NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/10319

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Subject: _Public Citizen's_ 90/91 Annual Report: PRESIDENT'S REPORT
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_Public Citizen's_ 90/91 Annual Report: PRESIDENT'S REPORT

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                 P R E S I D E N T ' S   R E P O R T
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Public Citizen celebrates its 20th anniversary stronger and more
feisty than ever before. Last year, I reported an exciting
development: from 1988 to 1989, Public Citizen's nation-wide
membership swelled by 50 percent to 60,000. In 1990, it happened
again: our member- ship rose by more than 50 percent to nearly 100,000
people and still counting

Our burgeoning growth is a real sign that the times they are
a-changin'. The spell that Ronald Reagan cast over the country during
the 1980s is slowly dissolving, and America is awakening once again to
long-festering problems of social injustice, abuse of corporate power,
and corruption in government.

Citizens and taxpayers find themselves stuck with the bill for a
decade and more of runaway laissez-faire policies from the $500
billion cost of the savings and loan industry bailout to the $100
billion needed clean up Pentagon nuclear facilities -- not to mention
perennial budget deficits of $200 billion each year. And they're
getting angry.

Part of that anger, at least, began to focus in 1990 on the need for
campaign finance reform. Two years' worth of unrelieved scandal in
Congress disgusted voters who resent that their elected officials
represent not them but the wealthy special interests who pay for
election campaigns.  Public Citizen launched an aggressive,
congressional district by district campaign in 1990 under the slogan:
"We the People for Public Funding." Citing the cost of the S&L
scandal, we called for the replacement of tainted lobbyists' money
with clean public funds for all House and Senate races.  The battle
for campaign reform caused an uproar in Congress.  Reform bills passed
both houses, but the legislation died at adjournment; it will be an
explosive item on Congress' agenda in 1991. Public Citizen will be in
the thick of the battle.

The Reagan years left the United States with another legacy: the
deterioration of the system of government regulations that protect
consumers in the home, in the marketplace, in the work-place, and in
the environment. Amid evidence that the Bush Administration is not
doing much to halt that slide, Public Citizen fought in 1990 to defend
some hard-won gains and to make some advances in preserving public
health and safety. To cite a few examples, Public Citizen Litigation
Group lawyers argued cases Concerning the safety of silicone gel
breast implants, the regulation of cadmium in the workplace, and safety
at nuclear power plants.

Public Citizen's Congress Watch staff campaigned on a broad front in
1990 to preserve and strengthen white-collar crime laws, to secure
strong food-safety laws on fish inspection, pesticides, and nutrition
labeling, and to defend the consumer's right to seek damages for harm
caused by unsafe products.

Two important publications highlighted the work of Public Citizen's
Health Research Group in 1990. First, an 1100-page reference hook
called _6,892 Questionable Doctors_ compiled for the first time the
names of doctors disciplined by state medical licensing boards and
federal agencies, giving consumers an important clue about the person
who provides their medical care.  The second was a new edition of Carc
_Care of the Seriously Mentally Ill_, a state-by-state evaluation of
programs for treating people with mental illness.  Shamefully, our
nation has made little advances since the era of the scandalous "snake
pits" in dealing with two million Americans with schizophrenia or
manic-depressive psychosis.

Public Citizen found itself at the center of another controversy in
1990, over a 11.5. Nuclear Regulatory Commission policy decision
allowing as much as 60 percent of the country's nuclear waste (by
volume) to be disposed of in landfills, dumps, and sewers. We helped
to organize a nationwide grassroot effort to oppose the deregulation
of this so-called "low-level" waste, which could result in thousands
of cases of cancer each year. Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy
Project also continued its work in the areas of nuclear plant safety,
nuclear power economics, and the need for energy conservation and
renewable energy sources.

All of this was chronicled in the pages of Public Citizen magazine,
which this year featured important stories about the nation's crisis
in providing affordable health care, the design flaws in CJ model
Jeeps, and the small hut growing involvement of minorities in the
environmental movement.

We at Public Citizen look forward to a year-long celebration of our
20th anniversary, and invite you to share with us as we review two
decades of accomplishments. Yet so much more remains to be done. We
have a long way to go as a nation before we can be satisfied that
justice and fairness prevail. But we are confident that the help of
thousands upon thousands of "public citizens" will make 1991 a very
good year indeed.