In the Public Interest

The Christmas toy buying season is here. And the chief concern of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), it seems, is not to greatly improve its toy safety duties; it is how to respond to consumer groups annual criticism of the agency’s dereliction. Each year, toy safety lawyer, Edward M. Swartz of Boston, is invited…

Saskatoon, Sask.–“There is nothing like this in the States,” I remarked to Wes Fine Day, the Cree interpretive guide at Wanuskewin Heritage Park, a 250 acre living memory of the original peoples of the Northern Plains. “There is nothing like this in the world,” replied Fine Day as he started to weave the historical embrace…

This is the story of Michael Waldman, our former colleague, writer, advocate and corporate critic during the latter Reagan and Bush years in Washington, D.C. To see him go after the Savings and Loan crooks, the corporate power brokers and the corporate-indentured White House was a delight. He was factual, concise and seemingly sincere. I…

The day after the Gore-Perot debate, great big baskets of goodies from the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) began arriving at the Congressional offices of each of your Senators and Representatives. Festooned with bright ribbons, these baskets contained brand name potato chips, crackerjacks, spaghetti, brownies, macaroni and soaps, razors and chewing gum. A large card…

Edmonton, Alberta — The mood of Canadians in this former oil-boom Province borders on the grim and disgruntled. The provincial government has announced a 20% cut in the education budget which has provoked an unusual demonstration before the Parliament building of several thousand objecting high school students. It seems everything is being cut back except…

At a time when the best selling book is Howard Stern’s salacious exhibitionism, the most talked about television show is Beavis and Butthead and the most well-known physician is Dr. Kevorkian, it is a refreshing contrast to learn about the 1993 awards for innovations in state and local government from the Kennedy School of Government…

It’s new management but the same old General Motors. Lagging behind its domestic competitors, Ford and Chrysler, on the critical goal of full front seat air bag installation, the bureaucratic behemoth stiffed a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) “Frontline” documentary show on the shaky auto giant by refusing repeated requests to be interviewed. Then a few…

The one month countdown to the Congressional vote on the supragovernmental agreement with Mexico and Canada, known as NAFTA, has begun. Big business forces that are pro-NAFTA are launching a multimillion dollar television campaign on your screens. NAFTA means jobs, they say. Organized labor, which knows a little about job losses in the past decade…

Everyone wants health care reform. And every special interest, from the American Medical Association to the drug industry to the big insurance companies, is telling the White House and Congress what it wants. Whatever the health plan becomes, consumers must also be participants, not just “recipients” in the restructuring of the health care delivery system…

Two notable areas were not mentioned in President Clinton’s address to the Congress on his health insurance plan. The first area dealt with the largest source of non­addictive fatalities in the nation–medical and hospital malpractice. Extrapolating from the Harvard study of hospitals in New York state, at least 80,000 people lose their lives in hospitals…