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From The Nader Letter July 1996The slash and burn approach of the 104th Congress has produced a long list of foolish, counter productive and, often, dangerous cuts in the federal budget.But, few top the irresponsibility of the budget cutters who have applied a blunt meat axe to the General Accounting Office (GAO), the only full-time…
In September of 1993, Wesley J. Smith and I wrote a book titled Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety We made a large number of recommendations based on official crash investigations, technical specialists inside and outside the industry whom we interviewed and the many insights of pilots, maintenance workers and flight attendants. All their…
Joe Belth is at it again. One of the most brilliant critics of the insurance industry, this retired Indiana University Professor, has devoted the July 1996 issue of his newsletter “The Insurance Forum” to urging insurance companies to stop investing in the tobacco industry. In typical rigorous fashion, Professor Belth reports that 33 life-health companies…
For a newspaper that published several long articles on the downsizing of America, the New York Times missed an important story a few days ago in Cleveland. For a new labor leader who pledged $35 million to help elect Democrats this fall, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO missed a great opportunity a few days ago…
A runaway profit motive tends to feed on itself. Corporate milk (infant formula), complete with beguiling promotions, replaces mother’s milk. The drug companies see an opening. They sell mothers a drug to suppress natural lactation. The drug has undesirable side effects which may lead to another ailment requiring another drug. Helped by professional psychotherapists, drug…
The media gurus love to expound on the glories of the First Amendment and the overriding importance of an open, accessible and accountable government where secrets are limited to only the most critical and immediate national security matters. But, extend these First Amendment arguments to include the Federal Reserve System and much of the national…
Economic mismanagement, lack of accountability and secrecy are working their insidious will to destroy the non-profit, full-service, acute care, community hospital in Winsted, Connecticut that has been the pride of this small town (pop. 11,000) for 94 years. Winstedites are fighting back to save their health care institution that serves about 30,000 people in semi-rural…
This is the time for annual shareholder meetings for many of the nation’s largest corporations. This is the time when the owner-shareholders, who attend these meetings to ask questions, see once again how shabbily they are treated by the CEOs and Presidents of these companies and their rubber-stamp Boards of Directors sitting stiffly nearby. Around…
Call it the Corporate Ultimatum. That is what global corporations, technically domiciled in the United States, are confronting the American people with on a broad and cruel front. Whether it is laying off workers, while vastly increasing the compensation of bosses, or demanding lower health, safety and environmental standards, or insisting on far lower taxes…
Desperately seeking to find an issue that puts President Clinton on the defensive, Senator Robert Dole wants to repeal the 4.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax that was enacted in 1993. Desperately determined never to let his Republican opponent outflank him from the right, Mr. Clinton is willing to go along — kinda that is. This is what…