In the Public Interest

 Alert for the millions of airline passenger knees — American Airlines will give them three to five extra inches of space in about a year. Hooray for small favors. One would think that buying an airline ticket for a seat on the plane would include knees along with toes and torsos. But since airline deregulation…

Social Security places government in one of its noblest roles: as an institution that offers a bedrock financial guarantee to all members of society that they need not fear the financial consequences of growing old or disabled. That’s quite the opposite of the U.S. government’s all too familiar role as a provider of corporate welfare,…

Detroit, Mich., fell on hard times recently when the snow started falling on Jan. 2, 1999. Twenty-one inches of snow accumulated over the next two weeks, and city officials still did not plow residential streets. That streets were left unplowed was not an oversight. It was the result of a policy of many years standing…

The collapse of community surfaced with a vengeance in Detroit, Michigan recently when the snow started falling on January 2, 1999. Twenty one inches of snow fell over the next two weeks and city officials still had not plowed the residential streets. That is not an oversight. It is a policy of many years standing.…

Few politicians have shrunken as fast, while rising in power, as Vice-President, Al Gore. In terms of standing up for what he believes, Gore is a shadow of his former self as Representative and Senator from Tennessee, though he never came close to the political courage of his father, also a Senator. Gore, senior, for…

“Nickel and diming” the consumer is now a big, booming business in the financial arenas of corporate greed and fraud. Bank charges, currently numbering over two hundred varieties, bring in nearly $20 billion a year to the banks. First Union even charges its customers 50 cents for a deposit slip and $2 for each call…

Last month on the Jay Leno Show, Hulk Hogan thought he would make some news, but he did not. Too bad the media missed his presentation because he seemed very serious about what he was saying. Hogan “announced” his official retirement from professional wrestling, adding that his children were well taken care of by the…

My home state of Connecticut has been known as “The Constitution State.” This month, Republican Governor John Rowland and Democrats Kevin Sullivan, President of the State Senate, and Tom Ritter, the Speaker of the House, shattered that moniker by ramming through a special session of the legislator a massive taxpayer subsidy to lure the New…

It has been said that virtue is its own reward. Tell that to Mark Green whose record of public service and a clean, vigorous, primary campaign for the Democratic party’s Senatorial candidacy against Senator Al D’Amato earlier this year, resulted in his coming in third. Having worked with Mark Green for nearly thirty years —…

The many pillars of a working democracy, coming out of the civic culture, are rarely publicized these days. The people who constitute these pillars keep going, believing that there can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. One would think that the rapid expansion of television and radio spaces would find room for these civic…