In the Public Interest

“Waste not, want not” reflects little of the ways of corporate industry. These waste-makers have filled too many dumps and landfills with disposable containers, designed too many vehicles, buildings and appliances to be energy gluttons, and generally inflicted too much product obsolescence on the consuming public. But in one area, the rebellion against can and…

It came like a thunderbolt from Zeus–the unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals reversing Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis’ order rescinding the auto crash protection standard last October. Lewis told me the next day that he would have no comment until he studied the 76-page opinion. Were he to read the three-judge court’s…

ON BOARD AMTRAK TRAIN FROM NEW YORK CITY TO ALBANY–From the start of our conversation, I realized he was not your usual import-export textile executive. A 1968 graduate of Columbia University (a non-participant in the student revolt that year), he had gone into his family business and become quite successful. Just coming from a day-long…

The decision by Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis to weaken the bumper standard from protecting cars in 5-mph crashes, as presently is the case, to a 2.5-mph level has to be described as grotesque. With millions of Americans refusing to buy cars made by U.S. auto companies, the Reagan administration goes out of its way to…

It is not “justice” that most of the thousands of graduating law students are going after these days. It is, instead, the top dollar. Never mind how badly the legal reforms of the past 25 years need to be defended and extended. Never mind the frequent twisting of the law by the powerful to oppress…

Sunday, May 2, was a lovely day for the National Arboretum to refresh its many visitors. Situated on 444 acres in the Mount Hamilton section of the District of Columbia, the arboretum was alive with azaleas, flowering dogwood, mountain laurel and the expansive blooms of the elephant-ear magnolia. The fresh scents of these blossoms wafted…

President Ronald Reagan, the arch-anticonsumerist, proclaimed the last week in April National Consumers’ Week and left it up to his consumer adviser, Virginia Knauer, to fuzz the irony. She had trouble doing so. On the “Today Show,” she could not explain why Reagan would not meet with consumer groups during Consumer Week. He was busy…

All you eaters of meat and poultry products, Jim Murphy, a leader of government food inspectors, wants to send you a message–SOS-like. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mandatory continuous meat and poultry inspection tradition is in jeopardy. Ronald Reagan’s secretary of agriculture, John Block, has sent to Congress legislation to end mandatory inspection of processing…

“James J. Kilpatrick is a human being after all,” the young woman said joyously, as she waved the day’s Washington Post at her friend. What could the crusty columnist have written, I wondered, to provoke such a rare observation? An hour later, I got to my copy of the Post and saw why. Here was…

J. Robert Hunter must appear to be omnipresent to members of the insurance industry. They see him at their trade meetings, on radio and television, in their trade press, at state insurance commission panels and congressional hearings. Everywhere he is their hairshirt, a casualty actuary turned full-time consumer advocate for millions of auto, home, fire…