In the Public Interest

HERE is a game that congressional leaders play to de­’ feat popular measures like – cleaning up Congress. It is called the delay game. Congressional leaders love to bury bills this way because there are no fingerprints. Behold, like magic, the bills are stranded at the end of the congressional session. Here’s how the lip-…

For years I have been urging insurance agents to more vigorously represent their consumers rights and needs rather than place their insurance company principals, whose insurance they sell, first. Well, two former associates, Mitch Rofsky and Jason Adkins, have decided to start an insurance agency that does just that -­putting consumers or policyholders first. Before…

A new kind of polling and a broader way of describing intelligence than the IQ test offer promise for a higher quality of public discussion and respect for intangible talents. The polling registers the relationship between what people know and their attitudes. For example, a recent national poll showed that most people think that foreign…

Remember that brief dustup during the 1992 Presidential campaign about how little in federal taxes that foreign companies pay because of all the ways they can maneuver their books and engage in pricing transfers to artificially increase their costs in the U.S. The estimates of taxes they should have paid ranged from $3 billion a…

Adbusters is a satiric, irreverent, profound, almost indescribable magazine out of Vancouver, Canada whose mission is to chew up the crass materialism and commercialism that is devouring conscience, soul and economic sustainability on Earth. If that is a mouthful of praise, this colorful, quarterly journal deserves it. If you are experiencing unease at the flood…

The Newt Gingrich Gang in the House of Representatives had a particularly banner third week in September hijacking America on behalf of large corporations. Consider the following: 1. Gingrich is pushing to allow companies to raid their workers’ pension funds once they define them as overfunded. The Pension Rights Center warns that, given the serious…

It was a talk show host who recently said that “our culture is in decay.” When it comes to daytime national TV talk shows -­and there are seven more new syndicated ones this fall — there is ample evidence that they are falling all over one another in their imitative race to the bottom. There…

When Senator Bob Packwood (R-OR) decided to resign after the Senate Ethics Committee voted to recommend his expulsion, Committee Chair, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), assumed the role of the Prince of Ethics in denouncing the behavior of his colleague. To even use the word “ethics” in association with Mitch McConnell’s name is appalling. Better to use…

From the depths of Rep. Nancy Johnson’s House Ethics Committee has leaked the following news: the Ethics Committee staff has prepared a list of seven attorneys who might serve as outside counsels to investigate the charges against House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Finally. Gingrich is faced with an array of charges, including misuse of tax-deductible dollars…

September 6th is the day when Cal Ripken is expected to break what was long viewed as the most unbreakable record in sports (except for perhaps Joe Dimaggio’s 56 game hitting streak) — Lou Gehrig’s 2130 consecutive games played. The Baltimore Orioles shortstop is not close to Gehrig’s batting, runs driven in and home runs…