King’s Gamble by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
January 17, 2011

Bob King, the new president of the United Auto Workers, whose membership is down under 400,000 from a peak of 1.5 million in 1979 is rolling out an initiative to organize foreign auto plants in the U.S., expand the union’s reach overseas and forge alliances with social justice organizations.

Ordinarily, the response to these ambitions would be “With What?” Few unions have been beaten down as much as the UAW whose workers enduring the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009 and a debt-burdened Ford Motor company. During this period the UAW gave up billions of dollars in wages and benefits. Thousands of workers were laid off to save these companies.

Open Letter to President Obama: For justice and jobs by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Jan. 10, 2011

Dear President Obama:

The sentiments expressed in this letter may have more meaning more for you now that the results of the mid-term elections are clear. You have seen what can happen when a number of your supporters lose their enthusiasm and stay home or do not actively participate as volunteers.

Tweeting Away the Time by Ralph Nader + Smigly: Talk To Me

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Updated: Jan. 12, 2011 added a video.

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
January 3, 2011

The start of the New Year is a good time to talk about Time. About this, we can all agree—there are only twenty four hours in a day. Zillions of companies and persons want a piece of that time from us in order to make money. But that supply of Time is not expandable. Unlike other supplies in the marketplace, this one has no give beyond twenty four hours a day.

“The Left Has Nowhere to Go” by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
January 3, 2011

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.

Letter to Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo regarding A Stock Transfer Tax by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
December 30, 2010

Dear Governor-Elect Cuomo:

The conditions where many regular New Yorkers live are grim. Poverty, unemployment, home foreclosures, and small business bankruptcies keep growing.

On the other side of the tracks, the top twenty-five hedge fund managers recorded an average of $1 billion each, or over $80 million each a month in 2009. Quite a quick rebound on the backs of American taxpayers and privileged tax policies.

Wikimania and the First Amendment by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
December 20, 2010

Thomas Blanton, the esteemed director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University described Washington’s hyper-reaction to Wikileaks’ transmission of information to some major media in various countries as “Wikimania.”

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Blanton urged the Justice Department to cool it. Wikileaks and newspapers like The New Yorks Times and London’s Guardian, he said, are publishers protected by the First Amendment. The disclosures are the first small installment of a predicted much larger forthcoming trove of non-public information from both governments and global corporations.

Wikileaks, the Espionage Act, and the Constitution (Ralph Nader testifies)

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C-SPAN
3 hours, 14 minutes

Constitutional law and national security scholars testified on the constitutionality of prosecuting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. Among the topics addressed were the nature of journalism, the extent of constitutional protections of the press in protecting the divulgence of classified information, and the amount of information that is categorized as classified.

Letter to President Obama On Extending Bush Tax Cuts by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
December 7, 2010

Dear President Obama:

Increasingly credible press reports say that you are going to join with the Republican minority in the Congress and support the two year extension of the Bush tax cut for the Rich, along with the cuts for the $200,000 individual and $250,000 couples that the Democrats were favoring.

It has become a widely-noticed habit of yours to concede or to adopt both the Republican terms of policymaking and Republican policies and programs. Enclosed is a recent column where I wrote an imaginary private letter from former President George W. Bush to you, by way of providing examples of this recurrent practice.

The Republican Party: Institutional Insanity by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
December 6, 2010

If there was a mental health hospital for institutions the Republican Party and its top leaders would be admissible as clinically insane. Their bizarre wackopedia seems to contain no discernible boundaries. Repeatedly, these corporate supplicants oppose any measure, any regulation, any legislation that will directly help workers, consumers, the environment, small taxpayers and even investor-shareholders.

There are some exceptions. Since these Republican politicians eat, some did vote for the long-delayed food safety bill last week so that e-coli does not enter their intestines to disrupt the drivel drooling from their daily repertoire.

Missing the Mark on Deficits by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Nov. 29, 2010

The recent reports by the two deficit commissions–one appointed by President Obama (fiscalcommission.gov) and the other from the private Bipartisan Policy Center (bipartisanpolicy.org)–do not lack specifics. In fact, they are so specific that they obscure the need for a more explicit public philosophy that reveals both their value biases and their establishment thinking.

Nader and Associates Letter to President Obama on GM’s IPO by Ralph Nader (updated)

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Updated: Nov. 18, 2010

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
November 11, 2010

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

The U.S. government bailout of, and acquisition of a majority share in, General Motors was an exceptional action, taken in response to exceptional circumstances. The U.S. stake in GM obviously poses novel managerial challenges to the government. The appropriate response to those challenges, however, is not to run from the responsibility through passive ownership and premature sale at a loss to taxpayers.

Ralph Nader: Keynote on Energy and Policy

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Dandelion Salad

by ASPO-USA

Vimeo

Mr. Ralph Nader, Energy Reform Advocate for more information visit aspo.tv/

Democrats Squander the Swing Vote by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Nov. 5, 2010

The mid-term 2010 Congressional elections are over and the exaggerations are front and center. “A tidal wave,” “an earthquake,” “a tsunami,” cried the Republican victors and their media acolytes.

Wait a minute! No more than 7 percent of the actual voters switched sides to create a 14 point spread. This amounts to about 3 percent of all the eligible voters who produced this “tidal wave.” That is what happens in our winner-take-all system. So when it is said that “the people have spoken,” chalk it up to 7 percent or so switcheroos. The rest voted the way they did in the previous Presidential and Congressional election (and about 28 million voters stayed home.)

Ralph Nader: Corporate socialism controls American government

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http://rt.com

[...]

Nader believes that Theodore Dreiser put it very well many years ago, when he said that “the corporations are the government”.

“Knowing they [corporations] can’t be out front because people don’t like a lot of these big corporations, they are ripped off by the banks and credit card companies, they camouflage and their camouflage is that they give the Tea Parties certain deceptive information and focus on certain politicians, and therefore they continue their work behind the scenes. We have corporate socialism in this country where profits are kept and losses are socialized on the back of the taxpayer,” Nader said.

Road to Corporate Serfdom by Ralph Nader

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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Oct. 29, 2010

It was Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992 created the election slogan: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” For the 2010 Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: “It’s Corporate Crime and Control, Stupid.”

But notwithstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by U.S. corporations in favor of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists.