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Bill Would damage Consumer Rights

April 7, 1984
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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, MA

March 30, 1984
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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…

The Threat of the Merger Craze

March 23, 1984
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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…

Making Airwaves Accessible

March 21, 1984
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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…

Contaminated Offices

March 19, 1984
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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…

ERIP

March 10, 1984
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Norman Fawley is a lone California inventor of a more practical way to use natural gas as a vehicle fuel. “While I would like to think that the world would recognize an inventor, this simply is not a fact”, he declared. Jim Bagby is a coal miner in Kentucky. In the mines he builds brattices…

Eating Better for Less

March 8, 1984
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Some of her suburban Washington neighbors were skeptical about Jo Ann York’s casual claims regarding her family of four’s food bills. So in 1976 she wrote a book entitled “How I Feed My Family on $16 a Week.” With her husband and two pre-teen children York showed how they “eat three balanced, nutritious meals a…

Somes Issues to Get Voters Out

March 1, 1984
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Can the Democrats retire Ronald Reagan in November? If their voter registration drives among women, minorities and students succeed, the chances are good. Historically, the larger the voter turnout (it was only 52% of the eligible voters in 1980), the more likely will be a Republican defeat. But getting more voters registered and voting is…

Cancer Society Needed Push

February 23, 1984
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Behind the recent dramatic announcement by the American Cancer Society (ACS) launching a campaign against corporate sources of cancer in the environment, workplace and diet is the untold story of Dr. Michael Jacobson and his Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). For fifteen years this 40-year old MIT-trained microbiologist has been a consumer…

Running With His Hands Out

February 17, 1984
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Houston — When Texan Lloyd Doggett, probably the country’s fastest rising state legislator, announced last year his campaign for the U.S. Senate, he began to hear the same response from people he thought were likely supporters. They all expressed admiration for his sterling ten year record of progressive work in the Texas senate, but they…