Ralph Nader ran for president four times, but most people only remember when he ran against Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. As the Green Party nominee Nader got nearly 3 million votes, 97,421 of them in Florida — a pivotal state where, after a contentious recount and a Supreme Court decision, Bush beat Gore by 537 votes. Democrats excoriated Nader, calling him a spoiler. He lost many friends. Even Public Citizen, the advocacy group he founded in 1971, distanced itself from him. Nader has no regrets about running and has remained steadfast in his belief that democracy requires multiparty elections: it is not good enough to have people cast votes for the candidate they find less distasteful than the other one. (...)
It’s estimated that at least 3.5 million lives were saved between 1966 and 2014 because of Nader’s campaign against dangerous automobiles, and many more lives were saved or improved by his other investigations. He and the idealistic people who worked with him, called “Nader’s Raiders,” helped provide us with clean air and water; less-toxic foods; nutritional labels; cigarette warning labels; protective X-ray aprons; workplace-safety laws; toys that don’t choke kids; and medical devices that don’t electrocute patients. Nader is the country’s safety inspector, keeping an eye on the leaking roof, the cracked pipes, the seep of sewage into our daily lives.
A tall, solitary man with no wife or children (and apparently no car, cellphone, or romantic partners), Nader has founded more than fifty public-interest groups and watchdog agencies. Now eighty-five, he still resembles the somber, youthful David who battled Detroit’s mighty Goliath with a slingshot made of hard facts.
Barsamian: What’s your take on what’s going on in the country?
Nader: There’s a relentless increase in corporate control of our elections, of government, and of democratic institutions. I would say this is the high point of corporate control in a mature corporate state. The media are concentrated in a few hands. We have an uncontrollable military-industrial complex. Corporations are controlling people’s money through credit cards, debit cards, and online payment systems. Corporations have so much control in Washington, D.C., and state capitals that they can turn the government against its own people. And now they’re getting their favorites appointed to the courts.
Corporations strategically plan our lives. They plan the food we eat: junk food and junk drink, leading to huge obesity rates among children. They market directly to children, circumventing parental authority. They’re certainly trying to strategically plan our elections, our government policies, and our public budgets to produce more F-35s and nuclear weapons and fewer public works and public facilities. They don’t have to have a conspiracy to do this. If they had a conspiracy, it would mean there was some resistance that they had to conspire against.
Corporations are strategically planning a lot of our military and foreign policy. They’re strategically planning our education system. They’re commercializing education. They want all children to be computer-literate but not civics-literate.
And election campaigns are commercialized. That’s why even some of the best candidates rarely use phrases like “corporate welfare,” “corporate crime,” “corporate domination,” or “corporate control,” even though back in 2000 Business Week polled the American people and found that more than 70 percent of them thought corporations had too much control over people’s lives. People know who’s running the show, but they haven’t organized to take advantage of the huge asset called the Constitution, which starts with “We the people,” not “We the corporation” or “We the Congress.” We have all kinds of support on both the Left and the Right for Medicare for All, living wages, and cracking down on corporate crime. This idea of red state versus blue state doesn’t quite hold up when you go down to where people live, work, and raise their children. They want clean air; they want clean water; they want adequate health care; they want good public schools and public transportation.
Every major advance for justice in our country took no more than 1 percent of adults — around 2.5 million people — with public opinion behind them, mobilizing to change government policy. If you’ve got 2.5 million people, you can recover our country, recover our government, recover our hopes and dreams. Is that too much to ask, 1 percent?
Barsamian: The novelist Ursula K. Le Guin once said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
Nader: This isn’t really capitalism as we used to know it. My father and mother had a restaurant. That’s capitalism. What’s taken over now is big corporate capitalism. Corporations tie up small businesses in franchise agreements. The little guys are disadvantaged because the big guys get more tax breaks. Corporate capitalism is literally destroying traditional, small-scale capitalism. (...)
Barsamian: Do you think those corporations you were describing earlier feel good about Trump’s global economic policies and tariffs?
Nader: They’re nervous. So far he’s done things they like. He’s cut corporate taxes. He’s cut taxes for the rich. So they like that. Deregulation — they like that, too, even though most regulations are so out of date they have hardly any bite to them. They love the huge expansion of the military budget. Trump gave the Pentagon $80 billion it wasn’t even asking for, which delighted Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.
So they like him so far. But he is unpredictable, and they don’t like unpredictable politicians. They don’t want to get into a war that will mess up the stock market and the banking system. They’re worried about his instability, and they’re worried about the warmongers around Trump, like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (...)
Barsamian: Would you favor term limits for Supreme Court justices?
Nader: Yes, I favor twelve years and out. That’s enough. In fact, the appointment system has resulted in such corporatist judges that the court has repeatedly voted 5-4 to entrench the corporate state. The justices think corporations are people and have privileges and immunities real people don’t. I don’t think that would be the case if Supreme Court justices were elected.
Ask a tough question, will you?
It’s estimated that at least 3.5 million lives were saved between 1966 and 2014 because of Nader’s campaign against dangerous automobiles, and many more lives were saved or improved by his other investigations. He and the idealistic people who worked with him, called “Nader’s Raiders,” helped provide us with clean air and water; less-toxic foods; nutritional labels; cigarette warning labels; protective X-ray aprons; workplace-safety laws; toys that don’t choke kids; and medical devices that don’t electrocute patients. Nader is the country’s safety inspector, keeping an eye on the leaking roof, the cracked pipes, the seep of sewage into our daily lives.
A tall, solitary man with no wife or children (and apparently no car, cellphone, or romantic partners), Nader has founded more than fifty public-interest groups and watchdog agencies. Now eighty-five, he still resembles the somber, youthful David who battled Detroit’s mighty Goliath with a slingshot made of hard facts.
Barsamian: What’s your take on what’s going on in the country?
Nader: There’s a relentless increase in corporate control of our elections, of government, and of democratic institutions. I would say this is the high point of corporate control in a mature corporate state. The media are concentrated in a few hands. We have an uncontrollable military-industrial complex. Corporations are controlling people’s money through credit cards, debit cards, and online payment systems. Corporations have so much control in Washington, D.C., and state capitals that they can turn the government against its own people. And now they’re getting their favorites appointed to the courts.Corporations strategically plan our lives. They plan the food we eat: junk food and junk drink, leading to huge obesity rates among children. They market directly to children, circumventing parental authority. They’re certainly trying to strategically plan our elections, our government policies, and our public budgets to produce more F-35s and nuclear weapons and fewer public works and public facilities. They don’t have to have a conspiracy to do this. If they had a conspiracy, it would mean there was some resistance that they had to conspire against.
Corporations are strategically planning a lot of our military and foreign policy. They’re strategically planning our education system. They’re commercializing education. They want all children to be computer-literate but not civics-literate.
And election campaigns are commercialized. That’s why even some of the best candidates rarely use phrases like “corporate welfare,” “corporate crime,” “corporate domination,” or “corporate control,” even though back in 2000 Business Week polled the American people and found that more than 70 percent of them thought corporations had too much control over people’s lives. People know who’s running the show, but they haven’t organized to take advantage of the huge asset called the Constitution, which starts with “We the people,” not “We the corporation” or “We the Congress.” We have all kinds of support on both the Left and the Right for Medicare for All, living wages, and cracking down on corporate crime. This idea of red state versus blue state doesn’t quite hold up when you go down to where people live, work, and raise their children. They want clean air; they want clean water; they want adequate health care; they want good public schools and public transportation.
Every major advance for justice in our country took no more than 1 percent of adults — around 2.5 million people — with public opinion behind them, mobilizing to change government policy. If you’ve got 2.5 million people, you can recover our country, recover our government, recover our hopes and dreams. Is that too much to ask, 1 percent?
Barsamian: The novelist Ursula K. Le Guin once said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
Nader: This isn’t really capitalism as we used to know it. My father and mother had a restaurant. That’s capitalism. What’s taken over now is big corporate capitalism. Corporations tie up small businesses in franchise agreements. The little guys are disadvantaged because the big guys get more tax breaks. Corporate capitalism is literally destroying traditional, small-scale capitalism. (...)
Barsamian: Do you think those corporations you were describing earlier feel good about Trump’s global economic policies and tariffs?
Nader: They’re nervous. So far he’s done things they like. He’s cut corporate taxes. He’s cut taxes for the rich. So they like that. Deregulation — they like that, too, even though most regulations are so out of date they have hardly any bite to them. They love the huge expansion of the military budget. Trump gave the Pentagon $80 billion it wasn’t even asking for, which delighted Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.
So they like him so far. But he is unpredictable, and they don’t like unpredictable politicians. They don’t want to get into a war that will mess up the stock market and the banking system. They’re worried about his instability, and they’re worried about the warmongers around Trump, like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (...)
Barsamian: Would you favor term limits for Supreme Court justices?
Nader: Yes, I favor twelve years and out. That’s enough. In fact, the appointment system has resulted in such corporatist judges that the court has repeatedly voted 5-4 to entrench the corporate state. The justices think corporations are people and have privileges and immunities real people don’t. I don’t think that would be the case if Supreme Court justices were elected.
Ask a tough question, will you?
by David Barsamian, The Sun | Read more:
Image: Myrna Aguilar
