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The House Judiciary Committee is in the midst of hearings inquiring about the low quality of competition in the insurance industry. Forty years ago this powerful industry rushed through Congress a law called the McCarran-Ferguson Act, without any public hearings, to exempt the insurance industry from the federal antitrust laws except for actions of industry…

Owen Bieber, the new leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW), denouncing the huge bonuses which the top auto executives are receiving. He thinks such big bucks are going to make his members more demanding when the UAW opens contract negotiations the the auto companies in July. The bonuses are big — by any standard.…

There are over 12 million students at colleges and Universities and over 99 percent of the national television time devoted to them covers their athletic activities. A Martian visiting this country would conclude from the televised athletic contests that higher education is dribbling, throwing and batting and very little. But there is much more that…

David Grubb is one of those citizen advocates who does not give in easily. As executive director of the West Virginia-Citizen Action Group (1324 Virginia Street, East, Charleston, West Virginia 25301), this young lawyer has spearheaded a successful grass roots, legislative drive to contain the staggering increases in natural gas prices. West Virginia has the…

Standing before the giant cooling towers at Three Mile Island (TMI), first Jesse Jackson and later Walter Mondale declared their unequivocal opposition to the restart of TMI-1. This is the so-called undamaged nuclear reactor twin to TMI-2 which had the industry’s most serious accident five years ago. Unlike Gary Hart’s waffling on this question in…

The Senator dislikes trial lawyers. So this month, he, Larry Pressler, (R-South Dakota), helped vote out of the Senate Commerce Committee, S. 44, a bill that dislikes victims of hazardous products and chemicals. Another Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) says he doesn’t oppose victims’ rights; he just opposes the multiplicity of lawsuits. So he voted for…

Portland, Maine — This is a tale of dognapping and the emergence of a shadowy group calling itself the National Doggie Liberation Front. It all started with Tucker, a 140-pound bull mastiff getting into a fight with a neighboring poodle in Augusta. The poodle lost big. Tucker was charged with canine homicide and sentenced to…

This is the month that Ronald Reagan and his associates destroyed any pretense of enforcing the antitrust laws — those anti-monopoly charters for a competitive marketplace. In just one week, the Justice Department dropped its opposition to the merger of LTV Corp. with Republic Steel (resulting in the nation’s second largest steel producer), and the…

Turn the dial or turn off the television are the two choices given Americans who spend an average of 25 hours a week in front of the tube. The corporate license holders who control the public’s airwaves would not want it any other way. But there is another way for the people in Holland. In…

The other day a friend complained about the fatigue and headaches she and her office associates kept feeling in their office. After some inquiries they are persuaded that their afflictions have their source in some form of indoor pollution at their place of work. Hearing her description reminded me of all the concern over home…