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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…

Rarely have I seen Canadians so hopping angry as they are about “acid rain.” “It’s killing our lakes, poisoning our drinking water, damaging our soil and most of the bloody stuff comes from stateside,” said an elderly cab driver. He avowed that his own respiratory problem gets him really upset when he hears company polluters…

Only a few days after the bankers pulled the plug on Laker Airways, Freddie Laker, in his irrepressible manner, was talking about starting a new, low-priced airline. “We want to fly as many planes as possible, employ as many staff as possible, and give passengers a jolly good deal,” he declared. Time will tell whether…

Ronald Reagan’s 1983 budget package is out and once again we learn how much he cares for the truly greedy. The corporate rich and the wealthy classes can still feed at the public trough because Reagan’s corporate welfare handouts are still thriving. Life is quite different for 73-year-old Lois Gatewood, a diabetic from Woodbridge, Va.…

The great New York Times photographer, George Tames, took the picture that captured the event. There was Charles Brown, chairman of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T), with his hand patronizingly on the shoulder of President Reagan’s antitrust chief, William Baxter, who wore a Cheshire cat smile. The occasion was the joint announcement at…

The Reagan administration now wants you to pay more to find out what the Reagan government is doing to you. Higher prices for government publications are being added to the government’s greater secrecy to exclude citizens from knowing about critical decisions. Starting on Jan. 25, the Federal Communications Commission will refer you to a list…

For an insurance company president, he was most articulate. Perhaps it is because he had an important finding to communicate as he held a news conference in Washington earlier this month. Robert F. McDermott, president of a large automobile insurer, the United Services Automobile Association in San Antonio, was releasing a report on car safety…

There is a wholly unheralded builder of American democracy who invites a special New Year’s salute. I am referring to the woman homemaker who sees an injustice done to her children or community and mobilizes the citizenry to do something about it. Example: In the late Seventies two young mothers found their infants harmed by…

Sometimes countries pick up good ideas from one another. In this holiday time of giving it is appropriate to look at the Charitable institution known as “semi­postals,” while h have flourished for decades in many European countries. Semi-postal started in Holland, Belgium and Switzerland before World War I. They are colorfully designed postage stamps bearing…