In the Public Interest

In all the years of official Soviet-American ex­change programs, consumer groups have been conspicuously absent. Musicians, legislators, cor­poration executives, farmers, jurists, scientists, physicians, athletes, mayors, writers, governors, industrial specialists, religious and ethnic leaders and even labor union chiefs (most have declined) have been invited to visit the Soviet Union. But not representatives of consumer action…

AMHERST — Some call it the return of tested wisdom. All who are part of it agree that the common factors are greater community self-reliance and control over the production and distribution of the necessities of life. “It” is an emerging culture form that is more than a series of slogans and euphoric thoughts. “It”…

It was a pretty picture of a river winding its way through northwest Connecticut’s hill country that ap­peared on the front page of The Lake­ville Journal a few days ago. But under the picture, the Journal told a tragic tale that will be repeated about more rivers and lakes around this country! “Fishermen used to…

Every day, you, the consumer, are paying a hidden tax to corporations that regulate the marketplace by illegally fixing the prices of their goods and services. Price-fixing has been a federal crime for the past 87 years and most state laws also ban the practice. Yet price-fixing at national, regional and local levels remains rampant.…

When Ray Bonner, a young lawyer just out of the Marine Corps, came to work with us in 1972, he took up running so relentlessly that he once com­pleted the Boston Marathon event. Bonner is still running as a San Francisco assistant district attor­ney in charge of consumer fraud and white collar crime. He even…

Can you name the chairman or president of the following corporations? General Motors, Exxon, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Sears, U.S. Steel, General Electric, Citibank, Metropolitan Life, and General Mills. If you can’t, join the vast majority who can’t, ei­ther. These men of vast economic and political power have a passion for anonymity. Unlike their company…

Anyone observing the Senate process of confirming President Carter’s nomination of Robert McKinney as chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) will understand why the Senate has succeeded less than a dozen times this century in voting down a President’s cabinet or agency nomination. McKinney came to the Senate confirmation hearings with some…

With one of the worst anti-con­sumer, environmental and tax re­form records in Congress, Represen­tative H. G. Shuster (R-Pa.) is straining these days to preserve the right of Americans to be killed on the highways. He has solicited about 150 members of the House to co-sponsor his resolution to overturn Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams’ re­cent…

Volvo, almost small enough to fit into GM’s hip pocket, has tweaked the beaks of the giant auto companies more than once with its innovations. First with shoulder-style seat belts, Volvo pro­ceeded to prove through a study of 60,000 accident reports that they saved lives at the same time — in the late Sixties —…

The price of insulation for energy conservation is moving up and this is only the beginning. With demand in­creasing, the handful of corporations who produce fiberglass insulation are about to reap large windfalls as they weep about their inability to expand supply accordingly. Three companies dominate the fiberglass industry. They are Owens-Corning Fiberglass, Johns-Manville, and…