In the Public Interest

In the past several months you may have come across some full page advertisements by a group calling itself The Committee For Fair Insurance Rates. Funded by at least nineteen major insurance companies, this Committee has spent over $1 million trying to persuade you to oppose HR 100 and S 372 — bills in Congress…

Sydney, Australia — In the bustling downtown business district of this country’s largest city, I saw consumers driving cars, buying appliances and other hardware for their homes. I also saw Cecil Patten, a 41-year-old Aboriginal, a very sad member of the small Bunjalung tribe from the northeast Bush area of the state of New South…

On Monday October 3 citizen groups in over 100 cities and towns are resorting to satire to roast the Reagan government. The occasion is The First National Let Them Eat Cake Sale. The reference, of course, is to the time some 200 years ago, when Marie Antoinette, on being told that the poor in France…

The young man boarded the passenger airplane at Billings, Montana on the way to Seattle. Flight attendants concluded that he was mentally retarded and helped seat him with polite, patronizing words of reassurance. He slurred his speech and had difficulty pronouncing some phrases, but he was very friendly and his eyes shone kindly. A few…

What are consumers doing these days that is different from ten years ago? Banding together! Buyers doing together what they cannot do separately is not a new concept. About one hundred and fifty years ago unemployed workers in an English village started the first formal consumer cooperative. Today, what is new are the ways buyers…

When Ronald Reagan reached the White House in January 1981, he carried with him a campaign promise to abolish the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA). Since Presidents have to be more subtle then candidates on the trail, Mr. Reagan decided instead to turn this vital agency for American workers into a hollow pretense of…

This will not be a happy Labor Day for unions. Organized labor finds itself in the most severe straits of a generation. Union rolls are shrinking, especially in industries that are automating, importing parts from overseas or going overseas. Competition -from foreign companies is eating into domestic markets for steel, autos and many other products.…

Top executives of large corporations lead a cloistered life. Sitting in their executives suites they are far removed from the sweat and gritty reality of their workers on assembly lines, in mines or behind counters. These moguls have their private dining rooms, private washrooms, private jets, private country clubs and private meetings with their counterparts…

With close aides saying that it is “99 percent sure” that he will run, Ronald Reagan is turning to Hollywood once again for his campaign strategy. The image-makers are working to reshape Mr. Reagan into a caring person. (The fairness issue is believed to be crucial to his re-election.) They are operating on the premise…

An emerging, unique coalition of liberal and conservative groups is giving fits to giant corporations on the dole in Washington. These are the companies which are demanding subsidies, bailouts and other special considerations because they are mismanaged or they dislike marketplace risk or they are just plain greedy. Less than a decade ago, liberal and…