In the Public Interest

With Ronald Reagan announcing his gigantic salary grab to increase by 50% the pay of members of Congress and other top government officials (including his own pension), the 32 year career of retiring Senator, William Proxmire (0-WI) stands in even more startling contrast. Senators don’t come along like Proxmire anymore. Replacing Joseph McCarthy in 1956,…

There are not many people who can marshall facts and arguments better than physics — trained, Amory Lovins, the Director of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Old Snowmass, Colorado. His specialty for the past fifteen years has been energy and his target — the massive waste of energy in this country. You do not see…

The irrepressible Clint Reilly, who managed to spend a war chest of $70 million for the insurance companies and lose three ballot referendums in California, is drumming up new business for this firm — Clinton Reilly Campaigns. In a private 13 page memorandum, titled “Agenda 1989: The Lessons of the 1988 Insurance Campaign”, he advises…

The problem with President Reagan’s Commission on the salaries of top government officials is that the millionaires are not. as well represented as the multimillionaires on the nine-member panel. As might be expected, these moguls — mostly corporate lawyers and corporate executives (Aetna, Metropolitan Life, Loews Corp., Morrison Knudsen Corp.) recommended 50 percent increases in…

What incompetent physicians do to their women patients in this country amounts to a nationwide mayhem and carnage, regularly observed by their competent colleagues, who know of this chronic malpractice, yet remain silent. For over a generation, physicians have conducted unnecessary hysterectomies which now total in the millions. Despite numerous authoritative studies condemning the abuse…

Since 1985 the Japanese Yen has become stronger as against the U.S. dollar which has become weaker. It takes less than half the Yen now to buy a dollar than it did a little over three years ago. What this means for our country is that America is becoming cheaper to buy for the Japanese…

Lowell Weicker, the Senator from Connecticut, the maverick Republican, will soon be a former Senator. Attorney General Joseph Lieberman narrowly defeated him on November 8th, in part with a television ad likening Weicker to a snoozing bear to illustrate a number of absences from Senate floor votes. When it comes to defending the U.S. Constitution,…

In the outpouring of materials about national and global environmental crises, the concise booklet reports of the Washington-D.C. group known as Worldwatch stand out. Founded by the agricultural economist, Lester Brown, Worldwatch’s most recent Paper *86 covers the tragedy of “Environmental Refugees: A Yardstick of Habitability.” What is an environmental refugee? The 10,000 former residents…

The Presidential election is over and once again the issues of corporate power and abuses were overwhelmingly ignored in a dispiriting bipartisanship. This political taboo is, of course, the ultimate tribute to corporate power as well as a rejection of Jefferson’s belief that representative government should be a counter to the “monied interests.” But in…

In the week before the Presidential elections, Ronald Reagan made these three decisions: (1) Reagan pocket-vetoed the Whistleblowers Protection Act which provided safeguards for federal employees who speak out against corruption, waste or other wrongdoing in their agencies and departments. Existing law is too weak and many courageous civil servants, who have blown the whistle,…