Special interest groups

Special interest groups

Cry Wolf Quotes

[The right-to-know law is] a sop to a small group of people that I would call ‘overreactors’ I know it’s going to cost a business a helluva lot of money.

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Thacher Longstreth president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and former Republican city councilman.

Enforcement of Federal standards through Federal inspectors would result in the most intimate involvement of the Secretary of Labor in all operations affecting interstate commerce….easily result[ing] in blowing up the most minor grievances to very substantial proportions. A minor complaint can very well become a ‘federal case’. Provision of this kind of authority in the Federal government would tempt many an employee representative to boost his stock by calling on the federal government, since the very presence of a federal inspector could be used to demonstrate his importance and influence.

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Leo Teplow, vice-president and lead lobbyist for American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), testimony, Senate Subcommittee hearings on Labor and Public Welfare.

This is going to be a lawyer’s paradise.

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Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), New York Times.

The class-action bill would open a happy hunting preserve to ambitious lawyers with a quick eye for the plump bird. They are not likely to be much concerned with fraud in the ghetto: No money there. But has a major manufacturer gotten a little too exuberant in his advertising? Has he promised a ‘benefit’ that may not be fully deliverable? Well, then, let us find 10 customers ready to say they’ve been damaged, and let us sue in the name of 10,000 more.

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James Kilpatrick, Chamber of Commerce Newsletter. August, 1970.