Still, it is true that being a 1 percenter is not an easy burden to shoulder. Yes, they do have money and power, but don’t you see, they never have enough. If your sense of self-worth is tied up in your net worth, then what if your net is comparatively small?
It’s important for us riff-raff to realize that there are the rich – and then there are THE RICH. The relativity of status within the 1 percent creates enormous stress, even feelings of wealth inadequacy. They’re constantly thinking: “Is his bigger than mine?” Imagine if you had to live with that!
Perhaps you didn’t know, but the average household income for the 1 percent as a whole is a mere $1.26 million a year. Okay, that’s rich, but it’s not RICH. For that honorific, you have to step it up many notches and climb into the elite class of the richest one-tenth of 1 percenters. Their average household wealth is $6.37 million a year. Now that’s money.
Yet, it’s not enough. Those elites are looked down on by an even thinner slice of net worthies: The royal class of the richest one one-hundredth of 1 percenters. This is the stratosphere where the richy-richiest of THE RICH dwell, making ends meet on an average household income of $31 million a year.
Come on, people, have some feeling for the psychic pain of those who’re struggling to keep up with the one one-hundredths of 1 percent. It’s a tough world up there.
“Even Among the Richest of the Rich, Fortunes Diverge,” The New York Times, February 11, 2014.