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Members of the media have long been accustomed to confronting politicians with their past statements and asking for a present explanation.The same treatment is not accorded executives of large corporations. Politicians are chided for exaggerating or dissembling. Not so with corporate executives. Could it be that the latter do not engage in such practices? Let’s…
In the tradition of nuclear industry euphemisms, Carl Walske, president of the Atomic Industrial Forum, calls the Three Mile Island accident of March 1979 “a valuable learning experience.” He also has referred to it as an “incident” — a common corporate substitute for “accident.” Well, this “incident” will cost the nation’s consumers and taxpayers at…
Anyone who thinks practical solar energy is too expensive or is “Buck Rogers stuff” is not keeping to date. All over America the do-it-yourself people discovering the sun and applying it to their homes. This approach brings the cost down dramatically when compared with oil, coal or nuclear energy. Around the country, community action groups…
The law never seems to phase Transportation Secretary Neil Goldschmidt. Within weeks of taking the Cabinet post last year, he was off and running, telling city officials their federal aid applications would not be handled expeditiously if they supported anyone other than Jimmy Carter for president. Playing political reelection hardball with the taxpayers’ money happens…
If he is anything, Jimmy Carter is one of the foremost political broken-field runners in modern American history. Just when you think his ineptitude has caught his foot in a bear trap, he scampers away a few feet. This is about all that can be said about his most recent corporate “revitalization” program. All it…
HOBART, TASMANIA — Even in this more distant and very beautiful Australian state, the looming issue is becoming (as it is throughout this country) the foreign multinational corporations. The aluminum industry and other companies want cheap hydropower. So they are supporting the damming of rivers in the spectacular wilderness of Southwest Tasmania. Conservationists, led by…
One of those little-publicized struggles, weighted with gravity for the safety of millions of Americans on the highway, occurred a few days ago on Capitol Hill. Secretary of Transportation Neil Goldschmidt was busy undercutting the valiant attempts of conservative Republican Senator John Warner to ensure that life-saving air bags would be available on cars starting…
The state of Maine and the seven large paper companies that own 35 percent of its land took their annual run of the pesticide treadmill last month. As chemical insecticide use has increased, the pesticide treadmill has become a familiar phenomenon in forest and agricultural communities. In Maine the object of the poison is the…
HONOLULU, HAWAII—Do comparative grocery price surveys help keep food prices down? Here in Hawaii’s largest city where food prices are higher than in any other city in the United States except Anchorage, Alaska, the local newspaper, Honolulu Advertiser, has been printing for several years what a list of staple foods costs consumers at specific supermarkets.…
Every once in a while, the federal government comes out with a publication that is so useful you wish people could obtain it free. Well, just off the presses from the White House Office of Consumer Affairs is a 400-page paper-hack, beautifully laid out in print and pictures, called People Power. And it is free…