I haven’t qui-i-i-i-te been drawn into the Christmas spirit yet, but there’s still hope. Today I wore a Christmas sweater and I mailed off two giveaways that I did on the Art Journal list and a surprise package for a friend in Alaska. I might even dig out my Christmas earrings. Ooh, sparkly!

Monday night I participated in some civic engagement. Our historic district neighborhood association is fighting against a developer who wants to build a huge dormitory in a little space without the streets to support the traffic about a block and a half from my house. I would be sandwiched between this behemoth and the university. Needless to say, most of us ain’t happy about it. We’d like to see the property redeveloped, but almost anything else would be better. So we filled the zoning commission chamber and we won the first round - the zoning commission recommended against the development. The biggest battle will be next, in front of the City Council, who can still approve it over the Zoning Commission. Which begs the question - why the hell do they even have a zoning commission or spend money on comprehensive plans when they don’t bother to follow the recommendations?

But being a part of the winning team on Monday night was heady and fun. The lawyers for the developers sat behind me in the chambers and they were clearly stunned from the beginning at the way it was going against them. They had about 5 supporters in the chambers other than themselves and the other approximately 80 people were opposed. They fretted and muttered and sputtered. They had a powerful lawyer named Henry Isaacson whose practice is built upon winning these kind of cases. At the end, I turned around as I put on my coat and caught his eye. We locked eyes for about three long seconds, and I simply grinned like a happy fool. That felt good.

Don Vaughn, our state senator, was our lawyer and he did a great job. I didn’t like Don before because he named Craven Williams as a role model at one time, which led me to believe that he was either clueless, gullible, or crooked. However, I have to admit that Craven had a ginormous number of good people fooled - most people did not have the perspective and knowledge that I had of his true character. (I used to work at Greensboro College where he was president for years.) So I’ve changed my opinion of Don and I’m happy that he is my state senator.

A lot of people just don’t get why we don’t want this project here. It’s a beautiful thing, all right. But it needs to be over on Lee St. or some other area nearby that is a large enough tract and has large enough streets to support it. That’s not so hard to understand if you live here and deal with the parking and traffic on the streets every day. And they seem to think that these students, rich enough to rent a room in this high-end residence hall, won’t ever drive anywhere. Or at least they want us to believe that students never go anywhere but class and home.

Plus, we wouldn’t necessarily mind apartments. But this is for 725 students, aimed at the age group of 18-22, rented by the bedroom. What we’d really love to see is a mixed-use development with small shops, offices, and living areas.

Some of the morons commenting at the N&R say that the College Hill residents are afraid of losing rental income to this development. I don’t know anyone who opposes this who has rental property. And students aren’t the only people who rent in College Hill. These commenters make huge assumptions that have little basis in reality, yet they won’t shut up. What makes people speculate in public about subjects that they are totally ignorant about?

The development company has claimed that UNCG is in favor of this development, but UNCG has not spoken out. In fact, UNCG wanted to buy this property but were outbid by this company. Yet they have raised the name of UNCG again and again as if they are partners with them. I think that this backfired on them, because one of the zoning commissioners pointed this out.

Just the fact that I’ve had my faith somewhat restored in my government this week has made me pretty happy. What a rare feeling. Guess I’d better savor it while it lasts.

Oof. Just ordered a new HP laptop from HP online. I think that I’m getting a good deal, and I hope that this laptop lasts until I get it, but man, was that a frustrating experience. For one thing, the website froze up by the time I was ready to order it. So I gave them a call. Now, I fully expected a long wait to get a rep, but surprisingly, the wait was not long. It was the order with the rep that took forever. At first I really thought that I had a garbled connection. And she spoke English reasonably well. I’m not so naive to think that I’m going to get an American on the phone, since our free-trade loving politicians on the left and right sent our mid-range jobs overseas.

So, this woman not only is trying to upsell me (expected and shut down quickly), not only immediately trying to put my email down for a newsletter, not only immediately quotes me the most expensive shipping rate, but she is SLOWWWWWWWW. I tell her that I don’t have much time, I get off the phone a couple of times to take care of somebody quickly, I watch as a order that I should be able to rattle off in five minutes takes 35 minutes to complete. She repeats back every letter in every word slowwwwwly. E as in Edward. S as in Sam. She needs my credit card’s customer service phone number. What? Why? She puts it in wrong and spends five minutes figuring that out. I threaten to cancel my order if we don’t wrap it up quickly after 30 minutes of this.

The best part was this bit which sent me over the edge.

“How will you pay?”
“Visa.”
“Papul?”
“What? Visa.”
“Papul?”
“What are you saying? Visa!”
“Papul?”
“No, not Paypal! VISA!”

Jesus. This is why I hate politicians. Democrats and Republicans let business do this to us. It’s their fault mental illness is on the rise.

Thank God I no longer have to do business with AT&T, but I learned how to deal with their customer service. I put on my broadest Southern drawl and said, “I need to tawk to sumbody in the U.S.A.” And I was surprised when it worked, but it did!

Anyway, I hope to have a new laptop in a couple of weeks that will be able to handle the 21st century. I’d like to have a CD/DVD drive again, and be able to open more than one web page at a time, and play iTunes. I got out under $500 including shipping and tax. It’s my Christmas present to myself. I checked the website, since she didn’t send me an email with the order details as she promised, and it looks okay.

Received this press release from the Cornucopia Institute, one of the best corporate watchdogs for organic issues. What makes me want to weep is Organic Valley’s entry into the fray on the wrong side. OV products are my go-to when I can’t find local dairy products that come up to my humanely-raised standards. GMA and OTA don’t surprise me at all - the Organic Trade Association has not been on the side of consumers for a long time.

11/19/09
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mark Kastel, 608-625-2042

Food Manufacturers and Organic Industry Lobbyists Circle the Wagons
Defend Organic Scofflaw in Court to Protect Corporate Takeover of Organics

CORNUCOPIA, WI – Two powerful lobby groups in the food industry, The Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Organic Trade Association, recently intervened as friends of the court in a federal consumer class-action lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest supplier of private-label organic milk of consumer fraud. In what has been described as “the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry” USDA investigators, in 2007, found that Aurora Dairy had willfully violated federal organic standards. However, industry lobbyists are now concerned that convicting Aurora will set a dangerous legal precedent. Aurora bottles private-label organic milk for Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Safeway and many other grocery chains.

In August 2007 Bush administration officials were widely criticized for overruling career staff at the USDA and instead of decertifying Aurora as staff had recommended, banning it from organic commerce, the corporate dairy was allowed to continue in business under a one-year probation. Now agribusiness lobbyists are concerned that citizens prevailing in court, alleging fraud, will set a precedent necessitating large corporations to incur added expenses to more carefully check the sources and credibility of their organic suppliers.

“Due diligence by food manufacturers and retailers is the heart and soul of what maintaining the integrity of the organic label is about,” said Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, the farm policy research group that initially exposed the corruption taking place at Aurora.

In an internal document, the Organic Trade Association told its membership that, “OTA is taking this action in order to protect consumers’ access to organic products and the guarantee by organic farmers, producers and processors that their valid organic certificate fully demonstrates that their product is considered organic when marketed.” Lobbyists from the Grocery Manufacturers also were concerned that if the consumers prevail in this legal matter it would become, according to a copy written article in Sustainable Food News, “prohibitively expensive to continue developing organic products.”

“This type of rhetoric is just a stick in the eye to the ethical participants in this industry who make it a point, in their everyday course of business, to judiciously assure that their products meet not only the letter but the spirit of the organic law,” added Kastel.

Just like Aurora Dairy, Wal-Mart and Target were both found to have misrepresented organic products in the marketplace and were the subject of separate USDA investigations.

“Yes, it does cost more money to legally and ethically participate in organic commerce, said Will Fantle, Research Director for Cornucopia. “One of the reasons that big-box retailers are able to undercut their competition on price is they refuse to hire, train and adequately compensate management and frontline employees who know anything about the organic law.”

Aurora produces private label, or storebrand milk, for about 20 of the largest grocery chains in the United States.

In an ironic twist to this story Organic Valley, the nation’s second-largest organic milk marketer and a cooperative, is receiving criticism for its underwriting of a brief supporting Aurora’s position. The farmer-owned cooperative provided the financial support allowing the Organic Trade Association to file its amicus brief opposing the class-action lawsuit brought by consumers in over 40 states. The consumers allege that they were defrauded by the Colorado-based Aurora Dairy corporation.
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> The news of Organic Valley’s involvement was a shock to some of its co-op members including Kevin Engelbert, a nationally recognized organic leader and dairy farmer from Nichols, New York. “Can this possibly be true? Has OV made a pact with the devil? I know OTA is controlled by the big money interests,” said Engelbert. “The 14 willful violations [by Aurora] prove that some organic certificates aren’t enough to demonstrate that a product is organic when marketed. The ‘organicness’ of questionable products must be challenged when necessary to maintain organic integrity.”

The Cornucopia’s Kastel said he was “flabbergasted” that a cooperative owned by family farmers would stick up for a corporation at the heart of the biggest scandal in history in the organic food industry and he characterized Aurora as a “bad actor” and “bad aberration” in the industry where consumers can generally trust the organic label.

“Aurora’s factory farm milk has injured the vast majority of Organic Valley’s own farmer-members by depriving them of markets for their milk and unfairly driving down retail pricing. Earlier this year the cooperative cut the pay price to its members and required its farmers to reduce production because of a milk surplus in the marketplace — a surplus that would be much smaller if Aurora legitimately managed its dairy cows like Organic Valley’s ethical dairy farmers,” Kastel added.

Cornucopia analysis, and USDA research, suggests that as much as a third of the nation’s organic milk supply comes from giant factory farms. Another organic factory farm operator, Dean Foods, the country’s largest milk marketer, and an OTA and GMA member, has been widely criticized in the organic community for procuring much of its milk for its Horizon brand from mega-dairies allegedly breaking the same rules as Aurora.

“If you connect the dots here you have to wonder why the management at Organic Valley is getting into bed with Aurora, Dean Foods and the most powerful lobbyists representing corporate agribusiness,” Kastel lamented. “Not only would Organic Valley membership benefit from Aurora being banned from organics, but if the lobbyists concerns are true, and some of the largest corporate players that have been playing fast and loose with the rules decide to exit the organics, that will only pump up their brand’s market share.”

The friend of the court brief, opposing a lower court ruling, which was funded by Organic Valley, expresses fears about a precedent should consumers be compensated for any fraud committed by Aurora. Melissa Hughes, an in-house lawyer for Organic Valley, told the editor of Sustainable Food News, that if the appeal is upheld “it could have vast implications on retailers, processors, handlers, and ultimately consumers.”

Analysts at Cornucopia strongly refute the contention that the Aurora matter would leave all organic marketers open to tort complaints by consumers. “Obviously, there is strong evidence for these consumers to believe they were defrauded by Aurora and the supermarket chains,” Kastel said. “This is an exceptional situation not indicative of the industry as a whole.”

Kastel cited the fact that Cornucopia sent certified letters to every one of Aurora’s retailer customers informing them that the reputation of their store’s label was at risk and encouraging them to take action. Only two marketers, the Publix supermarket chain in Florida and United Natural Foods International, the largest organic food distributor in the country, did the due diligence necessary and switched suppliers.

“The organic certification documents alone are not enough if evidence is brought to a marketer’s attention that some kind of improprieties are taking place,” Fantle added. “There is always the possibility that collusion or incompetence has taken place on the part of the supplier, certifier or the USDA.”

A comprehensive investigative story that appeared in the pages of the Washington Post referenced the Aurora matter, and a cozy relationship between the powerful Washington lawyer and lobbyist for Aurora, Dean and the OTA, and the former director of the organic program at the USDA. Alleged malfeasance at the Department has sparked the interest of Congress and an expanded investigation is currently taking place by the Office of the Inspector General at the USDA.

“Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 charging the USDA with preventing fraud; protecting the interests of ethical industry participants and consumers,” observed Cornucopia’s Kastel. “The obvious allegation here is that the regulatory branch, the USDA under the Bush administration, failed to properly enforce the law. It is appropriate for citizens who feel they were defrauded to seek a judicial remedy,” he added.
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When the nation’s largest organic milk producer Aurora dairy, with five “factory style” farms, in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands of cows, entered the marketplace in 2004 they proudly stated that they would make organic milk more “affordable.” What they didn’t tell their customers was that their products would be more affordable, allowing them to undercut competitors in the marketplace, because they wouldn’t go to the expense of meeting the strict federal regulations governing organic marketing.
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> In 2007, after investigating legal complaints filed by Cornucopia about Aurora’s organic livestock practices, USDA staff concluded that Aurora had “willfully violated” 14 tenets of federal organic regulations. Aurora was found by federal investigators to have been illegally confining their cattle to feedlots, brought in conventional cattle that could not comply with organic regulations and, most seriously, selling milk labeled as “organic” that did not meet the legal requirements.

In its formal letter to the company, USDA staff at the National Organic Program stated: “Due to the nature and extent of these violations, the NOP proposes to revoke Aurora Organic Dairy’s production and handling certifications under the NOP.”

But the powerful Washington-based lobby of Covington in Burling, representing Aurora, worked with the Bush administration officials at the USDA to instead allow the $100 million corporation to continue in the organic business with a one-year probation and some modest changes to their operations

The “sweetheart” settlement between Aurora and the USDA provoked a consumer led effort to seek justice in federal courts. Nineteen separate class action lawsuits were brought against Aurora and several national grocery retailers selling Aurora’s suspect organic milk including Wal-Mart, Target and Safeway. The lawsuits claiming consumer fraud were eventually consolidated into a single case in the federal district court in St. Louis. Earlier this year, federal court judge E. Richard Webber dismissed the lawsuit on procedural grounds. An appeal has since been filed seeking to bring the merits of the lawsuit, which have not been heard, back before the court.

“OTA’s action, apparently backed by CROPP [Organic Valley], infuriates me,” said Kevin Engelbert. “I hope every person and organization that belongs to OTA drops their membership immediately.”

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit. The largest portion of its funding comes from individual members, mostly family-scale organic farmers. They can be found on the web at www.cornucopia.org.

Why am I not surprised that the representative of the development company who is planning to build a large apartment complex two blocks away could not name even one specific example of sustainable/green building or landscaping in their many past projects?

I mean, the guy couldn’t even come up with an easy plausible lie like plant more trees, or use energy-efficient windows. He said something about making the walls six inches thick instead of four inches thick and wandered off-subject for a while hoping to distract me. But he didn’t. I tried to rephrase the question as “green” instead of “sustainable” and he began scoffing at the phrase “green building” meaning all kinds of vague things so I nailed him again to give me one specific example. He could not.

The issue was so far off these people’s radar that they didn’t even have a damned bluff prepared.

Holy cow, they’re planning a huge apartment complex two blocks uphill from my house. Guess I’d better start howling to my local gummint officials.

Received this email from Carolina Farm Stewardship Association today. My disappointment? My N.C. rep is not on this list. Miller voted for the last b.s. food “safety” bill too. Whenever I write to him about agricultural issues, he replies that he is not on the agriculture committee. Well, by God, he eats, doesn’t he? If he is from North Carolina, then he ought to be interested in agricultural issues.

This is why I am leaving the Dems. They definitely don’t always get it right, especially when it comes to food. The appointment of Monsatan henchmen to important food posts clinched the party desertion for me. The Democrat Party is too happy to wallow in the corporate slime.

Not that I’ll ever, ever, ever be a Repub. But I do recognize a few of these names as Republicans, which shows that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, they DO get it right.

Dear CFSA members:

HR 2749, which did NOT have the Kaptur-Farr language CFSA supported that would have provided better protections for small and organic farms, was defeated today. Thanks to Reps. Heath Shuler, Howard Coble, Virginia Foxx, Walter Jones, Patrick McHenry and Sue Myrick of NC, and Reps. Barrett, Brown, Inglis, and Wilson of SC, for voting against the legislation. If one of those folks is your representative, please feel free to thank them. Your calls, emails, and our work educate our legislators made an impact—without those 10 votes, HR 2749 would have passed.

The bill is not dead. It was brought to the floor under a special rule that required a 2/3ds majority to pass the bill where the vote was both on the question of having the vote under 2/3ds majority requirements and on the underlying bill. So now the bill can be brought back up under “regular” rules, which means that there will have to be an opportunity for amendments on the floor. Or it could be brought back under special rules, but obviously they’ll have to make a few changes to get the extra few votes they need. If it were to come back under either scenario, that would be a chance for our community to influence positive amendments. When, and whether, there’s another vote is anyone’s guess right now.

Both NC Senators are on the Health, Education, Labor Committee, which has jurisdiction over food safety, and I know personally that the offices of both Senators are concerned about supporting small and sustainable farms. We should take advantage of the opportunity to exert our influence on them.

Why I don’t support the Organic Trade Association, boycott Dean Foods, and eat mostly unprocessed foods. The argument that maintaining strong organic standards will result in fewer organic products is illogical if the resulting food ISN’T ORGANIC. People should be allowed to know what they are paying for.

Via Donna Myers on Facebook:

Federal ‘organic’ label’s integrity under fire
Consumers who pay up to twice as much don’t always get what they expect