In the Public Interest

Last spring, before President Carter’s energy speech to the nation, General Motors was worried about the slow sales of its Chevette. After the speech, which emphasized the need for energy conservation, Chevette sales signifi­cantly improved. GM makes a direct connection between Carter’s remarks and the sales up­surge. Clearly, when Presidents speak, some Ameri­cans listen. But…

News releases by the Interstate Commerce Commission are not usually astonishing. But one five-page release from the ICC’s regional office in Chicago is a real eye-catcher. It reminds one of the TV commercial’s refrain: “Pass it on, pass it on.” The ICC filed suit against 12 large Midwestern trucking companies for illegally keeping over $2.3…

Joan Claybrook, formerly an important standard-bearer in the citizen movement, has been reduced to bureaucratic putty in her present position as nominal head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Claybrook’s situation is instructive both for her colleagues who also joined the Carter administration and for others in public interest groups contemplating a move…

Solar energy may well he developed in America -more because of what is going on out­side of Washington than by what Schlesinger’s Department of Energy (DOE) or the Congress is doing. Despite the millions of dollars which the DOE is spending on solar energy development, the sun remains a low priority compared with nuclear energy.…

There may have been only mild surprise at the Swiss headquarters of the giant multi-national company when the news arrived in July about a march of 100 people in Minneapolis urging a boycott of all Nestle’s products. Over the last three years, Nestle has come under grow­ing criticism by church, women’s and other citizen action…

In their recent condemnation of the oil indus­try’s consumer rip-off, President Carter and his aides avoided criticizing the principal Congres­sional engine behind the gigantic gauge — Sen. Russell Long, D.-La. Such avoidance is a tribute to Long’s dominant role in shaping key energy legislation. He is now using his power to require consumers and taxpayers…

John Z. DeLorean grew up poor in Detroit and became an automotive engineer. He rose quickly through General Motors’ executive ranks and produced what he calls “probably the best track record of any manager in the last 30 or 40 years at GM.” Rut in April 1973, this 48 year-old GM vice president, with a…

It was one of those comments that will go down in history as one of the most memorable expres­sions of business insensitivity. Robert K. Phillips, executive secretary of the National Peach Council, put it this way in a formal letter on September 12, 1977, to the Occupational Safety and Health Ad­ministration (OSHA): “While involuntary sterility…

A few weeks ago a good idea started weaving its way through the White House. What about enlist­ing, the internal proposal suggested, the energies of America’s youth as volunteers in the cause of energy conservation? President Carter, in the words of one memo, would “call on youth, their representative organizations, and other interested individuals to…

It used to be that Congress was divided into three camps: Democrats, Southern Democrats and Republicans. Depending on the issues, the out­come often, could be predicted with reasonable assurance. In the past three Congressional elections, the number of “progressive” Representatives was thought to signal a new era of constructive and’ imaginative legislation that would give…