Tidbits From Charles Peters, "Tilting At Windmills"

Charles Peters, Tilting at Windmills, founding editor of the Washington Monthly, has the following gems in one post (read the whole thing here):

Earlier this year, I collected a series of headlines from the Wall Street Journal that tell the story of the economy in miniature: “Corporate Profits Are Up Like Gangbusters”; “On [Wall] Street, Pay Vaults to Record Altitude”; “Downturn’s Ugly Trademark: Lasting Drop in Wages.”

And:

I am convinced that White House pressure for good news was the main reason for the Challenger disaster. NASA officials were so desperate for Ronald Reagan to be able to boast about the first teacher in space in his State of the Union message scheduled for the night of the launch that they rejected—and indeed sought to suppress—warnings from Thiokol engineers about the dangers of launching in freezing temperatures.

And:

Speaking of selling out, I invite your attention to a recent headline in the business section of the New York Times: “GOP Asks Businesses Which Rules to Rewrite.”

And:

If you had any doubt that the tobacco companies are not among the good guys, consider how Lorillard is resisting a government ban on the menthol additive in cigarettes that is so heavily marketed to blacks and adolescents. David Kesmodel of the Wall Street Journal reports that Lorillard, which makes Newport, is “buying up a host of menthol-bashing internet domain names including MentholKillsMinorities.com, MentholAddictsYouth.com and FDAMustBanMenthol.com.”

The significance of this action is that it deprives advocates of the ban from having easy-to-find-and-remember places on the Internet from which to make their voices heard.

And:

Here’s another reason why I recommend John Gravois’s article on the danger of understaffed agencies: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, again according to the Journal, is “trying to swallow a huge expansion in its workload, without an accompanying boost in its budget.” Why should you care? The CFTC is all that stands between you and dangerous derivatives, as well as the speculators that drive up everything from corn to coffee to oil.

That's from March/April. If you like that one, here's a link to the January/February 2011 issue of Tilting at Windmills.