In the Public Interest

The first move the electric company that owns the Diablo Canyon plant in southern California took on hearing that an earthquake had struck the San Francisco bay area over 500 miles to the north was to shut the plant down. The reason: Diablo Canyon is an atomic energy facility. It is remarkable how little attention…

Over 60,000 workers are on strike against the “Baby Bell” giant, NYNEX which has a legal monopoly, through its subsidiaries, on local telephone service in New York state and New England. The core of the dispute is NYNEX’s demand that its fully-paid family healthcare coverage move into a shifting mode onto the employees, starting with…

I attended a Hispanic-American convention recently and saw a variety of corporate sponsors sporting their identity. So, when the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released its report last week titled “Marketing Disease to Hispanics,” I was not surprised. Not until I read the shocking contents which documented the nature of the epidemic.…

Tokyo, Japan — This is an export-driven country that qualifies for the title of the “poorest rich society” in the world. It is a country with a booming gross national product that is forgetting about the welfare of its own people. Consider, for example, the lethal triangle of cancer. Japan’s tobacco policy is one of…

Tokyo, JAPAN — This booming economy, which includes the highest paid workers in the world, has exploited severely what an economy is supposed to be expanding. The well-being of consumers. In some ways, consumers live in a state of near poverty by U.S. standards. Polls reflect that most Japanese feel poor. Housing is the first…

The opening of several U.S. branches of large corporate law firms and mergers-and-acquisitions partnerships in Tokyo can be the start of a new industrial strategy toward the Japanese economic juggernaut. In short, if you can’t beat the Japanese companies with the strength of American quality competition, then export the weaknesses of our economy and make…

About 200,000 children are rushed to hospital emergency rooms every year due to playground injuries. The customary explanation for these injuries is that “kids will be kids.” They get carried away with themselves and they fall or bump their heads on the recreational equipment. Well, closer study has shown many injuries either to be caused…

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…