In the Public Interest

A New York City television repairman, named Joseph Linko, takes photographs of highway engineering hazards as a hobby. For five years, this public citizen has shown these pictures to members of Congress, highway officials, and safety groups hoping his campaign will result in safer guard rails and sign posts. His effort needs broad public support…

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate, Wilbur Mills, the Congressional powerhouse from Little Rock, is troubled over the gathering revolt against the iron grip of his House Ways and Means Committee. If there is to be tax reform, it must start with this “house within a house.” Ways and Means is Mills’ bastion. He presides over the…

In the past two years, letters from irate mobile home owners have been pouring into Washington. Their complaints cover almost every conceivable abuse: shoddy construction; plumbing, heating, electrical and insulation deficiencies; fire hazards; porous warranties, financing gyps. Many mobile home insurers also say that most loss claims in mobile homes are due to poor initial…

With all the flap about the Pay Board, too little attention has been given to the Price Commission. Headed by amiable C. Jackson Grayson, a former business school dean, the Commission is crucial to any attempt to cool the fires of inflation. Yet it is failing. Since Phase II began last November, all components of…

When Illinois Senator Charles H. Percy took to the floor of the Senate recently, he said some things the national and Illinois Chambers of Commerce would have rather not heard. A former big businessman himself, Percy hit them hard for their “unwarranted and impassioned attacks” on a pending bill to create a Consumer Protection Agency.…

Not a day too soon, the quality of our drinking water is finally seen as an urgent consumer issue.  Why the delay? For decades, the public has known of the burgeoning pollution of our lakes, rivers and streams from industrial, agricultural and municipal wastes. Recently, reports have detailed such dangerous contaminants as lead, mercury, pesticides,…

The anonymous ITT whistleblower who, mailed to columnist Jack Anderson the private two-page memorandum from Mrs. Dita Beard, ITT’s chief lobbyist, may yet be responsible for the most important reforms for handling antitrust cases in 35 years. For a week and a half, the Senate Judiciary Committee has held hearings into the role which acting…

What’s in a frankfurter? This question is being answered with disturbing detail for consumers who want to know what they are buying. Fraud, low nutritional value and health hazards abound, with varying degrees, in most of the 15 billion frankfurters sold annually. The hot dog is offering less nutrition and more fat and added water…

To most Americans, a company without a country would seem suspicious and puzzling. But not to many leading corporate executives who are finding that their multinational corporations’ American nationality is something of a drag. Last month, at the White House Conference on the Industrial World Ahead, Carl A. Gerstacker, chairman of Dow Chemical Company, revealed…

Several Presidential candi­dates, including Muskie, Lindsay, McGovern and McCloskey, are about to take positions on the issues of concentrated power, secrecy and monopolistic practices of giant cor­porations. Injecting the matter of monopolies and giantism into an election campaign is something of a revival. Although virtually ignored for three dec­ades, the issue draws on the historic…