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Outside and inside the cloistered negotiating rooms of the U.S. Senate, a furious struggle is going on over the kind of clean air law which will protect the health of the American people for the next decade. On one side are the public health and environmental groups, and on the other side are the polluters…
It was one of those newspaper stories about a fire that riveted one’s attention. “A mother and father died in a fire early yesterday morning in Brooklyn as they desperately squeezed their four children under a window gate!” reported the New York Times. While press attention focused on billionaire, Donald Trump, his real estate wealth…
The more than twenty year struggle by consumer groups for mandatory federal fish inspection may be reaching a climax this year in Congress. Both consumer groups and the fishing industry agree that federal inspection is inevitable, but they disagree on what kind. The former want mandatory inspection of both processing plants and boats, including unannounced…
FairTest is one of those small citizen groups with a big mission. Working out of their small Cambridge, Massachusetts offices, FairTest has forged a large coalition of education, parent and civil rights organizations which is calling on President Bush and the fifty state Governors to “stop relying on standardized multiple-choice tests to measure educational goals.”…
Parents are on a collision course with corporations over what can be described as the “sensuality ladder.” The underlying question is: who is bringing up the children of America? Ask Lynda Beams who launched a drive in Dallas to have shows like “Geraldo” played in time slots when children’s TV viewing is more likely to…
The hotel long distance telephone call surcharge racket started around 1984. I first noticed it in a Vancouver, Canada hotel when a long distance call I made came out inordinately priced on the bill. When I objected, the surcharge of 30% was immediately deleted. Neither on the room telephone nor on any of the materials…
HAVE YOU ever read about anyone of the giant health insurance companies taking on the giant drug companies for their spiraling price increases? Other than lip-service ads, have you ever seen these insurance companies really acting on what they are complaining about — namely too much “seller” waste, inefficiency, over medication, unnecessary operations and other…
What may be one of the hottest political issues of the New Year is a surge of support for an old idea. — limiting the number of terms that a state legislator and a member of Congress may serve. Initiatives to amend the state constitutions Will be underway in 1990 in California (supported by Attorney…
The Mighty Mississippi River of Mark: Twain, Huck Finn and Torn Sawyer, and long before of the diverse American Indian tribes, has become the giant American sewer. In a graphic demonstration that is a unique trademark of Greenpeace, the global environmental group, a new Report titled “We all live Downstream: The Mississippi River and the…
My class of 1955 at Princeton University has launched a project which could unleash the pent up civic energies of many Americans in their fifties who the media called the “silent generation” of the Nineteen Fifties. At a news conference on December 13th, in Washington, D.C., a group of us announced the formation of the…