Ralph Nader's Blog, page 45

Boeing’s Homicide Will Give Way to Safety Reforms if Flyers Organize

By Ralph Nader

April 4, 2019

To understand the enormity of the Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes (Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines 302) that took a combined total of 346 lives, it is useful to look at past events and anticipate future possible problems.

In 2011, Boeing executives wanted to start a “clean sheet” new narrow body air passenger plane to replace its old 737 design from the nineteen sixties. Shortly thereafter, Boeing’s bosses panicked when American Airlines put in a large order for the competitive Airbus A320neo.  Boeing shelved the new design and rushed to put out the 737 Max that, in Business Week’s words, was “pushing an ageing design past its limits.” The company raised the 737 Max landing gear and attached larger, slightly more fuel efficient engines angled higher and more forward on the wings. Such a configuration changed the aerodynamics and made the plane more prone to stall (see attached article: https://www.aviationcv.com/aviation-blog/2019/boeing-canceling-737-max).

This put Boeing’s management in a quandary. Their sales pitch to the airlines was that the 737 Max only received an “amended” certification from the FAA. That it did not have to be included in more pilot training, simulators, and detailed in the flight manuals. The airlines could save money and would be more likely to buy the Boeing 737 Max.

Boeing engineers were worried. They knew better. But the managers ordered software to address the stall problem without even telling the pilots or most of the airlines. Using only one operating sensor (Airbus A320neo has three sensors), an optional warning light and indicator, Boeing set the stage for misfiring sensors that overcame pilot efforts to control the planes from their nose-down death dive.

These fixes or patches would not have been used were the new 737’s aerodynamics the same as the previous 737 models. Step by step, Boeing’s criminal negligence, driven by a race to make profits, worsened. Before and after the fatal crashes, Boeing did not reveal, did not warn, did not train, and did not address the basic defective aerodynamic design. It gagged everyone that it could.  Boeing still insists that the 737 Max is safe and is building two a day, while pushing to end the grounding.

Reacting to all these documented derelictions, a flurry of investigations is underway. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, Calvin L. Scovel III, is investigating the hapless, captive FAA that has delegated to Boeing important FAA statutory and regulatory duties. The Justice Department and FBI have opened a criminal probe, with an active grand jury. The National Transportation Safety Board, long the hair shirt of the FAA, is investigating. As are two Senate and House Committees. Foreign governments are investigating, as surely are the giant insurance companies who are on the hook. This all sounds encouraging, but we’ve seen such initiatives pull back before.

This time, however, the outrageous corner-cutting and suppression of engineering dissent, within both Boeing and the FAA (there were reported “heated discussions”) produced a worst case scenario. So, Boeing is working overtime with its legions of Washington lobbyists, its New York P.R. firm, its continued campaign contributions to some 330 Members of Congress. The airlines and pilots’ union chiefs (but not some angry pilots) are staying mum, scared into silence due to contracts and jobs, waiting for the Boeing 737 Max planes to fly again.

BUT THE BOEING 737 MAX MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO FLY AGAIN. Pushing new software that will allow Boeing to blame the pilots is a dangerous maneuver. Saying that U.S. pilots, many of whom are ex-Air Force, are more experienced in reacting to a sudden wildly gyrating aircraft (consider the F-16 diving and swooping) than many foreign airline pilots only trained by civil aviation, opens a can of worms from cancellation of 737 Max orders  to indignation from foreign airlines and pilots. It also displays an aversion to human-factors engineering with a vast number of avoidable failure modes not properly envisioned by Boeing’s software patches.

The overriding problem is the basic unstable design of the 737 Max. An aircraft has to be stall proof not stall prone. An aircraft manufacturer like Boeing, notwithstanding its past safety record, is not entitled to more aircraft disasters that are preventable by following long-established aeronautical engineering practices and standards.

With 5,000 Max orders at stake, the unfolding criminal investigation may move the case from criminal negligence to evidence of knowing and willful behavior amounting to corporate homicide involving Boeing officials. Boeing better cut its losses by going back to the drawing boards. That would mean scrapping the 737 Max 8 designs, with its risk of more software time bombs, safely upgrading the existing 737-800 with amenities and discounts for its airline carrier customers and moving ahead with its early decision to design a new plane to compete with Airbus’s model, which does not have the 737 Max’s design problem.

Meanwhile, airline passengers should pay attention to Senator Richard Blumenthal’s interest in forthcoming legislation to bring the regulatory power back into the FAA. Senator Blumenthal also intends to reintroduce his legislation to criminalize business concealment of imminent risks that their products and services pose to innocent consumers and workers (the “Hide No Harm Act”).

What of the near future? Airline passengers should organize a consumer boycott of the Boeing 737 Max 8 to avoid having to fly on these planes in the coming decade. Once Boeing realizes that this brand has a deep marketing stigma, it may move more quickly to the drawing boards, so as to not alienate airline carriers.

Much more information will come out in the coming months. Much more. The NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which receives, incident reports from pilots, air traffic controllers, dispatchers, cabin crew, maintenance technicians, and others, is buzzing, as is the FlyersRights.org website. Other countries, such as France, have tougher criminal statutes for such corporate crime than the U.S. does. The increasing emergence of whistle-blowers from Boeing, the FAA and, other institutions is inevitable.

Not to mention, the information that will come out of the civil litigation against this killer mass tort disaster. And of course the relentless reporting of newspapers such as the Seattle Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and AP, among others will continue to shed light on Boeings misdeeds and the FAA’s deficiencies.

Boeing executives should reject the advice from the reassuring, monetized minds of Wall Street stock analysts saying you can easily absorb the $2 billion cost and move on. Boeing, let your engineers and scientists be free to exert their “professional options for revisions” to save your company from the ruinous road you are presently upon.

Respect those who perished at your hand and their grieving families.

Look How the Real Trump is Endangering America

By Ralph Nader
March 27, 2019

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent almost two
years to produce a $25 million report that is a flat tire. Still unreleased in
full to the American people, Trump’s acolyte, Attorney General William Barr, a longtime
friend of Republican Mueller, gave us what Trump long craved—by stating that
“the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign
conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election
interference activities” during the 2016 election. As for obstruction of
justice by Trump, Attorney General Barr cryptically burped, that “The Special
Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President
committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”—whatever that means. Give
people the whole report now, as the House of Representatives voted 420 to 0 to
do.

What a farce and distraction this whole exercise
turned out to be! Mueller’s assigned subject was Trump. So, does this
prosecutor demand to interview Trump, to subpoena Trump? No. Does this special
investigator conclude with any legal recommendations at all? No. He just wants
to be forgotten as he slinks away into deliberate silence (unless he is made to
testify before the House Judiciary Committee).

Really, what should we have expected from someone
who, as FBI Director, testified before Congress as part of the Bush/Cheney regime,
pushing for the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003?

The assignment to Mueller was doomed from the start.
Its charge was far too narrow and proof in such matters is very difficult to find.
Intent to collude requires direct examination of the President himself. But why
would Trump have to collude at all? The Russians interfered in his favor in
various ways to the detriment of Hillary Clinton and all he had to do was
accept such foreign largess.

An inquiry into Trump and all his business deals and
business proposals with various governments point to Trump’s disregard for the
law. By the way, whatever happened to the IRS audit that Tricky Donald kept
using as an excuse in 2016 for not releasing these voluminous tax records
depicting suspicious relations that Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston
has written about for years (see his book The Making of Donald Trump)?

The endless speculation and successful prosecutions
of Trump’s associates largely focused on ancillary lies and thefts not leading directly
to the White House.

Trump couldn’t have distracted the mass dittohead
media any better from his true crimes. Those include unlawful war-making, corruption,
wasting public funds, and unlawfully handcuffing or firing the federal “cops”
whose job is to save the lives, health, safety, and economic assets of all the
American people from big corporate predators across the land.

Consider all the print, TV, and radio time the mass
media used on the Mueller Russian probe compared to Trump’s cruelty and viciousness
from his brazen “deregulation,” or open flouting of statutorily mandated government
missions.

These policies have directly harmed innocent children,
the elderly, patients, consumers, and workers and have wreaked environmental
ruin, polluting the air, water, and soil with lethal toxins. He proudly took
away protections leaving defenseless humans to suffer more deadly coal dust,
coal ash, and coal pollution.

He has blocked our government’s responses to the
climate crisis looming everywhere.

He has gotten away with massive federal deficits
caused by his tax holidays for corporations and the rich, including the Trump
family. Take that, next generation of Americans!

He backs for-profit colleges who have committed
serial crimes against their impoverished students while heavily subsidizing
these corporations with your tax dollars.

He is pushing to weaken or eliminate modest controls
over imperial Wall Street, upsetting even Wall Streeters like Timothy Geithner,
setting the stage for another Wall Street collapse on the economy, causing
workers to lose their pensions and savings, before they, as taxpayers, are
required to again bailout the Wall Street speculators and crooks.

He lies repeatedly about current realities, falsely
brags about conditions he is actually worsening. He opposes any increase in the
frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and does not adequately enforce fair
labor standards. He has hired and personally profited from many undocumented
workers while attacking their presence in the U.S.

He pays more attention to one golf ball than he does
to the estimated $60 billion in annual wage theft or $350 billion a year in the
health industry’s computerized billing fraud, or the gouging drug prices he
falsely promised the people he would reduce.

Never mind impeachment, millions of Trump’s victims,
regardless of how they voted in 2016, should demand his resignation. A million-people
march should surround the White House and peacefully make this demand
repeatedly.

Enough of lying Trump’s slimy bigotry and his
snarling, hateful, bullying speech always directed at the powerless. Enough of
his destructive impact on millions of children imitating his coarseness toward
siblings and parents who, when admonished, blurt out that the President says this and does that. That daily acidic intrusion into family life—a cultural time
bomb—has yet to properly interest the media.

Cheating Donald J. Trump has gotten away with
everything in his failed businesses and his Electoral College-caused
Presidency. In so doing, he has taught us much about ourselves, how much we
tolerate with chronic indifference to the flaying of the rule of law, and the
principles of decency, helpfulness, peace, and justice. 

He has taught us about the costs of not doing our political homework, of staying home civically and electorally. He has taught us that if we do not look ourselves in the mirror, the three horsemen of fascism, lawless plutocracy, and oligarchy will run our beloved country into the ground, if not over the fiscal cliff.

Letter to the FCC Commissioners

March 18, 2019

Ajit Pai, Chairman

Michael O’Rielly, Commissioner

Brendan Carr, Commissioner

Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner

Geoffrey Starks, Commissioner

Federal Communications Commission

445 12th Street, SW

Washington, DC 20554

Dear FCC Commissioners:

The FCC has been an inert toady for the radio and
television broadcasting industry, and the cable industry, for so long its
obligations have become invisible to the general public. Apart from the FCC’s
opposition to net neutrality in spite of the overwhelming public support for
that policy, the FCC’s duties under the Communications Act of 1934—have been
internally neglected, to say the least.

So let this letter be a strong plea for a period of
FCC introspection by its Commissioners along with a renewed practice of holding
public hearings around the country to listen to the people and respond to their
concerns and expectation levels for the use of their public airwaves and the
cable franchises awarded to cable companies.

I am enclosing copies of the weekly TV Week, inserted in the Washington Post, there is one for each
of you. Please flip through its pages and see if you are at all professionally
embarrassed. See if your responsibility under the governing 1934 Communications
Act is refreshed.

You are, of course, aware of the decline in that
foundational statute’s utilization. Gone are requirements to ascertain the
information needs of the local populace. Gone is the Fairness Doctrine. Gone is
the Right of Reply. Gone is the previous, easier and more frequent opportunity
to challenge broadcast license renewals. Gone is any pretense of applying the
competition laws to the staggering trend toward monopolization and conglomeration
of broadcast cable and print media by a tiny number of giant corporations.

Your Chairman is a textbook poster boy for future
scholars of regulatory capture—a profile beyond caricature—as he prepares for a
forthcoming career on behalf of lucrative clients within the industry after he
leaves his government position. 

To look through TV
Week is to see the astounding usurpation of the public trust that Herbert
Hoover insisted be the standard governing the emerging radio industry. To call
it mostly junk is to disparage the solid waste industry. For example, programs abound
that induce children to view violence as common, while they are being seduced
to consume junk food and junk drinks seriously damaging their health and weight
over the long run.

You may recall the historic address before the
National Association of Broadcasters by the then new FCC Chairman, Newton
Minow, in 1961. He called television programming “a vast wasteland,” and upset
the audience with his truthful candor. By comparison, what choice of words
would you apply to a vast majority of programmed hours listed in the enclosed TV Week? This guide, of course, doesn’t
cover the hundreds of other cable channels dedicated to anything but the
concerns, needs, and activities involving workers, teachers, students,
consumers, small business, taxpayers, and communities nationwide. This was
supposed to be the justification for “Pay TV”—that unlike the national
networks, would pay attention to local news and other information necessities.
All, they added, without advertisements. Today, what is left are poorly
equipped and funded cable access stations that the Chairman wants to make fewer
in number by his recommended policies that parrot the desires of the cable
industry.

One additional suggestion. Why not call former FCC
Commissioner, Nicholas Johnson, now in Iowa City, Iowa, and ask him to come to
Washington, with some of his former colleagues, to have a healthy and
productive discussion. Among his many unique accomplishments while a
commissioner was his book, How to Talk
Back to Your Television Set, and an article in the Yale Law Journal about one full day at the FCC—“A Day in the Life:
The Federal Communications Commission” (Yale Law Journal, 1973).

I am sending this letter to numerous interested
parties who believe that the public’s airwaves and the “public interest,
necessity, and convenience” standard of the 1934 Act must engender some
contemporary responsibilities for the FCC, including reinstatement of the
previously noted revocations. The audience has important First Amendment rights
that have been grossly neglected by broadcasters.

I look forward to your individual or collective
responses in a considered manner reflective of your fiduciary duties as public
officials.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

Enclosures: TV
Week (5 copies)

Greedy Boeing’s Avoidable Design and Software Time Bombs

By Ralph Nader
March 21, 2019

As internal and
external pressures mount to hold Boeing responsible for its criminal negligence,
the giant company is exerting its immense influence to limit both its past and
future accountability. Boeing whistleblowers and outside aviation safety
experts are coming forward to reveal the serial, criminal negligence of
Boeing’s handling of its dangerous Boeing 737 Max airplanes, grounded in the
aftermath of two deadly crashes that took 346 lives. Boeing, is used to having its
way in Washington, D.C. For decades, Boeing and some of its airline allies have
greased the wheels for chronic inaction related to the additional protection
and comfort of airline passengers and airline workers.

Most notoriously, the
airlines, after the hijacks to Cuba in the late Sixties and early Seventies,
made sure that Congress and the FAA did not require hardened cockpit doors and
stronger latches on all aircraft, costing a modest $3000 per plane. Then the
9/11 massacre happened, a grisly consequence of non-regulation, pushed by right
wing corporatist advocacy centers.

Year after year, Flyers Rights – the airline passenger consumer group –proposed a real passengers bill of rights. Year after year the industry’s toadies in Congress said no. A slim version passed last year — requiring regulations creating minimum seat standards, regulations regarding prompt refunds for ancillary services not provided or on a flight not taken, and a variety of small improvements for consumers.

Boeing is all over Capitol Hill. They have 100 full time lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Over 300 members of Congress regularly take campaign cash from Boeing. The airlines lather the politicians with complimentary ticket upgrades, amenities, waivers of fees for reservation changes, priority boarding, and VIP escorts. Twice, we sent surveys about these special freebies to every member of Congress with not a single response. (See my letter and survey .)

That is the corrupt
backdrop that at least two Congressional Committees have to overcome in holding
public hearings into the causes of the Indonesian’s Lion Air crash last October
and the Ethiopian Airline crash on March 10, 2019.

Will the Senate and
House Committee invite the technical dissenters to testify against Boeing’s
sequential corner cutting on its single sensor software that miscued and took
control of the 737 Max 8 from its pilots, pulling down on the plane’s nose?
Boeing’s sales-driven avoidance of producing effective manuals with upgraded
pilot training was courting disaster as was outrageously leaving many of the
pilots in the dark.

The Congressional
Committees must issue subpoenas to critics of Boeing and the FAA in order to
protect them from corporate and agency retaliation.

Moreover, the
Committees must get rid of the grotesque self-regulation that allows Boeing  to control the aircraft certification process
for the FAA. This dangerous delegation has worsened in recent years because Trump
and Republicans in Congress have cut the FAA’s budget.

Brace yourself. Here is
how the Washington Post described
this abandonment of regulation by FAA, endorsed by Boeing’s Congress:

“In practice, one Boeing engineer would conduct a test of a particular system on the Max 8, while another Boeing engineer would act as the FAA’s representative, signing on behalf of the U.S. government that the technology complied with federal safety regulations…”
“Hundreds of Boeing engineers would have played out this scenario thousands of times as the company sought to verify the performance of mechanical systems, hardware installation and massive amounts of computer code…”

So, citizens, watch out
for bloviating Congressional Committee members castigating Boeing executives at
the witness table before the television cameras and then doing nothing once the
television broadcasts fade away.

Boeing’s 737 series started in 1967 and has had a good engineering safety record in this country. But Boeing was in a rush with its Boeing 737 Max 8. They had to catch up with the growing orders for a similar-sized passenger jet built by Airbus. Being in a rush meant a modification that added more seats (a key motivation), that led to larger engines that affected the aerodynamics of the plane that led to the inadequate, mostly uncommunicated software fix to the pilots. Step by step, top management pushed the engineers in ways that compromised their professional expertise and each slide set the stage for a deeper slide. Now, the press is reporting a criminal probe by the Justice Department. The Inspector General of the Department of Transportation is also investigating the FAA’s certification of 737 Max 8.

Years ago, aviation
experts say, Boeing should have developed a brand new aircraft design for such
intermediate distances. But Boeing dug in and compliant FAA officials dropped
the ball. And President Trump has failed to fill three top slots at the FAA
since January 2017.

That is why, after
flight 302 crashed outside Addis Ababa, both Boeing and the FAA kept issuing statements
filled with gibberish saying that the 737 Max 8 was safe, safe, safe—the
malfunction-prone software time bomb to the contrary. A brand new plane,
crashing twice and taking hundreds of lives, can’t be blamed on pilot error.

Caution: the grounding
of the planes may receive a whitewash unless the media keeps light and heat on
this corporate-government collusion.

Installing artificial
intelligence replacing or overpowering human intelligence in ever more complex
machines, such as modern aircraft or weapons systems or medical technology is
the harbinger of what’s to come.  In a
2014 BBC interview Stephen Hawking, the famed theoretical physicist, said:  “The development of full artificial
intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” And in 2018 Elon Musk said:
“If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy
humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it. No hard
feelings.”

At the wreckage near
Bishoftu in a small pastoral farm field and in the Java Sea off Indonesia lie
the remains of the early victims of arrogant, algorithm  driven corner cutting, by reckless corporate
executives and their captive government regulators.

Congressional Airline Survey

Please
answer yes or no to the following questions:

For the
benefit of you or your staff, has any airline:

Operated
a flight specifically for your convenience?
yes  no
Intentionally
delayed or rescheduled a flight for your convenience?
yes  no
Granted
a free ticket?
yes  no
Granted
a ticket discount not available to the general public?
yes  no
Granted
a free upgrade to you or your staff to premium economy, business, or first
classes?

 
yes    no
 

Granted
free amenities (meals, drinks, inflight entertainment, etc.)?
yes  no
Granted
unearned elite status in a frequent flyer program?
yes  no
Waived
fees for cancellations or changes or granted a refund not available to the
general public?
yes  no
Waived
ancillary fees for checked baggage or other services?
yes  no
Granted
unearned access to its airport lounge?
yes  no
Granted
priority boarding or disembarking?
yes  no
Provided
a free VIP escort?
yes  no
Granted
any other amenities or perks not granted to the general public?
yes  no

For the
benefit of you or your staff, has any airport authority or government agency:

Granted free or VIP parking at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, or other facility? yes  no
 
Granted
expedited clearance or processing through U.S. Transportation Security
Administration airport security?

 
 
yes    no

 
Granted
expedited clearance or processing through U.S. Customs and Border Protection?

 
 
yes    no

 
Granted
expedited clearance or processing through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services

 
 
yes    no

 
Granted
any other unearned amenities or perks not available to the general public?

 
 
yes    no

Letters to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack

February 25, 2019

Andrew Lack
Chairman, NBC News
30 Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10112-0002

Dear Mr. Lack:

As a baseball fan, I am writing you for the third time in
the hope that you will accord me the courtesy of a considered response
(attached are my two previous letters).

There was a time years ago when the executives of broadcast
networks would respond to serious letters of inquiry by their viewers. What has
changed for you? The food at 30 Rock is allegedly better!

By the way, people at NBC have told me that the decision as
to who will be chosen to be on the panels of Meet the Press is made in New York and not by Chuck Todd and his
colleagues in D.C. The panels are avoidably dull, though loud. My question is
why do you choose a member of such entities as the American Enterprise
Institute so often and never anyone from Public Citizen? Public Citizen’s
president is Robert Weissman, who actually knows what he is talking about, and
does speak speedily. 

In your moments of personal contemplation you must ruminate
about how mimicry has taken over the Sunday morning network news shows. A
dictator could scarcely have ordered more efficiently the same topic and
fungible guests Sunday after Sunday. Were Larry Spivak, the first host of Meet the Press so constrained, he never
would have had my “news-breaking, unconventional” message on his program over
50 years ago. Nor would the impact of that interview have prodded Congress to
pass such life-saving legislation.

Summarizing, please reply to the questions in all of these
three letters or have someone higher on the charts do so, if you were not
responsible for these decisions.

May you think boldly for yourself and NBC.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader

P.O. Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036

Cc:

Chuck Todd, Host, Meet the Press

Kyle Pope, Editor, Columbia Journalism
Review

Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live

Nicholas Johnson, Former FCC Commissioner Extraordinaire

For what it’s worth:
Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman
Michael O’Rielly, FCC Commissioner
Brendan Carr, FCC Commissioner
Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC Commissioner
Geoffrey Starks, FCC Commissioner

June 12, 2018

Andrew Lack
Chairman, NBC News
30 Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10112-0002

Dear
Mr. Lack:

It
has happened again!  People belting tennis
balls have been given priority over yesterday’s MEET THE PRESS, or shall we
call it BEAT THE PRESS.  My previous
letter to you, dated May 15, 2018, commenting on a soccer game usurpation of
Meet the Press, has yet to be answered 
(see attached copy).

People
at NBC have said that this program decision is even above your pay grade.  So would you kindly forward this and my first
letter to the superior boss on whose shoulders such grave orders emanate?  You may have him/her take note of the
fiduciary relationship that accompanies such uses of the public airwaves,
established by the 1934 Federal Communications Act and foreshadowed by Herbert
Hoover, who in the 1920s called radio stations “a public trust.”

I
look forward to receiving replies to both of my letters.  If you wish more signatories, please let me
know.

Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader

P.O. Box 19312
Washington, DC  20036

cc:  Chuck Todd and the crew

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who will soon be one of your industry’s colleagues and couldn’t care less about his fiduciary duties as he relentlessly monetizes his position.

Enc:  copy of May 15, 2018 letter

May 15, 2018

Andrew Lack
Chairman, NBC News
30 Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10112-0002

Dear Mr. Lack:

A neighborhood group that gathers each Sunday morning to
have breakfast and watch Meet the Press contacted me about how upset they were
to learn that soccer games had bumped Meet the Press!  Why, they asked?  Going further, they wondered why Meet the
Press wasn’t deferred to another time that Sunday.  After all, this is supposed to be important
public programming on the public airwaves.

You’ve probably got a formal response to viewers like
them who have asked, “What happened and Why?” 
It does seem strange that the flagship Sunday show – Meet the Press –
with your star Chuck Todd, was blacked out for soccer games.

Please send me your formal response and add an
explanation about why you didn’t push it up to another time slot.  Imagine letting Chuck sleep over on Sunday
morning!  Moreover, tell us how often
this usurpation occurs in any given year.

I look forward to your considered response. 

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

P.O. Box 19312
Washington, DC 20036

cc:  Chuck Todd and
the crew

OPEN LETTER TO BOEING – Passengers First, Ground the 737 MAX 8 Now!

By Ralph Nader
March 12, 2019

I called Boeing’s office in Washington, D.C. about the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, with over 300 fatalities, to give them some advice. They were too busy to call back, so I’m conveying some measures they should take fast in this open letter.

            Dear Boeing Executives:

            You don’t seem to see the writing on
the Wall. Your Boeing 737 MAX 8 is being grounded by more and more countries
and foreign airlines. Airline passengers in the U.S. are switching away their
reservations on this plane and there are signs of an organized boycott of this
aircraft which is used by the major U.S. airlines.

It
is only a matter of time before the bereaved families organize, before members
of Congress start forcefully speaking out, as Senators Ed Markey and Richard
Blumenthal just did. Both Senators are on the Senate’s Aviation Subcommittee.

Soon
the technical dissenters in the reported “heated discussions” with FAA, the
airline industry, the pilot unions and your company will see some internal
e-mails, memos, and whistleblowers go public. Technical dissent cannot be
repressed indefinitely.

Your
own lawyers should be counselling you that Boeing is on public notice and that,
heaven forbid, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash in this country, the arrogance of your
algorithms overpowering the pilots, can move law enforcement to investigate
potential personal criminal negligence.

Clearly,
you run a company used to having its way. Used to having a patsy FAA, with its “tombstone
mentality,” used to delaying airworthiness directives that should be put out
immediately, and not diluted and delayed, used to getting free government
R&D and used to avoiding state and federal taxes.

Stop
digging in your heels. Tell the airlines to stop digging in their heels. Public
trust in your Boeing 737 MAX 8 is eroding fast. Get ahead of the curve that is
surely heading your way.

You
see the Boeing 737 MAX 8 as being a large part of your passenger aircraft
business. You’ve delivered over 300 planes and reportedly have over 3000
orders. Over the years, your engineers have solved many technical problems brilliantly.
The domestic safety record of the major airlines, using your equipment, has
been very commendable for more than a decade. A lot of the credit goes to
Boeing as well as to the airline pilots, flight attendants, traffic
controllers, and mechanics.

But
there is always a time when commercial dictates and a rush to get ahead of Airbus
result in too many corners being cut. There is always a time when the
proverbial rubber band, being stretched suddenly snaps. This aircraft is not an
old DC-9 being phased out. The stakes involved in your erring on the side of
safety and letting your engineers exercise their “options for revision,” affect
the future of a good part of Boeing.

Tell
the U.S. airlines and other recalcitrant airlines overseas to ground their 737
MAX 8 planes and then you do what is necessary to restore the engineering
integrity of your company. You did this before with the Boeing 787 in 2013.

Once
an aircraft starts to carry a stigma in the minds of passengers, time is of the
essence. You know all about branding’s pluses and minuses. It is better to act
now before being forced to act, whether by Congress, the FAA, a prosecution or
another aircraft disaster that could have been avoided.

For safety,
Ralph Nader
Co-author of Collision Course:
The Truth About Airline Safety

Who will Displace the Omniciders?

By Ralph Nader
March 8, 2019

Citizens challenging the towering threat of climate crisis should never underestimate the consequences of our dependence on fossil fuel corporations. Real engagement with the worsening climate disruption means spending more of our leisure hours on civic action. The fate of future generations and our planet depends on the intensity of these actions.

This was my impression
after interviewing Dahr Jamail, author of the gripping new book, The End of Ice, on my Radio Hour. Jamail,
wrote books and prize-winning articles, as the leading freelance journalist covering
the Bush/Cheney Iraq war and its devastating aftermath. For his latest book, Jamail
went to the visible global warming hot spots to get firsthand accounts from
victims of climate disruption. His gripping reporting is bolstered by facts
from life-long specialists working in the regions he visited.

Readers of The End of Ice are taken on a journey to
see what is happening in Alaska, the mountain forests of California, the coral reefs
of Australia, the heavily populated lowlands of South Florida, the critical
Amazon forest, and other areas threatened by our corporate-driven climate
crisis.

Jamail, an accomplished
mountaineer, precisely illustrates the late great environmentalist, Barry
Commoner’s first law of ecology. Namely, that “everything is connected to
everything else.” Jamail makes the connection between the rising sea levels and
the untold catastrophes engulfing forests, mountains, and the wildlife on land and
in the sea. Jamail is not relying on computer models. What he is seeing,
photographing, and experiencing is often worse than what the models show in
terms of accelerating sea level rises and the melting ice of the glaciers.

Jamail’s trenchant
conversations with bona fide experts who have spent a lifetime seeing what
mankind has done to the natural world, presents a compelling case of the threat
the climate crisis poses to human survival.

Jamail, near the end of
his narrative, writes: “Disrespect for nature is leading to our own
destruction… This is the direct result of our inability to understand our
part in the natural world. We live in a world where we are acidifying the
oceans, where there will be few places cold enough to support year-round ice,
where all the current coastlines will be underwater, and where droughts,
wildfires, floods, storms, and extreme weather are already becoming the new
normal.”

If you don’t know that
melting ice and permafrost is a big tragedy, then that is all the more reason to
read this book and immerse yourself in its vivid prose.

His chapter on south
Florida and its millions of residents is probably the one scenario that will
bring the alarming message home to people in coastal communities worldwide. South
Florida could be underwater in fifty years or less. Many of the houses,
buildings and infrastructures are located only a few feet or yards above sea
level. Engineers and some city officials see Miami Beach as doomed and say Floridians
must prepare for evacuations.

There are other more
approaching, intermediate dangers. As Jamail writes: “One major source of
concern is the Florida aquifer. Once that water is contaminated by saltwater,
it is over.”

Already, some banks
will not provide 30 year home mortgages for vulnerably located houses. Some
home values along the ocean are starting to be adversely affected. Insurance
companies are reluctant to publicize their projections but their actuarial
tables are not, shall we say, consumer friendly.

Then there are the
lethal-storm surges during major hurricanes as sea levels and high tides rise
relentlessly.

Most businesses,
people, and municipalities are looking the other way. Two-term Governor Rick
Scott (a corporate crook) even prohibited state employees from uttering or
writing the words “climate change” in any state documents. It is admittedly
hard to face such catastrophe while the sun is shining and most normal life
continues. In 2017, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Florida Power and
Light, the go-ahead to build two new nuclear power plants (they’re too
expensive and won’t be built) to join its aging plants on the beach. Shades of
the Fukushima disaster in Japan 8 years ago.

None of these warnings are
recent. Climate scientists warned President Lyndon Johnson about the dangers
associated with carbon release in the atmosphere in 1965. President Bill
Clinton and Vice President Al Gore released a detailed, urgent, report, with
pictures and graphs, about climate disruption in 1993 to demonstrate that the
clock was ticking. Unfortunately, in the following seven years, they mostly did
what the auto industry wanted them to do—nothing.

Some of the most
poignant passages in Jamail’s book are the informed cries and worries of the
onsite specialists he interviewed. People you have never heard of, but who
should be heard all the time. One of them, Dr. Rita Mesquita, a biologist with
the largest research institute in Brazil for the Amazon forest says, “We are
not telling the general public what is really going on.” While the general
public is spending more time in virtual reality and, with growing urbanization,
becoming estranged from nature, this ominous disconnect is widening.

The new president of
Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has openly vowed to bolster more commercial development
in the Amazon and on indigenous tribal land.

How will India’s
billion plus people get their water if its rivers dry up because the glaciers
in the Himalayas have melted? How do you relocate 30 million people from Mumbai
from rising sea levels? How do you head off spreading diseases due to habitat
destruction? Meanwhile, 100 corporations (e.g. ExxonMobil, Shell, and state
entities) continue to be the source of 71% of total global carbon dioxide
emissions.

There are 600 cable
channels in the U.S. transmitting largely junk programs. How about one percent
of them (six) being dedicated to the global stories and urgencies of climate
catastrophes, and to how movements like Drawdown (of greenhouse gases) are
succeeding in cutting these menaces (see Drawdown
by Paul Hawken) around the world?

Think about what we
should be doing with some of our time for our descendants so as not to have
them curse us for being oblivious, narcissistic ancestors!

We can start with
instructing our Congress to deploy its transformative leverage over the
economy. The only reason Congress has been an oil, gas, and coal toady, instead
of an efficient, renewable energy force, is because we have sat on the
sidelines watching ExxonMobil be Congress’ quarterback.

Unleashed Graphic Designers – Art over Function

By Ralph Nader

February 27, 2019

Many readers object to illegible print in contemporary print newspapers and magazines. In today’s print news, legible print is on a collision course with flights of fancy by graphic artists.

Admittedly, this is the golden age for graphic artists to show their creativity. Editors have convinced themselves that with readers’ shorter attention spans and the younger generation’s aversion to spending time with print publications, the graphic artists must be unleashed. Never mind what the ophthalmologists or the optometrists may think. Space, color, and type size are the domain of liberated gung-ho artists.

There is one additional problem with low expectations for print newsreaders: Even though print readership is shrinking, there will be even fewer readers of print if they physically cannot read the printed word.

I have tried, to no avail, to speak with graphic design editors of some leading newspapers about three pronounced trends that are obscuring content. First is the use of background colors that seriously blur the visibility of the text on the page. Second is print size, which is often so small and light that even readers with good eyesight would need the assistance of a magnifying glass. Third is that graphic designers have been given far too much space to replace content already squeezed by space limitations.

Function should not follow art. Readers should not have to squint to make out the text on the page. Some readers might even abandon an article because of its illegible text! One wonders why editors have ceded control of the readability of their publications to graphic designers. Editors cannot escape responsibility by saying that the graphic designers know best.

I am not taking to task the artists who combine attention-getting graphics with conveyance of substantive content. A good graphic provides emotional readiness for the words that follow.

However, in the February 17, 2019 Sunday edition of the New York Times, the page one article of the Sunday Review Section was titled, “Time to Panic,” about global climate disruption by David Wallace-Wells. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. The editors wanted to strike fear in readers to jolt their attentiveness to such peril, through a lurid two giant fingers with a human eye in between. A dubious attempt. Taking up the entire first page of the precious Sunday Review section (except for a hefty slice of an ad for the Broadway play “To Kill a Mockingbird”), smattered by three paragraphs of small, white and almost unreadable text on a dark pink background, is counterproductive. Less graphic license and clearer type would have had art following function.

Many graphic artists seem to have lost their sense of proportion – unless that is, the editors are pushing them to bleed out more and more valuable space with their increasingly extravagant designs. It is bad enough that print publications have been shrinking due to diminished ad revenue.  It is time for better editorial judgment and artistic restraint.

Unfortunately, there is no sign of such prudence. In that same Sunday edition of the Times, over eighty percent of page one of the Business Section was devoted entirely to a graphic of a presumed taxpayer smothered by flying sheets of the federal tax return – it rendered the page devoid of content. At the bottom of this front page, there was a listing of five articles under the title “Your Taxes 2019.” I can only imagine Times reporters gnashing their teeth about having their prose jettisoned from being featured on this valuable page of the Business Section. That wasn’t all. The artists ran amok on the inside pages with their pointless artistry taking up over half of the next three pages of this section.

Think of all the additional articles on other pressing business topics that never reached readers. Gretchen Morgenson’s prize-winning weekly column exposing corporate wrongdoing used to be on page one of the Business Section. She is now at the Wall Street Journal.

This is happening in, arguably, the most serious newspaper in America – one that tries to adjust its print editions to an Internet age that, it believes, threatens the very existence of print’s superiority for conversation, impact and longevity for readers, scholars, and posterity alike.

I first came across run-a-muck graphic design at the turn of the century in Wired Magazine. Technology has dramatically reduced the cost of multi-colored printing. I could scarcely believe the unreadability and the hop-scotch snippets presented in obscure colors, and small print nestled in-degrading visuals. At the time, I just shrugged it off and did not renew my subscription due to invincible unreadability.

Now, however, the imperialism of graphic designers knows few boundaries. Many graphic designers don’t like to explain themselves or be questioned by readers. After all, to them readers have little understanding of the nuances of the visual arts and, besides, maybe they should see their optometrists.

Well, nearly a year ago, I wrote to Dr. Keith Carter, president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Dr. Christopher J. Quinn, president of the American Optometric Association, asking for their reactions (enclosing some examples of designer excess). I urged them to issue a public report suggesting guidelines with pertinent illustrations. After all, they are professionals who should be looking out for their clients’ visual comfort. Who would know more?

Dr. Carter responded, sympathizing with my observations but throwing up his hands in modest despair about not being able to do anything about the plight of readers. I never heard from anybody at the Optometric Association.

Of all the preventable conditions coursing across this tormented Earth, this is one we should be able to remedy. It is time to restore some level of visual sanity. Don’t editors think print readers are an endangered species? One would think!

What are Torts? They’re Everywhere!

By Ralph Nader

February 20, 2019

What exposed the Tobacco industry’s carcinogenic cover-up? The lethal asbestos industry cover-up? The General Motors’ deadly ignition switch defect cover-up? The Catholic Church’s pedophile scandal? All kinds of toxic waste poisonings?

Not the state legislatures of our country. Not Congress. Not the regulatory agencies of our federal or state governments. These abuses and other wrongs were exposed by lawsuits brought by individuals or groups of afflicted plaintiffs using the venerable American law of torts.

Almost every day, the media reports on stories of injured parties using our legal system to seek justice for wrongful injuries. Unfortunately, the media almost never mentions that the lawsuits were filed under the law of torts.

Regularly, the media reports someone filing a civil rights lawsuit or a civil liberties lawsuit. When was the last time you read, heard, or saw a journalist start their report by saying…“so and so today filed a tort lawsuit against a reckless manufacturer or a sexual predator, or against the wrongdoers who exposed the people of a town like Flint, Michigan to harmful levels of lead in drinking water? Or lawsuits against Donald Trump for ugly defamations or sexual assaults”?

I was recently discussing this strange omission with Richard Newman, executive director of the American Museum of Tort Law and a former leading trial attorney in Connecticut. He too was intrigued. He told me that when high school students tour the Museum, their accompanying teachers often admit that they themselves never heard of tort law!

Last fall, a progressive talk show host, who has had many victims of wrongful injuries on her show, visited the museum. While walking through the door, she too declared that she didn’t know what tort law was. She certainly did after spending an hour touring the museum. (See tortmuseum.org).

Public ignorance about tort law should have been taken care of in our high schools. Sadly even some lawyers advised us not to use the word “tort” in the Museum’s name because nobody would know what it meant.

“Tort” comes from the French word for “a wrongful injury.” Millions of torts involving people and property occur every year. Bullies in schools, assaults, negligent drivers, hazardous medicines, defective motor vehicles, toxic chemicals, hospital and medical malpractices, and occupational diseases, and more can all be the sources of a tort claim.

Yes, crimes are almost always torts as well. When police officers use wildly excessive force and innocent people die, families can sue the police department under tort law and have recovered compensation for “wrongful deaths.”

American law runs on the notion that “for every wrong, there should be a remedy.” When Americans get into trouble with the law, they are told by judges that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” and that “you are presumed to know the law.” In that case, why then don’t we teach the rudiments of tort law (or fine print contract law for that matter) in high schools?

After all, youngsters are not exempt from wrongful injuries in their daily street and school lives. Just recently, scores of schools’ drinking water fountains were found to contain dangerous levels of lead. That is a detectable, preventable condition and would be deemed gross negligence invoking tort law.

Most remarkably, the insurance industry has spent billions of dollars over the past fifty years on advertising and demanding “tort reform”, meaning restricting the rights of claimants who go to court and capping the compensation available to injured patients no matter how serious their disability. Still the public’s curiosity was never quickened to learn more about tort law and trial by jury. The right to trial by jury is older than the American Revolution, is protected by the seventh amendment to our Constitution and is available to be used by injured parties to help defend against or deter those who would expose people and their property to wrongful harm or damage.

One way to educate people is to do what a physician friend of mine did at a conference of Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) specialists. He walked in wearing a Tort Museum T-Shirt, raising eyebrows and provoking discussion.

There are, of course, more systematic ways to inform Americans about tort law. Bring the high school curriculums down to earth and educate students about this great pillar of American freedom. Devote one of the 600 cable channels in America to teaching citizens about the law, and how to use it to improve levels of justice in our country.

From social media to traditional media, the law of torts needs to be illustrated with actual case studies showing its great contribution and even greater potential to provide compensation for or deterrence to all kinds of preventable violence.

Artists and musicians should use their talents to convey many of these David vs. Goliath battles in our courts of law. Oh, for a great song on the delights of having a jury bring a wrongdoer to justice.

The powerless can hold the powerful accountable, with a contingent fee attorney. Tort law remains vastly underutilized—though it is before us in plain sight. The plutocrats must be happy that so few people know about or use the remedies available through tort law.

Hear this practicing plaintiff lawyers—wherever you are: You number 60,000 strong in the U.S. If you each speak to small groups—classes, clubs, reunions, etc.—totaling some 1,000 people a year, that is 60 million people receiving knowledge central to their quality of life and security. Every year! Fascinating human interest stories full of courage, persistence, and vindication of critical rights will captivate and inspire your audiences. What say you, “officers of the court”?