In the Public Interest

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…

It is understandable why some long-time supporters of automatic safety systems in passenger automobiles heaved a sigh of relief when Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams announced his decision to require such higher safety standards starting with some 1982 model cars. The battle over passive safety systems, exemplified by the air bag, has been dragging on…

At a recent Cabinet meeting, President Carter declared that he wanted his administration to speak with one voice on stopping work at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project in Tennessee. With mounting op­position in Congress by a well-oiled, pro-Clinch River lobby, Carter em­phasized his strong desire to win this struggle. Why did Carter have to…

The Washington taxi driver dropped off his rider and quit early. He couldn’t take the air pollution in this city where vehicle density per square mile is the highest in the United States. Mid-June in Washington brought the air pollu­tion index to a high of 130 which is described as “very unhealthy” by the region’s…

An ill wind is sweeping through Con­gress these days. It is a mood of confu­sion, frustration, indifference, timidity and the usual ‘ presence of political venality. This is a Congress out of control, even from itself. It is bound by no substan­tive leadership or program, despite a solid Democratic majority. Its fitful slogans and zigs…