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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…

The multimillionaire, who owns several $1,000 cowboy boots, is the same man who wants to eliminate the minimum $122-a-month Social Security payment, cut school lunch plates in half and pre­vent aid to dependent children if families have more than $1,000 in personal prop­erty. The man, of course, is Ronald Reagan and he wants much more.…

General Motors pouted with denials this spring when I asserted in an open let­ter to GM Chairman Roger Smith that his company was producing a bumper lemon crop because of serious quality control problems. I specifically mentioned troubles that motorists were having with $20,000 to $25,000 Cadillac’s as indicative of a defect process plaguing other…

As organized labor moves toward what it hopes will be a large demonstration in Washington Sept. 19 against the Reagan administration’s policies, it is difficult to see any sector where union influence is not declining. Much of this decline is of the union’s own making and the rest reflects a major resurgence in the use…

HARTFORD—Consumer protestors from several Connecticut cities came here recently to demonstrate against the giant rate increase by Northeast Utilities. They were angry enough to boycott the hearing before the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) on the proposed $242 million rate increase and announce their own “citizens’ hearing” in October. Such protests are no longer…

Tony Bonillo, the new president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), paid a visit recently to Vice President George Bush. Because minority group leaders are expressing deep worry about the way budget cuts are being made, Ronald Reagan has instructed his vice president to be the administration’s point of highest contact with…

“I’m not a regulatory torpedo,” said Raymond Peck, coal industry lawyer, soon after Ronald Reagan appointed him to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “This job involved matters of life or death,” he added, by way of distinguishing his admitted anti-regulatory bias in economic matters. After four months officially on the job, Peck…