#187 Vape Sale

[cbdbaronug]

187 Straßenbande Watermelon Vape

187 Strassenbande – Watermelon bietet einen saftigen Wassermelonen-Geschmack und kann etwa 600 Züge liefern. Die beliebten Shisha-Tobaks der Rapper sind nun als Einweg-Vapes erhältlich. Ohne Voreinstellungen kann man sofort dampfen, indem man einfach inhaliert. Watermelon ist mit 2,0 ml Liquid vorbefüllt, pro Zug werden 0,16 mg Nikotin abgegeben. Ein spezialisiertes Heizsystem sorgt für intensiven Geschmack und dichten Dampf bis zu 600 Zügen. Im Vergleich zu klassischen Shishas ist das Dampfen kompakter, ohne unangenehmen Geruch. Die Vapes sind in verschiedenen Geschmacksrichtungen mit 20 ml Nikotin erhältlich. Es ist wichtig zu beachten, dass Vapes, einschließlich Elfbar und Geek Bar, gesundheitsschädlich sind und süchtig machen können.

Einweg E-Zigarette

Ergonomisch, kompakt und leicht

500 mAh Akku

Nikotingehalt: 20mg/ml

ca. 600 Züge möglich

Keine Einstellungen notwendig

Vorbefüllt mit 2.0 ml Liquid

Geschmack: Wassermelone

[robertreich]

How Trump is Killing Capitalism

Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weed killer?

Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators.

These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people.

To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations that they can now do as they please.

Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design.

Nonetheless, Trump’s Federal Aviation Administration certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the United States was slower to ground the planes than other countries.

Last month, Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm.

In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information.

The Federal Trade Commission has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing — not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that.

Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers.

Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought a major stake in the vaping company Juul of San Francisco. Its stock has already gained 14 percent this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after less than two years on the job.

Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud.

But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals.

What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged.

Recently a federal jury awarded $80 million in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weed killer for his cancer after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup.

Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts.

What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017, its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer — although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data.

These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration.

This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life.

Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing.

Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it won’t survive.

[savvyherb]

‘Banana Kush’ and ‘Peanut Butter’: Police, marshals bust suspected marijuana, vaping operation in Foggy Bottom

Authorities searching for a man in a drug case uncovered a large-scale marijuana operation inside an eighth-floor apartment on K Street Northwest, near the Foggy Bottom campus of George Washington University, according to police and court documents.

Police detailed a lengthy list of items seized, including 187 marijuana joints, 800 containers of suspected marijuana, nearly $50,000 in cash and 300 vaping cartridges. Bags had labels such as “fresh O.G.,” “Peanut Butter” and “Banana Kush.”

One man was arrested, and police said they are seeking his brother.

Wednesday’s arrest at the Circle Arms Apartments in the 2400 block of K Street NW marks the second time in a week D.C. police have targeted what they described as a large-scale marijuana-selling operation in some of the pricier areas of the District.

On Sept. 25, police set their sights on a 5,220-square-foot carriage house with an indoor waterfall on Q Street NW near Dupont Circle. The property was once known for loud parties, but according to authorities it had transformed into a marijuana “pop-up” venue that attracted one seller from abroad. Police said they seized nearly 25 pounds of marijuana and hundreds of smoking devices and marijuana-infused candies, along with ledgers of sales.

[Police raid mansion near Dupont Circle suspected of hosting marijuana party]

People may grow and possess small amounts of marijuana in the District but cannot legally purchase recreational pot. Smoking small amounts is allowed inside private residences. The mayor is trying to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana dispensaries.

Allowing people to possess but not sell marijuana has led to confusion and prompted an influx of “pop-up” markets advertised through social media and designed to remain somewhat hidden from the general public and law enforcement.

Police continue to target selling operations and organized events where marijuana is used and distributed.

Cmdr. John Haines, who heads the D.C. police narcotics and special-investigations division, said that “we’ve seen quite a bit of an increase” in marijuana pop-ups and distribution organizations in the past two years.

[Marijuana pop-ups thrive in District’s murky world of marijuana laws]

He said organizers often try to skirt the law by asking for donations and then giving out “free gifts” that include marijuana, falsely believing that doesn’t qualify as an exchange of something of value, although it is illegal if the exchange includes marijuana. He said organizers also sometimes rent rooms or houses for a short periods of time to help avoid detection of the events.

“They rent a place on a Thursday for a party on a Saturday and they’re gone Sunday,” Haines said. “That limited exposure times makes it difficult for law enforcement to take any kind of action.”

Haines said the parties and the distribution venues invite danger. “These marijuana parties bring a lot of cash,” he said, making patrons and organizers vulnerable to being robbed either of drugs or money, or both.

Authorities said the suspected drug operation in Foggy Bottom, first reported by WRC-TV, was found by accident. Court documents and a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said agents went to the apartment to arrest a resident who police said had failed to show up for a court appearance on a marijuana distribution charge.

Agents were told that man had left the country, the court documents state. But that man’s brother was at the apartment, according to Haines, and the agents detained him after seeing the suspected drugs. D.C. police obtained a search warrant, and that led to the arrest of Jeffrey Bennett, 52.

Bennett was charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana, a felony. A D.C. Superior Court judge on Thursday released Bennett, who also has an address in Silver Spring, Md., and set a hearing for Oct. 17. Bennett could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Teresa G. Kleiman, did not return calls to her office Friday.

Read more:

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The post ‘Banana Kush’ and ‘Peanut Butter’: Police, marshals bust suspected marijuana, vaping operation in Foggy Bottom appeared first on Savvy Herb Mobile Cannabis Platform.

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[weedconsortium2]

Police in Santa Barbara County, California raided a massive illegal cannabis cultivation site last week, with deputies finding so many illicit plants the enforcement operation took four days to complete. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said on Saturday that 350,000 cannabis plants had been destroyed and 20 tons of processed cannabis had been seized from the site.

A two-month investigation into the cultivation operation culminated on June 17 with search warrants being served in northern Santa Barbara County near Buellton and two other sites, one in Santa Maria and another in neighboring San Luis Obispo County, according to Kelley Hoover, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

“The cultivation area itself was located on a property of approximately 187 acres of agricultural land, with just over 60 acres of it being used for the commercial cultivation of cannabis,” Hoover said. “From the initial investigation, it appeared the site was used to continually cultivate cannabis throughout the year, and at the time of the search, approximately 40 acres was presently growing, with a large amount having been recently harvested.”

Multiple Agencies Participate in Raid

Deputies from the sheriff’s office, including members of its Cannabis Compliance Team, were assisted in the eradication operation by the county District Attorney’s Office, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Army National Guard Counter Drug Task Force. In all, 35 detectives, investigators, and wildlife officers took part in the raid, Hoover said.

“This investigation was the result of complaints from the public, tips, and information provided to the sheriff’s Cannabis Compliance Team,” Hoover noted.

The sheriff’s office has not released the name of the owner of the property where the marijuana cultivation site was located and has not yet located or made contact with the owner, according to media reports.

Authorities are investigating if a license to cultivate cannabis on the property had been obtained from the state fraudulently and if illegal cannabis sales have occurred. Hoover said that the case has been referred to the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office for possible criminal charges.

Are Licensed Cultivators Operating Illegally?

To gain permission from the county to cultivate cannabis, which is required to obtain a license from the state, applicants had to file an affidavit that stipulated the site had been used to grow medical marijuana prior to January 16, 2016. However, there were no requirements to provide documentation or otherwise prove the claim made on the affidavit.

That loophole left the system ripe for abuse, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times. One area resident, Blair Pence, said the fields next to his winery were used to grow bell peppers until 2018, two years after operators claimed they were cultivating marijuana on the site. Now, there are 30 acres of cannabis growing on the property.

“These guys are all lying through their teeth,” Pence said.

Jacqueline McGowan, the director of local licensing and business development at K Street Consulting in Sacramento, told High Times in an email that some licensed cannabis operators in Santa Barbara County may, in fact, be operating illegally.

“If some of the county’s current cultivators signed this affidavit under penalty of perjury, and they did in fact lie and no prior cultivation had occurred, then the Sheriff may be in the right here when eradicating these licensed operations,” McGown said. “I would interpret that document to mean that if you had been cultivating prior to January 19, 2016, you would be allowed to continue cultivating under that identical footprint. However, any expansion would be prohibited unless the county expressly allowed it.”

The post Raid of Massive Illegal Cannabis Grow Site in California Took Four Days to Complete appeared first on High Times.

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[lovehardenemycollector]

From Boeing to Monsanto and beyond: this week has revealed the tip of the iceberg of regulatory neglect ‘Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please.’ Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weedkiller? Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators. These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people. To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please. Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design. Nonetheless, Trump’s FAA certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the US was slower to ground them than other countries. Last week Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm. In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing – not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that. Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers. Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought the vaping company Juul. Its stock has already gained 14% this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after barely a year on the job. Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud. But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals. What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged. This week, a federal jury awarded $80m in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weedkiller for his cancer, after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts. What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017 its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer – although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data. These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration. This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life. Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it is in deep trouble. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

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[cool-azert123]

Corporations are endangering Americans. Trump doesn't care

From Boeing to Monsanto and beyond: this week has revealed the tip of the iceberg of regulatory neglect ‘Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please.’ Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weedkiller? Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators. These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people. To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please. Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design. Nonetheless, Trump’s FAA certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the US was slower to ground them than other countries. Last week Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm. In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing – not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that. Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers. Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought the vaping company Juul. Its stock has already gained 14% this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after barely a year on the job. Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud. But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals. What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged. This week, a federal jury awarded $80m in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weedkiller for his cancer, after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts. What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017 its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer – although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data. These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration. This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life. Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it is in deep trouble. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

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[beautytipsfor]

Corporations are endangering Americans. Trump doesn't care

From Boeing to Monsanto and beyond: this week has revealed the tip of the iceberg of regulatory neglect ‘Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please.’ Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weedkiller? Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators. These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people. To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please. Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design. Nonetheless, Trump’s FAA certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the US was slower to ground them than other countries. Last week Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm. In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing – not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that. Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers. Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought the vaping company Juul. Its stock has already gained 14% this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after barely a year on the job. Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud. But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals. What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged. This week, a federal jury awarded $80m in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weedkiller for his cancer, after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts. What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017 its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer – although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data. These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration. This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life. Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it is in deep trouble. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

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[tendance-news]

From Boeing to Monsanto and beyond: this week has revealed the tip of the iceberg of regulatory neglect ‘Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please.’ Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Why didn’t Boeing do it right? Why isn’t Facebook protecting user passwords? Why is Phillip Morris allowed to promote vaping? Why hasn’t Wells Fargo reformed itself? Why hasn’t Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) recalled its Roundup weedkiller? Answer: corporate greed coupled with inept and corrupt regulators. These are just a few of the examples in the news these days of corporate harms inflicted on innocent people. To be sure, some began before the Trump administration. But Trump and his appointees have unambiguously signaled to corporations they can now do as they please. Boeing wanted to get its 737 Max 8 out quickly because airlines want to pack in more passengers at lower fuel costs (hence the “max”). But neither Boeing nor the airlines shelled out money to adequately train pilots on the new software made necessary by the new design. Nonetheless, Trump’s FAA certified the plane in March 2017. And after two subsequent deadly crashes, the US was slower to ground them than other countries. Last week Facebook admitted to storing hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ passwords in plain text that could be searched by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. The admission came just a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook shared the personal data of as many as 87 million users with a political data firm. In reality, Facebook’s business model is based on giving personal data to advertisers so they can tailor their pitches precisely to potential customers. So despite repeated reassurances by Mark Zuckerberg, the firm will continue to do what it wants with personal information. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to force Facebook to better guard users’ privacy. But so far Trump’s FTC has done nothing – not even to enforce a 2011 agreement in which Facebook promised to do just that. Altria (Phillip Morris) was losing ground on its sales of cigarettes, but the firm has recently found a future in vaping. Because inhaling nicotine in any form poses a health hazard, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb wanted to curb advertising of vaping products to teenagers. Gottlieb thought he had Altria’s agreement, but then the firm bought the vaping company Juul. Its stock has already gained 14% this year. What happened to Gottlieb? He’s out at the FDA, after barely a year on the job. Wells Fargo has publicly apologized for having deceived customers with fake bank accounts, unwarranted fees and unwanted products. Its top executives say they have eliminated the aggressive sales targets that were responsible for the fraud. But Wells Fargo employees told the New York Times recently that they’re still under heavy pressure to squeeze extra money out of customers. Some have witnessed colleagues bending or breaking internal rules to meet ambitious performance goals. What has Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency done about this? Nothing. It’s been defanged. This week, a federal jury awarded $80m in damages to a California man who blamed Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) Roundup weedkiller for his cancer, after finding that Roundup was defectively designed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk, and that the company acted negligently. It was the second jury in eight months to reach the same conclusion about Roundup. Roundup contains glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Cases from more than 1,000 farmers and other agricultural workers stricken with non-Hodgkin lymphoma are already pending in federal and state courts. What has Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency done about glyphosate? In December 2017 its office of pesticide programs concluded that glyphosate wasn’t likely to cause cancer – although eight of the 15 experts on whom the agency relied expressed significant concerns about that conclusion, and three more expressed concerns about the data. These are just tips of a vast iceberg of regulatory neglect, frozen into place by Trump’s appointees, of which at least 187 were lobbyists before they joined the administration. This is trickle-down economics of a different sort than Trump’s corporate tax cuts. The major beneficiaries of this are the same big corporations, including their top executives and major investors. But these burdens are trickling down as unsafe products, fraudulent services, loss of privacy, even loss of life. Big money has had an inhibiting effect on regulators in several previous administrations. What’s unique under Trump is the blatancy of it all, and the shameless willingness of Trump appointees to turn a blind eye to corporate wrongdoing. Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress yell “socialism!” at proposals for better balancing private greed with the common good. Yet unless a better balance is achieved, capitalism as we know it is in deep trouble. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

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