Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader: on Corporations
Bill Clinton:
OpEd: Pushed corporate-inspired bills on telecomm & trade
In 1992, Clinton defined what a "new Democrat" was like. Over the next 4 years, he so favorably astonished the business lobbies that the head of the National Association of Manufacturers told me after a cable television taping that we shared, "We like
Clinton more and more."And why not? The boy wonder from Arkansas pushed through the greatest surrender of local, state, and national sovereignty in US history to those corporate-inspired systems of autocratic governance called NAFTA and the WTO.
Clinton signed the megacorporate legislations involving the telecommunications and agribusiness industries, ballyhooed phony welfare reform for the poor while creating new models of corporate welfare, and undermined civil liberties in signing
3 criminal bills, all while losing a health insurance package in a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1994.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 44
Oct 14, 2002
Rev. Jesse Jackson:
Use corporate power to open doors to black businesses
Jesse certainly has paid his dues. No one has brought out more African-American votes for Democratic candidates at all levels. No one has stimulated more voter registration drives. No one has done more to show that political parties need to go where the
anguish and injustices reign. He has logged hundreds of thousands of miles of effort. However, his self-restraint toward the manipulative elements of his party is now so extensive that it is affecting him. While he quietly moderated a few of the Clinton
administration's calculating moves against principles, his counseling on the Lewinsky affair to the contrary, he no longer sees himself as a singular public force to push the party toward progressive actions. His son, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.
(D-Illinois), already has assumed a more assertive role in this respect. Jesse Sr. now also sees himself as using entrenched corporate power to open doors to African-American businesses.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.250
Oct 14, 2002
Ralph Nader:
Corporate politics is only free speech because money talks
At the Republican National Convention, I managed to observe that while more than $13 million in taxpayer funding had gone to this convention because an earlier Congress viewed such gatherings as civic affairs, the
Republicans had added to that millions of corporate dollars. Elections, I told the reporters, are supposed to be for real people--the voters--not for corporations, artificial entities that cannot vote (at least not yet).
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.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
Ralph Nader:
Major parties both focus on wealthy interests
[At the Republican National Convention], lavish parties were setting spending records for national political conventions. These events are the “convention behind the convention.” The talk almost always centers around big-business demands--contracts,
subsidies, tax breaks, bail-outs, and reducing or eliminating regulation.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.”
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
Ralph Nader:
Airline industry took $15B advantage of 9-11
One of the reasons why corporate lobbyists are well paid is that they are expected to follow orders, allow no internal wavering, and click their heels for maximum greed.
The post-9-11 frenzy started with the airline industry--headed by the same company bosses who, year after year, rejected one proposal for airline security after another by our aviation safety group and safety-conscious aviation engineers
and legislators, including the simplest one of all: toughening cockpit doors and latches. In one swoop on Congress and after announcing 80,000 layoffs, the industry came away with
$5 billion in cash and $10 billion in loan guarantees. The workers got nothing; the top executives maintained their ample pay.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. xv-xvi
Jan 17, 2002
Ralph Nader:
1965 book "Unsafe At Any Speed" saved millions of lives
In 1963 [I wanted] to bring the reckless, hyper-horsepower-minded automobile industry under the rule of law. The more I learned about the simple safety features--seat belts, collapsible steering columns--that could make crashes survivable, the more I was
driven to press for mandatory vehicle safety standards.My book "Unsafe at Any Speed" came out in 1965, and by 1966, Congress had passed the Motor Vehicle and Highway Safety Acts, bringing the auto industry under federal regulation. The book created an
uproar in Detroit. Congress responded to overwhelming evidence that safer cars could greatly diminish highway casualties. Isn't this the way our political system is supposed to work?
More than a million lives have been saved and many millions of
injuries prevented or reduced in severity because of implementation of these laws. The system worked--government responded to an engaged citizenry, and the fatality rate declined from 5.6 deaths per hundred million vehicle miles in 1966 to 1.6 in 2000.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 18-19
Jan 17, 2002
Page last updated: Jul 04, 2012