Blog

This month Congress has the option of siding with consumers or the cable industry. Legislation sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), would require local governments to certify a local consumer group comprised of cable viewers. This group would help fight high cable rates and poor service on behalf of cable subscribers, who are currently under-represented…

The national news media may not have thought so, but a conference of exceptional importance to protecting the integrity of government employees, who want to go a good job, took place in Washington D.C. at the end of March. Composed of over 100 civil servants from environmental, wildlife and natural resource agencies, the conference was…

The monetized mind is working at fever pitch here in Washington, D.C.Over at the World Bank, the taxpayer funded institution whose employees pay no federal taxes, the chief economist, Lawrence H. Summers delivered of himself an “office memorandum” on December 12, 1991. “Shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to…

Repeal of the Bush-Congress Pay Grab, amounting to about $40,000 a year plus bulging benefits, is the centerpiece of the current spate of check bouncing at the House Bank and other perk abuses. Cong. Andy Jacobs (D-IN) has introduced the repealer bill H.R. 1003, to drive down Congressional and upper Executive branch pay to under…

It is time to add new claims concocted to capitalize on the environmental ethic to the junk heap of corporate America’s marketing claims. Like many Madison Avenue claims, most of them are half-truths, or half-solutions. Unfortunately, environmental problems demand more than corporate America’s wasteful, business-as-usual offerings painted a friendly shade of green. The battle being…

Postmaster General Anthony Frank departs his position on March 10 and leaves behind a bizarre trail of behavior and priorities. Last year, viewers watching the Dave Letterman show were treated to the sudden appearance of Mr. Frank on the edge of the stage set. Letterman introduced him and kept him standing on the sidelines while…

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…

“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…