In the Public Interest

For a newspaper that published several long articles on the downsizing of America, the New York Times missed an important story a few days ago in Cleveland. For a new labor leader who pledged $35 million to help elect Democrats this fall, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO missed a great opportunity a few days ago…

A runaway profit motive tends to feed on itself. Corporate milk (infant formula), complete with beguiling promotions, replaces mother’s milk. The drug companies see an opening. They sell mothers a drug to suppress natural lactation. The drug has undesirable side effects which may lead to another ailment requiring another drug. Helped by professional psychotherapists, drug…

Economic mismanagement, lack of accountability and secrecy are working their insidious will to destroy the non-profit, full-service, acute care, community hospital in Winsted, Connecticut that has been the pride of this small town (pop. 11,000) for 94 years. Winstedites are fighting back to save their health care institution that serves about 30,000 people in semi-rural…

This is the time for annual shareholder meetings for many of the nation’s largest corporations. This is the time when the owner-shareholders, who attend these meetings to ask questions, see once again how shabbily they are treated by the CEOs and Presidents of these companies and their rubber-stamp Boards of Directors sitting stiffly nearby. Around…

Call it the Corporate Ultimatum. That is what global corporations, technically domiciled in the United States, are confronting the American people with on a broad and cruel front. Whether it is laying off workers, while vastly increasing the compensation of bosses, or demanding lower health, safety and environmental standards, or insisting on far lower taxes…

Twenty years ago, Dr. Carl Jensen, professor of communication studies at Sonoma State University in California, launched “Project Censored” in a valiant effort to make the American public more aware of the media’s “self censorship” which leaves the nation’s information plate so empty and unsatisfying. In the place of stories that should have provided the…

The growing corporate dismantling of our democracy flouts the lessons of history that demonstrate the critical role of countervailing powers to big business greed and power. Let’s look at some ways that our country has developed to curb and discipline business abuses. 1. The antitrust laws were passed between 1890 and 1914 to prohibit anti-competitive…

The corporate takeover of childhood is what marketing specialists euphemistically call “the integrated product marketplace.” That means tying together, through one conglomerate after another, television programming, advertising, music video, videogame, MTV, movies, food, cosmetics, clothing and other products to envelop children, by age groups, in a corporate product world. Even the schools are now objects…

Republicans in Congress never tire of exuding their fulminations against Big Government. They also never tire of their sham, for they are the leading supporters of that Big Government — such as the Federal Reserve and corporate welfare payouts — that caters to the endless demands of Big Business. Big Business is Big Government. How…

The recent orgy of forcing taxpayers to subsidize the multi‑millionaire owners of sports corporations shows no signs of abating as cities grovel to outbid one another. The bids normally range between $200 million to $400 million packages and the give­away contracts do not require any share of profits or any other kind of payback to…