In the Public Interest

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…

If you haven’t yet heard of “UPEC,” you soon will. “UP EC” -­uranium producers export cartel —is the informal name which industry insiders give to the foreign countries controlling most of the uranium re­serves needed for nuclear power. Partly because these countries —France, Canada, South Africa and. Australia are among the leaders —are having informal…

Breaking up big business into smaller, more competitive companies is viewed as good for consumers by “trustbusters,” and many old-fash­ioned free enterprisers. Much more surprising is the historical evidence that splitting up giant corporations, under our anti-monopoly laws, has been very good for shareholders as well. One year after the breakup in 1911 of the…

You won’t find the energy corpora­tions beating a path to Prof. Otto J.M. Smith’s door, but he believes he has designed a way to harness the sun economically to generate elec­tricity. A hard-headed electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. Smith calls his mirror-tower plan “a practical solar­thermal-electrical power plant that can be built…

Here comes the “activated pa­tient” — the latest erosion of what some call “mediococentricity,” or the monopoly over health care by the physician. Although many doctors now recog­nize the value of having nurse practi­tioners and physicians’ assistants handle some routine medial proce­dures, only a few are heralding health education programs centering on the self-care idea.…

Soon the spring-summer mass advertising campaign for the Shell no-pest strip will be urging consum­ers to hang these silent insect hunt­ers in their homes. Don’t buy — unless, that is, you be­lieve a product which vaporizes a nerve poison 24 hours a day in your bedroom, living room or family room is a necessary ingredient…

A looming and ominous discovery affecting the major flame retardant in children’s sleepwear may be the impetus needed to get the House of Representatives moving behind the Senate-passed Toxic Substances Control Act. The flame retardant is called IRIS (2.3-Dibromopropyl) phosphate (TDBP) — or “TRIS” for short. This substance was freely chosen by the chemical companies,…

W.T. Slick Jr., senior vice-president of Exxon Company’s calling for higher profits, lower taxes, and less government involvement in the oil industry. In a recent speech before business economists, he declared, “Government policy needs to make a turn back to the kind of economics that helped build our country — a turn back to market…