Origins
Consumer Alert was founded in 1977. It described itself as "a national, non-profit organization for people concerned about excessive growth of government regulation at the national and state levels. We are dedicated to informing the public about the consumer benefits of competitive enterprise and promoting the utilization of sound economic, scientific, and risk data in public policy decisions."
The National Consumer Coalition was formed by Consumer Alert on February 4, 1997; it conducted research and educational activities on a variety of issues, including housing, transportation, food, health and safety, the environment, utilities, tax policy, financial issues, and telecommunications. A major issue of the National Consumer Coalition in the late 1990s was opposition to a federal mandate that airbags be installed in automobiles sold in the United States. The NCC argued that manufacturers should be allowed to install switches in automobiles so consumers can turn the airbags off. After federal permission for such switches was given, the NCC sought to persuade automakers to install the switches.
The founding principles of the National Consumer Coalition were stated as follows:
"The members of the National Consumer Coalition (NCC) do hereby endorse the following principles for a society of free and responsible consumers:
- A market economy benefits consumers by expanding consumer choice and competition and fostering innovation, which lowers costs and improves consumer health and safety.
- Individual consumers have different values and varying needs in the marketplace and shop for goods and services based on those, such as quality level, price, service, and convenience.
- Informed consumers are better off making their own decisions in the marketplace and holding responsibility for those decisions.
- Consumers exert clout in the marketplace by their decisions to buy or not to buy and to choose where to spend their money.
- Government policies that restrict consumer choice and stifle competition harm consumers by substituting policymakers' values for individual values and raising the costs of goods and services to consumers."
In 2001, the National Consumer Coalition launched the website www.NCCprivacy.org, saying it would cover four issue areas: online privacy, medical privacy, financial privacy and government surveillance. In 2004, the National Consumer Coalition joined with the Free Congress Foundation to ask Congress not to eliminate "sunset" provisions calling for the expiry of regulations in the Patriot Act that Consumer Alert's James Plummer called "violations of consumer privacy." Consumer Alert and the National Consumer Coalition ceased operations in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Cooler Heads Coalition
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)