Ralph Nader's Blog, page 34

Wrecking America news release

WRECKING AMERICA exposes how Trump’s lawbreaking & lies are creating “Fascism 2.0”.

Timed for the Fall Election, coauthors Mark Green and Ralph Nader describe the presidential race as Fascism for some vs. Democracy for all. Book focuses on Lawbreaking, Covid-19, Race in chapters that assess his disinformation topic-by-topic. Authors look ahead to what happens if Trump’s re-selected by Electoral College or loses in a realigning landslide.

In their revealing, updated paperback, Green and Nader explain that “we began our research when it was considered bad form to openly call Trump a liar or Fascist, but now it’s naive not to.” (See: https://bit.ly/3jPwOZN]

“By categorizing his ‘twistiIications’ (a Jefferson coinage) and explaining their cost on our lives,” they write, “we hope that Wrecking America can help voters become their own Trump BS Detectors. Following a string of big insider Trump books, ours is the only accessible paperback that is both readable and usable as a political guide, exposes the cost of his lies on our lives, and describes Trump as not merely a jerk but a menace harming our families.”

“At the same time, we are also the only Trump book that has a chapter appealing directly to 60+ million Trump voters who should consider changing their minds,” added Nader [see “Whose America? Dear Trump Voter, if you’re listening…”]. “Obviously most won’t but if even a small percentage did, it could have an outsized impact on close swing states. Our argument is this: look at the unprecedented number of insiders who work with him, then leave and denounce him; and if you wouldn’t want such a miserable neighbor, why would you want him as your president?”

Nader is a renowned consumer advocate and former four-time presidential candidate and Green the author/editor of 24 books on public affairs and former Public Advocate for New York City. Both are NY Times bestselling authors.

“Today’s national emergency is not ‘a’ Trump lie,” conclude Green and Trump, “but the epic volume of lawbreaking and lies that has led to a fake president running for re-election based on Five Big Lies: Climate violence is a hoax; Covid-19 is petering out; Trump created a great pre-Covid economy (it was Obama); mail-in ballots will ‘rig’ the election for Democrats; and the problem of ‘Law and Order’ in a few cities threatens America more than 401 years of structural racism. As Carl Bernstein said, ‘Trump IS the lie.’”

Wrecking America decodes 21 Trump Tricks designed to let him escape almost any criticism. “But dealing with his outrages one by one rather than as part of his pattern of corruption obscures the reality that the whole is greater than the sum of his parts. While any sole misstatement can be explained away (‘it was a joke!’, ‘the Clintons were worse,’ ‘I didn’t call soldiers “losers,”’ ‘Fake News!’), nothing can explain 20,000 falsehoods, 3200 conflicts-of-interest, and numerous crimes.”

According to the book, Trump apparently thinks that The Rule of Law really means the Law of Rule. As the authors explain, “his approach first asks if the person implicated is Republican or Democrat… White or Black…pro-Trump or never-Trump? If the person is, say, a racist sheriff, adjudicated war criminal, ideological reactionary, Michael Flynn or Roger Stone, they get pardons or compliments. But if the person under scrutiny is Black, Jeff Bezos, or Joe Biden…This is not law but tyranny.”

Instead of proposing an early plan to defeat COVID-19, for example, “Trump resorted to his usual grab bag of tricks to get by politically, which meant not doing good but looking good. Throughout, he admittedly lied about the severity of the pandemic, made panglossian predictions, and found available scapegoats in China/WHO/Obama/Democrats. The result: 100,000 to 150,000 avoidable deaths. Or political homicide.”

What’s the evidence that Trump is sinking into fascism to win and govern? Nader and Green urge readers to “connect these dots: If repeatedly violating the Constitution and laws, demonizing People of Color, stealing votes and elections, abusing the military for partisan ends, encouraging violence and racial strife, trying to block publication of critical books, firing whistleblowers and prosecutors who exposed him, falsifying data by the CDC, FDA, Intel agencies and combining political and economic power into a corporate state isn’t fascism, what would be? Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called Trump’s use of federal troops to attack peaceful protesters ‘fascistic.’”

Green and Nader’s final chapter, “Whose America?”, anticipates a couple dozen ways Trump might try to further destroy democracy to hold onto power in the general election and 77-day interregnum—by seeking to overturn close state losses via discarded mail-in-ballots, martial law and armed supporters in the streets—or by getting more extreme in a second term if he wins.

The coauthors, both lawyers, propose a post-Inauguration Special Counsel to investigate and possibly prosecute the lawlessness of Team Trump or else risk encouraging repetition by a future president by whitewashing Fascism 2.0.

“Are we approaching or in an American Brownshirts moment?,” ask the coauthors. “‘Yes’ if congressional Democrats and the media don’t call out his sprint to combine Mussolini and Monarchy. But ‘no’ if he’s landslided in November. Our best guess: Trump’s wrecking ball will fail to destroy America…but only if we voters can save us citizens.”

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Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control to Corporations?

By Ralph Nader

September 18, 2020

The American people own most of the wealth – private and public – and most of the information in the country. The top one percent do not.

The American people have most of the power in the country. The top one percent do not.

These assertions may surprise you, because the top one percent and the giant corporations work overtime to control what you own. This means they do not have to seize what you own so long as their control provides them with both riches and power over you.

Let’s spell this out with specifics. Our Constitution starts with the words, “We the People…”; it doesn’t start with ‘we the corporations’ or ‘we the Congress’ or ‘we the super-rich.’ The sovereign authority under the Constitution is us; we the people are the bosses. But we give our power away to the Big Boys who run the big companies that control most of our elected politicians. The politicians in turn proceed to corrupt our elections with campaign money, gerrymandering, deceitful ads, voter obstructions, and a totally dominant two-party duopoly. This corporate state destroys competitive democracy which would give our votes meaning, choices, and effectiveness.

Shouldn’t we be discussing why, when we own the vast federal public land, one-third of America – and the vast public airwaves, do we give control of these resources to corporations every day of the year to profit from at our expense?  We give the television and radio stations, that block our voices, free control and use of the airwaves, 24/7. We receive very little in royalties from the energy, mining, timber, and grazing companies extracting huge wealth from our federal lands.

We send our tax dollars to Washington, D.C., and the federal government gives trillions of these dollars to companies in the form of subsidies and bailouts.

Trillions of dollars are devoted to government research and development (R&D), which has built or expanded private companies. These include such industries as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, military weapons, computers, internet, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and containerization.

Our taxpayer-funded R&D is essentially given away free to these for-profit businesses. We the People receive no royalties nor profit-sharing returns on these public investments. Worse, we pay gouging prices for drugs and other products developed with our tax dollars.

We have trillions of dollars in savings and retirement money placed in giant mutual and pension funds. The managers of these institutions make big profits by investing your money in the stock and bond markets. If you controlled these trillions of dollars in stocks and bonds that you own, that is if there was real shareholder and bondholder power, you would control the ownership of all the big companies and turn the tables on the Big Bosses. Polls show a big majority of people think Big Business has too much power and control over us. Nonetheless, we regularly give these plutocrats control over what we own.

We own our personal information. Yet, we give it totally free to the likes of Facebook, Google, Instagram, and YouTube, etc. so they can make trillions of dollars selling data on what we buy, what we like, what we think, and what we’re addicted to in the marketplace. The advertisers then pester us 24/7 and even betray our trust. Imagine Alexa eavesdropping in our homes and businesses. High-tech companies should not be privy to our personal information.

Unfortunately, giving companies our personal information, from which they profit immensely and gouge and penalize us profusely, started long ago. The moment we took out credit cards, for example, we began to lose control of our money and our privacy. With the internet, companies are generating new payment-system controls, with their dictatorial fine-print agreements and never-ending additional surcharges, driven by their greedy overreaches.

People spend lots of time just trying to get through to these companies for refunds, adjustments, corrections, and simple answers to their questions.

Why have we handed over the enormous assets we own to this expanding corporate state? Why have we surrendered to statism or corporate socialism? The corporate “Borg” is sucking the ready availability of the good life, decent, secure livelihoods assured by our collective self-reliance, and the freedom to shape our future out of our political economy.

Why are we allowing the United States – this rich land of ours – to have so many impoverished, powerless people, dominated by the few? With ever greater concentration or powers under corrupt Trumpism and its corporate supremacists,  control of our lives is getting worse.

It starts with us being indoctrinated into being powerless (civic skills and practice are not taught in schools). This leads to the people not taking control of Congress (only 535 of them). We are allowing elections and debates to ignore raising these basic democratic issues of who owns what and who should control our commonwealth.

David Bollier and his colleagues are working to have adults and students learn about the commons – owned by all of us – and the few examples of people sharing in our commonwealth. Through the Alaska Permanent Fund, every Alaskan gets about $2000 a year from the royalties’ oil companies pay for taking the people’s oil from that state.

If you’re interested in reading further about the “commons” we own but do not control go to bollier.org and breakingthroughpower.org. It’s in our hands!

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Statement on the DeFazio Report

The House Transportation Committee report documented serious past failures and cover-ups relating to the Boeing 737 MAX disasters. The report did not address the imminent question of returning the 737 MAX to service. Such a return should never happen without addressing and fixing the basic aerodynamic instabilities that rendered it unairworthy.

The next step, according to the Committee, is to release proposed legislation for regulatory reform and Boeing’s accountability. Over at the Senate, Chairman Roger Wicker has no bill (it was withdrawn) and no report. Boeing owns the Republican-dominated Senate under Mitch McConnell as well as the Department of Transportation run by Secretary Elaine Chao – McConnell’s spouse. Chances for legislation this year are very slim. No wonder Boeing stock went up today, in spite of a devastating report on Boeing’s failings and cover-ups. It has been over 18 months since the second Boeing 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia. Congress is in a historic slow-motion phase of its history. It is up to the air travelers, the airline unions, the families of Boeing’s victims, the consumer groups (such as Flyer Rights and Consumers Union), and the media to keep the spotlight and the pressure on Congress and the FAA.

-Ralph Nader, co-author Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety

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Trump’s Broken Promises to His Voters – He Didn’t Deliver!

By Ralph Nader

September 11, 2020

Trump voters are not inclined to change their minds. Some of them are forever Republicans and will only vote the GOP ticket; they are called hereditary voters. Others can’t stand the Democratic Party nominees, won’t vote for the Libertarian ticket, and will only vote for Trump. Some love Trump because of his anti-immigrant stance, deregulation of law enforcement on businesses, and nominations of anti-choice and right-wing corporatist federal judges.

Yet, polls show that the one area of widespread disappointment among Trump voters (not the rich ones) is that he didn’t deliver the improvements for their livelihoods that he promised in the 2016 campaign. Many Trump voters are willing to overlook Trump’s dangerous lies, coverups, self-enrichment, the surrender of Washington to Wall Street corruption, lethal incompetence, i.e., his bungling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and personal immorality (he has violated seven of the Ten Commandments). But Trump voters expected Trump to do a little bit more to further the legitimate self-interests of the families on Main Street.

Now come two Pulitzer-Prize-winning, famously accurate reporters, Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org, and Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times with lists of Trump’s broken promises. (Smith also mentions some promises Trump tried to keep, such as those which largely favor the wealthy and big businesses).

These include getting out of the Paris Climate Accord and the huge tax cut for himself and other wealthy Americans. But Trump has failed badly on many of his over 200 campaign promises in 2016 that were directed to working people.

Trump promised to create 25 million jobs over 10 years – 2.5 million jobs a year. Even before Covid-19, Trump didn’t come close, because, in large part, he didn’t push for a major infrastructure jobs bill in Congress to repair and upgrade public works in every American community.

Remember Trump’s repeated promise to bring back 7.7 million lost manufacturing jobs? At its high last February, Trump’s economy and trade policies didn’t begin to deliver. In fact, Trump encouraged Apple CEO Tim Cook to keep the company’s Chinese factories by waving tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Apple phones and computers imported from China.

Trump promised to raise wages then proceeded to keep the frozen federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour. Under Trump’s watch, taking inflation and loss of benefits into account, Smith concludes that “workers are net losers.” But not the CEOs like the head of Walmart who makes about $12,000 per hour and benefits from Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy!

Smith refers to Princeton economist, “Alan Blinder, who pointed to academic studies that show ‘For the first time in the past hundred years, the working class today pays higher tax rates than billionaires.’” Thanks to Trump.

Kristoff has reported additional broken promises – from Mexico not paying a peso for the “wall” to Trump inciting violence, breaking laws, and bringing disorder to our streets, to altering “the terms of student loan repayments” adding $200 billion over a decade; (he promised the opposite to “our students who are drowning in debt”) to repealing and replacing “disastrous Obamacare,” Trump has failed miserably.

On July 27, 2018, Trump said, “You’re going to have a great health care at a much lower price. It will cost the United States nothing.” Sure, tell that to the frontline Covid-19 workers who are being gouged when tested and still do not have adequate protective equipment under Trumpism. Many have no health insurance or are underinsured.

Two weeks before the 2016 election, Trump said he was “proposing a package of ethics reforms to make our government honest once again.” Instead, Trump has given the American people the most relentlessly corrupt regime in reported American history. From the White House to key government agencies, Trump and his cronies daily twist and break the law.

The list of broken promises could fill volumes. Compare Trump’s words and deeds and misdeeds. “We will honor the American people with the truth and nothing else.” (Over 20,000 false or misleading statements so far by the Washington Post’s reliable count). “We will end our chronic trade deficits.” (The trade deficit is bigger now than in Obama’s last year in office). That means the US is exporting jobs.

In contrast to Trump’s pledge to get rid of the $19 trillion National debt “fairly quickly,” he doesn’t care at all about piling huge debts on the children and grandchildren of America so that he doesn’t have to repeal his enormous tax cut for the wealthy and stop massive corporate welfare handouts and bailouts.

If you can endure more examples of deceitful Donald’s seduction of believing voters, go to Smith’s and Kristoff’s websites (http://reclaimtheamericandream.org/ and https://www.nytimes.com/column/nicholas-kristof).

While visiting Smith’s website note that one of his team’s most important objectives is to “introduce you to multiple issues, multiple strategies, multiple organizations that can help you start a reform movement in your own community or join forces with others.”

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Ralph Nader Statement About Kevin Zeese

Monday, September 7, 2020

Democracies don’t produce many extraordinary civic leaders like Kevin Zeese. He was super-passionate for justice for all and he had deep substantive knowledge about the law, the political economy and the environment. Kevin linked this knowledge to bold organizing and relentlessly put many elevating forces in motion that will continue and grow as his legacy.

Kevin’s work will inspire many people to carry on his fight for a better society.

Our sympathies are with Margaret Flowers and his family.

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Can the Democratic Party Rev the Engines to Topple Tyrant Trump?

By Ralph Nader

September 4, 2020

Why can’t the Democratic Party landslide the serial corporate criminal and government outlaw Donald Trump? He is a servant of Wall Street and, by his deeds favoring the powerful, a proven “enemy of the people.”

Why has the Democratic Party been losing again and again at the federal and state level to the worst, cruelest, soft on corporate corruption, war-mongering, anti-worker Republican Party in history?

The answers are many. The Democratic Party is indentured to monied interests and is incapable of taking responsibility for its losses and mistakes. Democratic operatives resist organized grassroots pressure and the party excludes/punishes any dissent inside its ranks. The shrinking trade unions that have historically pushed the Democratic Party are increasingly content with crumbs for workers and afraid of union members who have swallowed the Trump lies.

The two-party duopoly and an electoral system that obstructs challengers from smaller parties lets the Democratic Party stagnate. Unfortunately, the fate of the nation and our Constitutional Republic is in its hands. Joe Biden should be thirty points ahead in the polls against the delusional, falsifying, lawless, selected occupant of the White House who spends most of his time tweeting insults, lies, and fictional accusations when he isn’t watching the Fox News adoring bloviators. Instead, Biden’s lead is in single digits and he is having a hard time getting the offensive Trump on the defense. Here are some suggestions for the Democratic Party’s quivering leaders:

Organize a mass demand for Trump/Pence to Step Aside and let experienced pandemic scientists and managers run the federal response to Covid-19, saving tens of thousands of lives and allowing the economy to recover. Trump’s Virus, spreading daily owing to Trump’s bungling, fabricating, quackering, chaos, denials, and grinding government scientists through his ignorant, ego-obsessed shredders, requires such a demand. It will encourage more people and state and local governments to be more assertive and insist on professional management and critical coordination by Washington.

There are many Republicans in Congress who privately dread how the daily Trump Virus Show is diminishing their own electoral poll numbers.
Stop Coddling, Aiding, and Abetting Corporate Crooks who are cheating and endangering the health/safety of red state and blue state Americans alike. Demand Law and Order enforcement and greater funding for the corporate crime police. By massively dismantling government law enforcement, Trump is intensifying the corporate crime wave with subsidies, handouts, bailouts, and huge tax escapes. How’s that for putting Big Business over Main Street? Let them steal, let them pollute, let them park their profits in tax havens abroad are elements of the Trumpian mantra which he brazenly applies to his own business interests.
Stop Trump from committing big-time violations of our Constitution and our federal laws in order to deepen his dictatorial regime. Trump illegally uses federal employees and property to promote his political campaign – a federal crime under the Hatch Act. He seizes the “power of the purse” from Congress, spending money for unauthorized domestic and foreign objectives thereby violating the criminal statute known as the Anti-Deficiency Act. He fires prosecutors and Inspectors General closing in on his and his crony’s crimes and egregious misdeeds.

Take on Trump when he declares phony national emergencies to grab more dictatorial powers making him the largest national emergency of them all. Trump makes it easy for the Democrats when he declares “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Nixon was about to be impeached and convicted in 1974, before he resigned, for a tiny fraction of what the Democrats are letting Trump get away with.
Announce it is time to Vote Trump Out and Vote in the long-overdue Pay Raise. Ending the freeze on the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage and raising some 25 million workers’ wages to $15 per hour would answer the question: “Whose Side are You On?” The House of Representatives has passed a $15 an hour minimum wage bill, though with a long implementation schedule. The Republican Senate, however, blocks passage and it has blocked the $600 a week relief payment to many millions of Americans without jobs due to Trump’s Virus.

Shouldn’t the Democrats make these contrasting, notorious corporate-driven cruelties more vivid, and more front and center? Repetition is what reaches people who are numb to years of empty rhetoric and who want authenticity. Comparing Walmart’s CEO making $12,000 an hour while many of his workers languish well under $15 per hour sharpens what should be the authentic contrast between the Republicans and Democrats.
Make Mitch McConnell, the self-styled “Grim Reaper” toady of big business, who buries scores of good bills passed by the House, the number two Ogre in the campaign. The evil McConnell is the worst suffocator of necessities for the American people, their children, and retirees in American congressional history. The Democrats have listed scores of bills under McConnell’s chokehold – such as protections for poor children, fragile worker and retiree pensions (including those for coal miners in his state of Kentucky), lowering drug prices and expanding health care coverage, controlling climate disasters – to name a few. Yet, once again, they have not made “Moscow Mitch’s” record (including blocking safeguards for election security and voter’s rights) vocal, vivid, and front of center. The Democrats certainly have the campaign money to do so.

The arrogant McConnell is up for re-election against a hyper-cautious conservative Democratic opponent. Democrats should take McConnell’s pompous boast “The one thing I get to do that the other 99 /Senators/ don’t get to do, is decide what we’re going to do.” and flood Kentucky with the truth about this malicious, destructive tyrant of the Senate and his 200 confirmed right-wing and corporate judges. McConnell’s lapdog delivery of the Senate has made possible Trump’s monarchical drive to repeal the American Revolution against Kings and for “a new birth of freedom.”
Last November, 61% of women in a national CNN poll wanted Trump impeached and convicted. Certainly on their minds was Trump’s long history of being a publicly bragging sexual predator and a terrible example for boys and young men. Over twenty brave women have come forward with credible accusations of sexual assaults by lying Donald. Why aren’t the Democrats making this a campaign issue and making Trump pay a political price for such disgusting outrages? Democrats can turn the Republican Party’s campaigns on “values” against Trump and his apologists.
The Democratic Party must choose to stand with the people by presenting a solemn covenant that improves all the livelihoods of all Americans and addresses the widespread anxiety, dread, and fear where they live, work, and raise their families. Help make people’s dreams of a secure, fulfilling future a reality. This specific covenant would show that the Democratic Party stands for much more specific changes than not being Trump. Make it vivid and memorable, including empowering the people in distinct ways.

If you like these suggestions, add some of your own, and call or email Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the House Democratic Caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries.

To Contact Chairman Tom Perez

Visit: https://democrats.org/contact-us/

or call (202) 863-8000

To Contact Members of Congress, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121

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Democrats Must Demolish Trump’s Delusional Law-Breaking Dystopia

By Ralph Nader

August 28, 2020

Donald Trump continually breaks multiple laws. Yet the serial lawbreaking, lying Trump is playing the “law and order” card against street protestors reacting to fatal cases of police brutality. Armed pro-Trump provocateurs are attending civic protests and generating casualties and property damage, as was the case recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Trump uses such mayhem to attack Joe Biden and his hyped “radical leftists.” This is grotesque, but then that is how corrupt, dangerous, devious Donald operates when cornered by falling polls, and growing opposition from leading retired military leaders and national intelligence officials. Trump’s attack on the U.S. Postal Service is also producing a nationwide backlash and even red-state conservatives are troubled by delays in deliveries of medicine and Social Security checks.

Devious Donald has a practice of doing exactly what he mostly falsely accuses his opponents of doing. It is puzzling, though not surprising, that the Democrats have not repeatedly restated the highlights from corrupt Donald’s rap sheet. Shining a spotlight on Trump, with specific indictments, would demonstrate that his actions suspend law and order in favor of dictates.

Every day Trump is committing crimes and civil violations of federal law. Every day Trump is violating the Constitution with serious impeachable offenses (December 18, 2019, Congressional Record H-12197). Do the Democrats think that the American people do not care about the rule of law and observing the Constitution that are the bulwarks against destructive dictatorial power by an ego-obsessed delusional wannabe monarch?

Yesterday’s acceptance speech to the Republican Party by Trump turned the White House into a federal crime scene. The Hatch Act states that having federal employees enable, with federal property, the political campaigns of the President is a criminal violation with serious jail time. Why? Because Congress did not want the power of the federal government to be used to further an incumbent’s political objectives against challengers. When Trump ordered Treasury Department staff to place his signature on the memo line of millions of relief checks, that was also a criminal violation of the Hatch Act. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump toady, is not about to prosecute. Barr refuses to respond to demands that he investigate this and other Trump administration violations of law.

But lawless Donald has gotten away with more serious violations such as seizing, unconstitutionally and illegally, the Congressional power of the purse and the power to tax in our Constitution. Trump moves money for purposes, not approved by Congress, from one agency to another, as for building the wall, thereby violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, which carries a criminal penalty.

Trump has defied over 100 Congressional subpoenas and more formal demands for his subordinates to testify. These are first-class impeachable offenses. The Founding Fathers provided Congress with the power to compel the disclosure of information that is critical to all other Congressional authorities.

President Richard Nixon was on the way, in 1974, to being impeached and convicted in the Senate, during the Watergate scandal, for defying just one subpoena and one count of obstruction of justice. Trump obstructs justice, the processes of law enforcement, all the time, as documented in part by the Mueller Report.

Trump talks about supporting law enforcement on the streets, while inciting his supporters to violence, yet he fires and intimidates prosecutors and Inspectors General who investigate or expose violations of law by Trump and his Trumpsters. Both his current government and personal businesses, as well as his previous ongoing personal business and taxation entanglements are under investigation by federal and state prosecutors.

The list goes on. Trump unlawfully nullifies statutory mandates by executive orders. His failure to enforce environmental, health, worker safety, and consumer protection laws is a direct violation of federal laws and the Constitution. He is dismantling these protections, driving out civil servants and scientists, and abandoning law and order for corporate crooks by defunding the corporate crime police.

Trump’s outlaw regime brags about destroying controls on pesticides (especially harmful to children), coal ash, and other sickening emissions that will attack the health of all Americans.  Trump and his henchman also recently shredded controls on the release of methane, a global warming gas many times worse than carbon dioxide.

Why don’t the Democrats use what even the Wall Street Journal has regularly exposed about Trump’s riddance of law and order to allow runaway big businesses to cheat, pollute and overcharge people, as well as to defraud the federal government big time with procurement rackets? Trump is pushing for 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance, with no substitute proposal, and weakening nursing home safety regulations – in the middle of a giant pandemic!

One answer may be that the Democrats have done some similar things when in power, especially in the area of unauthorized wars and mass surveillance of the people. However, Trump sinks to utterly unprecedented levels of outlawry and openly embraces the monarchical boast that “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

The daily tweeting, lying King, the man who boasted about abusing women, and behaving as a sexual predator, is a ruler who brings out the worst from this country. Trump deliberately divides America and stokes conflict and disruption. Trump is a reality denier and chaotic bungler who is aiding and abetting the climate crisis and preventing scientists and public health managers from controlling Covid-19, the cause of the worst global pandemic in our lifetimes. He is also blocking relief for a crashing economy and still escapes accountability.

The Democrats are not matching Trump’s own or his Party’s propaganda. In 2004, author, and former prominent Republican political analyst Kevin Phillips, argued that the Democrats go for the capillaries while the GOP goes for the jugular. By not going full force against dictator Trump, the Democrats are not overwhelmingly countering the most criminally, unconstitutionally culpable, vulnerable, and dislikable president in US history. With just over two months until the November 3rd election, a strong, independent, civic drive to oppose and vote out Trump/Pence is required. Standing on the sidelines hoping that the Democrats will retire the failed gambling czar didn’t work in 2016 and it won’t work in 2020 either.

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Democratic Convention: New Faces, Similar Policies but Sharp Contrast with Trumpism

By Ralph Nader

August 21, 2020

A national political nominating convention, as the Democrats have just completed, is, to be sure, a mutual admiration event. A steady stream of speakers led to the finale with the acceptance speech by the presidential candidate, Joe Biden. But the Convention has another declared purpose:  to show the country what the Democratic Party stands for and the future it wishes to shape for the American people.

Repetition is expected and it was no surprise that speaker after speaker attacked “inequality” and the injustices of discrimination against minorities, women, and the poor.

Intriguingly was what the three-day talkfest left out.  The Democratic Party avoided the issue of what to do about the gross maldistribution of power between the tiny few and the rest of the people in America.  This glaring omission signaled that the aggressive progressive wing of the Party – led by Bernie Sanders and youthful incumbents in Congress could have their priorities excluded with impunity by the Party bosses. The overriding desire for unity against Trump became the muzzle for most of the progressive delegates.

When unity, as if any Democrat had anything else in mind in stressing the defeat of dangerous and corrupt Donald, becomes a tool to demand unanimity on policies, alas, the Party is up to its old establishment ways.

The Biden/Harris Democratic Party looks like it will repeat the Clinton/Obama practice of avoiding major hurdles to peace and justice. Here are some glaring omissions:

Trump shreds the Constitution daily with numerous impeachable offenses. He is getting away with these abuses because of the AWOL Congress’s indifference to his unprecedented dictatorial seizure of legislative authority, including his recent brazen executive usurpations of Congress’s power of the purse and taxation. Some of Trump’s acts include criminal violations of federal law.
The gross distortion of the federal budget with over 50% of operating expenditures going to the Pentagon, the bloated military contractors, and the pursuit of a boomeranging, draining Empire. Speakers could have felt secure by quoting President Eisenhower’s farewell warnings regarding the military-industrial complex. Empires starve their country’s necessities and the U.S. is no exception to such misallocation of funds.
There was much talk of expanding social safety net programs, but little or no discussion about how to pay for these vital programs, but no demand, other than a passing reference in Biden’s speech, to repeal the $2 trillion Trump tax cut for the super-wealthy and giant corporations like CEO Tim Cook and Apple. There was no demand to cut enormous corporate welfare payouts – crony capitalism and no push for a financial sales tax on Wall Street trading, notwithstanding recent support for that huge source of new revenue from Michael Bloomberg and Wall Streeter Robert Rubin.
The corporate crime wave keeps roiling higher and higher with immense costs to regular people and their families. It would have been easy and popular to call for more law and order and adequate enforcement budgets to catch corporate crooks. Billing fraud and abuse, just in the health care industry, costs consumers and taxpayers one billion dollars a day!
One would think that the unconstitutional, illegal, mass surveillance by federal agencies, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, would be worth a shout out. Privacy destruction is on people’s minds. Is this deemed too controversial for the Democratic Party?
What about telling people about changes the Democrats want to make in the country’s foreign policy? What about the role of monopolistic corporations escaping taxes by using overseas tax havens, fomenting trouble, and exploiting indigenous people in foreign lands?
Wouldn’t you think Convention speakers would report the crimes, misdeeds, and corporate takeovers of our government’s agencies and departments by Trump’s big-business henchmen? Look at EPA, OSHA, the CFPB, and the Departments of Interior, Labor, Agriculture, and other health/safety regulatory agencies and the life-saving and economic protections Trump and his cronies have shut down. In Minneapolis on Monday, Trump, in one fast minute, strung together his serial madcap attacks on the Democrats, who in the hours at their Convention, did not adequately return the favor.
It would have been extraordinary had the Democrats addressed the Trump voters, especially those blue-collar workers who left the Democratic Party because the Party deserted them on economic/trade matters. Barack Obama did mention “white factory workers” whose jobs were displaced. But the tens of millions of low-income whites did not hear the Democrats directly saying much about working-class grievances.

It is standard practice for the presidential nominee’s team to clear drafts of all Convention speeches to make sure none stray too much from the permissible positions and non-positions of the candidate. If Joe Biden followed this practice, then what Convention speakers said and did not say reflects Mr. Biden’s range of proposed action and inaction.

However, the Democratic Convention’s embrace of replacing Trump’s deliberate chaos and confusion with recovery and rebuilding the country did seem to come through persistently over three days. The Democrats presented a contrast to the crazed, bungling, ego-maniacal Trump spewing hate, inciting violence, and emitting hourly lies.

The post Democratic Convention: New Faces, Similar Policies but Sharp Contrast with Trumpism first appeared on Ralph Nader.

Needed: Indicators for Measuring Injustice and Societal Decay

By Ralph Nader

August 14, 2020

Economic indicators – data points, trends, and micro-categories – are the widgets of the big information industry. By contrast, indicators for our society’s democratic health are not similarly compiled, aggregated, and reported. Its up and down trends are presented piecemeal and lack quantitative precision.

We can get the process started and lay the basis for qualitative and quantitative refinement. Years ago, when we started “re-defining progress” and questioning the very superficial GDP and its empirical limitations, professional economists took notice. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, economists cling to the yardsticks that benefit and suit the plutocrats and CEOs of large corporations.

Here are my offerings in the expectation that readers will add their own measures:

A society is decaying when liars receive mass media attention while truth-tellers are largely ignored. Those who are chronically wrong with outrageous and baseless predictions are featured on news broadcasts, op-ed pages, and as convention and conference speakers. On the other hand, those who forewarn and are proven to be accurate are not regaled, but instead, they are excluded from the media spotlight and significant gatherings. Consider the treatment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz post-Iraq invasion, compared to people like Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn who factually warned Washington not to attack illegally a country that didn’t threaten us.
A society is decaying when rampant corruption is tolerated, and its perpetrators are rewarded with money, votes, and praise. When President Eisenhower’s chief of staff, former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams, accepted a vicuña coat from a textile manufacturer, he was forced to resign. The daily corruption of Trump and the Trumpsters towers beyond measure over Adams’ indiscretion. Yet calls for Trump and his cronies to resign are rare and anemic. Tragically, the law and the norms of decency have done little to curb the corrupt, criminogenic, and criminal excesses of Trump & company. Even government prosecutors and inspectors generals have been fired, chilled, and sidelined by Trump and his toady,  Attorney General Barr.
A society is decaying when a growing number of people believe in fantasies instead of realities. Social media makes this an ever more serious estrangement from what is actually happening in the country and in the world. Believing in myths and falsehoods leads to political servitude, economic disruption, and social dysfunction. The corrupt concentration of power ensues.
An expanding economy focusing increasingly on ‘wants and whims’ while ignoring the meeting of basic ‘needs and necessities’ shatters societal cohesiveness and deepens miseries of many people. Adequate housing, healthcare, food, public services, education, mass transit, health & safety standards, and environmental protections are the prerequisites for a humane democracy. The economy is in shambles for tens of millions of Americans, including hungry children. Minimal economic security is beyond the reach of tens of millions of people in our country.
With few exceptions, the richer the wealthy become, the more selfish they behave, from severely diminished contributions to charities to the failure to exert leadership to reverse the breakdown of society. Take all the failures of the election machinery from obstructing voters to simply counting the votes honestly with paper records. The U.S. Senate won’t vote to give the states the $4 billion needed for administering the coming elections despite the Covid-19-driven need for expanded voting by mail. The Silicon Valley, undertaxed, mega-billionaires could make a $4 billion patriotic donation to safeguard the voting process in November and not even feel it.
Rampant commercialism knowing no boundaries or restraints even to protect young children is running roughshod over civic values. Every major religion has warned about giving too much power to the merchant class going back over 2000 years. In our country, justice arrived after commercial greed was subordinated to humane priorities such as abolishing child labor and requiring crashworthy cars, cleaner air, water, and safer workplaces. Mercantile values produce predictable results, from excluding civic groups from congressional hearings and the mass media to letting corporations control what the people own such as the vast public lands and public airwaves.
Then there is the American Empire astride the globe, enabled by an AWOL Congress and propelled by the avaricious military-industrial complex. In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower presciently forewarned that “[W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” All Empires devour themselves until they collapse on the countries of their origins. Over 55% of the federal government’s operating spending goes to the Pentagon and its associated budgets. The military-industrial complex increasingly leads to quagmires and creates adversaries abroad, as it starves the social safety net budgets in our country. Our country’s military spending with all its waste is surging and unaudited. The U.S. spent more than $732 billion on direct defense spending in 2019; this is more than the next ten countries with the largest military expenditures.
A society that requires its people to incur crushing debt to survive, while relying on casinos and other forms of gambling to produce jobs, is going backward into the future.
Public officials who repeatedly obstruct voters from having their votes received and counted accurately and in a timely fashion continue with impunity to try to steal elections. Then Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (now governor of Georgia) “stole” the election in 2018 from gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Abrams said Kemp was an “architect of voter suppression.” And that because Kemp was the Georgia Secretary of State during the race, he was “the referee, the contestant and the scorekeeper” for the 2018 gubernatorial election. He escaped accountability. Democracy decays.
Access to justice is diminishing. Tort law – the law of wrongful injuries – has been weakened in many states with arbitrary caps on damages for the most serious injuries. It also is harder than ever for citizens to get through to real people in government agencies.

Time to conclude and look forward to your indicators of societal decay. Send them to info@csrl.org or CSRL, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036. The more Americans know where their country is heading, the more they may just want to work for a better future by participating in or supporting the movements dedicated to turning our democracy around.

A Memorable Statement to Contemplate

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King Jr.