In the Public Interest

A few years ago the Washington Post carried a series of articles on the failure of the local school system to teach students how to read and write. The reporter’s most stunning finding: more than a few high school seniors relied on their classmates to read the signs on the Metro bus so that they…

Safety has the highest mandate in her administration, says Transportation Secretary, Elizabeth Hanford Dole. She then fails to preside over three days of Departmental hearings three blocks from her office in Washington on the most important safety decision she will be making — the automobile crash protection proposal. Granted she did appear at earlier hearings…

“Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.” So said Ronald Reagan to his consultant, Stuart Spencer,in 1966 as he started his gubernatorial career in California. With such an attitude a politician can develop a highly refined sense…

Your telephone companies, led by AT&T, are telling you that a major reason why they have to double or triple your monthly residential telephone bill is because long distance rates will no longer subsidize local service after January 1, 1984. That is the date when AT&T’s long distance unit splits from the soon-to-be independent regional…

A small New Jersey company, the Breed Corporation out of Lincoln Park, has developed a simple, reliable, less costly automatic crash protection system to save the lives of motorists. Called the Breed airbag module, it uses a mechanical system instead of the present airbag systems that operate with sensors which are crash activated electric switches.…

As a student at the Harvard Law School (HLS) in the Fifties, I used to wonder what that pre-eminent institution would be like years later. With all my imaginings, I guessed wrong. The school neither remained the same nor did transform into an active center for the analysis and advancement of justice in America. Instead,…

The Scene was a large Washington hotel conference room. There were very few empty chairs and very many television cameras. Scientists were making a two day presentation on “the world after nuclear war” — namely the long-term worldwide biological consequences of nuclear war after the half a billion people have died by the initial blasts…

If the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee could talk, its flowing waters would be breathing a sigh of relief. For the Breeder Reactor, which the American taxpayers were going to pay for without discernible limit, will not be built after all. And the river’s name, Clinch, will not become permanently associated with probably the single…

Sydney, Australia — Almost everywhere you go in this large country, people will tell you how passive Australians are when it comes to citizen action. Part of this supposed passivity may be due to a broad consensus about what government’s role is in their society. Voting, in national elections, for example, is an accepted, mandatory…

The audience of 2500 delegates to the 71st National Safety Congress listened closely to the views of four panelists, including Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) administrator, Thorne Auchter’, and myself, on the future of Washington’s job safety and health programs. Looking out at the large gathering in a Chicago hotel last week, I wished…