Ralph Nader in Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader
On Government Reform:
Denying D.C. vote is colonial mentality by congress
The hallway outside the arena were filled with activists [who] advanced D.C. statehood, living wage, healthcare, eliminating child poverty, an end to the death penalty, revoking the cruel life-destroying
sanctions on the innocent Iraqi people, protecting the global environment, free Tibet, and sustainable self-sufficient economies. The turnout, estimated at 10,000, was gratifying.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.288
On Government Reform:
Clean money means clean elections
It's way past time for a shift of power today from big business to the people. Power is the central contention of politics.
Just think about it: you go down to vote, you expect it to count, and the votes are cut off at the pass by fundraising
dinners where fat cats pay off politicians for present and future favors and the politicians shake down the fat cats in a kind of combined symbiosis of legalized bribery and legalized extortion.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.289
On Government Reform:
Government obstacles to voting make our elections oppressive
The test of any democracy is whether after a national trauma significant reform follows. From obstacles to registration to incomplete or erroneous voting lists (note the miscues regarding ex-felons in
Florida), to machine errors, to confusing ballot designs, to poorly publicized changes of precinct locations, and on and on, millions of voters are not having their votes counted or counted accurately.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.296-297
On Abortion:
Roe v. Wade is not at risk, even from GOP Supreme Court
The Supreme Court justices viewed as anti abortion had three chances to overturn Roe v. Wade and did not.
Republican Party operatives tell people in Washington all the time that they are not about to destroy the party on this issue but have to promote the rhetoric to keep the support of the party’s antiabortion wing.
[Some pro-choice activists] tell people about my belittling Roe v. Wade, which I see as so well established and so deeply supported (by polls, media, and a very well-connected feminist movement)
and which [some Democratic activists] see as hanging by one bad judicial nomination.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.255-256
Oct 14, 2002
On Civil Rights:
Questioned anti-female bias at 1950s Harvard Law School
I would have walked her through my efforts at law school, while writing for the laws school newspaper in the fifties, to question the deans about their admission policy, which admitted only about fifteen women in a class of 550 students.
One professor told me that women who take male seats will go on to give birth to babies, not briefs. I wrote about other issues, including the outrageous laws in several states prohibiting women from serving on juries.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.255
Oct 14, 2002
On Principles & Values:
Joe Lieberman was unwise VP choice for Gore
Al Gore chose their nemesis, Senator Joseph Lieberman, as his vice presidential running mate over Senator John Edwards, who was a successful trial lawyer.
Gore surrounded himself with an inner circle of longtime advisers and speechwriters right out of a tort deform nightmare. There were no environmental or consumer advocates anywhere near Gore’s inner circle.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.263-264
Oct 14, 2002
On Corporations:
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
On Corporations:
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
On Environment:
Dems surrendered to the auto industry on safety & pollution
Not surprisingly, the 48-page Democratic platform was a model of avoiding both the spiraling power of big business and the economic disconnect between the rich and the rest of us.
This is the party that abjectly surrendered for eight years to the superprofitable auto industry on fuel efficiency, safety, and pollution control--jeopardizing the global environment that
Al Gore so feels for--sacrificing lives, limbs, and health. Accordingly, the committee rejected a thoughtful plea by one witness to include a sentence advancing auto safety. Fifty years after Western European nations, coming out of the rubble of
World War II, provided universal health care for their people, Al Gore’s platform described his vision for the world’s richest country as “step by step” toward full coverage with no specific attainment date.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Government Reform:
Lack of election opponents let corrupt pols stay in office
When House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was subject to a devastating page-one expose in the Washington Post five years ago, nothing happened. The article cited instances of
DeLay bordering on making extortionate demands for money from special interests, and the House Ethics Committee did not even open an investigation. At the August Republican convention, Congressman
DeLay became a veritable talent agent reportedly offering lobbyists packages starting at $15,000 and rising to $100,000 in terms of how exclusive one’s meetings could be with the elected bigwigs.Like most congressional districts,
DeLay’s is one-party dominated, and he wins by large majorities with only nominal opposition. This is typical. In about 90 percent of the 435 congressional districts, there is one-party rule. So choice is effectively denied to a vast majority of voters.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Government Reform:
Non-violent demonstrations are ignored by the press
Certainly the most interesting events at the [2000 Democratic and Republican conventions] took place in the streets, parks, and parking lots near the convention halls. But the story here incredibly became one not of protest but of crowd control
& police preparation. Unlike in the 60s & 70s, peaceful mass demonstrations no longer receive much media coverage. Many a weekend march of 50,000 to 200,000 people for labor rights or the environment receives little more than a picture & a caption in the
Washington Post.Consequently, demonstrators began to figure that nonviolent civil disobedience or, in some frustrated instances, controlled violence against property, would mesh with the television media’s mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Studious, well-prepared news conferences, absent these demonstrations, don’t make the grade with the eyes and ears of the press. The reaction of course is for the police to organize massive counterforce against what is perceived as a giant safety problem
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Government Reform:
National Youth Convention bypasses electoral fluff and bluff
As part of the National Youth Conventions, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called Youth in Action [held a presidential forum]. As the presidential candidate for the Green Party, I was asked to listen to each youth panel summarize its points and then
respond, which I did in some detail.Our interaction was one of the most stimulating exchanges in the campaign. I was pleased to hear young people in their teens and early twenties articulating a political agenda separate from the tactics, fund-raisers
and fluff and bluff surrounding the major-party candidates.
These Youth convocations were intricately planned and promoted. They were supported by major foundations, such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, and major nonprofits, including the League of
Women Voters and the YMCA and YWCA. These conventions give young men and women a voice and involvement, when so often they are alienated from presidential campaigns that ignore their existence, except for the occasional scripted photo op.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Government Reform:
Dems & GOP say they want campaign reform, but do nothing
Politics, as it is practiced, is the art of having it both ways. One party--the Democrats--regularly says all the right things about campaign finance reform but does nothing. The other party--the
Republicans--rarely says the right thing about the corruption of our elections and does nothing. Both use the same ready cliche when asked why one party doesn’t lead on reform by example: “We do not believe in unilateral disarmament.”
There are two lessons to learn from these [Democratic and Republican] political conventions. One is that our nation’s political leaders are chosen by one big entertainment extravaganza.
Voters are left with only limp imagery, hackneyed slogans, and the omnipresent thirty-second propaganda advertisement. Dr. Pavlov soon becomes the patron saint of the political horse race.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Homeland Security:
Bush attacks civil liberties while saying he defends them
[After 9/11], the Bush Administration confronted the age-old balance between national security and civil liberties by coming down hard on the latter. But by deed, not by rhetoric. In their statements, President Bush and his Cabinet spoke the language of
freedom and liberty, which they said the terrorists and their backers attacked on September 11. They are attacking, the President declared again and again, our freedom of speech, our freedom of religion, and our freedom to disagree. But in a remarkable
In the weeks after 9/11, expressions of political dissent or the need for tolerance were frowned upon, condemned, or excluded from radio and television. People were shouted down at public gatherings, summarily cut off on TV shows, fired from their jobs.
contrast between words and deeds, even for Bush, the government responded with both the most restrictive single law on our civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 798 and, by creating a climate of repression, chilling dissent.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. xi-xiv
Oct 9, 2002
On Principles & Values:
Gore & Bush both ignore youth issues in favor of fat cats
The seat next to me on the stage was reserved for George W. Bush, but on that afternoon of Aug. 2, 2000, it remained empty.For months, a nonpartisan group called Youth in Action tried to have that seat filled in Philadelphia’s Drexel University
auditorium. The event was part of the National Youth Conventions, which involved thousands of high school students and other young people contributing to a National Youth Platform.
By demonstrating a serious engagement with the presidential campaign of
2000, as well as their deep stake in America’s future, Youth in Action was hoping that it could lay claim to some personal attention by George W. Bush and Al Gore, just as large campaign donors had done throughout the year. Its schedulers made sure that
there were no conflicts with the big events at the two conventions.
It was not to be. Gore matched Bush in declining to appear. The two candidates had more important events to attend--lavish parties with corporate lobbyists and fat cats.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Social Security:
Candidates focus on elderly because young people don’t vote
The day after a Youth Convention gathering [that Nader attended and Bush & Gore skipped], there were no stories in the major media, no mention of Bush--the self-described education candidate who pledged to “leave no child behind”--being absent from an
event that he could have turned into an advantage over Gore. Why? Because Bush & Gore’s supposedly savvy staffs had polls showing that young adults do not vote in large numbers and their interests are more universal, unlike elderly voters whose demands
are more particular and insistent, such as prescription-drug benefits, preserving Social Security, and patients’ rights. Older voters have money. Older voters have influence. Younger voters tend to have neither. Then there are the less inhibited question
young people tend to ask and a risk of being caught off guard or being embarrassingly out of touch. Why should the candidates deviate from the carefully constructed script and emerge from the force field erected by their political handlers?
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Technology:
Media coverage moving from sound bites to sound barks
I went to find NBC for an invited interview by Maria Shriver on the premises of the Republican National Convention. The area was like a military encampment: security personnel, multiple checkpoints, and trailers with security equipment were omnipresent.
Demonstrators were not allowed within the fenced encirclements.Inside, I was driven in a golf cart to the NBC installation. I asked the driver where the interview was to take place, and he pointed skyward. At the top of a 40-foot scaffold were
perilously perched Ms. Shriver and her camera crew. I asked why--why this Tower of Pisa? She pointed to the view of the Convention Center bathed in a spotlight as the one and only reason. A quick three-minute interview followed, allowing only for short
answers to complex questions.
I climbed down the narrow staircase, wondering how reporters like Shriver can take year after year of what they believe are shallow formats with ever shorter sound bites heading, it seems, for a future of sound barks.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Welfare & Poverty:
Visit poor cities to put faces on poverty statistics
On the Camden waterfront [across the Delaware River from the Philadelphia venue of the Republican National Convention], then-N.J.-governor Christine Todd Whitman readily approved expensive window dressing for four miles of dilapidated buildings so that
Republican dignitaries would not be offended by scenes that are all too prevalent in many other less visible parts of Camden. “The first impression is important,” said this latter-day Marie Antoinette. In the meantime, this city is not even eating cake.
It is an economic and living disaster. Indicative of the devastation in Camden is the absence of a single supermarket, motel, or movie theater within the city limits.
Campaigning in Camden, political consultants say, is a waste of time. For me it
put human faces behind the government’s statistics; it made clear the difference between charity and justice. There are many Camdens in America. People left behind in the millions with only the urban renewal of gentrification available to push them out.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, Chapter One
Oct 9, 2002
On Corporations:
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
On Corporations:
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
On Education:
Standardized tests designed to show public schools failing
From Providence we drove to the Boston Commons, where a rally organized by high school students against the MCAS standardized tests in Massachusetts and the looming privatization of public schools was under way. From afar, one could think that those
youngsters just didn't like tests. But these youngsters had done their homework. Created by consulting firms that saw the corporate management of public schools as a profitable objective, these tests appear to be designed to show that public education
was not working because so many students flunked. Experience in Texas with such manipulations led to higher dropout rates for high school students under Governor Bush. This testing tyranny forces the schools to teach to the tests, which themselves are
narrow-scoped and misleading yardsticks. There is plenty of evidence to show that behind these tests is a commercial ideology panting to take over more and more of the $320 billion spent annually on public schools.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.115
Jan 17, 2002
On Free Trade:
Corporate globalism causes autocratic governance
Public budgets are being massively distorted by the proliferating array of taxpayer subsidies, giveaways, and bailouts (known as corporate welfare) to corporations. And I described how these transnational companies have no allegiance to any country or
community other than to control them. Company executives have yearned for years for their company to be "anational"--outside any national jurisdiction. While this literally has not yet transpired, corporate globalism is creating its autocratic systems of
governance under the guise of global or regional trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. Increasingly, these modes of governance that subordinate nontrade standards, such as consumer, environmental, and worker conditions, to
the supremacy of international commerce, will avoid and thereby undermine local, state, and national sovereignties. All this I said quickly because I wanted to revisit some New England history with them.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.123-124
Jan 17, 2002
On Government Reform:
Citizens should shape elections, not just spectate and vote
In 1984 my associates and I made our first determined effort to broaden the agenda between the two presidential candidates. We called this project The Difference. As usual, the Republican and Democratic candidates--in this case Reagan and Mondale--
managed to narrow the number of issues they would advance. The Difference challenged the candidates to take stands and debate subjects such as energy and consumer protection.It did not work. Voters were expected to be polled, to be spectators and to
vote. Their participation in the whole election process as an active civic force shaping the substance and tone of the campaign--why, that wasn't the way it was done.
During the 80s, it became ever more clear that the Democrats were losing the will to
fight. Business money pouring into party coffers melded into the retreat from progressive roots and then into an electoral tactic that argued for defeating Republicans by taking away their issues and becoming more like them.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 26-27
Jan 17, 2002
On Government Reform:
Binding "None Of The Above" disqualifies election if it wins
The general goal of the 1992 presidential write-in campaign was to meet with people throughout the state [of NH] to hear and discuss a broad pro-democracy agenda. The subjects were contained in what I called the "Concord Principles," having released them
one very cold winter morning on the steps of the state office building. The principles were essentially a "new democracy toolbox" replete with election reforms, such as public funding of elections, more convenient voter registration rules, binding none-
of-the-above (NOTA) lines that would cancel that election and order a new election with new candidates if NOTA won the most votes, and 12-year congressional term limits. The principles also offered simple strategies for consumers, workers, and taxpayers
to band together with membership organizations and work for universal health insurance, trade union growth, an end to corporate welfare, renewable energy, and safer food and other products, and to try to avert future perils and injustices on the horizon.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 38
Jan 17, 2002
On Government Reform:
FEC regulations prevent 3rd-party campaigns
In 2010 we had to navigate the treacherous regulatory waters of the Federal Election Commission. A few examples will give a sense of the FEC thicket that had to be cleared.Can someone voluntarily drive the candidate to and from events without
converting it into a dollar contribution for gasoline and mileage expenses? Do we have to put "Paid for by the Nader 2000 election committee" on our buttons? Answer: No, there is a de minimus rule for items that are too small.
If you are finding the
above listing tedious, try studying the guidelines and then transferring them into operation among the headquarters staff, field people, and everyone else they have to guide. Full public financing of public elections would remove the vast number of
regulations. The FEC thicket has become another barrier to entry by small parties that simply cannot afford the cost of clearing a path toward fund-raising.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 65-66
Jan 17, 2002
On Government Reform:
Ballot access restrictions set up as barriers to 3rd parties
After fund-raising, our next priority was getting on the ballot in every state. In no Western democracy are the hurdles for candidates to access the ballot anywhere near as high as ours. Another obstacle for smaller parties to challenge the duopoly.
Paid signature gatherers can become very expensive, as Pat Buchanan found out: more than $200,000 just to get him on the NC ballot. In WV & GA, the filing fee is $4,000. PA stipulates that signature forms have to be on special colored paper.
Officials would provide only 400 forms when our volunteers needed more than 2,000. Downloading the forms from the Internet was prohibited.
I wrote my first article on ballot access barriers in 1959.
And matters have in many states only gotten more burdensome. For decades, third parties have had to spend time and money confronting ballot barriers. We did not get on the ballot in 7 states.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 74-76
Jan 17, 2002
On Health Care:
Military development of cheap vaccines shows up Big Pharma
[I met with] naval researchers on global infectious diseases with Congressman Sherrod Brown and his colleagues. The government's only "drug company" is in the
Department of Defense, where army and naval medical scientists with incredible efficiency have discovered and tested major anti-malarial drugs, along with other drugs and vaccines now used throughout the world.
This remarkable story of amazing successes with first-class science on tiny budgets, extending over three decades, shows up the exorbitant major drug companies that have no interest in investing in malaria,
TB, and other infectious disease research, because they don't see enough money in it for them.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.108
Jan 17, 2002
On Principles & Values:
1960s participatory citizens shut out by 1990s corporations
In the 60s and 70s, not a year went by without dozens of new citizen action groups opening their doors in the nation's capital and around the country.
There was a heady atmosphere that abuses could be remedied, that power could be more widely shared, that democracy could be, in the word of the day, "participatory."
Newspapers, magazines, and television stations, along with new community media, covered events as if "the whole world was watching."Yet somehow that spirit, little by little, slipped away, and big business stepped in again to seize more influence on
our government. Over the course of my work in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans have drawn so close to the monied, corporate interests that the citizens are shut out.
That is why I ran for president.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 20
Jan 17, 2002
On Principles & Values:
Ran in 2000 to address the "democracy gap"
In 2000 the decision to run a full campaign came in 5 principal reasons rooted in disturbing realities.- The "democracy gap" had widened & deepened over the past 20 years. Citizen groups mattered less; both political parties were morphing into each
other.
- Solutions to our nation's injustices & needs abounded. They were being applied in a few places but without any engines of diffusion.
- The major media repeatedly headlined investigative stories about the failings of big business & government,
but nothing was happening. This was a telltale sign of a weakening democratic society unable to provide the linkages that bring serious misdeeds toward a more just resolution.
- Having to spend so much time raising money from interests you don't favor
or like has turned away too many good people from running for office in America.
- People's expectation levels toward politics had reached perilously low levels. Why bother? These words become the mantra of withdrawal.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 56-57
Jan 17, 2002
On Principles & Values:
Suffered from "media gap"--little coverage of 3rd parties
Throughout the primary campaign, the media obsessed over the tactics of the candidates and other horse-race aspects such as the polls, endorsements, staff turnover, and the like. This has become a professional addiction providing mind-numbing renditions.
We scheduled the announcement of my candidacy for Presidents' Day, Feb. 21, 2000. Because it was a national holiday, the day was almost guaranteed to have little news competition for the announcement. There was not a single sentence about my
announcement on any of the three major networks. Was I surprised by this uniform blackout on four networks? Of course. It could be expected that a candidate with a visible 35-year record of consumer, environmental, and worker advocacy would merit at
least 15 seconds on the nightly news.
Although there was good coverage throughout the independent media and talk radio, we quickly realized that our "democracy gap" campaign had fallen into a big-time "media gap."
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 62-64
Jan 17, 2002
On Principles & Values:
Base campaigns on issues, not on ego
I am a "Brandeis brief" type of person who believes that factual reality counts, that candidates' records matter greatly, that agreements need to be rooted in evidence, and that robust debates with challenging reporters provide the most level playing
fields. A campaign should not be a vehicle for an ego. Rather, it is an opportunity for other articulate voices to be heard. When the Green Party conventioneers in 1996 started chanting "Go, Ralph, go,"
I immediately changed the phrase to, "Go, we go," and it caught on to a surprised but delighted audience. Social change occurs when "we" come together to create a just and democratic society. It's as simple as that. If you want a society that
embraces both visions and revisions, then the motto must be "Together we can make a difference." That leaves little room for "ego tripping" or people who are so egotistically fragile that they can be blistered by moonbeams.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.100-101
Jan 17, 2002
On Principles & Values:
News media doesn't cover 3rd parties; only the horse race
The major media consistently viewed our campaign as an occasional feature story--a colorful narrative dispatch from the trail--rather than a news story about our agenda. During the months when I was traveling, the national print and electronic media was
capricious: A reporter would travel with us for a day and file a profile that focused on the so-called spoiler issue. We were never a news beat.I asked the political editor whether the LA Times had any overall newsworthiness criteria for covering
significant third-party candidates. He allowed that there were no specific standards, but, "If you do anything with Pat Buchanan, or when you campaign in California, I'd be interested."
I often asked newspaper editorial boards across the country what
I had to do to be more newsworthy. The responses were either noncommittal or related to our effect on the Gore-Bush competition. One would think that merely to escape the tedium, the press would declare itself some holidays from the horse-race question.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.163-164
Jan 17, 2002
On Technology:
Internet encourages small donations but not voter turnout
All the presidential and vice presidential candidates used the Internet with elaborate, heavily worked Web sites. They enthusiastically counted the millions of hits. They poured out notices and messages and got replies back.
Millions of voters purportedly got more engaged in watching, reacting and commenting on these campaigns.
The Internet age, a hundred pundits predicted, would greatly change political campaigning and fund-raising. Well, it proved to be a very cheap fund-raising medium that encouraged small givers.
But for increasing voter turnout--another frequent prediction--it was disappointing.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.128-129
Jan 17, 2002
On Technology:
TV news is sparse, abbreviated, and very repetitious
The newspapers take elections more seriously than the broadcast media. TV and radio have many ready-made excuses for their shrinking coverage. A 22-minute national television news program, excluding advertising time, is not sprung from holy writ. The
format of the local television news, with its 9 minutes of ads, with several leadoff accounts from the police crime blotter, 4 minutes of sports, 4 minutes of weather, 1 minute of chitchat, and the prescribed animal and medical journal health story, is
not carved in stone. Apart from public radio and the few nonprofit community radio stations, commercial radio and TV devote about 90% of airtime around the clock to entertainment and advertisements. News is sparse, abbreviated, and very repetitious.
When radio is not singing or selling, it is traffic, weather, and sports with headline news spots. The number of reporters and editors has been cut to the bone. No more are there FCC requirements for ascertaining the news needs of the community.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.161
Jan 17, 2002
On Technology:
FCC gave away $70B of spectrum but blocked non-profits
No more are there FCC requirements for ascertaining the news needs of the community. Gone are the Fairness Doctrine and the Right of Reply. In 1996 there was near silence on the tube regarding the congressional fight to block the giveaway of $70 billion
worth of the new spectrum to the television stations--a giveaway opposed even by the GOP candidate that year, Robert Dole. The notorious Telecommunications Act of 1996 received the cold shoulder, notwithstanding its paving the way for a massive binge
of mergers and further concentration of media power. In 2000 the FCC, under its chairman, William Kennard, started granting community radio licenses to nonprofit neighborhood associations. The formidable media lobby, led by the national Association of
Broadcasters, descended on Congress. They pummeled into line a majority of Congress to pass legislation, which Clinton reluctantly signed, that blocked the FCC from licensing these little stations, which could accept no paid advertising.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.161
Jan 17, 2002
On Welfare & Poverty:
Predatory lending is rich scamming the poor
Payday loans, rolled over to payday after payday, can reach annual percentage rates of 400%. Rent-to-own rackets proliferate. Predatory lending is a booming business from high-cost automobile financing to home equity and refinancing scams.
Behind this shady world of exorbitant interest rates are some well-known Wall Street investment and commercial banks that provide the capital to fuel these operations. In the 1970s, the financial lobby secured the repeal in most states of the usury laws,
so the sky's the limit as far as interest rates are concerned.
There are solutions. Community development credit unions are a fair source of credit, including home mortgages. Credit unions are cooperatives, owned by their member depositors.
Together with community development financial institutions, thousands more of these credit unions would do much to drive the sleazy credit predators and their Wall Street backers out of inner-city neighborhoods.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p. 88
Jan 17, 2002
On Welfare & Poverty:
Tale of Two Cities: lovely suburbs and poor inner cities
[I grew up near Hartford], but this did not mean that I was familiar with THEIR Hartford--now one of the poorest inner cities in the US, suffering violent, drug-ridden, devastated schools, crumbling houses and tenements, high infant mortality, and a
stunning asthma rate among black and Hispanic children reaching 40%. But as I stood by the church, one sight, one glimpse, caught the tale of two cities that is Connecticut's capital. There over the horizon rose the gleaming office buildings and hotels
of the insurance companies, with their tens of billions of dollars in assets and their well-compensated executives, who at the end of the day leave for West Hartford, Simsbury, and other lovely suburbs west of the city. There also were the banks that for
years found reasons to abandon low-income areas, redlining them into sure decay.Inside the church, the pastors knew about the two Hartfords.
Source: Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader, p.117-118
Jan 17, 2002
Page last updated: Jul 04, 2012