In the Public Interest

If you are fed up with your local late evening television news, it could be because most of the half hour is taken up with ads, weather, sports and street crime stories — with the latter frequently leading the news once, twice, thrice and sometimes four segments in a row. That practice, by the way,…

Someone should tell the drug and medical device industries that they’ve never had it so good. Bulging sales, profits and executive compensation, spiraling stock prices and the absence of a major product catastrophe swirling in the news and inside law enforcement agencies — that is having it all. One reason for this balmy environment is…

While the waves of myopia, indentured status, titillation and trivia continue to advance on the media, the maverick newsletter by Cleveland’s Roldo Bartimole gives some of us in Washington a respite. His monthly Point of View (POV) punctures the balloons of the city’s political surrender to corporate fat cats who shake down the Mayor and…

Suppose a new industry centered on a new habit — workers going to kiosks to have their teeth brushed on their daily way to and from work — emerged in our country. Say 100 million workers stopped by these kiosks, sat in dental-like chairs while teeth cleaners gave them a five minute invigorating brush-down on…

Common Courage Press, out of little Monroe, Maine, exists because too often the major publishers of books do not have common courage or have convinced themselves that “courageous” books don’t sell. How else to explain the absence of any large publishing house eagerly issuing the collection of columns by progressive media critics — Norman Soloman…

In the pantheon of human beings possessed of indomitable spirit, make room for Vivian Lee Hobbs — mother of three children, lawyer specializing in pension, health and employee benefit issues, active in bar association work, speaker and advocate for disability rights and a quadriplegic. On June 17, 1972, a sunny afternoon, Vivian’s life changed. At…

To hear the assembled state attorneys general at the announcement of their agreement (which requires Congressional approval) with the tobacco industry on June 20, 1997, it was a one way surrender by the giant tobacco companies, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and others. To hear from Wall Street, stocks of the tobacco companies have been rising…

A veritable lobbying blitzkrieg by corporations at the nation’s state legislatures this year is accelerating the dismantling of our democracy and consumer rights. The national press seems largely oblivious to what has been going on. Using pretexts such as “meeting the global competition,” “law reform,” “deregulation,” “restructuring” and other soothing phrases, these business lobbyists are…

A new multinational bulldozer against democratic practices and benefits for regular human beings is being built quietly in closed-door negotiations by representatives of 29 wealthiest nations under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Sometime later this year, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) will be proposed by OECD to their respective governments for…

Paul Allen from the Seattle area is the world’s 8th richest man with over $10 billion in wealth — mostly from Microsoft stock. There are days when this booming stock goes up so that it increases Allen’s wealth by over $300 in one day! This is a major reason why more and more taxpayers in…