In the Public Interest

Last year’s deregulation monster-the so-called financial modernization legislation-was riddled with anti-public interest provisions, but nothing illustrated Congressional recklessness more than the way safety and soundness of the nation’s financial system was ignored. In its rush to deliver for the financial corporations, a bi-partisan coalition in both the Senate and the House of Representatives turned its…

More than half of all voting-age Americans do not vote. If we are to prevent the further withering of our democracy and the entrenchment of plutocracy, we must take steps to spur dramatically enhanced voter participation. Here are some steps we should take to revitalize our democracy: End legalized bribery and support publicly financed campaigns.…

The Taco Bell crisis and the mixing of genetically altered corn not approved for human consumption into the nation’s corn supply reveals how poorly government regulators have been doing their job. It was biotech opponents, not the FDA, who discovered that Taco Bell brand taco shells — made by Kraft and sold in grocery stores…

For all the talk in Washington about the need to decentralize power and give authority to the states, in one of the core areas of state and local responsibility — education — there is a growing and dangerous sentiment among top officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties in favor of a new federal…

The American mission of safe and healthful workplaces should be highly visible, heralded and backed by an adequately funded and enforced program. After all, far more Americans have lost their lives due to trauma and toxics in places of employment — especially the factories, farms, construction sites and mines — than the number of Americans…

More than 500,000 people live in the District of Columbia. As the capital of this nation, the District is the symbol of the freedoms for which this nation stands. The light of democracy shines from the District, but does not illuminate this city. The core is hollow. The values of equality and political participation that…

The airwaves belong to the people. Yet the U.S. government gives them away to television and radio broadcasters for free, and demands virtually nothing in return. We have forfeited many of the means of mass communication to concentrated corporate interests, consigning ourselves to homogenized low-grade entertainment and lower-grade copy-cat “newstainment” that barely aspires to inform…

Justice delayed is justice denied. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster, Exxon was found guilty by an Alaska jury and ordered to pay about $5 billion in punitive damages ? this was about one year’s profit for the oil giant. Eleven years later, Exxon has not paid a dime of the punitive damage award.…

At a time when CEOs are paying themselves exorbitant salaries, stock options and benefit packages, corporations are slashing the pension benefits of workers who have helped build their companies. The most heinous of the pension takeaway schemes include switching to cash balance plans (which deprive workers of expected benefit increases from their final years of…

The last few years have witnessed the increasing blurring of corporate and governmental roles in the international sphere — none more worrisome, perhaps, than the United Nations cozying up to big business. With a surge in private-public partnerships among various UN agencies, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is leading the international organization into ever-more intrusive…