No More Kids' Stuff At Goodwill

Ack. A serious dilemma for this here Worried Dad and several of his co-conspirators in the world of guerrilla parenting.

Here's the short of it:

* America want cheap junk from China.

* China complies, but slaps extra lead on every kind of book, toy, lunchbox, and article of clothing to help keep costs down.

* Americans freak out (including your humble blogger here).

* American Congress passes sweeping anti-lead law. Now every store, vendor, producer, etc. of children's anything must prove that their products are lead free.

* Worried Dad then walks into favorite Goodwill store and discovers that all children's clothing and toys are gone, baby, gone.

* Worried Dad ponders global economic apocalypse and wonders if kids today really need all those extra IQ points after all...

Nigerians Scam Citibank

As if we didn't need any more reasons to be worried about the people running our banks, it seems that the geniuses at Citibank just fell for a Nigerian scam (run by real Nigerians!) for $27 million posing as representatives of the Bank of Ethiopia. The bank refunded the money to the Ethiopians, which probably wasn't a big deal since they are sitting on billions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money.

From the Times:

Swindles in which someone overseas seeks access to a person’s bank account are so well known that most potential victims can spot them in seconds.

But one man found success by tweaking the formula, prosecutors say: Rather than trying to dupe an account holder into giving up information, he duped the bank. And instead of swindling a person, he tried to rob a country — of $27 million.

To carry out the elaborate scheme, prosecutors in New York said on Friday, the man, identified as Paul Gabriel Amos, 37, a Nigerian citizen who lived in Singapore, worked with others to create official-looking documents that instructed Citibank to wire the money in two dozen transactions to accounts that Mr. Amos and the others controlled around the world.

The money came from a Citibank account in New York held by the National Bank of Ethiopia, that country’s central bank. Prosecutors said the conspirators, contacted by Citibank to verify the transactions, posed as Ethiopian bank officials and approved the transfers.

...

Prosecutors said the scheme began in September, when Citibank received a package with documents purportedly signed by officials of the Ethiopian bank instructing Citibank to accept instructions by fax. There was also a list of officials who could be called to confirm such requests. The signatures of the officials appeared to match those in Citibank’s records and were accepted by Citibank, the complaint says.

In October, Citibank received two dozen faxed requests for money to be wired, and it transferred $27 million to accounts controlled by the conspirators in Japan, South Korea, Australia, China, Cyprus and the United States, the complaint says.

Citibank called the officials whose names and numbers it had been given to verify the transactions, prosecutors said. The numbers turned out to be for cellphones in Nigeria, South Africa and Britain used by the conspirators.

Citibank, in its investigation, later determined the package of documents had come via courier from Lagos, Nigeria, rather than from the offices of the National Bank of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa.

Citibank has credited back the lost funds to the National Bank of Ethiopia, said one person who was briefed about the situation.

Organic Farms Got Phony Fertilizer

Organic farmers in California, including some of the largest producers in the country, have been unwittingly using a synthetic fertilizer for up to seven years. The product, made by California Liquid Fertilizer, was cheap, effective and certified organic. It captured a third of California's organic farming market by 2006.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture had been notified of the problem in 2004, but didn't order the company to remove its product from the market until January 2007. It didn't notify the company's clients until a year and a half later.

Another major producer of liquid fertilizer pulled its product from the organic market in November 2007 after regulators initiated an investigation.

The organic produce market has grown from small farmers to a multi-billion dollar megabusiness, but regulation hasn't kept pace. State regulators only initiate inspections after receiving a complaint. Most of the regulation falls on the industry certification groups, but they often rely on company-provided information to determine if products meet federal standards.

From the Sacramento Bee:

For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer's dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.

The company's fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.

As a result, some of California's 2006 harvest of organic fruits, nuts and vegetables – including crops from giants like Earthbound Farm – wasn't really organic.

According to documents obtained by The Bee through a Public Records Act request, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials were notified of the problem in June 2004 but didn't complete their investigation and order the company to remove its product from the organic market until January 2007.

State officials knew some of California's largest organic farms had been using the fertilizer, the documents show, but they kept their findings confidential until nearly a year and a half after it was removed from the market. No farms lost their organic certification.

The rest of the story (a very interesting read) is here.

Killer Peanuts

I take a month away from the blog and peanuts threaten to rise up and kill all our children.

Since the peanut uprising began, at least 575 people in 43 states have been sickened by salmonella-tainted PB. At least 8 have died.

The Times reports today that peanut agents have apparently infiltrated the government and had the Agricultural Department send out tainted peanut butter to schools across the country as part of the free-lunch program (moral: there is a free lunch, but it will kill you).

This interesting tidbit was buried deep in the story:

Despite ongoing reports of illnesses linked to the company, the Agriculture department only Thursday suspended Peanut Corp. from participating in government contract programs, for at least a year. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also removed Stewart Parnell, president of the company, from USDA's Peanut Standards Board.

...

The Food and Drug Administration learned only weeks ago that the Peanut Corp. of America had received a series of private tests dating back to 2007 showing salmonella in their products from the Georgia plant, but later shipped the items after obtaining negative test results.