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Sunday, May 2, was a lovely day for the National Arboretum to refresh its many visitors. Situated on 444 acres in the Mount Hamilton section of the District of Columbia, the arboretum was alive with azaleas, flowering dogwood, mountain laurel and the expansive blooms of the elephant-ear magnolia. The fresh scents of these blossoms wafted…

President Ronald Reagan, the arch-anticonsumerist, proclaimed the last week in April National Consumers’ Week and left it up to his consumer adviser, Virginia Knauer, to fuzz the irony. She had trouble doing so. On the “Today Show,” she could not explain why Reagan would not meet with consumer groups during Consumer Week. He was busy…

All you eaters of meat and poultry products, Jim Murphy, a leader of government food inspectors, wants to send you a message–SOS-like. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mandatory continuous meat and poultry inspection tradition is in jeopardy. Ronald Reagan’s secretary of agriculture, John Block, has sent to Congress legislation to end mandatory inspection of processing…

“James J. Kilpatrick is a human being after all,” the young woman said joyously, as she waved the day’s Washington Post at her friend. What could the crusty columnist have written, I wondered, to provoke such a rare observation? An hour later, I got to my copy of the Post and saw why. Here was…

J. Robert Hunter must appear to be omnipresent to members of the insurance industry. They see him at their trade meetings, on radio and television, in their trade press, at state insurance commission panels and congressional hearings. Everywhere he is their hairshirt, a casualty actuary turned full-time consumer advocate for millions of auto, home, fire…

For months now, the Republican Reaganites have hurled anti-regulatory slogans against real problems of health and safety in the country. They demanded “regulatory relief”-a euphemism for scraping law and order from the backs of corporate polluters and hazar­dous-product manufacturers. In recent weeks, however, their wrecking-crew policies-directed toward destroying the auto safety, food and drug, and…

YAKIMA INDIAN NATION, TOPPENISH, WASH.–Here at the nearly completed Yakima Nation Cultural Center the Native Americans have a favorite saying: “Y: can begin to understand a human being only after you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” For Russell Jim, the tribal councilman, even the environmentalists do not appreciate the tribe’s growing concern over…

There used to be a stereotype in Washington that Republicans did not smile. They looked like George Will. By contrast, Hubert Humphrey, the “Happy Warrior,” used to revel in hilarity and crackle with jokes about his adversaries and about himself. John F. Kennedy was always ready with some witticism or jocular comment. But not Republicans.…

Pick one issue that you think members of Congress would not dare to side with the business lobby against consumers. Chances are that you would choose siding with used-car salesmen against used-car buyers. Well, last November, 216 representatives signed on a bill to veto the used-car disclosure rule which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued…

Big Business and the Reagan administration are seething with mutual antagonism over a major conflict that has yet to break into broad public view. Tension is growing over American corporations’ selling technology to Soviet bloc countries–actions that powerful Reaganites and New Right leaders believe to be damaging to U.S. security interests. Last year a high…