Word: public-interest
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...Mayes-Jones success story is no manna from heaven. It is the fruit of a long, gritty battle to reform the Los Angeles department of child services. Only five years ago, the county was fighting a lawsuit by public-interest groups over a bureaucracy so lax that many abused children were not even visited once a month, the state's legal minimum. "Kids were dying because they were not adequately supervised," says Carole Shauffer, director of the San Francisco-based Youth Law Center. "Foster parents had to make do with 'drive-by visits': they would bring the kids...
...budget-balancing plan goes into effect as passed by Congress, charities and their clients face a potent double whammy: a drop in direct government support for charitable organizations just as demand for their help surges because of simultaneous cuts in federal entitlement programs. Bob Smucker, chief lobbyist for the public-interest umbrella group Independent Sector, says grimly, "It is the worst of times. And it is the worst of times...
Nader also called for more organized student involvement in public-interest issues...
Taking another route, Donald Driscoll, a public-interest lawyer, has filed several lawsuits in California against major drug chains--including Payless, Long's and Walgreens--charging that the packaging and inserts for homeopathic preparations constitute false advertising. "We don't want companies to claim these remedies are effective unless they have evidence for it," says Driscoll." So far, that evidence is missing...
Though the information superhighway may eventually dispense with many of the public-interest obligations that marked the age of broadcasting, our responsibility to protect and educate our children will never be among them. Even skeptics who believe the public interest is beyond definition know it lies in the hearts and minds of children. If as a nation we cannot figure out what the public interest means with respect to those who are too young to vote, who are barely literate, who are financially, emotionally and even physically dependent on adults, then we will never figure out what it means anywhere...