In the Public Interest

The media called it “the battle of Seattle” last week. Certainly it was clear once again that the media often waits for street demonstrations before conveying the message of the demonstrators — in this case composed of labor, church groups, environmental and consumer organizations, family farm delegations, human rights advocates, students against overseas sweat-shops and…

An elderly woman is visited at home by a window salesman who talks her into buying 10 windows for $10,000. She signs a number of pieces of paper, including the sales contract, the financing agreement, and a form on which she consents to receive the contract and all notices relating to the sale over the…

The historic Microsoft monopoly trial took an odd twist on November 19th when federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson secured the agreement of the Justice Department and Microsoft to accept mediation by 7th Circuit chief Judge Richard Posner. For most jurists, being a chief judge of a busy federal circuit court of appeals would be a…

Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve — an agency that serves purposes which officials in other western countries would call “central banking functions” — must keep saying to himself these days that “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Here he is, head of the most powerful federal regulatory agency in the government and…

When it comes to the tens of billions of dollars of annual health care fraud that all of you eventually pay for, the sophistication of the private criminal enterprisers is ahead of the government’s law enforcers. The usual figure for the amount of billing fraud and abuse that the government estimates is 10 percent of…

The financial services industry spent millions on public relations, opinion polls and advertising to promote legislation in the current Congress which would allow the merger of banks, securities firms and insurance companies under common ownership in financial conglomerates. All this in addition to the more than $30 million in campaign contributions that can be traced…

SOLAR ENERGY advocate Dan Berman has sent me news of a development for electricity consumers in Davis that millions of households may find of interest during these times of energy deregulation. A group of citizens are moving toward a referendum in Davis to establish the town’s own municipal utility district. If the voters pass this…

The drumbeat to corporatize (a.k.a.: privatize) essential facilities continues to beat from the business-funded think tanks in Washington, D.C. Recently, the government’s uranium enrichment installations — which deal with national security matters — were corporatized, and are now run by a company listed on the stock exchange. Corporatization is supposed to be more efficient, more…

Remember when the “energy crisis” was the big political issue? Remember the long gas lines and the sudden surge in gasoline prices — once in the mid-’70s and once in the late ’70s? Remember the politicians demanding that our country strive for energy independence, so that we would no longer need to be reliant on…

“America’s big oil companies have been ripping off federal and state governments for decades by underpaying royalties for oil drilled on public lands. The Interior Department tried to stop the practice with new rules, but Congress has succeeded in blocking their implementation….” So wrote the Los Angeles Times in an editorial this summer. Indeed, this…