In the Public Interest

WASHINGTON—It’s called “The Bank Book.” It is an exposure of banks by a bank insider using the pseudonym of Morgan Irving. This book is only one indication that the consumer movement is finally catching up with the banking industry. At about the same time later this fall another booklength critique on banking will be published…

WASHINGTON–“There’s gold in them thar hills” used to be the expectant cry of the 19th century prospector. Today the inquiring citizen-taxpayer could direct the same words towards state and local government which are losing billions of dollars every year in uncollected corporate tax revenues, lost procurement savings, and non-interest bearing government accounts. Here is a…

WASHINGTON–Once upon a time children’s food habits and taste were primarily shaped by their parents. Not any more. Television ads, especially on Saturday and Sunday mornings, have taken over and no one knows this better than the constantly nagged mothers and fathers. To get an idea of the massive television exposure directed toward children, you…

WASHINGTON–Many people who watched the recent three hour NBC television documentary on “the energy crisis” must have come away confused. Issues, charges and denials flew out at the viewer in a welter of point and counterpoint by industrialists and environmentalists. At the same time, a heavy smog hung over Washington and other cities along the…

President Nixon’s Cost of Living Council (CLC) conducted a one-day hearing last week as a prelude to rubber-stamping over $1 billion of unjustified price increases desired by the profit-glutted auto industry. The hearing was a charade. In came GM, Ford, Chrysler and AMC, as they did last year, implying that they would have to go…

WASHINGTON–During the heyday of Presidential defiance of Congress early this year, President Nixon had defended his impoundment of appropriated funds for health, educational and economic programs as inherent in the powers of the presidency. He said welcomed court tests of such White House refusals to spend funds which Congress creed should be spent by laws…

WASHINGTON–Can the legal system and lawyers be reformed from within or chiefly from without by an increasingly impatient and outraged public? Earlier this month, we held a conference in Washington entitled “Verdict on Lawyers” to discuss this and other questions relating to the popular criticism of lawyers these days. A few blocks away, the venerable…

WASHINGTON–There is probably no group of companies whose price gouging has been investigated more thoroughly by Congress than the drug industry. Starting with Senator Kefauver’s probe in the early sixties and continuing with Senator Nelson’s hearings over the past four years, the details of this most profitable industry have been laid bare publicly. Yet very…

There is probably no group of companies whose price gouging has been investigated more thoroughly by Congress than the drug industry. Starting with Senator Kefauver’s probe in the early sixties and continuing with Senator Nelson’s hearings over the past four years, the details of this most profitable industry have been laid bare publicly. Yet very…

July is the month when thousands of law school graduates anxiously take their bar examinations so they can become lawyers for millions of people throughout their careers. Preciously little scrutiny has been given to the bar examination in the fifty states by the legal profession, law professors, students and others interested in how lawyers are…