Ralph Nader's Blog, page 38

Out of the Coronavirus Crisis Can Come Efficient Historic Changes for Justice

By Ralph Nader

March 27, 2020

Many of us have heard that the Chinese character for “crisis” is also the character for “opportunity.” During the coronavirus crisis, we have a duty to apply political solutions and emerge much superior than before the pandemic struck an unready country. The time for serious civic reforms is now! Here are five fundamental opportunities for structural reforms and transformations:

1. The U.S. needs a permanent framework of explicit Congressional standards and accountability procedures for gigantic corporate welfare grants, loans, and other guarantees especially during emergencies. Without these standards, the U.S. government has repeatedly bailed out capitalism with “socialism for the rich.”

The most recent example is the $2.2 trillion salvation package for big corporations, small businesses, local and state governments, workers, and a little for consumers. The bailout package is nearly 1,000 pages of vague language, loopholes, and other gateways for waste, fraud, and corruption.

To put it mildly, Congress is granting the Treasury Department huge discretion to provide more taxpayer welfare to the business community. We know how this is going to turn out in the highly partisan, corporatist, secretive Administration of Donald Trump.

The same lack of standards and openness afflicts the corporate “socialism” of the Federal Reserve even more deeply. The Federal Reserve has occult ways of incurring debt and printing money to save the big boys of Wall Street and those in their dependent commercial circles.

2. Congress must be held to a higher standard and must carry out its constitutional duties. Congress is the duly authorized branch of the government to establish clear public missions and exercise prudent oversight of government initiatives. But as constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein, has testified repeatedly – “Congress is an inkblot,” abdicating its constitutional duties either to the Executive Branch, the courts, or to the ether.

Working a 2½ day week, when not on recess, Congress has less time to conduct rigorous appropriations and oversight hearings to be followed by competently drafted legislation.

So pathetic is Congress that since 1992, it has allowed the Defense Department to violate the requirement for annual auditable budgets—with impunity. Congress has rubberstamped trillions of dollars for the Iraq and Afghan wars under a special escape from customary Senate and House hearings. The military contracts with giant arms contractors are a wildly out-of-control fleece-fest marked by greased palms and golden handshakes.

And most troubling, Congress is complicit in endless wars, neither to be declared since World War II, nor to be evaluated regularly by the most powerful of our three branches of government.

3. We must never allow ourselves to be driven into a state of perilous domestic unpreparedness due to the grotesque misallocation of federal funds behind the warfare state. The Empire’s insatiable demands worldwide has created new enemies and starved funding for domestic necessities. Of the federal government’s operation budgets (excluding self-funded insurance and social security) nearly 70 percent goes to the military budget, interest on deferred debt for wars, the Veterans Administration, and pieces of other Departments such as Energy and Homeland Security.

The coronavirus assault finds the mighty, often-forewarned U.S.A. without adequate emergency planning for a pandemic. The U.S. has been unable to ready hospitals, add skilled staff, and conduct critical pandemic medical research. U.S. hospitals even lack basic equipment such as ventilators, facemasks, and – astonishingly, swabs. U.S. readiness requires a social safety net like what citizens in other Western countries have. It means more self-reliant production in the U.S. for pharmaceuticals (now outsourced heavily to China and India) along with the production of all basic necessities. The rules of corporate-managed “free trade,” have left us without a national defense from corporate avarice run amok.

The days of abandoning crucial elements of our protective economic sovereignty must be declared over once and for all. Our country must take care of itself right down to producing critical swabs, now rationed by a dominant Italian manufacturer besieged with virus-induced needs in Italy.

4. The media has to be smarter, dig deeper, and not wallow in official source journalism, while ignoring the knowledge and experience of citizen groups. Members of the media spend too much time ditto-heading each other, interviewing their own reporters, and not covering the daily power struggle between the haves and the have nots. Instead, some editors pursue long investigative features in search of prizes. Unfortunately, too many (but not all) journalists are content to rehash the news of the day with establishment talking heads.

Like politicians running for public office, the mass media mostly ignores the devastating impact on our country of the devouring, corrosive, burgeoning military-industrial complex (remember President Eisenhower’s warning) desperately looking for enemies abroad to justify their gigantic contracts.

5. The foundation on which all of the above relies— is the citizenry. Focusing on the 535 members of the Congress, a mere one percent or less of citizens forming Congressional watchdog groups over their two Senators and Representatives in every Congressional District can regain command of Congress. Only through citizen action will Congress perform its constitutional duties and turn the ship of state from corporatism to a functioning democracy.

In my small paperback, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier than We Think, I outline specific, modest actions citizens can take to laser-beam focus back home on their legislators. What is needed is a left/right alliance on many fundamental changes. Such a latent, converging alliance, where people live, work, and raise their families, is politically unstoppable.

Marshaling decisive public opinion can overwhelm the divide-and-rule tactics of manipulative plutocrats. It happened before in our history and it can happen again in major ways—starting small and building quickly in each District.

Wide reaching, predictable crises, such as the coronavirus, invite long-overdue advances in the evolution of democratic societies. These include full Medicare for all, living wages, and law and order for big business. We need to make the most of these life-sustaining opportunities. Right now!

Please visit SinglepayerAction.org, Fight for $15, and Citizen.org.

For America’s Urgent Health and Safety, Trump Needs to Resign!

By Ralph Nader

March 20, 2020

Leaning on sober-minded experts in infectious diseases at his daily news conferences, Trump is frantically trying to look good. But the old delusionary Trump keeps resurfacing. On Monday, he rated his coronavirus performance at a perfect ten. On Tuesday, he lied to the public about his knowing it was a pandemic “long before it was called a pandemic.” The facts are just the opposite. On February 28th, Trump called COVID-19 a Democratic hoax (See the March 18, 2020 article in the New York Times).

Trump is unable to accept the ferocious reality of this pandemic.

Donald J. Trump is so consumed by his all-defining ego as to be occupationally insane. He is imperiling the public health of the entire country. If Trump endangered his family as he has endangered the country, he would be institutionalized. Again and again, Trump replaces realities with fantasies. He fibs, flails, fails, scapegoats, and never admits he was wrong or mistaken. Trump insists that the media heap undeserved praise on him, and solicits fawning, obsequious compliments from his cabinet members and staff. He just cannot absorb essential information.

Trump’s negligence is even worse than is often recognized. In 2018, his White House’s National Security Council disbanded the pandemic response team after Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who headed the program, was told to leave his position. Last week, Trump vacuously said he didn’t know that this happened. Even though, the press had repeatedly reported Trump’s decision, Trump refused to take any responsibility. Trump insanely cut USAID’s tiny Predict Program tracking infectious diseases, while bulking up the bloated military weapons budget. Stockpiling redundant nuclear bombs but not precious medical equipment and facilities.

It is clear that Trump’s failed administration is responsible for our staggering unreadiness as the current catastrophe metastasizes, leaving America greatly vulnerable. But Trump doesn’t see it that way. When asked about the role he played in the U.S. government’s gross failure to anticipate and contain coronavirus, Trump responded, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Trump is crazily still pressing to weaken nursing home regulations designed to reduce deadly infections among millions of elderly residents. He stubbornly persists even after COVID-19 interrupted his golf game. He hates these rules because Obama issued them – his vendetta against Obama is all-consuming.

One of Trump’s biggest goals is to get rid of Obamacare without any replacement plan. When Democrats repeatedly stopped his efforts in Congress, Trump decided to turn to a prolonged court case. Would a rational president mindlessly cut desperately needed healthcare coverage for thirty million Americans during a pandemic? The potential victims even include Trump’s own supporters!

The corporations now want varieties of bailouts because of the virus crisis, and Trump and the Republicans are pouring Niagara’s of red ink into the federal budget. Yet Trump and his congressional cronies continue to starve the IRS that is unable to recover over $400 billion in uncollected taxes every year because of its inadequate budget. The IRS budget is lower than it was in 2011 and lack of funding has forced layoffs of thousands of employees. It is impossible for the IRS to properly audit many global corporations or even respond to inquiring taxpayers without long delays.

Would a sane president be fanatically disabling disease and injury prevention programs at federal agencies and boast about such “deregulation”? Trump continues to favor crooked/for-profit universities that rip off students and leave them impoverished with debt.

It gets worse. Year after year, Trump tried to cut the budgets of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, and the US contribution to the World Health Organization, including their pandemic prevention work. This is criminal negligence. His recent federal budget sent to Congress on February 10, 2020 still advocated these capricious cuts, along with more money for the bloated Pentagon budget than asked for by the Generals.

Last week, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, called for President Trump to resign. (You can see his statement at Citizen.org).

Lunging between vicious vitriol and manipulative flattery, Trump never did know how to get out of the holes he dug. Here is how to get him out of this one: he should be a patriot for the sake of America and just resign. This is not the time for Captains Queeg or Ahab. The ship of state is sailing toward disaster and the President is incapable of transforming his temperamental dysfunctions. (See: Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t by Mark Green and Ralph Nader).

The Federal Reserve Dictatorship Runs Amok Against Savers

By Ralph Nader

March 18, 2020

If you are a saver in a money market account or in a bank, you’ve already noticed your dwindling interest income as interest rates have been at their lowest in modern American history. Well, brace yourself. Your saving account has just become little more than a lock box, thanks to the supreme dictatorship of the Federal Reserve.

On Sunday, March 15, The Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates to “near zero.”

After ignoring the largely unproductive spiral in corporate debt, now a staggering $9.3 trillion, the risk of a domino effect from underwater “zombie companies” is pushing the Fed toward an orgy of printing money for an anticipatory bailout of profitable corporations – not depleted savers.

The Federal Reserve is our version of what other countries call a Central Bank. The Fed is not funded by Congress; its budget comes primarily from interest on government securities and fees from financial institutions. Bankers influence who gets appointed to its Board of Governors. Bankers can also elect three directors directly to the boards of the Fed’s regional Boards.

The Fed decides in secret the fate of the monetary policy, which includes the interest rates paid on your savings. There are no public hearings or open dockets for submission of views.  No real explanations by the Fed; just dictates. It is a government of its own inside our government – the epitome of corporate socialism.

The President nominates members to the Board of Governors and they have to be confirmed by the Senate. This is almost an automatic process by a supine Senate. These nominated “governors” and Chairman Jerome H. Powell have allowed themselves to be publically bullied by Trump who, as a failed lifelong debtor, wants zero interest rates.

The Fed has no regard for the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments taken from one hundred million unorganized savers who have their savings in Treasury bonds, banks, and money market accounts. Now trillions of dollars’ worth of interest rates are getting “near zero.” What a blow by the Trumped Fed reducing interest rates from about 2.25% – 2.5% to near zero in five dictatorial steps over the past 14 months.

The big Fed fib is that this cut in interest rates will stimulate a shaken economy buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic. How? By reducing mortgage rates and other costs of borrowing. Well, the last interest rate cut by the Fed saw mortgage rates actually increase. Moreover, the Fed’s move doesn’t affect the sky-high credit card interest rates on unpaid balances, the horrifically gouging “pay-day loan” and “rent-to-own” rackets and the towering interest rates charged by lenders for student loans. There is no Fed regulation of usurious interest rates by profiteering lenders.

What harms the economy is reduced interest income for savers that in turn cuts down on consumer demand.

So what is the Fed up to? Juicing the stock market and big finance is the narcotic offered to the executive suite speculators. To enhance further its credentials as the aider and abettor of crony capitalism, the Fed is buying $700 billion in government securities and will be increasing “its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $500 billion and its holdings of agency mortgage-backed securities by at least $200 billion” (See: Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement, March 15, 2020). At the same time, the Fed is reducing bank reserve requirement ratios to zero percent and letting banks tap into the Fed’s discount window at ridiculously tiny interest rates. The average interest on millions of student loans is 5.8%.

On Sunday, when no one was looking, the Fed imperiously announced its decision to hold interest rates near zero “until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goals.” That is a very nebulous standard. Congress doesn’t establish any standards for the Fed except the vague mission of advancing employment and maintaining a stable monetary system.

The Fed has its own inscrutable language. “Quantitative easing,” is jargon for printing trillions of dollars in liquid money to lift stock markets and big banks. What the Fed doesn’t want to explain is how boosting the “paper economy” and tolerating trillions of dollars in unstable corporate debt – some incurred for unproductive stock buybacks – helps the common worker.

Pension funds, conservatively invested, can’t begin to earn the interest rates called for by the actuarial tables for payouts. So, backed up against the wall, pension funds dive into riskier stock investments and derivatives for higher returns which bring their own perils in case of stock market collapses.

The Fed has lots of explaining to do for the public in plain language. But why bother? As described by William Greider, in his classic book, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, the Fed can do pretty much what the financial industry wants it to do. For all the help the Fed gives to the unrepentant speculative financial industry, it does not ask for anything in return for the huge bailouts that would help the common folk. “Reciprocity” is outside of the Fed’s self-defined dictionary.

After all, the Fed does nothing about rampant speculation and staggering debt until it sees a “liquidity problem” (a.k.a. “the greedy big boys got themselves into a fix”) and then it rushes to inject massive sums of liquidity into the economy as relief. And the self-inflicted cycle of government guaranteed corporate greed and abuse of power starts all over again.

Remarkably, groups like Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America are not fighting for the one hundred million small and mid-size savers who are being taken to the cleaners and have no voice whatsoever in the Fed dictatorship.

Trump Minimizing and Sugarcoating Coronavirus Perils

By Ralph Nader

March 13, 2020

Donald Trump can’t fake his way through the coronavirus. It’s spreading and doesn’t respond to his delusions. Donald is flailing, failing, fibbing, stumbling, and scapegoating. With the stock market collapsing and the economy shaking, Donald fears defeat in November. Trump is a daily clear and present danger and he is the worst person to handle the COVID-19 crisis.

Last weekend, Trump and Mike Pence met with Brazilian officials at Mar-a-Lago, after which Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for COVID-19. Despite his potential exposure, Trump refuses to take the test for coronavirus. He should take paid sick leave and let competent, experienced people take the reins to combat the virus.

“Be calm,” he says, “it will go away.” “This is like the flu.” On February 26, he falsely said the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” The dangerous falsehoods continue to pour from his fevered mind.

Trump knows that during his tenure, he took innumerable actions that have made the United States more defenseless against this pandemic and other threats. He and the evil John Bolton, aggressively moved to disable pandemic prevention forces in the U.S. government, boosted by supine, maniacal right wing talk radio show hosts (Rush Limbaugh said the virus is “just a cold”).  In 2018, the head of the pandemic response team, Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, left the National Security Council amid Bolton’s restructuring. Once Ziemer was gone, Bolton dismantled the entire pandemic response team. Trump also pushed to slash the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Congress stopped the cuts but couldn’t repeal the destructive policies of Trump and his henchmen.

Trump insanely decided to cut USAID’s Predict program, a critical federal program that tracked infectious diseases.  At the same time, he poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the bloated military empire budget with congressional complicity. According to Public Citizen, Trump wanted to cut the CDC’s 2021 budget by $1.3 billion, down 19% from the previous year. The proposed CDC budget cuts included cutting $25 million in funding for the “preparedness and response programs.”

This is sheer madness: Trump has chosen death over life. Draft-dodger Trump is stockpiling mass destruction weapons that can blow up the world many times over. But the determined golfer, right in the midst of this COVID-19 surge, did not stockpile ventilators, face masks, testing kits and other critical equipment and materials. Hospital capacity is perilously low and the number of reserve medical and nursing personnel is too small. What about readiness here at home?

Failing to head off a pandemic is what can be expected from a regime that sugarcoats and covers up its criminal negligence by not protecting the American people. Trump blathered about China since day one, but he allowed the U.S. drug companies to continue to outsource production of most drugs to China and India. We’re utterly dependent on that fragile supply chain because Big Pharma wanted to make even bigger profits—despite the handouts they already get in the form of big tax credits and free research and development of drugs by the National Institutes of Health. The U.S. government doesn’t even have price ceilings on drugs, allowing pharmaceutical companies to gouge Americans. There’s a real possibility of drug shortages soon.

Trump is trying to buy himself out of trouble through red ink deficit spending in the tens of billions to cushion businesses. At the same time he balks at eliminating the huge tax cut he gave to big business and the wealthy to provide paid sick leave, paid medical care for the uninsured, and other assistance people will need. Poor people will especially need broader medical coverage, protections from evictions, and food assistance during the predicted crisis. Unemployment compensation funds need to be expanded during this coming recession.

New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote that “We’re all socialists in a pandemic.” That brings us to the daily vindication of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Suddenly, everyone – the banks, Wall Street, the airlines, the hospitality and tourist business, beleaguered small business, and others are expecting government agencies to help in all kinds of ways. The same CEO fat cats who, in the past decade, dumped seven trillion dollars of profits into unproductive, stock buybacks for their compensation metrics are looking to the government to stabilize their debt-ridden companies.

When I was campaigning for president in 2008 during the stock market crash, we hoisted a large banner at an anti-Wall Street rally that read, “Socialism bails out Capitalism.” Bernie recognizes our mixed private/public economy. He wants a better balance so that the few/powerful, in their greed do not disproportionately benefit while the many powerless suffer. Bernie wants what western European democracies have long provided for all their people: Universal health care, tuition-free education (like we have for public high schools), living wages, stronger labor unions and cooperatives, and other social safety net benefits long overdue in the world’s biggest economy.

So long deprived of what they’ve earned, from frozen wages to looted pensions and consumer gouging, the people should shout out “what’s the big deal, we are long overdue.”

Bernie needs to continue his campaign to the Party’s convention. Just like Jesse Jackson did in 1984 and Ronald Reagan did in 1976. To drop out is to calamitously let down his supporters, including voters yet to vote. He would forfeit going after Trump, with media coverage, in ways faltering and gaffe-prone Joe Biden can’t or won’t. He would lose his leverage, backed by legions of small donors, to get concessions from Biden and his entrenched Democrats. Besides, Biden could stumble before the convention.

So it’s not just about voting margins in primaries; it’s about policies for the present and future of America. Politics is about timing; now Bernie’s proposals will receive more attention from everybody affected.

And everybody is affected by the looming coronavirus pandemic.

Nader on Biden

From “The Ralph Nader Radio Hour” Week of March 2, 2020

Why did Senator Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suddenly drop out? They were all on the ballot on Super Tuesday and they suddenly dropped out. Well, they were contacted by the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, by various people like Terry McAuliffe, the Clintons and all of them basically saying — do it in order to save the party from Bernie Sanders, do it for Joe Biden, our boy, you know. These are a bunch of losers, they have lost so many elections, state, federal over the years against the worst Republican Party in history. And the losers don’t want to give up their sinecures. They don’t want to give up the entrenched role they play inside this decrepit Democratic Party that Bernie is trying to clean up and reform. There are a lot of emails, calls going on after the South Carolina primary, in the three days to line up all kinds of party apparatchiks, to get out the vote, to bad mouth Bernie — and it worked for them for the time being.

But let’s see Bernie and Joe Biden on the debate stage and let’s see how Biden fares against Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden was for all of these corporate managed trade agreements that emptied his beloved native Pennsylvania of jobs. He supported all of the wars that Clinton and Obama supported. He is the toady of the big banks in Delaware. He supported the Wall Street bailout after the crash in 2009. He was the waterboy for the credit card industry and their rapacious interest rates and penalties. And he comes from Delaware, which is the hospitality center for giant corporations to be chartered in so that they can have permissive corporate laws and strip their own shareholders and mutual funds and pension funds of the rights of ownership, entrenching power at the top among the corporate executive class. He voted for legislation in the Senate that led to mass incarceration. That’s all, just for starters.

He’s responsible for Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. He took Thurgood Marshall’s seat and he’s been voting against black and Latino interests ever since, making a difference in 5-4 decisions. And as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden mistreated Anita Hill, who was a star witness. And he didn’t urge the Democrats not to bolt — and eleven of them bolted and supported Clarence Thomas who won 52-48 in a Democratically controlled Senate. He’s responsible for a lot of those 5-4 votes where Clarence Thomas makes the difference.

It’s about time that the press focused some attention on Delaware Joe.

 

Trump vs. Sanders—Comparisons for Voters

By Ralph Nader

March 6, 2020

It isn’t un-American for voters to do some homework before voting. Here’s a “concise guide” for the voter with limited time who might want more information.

The corporate Democratic Partiers keep questioning the electability of candidates they do not like, namely Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Really? These leading progressives are absurdly presumed to be “unelectable” compared to Trump?

Consider an election where Bernie is up against Trump. The differences are night and day. Start with the all-important issue of character. Trump lies every day, tweeting misinformation and falsifying what is and what is not going on in our country. Just as bad, Trump’s tactics rely entirely on lying about or misrepresenting what he is doing to handle large and small problems. Trump has made over 16,000 false or misleading claims since January 2017. Bernie bluntly tells the truth.

Trump is a bigot/racist who uses dog whistles to promote, implement, and enforce racist policies. Bernie is a civil rights fighter going back to the nineteen sixties.

Bernie respects women and champions their causes. Donald is a savage sexual predator, has boasted about his sexual conquests, and was a serial adulterer.

Bernie talks of peace and rule of law. Donald incites violence and believes in the rule of raw power by a president who is lawless and daily violates our Constitution. Recall his ominous declaration that “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Compare what Trump and Sanders do in public office. When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people. Bernie has the best Congressional record of fighting corporate abuses. Meanwhile, Trump, really a corporation masquerading as a human being, works to line the pockets of corporate fat cats. Bernie fights for unions, living wages, and workplace safety; Donald hates unions, and has no problem freezing the $7.25 per hour minimum wage and dismantling serious worker health and safety protections.

Bernie is a consumer champion who wants to cancel crushing student loan debt and reverse the dangerous outsourcing of production of medicine to China, leaving us defenseless. Trump is close to shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other consumer safety agencies such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For three years he crazily pushed cuts for health and pandemic research. It took a spreading coronavirus for him to face reality and his response has been too little, too late.

Trump was a corporate welfare king with a failed gambling business who used, in his brazen words, “bankruptcy as a competitive advantage.” He’s busy shoveling all kinds of subsidies, giveaways, bailouts, and giant tax escapes to profitable big companies, at the expense of smaller taxpayers. Bernie is strongly against most of this corporate “socialism for the rich.”

On the environment, Bernie has a good, though not perfect, record. Trump has no problem with deadly corporate pollution—such as coal ash, mercury, methane, diesel particulates degrading your health. Trump is preventing federal efforts from combating climate disruptions, talks about “clean, beautiful coal,” and even forbids the use of the term “climate change” (which he believes is a hoax). Bernie campaigns all over the country talking about public investments in climate preparedness—paid for by restoration of corporate taxes that Trump would like to further cut. Only by using all available resources can the U.S. contain immensely costly runaway fires, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and already rising sea levels caused by climate disruption.

Bernie releases his tax returns while Trump hides them and gets a major tax cut for his family through Congress.

Donald says he’s never done anything wrong and never needs to apologize. Bernie recognizes his mistakes when he is wrong. Donald breaks promises—on lower drug prices, on cleaner air and water, on more manufacturing jobs, and on expanded health care insurance.  Trump has, in fact, actively damaged the environment and hurt these workers and consumers.

Bernie and Trump have superficial similarities. Both rarely smile. Both can be gruff and have trouble taking advice. But Bernie reads, thinks, and empathizes with people who desperately need universal healthcare and endure daily poverty. Frantically tweeting Donald doesn’t read or think, and is devoid of empathy, preferring to use his office to enrich Trump family businesses. Instead of spending his time working to understand the problems of working people, thin-skinned Donald spends his time blaming others and viciously nick-naming political opponents.

Bernie is a “democratic socialist,” advocating for improvements that western European counties have had for decades as well as ones we had decades ago—like nearly tuition free higher education after World War II at state universities from California to New York and even an early sales tax on Wall Street trading.

Donald is a corporate socialist and a champion of the dictatorial, corporate state (Wall Street owning Washington) that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “fascism” in a message to Congress in 1938.

Bernie is a good, crisp debater. Donald is a shouter, stage liar, and evader-in-chief. Bernie refuses corporate PAC money and has millions of people funding the campaign with small donations. Trump goes for the zillionaires. I could go on. For more usable information, read the new book, Fake President, by Mark Green and me.

According to the number one Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump is “a crook, a thief, a liar. He should be in prison.” Can anybody think honest Bernie is not electable against corrupt Donald?

American Fuhrer—Corrupt Rampage Against Americans

By Ralph Nader

February 28, 2020

Delusionary, dictatorial Donald Trump is drunk on power. Trump’s monarchical and lawless actions are a clear and present subversion of our Republic and its Constitution. As soon as the impeachment trial ended and Trump was acquitted by the Senate’s supine Republican courtiers (except for Senator Mitt Romney), vengeance flooded Trump’s fevered mind.

Ignoring warnings from his advisors, Trump is lashing out in all directions, unleashing torrents of foul-mouthed tweets. Note with alarm how this American Fuhrer is consolidating control and using his presidential power to smash all opposition. Remember that last July Trump declared “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” He wasn’t kidding, America.

Trump is shocking his current appointees— in addition to those who have quit or been fired in purges.  Without evidence, he is accusing the intelligence agencies and the FBI of conspiring against him! Trump has attacked both the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr because of the sentencing recommendations by four DOJ prosecutors for convicted criminal and Trump advisor Roger Stone. Barr, a Trump toady, was shaken. Barr said it would be impossible for him to do his job if Trump kept interfering.

As Mark Green and I depicted in our new book, Fake President, loser Trump always retaliates against opponents by charging fraud, fakery, and crookery. Trump’s intimidation of others is amplified by the media that gives no right of reply to Trump’s targets.

What is most troubling are the silences of the countervailing forces that Americans have a right to rely on to fight Trump the tyrant.

Post acquittal, Trump has doubled down on his numerous impeachable offenses (see the Congressional Record from December 18, 2019, page H 12197). But Democrats, who control the House, are not doubling down on their impeachment investigations. Instead, they are following orders from Speaker Pelosi and standing down.

Trump regularly attacks the judges who rule against him or dare to challenge his illegal acts. Yet there is only silence by the many judge’s associations and the many bar associations. The American Bar Association, which has over 194,000 members, remains asleep. All of its members, so-called “officers of the court,” are attorneys and should understand their responsibilities to uphold the rule of law.

Trump’s Party has a long history of vicious voter suppression (chronicled in the new documentary, Suppressed: The Fight to Vote, by Robert Greenwald). These anti-democratic actions should be considered serious crimes. However, the members of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) are largely unprepared to protect voter rights and accurate counting of votes. Some Secretaries of State are aiding and abetting these electoral crimes. Current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp used his power as Georgia’s Secretary of State to suppress black voters, cheating his way to the Governor’s mansion in 2018.

Trump is now doing what all dictators do when they take power: he is purging the civil service of any critical voices of those who simply want to do their jobs. These civil servants made the “mistake” of enforcing health and safety laws that the supreme leader wanted to go unenforced to benefit the President’s big corporate buddies and donors. The government employee unions are not doing enough to fight back and explain what Trump the tyrant is doing to harm people—Trump voters and anti-Trump voters alike. Trump and his cronies are making America more dangerous again by scuttling protections that reduce deaths, injuries, and illnesses.

Whether it is the air you breathe, the water you drink, the vehicles you ride in, or the toxins in your workplace, Trump’s corporatist wrecking crew is running federal agencies into the ground. While corporate outlaws fill Trump’s coffers and hotels with riches, he gives them huge tax escapes and starves infrastructure. The word “corruption” cannot fully embrace how this insulting megalomaniac is tearing apart our country, our democratic practices, and our moral norms. Protections for children, the elderly, veterans and workers are all on Trump’s chopping block.

Who will stand up to this horrible bully who is intent on rolling back America’s gains and the anti-monarchy purpose of the American Revolution itself? Some in the media will sound the alarm. Sensing this threat, Trump interfered with government procurement to tilt a large contract away from Amazon because Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has run many articles about Trump’s rampage. Trump’s Republican campaign committee just filed a loser suit against The New York Times. Whether Trump wins or loses, the intimidation of the media is his goal.

These tactics are working on Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, according to former Fed insiders. As a result, the Federal Reserve has stayed committed to lowering interest rates to the detriment of savers. Intimidation is also working on the House of Representatives Democrats, who abhor the lives ruined by the savage sexual predator. Sadly, these lawmakers are not demanding a House Judiciary investigation of Trump’s treatment of women. Credible tort lawsuits are being delayed by Trump’s lawyers.

The cowardly silence of Barack Obama is the most stunning. In his extraordinary new book, The Triumph of Doubt, that names names, former head of Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA), Dr. David Michaels, documents “President Trump’s desire to reverse anything the Obama administration did—if Obama supported it, Trump would do the opposite no matter what the consequences.”

The results are more mercury and diesel particulates in your lungs, more deadly methane accelerating climate disruption, and more coal ash for your children to breathe. Trump’s administration is even failing to adequately invest in medical science, which could save you. Until the coronavirus came along, Trump demanded serious funding cuts for the Centers for Disease Control; these funding cuts were thwarted by Congress. Even more damning, the Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team to save money! The CDC’s annual budget is equal to a mere three days spending by the Pentagon, whose budget Trump bloats.

So where is Obama? Critiquing music, making movies, attending NBA all-star festivities, and readying for March Madness. Obama is thoroughly enjoying himself. What about also using his high political poll ratings and his massive Twitter following (which is far larger than Trump’s) to combat Trump’s actions? If not for the wellbeing of the American people, Obama should at least want to protect his legacy.

If Obama remains so carefree in the critical months before November, he will need a sign beside the exhibits to be displayed at his forthcoming presidential library: REPEALED BY TRUMP.

OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS:

By Ralph Nader

February 24, 2020

Think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Paul and Jeannette Rankin. Recall their courage and leadership in comparison with the courage needed to request an investigation of President Trump’s treatment of women.

It does not take many conversations with women lawmakers and their staff on Capitol Hill to sense the deep indignation over the recidivist, serial sexual predator now inhabiting the White House as President. Since his selection by the Electoral College, Donald Trump has been embroiled in numerous tort lawsuits alleging sexual assaults with sworn testimony by aggrieved plaintiffs. He has called the charges by aggrieved women lies and showered his accusers with degrading fulminations. The credible accusations by many women, under oath, of Trump’s very brutish, violent rapacious assaults are overwhelming. As has been his practice in a bankrupt-ridden business career, Trump has thus far escaped being deposed under oath because of the well-honed dilatory tactics of his attorneys. (Unlike Bill Clinton who was deposed under oath in a tort case asserting sexual aggressions and then impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about sex).

Through his last three years as President, Trump has persisted with non-stop slanders of women, whether they are accusing him of sexual assault and battery – a felony in every state – or whether they displeased him by denouncing him for sexist behavior or other practices. On national television and before large rallies, Trump has called the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, “low-IQ Maxine Waters” repeatedly. Never any remorse nor apologies. He just doubles down with his unprecedented intimidating misogyny in action.

Last year, Trump singled out two female members of Congress by urging the prime minister of Israel to deny these two women visas to exercise their oversight responsibilities regarding U.S. foreign policy in Israel and Palestine. In so doing, he violated the spirit if not the letter of the “speech or debate” clause of Article I, section 6, clause 1 of the Constitution. Trump has never selected any male members of Congress for such exclusions. He refuses to express regrets and promise never to repeat this violation of the critical separation of powers under our Constitution. He has denied the House Speaker appropriate military aircraft for hazardous foreign travel while exercising her official oversight responsibility. Trump always has had difficulties with strong women.

Democratic women lawmakers led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand forced the departure of Senator Al Franken and Representative John Conyers for past inappropriate sexual advances. It did not matter enough that these two Democrats were champions of women’s rights in the Congress. There was an absence of due process, particularly regarding Senator Franken’s request for an ethics proceeding that was pending before the Senate Ethics Committee, despite expressions of remorse. Both women and men in both Houses just said –“get out now” to both Democratic legislators. Senator Franken and Representative Conyers complied.

What of Republican Donald Trump? His blatant sexual transgressions, boasted over national television shows, were far, far greater in number and levels of felonious violence than the above legislators. Moreover, his rise to public notoriety that in turn gave rise to his plan for the White House was partly based on his outrageous outbursts on television shows, such as those on the Howard Stern show, and what went on about his treatment of women behind the scenes of Trump’s show The Apprentice.

As related by one of Trump’s sexual victims, Natasha Stoynoff, in the Washington Post op-ed page on November 7, 2019: “Two weeks ago, 43 new allegations of sexual misconduct by Trump surfaced in a new book, ‘All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator,’ by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy. My sisters and I were not surprised: we suspect there are even more out there.”

This book was given major coverage in the New York Times. A reporter there told me she was surprised at the mild response to the feature by the MeToo movement engaged in the protection of women from sexual assaults and harassments. This same citizen constituency created public awareness that led to some 200 powerful officials in the business, sports, entertainment and academic world being ousted. The book’s co-author, Barry Levine wrote that “Trump’s actions helped catalyze the #MeToo movement…”

Has Donald Trump – the bully and sexual predator – become too terrible to challenge, too much of a criminal sexual marauder gravely abusing his power and public trust, to justify impeachment and removal from office? Republican Trumpsters take note – Trump’s offenses are rooted in state statutory crimes. In addition, he criminally paid hush money to a porn star late in the election year of 2016, which is itself rooted in the violation of federal campaign finance laws having criminal penalties. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has denounced Trump, the kingpin of sexual predators in the White House. In December 2017, Gillibrand said:

“President Trump has committed assault, according to these women, and those are very credible allegations of misconduct and criminal activity, and he should be fully investigated and he should resign,” Gillibrand told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview.

“These allegations are credible; they are numerous,” said Gillibrand, a leading voice in Congress for combating sexual assault in the military. “I’ve heard these women’s testimony, and many of them are heartbreaking.”

If he does not “immediately resign,” she said, Congress “should have appropriate investigations of his behavior and hold him accountable.”

Other members of Congress made similar demands at that time. Why no action since that declaration? Why the surrender?

Public hearings by the House of Representatives and the Senate, where the assaulted women testify under oath followed by a demand that Donald J. Trump appear before Congressional Committees to respond under oath are a critical component of the lawmakers’ belief that no one is above the law. These are clearly inquiries with legitimate legislative purpose to discover the extent of violations of the laws pursuant to the available probative evidence on the record and what laws need to be strengthened.

The women in Congress have the facts, the morality and the law squarely on their side. Moreover, a CNN national poll released on November 27, 2019 reported that 61 percent of women are ready to impeach and remove Donald Trump from his office.

On January 30, 2020, over two dozen women legislators in the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Jackie Speier, Representative Lois Frankel and Brenda J. Lawrence co-chairs of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, sent a letter to President Trump reprimanding him, with graphic detail, for his “continuing derogation of women in your rhetoric and policies.” It ended with the plea: “Mr. President, instead of being the biggest bully on the playground, why don’t you set a moral example for our children?” This unprecedented admonition received almost no media, much less a response. Letting Trump get away with a sharp verbal slap on the wrist does little to counter violent behavior against women for all too many men and boys to find acceptable.

Where is the call for Congressional hearings? If these accusations by scores of women, some made under oath, turn out to be either felonious crimes or tortious wrongful injuries, such offenses are impeachable or grounds for resignation. The public has a right to know the facts and the violations of pertinent applicable laws to this boastful unrepentant sexual sadist.

Our Founders cited serious abuses of power or violations of the public trust as a prime definition of the clause “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including by no less an advocate of a strong executive than Alexander Hamilton.

Imagine the horrible precedent for future presidents and wannabe presidential candidates that are being established by not moving to hold Donald Trump accountable to the rule of law. Having gotten away with racist/bigoted policies and incitements to violence, this serial fabricator cannot be allowed to escape accountability for these egregious, chronic offenses. As collateral harm, he is shredding further the moral fiber of our society among impressionable youths, as detailed this week in the Washington Post (See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/school-bullying-trump-words/).

By comparison, note how the lawmakers in Albany, New York reacted in March 2008, when the New York Times reported that Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer had paid a prostitute for her service at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. Legislators especially Democrats, told him if he did not resign immediately, he would be impeached. He resigned two days later with remorse. After ending a promising political career, he subsequently said: “I resigned my position as governor because I recognized that conduct was unworthy of an elected official,” and “again apologize for my actions.”

It is true that Spitzer’s conduct occurred while he was governor. Trump’s conduct, as far as is known, preceded his taking office but is civilly sub judice and still vulnerable to criminal prosecution. Moreover, his conduct in office is deeply misogynistic and offensively sexist, with regular, crudely phrased (“She’s not my type,”) denials, not under oath, of violent encounters described in great detail under oath or ready to do so, by his accusers. At the least, a Congressional investigation would discover more of the facts and move a long overdue process of accountability forward.

I write this letter from decades of indignation over the cruel, discriminatory treatment of half the human race by the dominant male culture and its laws. As a law student I started writing about these blatant repressions, including some states prohibiting women from serving on juries as late as the nineteen fifties. I challenged our law school Dean as to why only 15 women were admitted to our class of over 500. Later, I wrote articles and sponsored books on the corporate marketplace discrimination and exploitation of women as consumers, workers, patients, and debtors. I never would have envisioned, after years of successful advances of the rights of women by organized women that such continued inaction toward President Donald Trump would presently prevail in the powerful seats of the U.S. Congress.

This letter does not in any way exonerate male legislators and staff who mostly are willing to pass the responsibility for action to their female counterparts. I have been told and have seen women staffers with frustrated, reddened faces and moistened eyes when this issue of nothing being done is raised with them directly. Perhaps they think it is not for them to speak up before their principals do, but it may be necessary for them to take the first steps.

Speaking for the scores of Trump’s victims, Natasha Stoynoff asks on their behalf “But for us, the question remains. Will this, finally, be the time when enough people care?”

The clock of history is ticking, Congress.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

Three Major News Stories That Need To Be Exposed

By Ralph Nader

February 21, 2020

The news is filled with stories about President Trump and his predecessors imposing sanctions on other countries, their officials, and other prominent persons. But the media rarely spells out exactly what these sanctions are, the intermediaries who enforce them, the impacts they have on innocent civilians – women, men and children – how they are countered or evaded, and whether they fulfill or undermine their diplomatic, military, or economic purposes.

For example, sanctions against Iran by Trump increase by the year. They force banks and other financial institutions to cut off all decreed transactions, such as exports from Iran or purchase by Iran of critical spare parts, raw materials, even medical devices. Years ago, sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein prohibited Iraq from purchasing chlorine to purify drinking water and children’s catheters. These sanctions produced deadly results for innocents. Iran’s economy is now in ruins and the brunt of the pain is suffered by innocent families. Under international law, disproportionate harm on civilians from sanctions is a serious violation.

Presently, from Trump there are sanctions on individuals in numerous countries, restricting their travel, their purchases and more. When banks like Citigroup and Bank of America are told by Washington to cut off any financial transactions from any companies doing business with a sanctioned country, do the banks receive payment for their trouble, or are there other quid pro quo rewards? We do not know. Secret government actions are pervasive, though sometimes a freedom of information request, followed by litigation, may pry open what is hidden.

Media alert! Sanctions are potential hotbeds for corruption and illegalities.

A little told story relates the tariffs Trump is imposing on imports from other countries, especially China. There are serious questions as to whether presidents have the constitutional authority or whether Congress must maintain authority on tariffs. Veteran constitutional law litigator Alan Morrison is now contesting sweeping executive tariff power in the federal courts. Reporting on this overreaching by the President is scarce.

Digging deeper, reporters should be asking what standards control presidential discretion or whims on imposing tariffs. The “national security flag” can’t just be waved arbitrarily.

Trump passes out many waivers for certain U.S. companies. Why, for example, did Trump give Apple CEO Tim Cook a waiver on tens of billions of dollars in iPhones imported from China, but not provide waivers to any number of smaller U.S. companies who buy products from China for their manufacturing or retail/wholesale sales?

Constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein, says the absence of standards for giving waivers raises fundamental questions of unlawful delegation by Congress.

Media alert! Potential incentives for corruption and lawlessness in these burgeoning behind the scenes intrigues are huge.

The third hotbed of abuses relates to the charges by Washington that countries abroad tolerate “corruption,” and that security and economic relations with them are either jeopardized or unworkable. Such charges are regularly made against the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq – both militarily occupied by the U.S.

Corruption involves more than high-level officials taking bribes. Low-level public servants, so woefully underpaid, take money under the table to survive. As it happens, Ashraf Ghani, the elected president of Afghanistan, a former professor at Johns Hopkins University, was a leading expert on the nuances and functions of bribery in third-world countries. He can be a worthy source of knowledge on corruption.

U.S. agencies are a major generator of secret corruption in countries like Afghanistan. For example, cargo planes full of crisp one hundred dollar bills are shipped to Kabul and then trans-shipped to places like Kandahar. It doesn’t take much imagination to frame a reporter’s investigation—of what happens to cash in occupied, desperate societies.

Books and articles on the intelligence agencies note that cash handouts, big and small, are critical to achieve their purposes. There is so much bribery cash in Afghanistan that to stop the flow would seriously affect their shaky economy.

Bribery is a two way street – the briber and the bribee. Secret payments and bribes have often backfired against U.S. foreign policies in many undesirable ways.

Bribes to get what Washington and giant multinational corporations want from fragile countries merits more reporting, if only to show that a good deal of the bribery is under our control and within our power to reverse.

Media Alert!

“Democratic Socialism” – Bring it on Corporate Socialists!

Crooked Donald Trump, the erstwhile failed gambling czar and corporate welfare king, is assailing Bernie Sanders for his “radical socialism.” How ludicrous given Trump’s three-year giveaway of taxpayer assets and authorities to giant corporations – a perfect portrait of crony capitalism.

Others are joining the socialist labeling bandwagon, including corporatist right wing radio talk show blowhards, themselves freeloaders, profitably using the public airwaves. This pack includes Lloyd Blankfein, former lawbreaking chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Bernie knows, of course, how to rebut this distorted interpretation of “democratic socialism.” But will his rebuttals be enough given that the Biden-Bloomberg-Klobuchar wing of the Democratic Party is determined to label Bernie “unelectable” against the boastful Don the Con?

Some suggestions for Bernie and others to use in this upcoming back and forth on “democratic socialism” vs. “corporate socialism” of the super-rich corporations:

Go after the corporate socialists who have invited Wall Street and Big Business to socialize the means of government against the peoples’ necessities and freedoms. It is a government of, by, and for the dominant corporations. Such private power dominating our government in so many reported ways was called “fascism” in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a formal message to Congress. This is a fertile field for taking the offensive.
“Democratic socialism is a political force in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, sometimes Canada, and others. In these places, it means all the people in those countries get their taxes returned in the form of improved livelihoods, economic security, and peace of mind. Democratic socialism means better pay, universal healthcare, pensions, day care, family sick leave, vacations, tuition-free higher education, robust public transit and parks, and many other amenities backed by stronger unions, denied the American people in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Since World War II, the European political movements were led by “social democratic” parties.

Back to our country. Corporatists and right-wing Wall Street Democrats are inferring that “democratic socialism” is un-American, ruinous for our economy. These demonizers argue that a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” is a sure loser in the election against Donald Trump – a self-enriching crook, outlaw, boastful, savage sexual predator, bigot/racist in his policies, inciter of violence, and a serial, delusionary liar. Trump, the Electoral College-selected tool of the super-rich and corporate powers should be easy to defeat given his disgraceful presidency.

The American people of all backgrounds like their public libraries, public local control water works, municipal fire departments, police precincts, and public schools. They seem okay with government highways, bridges, public transit, and want their taxes spent to repair and upgrade these vital pieces of our infrastructure. Taxpayer’s don’t want our commonwealth being owned by tax-escaping, gouging corporations.

There are over 1,000 municipal public utilities providing electricity. The “Red” states of Tennessee and Alabama would fight any corporatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which 87 years ago, brought electricity to a large poor region that the private electric companies didn’t think was profitable enough.

The unfairly maligned Veterans Administration brought free hospitals and health care to millions of veterans. Millions of Americans are favorably disposed to life-saving Medicare and Medicaid and are economically saved by Social Security and unemployment compensation. Hey! There must be a lot of “democratic socialists” out there in “blue” and “red” states. New Hampshirites are mostly okay with state-owned, revenue-producing, hard-liquor retail stores.

At a meeting long ago with top medical officials at the Walter Reed Army hospital, I was told that after learning the second leading cause of hospitalization for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam was malaria, the U.S. Army asked the drug companies to develop remedies. The negative response was that developing medicines to deal with malaria wasn’t profitable enough. In response, the Pentagon brought together skilled doctors and scientists and started its own “drug company” inside Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals. For less than 10 percent of what the big drug companies say it costs, our government developed three out of four of the leading anti-malarial drugs in the world and made them available everywhere without any patents producing big pharma-like profits.

If the political and corporate Trumpsters and the Clintonite Democrats snort at all this, tell them that they do agree on one thing. Those in both these camps have been eager to have collapsing capitalism, as during the 2008 Wall Street dive, always saved by reliable socialism – aka – trillions of taxpayer dollars via Washington, D.C. funding the bailout of the reckless bankers and speculators.