In the Public Interest

Washington is in the midst of its biennial guessing game about what legislation will get the green light when the 108th Congress convenes next month. Many Committee chairpersons, of course, are just waiting to get their marching orders from the White House and their friends among the army of lobbyists (aka campaign contributors). But at…

Subprime lenders have been marching up to state legislators around the nation with a stern warning-“enact protections for borrowers and you will trigger a quick and certain reduction of credit for thousands of low, moderate and middle income borrowers.” But, the hard facts coming out of the states with the courage to stop predatory and…

The memorial service for Senator Wellstone, his wife Sheila and daughter Marcia at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, DC on November 13, 2002 was a fitting and diverse tribute from their two sons, Mark and David, Senatorial colleagues, staff and friends. With each heartfelt expression, the assemblage understood what Senator Tom Daschle meant when…

The mid-term elections are over. After spending hundreds of millions of business dollars, the Republicans now control the Senate and hold on to the House of Representatives. It is amazing that the Democrats did not do worse. They had decided months ago on a strange strategy — that they were going to defeat the Republicans…

The Democrats should have an easy time winning control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in next week’s election. Recession is deepening, unemployment is rising, and corporate corruption headlines are proliferating. Health care costs, drug prices and the number of Americans without health care coverage are all increasing. Median household incomes are falling.…

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of one of the nation’s fastest growing unions — the 45,000-member California Nurses Association — called him “the greatest labor leader I have ever known.” She was referring to Anthony Mazzocchi, a mentor and strategist to thousands of labor activists over the past 50 years. He lost his struggle with…

About 80,000 Americans die every year (and many more are harmed) in hospitals from medical incompetence, neglect or worse, according to the Harvard School of Public Health report. The make matters worse, the Republicans in the Congress are pushing to pass legislation to drastically restrict the compensation for pain and suffering that state and federal…

When the revelations of crime and deception poured out of the executive suites of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and other corporations earlier this year, politicians-particularly sitting members of the Senate and the House of Representatives-unleashed a blizzard of news releases to denounce corporate crime. Never mind that many of these same politicians long had been neck-deep…

Blind adherence to ideology can get you in some sticky places. That’s where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — the Washington, D.C.-based agency which makes loans to developing countries facing balance-of-payment and fiscal difficulties — now finds itself. The IMF believes in unregulated markets, and pushes for policies of deregulation, privatization and marketization without regard…

The ultimate downfall of the corporate globalizers may be that they know no limits. Not satisfied with imposing pull-down agreements on the trade in goods, Big Business is looking to do the same thing for services through the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Services includes such economic sectors as finance (banking, insurance, pensions),…