In the Public Interest

Now that David Stockman, Reagan’s former duplicitous budget director, is cashing his $2 1/2 million in royalties for his book: The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed, his critics are having a field day deploring his disloyalty to Reagan. Why, they demand, did Stockman wait until he left office and sign a book…

The response to the Soviet atomic power plant accident by U.S. government and nuclear industry officials has been curiously self-righteous. We are told that Soviet safeguards for nuclear plants are weaker than those applying to the 100 licensed nuclear plants in the U.S. Then we learn that five plants used for producing weapons grade material…

About ten years ego physicist Alvin Weinberg, former director of the Oakridge National Laboratory told me that no one will really know how dangerous a nuclear power plant could be until a meltdown occurs. The disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, at this writing, may come closer to giving Dr. Weinberg…

Two recent reports about upper-class salaries and bonuses illustrate the sharper stratification between economic classes in our country — between those who produce and those who manipulate. The top five General Motors executives each received over one million dollars in salary and bonuses for the year 1985. These astronomical payments come at a time when…

What is the Reagan government waiting for — one major mid-air collision — before coming to its senses and either upgrading the air traffic controller system and staff or reducing the density of air traffic? Since Mr. Reagan fired the illegally striking air traffic controllers in 1981, he has refused to reinstate three or four…

Rarely have I ever observed a more successful statistical hoax perpetuated on most electronic: and print media than that being accomplished almost daily by Jury Verdict Research (JVR) of Solon, Ohio a firm that purports to collect samples of average jury verdicts in the malpractice and product defect areas. During the rising media attention to…

It started in May 1976 and ended last month in a resounding victory for consumers in California with far-reaching effects on other states. Ten years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Levi Strauss & Co. with pressuring retailers to set higher prices for jeans in violation of federal antitrust laws. In late 1977 the…

The export of American jobs is no longer restricted to blue-collar workers. While everyone is aware that U.S. corporations have been moving their factories and investments overseas — one Pennsylvania banker accused them of abandoning America — and selling their products back in this country, few people are aware that the next big move could…

It did not happen in World War I or World War II or during the Great Depression. But it is happening under Ronald Reagan’s gargantuan deficit and twisted priorities. The Library of Congress is cutting its hours of service from 77 1/2 hours to 54 1/2 hours per week. Responding to a $18.3 million cut…

With Senator Kennedy on their side, the U.S. drug companies are making their move on the Senate floor soon to pass S. 1848. This legislation would allow drug companies to sell to foreign countries pharmaceuticals which are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For years the U.S. has stood alone among…