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Ever try building democracy in the good ole USA? It’s not for the fainthearted, as our history points out over the past two centuries. Try asking Theresa Amato, who, for four years as director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, Illinois. nestled in the Chicago suburbs, has been grappling with local tyrannies and autocracies…

Is corporatism on a collision course with conservativism? The contradictions are sufficient to cautiously predict a serious split coming between members of Congress who curtsy to corporate power and those who see corporate power as restricting choice, freedom and justice. Starting in 1983 when real conservatives teamed up with liberals to defeat Ronald Reagan’s tax-subsidized…

In recent years, banks, credit card companies and others in the financial industry have been pushing high-cost credit on consumers in a reckless reach for bigger profits. Some lenders have lured new customers by offering low introductory interest rates. For example, a few years ago Chevy Chase Bank of Maryland offered customers a low introductory…

Washington, D.C. — In a town not known for its candor, Chairman Norman E. D’Amours of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) told an assemblage of credit union professionals from around the country that “credit unionism in the U.S. seems to be drifting toward becoming a not-for-profit banking sector like mutual banks.” D’Amours, a former…

Nashville, TN — Here in the heart of country music land, the nation’s insurance and hospital lobby is testing out a new tune of privilege in the form of Senate Bill 2283. Under the pretense of encouraging these companies to obey the law, this proposed legislation would shield a mass of internal documents from the…

It is annual bonus time on Wall Street. The Washington Post reports that these staggering bonuses paid to brokers and executives are viewed even by those who receive them as “absurd” and “outrageously” large. There is so much surplus money around that, the Post says, that “$10 million apartments in Manhattan, $3 million beach houses…

In a recent New York Times column, Frank Rich bemoaned the absence in public life of anyone who has the “standing to lead us to judgment of him?” (meaning Clinton and his current personal imbroglio). Rich ticked off established names in the press, politics, celebrity clergy, who no longer qualify for a variety of tarnished…

The release by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) of shocking documents by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco company that focused on the youth market for cigarette addiction again teaches groups too willing to settle for too less with this industry that political momentum and public opinion are still growing. Every month, the tobacco companies are losing ground in…

The availability of bank credit and services is the life blood of local communities. When banks curtail loans to small businesses, homeowners and development and housing projects, neighborhoods can deteriorate rapidly. That’s why community groups are concerned when big multi-state banks announce plans for mergers and acquisitions. It means less competition and the potential for…