In the Public Interest

If the lessons of recent Washington history are to be heeded, Jimmy Carter should be launching a “two track presi­dency” to fulfill his campaign declara­tions. The first track is the familiar one. It involves treating the problems of inflation, unemployment, disease, poverty and crime on the domestic scene and the urgency of the arms race,…

Utilities, polluters, other corporate defrauders and wayward government agencies may not be pleased, but here is a bit of good news on the hori­zon for the people. The fraternity of lawyers known as the “organized bar” is finally beginning to con­sider seriously its obligations to support what has come to be known as public interest…

The other day I came across a unique report from U.S. District Judge Charles B. Renfrew in San Francisco. It exam­ines the sentences he imposed on several corporate executives in a criminal anti­trust case. Judges rarely follow up their sentencing decisions and even more rarely write an evaluation of them after they are carried out.…

Jimmy Carter comes to Washington soon to bring his voters “Why Not The Best” government. This is a tall order — one that needs new ideas and modes of operation. In the spirit of the New Year, here are some modest resolutions which could Help Mr. Carter become a President of the People — for…

In the struggle for leadership of the United Steelworkers Union the issues between the incumbents and challenger Ed Sadlowski become clearer every week. Consider, for example, the reaction of the two camps to the steel industry’s recent uniform price increase. Sadlowski issued a statement that sounded like old time unionism. He condemned these prices as…

Former General Motors President Edward Cole and former General Motors Vice President John De­Lorean are for it. So are many con­sumer groups, the auto insurance industry, Forbes Magazine and three former chiefs of the federal auto safety agency. “It” is the automotive passive re­straint, often referred to in one of its forms — the air…

“Nobody controls Jimmy and nobody ever will,” said Rosalynn Carter just before the election. But – the question facing the new President in January is a reverse one. That is, can he control the powerful corporate forces which lead to inflation, pollution, and consumer abuse? Mr. Carter recently received an early signal along this line…

Historians are fond of writing that Americans have rarely indulged themselves in either ideologi­cal or utopian thinking. While the nation’s past has been etched from time to time by both ideologues and utopians, the overwhelming approach, it is said, has been pragmatic — tending to ordinary problems with hardheaded solutions. But these are not ordinary…

General Motors complains that it pays more for health insurance than for steel. Blue Cross is placing advertise­ments around the country pointing out the costs of surplus hospital beds, unnecessary surgery, facility dupli­cation and other wasteful practices that are sending hospital bills soar­ing. Blue Cross predicts that hospital stays could reach an average price of…

On Oct. 10, 1973, the Food and Drug Administra­tion (FDA) published an official notice warning that progestins — synthetic sex hormones — had never been proven effective in preventing miscar­riages and had been implicated in causing birth de­fects. The labels to physicians carry warnings along such lines at the present time. Yet in 1975, about…