In the Public Interest

For years, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has run a very active enforcement program against major American corporations accused of trading with statutory enemies of the United States. For years, OFAC would call corporate lawyers into their offices, demand that the companies pay to the Treasury Department thousands of dollars to…

Over the last six weeks, major civic groups with deep concerns about the impending war with Iraq have requested meetings with President Bush, who not once in the past year has met with a domestic antiwar delegation. Astonishingly, not one of these groups, which collectively represent millions of Americans, have received any invitations to meet…

For decades Republicans and conservative Democrats were vehement in their defense of states’ rights. Federal legislation on everything from civil rights to gun control to environmental and health safeguards-and a host of other consumer protections-have faced vigorous opposition centered around the argument that such issues were the province of the states, not the federal government.…

Monopolist Microsoft and oligopolist General Electric – the co-owners of MSNBC – took their highest rated show off the air and sent Phil Donahue away on February 25, 2003. After choosing Donahue to host his own 8pm daily show only six months ago, the corporate managers micromanaged, mismanaged and refused to let Phil Donahue be…

Despite some encouraging statistics about recent declines in substance abuse, the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by teenagers and young adults remains one of the nation’s most serious and destructive health problems. A lot of time, money and words have been expended on prevention programs. So, why haven’t we made more progress in reaching…

As the drive to war in Iraq races toward a precarious endgame, the lead-footed Bush Administration shows no signs of heeding to the caution flags flying in from all sides. Urgings to go slow are not just a phenomena of “Old Europe.” At home, retired General Anthony Zinni, a consultant to Colin Powell, and many…

For most families, the purchase of a home represents the single largest financial obligation of a lifetime. It’s all part of the “American Dream” according to the pitchmen for builders, lenders, brokers and other assorted players who make up the lucrative real estate industry. Too often, the “dream” becomes something closer to a nightmare when…

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, one of the most important and successful civil rights laws in U.S. history, may soon be undermined by the Bush Administration’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. Title IX bars sex discrimination in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding, including athletics. The law gave women…

The deepening federal and state budgets are causing cuts that affect the most defenseless and least powerful of Americans. That, of course is the direct consequence of plutocracy — rule by the wealthy. Their ownership and control of the nation’s private assets is growing while the poor and middle class are losing. The latest figures…

I wonder how Seymour Melman feels these days. For over half a century, this Columbia University industrial engineering professor (now emeritus) has been researching, writing and speaking about the massive overspending on the military portion of the federal budget and how this waste is de-industrializing America, costing millions of jobs and starving the investment in…