In the Public Interest

Having experienced unprecedented reversals in the regulatory arena, the courts and the court of public opinion, Big Tobacco is seeking to escape from unbounded liability for the massive damage it has inflicted on human health and from anticipated new regulatory and legislative initiatives. As always, the tobacco companies’ forum of choice is a closed backroom.…

Big banks are rolling in record profits, branching interstate, gobbling up competitors, grabbing for new powers from the regulators and lobbying the Congress for even more of the nation’s economic pie. Rarely have those at the top of the banking heap had it so good. For the customers of these financial giants it is a…

In the mid-1700s, commerce along the Virginia waterfront -­across from what would become the nation’s capital– depended heavily on the Potomac River. By the 1800s, busy wharves and shipyards lined the river banks in Alexandria, Virginia. Today, most of that activity has been supplanted by speedier forms of transportation and little evidence is left of…

Knoll Pharmaceutical Co. has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit that charged the company with trying to suppress research showing its prescription drug Synthroid was no better than cheaper nonprescription thyroid drugs. Knoll said it would pay $135 million to patients who file claims under the procedure. What if there are millions of dollars…

One of the most obscure pieces of legislation in the last Congress–an amendment to the Federal Financial Management Act–is about to have a huge impact on the nation’s banking system and millions of unsuspecting consumers. When the amendment takes effect on January 1, 1999, the federal government will shut down its check writing machines and…

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…