In the Public Interest

At last count there were more insurance consumers by far in Connecticut than insurance companies and their executives, but you wouldn’t know it by examining the political behavior of the state’s two Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman and Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson. As legislative heel-clickers for the giant insurance lobby, many of which…

The nation’s most prosperous drug dealers — the tobacco companies — are on the defensive these days. After years of control over Congress and the White House, the once powerful tobacco lobby is under attack by forces determined in all kinds of ways to reduce the annual death toll of over 400,000 Americans from tobacco-related…

Disney, Inc., ultimatum corporation that freeloads on taxpayers, wants to build a history theme park in northern Virginia as a camouflage for a massive real estate development in the beautiful, historic countryside around Haymarket. Secretly buying rights to 3000 acres of land, and probably more yet to be disclosed expansions, Disney went partially public last…

The thirty-year long struggle to tame the tobacco industry the opened a new phase last month when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would focus on “presence of nicotine in cigarettes in amounts associated with addiction.” FDA chief, Dr. David Kessler, wrote the American Heart Association on February 25, 1994 to say that…

A fast-growing service industry based on the commercialized privatization of settling conflicts is called Alternative Dispute Resolution. Known as ADR, for short, its growth over the past 15 years is fed by assertions that the courts are too clogged, judicial procedures too dilatory, and the judicial system too expensive. ADR’s proponents argue that mediation, arbitration…

Geraldo Rivera was clearly embarrassed and he did not appear to be acting. His show was on “transvestites, cross-dressers and the people who love them.” Geraldo’s titles are literal and the panel of guests spoke so literally that “bleeps” were blocking many of their words. Although he asked his audience “am I blushing?”, mumbled to…

Back in the Flatbush Brooklyn Dodger era, diehard fans would react to a close defeat on the diamond by saying “We wuz robbed.” That sums up the semi-stunned and angry response of Republicans to Bill Clinton’s State of the Union message before the assembled Congress. Later, at a Washington, D.C., fatcat Republican fundraiser, featured speaker,…

Injuries abounded once again this year in the National Football League and one of the causes is the artificial turf that covers the stadium floors used by 15 out of 28 NFL teams. Yet the owners, who make megamillions and pay millions to their players, watch indifferently from their luxury boxes as one athlete after…

Talk radio is breaking out all over. Listeners feedback their views more on talk radio programs than they can on all the television stations and newspapers combined. However, there is a pronounced tilt toward right wing talk show hosts that is getting worse. Who is the counterpoint to Rush Limbaugh — the cowardly mouth of…

Ever get the impression that just about every problem in our country has been studied to exhaustion. If you do, why not ask about what problem is rarely, if ever, studied? Let’s select a problem that involves the spending of over $1100 per year per American adult. I’m referring to over $210 billion in taxpayer-funded…