In the Public Interest

YEARS AGO during one of our family’s dinner table conversations about politics, I said, “What this country needs is a real third party.” My father replied: “I’d settle for a real second party.” I recalled this exchange the other day while reading about the combination of Re­publicans and Democrats supporting President Bush’s capital gains tax…

Edgar S. Cahn has developed an idea that can revolutionize the exchange of needed services between people who have little money but considerable time. He calls it the Time Dollar and it’s already working in ten states. For the former Dean of Antioch Law School, the Time Dollar represents only the latest of his contributions…

Editorials are hailing the announcement by government health researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that the drug, AZT, can delay the advance of AIDS in infected persons who have no symptoms. But these same editorials are bewailing the prices for a year’s AZT treatment at $8,000 or more per patient. The new findings…

If you amassed all the waste dumps, kindly called “landfills,” in the U.S.A. and totaled the acreage, they would cover an area larger than Rhode Island. Most are full or filling up rapidly; new land fills are very difficult to get passed environmental requirements and community opposition. So the Big Word for the Nineties will…

A letter came in the other day that filled five pages of single-spaced type under the heading of “Bad Chemistry.” The author made an interesting and infrequently made observation; namely that the marketplace response to our negative reaction to indoor pollutants has been to provide people with all types of deodorant chemicals — some hidden…

Probably the most damaging appointment Ronald Reagan ever made to his callous, deficit-ridden government was one Mark Fowler, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Fowler stayed in office for almost seven years and left a wreckage of public trust behind, flouting the Federal Communications Act of 1934 all the way. Fowler’s philosophy was that…

Ask an auto dealer these days about the Autofacts Program and Remar Sutton and you’ll likely see a flush of indignation. Remar is the vocal author of “Don’t Get Taken Every Time,” a best selling paperback about the ways and means of customer fleecing by many auto dealers. Now he has joined forces with the…

Years ago during one of our family’s dinner table conversations about politics, I said “what this country needs is a real third party.” My father replied: “I’d settle for a real second party.” I recalled this exchange the other day while reading about the combination of Republicans and Democrats supporting President Bush’s capital gains tax…

It was a newspaper cartoon that sellers of fish are not likely to forget. A housewife with a cart is looking at the fish counter in a supermarket. Different rows of fish are labeled “regular unleaded,” “premium unleaded” and “high octane.” Yes, the time for mandatory fish inspection is long over­due. All these reports about…

Let’s say there was a debate topic entitled “Who’s bringing up America’s children -­parents or corporations?” Would the debater supporting the proposition that business is influencing children more than are parents have all that difficult a case to argue? Doubtful. Here is a quick and incomplete tour. Start out with infant formula hucksters who have…