Nader's 1974 Warning On National Health Insurance Revisited

In his July 1974 testimony before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Public Citizen Health Research Group spokesperson Ralph Nader stated the following:

“To take the worst features of what now passes for a health care system in the form of billions of dollars in annual retentions (profits and expenses) for private health insurance companies, billions wasted on unnecessary hospitalizations, inappropriate and useless drugs, and thousands of excess hospital beds—and then to add to this a so-called national health insurance plan which requires low-wage earners to pay far more of their income than the rich through payroll taxes, deductibles and coinsurance—is to perpetuate a fraud on the American public.

“There is no room in taxpayer funded national health insurance for private insurance companies. They have already proved they are far more concerned with their over $5 billion profits and retentions than with providing low-cost comprehensive preventive health care.

“You only have to look over the history of Metropolitan, Prudential, and other health and life insurance companies…to see how little attention is being paid to preventive health care…

“Congress should reject any plan designed to massively subsidize a private corporate insurance system whose primary objectives are increasing their wasteful ways and increasing profits.

“What is needed…is a federally administered publicly accountable financing mechanism with revenues derived from progressive taxing mechanisms.

“This is also an important point. The taxing system to fund these plans should not be regressive. It should be progressive in fact…”

(Downtown 10/13/93)

Nader's Open Letter To U.S. Commander-in-Chief-Elect Obama

On November 3, 2008, the 2008 independent anti-war and anti-corporate presidential candidate Ralph Nader apparently wrote the following open letter to U.S. Commander-in-Chief-Elect Barack Obama:

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart.

Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza.

Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza.

Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side.

Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque."None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

Nader Got 581,000 Votes In 1996

Of the minority (48 percent) of registered voters who bothered voting in the Media Monopoly-rigged 1996 U.S. presidential election, more apparently voted for Ralph Nader per campaign dollar spent in 1996 than voted for either the Democratic Party presidential candidate or the Republican Party presidential candidate. Although Nader’s campaign spent less than $5,000 in 1996, nearly 581,000 people voted for Nader—over 100 votes won for each campaign dollar spent. In California, for example, over 214,000 people voted for Nader in 1996, with 11 percent of all the voters in Mendocino-County, California casting their ballots for Nader in 1996.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 11/20/96, 11/27/96, 12/4/96)

Time Warner/CNN/Time Inc.’s Post-1952 Political Influence Historically

Time Inc.’s C.D. Jackson, along with Time-Life’s European correspondent, Emmet Hughes, was loaned by Time Inc. Founder Henry Luce to the successful 1952 Eisenhower presidential campaign staff. Time-Life’s former European correspondent then served as U.S. President Eisenhower’s speechwriter for two years before returning to Time Inc. as a Fortune magazine staff writer, until he subsequently became former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s political adviser. Luce had also contributed $13,000 [in 1950s money] to Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential election campaign.

During the 1952 Stevenson vs. Eisenhower presidential campaign, according to an article by Joseph Epstein in Commentary magazine’s November 1967 issue, titled “Henry Luce And His Time,” “the political bias of Time magazine “extended all the way down to photographs.” Epstein noted that media analyst Ben Bagdikian had pointed out that “in the 13 issues published during the campaign, Time printed 21 photographs of Eisenhower, all generally attractive, shaking hands, smiling that winning smile, looking altogether earnest and mellow and wise. But during the same period there appeared only 13 photographs of Stevenson…Four showed him in such infelicitous poses as eating, drinking and frowning.”

Although Time Inc. endorsed Richard Nixon during the 1960 Nixon vs. Kennedy presidential contest, Henry Luce was also a close friend of JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Luce had utilized his media empire during the 1950s to transform John F. Kennedy into a media-star and Democratic Party presidential nominee. According to Henry R. Luce And The Rise of The American News Media by James Baughman, in the 1930s “Joseph Kennedy began a family tradition of winning allies in the fourth estate,” Luce’s publications “had usually treated Joseph Kennedy and his family admiringly” and Henry Luce wrote the introduction to John F. Kennedy’s first book, Why England Slept. The Henry R. Luce And The Rise of The American News Media book also noted that on “the night John Kennedy delivered his acceptance speech before the Democratic convention, his father watched the event on Luce’s television set in New York” and at JFK’s inaugural ball Henry Luce and his wife, Claire Booth Luce, “sat in Joseph Kennedy’s box.”…

A former Time magazine staff writer, John Tirman, in an August 1981 Progressive magazine article, “Doing Time,” recalled how former Time magazine Editor-in-Chief Henry Grunwald pressured his Time Inc. editorial subordinates to turn an article on consumer rights advocate [and 2008 independent presidential candidate] Ralph Nader into a journalistic hatchet job:

“Earlier in the week, I had been assigned a story on what had become of Ralph Nader…The senior editor of the Business Section, George Church, had left the story largely intact, and we were waiting word from the `top’ editors, the final judgment for all Time articles.

“At about 9 o’clock, Associate Editor Jim Grant came to my cubicle to tell me the Nader story was in trouble: The `34th floor’ wanted the story changed. Even to a Time neophyte the message was clear: The company brass presiding over Time Incorporated from the 34th floor, corporate editor Henry Grunwald had spoken.

“`What does Grunwald want?’ I asked Grant.

“`A hatchet job,’ he said.

“I hurried to Church’s office…Church paused, swallowed a mouthful of Dewar’s White Label, and sighed. `Henry Grunwald,’ he said, `just hates Ralph Nader.’ And that was that. Church went to work on the copy, shifting sentences, honing the ridicule. And the sharpened ax of Time did fall on Nader…”

(Downtown 1/29/92)

Nader's Solutions vs. Media Monopoly's Obama-McCain Ticket

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)

Nader Reduced Auto Deaths By Over 50,000

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader has been serving people in the U.S. for many years. As Money Talks: Corporate PACs And Political Influence by Dan Clawson, Alan Neustadt and Denise Scott recalled in 1992:

“In the early ‘60s auto safety was presented as depending entirely on safe drivers. Ralph Nader raised the heretical idea that perhaps cars were also a cause of accidents—and had the data to prove it…

“Did Ralph Nader’s campaign totally transform U.S. society and the power of business? No. Did it have any real effect on people’s lives? Absolutely. In 1965, for every 100 million miles driven, 5.3 people died in automobile accidents. If that rate had still applied in 1988, an additional 50,000 people would have died in auto accidents.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 7/10/96)

Nader In 1974: `Review Corporate Tax Privileges Annually’

As long ago as 1974, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader was fighting to cut government corporate welfare grants to transnational corporations. As Power Inc. by Morton Mintz and Jerry Cohen observed:

“…Commenting in late 1974 on the failure of tax bonanzas for the wealthy and private corporations to produce benefits for society as a whole, Nader said:

“`Given this unrequited subsidy, which directly burdens the small taxpayers why is there not an annual evaluation by the congress or the treasury of such special corporate tax privileges? The small taxpayers should be informed about what they are not receiving in return for their subsidizing of these companies through the tax system…Corporate executives are once again telling the White House that they need even more `tax incentives,’ as they call them, or `welfare payments’ as they should be described…’

“Nader…has touched on something that the newspapers, magazines, and radio and television networks seldom make truly clear to the broad public: tax `subsidies,’ `incentives,’ and tax breaks for corporations are giveaways and handouts on a lavish scale…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 7/31/96)

Prez Candidate Nader vs. Union Carbide Historically

For many years, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader fought against the abuse of power by transnational corporations like Union Carbide. As the 1980 edition of Everybody’s Business: An Almanac recalled:

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s Union Carbide was virtually Environmental Enemy No. 1. Environmentalists called their Alloy, West Virginia, iron-alloy plant `the smokiest factory in the world.’…When Carbide threatened to lay off 625 workers in Ohio to offset the cost of pollution control, Ralph Nader called it `environmental blackmail.’”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 7/24/96)

Nader Warned Of `Downward Trend’ In Air Safety

In the 1994 book which he co-authored with Wesley Smith, Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety, [2008] independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader observed:

“Despite the official denials of the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] and the airline industry…aviation safety is threatened on many fronts…Collectively, they pose a clear and present danger to existing safety levels. These issues include:

“…Pressure from the airline industry to increase capacity, which has caused the FAA to approve compromises in safety procedures…The aging of our domestic aircraft fleet…The growth of commuter airlines that fly smaller planes with less safety equipment…The need to…upgrade the crash survivability of…transport jets…Problems with…management…that adversely affect safety…The need to improve ground control technology to prevent accidents…while planes are on the ground…The underfunding of the FAA that has…rendered it unable to…perform its legal mandate.”

Nader also asserted that “consumers are going to have to exert their power as citizens and customers to reverse the downward trend in safety levels” and proposed “the creation of a broad-based consumer organization dedicated solely to advocating for airline safety,” the Coalition of Airline Passengers.

As long ago as 1973, Nader “asked federal district court in Washington to prohibit the FAA’s use of X-ray security checks at airports” because the FAA had failed to consider the environmental impact of such an operation, had failed to set minimum standards for X-ray machines, and had failed to allow an adequate period for public comment,” according to Consumer Protection 1976.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/21/96)

Nader Launched Non-Smokers' Rights Movement

Big Tobacco corporation executives have apparently contributed $30,000 to help fund the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama--who, until recently, was apparently a chain-smoker. And the 2008 Obama presidential campaign has spent over $190 million of the campaign contributions it has received from the U.S. corporate rich on purchasing campaign ad space from the U.S. corporate media conglomerates--to try to persuade non-smoking U.S. voters that the inexperienced Obama is more qualified than Nader to move into the White House oval office on January 21, 2009.

But 2008 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is also the person who launched the Non-Smokers’ Rights Movement. As Ashes To Ashes by Richard Kluger recalled in 1996:

“Ralph Nader launched what would become the non-smokers’ rights movement at the end of 1969 by petitioning the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ban the use of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes on all passenger flights, arguing that the smoke annoyed non-smokers, distracted the flight crew, and posed a danger to health and a fire hazard for all aboard…

“…The Civil Aeronautics Board…in September 1972 responded positively to a Nader petition to require separate passenger sections…

“A few weeks after his initial petition to the FAA, Nader called on the Interstate Commission to establish non-smoking rules for buses.”

Nader Called For `Semi-Regulation’ Of Airlines

Ralph Nader has also long believed that the interests and safety of airline passengers can be protected only if the airlines are `semi-regulated.’ As Rapid Descent: Deregulation and The Shakeout in The Airliines by Barbara Sturken Peterson and James Glab noted:

“A multitude of…critics…claim that only a new era of federal regulation could save…the flying public from further deterioration in airline service.

“…Ralph Nader in late 1993 outlined a detailed plan for what he termed semi-regulation of the airlines. In his book Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety, Nader advocated limited price regulation, using state regulation of the insurance industry as a model, to prevent price gouging and predatory pricing.”

The same book also recalled:

“Ralph Nader…the patron saint of aggrieved passengers…went after the airlines when he was bumped from an Allegheny Airlines flight on April 18, 1972…Nader’s lawsuit laid the groundwork for the eventual regulation of the airlines’ overbooking practices. But Nader saw this as just one piece of a broader pattern of industry abuses…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/14/96)

As long ago as 1972, Ralph Nader was offered the vice-presidential nomination by the Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern. As Nader And The Power Of Everyman by Hays Gorey noted:

“When George McGovern of South Dakota did win the Democratic nomination and then had to force his original choice for running mate off the ticket he…suggested Nader run with him. But Nader said no…because he believes that `the more successful you become in politics the less effective you are, because you have to compromise yourself, you have to serve the interests that have helped make you successful...’”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 6/12/96)

Nader's Anti-Nuke Movement Connection

Five years before the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 1996 [and 2008] presidential candidate Ralph Nader helped launch the movement which resists the use of nuclear power in the United States. As The Anti-Nuclear Movement by Jerome Price observed:

“…Ralph Nader organized the first anti-nuclear conference, Critical Mass ’74, in Washington D.C…The prime mover for environmental opposition to nuclear power was Ralph Nader…Nader sponsored the convention of nuclear power critics…to coordinate antinuclear activities throughout the nation…Nader called for increasing citizen intervention and joint activities among divergent groups, including those fighting utility rate structures…

“Nader’s organization established the Critical Mass newsletter, representing the Citizen Movement to Stop Nuclear Power…Powerful coalitions of financial and industrial interests, manipulation of the press, and biased government activity were exposed…”

As long ago as 1978, Nader argued that U.S. politics could be characterized in the following way:

“Liberal versus conservative is no longer the real dividing line in politics; the actual distinction is between the `corporatists,’ those who support and expand the power of corporations, and `consumerists,’ those who are working to expand the power of the people. The abuse of power by large corporations is the number one issue in our society…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 5/22/96)

Historically, the media images of major party presidential candidates [like the Big Media’s 2008 presidential ticket of Obama-McCain] have apparently been fabricated. As Myth of Democracy by Ferdinand Lundberg observed:

“It has come about that the entire `image’ of the President that is presented to the public is a gross fabrication by a team of election specialists. These specialists include speech writers (for few candidates write their own speeches), authors, elocutionists, strategists who know what words will affect different voting groups, make-up men, tailors, hairdressers, stage designers from Hollywood, lighting experts and many more arcane experts.

“The task of all these people, composing the election team, is to develop a fictitious character to take part in the election charade. The election campaign is a charade because it has nothing to do with the way the government will be run…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 5/15/96)

Yet long before he became a 1996 [and 2008] presidential candidate, Ralph Nader provided financial support to an organization that lobbied for women’s rights. In 1972, Nader’s Public Citizen group helped set up the “Center for Women’s Policy Studies” to “advocate women’s rights in employment, education and other areas” with “a $10,000 grant” [in 1970s money], according to Ralph Nader: A Man And A Movement by Jay Acton and Alan LeMond. The same book also noted that, although Nader helped set up and fund the Center for Women’s Policy Studies, this feminist center operated “independently of Nader.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 6/5/96)

Nader's Legislative Record In 1960s

In the 1960s, 1996 [and 2008] presidential candidate Ralph Nader was able to push through Congress more legislation in the public interest than Bill Clinton [or John McCain or Barack Obama] has been able to push through Congress. As Nader: The People’s Lawyer by Robert Buckhorn recalled in 1972:

“…If Nader contributes little in the way of consumption of goods himself, he has almost single-handedly done more for the consumer…than any clutch of presidents, politicians, or corporation chiefs. Since 1965, he has been responsible…for the passage of…the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (1966), Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act (1968), Wholesale Meat Act (1967), Radiation Control Act (1968), Wholesale Poultry Products Act (1967), Coal Mine Health and Safety Act (1969), and the Occupational Health and Safety Act (1970).

“…It was Nader who prodded the Food and Drug Administration to force the railroads to stop what Nader termed `their repulsive corporate practice’ of dumping two hundred million pounds of human excrement along railroad tracks every year. It was Nader who gave public exposure to the threats of poisoning from mercury in fish, cadmium in water, and asbestos in ventilation systems.

“It was Nader who charged that non-tobacco elements like glass fibers and rock wool were finding their way into cigars and cigarillos…And it was Nader who warned that the Volkswagen bus was `so unsafe’ it should be permanently barred from the road.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 5/1/96)

Before becoming well-known as a consumer advocate, Nader lived in New Jersey as a Princeton University undergraduate. According to Nader: The People’s Lawyer by Robert Buckhorn:

“…At Princeton, in the era before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Nader was alarmed over the use of pesticides. When he found that DDT was killing the campus bird population, he was outraged. But his fellow students couldn’t get all that upset over a few dead birds, and Nader found the editor of the campus newspaper wouldn’t even print his letters of protest…

“It was at Princeton that Nader developed his penchant for staying up half the night, something he still does regularly…Nader spends his nights preparing congressional testimony or plowing through trade magazines, letters, and technical reports…His major was Oriental studies and he mastered Chinese, Russian, and Spanish…On summer vacations, he visited Indian reservations in New Mexico, Arizona, and California to collect information for a…paper on the exploitation of the Indian.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 5/15/96)

Nader In 1972: `Punish Corporate Crime!'

One of the Independent Majority’s presidential candidates in 1996 [and in 2008], Ralph Nader, has been urging the federal government to punish U.S. corporate criminals and reduce U.S. corporate power for many years. In the 1972 book Nader: The People’s Lawyer by Robert Buckhorn, for example, Nader observed:

“I don’t know of any horde of hippies or yippies who have managed to smog New York City or contaminate the Gulf of Mexico. But I know companies that have done that. Consolidated Edison smogged New York. Chevron Oil dumped hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico with impunity until the law finally came down on it, then only with a $1 million fine—the equivalent of about one hour’s gross revenues of Chevron’s parent company, Standard Oil…

“…Corporate crime should be punished, but it isn’t, because we have not been conditioned to think in terms of curbing corporate power or punishing it for excesses. There is a corporate crime wave in this country of unprecedented proportions, but if you look at the FBI crime statistics, what do you see? Have you ever seen a company on the `Ten Most Wanted’ list? Do you ever see statistics as to how much corporations stole from consumers?

“My job is to try to bring these issues out in the open where they cannot be ignored. The only real defeat is giving up, just as the only real aging is the erosion of one’s ideals.”

The same book also noted:

“The New Party, formed in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago to provide an alternative for those who were no longer willing to compromise their views or vote for the `lesser of evils’ candidates, was the first political entity to reach out for Nader…The party consisted…of…young political activists. Its platform included plans endorsing everything from the Gay Liberation movement to a call for `a 30-hour week at 40-hour pay,’ and abolition of the CIA…

“As the average voter-in-the-street about Nader as presidential candidate, and you get a puzzled look followed by an expression that seems to say, `Why not?’…”

In 1975, Nader And The Power Of Everyman by Hays Gorey recalled:

“At the height of the Watergate scandals, Nicholas Von Hoffman had written in the Washington Post that `there is one man in public life who is clean enough, who has stature enough to restore respect for politics and public office, and that’s Ralph Nader, our national ombudsman…’ His distance from both major parties was a distinct asset, Von Hoffman had written, `in a period when parties are generally regarded as packs of marauding thieves and housebreakers.’

“Besides, `who knows more about how the federal government works on every level? Who could attract more talent to government? Who would more quickly shed the monarchical trappings the Presidency has acquired over the years?’”

One reason the New York Times/Boston Globe/Boston Metro media conglomerate was not eager to report on Ralph Nader’s 1996 [and 2008] presidential campaign is that, as early as 1972, Nader suggested that a consumer-oriented study of the New York Times media conglomerate should be made. In Nader: The People’s Lawyer by Robert Buckhorn, Nader made the following recommendation:

“There should be a study of The New York Times. Why the Times covers what it does? What are the priorities? Why doesn’t it have more investigative reporters? Why is it so poor on coverage of the way big banks manipulate the economy? What about the likes and dislikes of its editors? How high up are the decisions on editorials made? The Times is a world of its own and a study would be worth doing…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 4/10/96)

Nader & McKinney's Independent Vote In Battleground States

The U.S. Establishment's Big Media and the Democratic Party's Obama campaign undemocratically excluded 2008 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney from the 2008 televised presidential debates. One reason was because both the Big Media gatekeepers and the Obama campaign's media consultant realized that Nader and McKinney, if allowed to debate Barack Obama on U.S. television, would likely obtain the votes of many independent antiwar U.S. voters in closely-contested "battleground states."

In 2000, for example, over 117,000 voters in Ohio, over 103,000 voters in Pennsylvania, over 90,000 voters in Colorado, over 29,000 voters in Iowa, over 84,000 voters in Michigan, over 126,000 voters in Minnesota, over 38,000 voters in Missouri, over 22,000 voters in New Hampshire, over 21,000 voters in New Mexico, over 59,000 voters in Virginia, over 10,000 voters in West Virginia, over 94,000 voters in Wisconsin and over 97,000 voters in Florida voted for Ralph Nader--even though Nader was also excluded from the 2000 televised presidential debates.

In 1992, when an independent presidential candidate named Ross Perot was allowed to participate in the 1992 televised presidential debates, Perot ended up receiving:

over 1 million votes in Ohio;
over 900,000 votes in Pennsylvania;
over 360,000 votes in Colorado;
over 253,000 votes in Iowa;
over 824,000 votes in Michigan;
over 562,000 votes in Minnesota;
over 518,000 votes in Missouri;
over 121,000 votes in New Hampshire;
over 91,000 votes in New Mexico;
over 348,000 votes in Virginia;
over 108,000 votes in West Virginia;
over 544,000 votes in Wisconsin; and
over 1 million votes in Florida.

Nader In 1994: `Establish Audience Network!'

In an essay that appeared in State Of The Union 1994 [2008 Independent U.S. Presidential Candidate] Ralph Nader proposed that the U.S. mass media system be reformed in the following way:

"To give the audience access to the airwaves that it already owns, the [Democratic] Clinton administration should support the establishment of a new broadcast vehicle, the Audience Network. This national, nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization would be granted one hour of prime-time television and one hour of drive-time radio on every commercial channel each day. It would function as a separate licensee, airing diverse programming shaped by the membership. It would be open to all citizens over age sixteen for a nominal fee, such as $10 annually, and be democratically controlled. Finally, Audience Network would represent consumer interests before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Congress and the courts. This would redress the longstanding disenfranchisement that millions of viewers and listeners have suffered under the current regulatory regime.

"Audience Network and its professional staff would be managed by persons accountable to the membership through a direct elective process...Major abuses that are not publicized for years by the commercial media would receive more prompt attention free of the constraints of corporate advertisers.

"Over time, Audience Neetwork would gradually transform a powerless, voiceless audience, which has been conditioned to accept a debased regime of programming, into an active audience with the ability to initiate new, innovative, and consequential programming..."

(Downtown 1/24/96)

LaFollette's Third-Party Platform Similar to Nader-McKinney Platforms

Nearly 17 percent of all people who were allowed to vote in 1924 supported Robert LaFollette's third-party presidential candidacy, which (similar to the platforms of 2008 alternative presidential candidates like Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney) favored "reduction of federal taxes...particularly by curtailment of the 800 million dollars now annually expended for the army and navy in preparation for future wars" and "such amendments to the Federal Constitution as may be necessary...to extend the initiative and referendum to the federal government, and to insure a popular referendum for or against war except in cases of actual invasion." According to LaFollette's Progressive Party of 1924, an alternative third party was needed by U.S. anti-war and anti-corporate progressive folks in the United States for the following reasons:

"The necessity for an independent Progressive movement lies in the failure of the two old parties to purge themselves of the influences which have caused their administrations repeatedly to betray the American people.

"...Both party organizations have fallen under the domination and control of corrupt wealth, devoting the powers of government exclusively to selfish special interests...

"To break the combined power of the private monopoly system over the political and economic life of the American people is the one paramount issue of the 1924 campaign...

"From 1912 until the present time no honest or continuous effort has been made by a single administration, either Republican or Democratic, to protect the American people from the exactions of private monopoly by enforcement of the criminal sections of the antitrust laws...

"Popular government cannot long endure in this country without an aggressively progressive party..."

(Downtown 10/18/95)