In the Public Interest

A small conference was held on January 6th in Washington, DC about a big concern for tens of millions of American workers — the loss of free time due to the omnivorous demands of their workplace obligations. The gathering, which met to press for public policies which will give workers a better work/life balance, was…

Civilian control over the military is a long established democratic tradition in our country.  It was the military that was believed by our founding fathers to be susceptible to plunging our country into foreign adventure.  Presently, however, the boondoggles, crimes and recklessness of draft-dodging George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and former Air Force pilot, Donald…

Richard Cohen, the finely-calibrated syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a column on October 28, 2004 which commenced with this straight talk: “I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for one, it would be ‘Impeach George Bush’.” Cohen stated the obvious…

Will this country ever again see the likes of a Senator from Wisconsin—William Proxmire—who passed away this month at age 90?  He came to the Senate, replacing Senator Joseph McCarthy, in 1957 and left in 1989.  He was the legislators’ legislator.  No one worked harder, studied more, listened to more Congressional witnesses or cast more…

There are times when unchallenged commercial greed morphs into institutional insanity. I am referring to the overall advertising-saturated, trivialized performance of the media conglomerates’ utilization of our public airwaves 24 hours a day and their dominance of the ever-expanding scores of cable channels. Take a test. If you are an average consumer of TV or…

On my desk one morning I found a 378-page tome whose name is “Real Simple” with an intriguingly worded “Life Made Easier” subtitle. It was the week when the members of the American Anthropological Association were meeting in Washington, DC. Too bad there wasn’t a copy of “Real Simple” by each of the anthropologists’ hotel…

The debate between progressives and corporatists over the state of the mass media goes like this—the former say fewer and fewer giant media conglomerates control more of the print and electronic outlets while the latter respond by saying there has never been more choices for listeners (radio), viewers (television) and readers (magazines, newsletters and newspapers…

With the Bush regime reeling from its own derelictions and falling in the national polls, the question most frequently put to the leading Democrats is, “What do the Democrats stand for?” This is the question that Tim Russert asked Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, on Meet the Press recently. Mr. Dean responded…

It was Wednesday, November 10th and the Senators had the five bosses of the largest oil conglomerates in the world facing them and the media in a large hearing room. Millions of Americans are indignant over gouging gasoline and natural gas prices and want action. So what did the two Senate Committees do? They blew…

Suppose every day for the past umpteen years, four fully loaded Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets crashed full of African children. Suppose further that no one doubted that similar children-filled jumbo jets would crash at this level every day into the indefinite future. Don’t you think that at some point something big would be done about…