A: Ralph Nader endorses the full eleven-point agenda for economic, social and political rights of women put forward by the National Organization for Women, which includes the following section on Reproductive Rights: “NOW supports access to safe and legal abortion, to effective birth control, to reproductive health and education. We oppose attempts to restrict these rights through legislation.”
A: Ralph Nader supports stem cell research. Through two organizations Nader created, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law in 1968 and the Consumer Project on Technology in 1995, he has contributed to efforts to insure stem cell research advances developed with public money are made available to the public and not held back by corporate or university patent holders.
A: Ralph Nader opposes the death penalty. Among the “ten reasons why there is no place in the Democratic Party for people who hold to their principles and progressive programs,” Nader said in 2004: “Kerry supported the Clinton crime bills, including the expansion of the federal death penalty in 1996 legislation.”
A: Nader says, “The drug war has failed--we spend nearly $50 billion annually on the drug war and problems related to drug abuse continue to worsen. We need to acknowledge that drug abuse is a healt problem with social and economic consequences. It is time to bring some illegal drugs within the law by regulating, taxing and controlling them. Ending the drug war will dramatically reduce violence related to underground drug dealing.”
A: Ralph Nader believes “it is time to break our addiction to fossil fuels. The evidence of global warming is mounting. We threaten the global environment with our continued use of fossil fuels. Not only is this an ecological threat, it is a tremendous economic threat, facing all of humanity. Global warming will bankrupt the re-insurance industry, spread infectious tropical diseases, and increase severe and unpredictable weather.”
A: Ralph Nader supports “a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric, and coal mining interests--an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy--including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses--that breaks our addiction to oil, coal, and atomic power.”
A: Ralph Nader has summed up his foreign policy by saying “the United States should be the world’s humanitarian superpower. Our foreign policy must redefine the elements of global security, peace, arms control, an end to nuclear weapons and expand the many assets of our country to launch, with other nations, major initiatives against global infections diseases.”
A: Ralph Nader was present at the creation of the movement against corporate globalization and created Global Trade Watch, which mobilized global justice demonstrations, including the “Battle in Seattle” in 1999. Nader has written extensively on the subject, including in “The Case Against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA and the Globalization of Corporate Power”.
A: Nader says, “NAFTA and the WTO makes commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull-up rather than pull down these standards. While global trade is a fact of life, trade policies must be open, democratic & not strip-mine environmental, social and labor standards. These latter standards should have their own international pull up treaties.”
A: Ralph Nader supports Instant Runoff Voting and Public Financing. He also calls for these electoral reforms:
A: Ralph Nader “supports a single-payer health care plan that replaces for-profit, investor-owned health care and removes the private health insurance industry. He favors replacing our fragmented, market-based system with a single-payer health plan--where the government finances health care, but keeps the delivery of health care to private nonprofits, and allows free choice of doctors and hospitals for patients.”
A: Ralph Nader spoke out vigorously against Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon and US support for it. Nader said, “The greatest move toward national security in our country and in the so-called effort against terrorism would be to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The majority of both people would like a two-state solution. This is an eminently resolvable conflict. But as long as the US basically says to whoever is in charge, ‘You can do whatever you want over there, and we’ll still pump $3 - $4 billion and cluster bomb weapons, etc.,’ there’s not going to be a resolution. As long as there’s no resolution, there’s going to be an inflammation increasing all over the Islamic world, and our national security will be compromised.“
A: Ralph Nader “supports the restoration of civil liberties, repeal of the Patriot Act, and an end to secret detentions, arrests without charges, no access to attorneys and the use of secret ‘evidence,’ military tribunals for civilians, non-combatant status and the shredding of ‘probable cause’ determinations.” 14
A: “Immigration is a challenging issue that must be addressed in a more cohesive way. We need to address economic justice in the US and the world and recognize the basic human rights of all people,” Nader says. “The long term solution to immigration is reducing the rich poor divide between the United States and other nations by peacefully supporting democratic movements.”
A: Ralph Nader has stated that exploiting immigrant workers puts a downward pressure on US labor wages and standards. A $10 minimum wage would open many of these jobs to unemployed American workers. As for the H1B visas, the US should stop the “brain draining” of highly skilled people in the Third World who are desperately need to develop their own economies.
A: Ralph Nader supports a living wage of at least $10 an hour for all workers. “Had the federal minimum wage been indexed since 1968, it would be about $8.00 per hour instead of the present $5.15 an hour. Congress has maintained a policy, now automatic, of keeping the salaries and benefits of its members ahead of inflation. Nader says, ”This condition afflicting 45 million hard-working Americans, who are working for low wages for corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonalds, must be changed. They have unmet consumer needs that transform into higher consumer demand in the marketplace. These workers deserve a fair return for their work, which their employers have not paid them. Their employers instead have received a free windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars all these years while they raised their prices.“
A: On Iraq, Ralph Nader supports the rapid and responsible withdrawal of US military forces, civilian military contractors, and US corporate interests fro Iraq. Ralph Nader has put a major focus of his time and energy into the Stop the War Campaign of Democracy Rising, which provides grassroots antiwar activists across the country with fact sheets, information, and tools they need to be effective.
A: Ralph Nader believes the US must stop saber rattling and take up Iran’s serious proposal in 2003 to negotiate all outstanding issues between the US and Iran.
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The above quotations are from Green Party 2008 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire.
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