The Intelligence Group

Consumer Advocate, Diane Bryan, founder of The Intelligence Group, has been fighting on behalf of the American people for more than 25 years. By 2004, it was apparent to her that ordinary citizens had almost no voice in their own country. It’s because most members of Congress now work first for wealthy corporations, and make their needs a priority—that’s who funds their expensive campaigns every election cycle, and keeps them in office. 

 
The Intelligence Group works as a liaison between the American people and their elected government representatives on local, state, and national issues. We also help consumers resolve disputes they have with American companies. We are concerned about the safety of the products we buy, the food we eat, the water we drink, the exploding crisis of homelessness in our country, a federal minimum wage that has been $7.25 since 2009, the continued outsourcing of American jobs to foreign lands, a healthcare system run by corporations who put profits over patients and is not affordable for most Americans, the lack of adequate medical and mental healthcare for our veterans, the rising numbers of veterans who have become homeless, and how the military families our politicians are constantly thanking for their service are so poorly paid that many are forced to make use of food stamps and food banks. 

 
We now live in a monopolized economy. Congress used to believe that it was good for industries to have lots of companies competing for employees and customers. Not anymore. In recent years, because many judges and policymakers have become convinced that corporate consolidation is good for America, despite the abundance of evidence that it is not, there’s been an escalation in corporate mergers in many industries. This has caused the destruction of factory towns, the loss of jobs, suppressed wages, and harm to small and middle-sized businesses. Unfortunately, many corporations today would rather dominate the market by eliminating their competition. Lack of competition has resulted in our citizens paying higher prices and often receiving lousy customer service from these giant corporations who control their industries. 

What we're charged for food, rent, mortgages, utilities, gasoline, drugs, credit card interest rates, automobiles, medical care, automobile insurance, homeowners insurance, and health insurance has skyrocketed. Our citizens are struggling to pay their bills, and a large percentage of our senior population is unable to afford essentials, including rent, and are becoming homeless. When they apply for senior housing, which is very scarce, they discover the wait can be as much as five years. We have a retirement crisis in this country that has been worsening since the 2008 crash of our economy. But most of our politicians choose to ignore it. 

Meanwhile, many Republicans in Congress continue their assault on the popular Social Security program, a war they've been waging since the program's inception. As they talk about making cuts to Social Security, and raising the age of retirement, it's clear they're oblivious to the current financial struggles of many of America's seniors. It also doesn't help that more than half of our members of Congress are multimillionaires and live in a world far removed from the real one most of America inhabits. 

As they deliberately underfund the Social Security program to make it appear to be a failed program, many of these politicians continue to have an agenda that President George W. Bush also had. They want to turn Social Security over to Wall Street banks--the same banks whose risky speculation crashed our economy in 2008, and who have received secret bailouts from the Federal Reserve in recent years too. Privatizing Social Security means that the banks would get trillions of dollars in management fees from the program. The banks have been donating generously for years to the political campaigns of these politicians, and that’s why they continue to push for what would be an enormous financial windfall for their donors in the banking industry. 

And some of the richest corporations in America―pharmaceutical giants and health insurers―are trying to privatize Medicare, the highly efficient and successful federal health insurance system, because there are billions of dollars to be made yearly by corporate America. That means higher costs for seniors, and the nightmare of denials and delays, courtesy of the profit-driven insurance system. Because we hear so many complaints, we recommend that people stay far away from Medicare Advantage plans and get their healthcare coverage from traditional Medicare and a Medicare supplement plan. 

We were disgusted that wealthy corporations, in a variety of industries, already enjoying record profits during the pandemic, decided to raise their prices, simply because they could. They had absolutely no concern about the severe financial damage they were doing to our citizens during Covid and its economic crisis as they contributed immensely to the high inflation our nation was going through. It was troubling that only a few of our politicians in Washington DC cared about this blatant display of corporate greed and its financial impact on ordinary Americans. But we have to remember that these corporations are also funding the political campaigns of many members of Congress. If you want to keep the campaign donations flowing, you don't criticize your corporate donors, or stop them from price gouging. 

We’re concerned about how so many of our nurses and doctors are feeling demoralized, overworked, and underpaid in a corporatized healthcare system that doesn’t value them.  We’ve been speaking to these people often since Covid began. Physicians used to be their own bosses, and they were in charge of the care of their patients. Now most are employees of corporations, and they have to answer to hospitals, the insurance companies, and private equity medical practices when it comes to how they treat their patients.  

We’re concerned about the housing crisis in America. Since the economy crashed in 2008, corporations have continued to buy up homes and turn them into rental properties. They outbid families who want to own these homes, often paying well above asking price, which raises the prices of all homes in those neighborhoods. Then they charge rents that are much more than rents normally are in those towns, and soon all rents increase.  These neighborhoods become too expensive for most people who want to buy or rent. 

Defense spending for 2024 will most likely be close to $900 billion. But it’s troubling that the Pentagon (Department of Defense) has failed every audit since its first audit in 2018. Spending is out of control and the Pentagon can’t seem to keep track of the money it receives from the American taxpayers. They can’t account for approximately $220 billion in equipment provided by government contractors, they pay ridiculously high amounts of money for spare parts, and have wasted billions on the seriously flawed F-35 jet fighter that costs approximately $80 million for each plane.  We’ve been hearing for many years about the abundance of waste and fraud at the Pentagon. 

We’ve become a nation of the scammed. Innocent Americans are buying thousands of dollars in gift cards to pay scammers who pretend to be the IRS, Medicare, Social Security, a cable company, a child or grandchild who has been “kidnapped,” or are from “the government” and are contacting them because “China put child porn on your computer and you can go to prison for that. We will help you.” Lonely older women have been scammed out of as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars by criminals, many who are located in foreign countries, who have created fake identities on social media websites, and manipulate these women into believing they are in love with them. 

The scamming of the American people has become a national crisis and we need a national agency to attack these scammers fulltime. It’s costing our citizens billions of dollars a year, and yet nothing substantial is being done by our government or corporate America to effectively stop what has become nonstop scamming. The phone companies that are only in business because we buy their services, can’t seem to prevent the constant, annoying scam phone calls that most of their customers are getting daily. It’s useless to put your phone number on the national Do Not Call Registry. Many people have been forced to stop answering their phones. And the corporations whose gift cards are used in many of the scams perpetrated against the American people are doing the minimum to prevent the crimes. One retailer, Target, has been bringing in an extra $30 million or more a year from scam payments that use their gift cards. Why would they want to rush to stop it? 

And also on our list of concerns is what people complain to The Intelligence Group about often--how most American corporations are making the choice to provide mediocre customer service. We noticed this beginning around 2004, and it’s only gotten worse. Too many corporations in America seem to want to ignore that their loyal customers are the only reason they're in business. We hear complaints often about how the majority of companies in this country provide inadequate phone customer service. Also, most Americans are not happy with the self-checkout registers that large corporations continue to install. In their quest for even bigger profits, many companies have made the decision to eliminate the employees who run the registers. They’re forcing their customers to use the self-checkout machines. Apparently, Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar General plan to have stores that are exclusively self-checkout.  But using these machines can be difficult and frustrating, and most customers don’t like that when they come to shop, they are now expected to do the work once done by employees. 

Many customers have felt for years that corporations are increasingly showing how little appreciation and respect they have for them, and their employees—the two groups that keep them in business. It does seem that many corporations today feel entitled to provide as little customer service as possible to their loyal customers. But not that long ago, the majority of corporations in America actually appreciated their customers, understood they were the reason their companies existed, and made an obvious effort to show that they valued them. 

The summer of 2023 has been the hottest ever recorded. We worry about the severe weather our planet is experiencing. It's causing America to have hotter heat waves, increased wildfire risk, greater amounts of snowfall, droughts that have become more severe, and larger storm surges. As fires burn across America and Canada, we're finding that they're heavily polluting the air of towns far from the blazes, and people are breathing in what is said to be the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes.

Our oceans are experiencing record temperatures now. In July of 2023 it was a sweltering 101.1 degrees F in the waters off South Florida's coast, and this is harming sea life. 

 
Thousands of species are dependent on the world's coral reefs. They provide food and protection for marine life, and protection for coastlines when hurricanes are approaching. But coral reefs are in danger of going extinct, possibly as soon as the mid 21st century. 

Doctors have been warning that as outside temperatures reach record heat levels in large areas of America, sidewalks have become so hot that people who fall or pass out on the concrete have experienced very deep burns that land them in the hospital, and some have needed skin grafts. This isn’t normal.

Recent weather/climate disaster events are worsening, and have destroyed the homes and businesses of many of our citizens--some who are their constituents. These weather/climate events cost our nation over $165 billion in 2022. 

Many people believe we need to approach this crisis as we would a war, and go on the attack. But we can't expect much help from our current members of Congress. Billionaires in the coal and fossil fuel industries don't want anything cutting into their billions in profits, and because of the large campaign donations they make, they can depend on most Republican politicians, along with a few Democrats, to block any legislation designed to solve these weather/climate crises. These politicians work so hard for their coal and fossil fuel industry donors that they won't even acknowledge the reality that the intensity of storms, heat, and flooding we're experiencing is unlike anything we've seen before.

It’s the Consumer Advocates in this country who have never stopped putting the needs of the American people first, but they’re not being treated seriously by our elected representatives and the media. You would assume that because Consumer Advocates represent a group that is over 300 million in number, they, and the American people, would have tremendous political influence. But what seems rational, is not our reality. Ordinary Americans can’t compete with the very generous campaign donations large corporations in a variety of industries provide politicians--especially members of Congress. And until they can, the American people, despite their impressive size, won’t be a priority to most men and women elected to represent them. 

Diane Bryan’s work as a Consumer Advocate became more challenging after the Wall Street banks crashed the economy in 2008. Tragically, millions of Americans never recovered financially, and went from being middle class to working poor. But the banks who caused financial devastation to these citizens were handed massive bailouts--they were considered to be too big to fail. In recent years, we've learned that these banks were given access to $29 trillion. They became richer, bigger, and more politically influential. During our nation’s economic meltdown, most of our representatives in Washington DC didn’t think it was necessary to bail out our citizens who, at no fault of their own, were losing their homes, their businesses, their jobs, and their savings. Just the banks were worthy of a bailout.

And the banks continued to make donations to their favorite members of Congress. These politicians didn't care that the banks were giving them bailout money that came from the American taxpayers. And so, when bills were introduced to help the financially devastated American people, many of these politicians voted against them, because the bailed-out bankers who funded their election campaigns told them it wouldn't be good for their profits. 

And to show their deep loyalty to these banks, Congress did nothing to stop the bailed-out bankers when they rushed to raise already high credit card interest rates on the struggling American people at the height of the Great Recession, just before the CARD Act of 2009 was enacted. The CARD Act was legislation designed to ensure people don’t fall prey to predatory practices. It put limits on interest rate increases that credit card issuers can charge. Before it became law, credit card companies could raise interest rates whenever they wanted, without notifying their customers before doing it. 

These bailed-out CEOs whose banks had helped crash the economy of the United States had one last chance to hike credit card interest rates before the CARD Act became law. They had the opportunity in that moment to show that they had a conscience about the severe financial damage they had done to the lives of millions of our citizens, and genuine gratitude to the American taxpayers for allowing them to stay in business. But instead, they made the vile choice to raise those interest rates and cause our citizens further economic stress. It was quite an arrogant display of greed and cruelty, and it was appalling that the men and women elected to represent us quietly allowed it to happen. 

The banks also benefited financially when Congress and the Obama administration allowed over 325,000 small businesses to close permanently, and 9 million homes of our citizens to be lost to foreclosure during that financial crisis. Many of those foreclosures were fraudulently executed by the banks, and never should have been permitted to go through, but no one in our government was willing to help these homeowners fight the banks and keep their homes. But several Consumer Advocates did get involved and were able to save a few homes. But not many. 

Because of their massive political influence, not one banker who crashed our economy in 2008 went to jail for the financial devastation they caused to millions of our citizens. Instead, they were given massive financial rewards. None of them felt compelled to use any of those trillions they could easily access to help the American people. 

While the banks were borrowing money from the Federal Reserve at close to 0%, they felt entitled to charge our citizens interest rates as high as 16% on their credit cards, even though they knew that many Americans had no choice but to use credit cards to keep from drowning financially during this national economic crisis their own industry had caused. There were no low interest loans available to help the American people save their businesses, their homes. and their savings. And our politicians did nothing to fix this. 

 
In recent months, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, and credit card companies have raised their rates too. They're charging a large number of their customers almost 30% annually—that’s an all-time high for credit card interest rates. Many of these customers have no choice but to use their credit cards to help pay their bills. They’re struggling financially because of inflation caused by a global pandemic and greedy corporations who are enjoying record profits and have no conscience about raising their prices. Once again, there’s no one in Congress demanding that banks lower these excessively high credit card interest rates during our latest financial crisis. In fact, many politicians receive large campaigns donations from Payday Lenders, and don’t have a problem with taking money from these companies who loan money to desperate Americans at interest rates that can be as high as 400%.  

There used to be a time in America when bankers who financially damaged our citizens went to prison for their crimes. They weren't considered to be too big to fail, or too big to jail. Over 800 were incarcerated for causing the Savings and Loan Crises of the 1980s and 1990s, during the Reagan and Bush 1 administrations. Why did none of the bankers who helped crash our economy in 2008 go to prison?  What changed? 

Corporations didn't always have such huge power in Washington DC. It's all about the rise in corporate lobbying which increased significantly by the early 2000s. Corporate lobbyists are paid to influence the President and members of Congress to pass or oppose legislation that affects their corporate clients. Unfortunately, they often block progress on important issues that impact the wellbeing of the American people. 

Lobbying is protected by the First Amendment and corporations spend more than $4 billion a year on it. A generous portion of those billions has gone toward getting Congress to pass legislation that lowers corporate taxes. It’s been one of corporate America’s best investments. At least 55 of the largest and most profitable corporations in America now pay no federal income taxes. 

 
Several large corporations employ as many as 100 lobbyists to represent their interests on a variety of issues. One study shows that for every dollar a corporation spends on lobbying and campaign donations, they’ll see a return of $760 from our government. Lobbying is a huge business in America. Many people see no difference between lobbying and bribery and believe that both should be illegal.  Lobbying is a way to influence power. Often through financial donations.  Bribery is a way to buy power. You pay to get what you want. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled, in their Citizens United decision, that corporations are people and political spending is a form of free speech protected under the First Amendment. Many Americans see this Supreme Court decision as the legalization of political bribery. It’s definitely given wealthy people and corporations a very unfair advantage in the political process.

Unfortunately for us, the result is a democracy that no longer can handle large-scale problems, corporations now wield so much influence and power that they have become more like the 4th branch of our government, and our 330 million citizens basically have no real voice in their own nation. Many lawmakers who leave Washington DC return as corporate lobbyists. It's a very popular career for former members of Congress from both parties. Corporate lobbyists often donate to political campaigns too, which also helps them influence policy. 

 
The pandemic caused another financial crisis for our citizens. Unfortunately, many of these people hadn't recovered from the 2008 financial crisis because there were no programs put in place by our government to help them. This crisis there were billions of dollars of pandemic relief money allocated by the Trump Administration to small businesses. But somehow, much of it ended up going to rich Americans and wealthy corporations that didn’t need the financial help. Many of them received several million dollars in Paycheck Protection Plan loans. These loans have been forgiven. They will never have to pay them back, even though they can certainly afford to do so.  Several of the richest members of Congress took that PPP money for themselves too. Why not? Free money was available. Why would they let a good financial crisis go to waste? The banks were paid well for processing the Paycheck Protection Plan loans. They received more than $19 billion in fees. But sadly, at least 200,000 small businesses have been forced to close permanently since Covid came to America. Many could have remained in business if only they had been given access to the financial aid meant for them. 

Today, 40% of America is making $35,000 or less working fulltime--that's considered to be poverty wages. And around 60% of this country is living paycheck to paycheck, and couldn’t come up with $500 in an emergency. This was going on before the pandemic started. Since the banks crashed our economy in 2008, the majority of jobs available to our citizens have increasingly become low wage ones in the service and retail industries. Many of these jobs are part time only--this allows companies to avoid giving their employees benefits. Before the pandemic, our politicians were telling us how wonderful it is that we have such low unemployment in America. But they left out the important information that a large percentage of these employed Americans weren’t making a living wage working fulltime, which meant some were forced to take on additional jobs, and many were turning to government assistance programs for help. 

Rather than demanding that their corporate donors pay their employees better wages, most of our politicians are totally fine with billions of our tax dollars being used annually for corporate welfare--food stamps and other government assistance programs for the underpaid employees of some of America’s wealthiest corporations. 

A few years before the pandemic began, all over America, millions of our citizens were speaking out in frustration and rage about the erosion of our once-strong middle class, and how millions of our citizens were falling into poverty, despite working fulltime. They wanted to know why our politicians had been ignoring this for years. Why were they doing nothing to stop it? People told us then, and continue to tell us now, that they barely recognize their country anymore, and express their concern about the future for themselves, and for their children and grandchildren.

 
For too many Americans, life has become just a constant, stressful struggle to get by, worsened by the skyrocketing costs of housing, transportation, utilities, gasoline, food, education, childcare, and healthcare. We speak to many hard-working Americans who tell us that despite trying to focus on the positives in their lives, they're finding that they are feeling a great deal of despair and hopelessness now. 

 
Many of us remember when America was a kinder and more affordable place to live. There was a time in the not so distant past where it was normal for an American family to buy a small house with one low income job. We also remember one of America’s greatest achievements—our middle class. It was something our politicians and citizens were so proud of. Now it’s on life support, and the prognosis doesn't look good. That’s because our political system has become all about corporate profits. 

In the last 20 years, in their unending quest to increase stock prices and maximize profits, corporations have closed more than 70,000 of our factories and sent as much as 10 million of our middle class jobs to foreign countries. 70,000 is an enormous number. Wasn’t the loss of factories a serious concern to Congress and politicians in those states where it was happening when it reached as much as 10,000? Tragically, no. There were millions of lost jobs, thousands of decimated towns, thousands of homes losing their value, thousands of small businesses and big box stores closing. But unless you were impacted, most Americans didn’t even know it was happening. If anyone was yelling bloody murder about this, we sure didn’t hear about it from the media. 

 
And it was allowed to get worse. Eventually, the number of closed factories became a head-spinning 70,000. Why was it just accepted by the majority of our politicians that tens of thousands of American towns, the businesses in them, and our middle class, would have to be sacrificed so that some greedy American corporations who wanted even bigger short term profits could send their manufacturing and jobs overseas to achieve it? 

The loss of such a high number of factories and middle class jobs had a lasting impact on this country. Many Americans who lost their middle class jobs never again could find another one. It turned people who had been living comfortable, happy middle class lives for years into the stressed out, struggling working poor that so many Americans have become today. 

We can blame Congress for this. They gave these corporations tax incentives to close their factories and leave America. This means that in return for some campaign donations many politicians were willing to help destroy our middle class and create an America where the majority of our citizens now have low wage jobs, and their lives are filled with the constant worry about how they will pay their bills. 

The GOP’s December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made it so that wealthy corporations now pay very little or no federal taxes. This legislation caused a $2 trillion deficit. Most people don’t know that this bill also included more tax incentives to encourage corporations to move their manufacturing and jobs overseas. During the Trump Administration, despite our being told that outsourcing of our manufacturing and jobs would end, another 1,800 American factories closed, and it’s estimated that more than 300,000 jobs went overseas. Corporations want the cheapest labor possible, and many of our politicians in Washington DC have been willing for many years to help them achieve it, even if it’s to the detriment of the American people.

 
In their quest to achieve the cheapest labor possible, both overseas and in the United States, corporate America continues to bring into the United States 85,000 foreign workers a year to take American middle class jobs using H-1B visas. In 2015, Disney, one of the largest and richest corporations in the world, decided to save money they didn’t need to save by replacing approximately 250 of their tech people in America with H-1B visa workers from India. Disney forced their fired American employees to train their replacements--or they would get no severance pay.

In 2015, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were trying to pass legislation that would increase the H-1B visas from 85,000 a year to 325,000 a year. Cruz and Rubio, like so many members of Congress, are dependent on large donations from corporations to stay in office. So, they put the needs of the companies who fund their political ambitions before the needs of the American people. They were ready and willing to take away 325,000 middle class jobs from American workers, many who had voted them into office, and do it every single year. In 3 years, that would have become almost 1 million jobs lost to our citizens. Why do we continue to elect men and women to represent us who are willing to sacrifice our nation’s workers for corporate donations? But most Americans don’t know what these politicians are doing to destroy the economic wellbeing of our citizens. The mainstream media doesn’t report it. 

Many Americans seem to be in agreement on this—they don’t believe that they’re a priority anymore to the politicians who run this country, and they feel hopeless about the future. The Intelligence Group worries that large numbers of our citizens are feeling defeated, and are simply becoming resigned to settling for an America that no longer works for most of us. 

The Intelligence Group wants us to finally recognize the huge power we have always possessed: As citizens, we can vote politicians in and out of office, and we pay the taxes that fund the lucrative government contracts corporations receive. As consumers, we purchase the products and services corporations provide. Which means we keep them in business. That’s a great deal of power. 

Diane Bryan and The Intelligence Group are determined to help our citizens understand how urgent it is that we, the American people, join together now with the goal of transforming this country so that it works for 330 million of us, instead of a few hundred wealthy corporations. Otherwise, the serious problems in America that continue to be ignored, and the deep divide between our citizens, will only worsen. We still have time to prevent a bleak future.

 
This deep divide has been fueled for more than 20 years by the media, cable news commentators, corporations, and many of our nation's politicians. They know that when they keep us at each other’s throats, and manipulate us so that we are feeling outrage about something, it benefits them enormously. They don’t care that it’s tearing apart our nation. And some of these politicians and media commentators have learned that they don’t even have to tell the truth—many Americans are willing to believe anything they say, won't bother to do any fact-checking, simply because they support the same political party. 

The goal is to keep the American people distracted. This way they’re not going to focus on the serious problems in this country that are only getting worse, but continue to be ignored by our lawmakers. They're not going to realize that these same politicians who are stirring up their anger, fear, and outrage, and distrust for their fellow Americans, are basically doing nothing else for them--or the rest of our citizens.

They have no idea that these elected representatives don’t actually have much allegiance to the citizens of this country, or care how the worsening conditions in America are impacting their constituents’ lives. Instead, while these politicians are telling their supporters how deeply they care about them, and coming up with the next thing for them to get outraged about, they're consistently putting the needs and demands of the corporations who fund their campaigns first. Especially during any economic crisis--which we saw during the pandemic, and when the banks crashed our economy in 2008. This is simply how our political system works today.

These politicians, who so easily sell out the American people, certainly missed that important history lesson about how our founding fathers hated corporations. The colonists had lived under the tyranny of the corporations of the King of England for years, and even fought a war over it. They wanted corporations to play as small a role as possible in the new nation. How devastated they would be to know that in today’s America, corporations have bought so much power and influence that they have become more like the 4th branch of our federal government.   

The Intelligence Group provides the latest research on a wide variety of health topics to consumers and health care professionals.  We encourage everyone to become actively involved in their own health care, which includes learning about possible side effects and drug interactions from the pharmaceutical medications prescribed to them and to their family members.  For many years we have been concerned about the junk food diet enjoyed by most Americans.  Besides causing an alarming increase in childhood obesity, it also affects brain power--impairing the ability of children (and adults too) to focus and to learn.  We provide the information and support needed to help people attain a healthier lifestyle.  We also evaluate some of the newest health and skin care products to see if they live up to their claims.