In the Public Interest

He took his position as the founder and CEO of Interface, the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturing firm, and made environmental history that is extending into many sustainability commitments for the industrial managers he educated. The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest…

The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company’s tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard. Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives impose its havoc on the American people there, then on…

The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled “To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default.” It was truly, as the Times pointed out, “a political environment…

Legislating while under the influence of ideological inebriation is not yet a statutory offense. It is only a multi-directional menace to much of what anxious Americans hold dear for themselves and their children. The dominant Republicans in Congress – both the new and many of the longer-term incumbents – are in heat. It is as…

Five Supreme Court Justices–Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals. The artificial entity called “the corporation” has no mention in our Constitution whose preamble starts with “We the People,” not “We the…

The first nationally televised debate (C-SPAN) on the subject of mandatory voting, or voting duty, occurred in Washington D.C. on June 27, 2011 (watch it at: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/DebateonMa). Why did it take so long? Because discussing this topic has been a taboo in electoral, legislative and main media arenas. Taboos afflict all know cultures, anthropologists tell…

Why do many serious readers of newspapers go first to the Sports section? Maybe because they want to read about teams playing fun games by sports journalists and columnists, who have more freedom to use imaginative words and phrases than others in their craft. The trouble is that ever-more organized and commercialized sports are squeezing…

The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya. You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled…

The 45th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) next month should remind all who have used this wonderful citizen tool against government secrecy and cover-ups of FOIA’s towering champion Congressman John Moss (D-Calif.) As a legislator, John Moss was a wonder of integrity, diligence, strategic and populist follow-through. Although Moss was not a…

Dear President Obama: My name is E.coli 0104:H4. I am being detained in a German Laboratory in Bavaria, charged with being “a highly virulent strain of bacteria.” Together with many others like me, the police have accused us of causing about 20 deaths and nearly five hundred cases of kidney failure – so far. Massive…