Ralph Nader on Corporations 2008 Independent for for President; 2004 Reform nominee; 2000 Green nominee

Sub-sections under Corporations:
• Auto Safety
• Consumer Rights
• Corporate Welfare
• Other issues under Corporations

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory

Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations

A: Yeah. There are differences, obviously. The question is not whether their differences verbally or what they put on their Web site, the question is what is their record? Senator Obama's record has not been a challenging one. He's not been a Senator Wellstone or Senator Metzenbaum by any means. He has leaned, if anything, more toward the pro-corporate side of policymaking. The issue is, do they have the moral courage? Do they have the fortitude to stand up against the corporate powers and get things done? Yes, get things done for the American people? 1950, President Truman proposed universal health care. We still don't have it.

Corporations have too much control over people's lives

That was before the corporate crime wave that started with Enron and the looting and draining of pensions and small investors. You can imagine what it would be now.

We have to touch people with descriptions and narrations of different types of corporate control Some descriptions will leave people cold. A lot of people don't really have empathy to inner-city exposure to business crime like payday loan interest rates of 400%, or asbestos and lead. Other people resonate with the corporate seizure of our tax dollars, where a huge portion of our tax dollars are cycled back to corporate welfare and bailouts. There are people who really get angry about that. We've got to enter that constituency as well

Corporations control government; that defines fascism

They have 10,000 Political Action Committees. They put their high executives in high government positions. They have 35,000 full-time lobbyists. Just imagine that--even the Labor Department is not controlled by trade unions--it's controlled by corporations.

It isn't just the government under the CONTROL of corporations--the government IS the Corporation now! The corporation IS the government!

That's the kind of thing that Franklin Roosevelt called "fascism." In 1938 he said to Congress, "When government is controlled by private economic power, that is fascism"

Citizens' agenda for cracking down on corporate crime

This is a citizens' agenda for cracking down on corporate crime.
• Establish a public online corporate crime database at the Dept. of Justice, and produce an annual corporate crime report
• Increase Corporate Crime Prosecution Budgets of the SEC, which have been chronically under funded.
• Ban Corporate Criminals from Government Contracts - including corporate contracts in Iraq.
• Punish corporate tax escapees by closing the offshore reincorporation loophole and banning government contracts and subsidies for companies that relocate their headquarters to an offshore tax haven.
• Restore the Rights of Defrauded Investors in seeking restitution
• Require shareholder authorization of top executive compensation at annual shareholder meetings.
• Enact corporate sunshine laws that force corporations to provide better information about their records on the environment, human rights, worker safety, and taxes, as well as their criminal and civil litigation records.

No eminent domain gifts to private enterprises

[In a reversal this week], the Michigan Supreme Court rejected the suggestion that "a vague economic benefit stemming from a private profit-maximizing enterprise is a 'public use.'" Rather, land may be seized and transferred to a private party only if "the property remains subject to public oversight after transfer to a private entity."

This decision makes good sense as a matter of constitutional law & fundamental fairness. People's homes can no longer be seized to achieve speculative benefits or to reward usually large corporate welfare kings. Courts nationwide should follow Michigan's lead and reestablish their rightful role in our constitutional system.

Legislative "tort deform" for consumers, not corporations

The reason we are seeing tort deformers push the myriad pieces of legislation that would immunize doctors from malpractice responsibility; that would protect oil companies from cleaning up polluting components of gasoline from our drinking water sources; or that would make more onerous the ability of class actions to succeed against wealthy cigarette manufacturers, asbestos manufacturers and other corporations, is because they need only establish a few federal legislative precedents to open the tort deform floodgates.

Economic powers control our lives and our elections

Capitalism can lead to fascism

Corporations should not legally be counted as individuals

Giant corporations roam the Earth making people into serfs

Corporate politics is only free speech because money talks

While I was talking with reporters, a wandering corporate fellow, having overheard my remarks about the convention's corporate omnipresence, blurted, "It's free speech, Ralph." I responded, "Sure, money talks freely, doesn't it?"

And business money donated to the Republican Party and its convention made even more public money gush in its service.

Major parties both focus on wealthy interests

Paying for these concessions with ever-larger campaign donations gives new meaning to what the wry Will Rogers once said about Congress: "the best money could buy." So when the corporate greasers & persuaders finished their work at the Republican convention, they took a few days off & then flew to Los Angeles for the opening of the Democratic convention.

For them, it was the same racket, just different coastlines. Democratic National Committee donors who gave $50,000 enjoyed a private reception. The biggest donors watched the action from private skyboxes far above the floor.

The business discussed [at either convention] has very little to do with the "Other America."

Net worth is $3.8 million; owns corporate stocks

Nader's net worth was $3.8 million as of June 2000. He owned $1.2 million in Cisco Systems stock and more than $100,000 worth of shares in Fidelity's Magellan Fund, which has stakes in defense contractors and business interests in South American rain forests. This, from a man who once urged GM's shareholders to revolt in an effort to force the company to be more socially responsible. Then again, Nader estimated during his presidential run that he had made $14 million since 1967. He gave the bulk of the money away, financing his own causes and numerous others. As always, Nader is full of contradictions inside of contradictions, like Chinese boxes.

Consumerism is about corporations vs. citizens

If you get bumped from a plane and the airline provides you a voucher for another flight, thank Nader. When you get an X-ray and the technician covers you with a lead apron-again Nader deserves thanks.

The nest result of all Nader's frenetic activity was a full-blown movement, consumerism. The name is a bit misleading: consumerism is not just about the price of a cup of sugar, at least not at its core. It is more of a political and economic theory, born out of Nader's distinct observations about the ongoing struggle between corporations and individual citizens, producers and consumers.

Shift power from corporations to consumers

Corporate state gives away public assets to private monopoly

By complex means, public assets--from natural resources to medical research and development--are given away to private monopoly ownership and/or control. Neutering the purpose of the law vis-a-vis corporations--as with health and safety regulations--has been done particularly in the auto and drug areas.

All the while, innocent people have suffered in the workplace, marketplace, and environment.

Corporate power lawyers are not just any citizens equipped only with the influence of their facts and arguments. They are paid to be architects of the corporate state from whence they derived their power, their wealth, and their status.

Instrumental in food safety laws as well as auto safety

In his career as consumer advocate Nader has been instrumental in the passing of the following legislation:
• National Motor Vehicle and Highway Traffic Safety Act (1965)
• Wholesome Meat Act
• Wholesome Poultry Product Act
• Safe Water Drinking Act
• Tire safety & grading disclosure law
• Center for Auto Safety
• Fisherman's Clear Water Action Group
• Professional Drivers (PROD) (truck safety)
• Professionals for Auto Safety

Auto safety devices are simple & cheap; but take years

When studies showed that in frontal collisions, if you hit your head against the rearview mirror and it did not break away, it could be a fatal injury. It took us years to get the auto company executives to let their engineers do what they knew how to do and to put breakaway rearview mirrors in cars that we have today. All of these safety devices cost a pittance even on the first round of installation.

Safety regulation works; but Auto Safety Agency sold out

What has happened now is that the Auto Safety Agency has become a consulting firm for the auto industry. The process started under Ronald Reagan and George Bush and continued unabated under the Clinton-Gore administration. With the exception of the airbag standard, there has been very little advance in automotive safety and fuel-efficiency technology in people’s motor vehicles in the last 20 years. The last statutory fuel-efficiency standard was established in 1975, and the goal was by 1985, a motor vehicle average fuel efficiency would be 27.5 miles per gallon

More regulation for auto safety, with criminal penalties

We need, in this country, new motor vehicle statutory authorities, with the following amendments enacted by Congress:
1. To put criminal penalties for knowing and willful violation of motor vehicle standards or knowing or willful refusal to recall known defective cars that are impairing human life.
2. To increase the [maximum] civil penalties from $925,000 to $15 million.
3. To require the testing before certifying for compliance with safety standards.
4. To extend the statute of limitations. Right now if you have a car that is over eight years old, and the company discovers a serious defect, they don’t have to recall the vehicle. After eight years, they are in the clear.
5. Now, [for] all of these and other knowing and willful criminal behavior, coverups, there is no criminal penalty. But if you are ever in Colorado or Wyoming and Idaho, and you get caught harassing a wild ass, you can go to jail for one year.

Cancel R&D giveaways to auto industry; let them do it

It is hard to imagine an industry less in need of government support than the highly capitalized auto industry, which is reporting record profits year after year. The government is supporting research that the industry would or should do on its own in response to market demands, or could easily be required to do in order to meet tougher environmental standards.

The PNGV is not the only example of a federal research program that should be eliminated. Research and development programs in areas like nuclear power and fossil fuels (among them the clean coal technology program) invest funds in undesirable non-renewable technologies. Such programs are not defensible.

Gore has given auto industry and other polluters a free ride

A: Gore said he was going to take on the auto industry. He gave the auto industry eight years of free ride on fuel efficiency standards, which have actually gone down; they’re at their lowest level since 1980-one reason for this oil price increase. He’s been weak on pesticides; given biotech industry a free ride; supported GATT and NAFTA, which are anti-environmental. He’s had eight years to convince us-we can’t believe him on that.

Motor vehicles are the greatest environmental hazard

DOT: Focus on safety and mass transit

A: I would make its mission safety, No. 1 -- whether it’s aviation, highway safety, motor vehicle safety. It isn’t No. 1 now. It’s basically a department that’s a consulting firm to the motor vehicle industry and all its component parts -- trucking industry, automobile manufacturers, the highway lobby, etc. It’s not enforcing the law. I would enforce the law.

I would dramatically expand investment in modern public transit. Instead of spending billions keeping our boys in Europe and East Asia to defend against nonexistent enemies on behalf of prosperous countries, I’d put that money into job production for public transit and other public works, like schools, clinics, sewage systems and drinking water systems.

Automakers avoid replacing internal combustion engines

A: Because at the point of production the company has to change the product, whereas at the point of emission it’s more at the [consumer] end. It’s more, “You haven’t kept it up. You haven’t maintained it,“ etc. But also, if you control it at the emission point you don’t have to raise the question of displacing the internal combustion engine with a new propulsion system. You don’t have to answer the question why the auto companies have been promising electric cars for all these years. I saw it at the 1939 World’s Fair at the GM exhibit. And now the head of the Automobile Manufacturer’s Association is quoted in the press as saying it’s still ten years off.

Instrumental in Consumer Product Safety Act and related laws

In his career as consumer advocate Nader has been instrumental in the passing of the following legislation:
• Consumer Product Safety Act
• Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
• Mine Health and Safety Act
• Whistleblower Protection Act
• Medical Devices safety
• Nuclear power safety
• Mobile home safety
• Consumer credit disclosure law
• Pension protection law
• Co-Op Bank Bill (1978)
• Funeral home cost disclosure law
• Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1970

Help for ordinary people should replace corporate welfare

Address corporate crimes piecemeal AND by revoking charters

Stop giving corporations the same rights as people

A:When you have fundamental problems you’ve got to have fundamental overhauls. Right now corporations are treated as persons, just like flesh-and-blood individuals. A corporation, an artificial legal entity, [is treated] as a person having all the rights under our Constitution. It’s absurd. You can’t have equality under the law with General Motors and John and Jane Doe having the same rights, when Ralph Nader railed against big business from the heart of corporate America yesterday. Nader criticized New York City for offering multimillion-dollar tax breaks and other incentives to persuade the New York Stock Exchange to stay in Manhattan. “Here is this bastion of global capitalism on welfare. It will take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in order to build them a new building. At the same time, hundreds of neighborhoods are suffering from inadequate funding of their vital needs.”

Scrutinize even “good” corporate welfare which helps public

Corporate welfare is a function of political corruption

S&L bailout helped bankers & hurt consumers

When Congress finally did address the problem, it put the bailout burden on the backs of taxpayers, rather than on the financial industry.

Congress even refused in the bailout legislation to include measures to empower consumers to band together into financial consumer associations-a modest quid pro quo that would have imposed zero financial cost and would have enabled consumers to act on their own to prevent future S&L-style crises and bailouts.

Rules needed for examining & challenging corporate welfare

[I propose] a new framework for analyzing corporate welfare; probing questions to ask of government subsidy programs for big business:
• What rationales do private interests use to secure subsidies, and then shield them from legislative and judicial challenges?
• How do corporate welfare programs become entrenched and immune to cessation or reform?
• To what extent do foreign corporations benefit from the expenditure of US taxpayer dollars?
• How can fair pricing mechanisms be used to allow beneficial programs to be preserved, while eliminating welfare subsidy programs?
• What criteria should determine when corporate welfare programs should simply be cancelled?
• What administrative due process should apply to corporate welfare? How can taxpayers be given standing and procedural rights to challenge arbitrary agency action?
• How do economic subsidies disadvantage non-subsidized businesses and foster undesirable market outcomes?

Disallow benefits to companies except for public purposes