In the Public Interest

General Motors dropped its biggest lemon last week — a lemon of its making. The giant auto maker announced the closing of 21 plants in North America and the loss of over 70,000 jobs by the mid-Nineties. From 1990 to 1995, 100,000 GM workers will not have their employment and the number of GM workers…

Seabrook, New Hampshire — The most expensive electricity in the United States comes from the controversial, troubled Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire near the Massachusetts border. both as taxpayers and as consumers, ratepayers are paying for John Sununu and company’s technological lemon. The citizens who led the opposition to the construction of the…

It was an altogether exceptional dinner gathering. The occasion was to honor the eleven major air bag inventors who were personally recognized, one by one, by survivors of vehicle collisions saved by the air bag. Official Washington is not used to such events. Dinners are to celebrate funding of campaigns and mutual backscratching between sets…

When he is not teaching law or writing articles on democracy, telecommunications and broadcasting at the University of Iowa, Nicholas Johnson has a quadrennial hobby he pursues. He asks candidates running for President in the early Iowa Caucus one question. It goes something like this: “I’ve now heard you denounce those powerful special interest lobbies…

How deep is our democracy? Is it getting deeper or thinner and in what areas? Can adequate criteria be selected to rank the 50 states on a depth of democracy scale with one another? These questions make us think beyond the more general but memorable definition of “government of, by, and for the people.” Let’s…

Ella Honeycutt dedicates her days to supporting the cause of farmland preservation from her Morrow Bay office on the central coast of California. Now, as president of the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District she is sounding the alarm about risks associated with imports of Mexican vegetables from fields contaminated by polluted water and desperately…

Peter Barnes is what one could call a consumer-side, entrepreneur. In 1903 he helped start a socially responsible money market fund by the name of Working Assets — to provide an “easy way for people to make an impact with the money they save.” In 1986 he launched the Working Assets VISA Card — “an…

Last week enough U.S. Senators beat back a 400 page energy bill loaded with goodies for its chief backers — the oil, coal and nuclear industries. The opponents of this legislation, many of whom favor a basic program fostering energy efficiency and renewable energy in place of more fossil fuels and more radioactive fuels, surprised…

In November 1989 after House Speaker Torn Foley (D-WA) and his ally, Rep. Bob Michel (R- L) locked arms to ram through the House of Representatives a $35,000 pay raise for each legislator, plus another leap in the lawmakers` pensions, I called Mr. Foley on the telephone. Given both his squashing of public committee hearings…

The nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States served as a multiple personality test for the United States Senate as well as for the nominee and his adversaries. For the U.S. Senate, the question is: what’s the rush? Why rush the nomination for a life-time position on the highest court…