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Suppose a group of very rich financiers came to your community and made this offer to your city council: “We the financiers will build a fuel plant on condition that when the foundations for the plant have been completed, the future consumers of the fuel will start paying for the costs of constructing the plant.…
Sen. Robert Stafford (R-Vt.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) do NOT want Americans to breathe more poisonous air. On the other side, Roger Smith, chairman of General Motors, is pressuring members of Congress to severely cripple the Clean Air Act of 1970. The outcome of this momentous struggle in Congress will depend entirely on how…
Mike Westfall is looking ahead and what he sees coming everywhere are robots. As a member of United Auto Workers Local 598 in Chesaning, Mich., Westfall knows what the auto companies are planning to do-replace tens of thousands of autoworkers with microelectronic automation. After years of forecasting, the robots are now coming fast. GM Cadillac’s…
The atomic power industry is crumbling—financially, technically and managerially. The evidence for this condition is obvious, diverse and overwhelming. Even Wall Street and the utilities themselves recognize the problems with their actions, if not their words. The money markets are turning off this hazardous and costly mode of boiling water to produce electricity. And the…
What started as a major motor vehicle lifesaving proposal in 1969 under the Nixon Administration was destroyed in one minute by the Reaganites Friday, Oct. 24, 1981. The tragic event took place at the Department of Transportation, where Reagan’s puppet traffic safety administrator, Raymond A. Peck, rescinded the crash-protection regulations which soon was to go…
Members of Ronald Reagan’s cabinet and subcabinet are busy telling business audiences around the country that the White House delivered the budget and tax relief that corporations have been clamoring for and now it is up to these corporations to produce this country out of the recession. There is more than an undertone of irritation…
If you try negotiating for a less-expensive insurance policy by asking your insurance agent to discount his or her commission, you’ll learn about the anti-rebate or anti-discount law. Those laws, enthusiastically backed by the insurance companies themselves, prohibit agents from discounting their commissions. On the books since the turn of the century, these anti-rebate laws…
The other day I came across a metal container which egg farmers used around 1920 to ship their fragile produce to consumers. This particular one, sold by Montgomery Ward, had separate pockets for two-dozen eggs. What was so surprising about this container? Only that farmers sent fresh eggs by the U.S. Post Office which, for…
From ‘a Philadelphia newspaper: “Six children were killed and three other people were injured this morning when a one-alarm fire gutted a two-story home. A cigarette carelessly left smoldering on a living room couch caused the blaze, which firefighters brought under control in only 16 minutes.” From a Boston newspaper: “A smoldering cigarette that may…
The forked tongue of the Reagan administration is now airborne. It belongs to Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis, who tells us regularly on the television screen that airline safety is his top priority even as he refuses to reopen negotiations with the air traffic controllers. He also adds that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is…