In the Public Interest

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…

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…