In the Public Interest

HARTFORD—Consumer protestors from several Connecticut cities came here recently to demonstrate against the giant rate increase by Northeast Utilities. They were angry enough to boycott the hearing before the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) on the proposed $242 million rate increase and announce their own “citizens’ hearing” in October. Such protests are no longer…

Tony Bonillo, the new president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), paid a visit recently to Vice President George Bush. Because minority group leaders are expressing deep worry about the way budget cuts are being made, Ronald Reagan has instructed his vice president to be the administration’s point of highest contact with…

“I’m not a regulatory torpedo,” said Raymond Peck, coal industry lawyer, soon after Ronald Reagan appointed him to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “This job involved matters of life or death,” he added, by way of distinguishing his admitted anti-regulatory bias in economic matters. After four months officially on the job, Peck…

TORONTO, ONTARIO—Acid rain, acid rain, acid rain! “It’s the biggest thorn between our two countries and getting bigger,” says a provincial official. The early signs of increasing acid rain show up as fishless lakes. At least 140 lakes in Ontario no longer have fish. Aquatic life in nearly 50,000 lakes could be extinguished next unless…

VANCOUVER, B.C.—Suddenly the shoe is on the other foot. After decades of large U.S.-based cor­porations colonizing the Canadian economy, the colony is striking back. The Canadian government is pursuing a policy to bring under Canadian ownership 50 percent of the country’s oil and gas industry in 1990. Canadian corporations are aggressively moving into markets and…

“If this was occurring in Poland, there would be an international uproar and demands for a United Nations inquiry,” said Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland). Let’s see if you agree with her. Suppose a Central Industrial Authority in Warsaw had condemned a 465-acre area which included the homes of 3,500 people, 150 small stores and shops,…

Back in December 1969, several members of the tobacco industry filed a lawsuit against the three television networks to stop the showing of ad­vertisements which state or imply that “cigarettes will kill people who smoke them.” The suit claimed each of these anti-cigarette ads “was false or made with reckless disregard of whether said statement…

Ronald Reagan played “brand-name politics” with the House of Representatives and his budget version won over the Democrat’s alternative. Legislators were asked to vote either for or against Reagan, Madison Avenue-style. Picture the scene. On Friday, June 26, the 435 members of the House of Representatives voted on the Reagan budget without knowing what was…

Rodale Press, Inc., a Pennsylvania company, is giving profit a good name. Last year this successful ‘publishing and research business grossed about $80 mil­lion. With that level of revenue, Rodale is increasingly able to get its message across to millions of people. The “message”—of preserving our agri­cultural resources, advancing nutrition and health and encouraging specific…

I had a suspicion that Victor Navasky, now editor of the Nation magazine, would someday revert back to satiric days of the early ’60s when he ran the Monocle-then America’s only publication of political satire. Victor is starting something called “The Institute of Expertology” whose first mission is to write a book called “The Experts…