Hightower Lowdown

Let's hear it for the Clinton Administration!

For once, they're actually taking a stand against corporate abuse of workers, consumers, and our environment.

The Clintonites are proposing regulations that would prohibit chronic corporate law- breakers from getting government contracts. You don't hear it on the news, but corporations routinely violate our nation's laws—including negligently causing the deaths of workers, defrauding consumers, recklessly polluting our air and water, and otherwise committing crimes that would put you and me in jail. Yet corporations have been allowed to walk, simply paying meaningless fines and then collecting billions more dollars in government contracts.

If these recidivist scofflaws of the business world can't get any of the $200 billion a year the feds spend on contracts, not only might they shape up, but the thousands of honest businesses in our country would get the advantage they deserve.

The regulation is no done deal since the corporate criminals and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are raising hell about it—and the Clinton bunch has a reputation for spinelessness. But at least they've put the issue on the table.