In the Public Interest

A year has passed since the disaster at the Soviet’s Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine. Outside the Soviet Union, governments have impounded and destroyed radioactive cheese and milk; they have conceded that silage and hay for farm animals are contaminated in Western Europe. Turkish tea and hazelnuts have been contaminated. For the same reason,…

H. Ross Perot is 56 years old and is worth over $2 billion. He started EDS, his data processing company in Texas, 25 years ago with $5000, sold it to General Motors in 1984 for $2.5 billion and continued to run EDS as a wholly owned subsidiary. Last December, after privately and publically criticizing the…

Before condemning to death and serious injury thousands of Americans each year, the proponents of revoking the federal limit of 55 mph on federal interstate highways displayed a model of doubletalk in the House of Representatives debate. The argumentative madness was exemplified by Cong. Barney Frank (D­MA) who said that since he violates this speed…

The auction at Christie’s in London the other day left the art crowd gasping. An anonymous buyer won the bidding for Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Sunflowers” (1888) for $39,921,750. The price was more than three times the previous record paid for any painting. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. He had hoped…

There is nothing bashful about Ms. P.J. Marchner and Mr. Wiley Buchanan. They are partners in a Washington, D.C. advertising firm called Required Reading. Why Required Reading? Well, because they’ve begun to sell advertisements to toilet stall doors and walls above urinals at restaurants. They’ve already signed up a popular eatery for yuppies, Joe and…

Annapolis, MD — The new Governor of Maryland, Democrat William Schaefer, has trouble saying No to corporations. This inebriation with “business climate politics” at the expense of peoples’ rights does not bother him in the least; the Governor is a man with a mission to project nationwide the perception that Maryland’s government is so pro-business…

This is a story about billing errors by Xerox Corporation during their servicing of our copying machine. It illustrates how alert and persistent buyers must be and, if they are not, they’ll pay more than they should and never know it. It started when one of our associates was reviewing the service bills over a…

Now that The Tower Commission has released its report, severely criticizing Ronald Reagan and his White House subordinates in the Iran-Contra affair, the real investigations are just beginning by the Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh and two congressional committees. Unlike the Watergate scandal, these investigations do not start with the question addressed to Richard Nixon: what…

Five little brothers and sisters lost their lives in a fire at their home in Connecticut a few days ago. They join the approximately 6000 Americans who will lose their lives to fire in 1987. Along with Canada, the U.S. has the highest per capita death rate by fire in the world. The toll is…

For Ronald Reagan, eating red meat is as American as apple pie. He is known to like chicken too. So he should have a passing interest in a puzzling contrast between his Department of Agriculture’s position on foodborne illnesses from contaminated livestock and poultry and that of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.…