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Ralph Nader interview on J20 |
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by Nick Berveiler
Email: naberve (nospam) ilstu.edu (unverified!) |
21 Jan 2001
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With so much information put out in the last couple of days, I wanted to make Nader's speech available in text for anyone who missed it. Nader called in to DC Indymedia |
How was your day Mr. Nader?
NADER: Well, like most Americans I was watching the proceedings on television. It is a great American ceremony. It doesn’t really mean very much in terms of who has power and who doesn’t in this country other than to soothe the transition between two administrations. Both of whom have and will take marching orders from big business. The same big business that pumped 35 million into the inauguration ceremony this weekend.
Since this election, what good has come of it, if any. And what do you think can be done by say independent media for example in telling about what has happened.
NADER: As I have said repeatedly over the last year we are witnessing a collapsing democratic process in this country as power is more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. And the two parties are increasingly similar to one another. Their similarities over major issues of the distribution of power and wealth, the military budget ,corporate welfare, telecommunications industries concentrations ,lack of attention to facilities to encourage people to form trade unions, and tens of millions of low pay jobs like in Wal Mart. The lack of consumer protection enforcement. All of these and many other similarities between the two parties have led many commentators such as Daniel P Monihan to US News and World Report Roger Simon to Washington Post column’s William Raspberry to conclude that the reason the election was so close was because the candidates were so similar. As Daniel P Monihan said one offers Tylenol, one offers Aspirin so the green party effort in the past year was a new birth of grassroots support for a long range political movement. And there will be thousands more green party candidates at the local and state and national level and I think we are going to see a resurgence of grassroots action I think were going to see level trade unions more militant, minority groups more organized & energetic, the environmental groups will be revved up and maybe well see in future years a Greater political choice before the voters.
But it might just be a long hard bumpy four years though, wouldn’t it. This administration, there are so many blocks, that the best thing we can hope for is some sort of homeostasis.
NADER: There will be little done if the democrats hold firm they have 50 senators now, they may have 51 very shortly, the ability of the democrats, if they hold firm and if they can control their blue dog democrats who are mostly behaving like republicans, they can stop George Bush from doing anything bad. And so what we’ll see in the next 4 years at best is a gridlock. There won’t be and fundamental attention to energy problems in this country, access to media, corporate prison reform, there wont be the kind of fundamental changes that are needed even though the words of president Bush speech today were really quite good, just abstract words he actually mentioned justice three times most inaugural addresses never mention justice. As an abstract concise statement We should always remember it in order to hold him to it on the day he became president.
What has been some of the most effective methods of countering corporate domination of our lifestyles and democracy some one from our studio wants to know
NADER: The message?
What has been some of the best methods of countering corporate domination of our lifestyle and democracy?
NADER: I think there is an growing anti- commercialism movement dealing with such commercial like intrusions as channel one, in high schools and middle schools all over the country. 12 minutes a day of MTV type news two minutes of commercial advertising of mostly junk drinks and junk food and other things before a captive audience of public school students. I think we are seeing both conservative and liberal groups coming up against the commercialism that has taken over our elections, commercialism now determining research priorities at universities its Commercialism run amuck, you could call it corporatism as well people looking around see that almost every nook and cranny of our lives advertising commercialism, corporatism, material values that relate to profits. And these corporations are basically determining our cultural tone and I think there is a growing rebellion against it now. You see it in small ways, opposing mile high stadium in Denver for example from being renamed after some company that pays millions of dollars to put its logo on the stadium. I also think there is a growing rebellion against the commercialization of childhood. Corporations are not letting children have their childhood they’re turning them into subjects for hucksterism and they’re not letting them alone, they’re bypassing the parents and directing their ads straight to the children, separating the children from their parents lot written on this there’s a growing distaste for it and then the drive to get the corporations off the government election process through campaign finance reform the so we keep a cool head here as citizens and unite and join all the groups that want us to be members to build a strong and deep democracy so that the people are sovereign instead of corporations we’ll make some significant headway in the coming years.
What about, It seems there’s this sort of polarization between people as you were saying, this growing mobilization of these different organizations that are against these limitations in our study, but then there’s also people who think that well this was a fair election and it was stolen fair and square basically, what would you say to those who seem to completely accept what happened as just a part of our democratic society.
NADER: Its part of a very low expectation level people have in this country of how elections and government should be run and performed and that’s part of what building a deep democracy is about. Its to raise peoples expectation levels to say “look, we don’t have to have this kind of poverty we don’t have to have tens of millions of workers making less and working longer than they did 25 years ago with inflation adjusted wages we don’t have to have this massive toxic mental degradation of our air and water, we don’t have to have this manipulation of the food supply and what’s being put to it by these food processors, once your peoples expectation levels…and much more likely to demand broader choices and that’s what our job is as citizens, that’s what the independent media effort is all about. its to open up new horizons and say hey look in western Europe back in the 50s and 60s after WW II’s rubble they gave all their people universal health care, paid maternity leave, full paid sick leave the right to easily form trade unions, decent public transit to get around underground, none of which we have as a matter of uniform service in this country, the richest country in the world. And people say what, this happened 30, 40 years ago in the Netherlands, France, Italy and England, why cant we have it here and suddenly the expectation level gets higher and higher and that’s key to any change in this country. There is a lot of propaganda basically trying to pacify people’s demands and keep people from realizing we can have a solar economy we don’t have to have blackouts in California, this is all due too much power in too few hands where the few decide for the many.
What about this effect that now that there is another bush in office that we seem to be heading towards a continuation of all the anti Iraq and oil motivated strategies and chest beating and heading towards confrontation with the middle east, over an energy policy. What can we do about that?
NADER: The Clinton Gore administration talked a good game on energy conservation but did very little. They did even less on solar energy even though they knew better. They even expanded the permits for drilling oil in Alaska, not in the ANWAR, but in the northern slope area. So we have an administration who did very little and said a lot of the right things. Now comes an administration that is going to say a lot of the wrong things and is going to be able to provoke people to be more energetic, moving towards an energy efficient and solorized economy. Maybe people will wake up now because we don’t have the snakecharmer, the soothe sayer in the White House any more, we have someone who says he wants to drill for more oil in Alaska. Now we’ll see what the Democratic Party and congress is really made of. Whether they are going to roll over, or whether they are going to be any different. Of course, my campaign last year was a recognition by many people in the country that you basically have two parties, one who says the right things on a number of issues and does nothing and the other who says the wrong things and does nothing. As people in the District of Colombia know so well on the statehood issue. We need to become much more energetic as citizens. Interesting that George Bush made a prominent point of that in his speech today. So tomorrow in the Washington Post I have a small article in the outlook section which basically says to George W Bush okay you’ve said all over the country you trust the people, you said all over the country you want to empower the people and just today he said he wants more vigorous citizen involvement. Lets see if he’ll follow that with a proclamation and with legislation to congress to provide facilities so that people can join all kinds of national citizen groups to make their government work better and make their government heed the will of the people.
What about the status of the presidential debate commission and your lawsuit against them?
NADER: Well, that’s still on appeal and we have basically two kinds of lawsuits one on appeal challenging the debate commissions being funded by corporate money, like Anheiser Busch and Phillip Morris which we think is a corporate contribution to both the bush and gore campaign we lost at the district court level but that’s on appeal and we the other lawsuit is against the debate commission for excluding me from the premises of the University of Mass. on whom I had a ticket to sit in the auditorium next to the debate auditorium watch the debate between bush and gore and then go to an invitation by fox news on the same premises to give commentaries. the same kind of expulsion occurred at the Washington university by the debate commission representative and I think they engaged in an unlawful use of police power and violated my civil rights. I think that the debate commission has to be destroyed because it is the stranglehold against any third party candidates getting to tens of millions of voters. It’s the only way third party candidates the way our system is now structured and the way our lack of access to media is now structured and the only way they can get to tens of millions of voters as Ross Perot did in 1992 and the debate commission let him on and they weren’t going to ever do that again they excluded him in 1996. Now the debate commission is nothing more than a private corporation created 12 years ago by the republican democratic party co-chaired by both of them, funded by corporate money and they decide to exclude all competitors and have a little tepid debate between the two major party candidates and they set the rules for the debates and even pick who’s going to ask the questions, in this case Jim Lehrer. If any country in Western Europe had the two biggest parties perform that way our commentators would be all over them, ridiculing them. And that’s why we have to have a peoples debate commission with multi-candidate debates and many more than three of them in the year 2004. And that’s what we’re working to do.
People want to know where Nader was during Florida that’s the question
NADER: Well I was speaking out on it and writing about it and putting out press releases and nobody was reporting it except when I was in a particular city like Rochester, NY where it was a page one story. I mean the situation that has been going on in Florida has been going on for years and its rather upsetting that some of the leading civil rights groups didn’t focus on the election machinery which did more to violate peoples civil rights than the violation of civil rights laws. Its really like a subterranean tier of exclusion and lots of people knew about it but the major civil rights groups didn’t seem to pay attention to it until Florida occurred. I’ve been writing on ballot access exclusion since the 1950s and very few people are listening.
There was a related question that someone had about the NAACP’s argument that if the Florida congressional delegation, that it should be reduced as per section to article 14 of the constitution when rights to vote are abridged and are you, you’re probably familiar with this argument and what do you think of it.
NADER: I’m not familiar with the argument and it seems to be a rather strange argument the way you’ve phrased it.
Yes, I’m sorry maybe I should rephrase it. If the right to vote is abridged then the representation, the congressional representation should be reduced proportionately, that’s one of the arguments the NAACP brought up on their hearings concerning the Florida election.
NADER: Well, I’d like to see the legal rational for that. At first blush it seems rather on the edge.
OK, and there’s someone here who wants to ask you a question directly…
Hello, I was actually was given two tickets and I interrupted the inauguration ceremony and was just about 20 feet behind right when he took the oath of office and we showed our signs on our bodies that said “one person one vote” and “no democracy”. My question was, I’m a supporter of yours and I’m a green party member, but why didn’t you appear in Florida at any of the demonstrations in support of any of those people who, I mean I know that you ran against gore and bush, but then it just seemed to become about the minute point zero one percent of democracy left was about what happened in Florida and it felt like you didn’t even support that.
NADER: Well I did support it as I mention to the person who just interviewed me, Trista, I would put out statements and go on interviews on radio, but you see, if you don’t get on national media on a national media stage, most people don’t witness that. On December 8 I put out as news release, before that I spoke about it in many cities around the country. My concern of course, was in protecting the green party votes we had no idea how many votes were lost in the in the ruinous election machinery. I know that the day after the election, Waterbury CT reported no green party votes and after due objections it turns out there were over 1100 green party votes in Waterbury CT. so unfortunately there was nobody who was in any position of power to speak about it. There was a Zogby poll that came out a few days ago and 10 percent of the people polled in this statistically representative sample said they voted on the Nader LaDuke ticket, well we got 3 percent of the vote. We’re worried about that situation now we have a ten point electoral reform platform that we are going to press on state legislation. We’re going to be announcing that in a few weeks which includes not only public funding but same day registration and correctional out of the irregularities that occurred in Florida. So when all is said and done were going to be doing a lot more than just talking about it.
I need to wrap this up, can I ask one more question, OK, as for the economy, I don’t understand why its taking a nose dive when it seems that with all the due regulation it would be good for corporations. Now what’s going on there, why, internationally, are there factors there that we’re not seeing, what’s your take on that.
NADER: Well, I’ve been reading that and there are a lot of the reasons the economy is slowing down is one is that it is over exaggerated and overheated with this information technology and huge surge in the stock market way beyond the proper valuation, also what we’re beginning to see is consumers are so heavy in debt, they are in 6 and a half trillion dollars in debt, they are becoming more squeezed and consumer demand is seen in some of these reports as slowing and even going down in some instances. You can’t have tens of millions on workers in this country making 5 and a half 6, 7, 8 dollars and hour and expect them to be fermenting much economic activity it can barely make ends meet even with 3 members of the family working. We raised a lot of these issues and those of you still interested in getting more detail in these positions both political and economic, our website is still open, its votenader.org or votenader.com for any of you who want to log in.
Are you going to any balls tonight?
NADER: No, it’s the wrong type of inaugural ball for us isn’t it?
Thank you very much for your time, are you running in 2004?
NADER: Its too early to tell, but we’re certainly trying to build the green party and encourage a lot more people to run at the local state and national level
OK, well have a blessed evening Mr. Nader.
NADER: Thank you, good luck to you.
Also, here is Ralph Nader’s article in the Washington Post on January 21, 2001
RALPH NADER is a consumer advocate. He was the Green Party\'s presidential candidate in the 2000 election.
Our new president has repeatedly said that he trusts the people and wants to empower them. He wants government to be accountable to the people. To begin to accomplish these goals, he should enable and encourage the formation of voluntary, nonpartisan, self-funded associations that would act as watchdogs and improve government policies.
His first step should be a proclamation endorsing such associations. Then he should ask Congress to charter them. Finally, he should order federal agencies to use their mailing resources and Web sites to encourage citizens to join. Any government mailing that goes to at least 50,000 citizens could legally carry this kind of promotion. The IRS\'s 1040 booklets could include a membership form for a taxpayers\' association; Social Security checks could be accompanied by information on a health care group. Once enough citizens had joined -- and paid their dues -- the organizations could begin operating on the public\'s behalf.
In the late 1980s, Illinois began permitting inserts in such mailings as vehicle registration forms inviting electric, gas and telephone rate payers to join and fund a Citizens Utility Board (CUB). With 200,000 members, CUB has been quite successful. In 1993, for example, it negotiated a $1.3 billion refund to families who had had to pay for Commonwealth Edison\'s excessive nuclear-generating capacity.
Corporations already monitor and lobby the government -- and they get massive subsidies, giveaways and bailouts. Under this proposal, taxpayers, consumers, workers and investors could band together to redress the severe imbalance of power in Washington between corporations and citizens.
Such civic institutions could address government policies on health, transportation, the environment, education, law enforcement, defense, energy, labor, social services, civil rights, taxes, housing, telecommunications and foreign affairs. They could solve or prevent many of the nation\'s systemic problems and injustices. They could prove to be President Bush\'s greatest legacy -- the best way to become, in his own words, \"the president for all the people.\"
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