Word: ftc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...company accused the commission of exhibiting "absence of fundamental fairness." Kentucky Senator Wendell Ford said that the agency had offended every businessman in his state. He noted that Louisville's Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., in answer to a subpoena, spent three years and $800,000 to ship the FTC 14,000 pounds of documents. Chicago-area Businessman Joseph Sugarman, the owner of a mail-order firm selling home computers and burglar alarms, took out half-page ads this month in papers around the country to cry: "The FTC is harassing small businesses, but I'm not going...
Commission Chairman Michael Pertschuk, who was appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1977, has become the lightning rod of criticism against the FTC. An ebullient, Yale-trained lawyer with a crusader's rapid-fire zeal, Pertschuk has further raised the ire of both congressional leaders and business. Senator Ford accuses him of turning the agency from law enforcement to social planning. Last year a federal judge banned Pertschuk from all involvement in the children's television case, concluding that he had become too biased against the cereal companies. Other critics charged that Pertschuk was an intemperate, excessive regulator...
Congress, though, is determined to yank some of the FTC's teeth. The House Commerce Committee voted to give Congress a veto power over all commission regulations. This would be the first time that any federal regulator had been so controlled. By a lopsided 223 to 147 vote, the House two weeks ago recommended canceling commission plans to force undertakers to disclose their prices fully and in advance. Representative Bill Frenzel of Minnesota suggested that every FTC staff member and all five commissioners "should spend 20 years at hard labor filling in their own asinine forms." The Senate Commerce...
...reformers really mean to punish the FTC and severely limit its powers." In an attempt to stop such congressional action, top Carter Aide Stuart Eizenstat sent an urgent plea to Senator Ford, arguing that the Senate was about to "undermine the capacity of Government agencies to meet real public needs...
Some of the FTC's recent actions, such as permitting lawyers to advertise despite the American Bar Association's restrictions and forbidding companies like Levi Strauss or Florsheim from setting minimum retail prices on their products, have benefited consumers. But the agency's excesses endanger its important consumer protection work. Says Republican David A. Clanton, one of the five FTC commissioners: "The trouble with the pendulum swinging the other way is that you knock out all the good stuff as well as chastising us where we need to be chastised." But when the final votes are taken...