In the Public Interest

With the mutually gracious home run hitting competition between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa still roaring on (at this writing, each has hit 63 big ones), companies are lining up to sign the two stars to various endorsement contracts. But several young fans, who caught McGwire’s home run balls, gave the public a rare display…

With the complete approval of President Clinton and Vice-President Gore, the head of the federal auto safety agency, Dr. Ricardo Martinez has turned a life-saving enforcement agency into a meek consulting firm to the auto industry. Instead of upgrading obsolete crash protection standards and forcing recalls of defective vehicles, Martinez speaks of partnerships, collaboration and…

It is time for some humility from the proponents of unregulated markets and intensified economic globalization. It is no longer even superficially plausible for their proponents to contend that the solutions to the problems caused by deregulation, marketization and globalization are more deregulation, marketization and globalization. Wall Street’s wild swings, the collapse of the Russian…

Tuberculosis, the ancient scourge of humans, still takes about three million lives a year throughout the world. And less is spent doing something about applying known inexpensive drug cures to the afflicted than Westerners spend on anti-balding nostrums. Now, however, a more resistant strain of TB is spreading in one country after another, principally in…

The November Congressional elections are coming up and the polls say that voters are either yawning or cynically withdrawing. Previous off year elections have drawn about 38% of the eligible voters to the voting booths. That is, more than 6 out of 10 eligible voters did not bother to exercise the franchise that earlier Americans…

It is worthy of remark that today’s business outrages against consumers in the service area would cause utter disbelief among the consumers of the 1950s or 1960s. I am referring in this case to the widespread practice of telephone slamming which is the unauthorized switching of a customer from one long distance seller to another.…

Why are President Clinton and Vice President Gore so frightened by the automobile industry that they are fleeing their lawful duties in the areas of health, safety and energy policy? Look over the scene. The federal auto safety agency (NHTSA) has never been more moribund. It is asleep at the wheel in not upgrading obsolete…

For three generations of children who grew up watching Shari Lewis and her simple sock puppet Lamb Chop convey music, playfulness and wise meaning, the passing of this unique and forever dynamic ventriloquist and puppeteer must mean an end to an era. Her PBS television shows and her home videos were like an island of…

How soon Washington forgets. Less than a decade ago, the taxpayers were called on to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the “free enterprise” savings and loan industry and to set aside another $30 billion as a contingency fund to prop up deposit insurance for the com­mercial banks. Now the banking industry…

Dear Mr. Gates: An astonishing calculation comes from Professor Edward Wolff of New York University and presents an important opportunity for you. Professor Wolff, a wealth economics specialist, estimated that your net wealth is greater than the combined net worth of the poorest 40% of Americans (106 million people). That includes their home equity, pensions,…