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About seventy years ago, the Oklahoman, humorist Will Rogers, called Congress “the best money can buy.” On May 13th at the Washington Hilton Hotel, a stream of limousines swept into the driveway to unload corporate lobbyists who poured a record $11 million dollars into Republican Party coffers. Marinated between the representatives of the auto, chemical,…
Alan Greenspan’s decision to raise interest rates last month produced an unintended consequence–the awakening of the Democrats on the House Banking Committee. Led by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democratic minority is demanding that Chairman Jim Leach launch full scale hearings on Greenspan’s action and its impact on jobs and consumers. The Democrats–with the…
From The Nader Letter May 1997 Much of the Federal Reserve’s power is based on a storehouse of myths that have been carefully nurtured by successive Fed Chairmen over the years. No myth is longer lasting than the often repeated claim that the Federal Reserve Board must have power over bank regulation in order to…
American history books rarely give due recognition to the importance of the not-for-profit institutions in our society. As a capitalistic society, our country must have had good reasons to spawn huge numbers of not-for-profit banks, insurance companies, hospitals, colleges and myriads of social service associations from the blood banks to housing and other consumer cooperatives.…
The closed door high level negotiations for the great Tobacco settlement are underway. State Attorneys General, who are suing the tobacco companies to recover Medicaid costs of treating smoking-related illnesses, are at the table. So are the CEOs of the big companies, including Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco and their corporate attorneys. So too are…
The man of the sports hour is Tiger Woods. At the age of 21, he has won the World Series of golf — the Masters Golf Tournament and won it by breaking all previous records with the best score and this on his first try. Needless to say, the story and victory of this son…
A booming computer service industry is underway and if the reason for its awesome, avoidable costs was due to some government action, companies using computers would be in a rage. They would be in overdrive blaming government bureaucrats. Instead, the estimated cost of $300 billion to fix the year 2000 or millennium virus problem is…
In towns all across America, there must be men in their eighties and nineties chuckling over the fancy names and avante guard initiatives called recycling. For in the Thirties and Forties and Fifties, these men were doing the same thing in their creaking vehicles from neighborhood to neighborhood. Only they were called “junk men.” The…
It is spreading like a plague throughout the country. Fat cat sports corporations are threatening to leave cities, which subsidized them to come in the first place, unless city and state governments raise still more tax dollars to keep them there and build a new arena or stadium ringed with skyboxes for corporate bigwigs and…
Last June 1500 delegates from hundreds of local unions and several International Unions founded the Labor Party at a giant convention hall in Cleveland, Ohio. Elaborate thought and planning over five years went into this new workers political movement. So much so that the Party has no intention, for the time being, to field any…