In the Public Interest

This week the Congress of the International Organization of Consumers Unions will hold its world convention in Hong Kong. From dozens of countries, rich and poor, capitalist and socialist, will come hundreds of delegates to advance the conference’s topic which is “consumer power in the nineties.” No one can claim that this conference will focus…

I am looking at a book published in the United States that would never be published, purchased or read in Canada. The book is titled “avoiding the Medicaid Trap: How to Beat the Catastrophic Costs of Nursing-Home Care” by Armond D. Budish (Henry Holt and Co. 1989). In 232 pages of text, tables, charts, lists…

Eighteen hundred factories right over the border in northern Mexico — many of which are owned by U.S. and Japanese giants such as GM, General Electric, IT & T, Sony and Hitachi — are a preview of the future unless citizens in both countries rise to an agenda for the protection of both Americans and…

It was a first for national television. All three bosses of the Big Three U.S. auto companies — General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler — appeared together June 11, 1991 on Ted Koppel’s Nightline Show. Koppel reasoned that if the three executives — Bob Stempel (GM) Harold Poling (Ford) and Lee Iacocca (Chrysler) could go…

What if someone was using your property free in order to make a profit by sending clever messages to your young children enticing them to consume products that would damage their short and long term health? Welcome to Saturday and Sunday morning children’s network television. Would you sit idly by and, like Ronald Reagan, dream…

Back in the early Seventies I asked a friend why he went to so many movies (two or three a week). He replied: “Because I want to get away from the television ads.” Well, look again, the ads are following moviegoers right into the theatre and into the movies themselves. If you haven’t seen the…

Steve Beckwitt, 46, and his son Eric, 24, are ancient forest preservationists who, out of their small ranch 60 miles from Sacramento, California, are proving what can be done when computers are democratized for citizens uses. Equipped with a tool known as geographic information systems (GIS), now usable through their personal computer, the Beckwitt’s are…

An unprecedented corporate power grab is underway, and citizens must act now to defeat it. The Bush administration’s pressure on Congress to adopt a no-amendment “fast-track” consideration of a new version of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international agreement regulating most of the world’s trade, is an attempt to make that…

The main lounge at the National Press Club in Washington reverberated with a refreshing set of anti-commercial values a few days ago. For there, the new Center for the Study of Commercialism was giving out its first annual Zeroes and Heroes awards of marketing. In the Centers view “commercialism promotes. a culture characterized by greed,…

There are certain questions, which by custom and practice, White House reporters do not ask the President. What are these questions? For starters, questions about the government’s enforcement of laws against corporate crimes, fraud and abuses are not part of the routine. When can you remember hearing a reporter ask any President about the auto…