In the Public Interest

A successful way to fight inflation is for the government to enforce the old anti-monopoly laws against price-fixing, concentrated corporate power in the marketplace and other anti-competitive practices. Consider the recent case of falling General Electric light bulb prices in New York City. On April 3, General Electric announced the dismantling of its 62-year-old system…

WASHINGTON–A successful way to fight inflation is for the government to enforce the old anti-monopoly laws against price-fixing, concentrated corporate power in the marketplace, and other anti-com­petitive practices. Consider the recent case of falling General Electric light bulb prices in New York City as an illustration. On April 3, General Electric announced the dismantling of…

WASHINGTON– Congressman Harley Staggers’ daughter is a young physician in West Virginia. She has treated patients suffering from contaminated drinking water. Yet she was not familiar with the safe drinking water bill which has been bogged down in her father’s House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee for several months due to lack of quorums, oil…

WASHINGTON–What would Alexander Graham Bell think of it all? The new Dallas-Fort Worth Airport charges 25 cents for a local pay phone call. Telephone companies are determined to make customers pay for information calls to the operator and to replace flat rates with metered message units that the customer cannot verify. What’s more, telephone companies…

WASHINGTON–In the current debate over public financing of electoral campaigns, the issue is not whether? but which? For many years there has been indirect public financing through patronage jobs for “pols” who, in the words of a recent New York Public Interest Research Group study, received “much dough for no-show.” Last year’s Agnew scandal involving…

WASHINGTON–What runs on $6,500 a year and makes the powerful Georgia Power Company squirm and fret? It’s the Georgia Power Project (GPP) – a citizens’ group composed of a young lawyer, an applied mathematician and an organizer together with twelve reliable volunteers knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of a utility’s financing and consumer gouging. The…

WASHINGTON– If you believe “you can’t fight city hall” look into the activities of two citizen groups who disagree. Citizens Action Program (CAP) needs no introduction in Chicago. At age four it’s a household phrase in the Windy City. Since 1970 this group of citizen organizations, supported with the tiny dollar contributions of several thousand…

WASHINGTON–Both the media and citizens have an important stake in a Senate bill that comes to grips with the no-fault government and the bureaucratic arrogance it breeds to perpetuate government secrecy in 67ashington. It is S.2543 which by tightening up the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966 and making that law more usable by…

Lynn Sutcliffe was troubled. The former Princeton football player and present counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, wondered who was going to represent users and passengers during the planning process to reorganize rail services in the midwest and northeast regions of the United States. Backed by subcommittee chairman Vance Hartke, Democrat from Indiana,…

WASHINGTON–To many members of the New York State Legislature, the image of the college student these days is not associated with the current streaking fad. Rather it is connected with an in vestigation of each legislator by students and their full time lawyers and other professional staff called the New York Public Interest Research Group…