Word: public-interest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...know the public-interest argument: the networks use the public airwaves, multi-billion dollar assets that they don't pay a cent for, so they owe the public a certain amount of public-affairs programming, even if it costs them. It's a valid point. But the ideal solution would be not to give the networks that access for free, but rather make them pay, and let the people decide how to spend that money in their own interest...
...sponsor, Russell Feingold, had to accept amendments that have caused a near mutiny among reform supporters in the House. Liberal members of Congress object to a provision doubling the maximum amount of regulated "hard-money" contributions a donor can make to a candidate from $1,000 to $2,000. Public-interest groups such as Common Cause threatened to bolt over another provision that allows state parties to keep collecting soft money, arguing it creates a loophole for unregulated donations. Organized labor, a key Democratic constituency, opposes a ban on TV ads that unions and other interest groups run during campaigns...
McCain and Feingold have been barnstorming the states of Senators whose votes are in doubt. Last Friday, while Bush was in Lafayette, La., pressuring Breaux and Landrieu to support his tax cut, McCain and Feingold were in New Orleans pressuring them to support campaign-finance reform. Public-interest groups, hoping to hold the Louisianans and others to past promises, are dredging up newsclips in which the lawmakers are quoted as saying they will vote for McCain's bill. To switch now "would truly be the height of hypocrisy," says Matt Keller, Common Cause's deputy legislative director. But even...
...only fair to ask why, if Gore were so vastly superior a candidate, the sniveling public-interest groups didn't do a better job of getting their constituents off the davenport to go vote for him. Election calculus is fuzzy math, to borrow a phrase, but it is possible, as Nader suggests, that fear of his threat to Gore actually got more people out to vote for the Vice President than otherwise would have. And Nader volunteer James Williamson, 49, of Cambridge, Mass., says he is offended by the suggestion that his vote for Nader should have been traded...
...handful of environmentally oriented members of the Congress, says the entire plan went through with virtually no debate, and the decision to pave BR-163 was made without debate, public review or public hearings. The rushed-approval process backfired, however, since the failure to produce an environmental-impact assessment has given opponents an opportunity to stall the project while they regroup. Public-interest lawyers and conservation groups have adopted a strategy of challenging the government to provide assurances on the impact of each aspect of the road, such as its potential effect on various waterways...