Crashing the Party, by Ralph Nader: on Welfare & Poverty


Ralph Nader: 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

Ralph Nader: 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

Ralph Nader: 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

  • The above quotations are from Crashing the Party:
    How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President
    Taking on Corporate Governance in an Age of Surrender    , by Ralph Nader.
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2012 Presidential contenders on Welfare & Poverty:
Republicans:
Rep.Newt Gingrich(GA)
Rep.Ron Paul(TX)
Gov.Mitt Romney(MA)
Sen.Rick Santorum(PA) 		Democrats:
Pres.Barack Obama(IL)
V.P.Joe Biden(DE) 		Third Parties:
Green: Gov.Gary Johnson(NM)
AmericansElect: Gov.Buddy Roemer(LA)
>Libertarian: Jill Stein(MA)
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Page last updated: Jul 04, 2012