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Few American corporations live a more charmed existence than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant enterprises which dominate the nation’s housing finance markets.As former entities of the federal government, Fannie and Freddie exist in a corporate twilight zone in which they rake in huge profits as private corporations without being required to sever their…

Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest natural fibers in the plant kingdom. It is also one of the most versatile plants, with approximately 25,000 uses, ranging from paper to textiles to cosmetics, and is a good rotation crop that can be grown with a minimum of pesticides. Once deemed an indispensable commodity…

The news media suddenly is doing a great job of publicizing predatory lending. Front page stories and editorials in the New York Times and a companion piece on the “20-20” news program aired by the American Broadcasting Company have put a national spotlight on the sleazy credit merchants. This is a welcome development for consumer…

Imagine a public interest artist using the town square as a canvass. Now comes Gene Stilp, a 49-year-old lawyer with a keen advocacy sense, a nose for news and the creativity and skills to symbolically present a complicated public policy initiative with a prop guaranteed to generate media coverage and capture hearts and minds at…

It is remarkable how someone like Gray Davis can be elected Governor of California without knowing the basic elements of Civics 101. Yes, Governor, our state and federal governments are divided into three branches — the legislative, executive and judicial branches. They were designed both to balance one another’s excesses and to perform functions unique…

“Granny D You Speak For Me” That the streets of Washington, D.C., as they followed 90-year-old Doris Haddock on the last leg of her cross-country march to rally support for meaningful campaign finance reform. Granny D began her cross-country trek at the Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena, California on January 1, 1999. She steadily made…

Some thirty years ago David Caplovitz wrote about a situation that the poor have known for years. He called his book THE POOR PAY MORE. At the time, his documented evidence created quite a stir and many articles were written in the press about these intensive consumer abuses against people least able to endure them…

The Federal Reserve has always acted as a separate government. Normal checks and balances that apply to other federal agencies are simply ignored by the Federal Reserve Board. The Board sets its own budget and operates off the billions of dollars collected in buying and selling government securities as part of its control of the…

Alert for the millions of airline passenger knees — American Airlines will give them three to five extra inches of space in about a year. Hooray for small favors. One would think that buying an airline ticket for a seat on the plane would include knees along with toes and torsos. But since airline deregulation…

When twenty years ago Senator William Proxmire (D—WI) was championing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) that prohibited U.S. companies from bribing their way to sales in foreign countries, many large U.S. corporations were outraged and opposed. Unfair, they cried; other western countries allow foreign bribes (in fact, such bribes were deductible in some countries)…