In the Public Interest

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…

Richard Whittle of the Dallas Morning News knows more than ever the meaning of the old journalistic adage that in the U.S. “news flows west, not east.” On Sunday, July 25, 1993, the Dallas newspaper broke a very long page one story by Whittle on Senator Phil Gramm’s extraordinary uses of campaign finance and taxpayer…

All over the country, controversies are raging over what to do with solid waste trash. The three alternatives are (1) dump it in landfills; (2) incinerate it; and (3) recycle it. A growing movement behind recycling is registering gains with more and more local and state governments. Paper makes up 40% of the what is…