Human Rights

This is the second in a series of articles about raw milk by the Center for Media and Democracy's Food Rights Network. For more about raids on raw milk farmers and eaters, see yesterday's article.

Wisconsin dairy farmers are appealing a state judge's ruling that they do not have the right to own a dairy cow or drink the unprocessed milk from their own cows.

Mark and Petra Zinniker, who sought to distribute raw milk to herd shareholders through their private farm store, received a judgment from state Circuit Court Judge Patrick Fiedler ruling against them on all counts in August.

In response, the Zinnikers, their shareholders and their lawyers at the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) filed a clarification motion, on which Judge Fiedler filed his decision and order on September 9th.

A few months before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, I was working on a "white paper" to try to persuade people -- especially lawmakers and candidates running for office that year -- that the problem of the uninsured in this country was not a big deal.

At that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were an estimated 47 million Americans who were uninsured, a number that has increased since then by about 4 million. My job was to slice and dice the Census data in such a way to convince people that most of those without coverage were just shirking their personal responsibility to buy it.

In another win for well-connected right-wing interests, Wisconsin Rep. Robin Vos (R-63) squeezed a last-minute provision into the budget on Friday, June 3 that moves Wisconsin towards re-introducing bail bondsmen (and bounty hunters) to the state, a corruptive practice that has been prohibited since 1979. Like much of the dairy state’s recent legislative activity, this latest effort is smudged with the fingerprints of the American Legislative Exchange Council and well-funded lobbying interests.

One of the reasons I left my job as a PR executive for the health insurance industry was because I could not in good conscience be a pitchman for the sort of fabulously profitable benefit plan that often provides little more than the illusion of coverage.

Known as "mini-meds," these plans have become popular among businesses like fast-food chains that have many low-wage employees. The common features of these plans: high deductibles, modest benefits and low annual caps on medical coverage. Some of these plans provide as little as $2,000 worth of care each year.

Consumer advocates call these plans "junk insurance." That's because what workers get in these plans for their hard-earned money may actually put them at risk of going bankrupt or losing their homes if they get seriously sick or injured.