In the Public Interest

For years there have been reports on the widespread prevalence of auto repair fraud, waste, and incompetence. One recent study by the Department of Transportation put the figure at over $15 billion annually taken out of consumers’ pocketbooks. Besides stricter law enforcement and media coverage such as CBS’s “60 Minutes” expose last August, what can…

WASHINGTON–The White House inflation policy invites superficial caricature and general condemnation. After pushing Congress hard for higher energy prices, including a massively inflationary natural gas bill, the Carter administration is about to go after its own health and safety regulators in a major way. Leading the charge is Charles Schultz, a born-again anti-regulatory economist, and…

The American economy is in the throes of another giant corporate merger wave. Bigger corporations are gobbling up big corporations. But some companies are fighting back with information about their potential gobblers. One of these companies is the Mead Corporation–a profitable Dayton, Ohio-based, diversified firm with projected 1978 sales of $2 billion. Two months ago,…

It was the evening of a long day for a high executive of a company that manufactures nuclear reactors. “How can you remain with a firm that is selling these reactors?” I asked him. “When is your company going to get out of the atomic power industry?” “The sooner the better,” he replied with firm…

In the past few weeks, the Winsted (Conn.) Evening Citizen has run three full page notices inviting the people of this small town (pop. 10,000) to come forward “with some ideas that will help Winsted.” The Citizen’s publisher, Joe Bradley, wants “to get the people of this area thinking positively again.” He was referring to…

These are the days of maximum hypocrisy in the Congress as the session nears its closing time. These are the times when politicians bifurcate their tongues and throw themselves into the laps of the business lobbyists eager to trade campaign contributions for corporate subsidy legislation. So get ready, airline passengers; that same combination is about…

For nearly 9 million students, another college year begins. For many of these students, the year is a tedious trip down memorization lane leading toward a diploma and, they hope, a job. College administrators and teachers go through their practiced motions of processing their students with the maximum of routine instruction and the minimum of…

The Monsanto Corp. is spending $7 million in a public relations campaign to speak up about chemicals. But chemicals have been speaking up for themselves recently in ways that Monsanto would rather not have publicized. More than 80 of these chemicals, 22 of them cancer-causing, have been oozing through a residential area in Niagara Falls…

It was bound to happen. But it still happened all of a sudden, Three new legal newspapers have been launched, and one of their quests is to illuminate one of the most secretive areas of the economy–the large corporate law firms. These law factories have played a powerful role in shaping government to the desires…

Nearly four million motorists will buy pickup trucks, vans or other multi-purpose passenger vehicles during the next 12 months. However, very few know that these vehicles do not meet even the modest safety standards that the U.S. Department of Transportation has required of passenger cars since 1968. This difference means, for example, that a driver…