In the Public Interest

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…

WASHINGTON–Lead free gasoline will be needed for catalyst‑equipped 1975 automobiles soon to reach the market. These latest pollution control devices are supposed to permit an average 10% better fuel economy than 1974 cars. Also, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that such lead free fuel will save motorists $45 per year in maintenance costs. All these…

WASHINGTON–Americans are now spending over $100 billion annually for a health care delivery system whose inequities, waste and quality deficiencies are so well documented that almost every conceivable political faction now supports some concept of “national health insurance.” The issue before Congress for the last four years is what kind of national health insurance? In…

WASHINGTON, D.C.–The crumbling ideology of big business is being hastened by the deeds and words of big business itself. For years, large corporations have built up big government as a bustling bazaar of accounts receivables, indirect tax subsidies and official insulations from market competition. Now a further dimension is being added to the construction of…