In the Public Interest

Remarkable what digital cameras can do. The photos of low level prisoners being abused and humiliated by both U.S. troops and private contractors in an Iraqi prison are the beginning of what Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) called “the worst is yet to come.” The Senator warned Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, at a Senate Hearing on…

Big time middlemen merchants have a hard time avoiding conflicts of interests where they say they represent your interests as buyers while they are receiving kickbacks or, more politely, “retrospective commissions” from the sellers. Such situations undermine making deals on your behalf that are on the merits of the product or service instead of on…

When President Roosevelt launched the New Deal in the 1930s nearly half of the U. S. population still lived in rural areas. By the last census in 2000, almost 80 percent of citizens were living in urban communities. Between 1950 and 1990, the U. S metropolitan population–located in central cities and close-in suburban areas–skyrocketed by…

Byrd Community Academy is a crumbling elementary school in Chicago next to one of the largest and most perilous public housing projects — Cabrini-Green. It also is the location of one of the more spectacular fifth grade classes in the country. In Room 405, since December, the entire course curriculum is devoted to one project…

T.S. Elliot once wrote, “April is the cruelest month. . . .” He wasn’t referring to the unfilled promise of The New York Auto Show – which is featuring “advances” in automotive engineering this week at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. But anyone who has visited this event knows – the distance…

The civil rights movement of the 1960s raised high hopes among African American citizens that they were at last on the road to true equality with the opportunity to share fully in the nation’s prosperity. Now, nearly a half century later, there are big questions about just how far we have come to meet those…

A book came out last year which should have gotten more attention had the nation’s news media not fallen in the obsessive trap of the Iraq-obsessive President. It is called “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke”(Basic Books). Written by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, an expert on consumer bankruptcy, and…

If there was ever a sign as to how consumers have been abandoned, check out the recent surges in the prices of gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas. They are more than comparable to the energy price hikes in the Seventies which caused an uproar in the country, prompted Congressional investigations, Justice Department lawsuits demanding…

Over thirty years ago, I started the Pension Rights Center which concerned itself with such issues as shortening the time of corporate pensions vesting or improving their portability for job-changing employees. No one nightmared that companies would dramatically cut their contributions to these defined benefit plans during years of economic growth and record company profits.…

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan strayed away from his charter once again to warn about the people’s entitlement programs-Social Security and Medicare- becoming unaffordable. He suggested cuts in benefits to reduce deficits. In the same breath, Mr. Greenspan urged that Mr. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy-a huge cause of the growing federal deficits-be made…