In the Public Interest

Why do southern senators vote so consistently against the interests of American consumers and for the objectives of corporate lobbyists? Certainly consumers in the south have the same grievances as consumers in the north or other sections of the country. Southern consumers often buy cars that are lemons, receive worthless merchandise, and suffer from price…

Corporate income tax payments, as a percentage of federal revenue receipts, have been withering away over the last three decades to a level that would shock millions of individual tax­payers who, quite predict­ably, are holding up an in­creasing share of the federal tax burden. In what must be among the least publicized figures in Washington,…

John Z. De Lorean, the former superstar executive at General Motors until he resigned last year, was in Washington a few days ago making some super good sense. In a Senate briefing, sponsored by Senator Vance Hartke (Dem., Ind.), De Lorean said it was ridiculous to consider sacrificing automotive engineering safety because of the auto…

The great energy gouge has replaced the contrived energy shortage of last winter just as predicted by a number of close observers of the oil industry. Now, however, the hordes of reporters who daily covered William Simon and his Federal Energy Office have gone back to other duties. Gouges are not as exciting to report…

Commercial and institutional consumers of paper products are increasingly outraged and despairing over the paper industry’s alleged shortages and its zooming price levels. William White, procurement officer for the Washington Board of Education, says prices have gone up an average of 100% for the school system’s paper in less than a year. School cafeteria paper…

Congressman Wayne Hays, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, has been watching the fast-rising price of paper used by the Government Printing Office. As millions of Americans who order government reports and pamphlets know, GPO’s prices have been going through the roof in the past two years. One reason is that the paper companies…

Neglected in the vast materials documenting the Nixonian corruption is the calculated White House criminality against the trust of millions of taxpay­ers who finance the federal government. More evidence of this con­duct is contained in a White House memorandum, dated March 17, 1972, and marked “Extremely Sensitive —Confidential,” from Nixon aide Fred Malek to H.…

WASHINGTON– Rising against the stench of political corruption and business bribery, the new governor of New Jersey, Brendan T. Byrne, and his advisors are trying to climb their Mt. Everest. They are trying to develop ways to make the state’s bureaucracies accountable and responsive to the public interest. “Government Under Glass” is the phrase used…

WASHINGTON–It is not Watergate that is on the minds of the big business lobbyists in Washington today. It is the consumer protection agency (CPA) bill now being slowly debated for the third time in the Senate since 1970. All over town the trade associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Grocery Manufacturers…

Back in December 1970, law professor John A. Spanogle sat down and wrote a letter to Hampton Rabon, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, about a very large subsidy which the Treasury was providing hundreds of banks. Spanogle, who was working with us at the time, wanted to know why the Treasury was leaving…