In the Public Interest

Some of her suburban Washington neighbors were skeptical about Jo Ann York’s casual claims regarding her family of four’s food bills. So in 1976 she wrote a book entitled “How I Feed My Family on $16 a Week.” With her husband and two pre-teen children York showed how they “eat three balanced, nutritious meals a…

Can the Democrats retire Ronald Reagan in November? If their voter registration drives among women, minorities and students succeed, the chances are good. Historically, the larger the voter turnout (it was only 52% of the eligible voters in 1980), the more likely will be a Republican defeat. But getting more voters registered and voting is…

Behind the recent dramatic announcement by the American Cancer Society (ACS) launching a campaign against corporate sources of cancer in the environment, workplace and diet is the untold story of Dr. Michael Jacobson and his Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). For fifteen years this 40-year old MIT-trained microbiologist has been a consumer…

Houston — When Texan Lloyd Doggett, probably the country’s fastest rising state legislator, announced last year his campaign for the U.S. Senate, he began to hear the same response from people he thought were likely supporters. They all expressed admiration for his sterling ten year record of progressive work in the Texas senate, but they…

Washington, DC — Two automobile company bosses came to town last week to speak and never were their messages more different from one another. First there was Roger Smith, the head of General Motors, addressing the National Press Club. In his entire speech text of 16 pages, not once did he refer to his company’s…

Presidents usually grace their annual State of the Union address before Congress with several servings of stirring language. But this year Ronald Reagan filled his address with soaring rhetoric which camouflaged falsehoods behind politically cunning expressions designed to keep hope springing eternal. Reagan wants people to see him as a new prophet who, promptly from…

Is there a Party of the opposition anymore? Each new year makes this question increasingly insistent. During the first two weeks of January the Reagan regime had a virtual media field day to itself, while leading Democrats were elsewhere or occupied with tearing into Mondale. Two cases are illustrative. Presidential counselor Edwin Meese III, with…

Gerald P. Carmen, Reagan’s administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) is a bit nervous these days. You see, I have praised him publicly and his Reaganite friends won’t let him forget that. But as head of the country’s biggest consumer buying operation, he deserves praise and wider notice for the way he is using…

Mark Fowler wants to take away from you the last remaining rights to have access to public property — namely the public airwaves, unless, that is, you happen to own a radio or television station. Who is Mark Fowler? He is the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the darling of the broadcasting industry and…

It is at the end of a year that one more easily thinks of constancy — defined by Webster as “steadfastness of mind under duress.” I think of those public citizens who year after year stay on the course against large odds in order to fight for justice in America. They work out of a…