In the Public Interest

It was the picture that was worth a thousand words. There was our Vice-President giving the finger to some hecklers at a Binghamton, New York, rally for Robert Dole. It was the finger that received the publicity, largely due to some very quick photographers, but it was the facial expression of Nelson Rockefeller that seemed…

There are over 100,000 law students currently in the nation’s law schools but few can experience what less than 400 law students go through at the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. The first two weeks of law school are spent living with families in Washington’s slums to get a feel for the poor…

The papers are heavy these days with reports of corporate crimes and other derelictions. Members of Congress in public and in private are more and more troubled with the unchecked power of corpo­rations to ravage the political, economic and envi­ronmental rights of citizens. Even some who call themselves conservatives are troubled by the growing gap…

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — “Imag­ine having to go to Washington to ob­tain reports about Canadian meat plants that our government holds se­cret from its own people.” This was the astonished reaction by a participant to remarks made at a spirited conference on freedom of information versus government secrecy, during the Canadian Bar Association’s annual convention. There…

AUSTIN, Texas — John L. Hill is angry at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). As attorney general of Texas, he has his lawyers looking into the mushrooming scandal of federally insured student loans (FISL) involving proprietary schools and banks. The more they investigate, the more they believe that HEW offi­cials bear a…

In the coming year, four major unions — the Auto Workers, Mineworkers, Machinists and Steelworkers — will have elections for new leader­ship. These elections, particularly the one by the steelworkers, may have far reaching effects on the way unions are run and the range of political and economic issues on which union power is exercised.…

Today’s job hazards are affecting tomorrow’s babies. Evidence is accumulating that chemicals, gases and other hazards in the workplace are producing birth defects, still­births, miscarriages and other reproductive damage. Some of this evidence was brought together recently in a report titled “Working For Your Life: A Woman’s Guide to Job Health Hazards” (available for $5…

Mitchell Atalla was a 25-year-old graduate stu­dent at the University of Florida in 1967 when he wrote to the U.S. Department of State for an application to the Foreign Service. To pin the Foreign Service was his lifelong dream. But when he received a detailed questionnaire from the department listing the physical require­ments, he dejectedly…

It was a routine, uneventful Senate Commerce Committee hearing last year on the successful confirmation of Richard L. Dunham (a Ford appointee and former associate of Nelson Rockefeller) as chairman of then Federal Power Commission. But there was nothing routine or uneventful about what Dunham and two of his fellow FPC commissioners did in late…

Gobbledygook is a growth indus­try. Verbal obscurity, gigantic, intertwined sentences, semantic blahs, bureaucratese and legal esoterica put people to work. There are people who produce Gobbledygook, people who interpret Gobbledygook and people hired to help other people adversely affected by insensitive Gobbledygook. It’s all part of the GNP. There are even people working to make…