Blog
Since the Red Menace is now, not the Soviet bloc, but the wildly surging national debt ($4 trillion), $400 billion annual federal deficits, the debts of states, municipalities and the huge debt burdens of many leveraged, large corporations, the next few generations will have quite a legacy to remember their forebears by every day.Paying past…
“Lives would be saved if people knew.” That was the bell-ringing sentence in the testimony a year ago by Barbara Arbuckle, 27, before a state legislative hearing in Washington state that was considering a bill to end gag orders and sealed settlements in personal injury lawsuits involving a product or condition of public hazard. Ms.…
In two months, citizens from across the United States will gather in town halls, along riversides, and in public parks to challenge the corporate energy giants that have inflicted global climate change, oil spills, air pollution, acid rain, and radioactive emissions and waste on the earth and its inhabitants. April 22, 1992 is Sun Day,…
Houston — An astonishing display of backroom dealing between usually contending parties has surfaced through the ooze of Texas politics in Austin — the state capital. For ten months, the tobacco, liquor and drug lobbies have been secretly negotiating with a small handful of plaintiffs’ trial lawyers over how much to weaken the rights of…
The conservative Washington Post editorial page called George Bush’s economic proposals in his state of the union speech “The Lollipop Budget.” It indeed did appear to have something for almost everybody at first glance. But at second glance the speech was vintage patrician Bush. He asked no sacrifices from the rich and powerful except one.…
Dixville Notch, NH — I finally visited Dixville Notch, population — 40 people with around 28 voters. You may remember that every four years, the voters of Dixville Notch cast their ballots for the Presidential Primary by 12:01 a.m. on election day. By 12:05 a.m. they are counted, the voting is complete and the nation…
“One thing I’m going to do,” the gentleman said to a large audience, “is to raise the level of public debate on how best to help our children. I’m going to talk and talk and talk until our country is working together to reach our children.” That was George Bush speaking, while campaigning for the…
Lo, the poor taxpayer! At all levels of government, thousands of companies are feeding at the taxpayers’ trough. Washington has become a burgeoning accounts receivable for large corporations on welfare. So numerous and diverse and circuitous are these programs — subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, loan guarantees, tax expenditures (tax breaks), inflated contracts, product promotion, protections from…
The Federal Railroad Administration (FR) would win any award for bureaucratic camouflage. Its most important purpose is to regulate the safety of the nation’s railroads — the track, equipment, operating conditions hazardous materials and other factors that now account for about 1300 fatalities and over 25,000 injuries per year. Yet the public almost never hears…
This is a story of a father, his two sons and the largest volcanic eruption in the 20th century. William Shernoff., a California attorney was reading about the explosions of Mt. Pinatubo in the western area of Luzon, Philippines during the week of June 9th, 1991. Rivers of lava were pouring down the mountainsides, burying…