In the Public Interest

“Safety Should be Our First Priority. The Auto Industry Has Dragged Its Feet Long Enough.” “In the early Eighties, the American car industry made a mockery of ‘Made in America.- “We believe a car engineered for safety is a car engineered for quality.” Who wrote the above words Consumer Advocates? Government Safety Regulators? None other…

There is a troubling triangle taking repeated shape in American Presidential politics that should give thinking people pause. From the murky miasma of many neglected domestic problems and tragedies in our country there emerges the Commander in Chief. He throws the spotlight on a foreign demon from the White House’s mass media pulpit. Day after…

Lo, the poor taxpayers. They think their tax money is often being wasted or stolen. But they can study the uses of their tax monies by the federal government for a year and they would not exhaust the myriad, complex ways in which their tax dollars are not only wasted and stolen but turned directly…

When cancer took the life of Jean Camper Cahn last month at age 55, none of he network TV evening news programs took note. For she was neither a well‑known actress, athlete or politician. She was only one of the most tireless fighters for social justice, one of the most effective democratic institution‑builders and one…

James K. Kirkpatrick, a stiff-lipped Republican columnist and television commentator, inadvertently illustrated just how far the Republicans have gone in sinking this country in red ink. He pronounced the new Bush budget as a “pretty good budget”. He never mentioned that the deficit built into this budget will be about $300 billion this year, not…

Resource conversation pressures are coming right down to the American household. California, in its fifth straight year of drought, is deciding on 13 water‑saving proposals via its Water Resources Control Board. In addition to higher water bills, one proposal would limit water use to 300 gallons per household per day. How much is 300 gallons…

A government that does not learn from its mistakes is sure to make the people pay more for them. The Bush Administration is doing just that because Bush, and Reagan before him, refused to continue the energy conservation policies of their predecessors, Ford and Carter. As a result, the auto companies began to go into…

Last month a reporter called to ask what book in 1990 would I recommend to his audience as part of an “end of the gear” article he was writing. After some reflection I called him back and gave him a list to choose from which make for good and diverse reading. Here are the titles:…

There are four puzzling questions surrounding the Persian Gulf crisis and possible hostilities which neither President Bush nor his associates have addressed. First, for the first time in modern American history, many former Secretaries of Defense (James Schlesinger, Caspar Weinberger, Harold Brown, Robert McNamara), former Secretaries of State (Cyrus Vance, William Rogers, Edmund Muskie, Dean…

A combination of a recession in advertising revenue, more competition for the advertising dollar due to more stations, and weak-kneed television station managers is producing censorship and, sometimes, dismissals of television consumer reporters around the country. The champion tv censors continue to be local auto dealers. Back, in 1968, the Miami Valley Auto Dealers Association…