Should I send this one to the DHS?

1. Engage in "privacy self defense." Don't share any personal information with businesses unless it is absolutely necessary (for delivery of an item, etc.). Don't give your phone number, address, or name to retail stores. If you do, they can sell that information or use it for telemarketing and junk mail. If they ask for your information, say "it's none of your business," or give "John Doe, 555-1212, 123 Main St." Don't return product warranty cards. Don't complete consumer surveys even if they appear to be anonymous. Profilers can build in barely-perceptible codes that link you to the survey, and this data goes straight to direct marketers.

2. Pay with cash where possible. Electronic transactions leave a detailed dossier of your activities that can be accessed by the government or sold to telemarketers. Paying with cash is one of the best ways to protect privacy and stay out of debt.

3. Install anti-spyware, anti-virus, and firewall software on your computer. If your computer is connected to the Internet, it is a target of malicious viruses and spyware. There are free spyware-scanning utilities available online, and anti-virus software is probably a necessary investment if you own a Windows-based PC. Firewalls keep unwanted people out of your computer and detect when malicious software on your own machine tries to communicate with others.

4. Use a temporary rather than a permanent change of address. If you move in 2005, be sure to forward your mail by using a temporary change of address order rather than a permanent one. The junk mailers have access to the permanent change of address database; they use it to update their lists. By using the temporary change of address, you'll avoid unwanted junk mail.

5. Opt out of prescreened offers of credit. By calling 1-888-567-8688 or by visiting https://www.optoutprescreen.com/, you can stop receiving those annoying letters for credit and insurance offers. This is an important step for protecting your privacy, because those offers can be intercepted by identity thieves.

6. Choose Supermarkets that Don't Use Loyalty Cards. Be loyal to supermarkets that offer discounts without requiring enrollment in a loyalty club. If you have to use a supermarket shopping card, be sure to exchange it with your friends or with strangers.

7. Opt out of financial, insurance, and brokerage information sharing. Be sure to call all of your banks, insurance companies, and brokerage companies and ask to opt out of having your financial information shared. This will cut down on the telemarketing and junk mail that you receive.

8. Request a free copy of your credit report by visiting http://www.annualcreditreport.com. All Americans are now entitled to a free credit report from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union. You can engage in a free form of credit monitoring by requesting one of your three reports every four months. By staggering your request, you can check for errors regularly and identify potential problems in your credit report before you lose out on a loan or home purchase. Currently, these reports are available to residents of most western states. By September 2005, all Americans will have free access to their credit report.

9. Enroll all of your phone numbers in the Federal Trade Commission's Do-Not-Call Registry. The Do-Not-Call Registry (http://www.donotcall.gov or 1-888-382-1222) offers a quick and effective shield against unwanted telemarketing. Be sure to enroll the numbers for your wireless phones, too.

10. File a complaint. If you believe a company has violated your privacy, contact the Federal Trade Commission, your state Attorney General, and the Better Business Bureau. Successful investigations improve privacy protections for all consumers.

...The magazines -- typically sports, music and entertainment publications -- say the extra cost and effort of screening their subscribers are worth it as a way to help insulate liquor advertisers from accusations that they are targeting minors.

Otherwise, they fear a rerun of the precipitous drop in tobacco advertising they endured a few years ago when cigarette makers, once a mainstay for magazines, scaled back advertising after coming under fire for targeting young consumers...

The magazines' approach for the liquor companies borrows a practice from general-interest magazines like Time Warner Inc.'s Time and Sports Illustrated, which sell advertisers various editions of the same issue with ads targeting readers according to income, job title, age, sex, and geographic area. They use U.S. census data and credit-rating agencies to cull information about their readers.

For the 21-plus editions, publishers start with the names and addresses of their subscribers and run them against up to three outside databases, including that of the credit-rating agency Equifax, to find readers who are 21 and over. For instance, Spin has identified a group of 256,000 subscribers, out of a total subscriber base of 478,000, who turn up in a database showing that they are at least 21. Vibe developed its program from a similar offer it had
created for Kool cigarettes several years ago, according to Publisher Carol Watson. Magazines charge a premium of 10% to 20% of an ad's price to cover the extra production costs and database search.

"When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard to be selfish at Christmas," Stewart wrote from the federal prison in Alderson, W. Va. "I beseech you all to think about these women -- to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison."

Just as pumpkins are smashed at Halloween, a number of Nativity scenes fall victim to pranksters every year. But this year the number being vandalized or stolen appears to be higher than usual; the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights says it has logged twice as many complaints as in most years, and more are expected in the days leading up to Christmas.

Some see the rash of stolen Christ figures as indicative of hostility toward Christmas or Christianity.

"There will always be some young people who are drinking who would smash a menorah or a Nativity scene, whatever is there," said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, which places a Nativity scene in Central Park and has received several dozen reports of stolen Christ figures from around the country. "But this is happening so much this year, I can only see it as part of the trend of Christian-bashing and trying to stamp out Christmas. It started with the criticism of the Mel Gibson movie ["The Passion of the Christ"] earlier this year. The culture wars are at their height right now, and this is part of it."

Law.com reports:

...the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 opinion has ruled that the (Ector County) hospital district violated Urbano Herrera's First Amendment right to free speech.

His supervisor disciplined Herrera, a carpenter at Medical Center Hospital, after he wore the button in violation of the hospital's dress code. Herrera was an organizer for the Communication Workers of America (CWA), according to the 5th Circuit's Dec. 1 opinion in CWA and Herrera v. Ector County Hospital District, d/b/a Medical Center Hospital.

Herrera had refused to remove the button, telling his supervisor: "I'm not going to take it off. If you want it off, then you take it off."

According to the opinion, he took the button off after his supervisor made him read a copy of the hospital's dress code, which contains a non-adornment provision that prevents employees from wearing such insignias. But Herrera put the button back on after consulting with the CWA, which told Herrera his supervisor could not require him to remove it. He then had another confrontation with his supervisor...

Back in November 2001, a Washington Post article by Yuki Noguchi described how wireless phone providers test the cellular network for quality and outages. It's an excellent article:

The carriers contract with companies such as the one Rutledge works for -- LCC International Inc. in McLean -- to find the weakest spots in their networks and to compare their service to the competition's. Most also conduct their own tests.

Other than customer complaints, the drive tests are the only way Verizon Wireless can check its network, said John Johnson, a spokesman for the country's largest wireless-phone firm, which typically tests 2,000 miles a month in the Washington-Baltimore area. If a call is dropped, or if it fades out, Verizon can reprogram software in the network to make the signal stronger or plan to build another cell tower to increase its coverage, Johnson said...

Rutledge's van has six phones -- one for each of the Washington area's major wireless carriers: Verizon, Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nextel Communications Inc. and VoiceStream Wireless Corp. Every two minutes, each phone is directed by a computer program to make another call. A database keeps track of the strength of the signal, the quality of the transmission and whether the call runs into trouble...

Rutledge has worked for LCC for six years, and he said he's mapped nearly every city in the country that way, except the ones in New Mexico, which he figures is simply a matter of time.

The world's largest retailer said yesterday that it would match customers' donations up to a total of $1 million to the Salvation Army's red-kettle holiday drive. It is no coincidence that the retailer's beneficence comes on the heels of Target's decision to ban the Salvation Army from outside its 1,313 stores.

"The Salvation Army red kettles and the bell ringers are truly a holiday tradition worth keeping," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Betsy Reithemeyer in a statement that was a subtle jab at the chain's largest competitor...

The money goes to local Salvation Army efforts to help needy families, which at the holidays usually means providing food, toys and clothing -- no doubt purchased at local discount stores like Wal-Mart. Who says charity doesn't begin, and end, at home?

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that "About two-thirds of Food and Drug Administration scientists lack confidence in the agency's monitoring of the safety of prescription drugs now being sold, according to an FDA internal survey:"

The survey was conducted by the Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General, or OIG, but the full results were released to the public only after an advocacy group filed a Freedom of Information Act petition...

About 66% of the experts surveyed said they were not at all confident or only somewhat confident that the FDA adequately monitors the safety of prescription drugs once they are on the market...

The survey also asked the scientists if they had ever been pressured to approve a drug even though they had reservations about its safety, efficacy or quality. Of 360 responses, 297, or 82%, of the scientists said they did not feel they had been pressured. Sixty-three, or 18%, said they did come under such pressure.

You should know that when attorneys general sue these telemarketers for ripping off the public, the telemarketers hide under the skirt of the First Amendment. The good news is that the Supreme Court in 2003 rejected a First Amendment defense by a telemarketer who mislead call recipients about the amount of money that goes to the charity. That case is Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates, Inc.

...Death in Iraq is gently described by the "folded flag" given to parents and spouses. Federal borrowing for Social Security is called "upfront transition financing." The absence of forbidden weapons in Iraq has become the presence of "weapons of mass destruction program related activities."

Tort reform is now "reducing lawsuit abuse." Abortion melts into "a culture of life." Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is softened as part of "a comprehensive energy plan." And just as surely as a "frank exchange" has always been used to describe a testy meeting, woe to the person described, as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was recently by McClellan, as "someone we will continue to work closely with."

At times, Bush inadvertently drops the euphemism, as he did in 2002 when he declared, accurately but prematurely: "The policy of my government is the removal of Saddam." Moments later, he amended: "Maybe I should be a little less direct and be a little more nuanced, and say we support regime change."

At the moment, the most favored euphemism is "We never speculate." Of course, Bush and his aides speculate all the time, about democracy in Iraq, improvement in the economy and victory at the polls. But when McClellan declines to speculate -- as he did an impressive 13 times in Monday's afternoon briefing -- he's merely stating, "I will not answer."

Following a motion adopted last month by Parliament, the Canadian government is forming a task force to develop recommendations within a year for regulations limiting trans fat content "to the lowest levels possible."

...Trans fats, which appear on food labels as "partially hydrogenated" or "hydrogenated" oils, deliver a cardiovascular double whammy, raising "bad" cholesterol levels and lowering "good" cholesterol. Food processors like them, however, because they improve shelf life, taste and texture of cookies, crackers, cereals and myriad other products.

...Trans fats came into vogue largely in response to past health worries, first about animal fats and then about tropical oils, such as coconut and palm kernel oil, which are high in saturated fat. But more recent research has shown trans fats to be the most unhealthy fat of all.

...Both the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration must approve the use of cell phones in airline cabins. If the FCC rules in favor of a change, the FAA still isn't likely to seriously begin grappling with the question until 2006, pending results of its own studies.

For its part, the FAA has banned cell phone use aboard commercial flights because of concern that the transmissions could interfere with aircraft navigational equipment. The agency has commissioned a report by the nonprofit RTCA Inc., formerly the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, to examine the issue. So far, the FAA has not proved conclusively that cell phones interfere with navigation. But the agency has long preferred to err on the side of caution.

"The problem is there is no data or evidence that cell phones do or do not cause a problem," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

In its review, the FCC will address whether cell phones used on airliners are a problem for communications on the ground. An FCC study in 2000 found that dropped or blocked calls on the ground increased because passengers overhead were talking on their cell phones. Cellular signals coming from high altitudes are spread across several base stations, interfering with callers on the ground who are using the same frequencies.

...Airlines, aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and telecommunication companies such as Verizon have lobbied hard on the issue. Several carriers, recognizing that business travelers crave to remain connected, have won approval from the FAA and FCC to test how cell phones affect their own aircraft systems. American Airlines and Qualcomm Inc. conducted tests in the summer.

Overshadowed by headlines from the federal investigation into steroids distribution at a San Francisco-area laboratory is a little known fact: The U.S. already has criminal laws governing the use of steroids, but they are almost never applied to elite professional or Olympic athletes.

Instead, the steroids users police are far more likely to bust are men who never compete in any sport but work out in local gyms to look good when they take their shirts off. The major U.S. sports sanctioning bodies -- some of which regularly snare athletes with urine tests to screen for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs -- say they don't generally turn information about violations over to law enforcement agencies.

The sanctioning bodies say they know of few, if any, steroids arrests among their athletes over the past five years. No Olympians. No pro baseball players. No pro football players...

"For all the hand-wringing about steroids in sports, the guys who are getting put in handcuffs are the gym rats," says Rick Collins, a Carle Place, N.Y., attorney who specializes in defendants charged with steroids violations.

...rules designed to save citizens from harm have conspired with economic cautiousness to close wallets in continental Europe. A thicket of laws to protect employees ensnares retailers, keeping prices high and store hours short...Limits on consumer finance protect borrowers from indebtedness -- and stifle the use of credit cards. Western Europe has only 0.27 credit cards per person, compared with 2.23 in the U.S. State pension systems are running out of funds, so people save extra for their retirement. Moreover, many affluent Europeans just don't want to spend their free time shopping...

In France, the evening news repeatedly broadcasts features on the dangers of over-indebtedness, and regulations discourage borrowing to consume. For example, the French central bank requires credit cards to display clearly the words "Carte de Credit," to distinguish them from more popular, less-stigmatized debit cards, which draw directly on a checking account.

"The consumer doesn't want to show to the retailer that he is paying on credit," says Herve Kergoat, MasterCard International Inc.'s country manager for France. "In France there is a culture strongly averse to credit."

David Thesmar, an economics professor at the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique in Paris, doesn't even have a credit card. He and his wife want only enough money to meet their spending needs, and he would rather spend his free time with his kids than go shopping, he says. "I'm not a very big shopper," says the 32-year-old. "I don't feel bad when I buy cultural things like books or CDs, but it feels bad to buy futile things, especially when I buy clothes."

...while the average American spends more than $5,500 a year using credit cards, the equivalent figure for Germany is only $64, and for France just $30, according to Euromonitor International, a market-research company.

For this analysis, the holiday season was defined as November 1--January 31, when decorating or related activities (e.g., stringing and removing outdoor lights) usually occur...

During 2000--2003, a total of 225 fall-related injuries that occurred to persons treated in participating EDs were attributed to holiday decorating or related activities, yielding a weighted national estimate of 17,465 (95% CI = 12,751--22,179) injuries, an average of 5,822 injuries per season. The overall injury rate was 8.1 per 100,000 population (CI = 5.9--10.3). The majority of injuries (62%) occurred to persons aged 20--49 years. Persons aged >49 years sustained 24%, and persons aged 0--19 years sustained 15% of fall-related injuries.

Males sustained more injuries than females (58% versus 42%, respectively), although the rates for males (9.6) and females (6.7) did not differ significantly (relative rate [RR] = 1.4; CI = 0.8--2.1) (Table). The majority of falls were from ladders (e.g., while hanging holiday lights), followed by roofs (e.g., while mounting an artificial Christmas tree on the roof), furniture (e.g., while standing on a table decorating a Christmas tree, standing on a chair hanging holiday decorations, or standing on a step stool when hanging a tree topper), stairs, and porches. Other falls were caused by tripping over or slipping on holiday-related objects (e.g., tree skirts or ornaments). Among 46% of injured persons, injuries occurred to the extremities (i.e., arm/hand and leg/foot); most persons (88%) examined in EDs were treated and released, and 12% were hospitalized. Fractures were the most commonly reported injury (34%); approximately half (51%) of the fractures were caused by falls from ladders. Of those who fell from ladders, nearly half (47%) were hospitalized.

Loosening the ban could benefit wireless carriers such as Sprint Corp. as travelers use in-flight time to work and communicate, though most cell phones won't work once a plane reaches its cruising altitude, said Sprint spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook...

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency doesn't have its own ban on in-flight cell-phone use, though it has supported the FCC's rule and individual airline policies that regulate whether a traveler can make calls once a plane lands and before it reaches the gate.

While the FCC prohibits in-flight cell phone use because of concerns that communication by callers in airplanes will interfere with calls between on-ground users, the FAA is focused on whether cell phone use will interfere with a plane's navigation system, Brown said. An independent organization is reviewing that issue for the agency, she said.

Via BoingBoing.

Can money in politics kill you? Just ask one of the millions of people who took Vioxx to treat their arthritis pain, thinking it was safe, and who must now be wondering if they’ve unknowingly cut years from their lives...

"A look at what has happened at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ever since the pharmaceutical industry started pushing to loosen the agency’s process for reviewing the safety of new drugs suggests the answer is yes."

In our chapter on drug safety, we documented how pressure throughout the 1990s from the drugmakers­powered by tens of millions in targeted campaign contributions and hundreds of lobbyists­led the FDA to approve twice as many new medications in half the time they used to take, allowing several deadly drugs onto the market where they have since been linked to the deaths of over 1,000 patients...

According to David Graham, the associate director of the FDA’s office of drug safety, between 88,000 and 139,000 Americans probably experienced heart attacks or strokes after taking Vioxx, and 30 to 40 percent probably died. That’s anywhere between 26,400 and 55,600 people whose lives were prematurely ended. Even if Graham’s estimate exaggerates the drug’s deadly effects by a factor of ten, that’s still a death toll that matches or exceeds those killed on September 11, 2001...

Though questions about Vioxx first arose in 2000, a year after it was made available in the US, little action was taken by the FDA until recently because the drug industry had so successfully shifted the agency’s priorities. Under that pressure, Monday’s New York Times reported, the FDA had “slash[ed] its laboratories and network of independent drug safety experts in favor of hiring more people to approve drugs.”

Back in 2001, Public Citizen’s Health Reform Group warned that problems with Vioxx were more prevalent than Merck admitted, and criticized the company for not doing long-term studies comparing it to older, more proven drugs. The consumer group put the drug on its “DO NOT USE” list. But the FDA only sent the company a warning letter for running ads for Vioxx that didn’t mention the fact that patients taking it had five times as many heart attacks as patients taking a different pain reliever, naproxen. Merck preferred to tout research by its own employees and paid consultants claiming that Vioxx was safe and by sponsoring talks at national medical meetings aimed at selling doctors on the drug’s value.

The Times story shows that the FDA’s failure to police Vioxx’s dangers more thoroughly was part of a larger pattern of inattention. “Dozens of former and current FDA officials, outside scientists, and advocates for patients say that the agency’s efforts to monitor the ill effects of drugs that are on the market are a shadow of what they should be,” the Times’ Gardiner Harris reported...

Mokhiber: Scott, on the Middle East - many evangelical Christians in the United States are supporting right-wing Jews in Israel who want to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They (Evangelical Christians) believe this is a prerequisite for Christ's return to earth.

They believe that when Christ returns to earth - they call this the rapture - he will take back with him the true believers. And the rest - the non believers - Jews, Muslims - will be left behind to face a violent death here on earth.

My question is, as a born again Christian, does the President support efforts to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount?

Scott McLellan: Russ, we can sit here and talk about religious issues. I will be glad to take your question, and if there is more, I will get back to you on that.

Mokhiber: Is he a born again Christian?

Scott McLellan: Thank you. (McLellan abruptly ends the press briefing and walks out.)

Amway -- an abbreviation of American Way -- was born in 1959 and relied on a network of individual distributors who sold soap, shaving cream, furniture polish, detergent, cookware and cosmetics, among other goods. Those distributors, in turn, enlisted others to sell products and received a percentage of their recruits' orders...

A lingo developed inside the company, with those known as "Black Hats" making up to $300,000 annually. As interest in the company grew, it was posited that some of the biggest distributors were making profits at the expense of recruits by strong-arming them to buy far more Amway goods than they could sell. Plus, they were pushing the company's own self-improvement publications on the fledglings at a cost of several hundred dollars.

The Federal Trade Commission spent years investigating the company in the 1970s on the grounds that it was a pyramid scheme, but the investigation went nowhere. Other FTC charges stuck, included a ruling that Amway improperly fixed prices...

Books with such titles as "Fake It Till You Make It," written by a former distributor, and "Amway: The Cult of Free Enterprise," became bestsellers and contributed to the company's sales hemorrhages in the 1980s...

Mr. Van Andel, who saw himself as a clean-living, Christian fundamentalist, also gave more than $500,000 to an eponymous creationist scientific institute in the desert of northern Arizona. One scientist there was trying to prove that God created the world in six days.

"For me, the greatest pleasure comes not from the endless acquisition of material things, but from creating wealth and giving it away," he wrote in his autobiography, "An Enterprising Life" (1998). "The task of every person on earth is to use everything he's given to the ultimate glory of God."

The D.C. Council approved legislation yesterday that will require District owners of large, luxury sport-utility vehicles to pay a higher excise tax and registration fee next year, after concluding that the vehicles contribute to air pollution and street damage.

But under the new legislation, residents with clean-air hybrid cars will no longer have to pay an excise tax and will have their vehicle registration fees cut in half...

The new excise tax on large SUVs would increase from 7 percent to 8 percent of the vehicle's market value. An owner whose SUV has a sticker price of $60,000, for example, would pay an excise tax of $4,800, an increase of $600. The excise tax is a one-time payment made when an owner registers the vehicle.

The vehicle registration fee on SUVs also will increase, from $115 to $155.

POLL RESULTS
Americans ranked public service professions highest in honesty and ethics.
1. Nurses
2. Grade school teachers
3. Druggists, pharmacists
4. Military officers
5. Medical doctors
6. Policemen
7. Clergy
8. Judges
9. Day care providers
10. Bankers
11. Auto mechanics
12. Local officeholders
13. Nursing home operators
14. State officeholders
15. TV Reporters
16. Newspaper reporters
17. Business executives
18. Congressmen
19. Lawyers
20. Advertising practitioners
21. Car salesmen

Source: Gallup Poll

...Anthony has waged a guerrilla war against televangelism-"a multibillion-dollar industry," as he describes it, "untaxed and unregulated, that preys on the elderly and the desperate." The United States has an estimated eighty million evangelical Christians, and about twenty-five hundred ministries that broadcast to them over radio and television. Dallas, the buckle of the Bible Belt, is one of their unofficial headquarters. Fifteen miles from Trinity's ramshackle homes, its opposite number, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, owns a gleaming office building that resembles the White House. Since 1973, TBN has created a twenty-four-hour lineup of religious shows that now go out over forty-six satellites to nearly seven thousand television stations worldwide. A few of its most popular ministers, among them local figures such as Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland, tend to preach what's known as the "Prosperity Gospel," which promises health and wealth to all true believers and generous donors. Twice a year, TBN hosts "Praise-a-thons," which raise an average of ninety million dollars each.

Anthony calls this the "Gospel of Greed" and has made it his mission to expose its excesses. Six Trinity members are licensed private investigators, and they have a network of informants and undercover agents in ministries across the country. Their most damning discoveries have led to prosecutions for fraud and to exposes on "PrimeTime Live," on "Dateline NBC," in the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Trinity's admirers like to think of the foundation as the conscience of evangelical Christianity. Its targets prefer to call it a godless, penniless, and deeply annoying cult. "The televangelist I worked for not only feared Ole-he wanted to do him physical harm," one of Anthony's informants told me. "These guys think he's Satan incarnate."

...Trinity's approach to detective work hasn't changed much since 1988, when it began to investigate Robert Tilton… Tilton had the fastest-growing ministry in the country by then, with more than eighty million dollars a year in donations. He owned or had personal access to several lavish "parsonages," one of which was worth four and a half million dollars, and a hundred-and-thirty-two-thousand-dollar yacht. Yet his ministry, like any other church, was exempt from most federal and state taxes…

Two months later, Anthony showed up at the offices of Response Media, Inc., the marketing firm in Tulsa that handled Tilson's mailings…he had been in contact with Diane Sawyer, the co-anchor of the ABC news show "PrimeTime Live." Sawyer had become intrigued by Tilton while watching his antics on cable one night. After vetting Trinity, she had agreed to collaborate on an investigation. On the day Anthony went to visit Response Media, he was accompanied by two "media consultants": a cameraman from "PrimeTime Live," who had a video lens hidden in his glasses, and a producer for the show, who had concealed a microphone and a video recorder in her purse. For the next two hours, they documented just how well the psychology of direct mail-with its crude manipulation of curiosity, expectation, habit, and obligation-was suited to religion.

"New names is the key. Just think, New names," Jim Moore, the president of Response Media, told Anthony. The firm began by gathering the addresses of hundreds of thousands of Tilton's followers. Then ghostwriters put together a series of direct-mail packages. Some packages contained prayer cloths (a red one for healing, a blue one for miracles, a green one for financial breakthroughs) that Tilton promised to anoint if they were sent back to him. Others contained plastic angels and outlines of Tilton's feet for donors to stand on while praying. Whenever someone sent in a pledge and a prayer request, he received a personal reply from Tilton, mentioning his problem specifically and promising to talk to God about it. Then he received a bill for the pledge.

As the letters from donors poured in, they were bundled together in Dallas and sent to a bank in downtown Tulsa, Moore explained. But he couldn't, or wouldn't, say what happened next. How did Tilton handle the prayer requests- thousands of them a day?

…Sifting through the pizza scraps, crumpled invoices, and coffee-stained spreadsheets, they slowly pieced together Tilton's "Wheel of Fortune," as Anthony later called it. The letters made their way from Dallas to the main bank to the branch bank, where they were opened and stripped of donations. The prayer requests were then read by Internal Data Management employees, who summarized their contents with a simple code ("JBS" for "job needed," for instance, or "BAR" for "barren wife"; "PCA" for "rebellious child" or "FON" for "Bob, pls call me"). The codes were entered into computers and used to generate personalized form letters from Tilton. Anthony and Guetzlaff found thousands of prayer requests in the Dumpster behind the branch bank. One of them, which Anthony keeps in his wallet, was from a woman whose son had lost his job. If he didn't find work, she said, he might commit suicide. "I couldn't believe the callousness of this whole mechanized operation," Anthony says.

"PrimeTime Live" aired a series of exposes on Tilton, based on Trinity's research. The minister fought back from his pulpit and on his own show…

Less than two years later, Tilton's show was off the air and his wife had divorced him…

…Robert Tilton has a new show on cable TV, and Benny Hinn recently held a crusade in India for nearly five million people. Even Jimmy Swaggart, whose visits to prostitutes once shook the religious right, now broadcasts his show to more than fifty countries

…After the wave of televangelist scandals in the early nineties, the Federal Communications Commission considered a truth-in-advertising clause for religious solicitations. If a televangelist declared, on the air, that he had cured a donor's cancer or tripled his bank account, that claim would have to be verifiable. Anthony made three trips to Washington to lobby for the change, and was told that it was certain to pass. Then, in 1994, the Republicans won control of the House, thanks in part to the religious right, and the measure was quietly tabled.

There are a lot of people who basically pretend to be down and out in Berkeley who probably are middle class kids. One was holding a sign that read "take me home," another, "will take exams." Some of these guys have dogs. I feel bad for those dogs. They probably would do better unencumbered by their ineffectual owners.

Anyway, Orwell used to pretend to be poor to see how he was treated by society. In Down and Out in Paris and London (reviewed by John Baggaley here), Orwell discussed his jobs, traveling around, his companions, etc. It's an excellent read. And, the San Francisco Chronicle now has a series of articles about the homeless problem in that city.

I'm sorry; I had to scan this in. There is something about this ad--the idea that Hummel figurines are a good investment, the newspaper boy selling a self-congratulatory "aren't we great!" publication, etc. This is divine.

FWIW, when I worked at Hechinger in Maryland in high school and college summers, I found a manager's anti-union toolkit. It was a detailed booklet describing how a manager should address calls for a union, deal with the media, and report to headquarters about organizing. Hechinger drug tested employees (it's really fun to pee in front of another person) and did personality tests. I was a very hard working employee at Hechinger, and didn't think that the company needed to be organized. But finding that booklet was a real wake up call. The tactics seemed unfair; they were designed to squash the debate instead of having some form of democratic choice or dialogue. In retrospect, I realize that Hechinger was taking advantage of me and other employees. They kept me on part-time status, despite my weekly hours that often hit overtime. That not only stopped me from having benefits, it also displaced the normal full times who did get benefits. I worked really hard there for no good reason. Hechinger went bankrupt when faced with competition from Home Depot and Lowe's. Anyway, back to Wal-Mart:

...While its [Wal-Mart's] workforce has one of the best productivity records of any US corporation, it has kept the compensation of its rank-and-file workers at or barely above the poverty line. As of last spring, the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three.[4] Despite the implied claims of Wal-Mart's current TV advertising campaign, fewer than half— between 41 and 46 percent—of Wal-Mart employees can afford even the least-expensive health care benefits offered by the company. To keep the growth of productivity and real wages far apart, Wal-Mart has reached back beyond the New Deal to the harsh, abrasive capitalism of the 1920s...

One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

...Every store manager at Wal-Mart is issued a "Manager's Toolbox to Remaining Union Free," which warns managers to be on the lookout for signs of union activity, such as "frequent meetings at associates' homes" or "associates who are never seen together...talking or associating with each other."

The "Toolbox" provides managers with a special hotline so that they can get in touch with Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters the moment they think employees may be planning to organize a union. A high-powered union-busting team will then be dispatched by corporate jet to the offending store, to be followed by days of compulsory anti-union meetings for all employees. In the only known case of union success at Wal-Mart, in 2000 workers at the meat-cutting department of a Texas Wal-Mart somehow managed to circumvent this corporate FBI, and voted to join the UFCW in an election certified by the National Labor Relations Board. A week later Wal-Mart closed down the meat-cutting department and fired the offending employees, both illegal acts under the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB ordered Wal-Mart to reopen the department, reemploy the fired workers, and bargain with the union, but Wal-Mart has appealed the NLRB decision and the litigation continues.

...every seven or eight minutes, during the daylight hours, a loud and unfamiliar dose of birdsong overwhelms the block for about forty seconds: wailing, whistling, screeching; one distinctly unpigeon-like call after the next, in rapid succession.

...Parks Department officials, acting at the request of the mall association, installed the speaker two months ago, in an attempt to ward off the pigeons. They bought it from a company called Bird-X, and it is designed to project the sounds of various predators. It is the first and only such device in use in the city—an experiment. And perhaps it ought to remain that way.

Shortly after the elderly woman had departed, another woman, bundled up for a day outside, shuffled over, unzipped her jacket, and removed a plus-sized bag of Cheerios, which she then emptied, with a smile, on the patch of mostly bare ground behind the bench. Hundreds of pigeons descended, spilling over even into the path of northbound traffic. The woman began muttering in a foreign language and retreated to a bench across the street, in Verdi Square.

...Later, at dusk, a man named Greg Pappas passed by the mall on his way home. He paused below the Bird-X speaker. “It’s annoying, and it doesn’t work,” he said. “I live on the sixth floor over there, on Amsterdam, and I can hear that thing through my window all day.”

He went on, “The problem is, there’s this woman who comes here and feeds them, like, every day.” He turned and faced the dirt behind the bench. “And, whatever the pigeons don’t eat, the mice do. It’s disgusting—look, there’s hundreds of them.”

The Anti-Kinsey, Judith Reisman, accuses Alfred Kinsey of the "current state of sexual degeneracy: the repeal of laws against abortion, adultery, fornication, and even sodomy."

In ABA v. Lockyer, financial services companies are suing to invalidate a California law that provides individuals with strong privacy rights. In 2003, California enacted the California Financial Information Privacy Act, commonly known as "SB1." SB1 provides the strongest financial privacy protection in the nation. It allows customers to "opt-out" of information-sharing practices between affiliated institutions, companies that have common ownership. SB 1 also bars financial institutions from sharing information about consumers with nonaffiliated third parties unless an individual gives his or her express "opt in" consent. However, the legal issue in ABA is limited to the constitutionality of the "opt out" provision for affiliate sharing, and a series of other rights created by SB1 are not being challenged in this case.

In April 2004, the American Bankers Association (ABA), the Financial Services Roundtable and the Consumer Bankers Association filed suit arguing that SB 1 is preempted or superceded by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). As interpreted by the banking industry, the FCRA imposes a preemptive ceiling on state privacy statutes, thereby preventing any state or local regulation concerning affiliate sharing of consumer information.

However, District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. ruled otherwise, holding that the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (GLBA) allows states to erect stronger financial privacy protections. Judge England’s Amended Order, issued on July 9, 2004, concludes that (i) the FCRA was not intended to regulate the simple sharing of information between affiliates, (ii) the only reasonable reading of the FCRA preemption provision is that it prevents states from enacting laws that prohibit or restrict the sharing of consumer reports among affiliates, and (iii) the FCRA preemption provision does not broadly preempt all state laws regulating information sharing by affiliates.

On July 28, 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Plaintiff ABA's request for an expedited appeal of Judge England's decision. EPIC is preparing an amicus brief against preemption of SB1 to support California's and other states' efforts to regulate affiliate sharing.

Under a law going back to the period immediately after the Civil War, the government has long been the court of last resort in these kinds of cases. The statute makes it a crime to deprive any person of their rights "under color of law." Justice Department data going back for more than 25 years show that the high proportion of declined cases under this law has existed in every administration. In addition to national data, TRAC's report also provides information about how each US Attorney's office in the country has dealt with these sensitive cases in the last few years.

The Washington Post reports:

The CBS and NBC television networks have rejected an advertisement for the United Church of Christ that shows two beefy bouncers turning away a gay couple, a Latino woman and a disabled man outside a church.

Officials of the Cleveland-based denomination, which has nearly 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members, said the 30-second ad is intended to emphasize its inclusiveness. "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we," the ad says.

In a written explanation to the church's ad agency, CBS linked the ad to the issue of same-sex marriage and said it does not accept advertising "on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups . . . and the fact that the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the Networks," it said...

"If the church wants to say they are inclusive and open, that's a very positive statement that we are very happy to have on the air," said Alan Wurtzel, NBC's head of broadcast standards. "These folks are giving the impression that NBC is anti-church, anti-religion, anti-gay. It has nothing to do with that."

The problem with the bouncer ad, Wurtzel said, is that it "throws down the gauntlet at a variety of unnamed other churches" that allegedly do not accept gays or minorities. "It violates a long-standing NBC policy, which is that we do not accept commercial advertising that deals with issues of public controversy," he said.

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

A majority of Metro directors, who set policy for the region's subway and bus system, say they have never ridden a Metrobus or can't recall the last time they did. About half rarely or only occasionally ride the subway. And none is a daily passenger on either bus or train.

This really is no surprise. I think most of the boards in Washington are comprised of people who might not be the best fit for the specified mission. Just look at the Federal Trade Commission--I often wonder whether any of the five Commissioners have ever represented an actual consumer with an actual dispute against a business. Most appear to be big firm lawyers. Probably only represented businesses.

Wal-Mart has finally found a union it can live with.

Up to now America's largest employer has opposed every effort of its employees to form a union...

But that was the old Wal-Mart. Last week Wal-Mart announced that if its associates wanted a union to represent them, that would be hunky-dory -- as long as the union was affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a body dominated by the Chinese Communist Party...

...Wal-Mart...[has a]...preference for old-line communist-dominated unions in authoritarian communist states over any other kinds of unions anywhere else...

...Unions affiliated with the All-China Federation seldom push for wage increases or safer machinery. Indeed, the locals are often headed by someone from company management...

The leaders of genuine workers' movements in China don't end up running the All-China Federation. They're to be found in prison, in exile or in hiding...

When a company such as Wal-Mart is so plainly comfortable with authoritarianism abroad, it tells you something about that company's values at home. Bentonville regards the prospect of employee free association and organization within its stores with the same fear and loathing that Beijing feels at the prospect of free elections in China...

The noblest of the Bush administration's goals, surely, is that of spreading democracy. If it's serious about that task, though, there are places closer to home than the Middle East that could use a little democracy-spreading, and the American workplace is high on that list. Strengthening labor law would make it harder for employers such as Wal-Mart to thwart their workers' desire for an organized voice on the job. When America's largest employer feels more affinity for the political legacy of Mao Zedong than for that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, it's time to start democratizing our own back yard.

Have you been ripped off by your credit card company? Congressman Sanders wants to know your story.

• Have you been treated unfairly by your credit card company?
• Have your interest rates been raised?
• How high?
• Have you been hit with late fees?

Congressman Sanders is fighting hard in Washington to end the dirty tricks often used by card card companies to rip off American consumers. We need your help.

Tell us your story.

For more information click here...

Asked to name the company whose 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work just four months a year, the 48-year-old Zerg correctly answered "H&R Block." Jennings guessed "FedEx." Zerg ended up $5,602 ahead of her famous opponent, who immediately shook her hand and reached over to give her a congratulatory hug.