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For all the talk in Washington about the need to decentralize power and give authority to the states, in one of the core areas of state and local responsibility — education — there is a growing and dangerous sentiment among top officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties in favor of a new federal…

The American mission of safe and healthful workplaces should be highly visible, heralded and backed by an adequately funded and enforced program. After all, far more Americans have lost their lives due to trauma and toxics in places of employment — especially the factories, farms, construction sites and mines — than the number of Americans…

More than 500,000 people live in the District of Columbia. As the capital of this nation, the District is the symbol of the freedoms for which this nation stands. The light of democracy shines from the District, but does not illuminate this city. The core is hollow. The values of equality and political participation that…

The airwaves belong to the people. Yet the U.S. government gives them away to television and radio broadcasters for free, and demands virtually nothing in return. We have forfeited many of the means of mass communication to concentrated corporate interests, consigning ourselves to homogenized low-grade entertainment and lower-grade copy-cat “newstainment” that barely aspires to inform…

Justice delayed is justice denied. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster, Exxon was found guilty by an Alaska jury and ordered to pay about $5 billion in punitive damages ? this was about one year’s profit for the oil giant. Eleven years later, Exxon has not paid a dime of the punitive damage award.…

At a time when CEOs are paying themselves exorbitant salaries, stock options and benefit packages, corporations are slashing the pension benefits of workers who have helped build their companies. The most heinous of the pension takeaway schemes include switching to cash balance plans (which deprive workers of expected benefit increases from their final years of…

The last few years have witnessed the increasing blurring of corporate and governmental roles in the international sphere — none more worrisome, perhaps, than the United Nations cozying up to big business. With a surge in private-public partnerships among various UN agencies, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is leading the international organization into ever-more intrusive…

Just about the last government function you would want to see privatized is meat inspection. But under recent and proposed regulatory changes, that is the direction in which the U.S. meat inspection program has been moving. The results, documented in “The Jungle 2000: Is America’s Meat Fit to Eat,” a report issued by the Government…

During the post World War II era 53 years ago, a pro-business Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act in an effort to slow, if not stop, the growth of the American labor movement. The fondest dreams of its corporate sponsors are being realized today. John L. Lewis, the president of the United Mine Workers, was prophetic…

It is time to expand the rights of citizens to hold government officials accountable for misdeeds or unacceptable behavior. Americans have a right to hold companies and government officials accountable when there are violations of the laws of this country — laws protecting the environment, prohibiting racial discrimination or otherwise effecting the purposes of the…