The Hightower Report

Cookie-Dough Cover-Up

E. coli 0157:H7 sounds like a character in an international spy thriller. And, in fact, 0157:H7 is an assassin, a deadly serial killer that takes out some 60 Americans every year.

What we have here is a vicious bacteria, and it has spread all across the country as our food supply has become industrialized, conglomerated, and globalized. It's a sneaky assassin, coming at us in the form of contaminated hamburgers, peanuts, spinach, orange juice ... and, now, cookie dough. Yes, death by cookie.

In June, a 29-state outbreak of E. coli was traced to a Virginia food plant owned by Nestlé, the Switzerland-based food giant. The particular perpetrator is Nestlé's very popular refrigerated Toll House cookie dough. It's like being poisoned by someone you love.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating the mystery of how E. coli gets into chocolate chip cookie dough, and there's not yet an answer. But the incident has uncovered a silent accomplice in E. coli's poisonous rampage: our food safety laws.

Rules supposedly meant to protect consumers have been perverted to protect the big manufacturers. The FDA does send inspectors into these food plants, but – get this – the corporations can dictate what our inspectors can and cannot look at. It turns out that Nestlé has been less than cooperative, refusing to allow FDA inspectors to review consumer complaints and to inspect the company's program for preventing food contamination. It has also denied access to pest-control records and refused to let inspectors photograph any part of the plant.

E. coli has come into our food supply because corporate profiteers are taking dangerous shortcuts on sanitation. That's bad, but it is unconscionable that our elected officials have also allowed the profiteers to control our food safety inspection system.

Madoff Is Not the Problem

Well, they sure nailed Bernie Madoff, didn't they?

The 71-year-old Ponzi schemer was sentenced to 65 years in the federal pokey for fraud, 50 years for money laundering, 20 years for filing false reports, and five years each for false statements, perjury, and theft. He'll be 221 years old when he gets out.

Madoff was a crook on an almost unimaginable scale, having run the largest, longest, most widespread Ponzi scheme in history. He bilked some $80 billion from tens of thousands of victims. His fraud wiped out the life savings of hundreds of small investors. Meanwhile, he was living the high life of Wall Street elites, including owning a $7 million New York penthouse, yachts, and a French villa.

So Bernie's gone, and that's that. Only it isn't. Madoff was not just some rogue financial slick who worked the dark corners of the system. He was the ultimate system insider who brazenly committed his gigantic fraud in broad daylight. Wall Street's other barons lionized his acumen, and Washington officials not only saluted his integrity but actually sought out his advice on relaxing regulatory policies. He is the product of an era of financial excess and laissez-faire foolishness. He didn't scam the system – the system is a scam, and he merely rode it further than most.

Putting Bernie away for a century and a half (a sentence three times longer than even the probation department sought) takes care of him but not the system. The phony swirl of Wall Street's swaps and derivatives, the job-busting deals of hedge funds, the government's weak and meek regulatory structure, and the culture of excess that allowed Madoff to flourish – all of this continues.

It's not the occasional outlaw that's the problem, but the in-laws – those who rig the system for their gain, at our expense.