Record Christmas Bonuses on Wall Street

By Naomi Spencer
From World Prout Assembly
2007

As millions of US households struggle with unmanageable mortgage payments, falling home values and foreclosure, Wall Street executives are awarding themselves record year-end bonuses.

Major US banks are reporting billions of dollars in write-offs from bad investments and double-digit losses in stock value. Nevertheless, among the four largest investment firms—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns—bonuses amount to nearly $30 billion.

Year-end payouts on Wall Street are 14 percent higher this year than last, bringing total compensation at the four firms to nearly $50 billion for 2007. Bonuses have increased at double-digit rates year after year on debt speculation and spiking energy and home costs, which have hurt working class families. To put these compensation packages in perspective, the entire budget for New York City, employing a quarter of a million people, is $59 billion in fiscal year 2008.

The Wall Street bonuses alone far surpass the combined funds for the city’s fire and sanitation departments, all of the city’s health, hospital, welfare, homeless, children’s and social services, and the municipal funding of the education department and the university system of New York City. The bonuses are more than the federal government’s discretionary budget for Housing and Urban Development, and more than the combined discretionary budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs—which pulled in profits of $11.6 billion, 22 percent higher than 2006, by positioning itself against other major firms which were entangled in the sub-prime mortgage crisis—is distributing a massive $12.1 billion in bonuses. Including compensation, Goldman Sachs will hand out $20.2 billion for the year, up from $16.5 billion in 2006.

Goldman Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein claimed a record bonus totaling nearly $68 million, including $26.8 million in cash and $41.1 million in stock and options. Blankfein raked in the previous record, $54 million, last year. Goldman co-presidents Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried were each given bonuses worth $40.5 million, up from $26 million apiece in 2006.

Investment firm Lehman Brothers reported total compensation of $9.5 billion, a 9.5 percent increase over last year, and bonuses of $5.7 billion. CEO Richard Fuld Jr. received a $35 million stock bonus. According to Forbes, Fuld’s five-year compensation total, excluding this latest bonus, is nearly $312 million.

The media has made much of the announcements from Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns that their chief executives will not be given bonuses due to their dismal earnings reports and falling share values. Reuters commented December 20 that “even top performers at some firms are getting pinched” by the collapse of the sub-prime and credit markets. “It’s a bloodbath on the credit side,” capital markets analyst John Kim told the news agency. “It’s going to be brutal. The bonus pool is shrinking.” Yet Morgan Stanley, the second largest securities firm, reported a decline in earnings of 60 percent over the year and a $9.4 billion write-down in debt securities holdings for the fourth quarter at the same time as it announced an 18 percent rise in compensation packages, to $16.6 billion.

Securities firm Bear Stearns posted its first-ever quarterly loss and reduced earnings estimates by nearly $2 billion. The company reported reduced compensation packages of $3.4 billion, down from $4.3 billion in 2006. These figures are certainly not making top Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns executives uncomfortable in their featherbeds. While Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack forgoes a bonus this year, last year he was given $40 million in compensation. Forbes puts Mack’s annual compensation, excluding bonuses, at $7.46 million, and his stock ownership at more than $220 million.

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne is estimated to hold more than $1.3 billion. Last year Cayne was paid $38 million in cash and held $59 million in stock options. As the company reported that two of its hedge funds had collapsed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Caynes spent his days chartering cross-country flights to attend bridge tournaments and play golf.

Even CEOs who resigned or were removed from their positions because of disastrous write-downs continue to reap windfalls. Stanley O’Neal, CEO of Merrill Lynch until being removed in October, is not receiving his bonus this year, but has been awarded more than $161 million in securities and retirement package.

Citigroup CEO Charles Prince resigned in November after forecasting $11 billion in sub-prime mortgage investment losses on top of $6.5 billion already written down. He was handed an exit package of $95 million, including $30 million in stocks and options, and will continue to get a bonus based on Citigroup’s share price.

Noting the enormous growth in award amounts, executive recruiting firm Boyden World Corp. director Jeanne Branthover told Bloomberg news on December 24, “What you’re seeing is historic. It’s going to set a pattern in the future for how people and firms differentiate themselves in extraordinary times.”

Indeed, these are extraordinary times. Such figures epitomize the deepening social divide between the parasitic upper crust and the mass of the US population. Inequality has grown sharply in recent years on tax cuts, speculation and outright fraud, at the expense of general living standards and the productive base of society.

The federal Congressional Budget Office reported earlier this month that between 2003 and 2005, the income of the richest one percent of the population rose more than the combined total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans. The richest 3 million people saw their income increase from $1.3 trillion to $1.8 trillion, equal to the combined total income of the bottom 166 million Americans.

This grotesque concentration of wealth has real consequences for the dynamics of economic life. As Wall Street executives claw up tens of millions, on New York City on any given night thousands of people seek emergency assistance from city shelters. The city’s Department of Homeless Services census count for December 21 put the total shelter occupancy at 35,419, including more than 15,000 children.

Nationwide, millions of working class households contend with exorbitant housing, heating and debt payments, largely the byproduct of investment firm profits. Home foreclosures continue to surge throughout the country as prices decline and sub-prime mortgage interest rates reset. More than 36.5 million people live below the artificially suppressed official poverty line. The rising cost of housing, energy, basic foods and gasoline have pushed the poorest families into desperate situations, strained emergency food banks and charities, and compounded the trend toward recession.

Meanwhile, Elite Traveler magazine reports that households worth at least $10 million are spending 67 percent more on the holidays this year. In addition to the usual jewelry, electronics, cars, yachts, and vacation homes, the super-rich are also splurging on private islands and private charter jet flights.

One of the most popular gift items this year, according to the magazine, is a $40,000 gift card redeemable for ten hours of luxury flying. The Lufthansa private jet service, the magazine says, “offers personal assistants, a cigar lounge, luxury bathrooms and integrated passport control and security checkpoints. Cuisine features a daily assortment of sushi as well as some 43 vintage Armagnac brandies.” From the lounge, “A chauffeured Mercedes S-class or Porsche Cayenne whisks travelers directly to their awaiting jet.”


Canada puts U.S., Israel on Torture Watchlist

By David Ljunggren
From Canada.com
2008

Canada's foreign ministry has put the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured and also classifies some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel.

The document -- part of a training course on torture awareness given to diplomats -- mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.

The man, Omar Khadr, is the only Canadian in Guantanamo. His defenders said the document made a mockery of Ottawa's claims that Khadr was not being mistreated.

Under "definition of torture" the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners. A spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier tried to distance Ottawa from the document. "The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government," he said.

The document was provided to Amnesty International as part of a court case it has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Khadr has been in Guantanamo Bay for five years. He is accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a clash in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15.

Right groups say Khadr should be repatriated to Canada, an idea that Prime Minister Stephen Harper rejects on the grounds that the man faces serious charges.

"At some point in the course of Omar Khadr's detention the Canadian government developed the suspicion he was being tortured and abused," said William Kuebler, Khadr's U.S. lawyer.

"Yet it has not acted to obtain his release from Guantanamo Bay and protect his rights, unlike every other Western country that has had its nationals detained in Guantanamo Bay," he told CTV television.

Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. A spokeswoman at the U.S. embassy said she was looking into the report. No one was immediately available for comment at the Israeli embassy.

The torture awareness course started after Ottawa was strongly criticized for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.

Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An inquiry into the case revealed that Canadian diplomats had not received any formal training into detecting whether detainees had been abused.

© Reuters 2008


Canada Takes U.S., Israel off Torture Watchlist

By David Ljunggren
From Reuters

Canada's foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.

Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.

Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, which also classified some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture. "It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten," Bernier said in a statement.

"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."

The document -- made available to Reuters and other media outlets -- embarrassed the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said the listing was absurd while the Israeli envoy said he wanted his country removed.

Asked why the two countries had been put on the list, a spokesman for Bernier said: "The training manual purposely raised public issues to stimulate discussion and debate in the classroom."

The government mistakenly gave the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. No one from Amnesty was immediately available for comment.

Under "definition of torture" the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners. It also mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where a Canadian man is being held. The man, Omar Khadr, has been in Guantanamo Bay for five years. He is accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a clash in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15.

Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. The foreign ministry launched the torture awareness course after Ottawa was rapped for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.

Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An official inquiry into the affair showed Canadian diplomats had not been trained to detect whether detainees might have been abused.


Press Release for "Chew on This" (Excerpt)

From Houghton Mifflin Company

When the award-winning journalist Eric Schlosser's groundbreaking book Fast Food Nation was published for adults, many called for his insights and research to be shared with young readers. They are, after all, the fast-food industry's biggest consumers. In Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food, Schlosser, along with co-author Charles Wilson, presents the fast-food industry to preteens, focusing on the aspects that will interest them most — the nonconformist teen entrepreneurs who founded the industry; the mistreatment of animals in slaughterhouses and employees in restaurants; the shocking effects too much fast food can have on growing bodies; and the impact of the industry on schools, communities, and the earth.

Kids love fast food. And the fast-food industry loves kids: it couldn't survive without them. In Chew on This, Schlosser and Wilson share with young readers the fascinating and sometimes frightening truth about what lurks behind those sesame seed buns. The book begins with a historical look at the beginnings of the fast-food industry, illustrating how its growth helped determine the urban and rural landscape of America and paved the way for the chain stores and malls of today. Young readers will get an intriguing bit of business history when they learn how high school dropouts and traveling salesmen started the restaurants they frequent. They'll see how the introduction of chain restaurants both benefits and harms small communities all over the country.

Stomachs will turn and tempers will flare as the authors shine a light on the grisly conditions in a chicken slaughterhouse, explain how market research firms study kids, and learn how those delicious fast-food smells are manufactured off a highway in New Jersey. The disgusting facts in Chew on This — and there are plenty of them — will surprise and scare readers. For example:

• A single fast-food hamburger may contain meat from hundreds, even thousands, of different cattle.
• Each can of soda contains more than ten teaspoons of sugar.
• A single animal infected with E. Coli 0157:H7 can contaminate thirty-two thousand pounds of ground beef.
• Chickens in slaughterhouses are sometimes killed by being thrown against walls or stomped on.
• Leftover waste from a cattle slaughterhouse is sometimes added to chicken feed.
• Leftover waste from a chicken slaughterhouse is sometimes added to chicken feed, turning the doomed birds into cannibals.

"What we eat changes not only how we look on the outside but also how we look on the inside," writes Schlosser. To explain the point, the authors include a "tour" of human body parts with the renowned heart surgeon Mehmet Oz. Dr. Oz illustrates in graphic detail the difference between healthy and diseased body parts and explains what can happen to those who stick to a fast-food diet.

More than just a litany against the fast-food industry, Chew on This is explicit about why kids need to be informed. The authors profile real teens whose lives have been affected by the fast-food industry. They talk to an eighteen-year-old boy who decides to have gastric bypass surgery; a twelve-year-old girl in Alaska who launched a "Stop the Pop" campaign to remove soda machines from her school; a teenage boy who helped unionize the McDonald's franchise where he worked — the first to do so — only to see the restaurant close shortly after; and two sisters living on a traditional ranch.

Chew on This addresses some of the most serious issues affecting our society, and its strong, fact-based narrative style, startling statistics, and eye-opening photographs will keep readers turning the pages. The average American child views forty thousand television commercials per year, almost half of which promote junk food. There are roughly nine million overweight or obese children in America and there's no reason to think that this number is shrinking. Corporations will continue to exploit workers, underpay farmers, and manipulate consumers unless they are forced to stop. Educators, parents, and health professionals have an important role in educating and helping young people make healthy decisions about the food they eat.

Change can only come about when young people themselves decide to think twice before they order a fast-food hamburger, fries, and a soda. Chew on This shows them that they can change the world by changing what they eat.

About the Authors
Eric Schlosser has been a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Nation, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Magazine Award and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for reporting. In 1998 Schlosser wrote an investigative piece on the fast food industry for Rolling Stone. What began as a two-part article for the magazine turned into a groundbreaking book: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001). The book helped change the way Americans think about what they eat. Fast Food Nation was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years, as well as on bestseller lists in Canada, Great Britain, and Japan. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Schlosser's second book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (2003), explored the nation's growing underground economy. It also became a New York Times bestseller. In 2003 Schlosser's first play, Americans, was produced at the Arcola Theatre in London.

Hoping to counter the enormous amount of fast food marketing aimed at children, Schlosser decided to write a book that would help young people understand where their food comes from, how it's made, how it affects society, and how it can harm their health. Written with Charles Wilson, Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food became a New York Times bestseller in the spring of 2006. Later that year, Fox Searchlight Pictures released a major motion picture based on Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater and cowritten by Schlosser. "It's a mirror and a portrait," the New York Times said of the film, "as necessary and nourishing as your next meal." Schlosser is currently at work on a book about America's prison system.

Charles Wilson grew up in West Virginia and has written articles for numerous publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Economist. He has worked at the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. His writing has often explored broader social issues through the lens of personal stories. As a young man, he helped round up beef cattle on horseback at his uncle's ranch. This is his first book.

A Conversation with Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson

Kids love fast food. Why did you write a book for them about its history and harmful consequences?
An editor came up with the idea not long after the 2002 paperback publication of Fast Food Nation [Eric's best-selling exposé of the fast-food industry, written for adults]. We were drawn to the challenge of recasting the material for a younger readership. It seemed that the people who needed this information most didn't have a way to get it directly. We decided to write a book for young people that wouldn't be condescending, preachy, or hectoring. We hope that Chew on This respects the intelligence of its readers and challenges kids to think for themselves.

The fast-food industry spends billions of dollars every year marketing unhealthy food to children. We felt that kids needed to hear the other side of the story. The eating habits that a person develops as a child are difficult to break later. And if a child is obese by the age of thirteen, he or she is likely to remain obese for life. The nutritional education of American children shouldn't be left to the fast food, junk food, and soda companies.

It's easy to take the fast-food industry for granted. It seems like fast-food restaurants are everywhere and have always been with us. The book tries to show that the growth of this industry wasn't inevitable. It was promoted by government subsidies, deceptive marketing, and individual choices. It can be changed through a different set of choices. We want to help kids think critically about the world around them and believe that a better world is still possible. Although Chew on This is full of disturbing and depressing information, it is grounded in a fundamental optimism.

You include a lot of historical information on the industry.
Chew on This traces the rise of the fast-food industry and its effects on how we work, how we eat, and how we live. It's a book both for and about young people. It begins in 1885 with a fifteen-year-old boy at a Wisconsin fair who invents the hamburger — and it winds up at the recent opening of a Burger King in Baghdad. The book traces the careers of the men who created fast food and describes how Walt Disney and Ray Kroc, the founder of the McDonald's Corporation, changed how products were marketed to children. It describes how the fast-food culture has transformed the American landscape, making cities and towns look the same, with the same chain restaurants and stores. It explores how the labor policies of the fast-food chains have affected the lives of teenage workers. It takes readers behind the scenes at a flavor factory, where the taste of fast food is manufactured, at a huge industrial French fry factory, at the poultry and beef slaughterhouses that supply the meat for burgers and chicken nuggets. It describes the efforts of the fast food and soda companies to target children in schools. And it looks at the impact that fast-food consumption has had on the health of America's children, telling the story of a young man in suburban Chicago and his struggles with obesity.

The book also offers grounds for hope. It introduces young people who are resisting the fast-food giants. It suggests that the future will bring a whole new attitude toward the production and distribution of food, encouraging sustainable agriculture and healthier diets. The goal of the book isn't to indoctrinate children with any single point of view. Our aim is to make kids think about what they're eating, where it comes from, and the consequences of every bite.

Did you approach the research for Chew on This in a different way than that for Fast Food Nation?
The research process for Chew on This was much the same: a mix of firsthand reporting and a lot of digging through archival and published sources. The fast-food industry is now global in scope, and we hoped to capture a sense of that in the book. Chew on This required a great deal of original research and investigative trips to Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, West Virginia, Alaska, Great Britain, and Singapore. The only real difference between the books is emphasis. For this book, we focused on how the industry affects the lives of young people. It wasn't hard to find good stories. The real difficulty was deciding which ones to tell. Just about every teen in America has some connection to fast food, for better or worse.

Fast food, in addition to tasting good, is cheap and easily accessible for almost everyone in America. Fresh produce and meats can be expensive and hard to find, making this an economic as well as a health issue. Is it realistically possible for everyone to eat fresh, healthy food?

One of the main points of the book is that fast food isn't cheap at all, once you add up all the social and health costs. Those French fries and shakes may seem inexpensive when you buy them. But if you add the cost of the dialysis when you develop diabetes from eating too much fast food, it's a pretty high price to pay. At the moment, the U.S. government heavily subsidizes the production of unhealthy foods while providing little direct support to ranchers and farmers who are producing the kind of healthy foods we should be eating. The poor are feeling the worst effects of these misguided policies. The food that they can most easily afford, in the long run, will damage their health. We need government policies that support the right kind of foods. And people need to realize that it's worth spending a little more money on what they eat. Americans now spend a smaller proportion of their income on food than any other society in history. There could hardly be a more important purchase, and, as with everything else, you get what you pay for.

Some folks might see the fast-food industry as an example of the success of capitalism.
In many ways the fast-food industry represents a perversion of free market capitalism. The major chains wield extraordinary power not only over the distribution and production of food, but also over the food and labor policy of the U. S. government. That's not what Adam Smith had in mind. The behavior of the industry and its suppliers brings to mind that of the nineteenth-century trusts, which controlled the American economy with an iron fist, setting prices, breaking unions, and ruthlessly eliminating independent businesses.

Are you vegetarians? Do you eat fast food?
Charles is a lifelong vegetarian. But he has tremendous respect for independent ranchers. His uncle used to own a ranch, and whenever Charles visited, he'd help round up the cattle on horseback. Eric still eats meat. His favorite meal is a cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate shake. He won't buy food, however, from any of the major fast-food chains. He simply doesn't want to give them any money. And for the same reason, he won't buy meat produced by the large meatpacking firms.

Fast-food restaurants are opening at a rapid pace around the world. There are protests, but there are also customers. Do you see this trend continuing? Why or why not?

Time will tell if the industry can continue to expand overseas. The major fast-food chains have run out of places to open new restaurants in the United States. The market has been pretty well saturated. And so this massive overseas expansion — which seems like a sign of the industry's strength and popularity — is actually a symptom of some underlying weaknesses. It's much more expensive to enter new countries than to open new restaurants close to home. The industry's growth seems to have run out of steam in Europe. China now offers the best hope of success. McDonald's is aggressively targeting children and teenagers there. But China is beginning to have its own obesity epidemic. It remains to be seen whether China will blindly follow our example when it comes to food, or learn from our mistakes.

Want to make a difference? You can!
Has Chew on This inspired you to make some changes in the food you purchase and eat? Here are some suggestions on where to start!

Start your own "Stop the Pop" campaign to remove soda machines from your school.
• Start a petition to give to your principal.

• Did you know there is the equivalent of ten teaspoons of sugar in a single twelve-ounce can of soda? Research the effects too much sugar can have on your health, both in the short term and the long term. Make posters showing these effects and hang them in the hallways.

• Try to stack twenty-two four-pound bags of sugar on top of one another — that's how much sugar the average American teenage boy consumes from soda every year.

Want fresh vegetables in your cafeteria? • Invite the person in charge of purchasing food for your school to your classroom. Ask questions about what they buy, and why. Ask whether they have the power to buy from local farmers and dairies. Do they have just one supplier? Or many?

• Take a field trip to your own school cafeteria and see how food is made behind the scenes. Talk to the cafeteria workers about their jobs — do they make food from scratch or does much of their work involve reheating frozen foods? Do they decide what to serve? Are they involved when the school gives health classes?

• Grow your own! Talk to your teacher about starting a school garden, or apply for a grant to get you started — visit www.kidsgardening.com to find out how.

Worried you are eating too much junk food?
• Take some cookbooks out of the library and whip up some healthy meals with your parents. Find a recipe that uses a food you've never eaten before.

• Visit a farmers' market. Visit www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm to find one in your area.

• When you go to fast-food restaurants with friends, order a salad instead of a burger.

• Drink water instead of soda at meals and after school.

• Bring a healthy lunch and snacks to school instead of purchasing food in the cafeteria.

• Compete with your friends! Count the number of foods in your lunch that haven't been processed. Each unprocessed food gets one point.

Upset by how animals and workers are treated at meatpacking plants?
• As a class assignment, write letters to your congressperson or senator explaining what you learned in Chew on This and why you think workers and animals deserve better. Give some suggestions on ways to improve things. They will listen! To find your local representatives' contact information, visit www.congress.org.

Support your locally owned restaurants!• Work with your teacher to invite local restaurant owners and fast-food franchise owners to your class. Ask them where they purchase their ingredients, and ask about their employee salaries and benefits. After they leave, discuss which restaurants you and your classmates feel comfortable supporting.

Publisher Urges Fast Food Giants to Focus on Facts, Kids' Health
Publisher Decries Swift Boat-Style Campaign Against Author Eric Schlosser
Houghton Mifflin Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Eamon Dolan today denounced the fast food industry's efforts to discredit the author Eric Schlosser and his books Fast Food Nation and Chew on This.

"In the five years since we published Fast Food Nation, the facts in the book have never been effectively refuted by the fast food industry," said Dolan. "It has become required reading at universities throughout the United States, routinely assigned by professors in a wide variety of disciplines. Yet now, with the publication of Chew on This, which Eric co-authored with Charles Wilson, the industry has launched a Swift Boat–style campaign against Eric rather than focusing on ways to improve adolescent health. Clearly the industry believes that when you cannot refute the message, it is better to go after the messenger."

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (April 12, 2006), McDonald's distributed a memo to franchisees in advance of the book's publication, alluding to plans to "discredit the message and the messenger." As also reported in the Wall Street Journal (May 18, 2006), groups including the Heartland Institute, the National Minority Health Month Foundation, the American Council on Science and Health, and the Center for Individual Freedom subsequently launched personal attacks against him. These organizations all have relationships with the conservative Washington lobbying firm the DCI Group, which counts McDonald's and Coca-Cola among its clients.

DCI Group specializes in what the Washington Monthly describes as "corporate-financed grass roots organizing" campaigns. Group principals have a long history of opposing public health initiatives, working on behalf of the tobacco industry, and relying on "front groups" that masquerade as independent and objective organizations. According to the New York Times, Chris LaCivita, a DCI associate, worked for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as a media adviser. Timothy N. Hyde, a DCI founding partner, was the senior director of public issues at R. J. Reynolds from 1988 to 1997. Hyde oversaw all of RJR's PR campaigns. The Associated Press reported in June 2001 that Tom Synhorst, the chairman of DCI, "has been linked to South Carolina push polls in the 2000 Republican primary that attacked candidate John McCain as 'a cheat, a liar and a fraud.'"

The attacks against Schlosser have been similarly personal and designed to harm his reputation. In early May, DCI Group published an attack site against Schlosser that argued he "is a politically motivated activist who plays on people's fears." The Heartland Institute — which has denied the existence of global warming and argues on its Web site that "the public health community's campaign against smoking is based on junk science" — has accused Schlosser and Wilson of engaging in "Nazi" tactics. In an essay on the site, Jay Lehr, the institute's science director, wrote: "In the 1930s Adolph [sic] Hitler recognized that . . . he could indoctrinate Germany's youth in support of his antihuman Nazi movement." He goes on to claim that Schlosser and Wilson, by writing a book that educates children about the health and other implications of fast food, are making the same effort in their "drive to socialize" America. The Heartland Institute's attack on Schlosser and Wilson is linked to Tech Central Station's Health Roundtable Web site, which is sponsored by DCI Group.

Referring to the McDonald's official press release regarding Chew on This, in which it claims to desire "objective and fair discussion" of issues related to fast food, Dolan called on McDonald's to demonstrate its commitment to that principle by halting its funding of DCI Group's Tech Central Station. "We're facing a serious threat to the health of our children, given the twin ills of obesity and diabetes. This is not a political issue, or a personal one. The fast food industry should see this as a challenge to be solved together rather than just another opportunity to engage in smear campaign tactics," said Dolan.

"Chew on This was published to inform kids about what they are eating, not to tell them what to eat," says Eden Edwards, the book's editor. "Schlosser and Wilson reveal what really goes into the food most American children consume by examining the entire supply chain, from the animals to the additives to how the workers are treated. They also explore the effects too much unhealthy food and drink can have on growing bodies."

Fast Food Industry Employs Swift Boat Tactics to Discredit Author
• A group sponsored by fast food companies and related trade groups has launched a campaign to smear the author Eric Schlosser, whose new book, Chew on This, examines the fast food industry's impact on children's health. (Mr. Schlosser is also the author of Fast Food Nation. A film based on the latter will be distributed nationally this fall.) The campaign, according to an internal McDonald's memo sent to franchisees and recently reported in the Wall Street Journal, is intended to "discredit the message and the messenger." McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker has since denied that the memo quoted in the Wall Street Journal exists. The reporter Richard Gibson, when contacted about this denial, stood behind his story.

• The main point of attack has been through third parties, many of which have long connections to the food and tobacco industries. Some of the attacks appear to have been coordinated by Washington lobbyists DCI Group and their Web arm, Tech Central Station (TCS), as well as other special interest groups. James Glassman, the head of Tech Central Station, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Until recently he was a columnist for the Washington Post, which finally ended the relationship after concluding that Glassman's numerous other entanglements conflicted with his role as a journalist purporting to offer expert financial analysis.

• Tech Central Station is sponsored by a variety of corporations that also use DCI for public relations and lobbying initiatives, including McDonald's. Until recently it was reluctant to acknowledge the identity of its real publisher, the DCI Group.

• DCI and its partners have initiated a stealth campaign, similar to the Swift boat tactics employed by the right wing against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race (see below on their connection to the swift boat attacks), that puts forth biased individuals and groups masquerading as "independent" organizations, including: The Heartland Institute (funded by the tobacco industry, among others), the National Minority Health Month Foundation, and the American Council on Science and Health (funded by, among others, Burger King and the National Soft Drink Association).

• Tom Synhorst, the chairman of DCI, according to an Associated Press report in June 2001, "has been linked to South Carolina push polls in the 2000 Republican primary that attacked candidate John McCain as 'a cheat, a liar and a fraud.'" According to the New York Times, (August 25, 2004) Chris LaCivita, another DCI employee, worked for Swift Boats Veterans for Truth as a media adviser. Timothy N. Hyde, a DCI founding partner, was the senior director of public issues at R. J. Reynolds from 1988 to 1997. Hyde oversaw all of RJR's PR campaigns.

• The Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which denies the existence of global warming and has said that "the public health community's campaign against smoking is based on junk science," has accused Schlosser and Wilson of engaging in "Nazi" tactics. In an essay on the site, Jay Lehr, the institute's science director, wrote: "In the 1930s Adolph [sic] Hitler recognized that . . . he could indoctrinate Germany's youth in support of his antihuman Nazi movement." He goes on to claim that Schlosser and Wilson, by writing a book that educates children about the health and other implications of fast food, are making the same effort in their "drive to socialize" America.

• Trade group representatives are posting negative comments about Chew on This on Amazon.com without revealing their affiliations, including Ruth Kava, the director of nutrition at the American Council on Science and Health and a frequent contributor to Tech Central Station.

• The DCI Group and the fast food industry have attempted to stop Mr. Schlosser from speaking at schools. Employees of the McDonald's Corporation visited Glen Ellyn Middle School and asked the principal to reconsider his invitation to Mr. Schlosser. In Chicago, the National Minority Health Month Foundation also opposed Mr. Schlosser's visits to local schools. The executive director, Gary Puckrein, was quoted in a local paper as saying: "He's really a proponent of a number of alternative lifestyles some parents would be uncomfortable with and likely to be the subject of discussion as he's presenting his new work." The National Minority Health Month Foundation issued a press release in March praising McDonald's nutrition labeling initiatives.

Fast Food and Childern
• One in four children and forty percent of all teens eat fast food daily.

• Twenty percent of all public high schools sell "branded fast foods."

• Ninety percent of kids eat at McDonald's at least once a month.

• Children see $3 billion plus worth of fast food advertising every year.

• If a child is obese by the age of thirteen, there's more than a ninety percent chance that he or she will be overweight at thirty-five.

• A ten-year-old child diagnosed with type 2 diabetes can expect to lose seventeen or more years of his or her life.

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