Comment

...In January, the NAP released poll results that concluded most Americans would be offended or embarrassed if such ads were beamed their way...

...The other set of books was to show what the actual reading was...

...Two Sets of Nuclear Books Dwight D. Eisenhower, that great, good man, the last of our Presidents to serve two full terms and leave office beloved by his fellow citizens, knew exactly what to do when Americans began to worry out loud about the hazards of nuclear fallout...

...It seems wholly irrational...

...Another of the Council's luminaries is Frederick Stare, who built the Nutrition Department at Harvard's School of Public Health, brought it to prominence by rustling huge grants from the likes of Borden, General Foods, and Kellogg, and is known today for his tireless crusades in behalf of white sugar...

...The makers of Trojan Condoms believe there is a time for children...

...In the Reagan Administration's view, such huge corporations are guilty of no crime but bigness, and bigness is no crime...

...It is one of the pilot advertisements now gathering dust as contraceptive makers await the time for televised birth control ads...

...The AT&T case was seven years in the making and the IBM case took almost twice that long and involved the taking of 2,500 depositions and the compilation of sixty-six million pages of documents...

...But the movement never advanced to the point where it was ready to reject militarism, espouse independent politics, or recognize the need for economic planning...

...Would condoms be huckstered for their decorator colors and contraceptive creams for their designer labels...

...The lies told in the 1950s—when there was, perhaps, a chance that we might strangle the nuclear monster in its cradle—are still being exposed more than a quarter of a century later...

...Their judgment will probably be affirmed at the March meeting of the Television Code Board, and that should settle the question for now...

...Litigation has been half-hearted, incredibly complex, and fraught with delays...

...Very frequently, pro-consumer and pro-industry are synonymous...

...But then, they always have...

...And now it is 1982, and Ronald Reagan sits in the White House, and because many of us are smarter than we were in 1965 and 1966 and 1967, he finds it prudent even now—before his war has really begun—to call in small-town editors and broadcast news managers and say to them, "There are things that in this job . . . there is information that you have . . . probably you're the only person, plus a few immediately around you, who have that information...

...Baxter's assessment of the antitrust record was, in fact, not too wide of the mark...

...Yet the need for significant restraints on corporate power is greater than ever...

...Givebacks— the yielding of benefits won by labor over the years—were widespread in 1981...

...The 10 per cent cut in wages and benefits negotiated by Ford and the union will reduce the cost of a car by about $ 190—hardly enough to send eager buyers swarming into the showrooms...

...The Government-industry push for give-backs is a sign that the progressive forces in the labor movement must regroup and adopt a new strategy...

...He would give the news executives his best sincere look, the one he saved for grave matters of state, and say, "If you only knew what I know...

...That is simply not the case: What we are suffering is not the temporary maladjustment described in fatuous Presidential pronouncements but a chronic disorder—the inevitable consequence of an unplanned, uncoordinated system based on militarism and greed...

...The tired old men who lead the AFL-CIO obviously lack the vision and the guts to mount the kind of effort that is needed...

...When ACSH was born, the report says, Whelan boasted that she would take no money from food, drug, or chemical companies...

...All the while, they insist in tones as sweet and frothy as soda pop that they are The Real Thing: ACSH includes "the whole legitimate spectrum" of public opinion, Whelan says...

...In return, Ford offered vague and unenforceable assurances that it would close no more plants for the next two years, cut down on the work it farms out to foreign and non-union shops, and guarantee half-pay to laid-off workers who have at least fifteen years' seniority...

...Who's to say that their counterparts don't exist today and aren't ready to rise to the challenge...

...But beyond the current tinkering and patchwork, there is urgent reason to examine ways of taming corporations that exert such powerful influence in our daily lives...

...now, with givebacks agreed to by the two largest and strongest unions, the UAW and the Teamsters, labor is locked into a losing game...

...As the President likes to say, "There you go again...

...It is a question of information and who controls it—and of how we can open up the airwaves to people who don't have anything to sell, but who do have something to say...

...According to The Wall Street Journal, the pay of UAW members accounts for only about 23 per cent of the retail price of an $11,000 automobile...

...tehistinj: Too little, Toolote When the Justice Department dropped its massive antitrust suit against International Business Machines and got a consent decree out of American Telephone and Telegraph, Assistant Attorney General William F. Baxter made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the kind of litigation from which the Government was trying to disengage...

...Van R. Brandon, a retired postal worker, finally revealed a grim secret he has been carrying with him since 1956...

...If labor had not been content to be the limp tail on the Democratic Party donkey, an independent labor or socialist party would now be in position to offer real alternatives...

...That was in 1965 and 1966 and 1967, and there were still some who believed him...

...Organized labor in the United States remained stuck in the porkchop stage of unionism—and now the porkchops are gone...

...In the Great Depression, it was young, militant trade unionists who forged the instruments to meet the crisis of their time...

...A couple running in the sand...

...In the background, a voice invokes Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season...

...The worst aspect of the labor givebacks is that by accepting them, the unions buy into the corporate claim that "high wages" are a prime cause of today's disarray in the auto industry, trucking, and other sectors of the U.S...

...Then, later, when the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, everyone got to know what Lyndon Johnson had known— what it was that had made the war in Vietnam worth the squandering of so many lives and so much treasure: He had known nothing...

...The stakes climb, the battle for market shares comes to resemble all-star wrestling, and consumers are blitzed with an embarrassment of New, Improved products that are, in fact, unnecessary and even harmful...

...In that year, as an Army medic, he had served in a unit that recorded the radiation levels to which many thousands of soldiers were exposed in bomb tests in Nevada and the Pacific...

...Corpsman Brandon and his buddies were under orders to keep two sets of books: "One set was to show that no one received an exposure above the approved dosimeter reading...

...BigMac Is Ming You "The assignment of foods to the evil categories of junk is very arbitrary...

...There is widespread and justifiable concern over possible declines in local telephone service, and potentially astronomic rate increases...

...Maybe there is no such thing as junk food, but there is such a thing as junk facts, and now that we know the truth about ACSH, we don't have to swallow them any more...

...The enfeebled unions are paying the price for decades of acquiescence in that system...

...if the auto workers won a wage increase (as they did whenever their contract came up for renewal), virtually every organized worker in the United States was sure to benefit...

...I recommend the permanent retirement of the term 'junk food.' " Ever since its formation in 1978, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has been spouting such statements...

...And the Teamsters, though not pace-setters, were never far behind...

...lengthening of the interval between raises from six months to one year...

...Now, however unwittingly and unwillingly, both unions have become partners of the Reagan Administration and big business in the most elaborately orchestrated assault on workers' living standards in our history...

...Ofcltat fiij fats A deserted beach...

...Yes, birth control information needs to be broadcast...

...Though the Reagan Administration has been given the blame (or credit) for abandoning the IBM and AT&T antitrust suits, it is arguable that these cases were doomed from the outset—doomed by the cumbersome nature of the antitrust process and by growing recognition that antitrust law is an inadequate mechanism for dealing with corporate abuse...

...The consumer has many voices and we happen to be a different one...

...Virtually every other product once thought too shameful to mention on the air—from tampons to enemas to jock-itch cures—is now routinely huckstered on television...

...In the UAW rank and file, the Ford agreement eased fears of further plant closings and layoffs—but the sense of relief is probably unwarranted...

...While the history of enforcement can hardly be characterized as "populist," it has certainly been marked by much posturing...

...Suddenly, other manufacturers rushed in with their gimmicks—perfumes, plastics, synthetic fibers—some of which actually threatened women's health...

...To shut the likes of them up, says Virginia Knauer, a special assistant to President Reagan and former consumer adviser to President Nixon, "could have a chilling effect on consumer cooperative efforts with, business and other groups...

...In February, for example...

...If you have been wondering why such nonsense should come from a self-styled consumer group, you'll find the answer in a new report on ACSH put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group in the traditional sense...

...It sounds weird, but it was really filmed...

...If I could just show you these classified reports that I have here on my desk...

...Brandon kept silent for more than twenty-five years because he was warned when he left the Army that if he talked about his experiences, "I could be charged with treason under the National Security Act...

...For thirty-five years, the UAW has been the pace-setter for other unions...

...That is a great challenge— but no greater than the one that confronted a demoralized labor movement in the 1930s...

...Ford will also replenish the depleted Supplemental Unemployment Benefit fund, so that payments can be resumed to laid-off workers who have been cut off...

...Political change works for the defendants, too: As one Government antitrust lawyer commented, "When you go through so many Assistant Attorneys General, you're bound to get one who disagrees with what you've done...

...Two of his seven children were born mentally retarded, two have developed arthritis, and one of his two grandchildren required a blood change at birth...

...That's what happened when the ban on tampon ads was lifted in 1972...

...Under the deal negotiated at Ford by UAW President Douglas Fraser, the 105,000 hourly workers still on the job—54,000 have been laid off indefinitely and 11,000 temporarily—will forego wage increases for thirty-one months, cost-of-living adjustments for nine months, and twenty-six personal holidays for three years...

...But people also have the right to know who is subsidizing its free speech and whether the subsidies come with a quid pro quo...

...The forty-odd Teamsters' union officials who are paid $100,000 a year or more may have welcomed the settlement, but for the rank and file it was a long step backward...

...But he could still try to snow the folks out in the boonies...

...For almost half a century, that spirit helped provide the political underpinnings for steady improvements in living standards and for at least a measure of social security...

...But if any charges of treason (or, more appropriately, murder) are to be leveled, it should be against those who loosed the nuclear poisons, those who lied about the consequences, and those who lie about the consequences still...

...The Army says the secret medical unit with which he served "never existed...

...rules changes to eliminate some jobs, and sharply reduced wages for new drivers—an inducement to management to lay off higher-paid veterans...

...COMMENT Bedtime for Bonzo As the Vietnam war closed in on him, as the protesters chanted in the streets, as the polls turned against him and the columnists and commentators lost their enthusiasm, as even the GIs began coming back with atrocity stories, Lyndon Johnson took to inviting in the small-town editors and broadcast news directors...

...He had given up on the metropolitan dailies and the networks...

...The Teamsters' agreement, negotiated by the Brotherhood's new president, Roy Williams, follows the same track: no wage increase unless there is an economic upturn...

...Whelan and Stare have done their own radio show and are busy turning out books and articles...

...Planned Parenthood is probably right...

...In an economic system that permits a few giant corporations to exercise extraordinary power over jobs, investments, and even research, no court is likely to impose significant restraints...

...The question of contraceptive advertising cannot be answered with a simple yes or no...

...Keep 'em confused," he said, and the nuclear establishment of his time embarked eagerly on the regimen of obfuscation, secrecy, and deception that continues to be followed by the nuclear establishment of our time...

...In such laborious legal proceedings, delays inevitably work to the advantage of the corporate defendants...

...Would the same sort of thing happen if contraceptives were permitted on the tube...

...Had they conceived their own program—and their own political instruments for carrying it out—the labor movement would not be helpless now...

...And a time to every purpose under heaven...

...their views have been respectfully cited by such influential newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Atlanta Journal...

...We can't argue with that...

...diversion of scheduled cost-of-living increases to pay for certain fringe benefits...

...The report, angrily titled Voodoo Science, Twisted Consumerism, starts out by describing the executive director of ACSH, epidemiologist Elizabeth Murphy Whelan, as one "who likes to be photographed holding a can of artifically sweetened soda or spreading sugar- and fat-rich icing-out-of-a-can on her young daughter's birthday cake...

...IBM's chief counsel acknowledged that in the thirteen years of litigation against his firm, he "knew of no example where the suit affected a business decision...

...they weren't buying any more...

...They talk about ads for contraceptives causing promiscuity, and then they run those Brooke Shields ads," says Eve Paul, a vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation...

...Until then, Tampax, with its unassuming cotton-and-wood-pulp product, all but ran the show...

...Broad, "structural" antitrust cases like those against IBM and AT&T, Baxter said, were just instances of "populist posturing...

...The challenge is to find the legal instruments that will supplant the old and discredited antitrust statutes with a new and effective form of public control, so that technology will serve the needs of all of us, not just the profit drive of a few huge corporations...

...It RIP Next time an organizer for the United Auto Workers (UAW)—or any other labor organizer, for that matter—tries to unionize a plant, the workers are likely to pose a tough question: "How much of a wage cut will you get us if we join the union...

...While it is pointless to yearn for a return to the "free market" in such fields as telecommunications and computers (which are rapidly consolidating into a single industry), it is essential to find a means of bringing these powerful interests to public accountability...

...It would, instead, be promoting a planned economy and a realistic welfare program and a transfer of Federal spending from the military to activities that meet human needs...

...Brandon believes these problems are linked to his presence at the atomic tests, but his claims for compensation—like those of other veterans exposed to radiation—have been denied...

...All these grants have bought ACSH a lot of public exposure...

...For it's a safe bet that working in the nuclear enterprise right now are the Van Brandons of the future, who will step forward some day—if we live that long—to tell us about today's crimes and deceptions...

...But then again, we have seen the way advertisers behave when their wares hit the screen...

...That strategy may well require the creation of a new, independent, labor-oriented political party in the United States...

...Here are some others: "We don't think a chemical should be banned at the drop of a rat...

...You won't be seeing it soon, though...

...The recent agreements between the UAW and the Ford Motor Company and between the Teamsters and the trucking industry can only be described as humiliating...

...Brandon now suffers from a spinal ailment...

...That gorgeous cheeseburger contains ingredients from all the Basic Four Food Groups, but if you eat it in a fast food restaurant, some people will regard it as junk...

...But count us in with all those NAB interviewees who flinched at the prospect of receiving family planning advice from Madison Avenue—not because it would be embarrassing, but because advertisers would surely do their best to make us feel hopelessly insecure about sex, and then offer salvation in a box of Trojans...

...Technological advances—especially in such rapidly developing fields as telecommunications and computer technology—swiftly render evidence obsolete...

...Together with a sixty-two-member advisory board packed with consultants to the food, drug, and chemical industries, Whelan and Stare have twisted the term "consumer advocate" into a pretzel, exonerating the controversial herbicide 2,4,5-T, blaming tooth decay on the kind of sugar found in dried fruit while opposing removal of sugary "fun food" from school cafeterias, recommending that air pollution standards be relaxed, pooh-poohing the hazards of saccharin and caffeine...

...Of course ACSH has the right to say and publish anything it pleases, even to call itself a consumer group...

...At the moment, Congress and the courts are grappling with some of the issues raised by the AT&T settlement...

...But in 1980, she decided with no media fanfare, "the hell with it—just take money [from] anywhere," as she says...

...Of ACSH's 111 current donors, all but twenty-seven have a real or potential interest in food, drugs, air pollution standards, or chemicals...

...Contraceptives remain the exception, though family planning groups point out that the-ads might make a dent in America's runaway teen-age pregnancy rate...

...Absolutely nothing...

...economy...

...If this looks about as much like consumer advocacy as a Pringle chip looks like a potato, Voodoo Science offers an explanation...

...Instead, the abject surrenders recently underwritten by the UAW and the Teamsters signal the last gasp of the militant CIO spirit of the 1930s...

...The real figures, closely guarded and suppressed to this day, were far above permissible levels of radiation exposure...

...They have been waiting since 1932, when the National Association of Broadcasters imposed a ban on "personal products" spots, and now they're likely to wait a while longer...