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)

Third Parties & The Big Media Historically

The Corporate Male's Big Media has a history of attempting to rig U.S. presidential elections by denying news coverage to anti-establishment independent or third party presidential candidates like Nader [and McKinney]. As The Other Candidates: Third Parties In Presidential Elections by Frank Smallwood concluded in 1983:

"The final major complaint of the third-party candidate involved the issue of the exposure--or more accurately, the lack of exposure--in the national media...Most were unable to obtain any significant coverage from the large television networks or national newspapers. According to the Rosenstone study, `in 1980 Reagan and Carter received about 10 times more coverage in leading newspapers and weekly magazines than did all the eleven third party...candidates combined. This disparity existed in network television news coverage as well.'...

"A review of the ballot access, the campaign finance, and the media issue reveals that the third-party...candidates face...institutional and procedural obstacles. During recent years these obstacles have increased in severity with...the erosion of equal-time access to broadcast media.

"Despite the homage that is paid in American politics to the concepts of free enterprise and free competition, the two major parties are intent on doing everything possible to kill off their third-party rivals..."

(Downtown 3/20/96)

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)

Obama Campaign's Pritzker/Superior Bank Scandal Link?

Penny Pritzker is the National Finance Chair of 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. Yet the Obama campaign’s national finance chair served as chairman of the Superior Bank from 1989 to 1994--before the savings and loan institution collapsed in July 2001, due to the Pritzker bank’s involvement in financially reckless subprime mortgage lending.

Created at the end of 1988 as the successor bank to the failed Lyons Savings Bank, the Oakbrook Terrace/Hinsdale, Illinois-based Superior Bank was 50 percent owned by Chicago’s billionaire Pritzker family. Yet, according to an Oct. 16, 2001 statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs by Ely & Company Inc. President Bert Ely, the Pritzker family’s Superior Bank “started life with enormous tax benefits and a substantial amount of FSLIC-guaranteed assets under a FSLIC Assistance agreement.” In a Dec. 2002 article (“Tremors In The Empire”) that appeared in Chicago Magazine, Shane Tritsch noted, for instance, that for investing $42.5 million in the failed Lyons Savings Bank before it was reopened as Superior Bank, the Pritzkers and their business partner received an estimated $645 million in federal tax credits and loan guarantees; but “by one estimate, it would have cost the government $200 million less simply to shut Lyons down.”

Yet according to Ely’s Oct. 16, 2001 statement, “Superior’s trick, or business plan” under Penny Prtizker’s chairmanship was apparently “to concentrate on subprimelending, principally on home mortgages, but for a while in subprime auto lending, too,” after the Pritzkers’ bank acquired its wholesale mortgage organization division, Alliance Funding, in December 1992.

With a business loss estimate of between $350 million and $1 billion, the 2001 failure of the Pritzkers’ Superior Bank represented the largest U.S.-insured deposition institution to fall between 1992 and 2001. But according to a Feb. 7, 2002 report of FDIC Inspector General Gaston Gianni Jr., “the failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to the Bank’s Board of Directors and executives ignoring sound risk management principles.”

Coincidentally, the Obama presidential campaign’s National Finance Chair was a member of the Superior Bank’s board of directors which apparently ignored sound risk management principles. As the Aug. 7, 2001 issue of the New York Times observed:“The Pritzkers controlled half the board seats. Penny Pritzker…was on the board, and Glen Miller, a top financial officer in the Pritzker organization, was chairman of the audit committee…Penny Pritzker…was designated…to watch over the Superior investment.”

Business Week magazine also noted in a Sept. 10, 2001 article (‘The Pritzkers’ Empire Trembles”) that “as of July [2001],” Penny Pritzker “was still a director of the thrift’s holding company, Coast-to-Coast Financial Corp….”

The Superior Bank board of directors on which the Obama presidential campaign National Finance Chair sat “paid dividends and other financial benefits without regard to the deteriorating financial and operating condition of Superior,” according to FDIC Inspector General Gianni’s Feb. 7, 2002 report. As Ely & Company Inc. President’s Ely’s Oct. 16, 2001 statement observed:

“Superior paid $188 million in dividends in the 1989-1999 period, which gave Superior’s stockholders an 18.1 percent pretax cash return on their initial investment of $42.5 million in Superior.”

Before Superior Bank’s 2001 collapse, stockholders like the Pritzker family members also “may have reaped additional profits from the substantial tax benefits the Federal Government gifted to them” when they acquired the failed Lyons Savings Bank in 1988 and created the successor Superior Bank, according to Ely’s Oct. 16, 2001 statement. Between 1992 and 1998, for instance, Superior Bank claimed a Federal tax credit of $10.6 million and only began to pay a meaningful amount of Federal income tax in 1999.

To avoid being punished for the failure of Superior Bank, the Pritzker family agreed to pay the FDIC $460 million. Yet even with this settlement, the failure of the Superior Bank due its board’s apparent mismanagement will cost the federal thrift insurance agency (and U.S. taxpayers) about $440 million.

The 1,400 Superior Bank depositors whose savings deposits in excess of $100,000 were uninsured, however, brought a federal civil racketeering suit against Penny Pritzker and other former Superior Bank officials. Not surprisingly, Business Week magazine reported in September 2001 that “the collapsing Superior Bank, a $2.3 billion thrift that” Penny “Pritzker chaired from 1989 to 1994” was “ putting the family business savvy under the klieg lights in Washington and beyond.”

Less than two years after the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held a hearing on “The Failure of Superior Bank,” former Superior Bank Chairman of the Board Penny Pritzker, coincidentally, began to financially back Obama’s 2004 campaign to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois. As David Mendell recalled in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise To Power:

“Obama was confident that he was destined for more than a day job running a foundation or practicing law or languishing in the minority party in the Illinois senate…He invited a group of African-American professionals to the house of Marty Nesbitt, who had served as finance chairman of his congressional campaign. Nesbitt is…vice-president of the Pritzker Realty Group, part of the Pritzker family empire…Nesbitt arranged a weekend gathering to help Obama reach inside the deepest pockets he knew—those of the Pritzker family…

“…Nesbitt knew that if Obama could sell himself to Penny Pritzker, her support would not only reap huge immediate financial dividends but also be a crucial step in the foundation of a fund-raising network.

“So in late summer 2002, Obama, Michelle [Robinson-Obama] and their two daughters drove to Penny Pritzker’s weekend cottage along the lakefront in Michigan about forty-five minutes from Chicago…”

Given the past involvement on the board of a failed savings bank that engaged in financially reckless subprime lending of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign’s National Finance Chair, it’s not surprising that an article in The Nation (2/11/08) by Max Fraser, titled “Subprime Obama,” reported that in the early part of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign “only Obama has not called for a moratorium and interest-rate freeze;” and that Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute said that “There’s been less emphasis from the Obama campaign on the really dysfunctional role of the financial industy in the subprime mess.”

And, coincidentally, Obama recently supported the use of billions of dollars more of U.S. taxpayer money to bail out the billionaire bankers (like the Obama presidential campaign's national finance chair) who helped create the current U.S. economic crisis by engaging in financially reckless predatory subprime mortgage lending and the securitization of subprime mortgages during the 1990s and early 21st century.

Incidentally, former Superior Bank Chairman Penny Pritzker contributed $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee [DNC] in 2000.