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The reporter from a national-chain of newspapers sounded astonished last April. He had just called Irving Shapiro, head of the giant Du Pont company, to ask his reaction to the Big Business Day coalition of consumer and labor groups citing Du Pont for what the coalition called harmful business practices.Coolly and with smooth confidence, Shapiro…
TORONTO–The words of the Big Oil man in New York City came back quickly to this bustling metropolis: “If the proposals are translated into legislation as presented, they will affect every aspect of Canadian economic, political and social life and stretch beyond Canada’s national borders.” Thus spoke Alex Massad, president of Mobil Oil Corp.’s exploration…
Postmaster General William Bolger must have been watching the Big Oil companies operate. He’s learned that really higher price increases bring less public resistance than modest increases. And besides, demanding an outrageous increase gives him an opportunity to compromise down to only a shocking increase. I am referring of course, to the 33.1 percent increase…
Incredible! After supposedly campaigning against inflation, both the winners and losers have returned to a lame-duck congressional session where they quietly plan to raise their salaries $10,238 to a level of $70,900 a year. And that’s not all. They also are moving to give the defeated legislators a last-minute 7.7 percent increase in the lifetime…
The election is over and so is the national Democratic era in American politics. The pundits and the pollsters are analyzing the voters who rejected the Carter administration after having brought it to power in 1976 in order to find out why. Brock Adams, former secretary of transportation, came closest to the reason. He told…
ATLANTA, Ga.—Billy Lovett could scarcely believe what he was reading. Here was the state commissioner of natural resources, Joe Tanner, telling a civic club in Tifton, Ga., “If we are going to continue enjoying anything resembling the lifestyle you have today we are going to have to have nuclear power in this country for the…
As the presidential election campaign comes to a close on decision day, Nov. 4, one point stands out clearly. Campaigns are not run on more than two or three substantive issues, and even they are pursued at a vague level of generality. Military defense, inflation and unemployment, of course, are the current issues that provide…
The presidential campaign has turned into a race to see which candidate can quarantine himself more completely from the press and the people. So far, Ronald Reagan is winning. He moves around the country with his staged events. 3-by-5 memory cards and his aides who seal him off from spontaneous contact with reporters and voters.…
HACKENSACK, N.J. — It drizzled at the gas station but not in front of the supermarket a few minutes later. Congressman Andrew Maguire, D-N.J., hardly noticed either weather pattern. He was busy handing out to motorists and consumers material on his congressional record and asking for their votes. Twice he pumped gas and talked politics…
Dennis Kucinich, former mayor of Cleveland, must feel vindicated. During his controversial tenure, which ended in 1979, he frequently charged that the powerful private electric utility, Cleveland Electrical Illuminating Co. (CEI), was trying to drive Muny Light, a city-owned retail competitor, out of business. The city’s attorneys filed a massive antitrust suit against CEI a…