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Pulic Commitment Broken

February 1, 1980
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Once again General Motors has broken its public commitments and decided not to assume the’ leadership to save a million lives and tens of millions of injuries on the highways wouldwide in the next 30 years. Last week, GM president Pete Estes telephoned the Department of Transportation to say that GM would not install air…

The State of Oregon – Very Progressive

January 24, 1980
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EUGENE, ORE.–The buttons here read “Keep Oregon Oregon.” They need no further explanation to Oregonians. Many of the state’s residents do not want California-style sprawl and one-sided development. Former Gov. Tom McCall made national news a few years ago when he invited outsiders to visit Oregon but not to stay too long. Oregon deserves to…

National Referenda System

January 18, 1980
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It borders on the banal to observe that the aggregate voting record of Congress is becoming more remote from the aggregate views of the people. If a variety of Louis Harris, Peter Hart, and other pollsters are to be believed, the public disagrees with the plethora of congressional votes recently that favor Big Oil, less…

Campaign Contributions

January 11, 1980
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Inflation or no inflation, Congress remains the best “buy” in the country. The business lobbies that ply Capitol Hill with their campaign money and fringe benefits know that such lucre is receiving far more value than when Will Rogers uttered his pithy description of the national legislature nearly 50 years ago. Some political observers believe…

Free Enterprise Undermined in Chrysler Bailout

December 30, 1979
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Passage of the Chrysler bail-out legislation by the Congress revealed clearly the ideological bankruptcy of self-styled political conservatives who say they oppose Big Government and favor the rewards and risks of a free-enterprise system. The Senate debate on the Chrysler bill should become a classic in the archives of political science. Rarely has the schism…

Statistics Aren’t Enough Too Assess Personal Injury

December 20, 1979
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Washington is a city which diligently goes about reducing human activity in travail to statistics. As a summary form of understanding, statistics pose a challenge to the capacity of human beings for empathy. That estimable quality of the heart and mind is not often tapped by just reciting, for instance, that 100,000 U.S. workers die…

FCC and Radio Airwaves

December 6, 1979
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing to turn over the operation of the public’s airways almost entirely to the radio stations. There now are so many radio stations, offering so much choice of communications, some FCC officials argue, that there no longer is any need to retain traditional public interest standards. Specifically, the FCC…

Airbags

November 29, 1979
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It was just before 3 p.m. on October 17 near Barnwell, S.C., when a 40-year-old man driving a 1972 Mercury went into insulin shock. The car shot forward toward the Savannah River nuclear facility, breaking through a metal chain link fence and striking several pine trees and a sign post before the vehicle rolled over.…

Chrysler Baiout Only Under Redesign Conditions

November 20, 1979
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“After several days of congressional hearings, the Chrysler bailout situation is becoming clearer. There is widespread agreement (government, labor, new Chrysler executives and others) that the company has been mismanaged. Little credence among decision makers is being given to Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca’s repeated scapegoating of Uncle Sam–the regulator for much of the failing company’s…

Sen. Wendall Ford – Senate Commerce Committee

November 15, 1979
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A grotesque spectacle is emerging in the U.S. Senate. It is in the form of chain-smoking Wendell H. Ford, the senator from Kentucky and the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. In his position as chairman of the Consumer Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, Ford is supposed to be a leading defender of consumer rights.…