Unlike the Media Monopoly’s current presidential ticket [of Barack “Send More Troops To Afghanistan” Obama & John “The War Hawk” McCain in 2008], if he were allowed by the Big Media to be elected president, the independent anti-war and anti-corporate presidential candidate [of 2008], Ralph Nader, would finally begin to solve the basic problems confronting folks in the United States. As long ago as August, 1996, Nader proposed the following solutions to the U.S. energy crisis, environmental crisis, housing crisis, health care crisis, transit crisis, economic crisis, political crisis and moral crisis, for example, in an August 19, 1996 speech at the Green Party Convention:
“Look at the basic problems. Energy: solar energy, energy efficiency—those are the solutions…Housing; There are pilot housing projects showing the way to go, so we don’t have this disgraceful, inadequate, decrepit, decayed housing stock, not to mention the homeless…Health care: we have the solution to health care…Universal health care, the single-payer Canadian system…Modern public transit:…Look at the work done in Northwestern University…on the subject and ask yourself why don’t we have…modern public transit that’s fast, reliable, that’s very close to zero pollution…Agriculture: instead of highly chemical-intensive agriculture…organic agriculture…How about the unemployment problem?...The jobs aren’t there because…billions of dollars of pension funds are being used for mergers and acquisitions and empire building instead of productive activity…”
As long ago as in his August 19, 1996 speech, Nader indicated why anti-war and anti-corporate folks in the United States who bother going to the polls [in 2008] should consider casting an anti-war/anti-militarist/anti-imperialist/anti-corporate protest vote for Nader or for a third party presidential and/or local candidate:
“Next time someone says to you, `Why are you building a third party? Don’t you know that a progressive third party will take votes away from the Democratic Party. Why are you being a spoiler?’ Well, the easy answer is you can’t spoil a system spoiled to the core.
"And another answer is that we are sick and tired and weary of being told every four years we have to choose between the bad and the worse, because every four years they both get worse. Because we don’t look kindly on two parties who…sign into law an increased child poverty legislation, where they literally throw out the baby with the bathwater, so-called welfare reform: no child care, no job opportunities, restricted food stamps, 350,000 disabled children off public assistance, and on and on. What’s the difference between these two?...The corporations are pulling both parties to the right, reactionary wing of American politics.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/30/96)
Nader’s Air Safety Reform Program
In his 1994 book Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety, [2008] independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader stated the following:
“Reform is urgently needed to protect safety of the flying public…Throughout this book…we advocate these…reforms to improve aviation safety: 1. increasing the strength of minimum safety regulations; 2. releasing money from the Aviation Trust Fund to finance a growing Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] and safety-related expenditures; 3. structural reform of the FAA; 4. partial reregulation of the airlines; and 5. vigorous financial fitness enforcement by the Department of Transportation and antitrust enforcement by the Department of Justice.”
In this same book, Nader and co-author Wesley Smith also noted:
“Did you know that you and a friend can buy a ticket on the same flight for the same price and be seated in the same section of the plane, yet one of you might be safer than the other in an accident? Why? Because one of you might be seated in a stronger seat that is better able to withstand crash forces. And guess what? You won’t know which of you has the safer seat because the airlines won’t tell you.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/28/96)
Who Owned The Media Monopoly Historically?
Even before the Democratic Clinton Administration allowed Time Warner, Turner Communications, Disney, Capital Cities/ABC, CBS and Westinghouse to merge with each other [in the 1990s], these same conglomerates were historically owned by the same mutual fund companies and pension funds.
In 1995, for example, San Francisco money manager Melvin Tukman’s $2.3 billion portfolio at the Vanguard/Windsor II fund office contained enough media stock to make Tukman both the seventh-largest shareholder of Capital Cities/ABC and the fourth-largest shareholder in CBS.
Capital Research & Management Co., the first or second-largest shareholder of Time Warner in 1995, also owned four million shares of Capital Cities/ABC and nine million shares of Turner Communications. And State Street Research owned both 1.4 million shares of Time Warner and $50 million worth of Capital Cities/ABC.
Other owners of the Media Monopoly in 1995 included: 1. The Seagram Co. Ltd. (the first or second-largest shareholder of Time Warner); 2. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Capital Cities/ABC’s largest shareholder, with 13% of the shares); 3. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (the second-largest shareholder of Capital Cities/ABC, with 9.4 million shares); 4. Provident Investment Counsel (4.7 milliion shares of Capital Cities/ABC); 5. Bankers Trust (7.2 million shares of Time Warner); 6. Equitable (6.1 million shares of Time Warner); 7. Wells Fargo Institute (7.1 million shares of Time Warner); 8. Sun Trust Bank (7 million shares of Time Warner); 9. The California Public Employees Retirement System (316,000 shares of Turner); and 10. The College Retirement Equities Fund (516,000 shares of Turner). [Pensions & Investments 7/25/95].
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 11/13/96)
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