In the Public Interest

Seventy years ago, Judge Benja­min Cardozo rendered his now famous decision making Buick Motor Company liable for a defective wheel which fell off one MacPherson’s Buick and resulted in MacPherson’s injury. Since then the court-made law of “products liability” has evolved into a wide array of legal liabilities for manufacturers who design or con­struct defective…

If defrauders of consumers were relieved when the Pennsylvania State Senate rejected Herb Denen­berg’s nomination in 1975 by Gov. Shapp to be head of the Public Utility Commission, they need only turn on WCAU-TV in Philadelphia for the daily 6 p.m. news to get agitated all over again. For there on the screen appears their…

It started with a police corruption inquiry in Indianapolis and ended with the formal launching of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) group last month in the same city. Myrta Pulliam, reporter for the Indianapolis Star, wanted some ad­vice on how to go about probing a po­lice scandal. She called up a veteran of such…

When British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was telling his fans 30 years ago that satellites would someday connect all homes and neighborhoods around the world via telephone, radio and television communications, few believed it could come so soon. Well, the technology is almost ready to fulfill Clarke’s vision — if the giant corporate Luddites…

Of the millions of words written about celebrating the Bicentennial, very little space has been devoted to the valiant Americans who have been actively exercising their citizen rights and duties for better communi­ties. They are not national celeb­rities. They are only our domestic patriots using their constitutional rights to make democracy work. There is 73-year-old…

It is invisible until needed in a collision. It can save over 10,000 lives and nearly a million injuries a year. It has been proven as reliable, effec­tive and economic in about 300 mil­lion vehicle miles of travel. There is a 1973 General Motors film applaud­ing its life-saving excellence. Nonetheless, this system, called the air…

Well, General Motors, Volvo has done it to you again. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has announced that Volvo successfully certified four different versions of its fuel-injected vehicle scheduled for sale next year which far exceed the advanced federal statutory air pollu­tion standards. Moreover, Volvo, in achieving what GM executives continually said could not…

Big business money is pouring into California to defeat Proposition 1S —the initiative vote designed to make the atomic power industry prove the claimed safety of its emergency and waste disposal systems and drop the limited liability which shields its assets from injured people’s claims after a nuclear catastrophe. Prom such companies as General Motors,…

It has been the largest and longest rent strike in U.S. history. Since June 1975, about 12,000 families in the mas­sive Bronx apartment complex called Co-op City have been withholding their monthly payments from the management and giving them instead to their own strike steering commit­tee. There presently is some 526 million hidden somewhere by…

If Sen. Russell Long, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, ever has the time, he could write a fascinating tale of how he manipulates arid controls northern Democratic liberals on his commit­tee. But he can’t stop manipulating to find the time. Long, son of the Kingfish — the late Sen. Huey Long of Louisiana…