In the Public Interest

If you knew your neighbors were operating or using a defective consumer product, wouldn’t you alert them? Of course you would. But most corpora­tions hush themselves; the simple Golden Rule is not for them. This attitude was illustrated once again a few weeks ago when confidential internal memoranda dated September 1978 by General Motors and…

Their names have become part of a macabre map of poisoned areas throughout America: Love Canal, N.Y., Woburn, Mass., Valley of the Drums in Kentucky, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Colo., and Lathrop, California. With few exceptions, these areas of “lethal litter,” in the words of the New York Times, are the legacy of the chemical industry.…

Once again General Motors has broken’ its public commitments and decided not to assume the leadership to save a million lives and tens of millions of injuries on the highways worldwide in the next 30 years. Last week, GM presi­dent Pete Estes telephoned the Department of Transportation to say that GM would not install air…

Campaign advisers to Ronald Reagan reportedly are working to blur his extremist right-wing image. The pres­idential candidate is not helping that much, judging by his recent widely publicized comments urging the revoca­tion of life-saving auto-safety stand­ards. Soon, they may be grappling with the image of Reagan’s brutishness. A few days before the Michigan primary, which…

“We’re sailing into somewhat uncharted waters for this summer by letting (airline) carriers decide how to price their product upward. But given the nation’s economic problems and already-high air fares, I don’t feel the carriers will abuse consumers.” With those words, Marvin S. Cohen, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), announced with his fellow…

One of the most interesting consequences of the recent Big Business Day was the reaction to it by corporation and trade association officials. First, these groups refused all invitations to discuss the role of Big Business in this country. Along with civil rights leader James Farmer and William Hutton of the National Council of Senior…

Voters, according to the national polls, are not being stirred by any of the presidential candidates. But one significant shift is showing up in political reports from several industrial states: More blue-collar workers are listening to the Ronald Reagan rhetoric and liking it. This phenomenon—observed eight years ago on the Wallace campaign—should concern organized labor.…

On March 14, 1980, John Swearingen, chairman of the board of Standard Oil of Indiana (AMOCO), had this exchange on the Phil Donahue show: Donahue: You know, one of the biggest misgivings people have, I think, about the oil companies is that you appear to make more money every time OPEC raises its price. You…

CLAIRFIELD, Tenn.—Amid the Cumberland Mountains, with much rural land and few rural people, the hunger is for land. Shelby York, a self-styled old-timer working with a community development group, says that people here see land as more valuable than money. The difficulty is that most of the land is owned by coal or land corporations…

General Motors’ top bosses, Thomas Murphy and “Pete” Estes, could save a million lives and prevent millions of serious injuries worldwide in the next 30 years. This preservation of life and limb is long overdue. Many highway casualty losses in the ’70s could have been averted if GM had put air bags on all its…