In the Public Interest

As President George W. Bush rushes around the country frantically trying to find acceptance of his exaggerated, deceptive and sometimes deliberately inaccurate (note his use of the word “bankrupt” ) plan for a social insecurity system, the pundits and the polls say he is not gaining traction. A large majority still opposes his proposals for…

An astonishing message came forth on May 12, 2005 from ABC News political unit’s The Note. I shall quote verbatim from Mark Halperin and his associate editors: “We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraqis truly staggering. But we are sort…

With U.S. union membership down to only 8% of the workers in the corporate sector – the lowest in 90 years – a clash of unions is underway within the AFL-CIO over the future direction of organized labor. The unions challenging the leadership of President John J. Sweeney – the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),…

Will just one regular White House reporter let out a scream after yet another managed Bush news conference? Not literally, of course. But substantively to protest this recurrent orchestrated theater between the President, his coaches and the reporters, that results in one giant ditto hour of what Bush has been saying every day on his…

You would think that Bush-Cheney would be sensitive to avoiding the weakening of democracy in our country while going around the world with Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, hectoring other countries about their anti-democratic practices. After all, the moral authority to admonish comes from the power of example. Instead brazen hypocrisy prevails. Bush and Cheney…

Question — have you ever heard of Maurice Hilleman? If your answer is No or Who?, join about 99 percent of the American people. He passed away this month in Philadelphia at the age of 85. Here is what the front page New York Times article said about his medical career: Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman…

The world’s greatest folklore scholar died on March 30 the way he lived— while teaching a graduate seminar in anthropology at Giannini Hall on the campus of the University of California-Berkeley. “To call Alan Dundes a giant in his field is a great understatement, observed George Breslauer, Dean of the Division of Social Sciences, adding…

The on-again-off-again alliances between conservative and liberal groups is on again, but not without its contradictions. Back in the early Eighties, during the Reagan years, conservatives joined with anti-nuclear power groups to end the multi-billion tax dollar boondoggle called the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Tennessee. Their joint lobbying in Congress overcame the opposition of…

The Terri Schiavo tragedy unfolds in many layers of controversy. They range from the bitter dispute between her husband, Michael, and her father and mother, Robert and Mary Schindler, all the way to the involvement by the Governor, the Congress, the federal courts and many religious, disability rights and medical organizations. If the focus is…

The Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, Cong. Tom DeLay of Texas, and I agree on one issue dear to his mind and heart. We do not want him to resign from Congress in the midst of deepening scandal surrounding his aggressive political and fundraising activities. Stay put, Tom. The Republican Party needs…