http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2TWnAU0bKE&feature=related
Regulatory Capture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
EXCERPT:
In economics, regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called Captured Agencies.
For public choice theorists, regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. Regulatory capture refers to when this imbalance of focused resources devoted to a particular policy outcome is successful at "capturing" influence with the staff or commission members of the regulatory agency, so that the preferred policy outcomes of the special interest are implemented.
Regulatory capture theory is a core focus of the branch of public choice referred to as the economics of regulation; economists in this specialty are critical of conceptualizations of governmental regulatory intervention as being motivated to protect public good. Often cited articles include Bernstein (1955), Huntington (1952), Laffont & Tirole (1991), and Levine & Forrence (1990). The theory of regulatory capture is associated with Nobel laureate economist George Stigler, one of its main developers.
The risk of regulatory capture suggests that regulatory agencies should be protected from outside influence as much as possible, or else not created at all. A captured regulatory agency that serves the interests of its invested patrons with the power of the government behind it is often worse than no regulation whatsoever.
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[edit] Economic rationale
The idea of regulatory capture has an obvious economic basis in that vested interests in an industry have the greatest financial stake in regulatory activity and are more likely to be motivated to influence the regulatory body than dispersed individual consumers, each of whom has little particular incentive to try to influence regulators. As well, we would expect that when regulators form expert bodies to examine policy, this will invariably feature current or former industry members, or at the very least, individuals with contacts in the industry.Some economists, such as Jon Hanson and his co-authors, argue that the phenomenon extends beyond just political agencies and organizations. Businesses have an incentive to control anything that has power over them, including institutions from the media to academia to popular culture, and thus will try to capture them as well. When this happens, they call this phenomenon "deep capture."[1]
[edit] Examples
Historians, political scientists, and economists have used the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), a federal regulatory body in the United States, as a classic example of regulatory capture. The creation of the ICC was the result of widespread and longstanding anti-railroad agitation, but the Commission was later accused of acting in the interests of railroads and trucking companies. The ICC, they claimed, set rates at artificially high levels and excluded new competitors through a restrictive permitting process.[2]Legal scholars have pointed to the possibility that federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a federal regulatory body in the United States, had been captured by media conglomerates. Peter Schuck of Yale University School of Law has argued that the FCC is subject to capture by the media industries’ leaders and therefore reinforce the operation of corporate cartels in a form of “corporate socialism” that serves to “regressively tax consumers, impoverish small firms, inhibit new entry, stifle innovation, and diminish consumer choice”.[3]. The FCC selectively granted communications licenses to some radio and television stations in a process that excludes other citizens and little stations from having access to the public.[4].
The academic Thomas Alured Faunce has argued the World Trade Organisation Non-violation nullification of benefits claims, particularly when inserted in bilateral trade agreements, can facilitate intense lobbying by industry which can result in effective regulatory capture of large areas of governmental policy.[5]
The United States Food and Drug Administration has also been accused of acting in the interests of the agricultural, food and pharmaceutical industries (and supporting monopolies) at the expense of consumer health interests.[citation needed]
Another illustration of a possibly captured agency is the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has a dual-mandate both to promote aviation and to regulate its safety; it called airlines its "customers" until September 2009, when its administrator issued a directive mandating that the agency use the term only to refer to the flying public.[6] Prior to the deregulation of the US air industry, the Civil Aeronautics Board served to maintain an oligopoly of US airlines.[7][8]
In the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Minerals Management Service, which had regulatory responsibility for offshore oil drilling, was widely cited as an example of regulatory capture.[9][10][11]
[edit] Quotes
Richard Olney, the US Attorney General circa 1889, opined upon the Interstate Commerce Commission: "The Commission is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of the railroads, while at the same time that supervision is almost entirely nominal."[12]In 1913 Woodrow Wilson wrote: "If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don't you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it."[13]
http://www.drsimone.com/thefounder.htm
EXCERPT:
Interest in Nutrition and Prevention
While thoroughly engrossed in basic science, Dr. Simone again found new direction as a result of direct contacts with cancer patients. One of his first patients was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who was dying of malnutrition secondary to his cancer. Later, a man his own age came to Simone at NCI and asked to be kept alive for the birth of his child. Intensive chemotherapy cleaned out the cancer, but he did not improve. "At last resort, I gave him high doses of vitamins and minerals that quickly produced a seemingly miraculous, but only temporary recovery." The man saw the birth of his son.
Newly interested in nutrition, Dr. Simone realized that existing cancer treatments produced limited results. Although billions are spent on research, the number of new cancer cases rise year after year. He decided to devote part of his time investigating the effects of nutrition on cancer and the possibilities of cancer prevention.
The result was a landmark book, Cancer and Nutrition, A Ten Point Plan to Reduce Your Chances of Getting Cancer (1982). This is the only book endorsed by George Stringfellow, a founder of the American Cancer Society. Dr. Simone now serves as a consultant to major corporations, foreign countries, and has been asked to advise prominent figures, including President Reagan, on the principles of cancer prevention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Crawford
EXCERPT:
Lester Mills Crawford (born March 13, 1938) is an American veterinarian and former Commissioner of Food and Drugs.
Crawford resigned as head of the Food and Drug Administration in September 2005 after a stormy two-month stint. On October 17, 2006, he pled guilty to a conflict of interest and false reporting of information about stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of regulating. [1] He received a sentence of three years of supervised probation and a fine of about $90,000. [2]
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2005/08/13/secrets-of-the-fda-revealed-by-top-insider-doctor.aspx
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