In the Public Interest

If Dan Rather referred to a woman appearing on his evening news show as “that girl,” there would be more than a few objections and not just from women’s rights organizations. I wonder how many objections went sent to the CBS network for a segment of Howard Stern’s televised show on Saturday night, November 14,…

Toledo, Ohio — Chrysler Corporation, having just merged with the German auto giant to become DaimlerChrysler, is teaching this city about some state of the art corporate socialism. Last year, Chrysler announced that it would expand the existing Jeep plant if the City government would subsidize this project with local tax dollars and a 100%…

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors—Article II, Section 4 of the U. S. Constitution. Talk show hosts, a bevy of academics and politicians of every variety are bombarding the nation…

Between November 13 to 15, the U.S. Labor Party will have their convention in Pittsburgh to advance a program of action on Key Workers’ Issues. There will be 1,100 delegates, representing more than one million working people from international unions, union locals and community groups from most of the states in the Union. The Labor…

Once again the latest election cycle sets an all time record for money spent on television and radio political advertisements by the candidates, the political committees and interested parties. These thirty second political pitches, with their imagery, emotion, background music and professional announcers, seem to enrage almost everybody, in calmer moments, but almost everybody in…

From venerable laws, long unused, comes a new campaign theme for Eliot Spitzer, Democratic candidate for Attorney General of New York — capital punishment for corporations convicted of serious crimes. Such a punishment would mean the corporation is dissolved and its assets sold, or its corporate charter to do business revoked by state governmental authority.…

Is there a larger hypocritical conceit than the concern for children’s well-being express by corporate and governmental power brokers compared to the neglect and harm inflicted on the little ones? Just for starters, Four Billion Dollars a day is spent in the world on armaments while about 40,000 children die each day from preventable causes.…

Washington, D.C. hosted a swarm of three thousand central bankers and finance ministers from around the world. The limousines were thick like locusts and the hotels glistened with gushing hospitality suites by banks and securities firms. But the topic was Gloom — the worsening crisis of runaway global capitalism. There were large rooms full of…

Deregulation of the nation’s financial system has been sailing through the Congress like an Alice in Wonderland fantasy in which banks, insurance companies and securities firms live happily ever after–and certainly never never fail. This sugar plum world of finance is beginning to unravel. Ironically, it is happening just as the Senate is trying to…

There are people — you’ve heard them — who say “what’s Clinton’s personal life got to do with his performance as President?” There are many answers to that rhetorical point but few as concrete as the White House’s weakness on current key Congressional legislation. In the last few months of a Congressional session, the extra…