US funding dubious science and unfounded fear

Eco-militants that defiled scientific integrity in government agencies defy corrections

by Ron Arnold       

Donald Trump’s EPA is facing a tsunami of vitriol for trying to drain the DC swamp of rogue regulators that rule with made-to-order scientific lies and invented threats, such as its ruling that the carbon dioxide which makes life on Earth possible is a pollutant. When President Trump proposed a $1.6 billion cut from EPA’s expected $8.1 billion budget, employee screams of doomsday intimidated Congress into forking over the full gimme-gimme. In response to the specter of lost jobs and less political power, entrenched Obama holdovers have organized to sabotage Trump’s reforms in what is being called the Deep State.

Fear is palpable throughout the EPA, where secret email accounts revealed serious abuses of power, where bureaucrats dictatorially took over virtually anything wet as “Waters of the United States,” including agricultural irrigation ditches and stock watering ponds (Trump revoked that rule), and where policies that destroyed the homes and lives of thousands have been routinely based on “liberal” interpretations of federal laws and scientific research that did not stand up to critical scrutiny.

The fear evidently touched EPA “Scientific Integrity Official” Francesca [Grifo], an Obama appointee who previously oversaw the “scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (“an oxymoron if there ever was one,” said Forbes magazine). She postponed this year’s meeting of EPA’s scientific integrity “stakeholders” when she found out that her faithful corps of environmental activist advisors was to be joined by independent scientists approved by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

The Grifo flap and other Environmental Protection Agency problems masked a much bigger government science outrage: the $315 million scandal engulfing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This scandal further underscores why Trump’s reforms are necessary.

In March, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee probed into HHS’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the $315 million in taxpayer-funded grants awarded since 1985 to the Italian research group Ramazzini Institute. The organization is an “independent” science academy focused on cancer research into commercial products. Its output had become the subject of controversy for its fixation on “scaremongering about chemicals, artificial sweeteners and other products.”

Ramazzini’s early claim that sweetener aspartame was carcinogenic was widely panned by the European Food Safety Authority, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Italian media. Its 2016 claim that sucralose (Splenda) was linked to cancer brought similar reactions. Not surprisingly, government and scientific bodies around the world have long criticized it for using secretive, questionable science to reach politically motivated conclusions.

In 2012, EPA scientists “identified discrepancies in the results of methanol studies” conducted by Ramazzini. Similar EPA complaints from 2010 prompted Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and David Vitter (R-LA.) to say Ramazzini’s work “is in dire need of review.”

The question remains: Who opened America’s public coffers – mostly without competitive bidding – for Ramazzini and its New York-based affiliate Collegium Ramazzini, the advocacy cooperative of scientists and researchers in the grant-gobbling Ramazzini circle?

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) confirm that the money came from HHS’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program.

Since toxicologist-microbiologist Linda Birnbaum became director of both in 2009, the two agencies provided $92 million, one third of Collegium members’ support. She herself is a Collegium member. A knowledgeable source says she got the NIEHS-NTP appointment largely because she was willing to expand the agency’s mission to include the health effects of climate change, while the other candidate for her job was not.

According to public records, Birnbaum’s NIEHS contracted with Ramazzini and its affiliates – through multiple third parties – muddying it up what services were rendered under these contracts and how they were prearranged.

Another Ramazzini fellow, Dr. Christopher Portier, a senior collaborating scientist for the anti-pesticide Environmental Defense Fund, and a well-known anti-glyphosate activist, worked for an HHS agency for 32 years. He initiated a report claiming the common weed killer glyphosate (used in Roundup herbicides) is carcinogenic. It was the only study among many that made this assertion, but activists used it to call for banning Roundup, which is often used in conjunction with genetically engineered crops to eliminate the need for weeding and tilling, thereby reducing erosion. 

The president of Collegium Ramazzini is former NIH researcher Dr. Phil Landrigan, now a professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. According to reports, Director Birnbaum coordinated with Dr. Landrigan to publish more than two dozen Ramazzini studies in the NIEHS-run journal, Environmental Health Perspectives. Landrigan also received substantial funding from Birnbaum’s NIEHS, E&E Legal reported.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee continues to probe the Ramazzini morass. Backed by Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is following up on a joint letter to HHS Secretary Tom Price, requesting documents and correspondence between Ramazzini and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The letter noted that Birnbaum’s NIEHS “has refused to respond to [FOIA] requests seeking information related to contracts between your Department, including NIH and NEIHS, and Ramazzini.” A source familiar with the issue says a dialogue was established and is progressing.

The controversies are likely to heat up in the face of news stories saying that Aaron Blair, the scientist who led IARC’s review of glyphosate risks, deliberately withheld findings from studies of some 89,000 U.S. farm workers and family members, concluding that there was no link between cancer and exposure to the chemical. Under Blair’s direction, while he and his team for years apparently ignored evidence that contradicted that conclusion, IARC found that the weed killer was “probably carcinogenic.”

Collegium Ramazzini strongly rebuts any assault on its integrity and infallibility. Its website says its mission “is to be a bridge between the world of scientific discovery and the social and political centers which must act on the discoveries of science to protect public health.” Is this self-congratulation, a power ploy – or a subtle warning to anyone who might question its funding arrangements?

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex and included this important final caveat: “In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Can the Trump Administration or Congress untangle today’s web of the scientific-technological elite and, more importantly, prevent our health and agricultural policies from being driven by dubious science, unfounded fears, deliberately withheld studies, and serious potential conflicts of interest?

It would take more than plowing through mountains of paper. We would learn a lot more from public testimony taken under oath.

Ron Arnold is a widely known researcher, columnist and the author of eleven books on environmental and public policy issues.

My Comments:

"The fear evidently touched EPA “Scientific Integrity Official” Francesca [Grifo], an Obama appointee who previously oversaw the “scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (“an oxymoron if there ever was one,” said Forbes magazine). She postponed this year’s meeting of EPA’s scientific integrity “stakeholders” when she found out that her faithful corps of environmental activist advisors was to be joined by independent scientists approved by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt."

I was one of those rational scientists who was to attend the EPA Scientific Integrity meeting Wednesday afternoon on 14 June. I was notified of the cancellation of that meeting on Friday, the 9th of June.

Actions Speak Louder than Words: Obama Hates Small Business

For each of the last five months, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has found that the business optimism of small business owners has fallen.  With First Quarter 2011 GDP growth dropped to 0.4% and Second Quarter GDP growth presently said to be 1.3%, some earlier optimism that this never-ending Great Socialist Recession was showing some signs of recovery has vanished.  Indeed, it is not even clear that if price inflation were taken into account properly that the so-called growth of the first two quarters of this year was not really a contraction of the economy.  We may very well actually have had the second dip of this recession already.  The Manufacturing Index has also been very disappointing.  Real estate values show no sign of recovery and consumer spending is still limping along.

Every time Obama and the Democrats push to provide extended unemployment benefits to the unemployed, the states have to continue using much higher than normal unemployment tax rates on the employees of businesses.  My company's rate in 2010 and 2011 is 7.33 times higher than it was 2008, despite our never having let an employee go who was eligible to collect unemployment insurance benefits.  This is not an incentive to small businesses to hire more employees and makes it harder to keep the employees they have.  Being forced to let a good employee go is definitely an optimism killer when you are running a small business.

Small businesses are also hit by the increased costs and bureaucracy they will have to expect with ObamaCare.  The Dodd-Frank financial industry reform bill has especially cut them off from the big lenders with assets in excess of $100 billion.  The increased regulatory burdens imposed by Obama's EPA, FDA, FTC, DOD, FDIC, Consumer Protection Agency, the NLRB, and the restrictions on oil and gas drilling have been hardest on small businesses who cannot afford legions of lawyers to deal with the government bureaucracy.  When the FDA or DOD require a business to become ISO-certified as proof of quality controls, that cost is proportionally much greater on a small business than on a larger business.  This is a very real discrimination against small businesses and often has only cosmetic effects on real quality controls since the business owner and upper management in a small firm are much more likely to be on top of quality issues than the corresponding management is in a big business.  New FDA oversight of small food retailers and producers is another major cost escalator for many small businesses.  Since few people were dying of food poisoning, there is no significant benefit to this new Obama cost.

Falling demand has been the biggest problem for small businesses which are less likely to participate heavily in the export markets as the large multinational companies do.  There are better opportunities for profits and sales abroad in many areas than here in the U.S., thanks to the Obama administration economy-wrecking policies.  Small business owners are also very worried about the uncertainties caused by excessive government spending and the rapid increase in the national debt.  The more spending government does, the more it interferes with business activity.  Since 2001, the GDP has grown by 46%, but the national debt has grown by 146%!  The Federal Reserve bought about three-quarters of U.S. Treasury Bonds in 2009 and 2010, thereby increasing its balance sheet from $896 billion in August 2007 at the start of the housing bubble collapse to $2.9 trillion now.  This is clearly not sustainable, yet there is no end in sight to this method of "covering" the absurd spending of the government.  The excessive spending and debt both cause pressure of increased taxes or inflation in the near future.  Business taxes are already much too high.

While only about 8% of small businesses name access to credit as their primary problem in NFIB surveys, it is clear that the credit needs of many small businesses are not being met.  Interest rates were increased on many lines of credit, business loans, and business credit cards.  40% of small businesses attempting to borrow in 2009 were able to meet their credit needs, 10% had most of their needs met, 21% had some, and 23% had none of their credit needs met.  With the gathering worries of satisfying the Dodd-Frank finance reform bill, this situation is becoming worse as this recession drags on and on and on.  Small businesses commonly do not have the resources to last through multiple years of recession.  Banks are especially refusing to lend money to fill in cash flow problems.

Small business owners generally own real estate.  In the NFIB 2009 study, 95% had real estate.  The fact that most real estate has lost considerable value has deprived many small business owners of the collateral they would commonly use to secure credit.  13% of small business owners had at least one property worth less than what they owed on it.  The loss of property values has left many small businesses much more vulnerable.

Into this sorry picture of woes for small businesses, the Obama administration FDIC has been squeezing banks to loan less money to small businesses, which it regards as less credit worthy as a group.  On that they may be right, but as is the rule with government, the assessment is a one-size-fits-all assessment.  Main Street Bank of Kingwood, Texas specializes in small business loans.  Main Street Bank has a $175 million loan portfolio and 90% of it goes to small businesses.  Most of these businesses have annual revenue less than $1 million.  The average loan size is $100,000.  Main Street had a profit of $1 million in the Second Quarter and wrote off 1.25% of its loans as bad.  The failure rate of loans in the FDIC insured banks in the First Quarter was 1.82%.  The FDIC has not released the bad loan rate for the Second Quarter yet.  Government is slow.

Despite the success of Main Street Bank in its small business loan strategy, the FDIC slapped it in July 2010 with an order to increase its capital and reduce the proportion of its small business loans from 90% to 25%.  The bank was also ordered to hire another bank executive.  It had to sell a business and shrink its loan portfolio to meet the increased capitalization requirement.  This increase in capitalization was a large one, from 9.5% in June 2010 to 17.3% in June 2011.  As a result of this FDIC interference in their business, Main Street Bank is working hard to turn in its bank charter.  A new company is being set up, Ascentium Capital, which will have backing from a private group of investors and will no longer take customer deposits.  This business will not be regulated and will be able to continue to specialize in small business loans.  They plan to increase the loan portfolio to $500 million.

The reduction from 90% of Main Street Bank loans to 25% for small businesses, removed $114 million of small business credit from the market.  Now imagine this kind of thing happening all over the country as the FDIC goes from bank to bank and prescribes lowered small business loan exposure.  The impact on small business credit will be huge.  This is very important, because a large fraction of American workers are employed by small firms and much innovation occurs in these companies.  A lack of access to credit during an extended recession makes these myriad small businesses more likely to fail.  The Obama administration policy is clearly to subsidize and bailout big businesses, but to slash and plunder small businesses.

Interestingly enough, the Small Business Administration has been repeatedly cited for guaranteeing lenders loans at 85% of the loan for which the lenders are considered to be at high risk in 80% of SBA 7(a) loans.  Their loan failures run many times higher than those of Main Street Bank!  While their loans go to only 0.2% of small businesses, they have an outlandish failure rate of 19.4%.  Perhaps the Obama crew should be more concerned with controlling this loan failure rate than that of a private bank which knows its business very well.

That tendency to plunder small business could not be made more clear than by Obama's constant effort to raise taxes on those earning more than something between $200,000 and $250,000 a year.  His efforts to widen the death tax is another indicator of his evil intentions with respect to small businesses.  It is politically much easier to plunder small businesses than it is to tackle big businesses with their many savvy lawyers and lobbyists.  It is also easier to over-regulate small businesses.  Socialists do not like business owners and managers.  They are equated with labor exploiters, no matter how many goods and services they produce for free consumers and no matter how many jobs they may provide.  Obama and his crew of insiders are nothing if they are not true socialists.  Small businesses are made to pay a heavy price as a result of their present power.

Missing Jobs Increase Again in November 2010

Continuing the trend since July, the number of missing jobs in the United States increased again in November 2010.  As usual, I will present the jobs statistics using those without the seasonal adjustments from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and add in the data from the November Unemployment Report.  I calculate the number of missing jobs based upon the percentage of Americans who were or wanted to be in the workforce in January 2000, near the end of a period of several years in which that percentage had been high and fairly constant.  I do not believe that Americans are yet lazier than they were then, though the easy availability of long-term unemployment insurance might be changing Americans into more dependent people.  But the overriding assumption here is that if the economy were healthy, it would produce enough jobs of high enough quality that 67.49% of Americans would want to work now, as they did in January 2000.

The number of employed Americans fell by 334,000, while the working age population grew by 185,000 people, of whom about 67.49% or about 125,000 would be expected to want jobs.  As a consequence, the number of missing jobs grew by 459,000 in a single month.  This is approaching a half-million more missing jobs in one month.  This is another human disaster.  The real unemployment rate is 13.47%, not the commonly touted 9.8%.  Despite this, the Wall Street Journal of 4-5 December 2010 has a top front page graphic showing that 39,000 jobs were added in November.  Their number was only for the non-farm payrolls.

Despite the early elation of many small business owners that the outcome of the mid-term election would ultimately work to diminish the anti-business climate in the halls of the Federal Government, the uncertainties about next year's tax rates, the escalating awareness of the costs and overhead of ObamaCare, worries about the EPA's rulings on CO2 emissions, increased costs and paperwork coming due to the new FDA regulations just passed through the lame duck Congress, continued worries about the sustainability of the federal debt and that of many state and local governments, and fears of inflation due to the massive printing of money are among the many factors keeping businesses from hiring.  Large businesses have many of the same worries and face a world of competitors in which they will pay the highest corporate taxes in the world this next year.

Harry Reid Complains About Slow Senate

Under Senator Harry Reid's term as Majority Leader this last couple of years, the Senate has buillt up a backlog of 400 items passed by the House of Representatives that the Senate has not taken up.  Despite the large Democrat majority, the Republicans have been able to keep the Senate from passing these 400 bills which are surely mostly further Progressive attempts to micro-manage the lives of the People.

In particular, Reid has recently complained about how Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, has kept the Senate from passing legislation to overhaul how the FDA controls our foods.  Reid claims to have spent the whole Congress on this FDA food control bill.  Senator Coburn thinks the Senate should say how it is going to pay for the new bill and that its merits should be discussed on the Senate floor.  Apparently, Reid believes a bill which some staffers have spent a whole session of Congress working up, which no Senators have read, and which has not been discussed on the Senate floor, is ready for passage.  He wants to use the Democrat's favorite trick of hurry up and pass this bill so we can find out what is in it.  Senator Coburn is a bad guy for standing in his way.

It is clear to me and I am sure to most Americans now, that Senator Coburn is protecting our individual freedoms and our General Welfare by opposing the tyrant Reid.  Can you even begin to imagine how much worse off we would be if the Senate had passed those 400 bills of new mischief and power aggrandizement that the huge Democrat majority in the House enabled them to pass.  The laundry list of socialist mandates and spending in those 400 bills is probably staggering.