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WINNIPEG, Manitoba — “Imagine having to go to Washington to obtain reports about Canadian meat plants that our government holds secret from its own people.”This was the astonished reaction by a participant to remarks made at a spirited conference on freedom of information versus government secrecy, during the Canadian Bar Association’s annual convention. There is…
AUSTIN, Texas — John L. Hill is angry at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). As attorney general of Texas, he has his lawyers looking into the mushrooming scandal of federally insured student loans (FISL) involving proprietary schools and banks. The more they investigate, the more they believe that HEW officials bear a…
In the coming year, four major unions — the Auto Workers, Mineworkers, Machinists and Steelworkers — will have elections for new leadership. These elections, particularly the one by the steelworkers, may have far reaching effects on the way unions are run and the range of political and economic issues on which union power is exercised.…
Today’s job hazards are affecting tomorrow’s babies. Evidence is accumulating that chemicals, gases and other hazards in the workplace are producing birth defects, stillbirths, miscarriages and other reproductive damage. Some of this evidence was brought together recently in a report titled “Working For Your Life: A Woman’s Guide to Job Health Hazards” (available for $5…
Mitchell Atalla was a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Florida in 1967 when he wrote to the U.S. Department of State for an application to the Foreign Service. To pin the Foreign Service was his lifelong dream. But when he received a detailed questionnaire from the department listing the physical requirements, he dejectedly…
It was a routine, uneventful Senate Commerce Committee hearing last year on the successful confirmation of Richard L. Dunham (a Ford appointee and former associate of Nelson Rockefeller) as chairman of then Federal Power Commission. But there was nothing routine or uneventful about what Dunham and two of his fellow FPC commissioners did in late…
Gobbledygook is a growth industry. Verbal obscurity, gigantic, intertwined sentences, semantic blahs, bureaucratese and legal esoterica put people to work. There are people who produce Gobbledygook, people who interpret Gobbledygook and people hired to help other people adversely affected by insensitive Gobbledygook. It’s all part of the GNP. There are even people working to make…
Seventy years ago, Judge Benjamin Cardozo rendered his now famous decision making Buick Motor Company liable for a defective wheel which fell off one MacPherson’s Buick and resulted in MacPherson’s injury. Since then the court-made law of “products liability” has evolved into a wide array of legal liabilities for manufacturers who design or construct defective…
If defrauders of consumers were relieved when the Pennsylvania State Senate rejected Herb Denenberg’s nomination in 1975 by Gov. Shapp to be head of the Public Utility Commission, they need only turn on WCAU-TV in Philadelphia for the daily 6 p.m. news to get agitated all over again. For there on the screen appears their…
It started with a police corruption inquiry in Indianapolis and ended with the formal launching of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) group last month in the same city. Myrta Pulliam, reporter for the Indianapolis Star, wanted some advice on how to go about probing a police scandal. She called up a veteran of such…