Ralph Nader's Blog, page 53
January 9, 2018
An Open Letter to President Trump
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President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
January 9, 2018
Dear President Trump,
Let us all wish and work for a peaceful and just New Year.
The American people are spending a significant amount of time observing and thinking about your presidency and its robust tweeting operation as President. Three areas of interest and concern comprise this letter’s purpose:
With news of the forthcoming medical examination by your physicians there will be renewed interest in your medical records and medical condition. This is true of all Presidents, but more so with you, because you have not been as forthcoming or anywhere near as complete in your disclosures about the state of your health during the campaign and since you became President last January.
The other concern relates to your diets and habits. You have what some nutritionists colloquially call a “cardiac diet” – full of foods containing fat, salt and sugar. A recent report said you drink about 12 cans of artificially sweetened diet coke a day! You have said you sleep less than normal people. You are overweight. Not a good combination, say physicians and health scientists, that is conductive to good health. And then there is the added stress of just being President and constantly being viscerally angry at critics here and abroad. People just doing things with their constitutional freedom, to which you strenuously object, seems to aggravate you.
Please release your full medical records with the necessary technical details and explanations to give the public confidence in your health.
There is much writing and litigation about how you are enriching yourself from many private and public sources. The emoluments clause of the Constitution is much in the news as recurrent reports bring to public attention all the spenders going to your properties and those of your family hoping to ingratiate themselves with your favors, including diplomatic officials of foreign countries in Washington, DC and New York City, and other public officials patronizing your properties abroad.
Since you have not fully divested from your properties, there is all the more reason for you to release several years of your tax returns, including the most recent return. Even your supporters have wondered, “Why not, what has he got to hide?” Or more benignly, “Why not, he’s got nothing to hide, everyone knows he is rich and has done lots of deals with lots of businesses and partnerships.”
Will you recognize that you are a public official and owe the people the full tax information, most importantly, your assets, debts and other business dealings and partnerships?
There has been a vast conflict between your public statements assuring the people that “we want to protect our workers, their safety our health and we want to protect our air and our country’s natural beauty.” Moreover, last year you asserted that no one would go without healthcare.
By contrast, you have selected men and women to run your health and safety regulatory agencies and departments who were and are openly hostile to these agencies’ official statutory missions. Like you, those you have appointed are boastful about their intention to dismantle limits on lethal or injurious impacts and actions that have been saving the lives, health and safety of the American people and protecting consumer dollars. You are aware of their sworn oath of office to uphold the laws under their jurisdiction – an oath preceded by similar assurances in their sworn congressional testimony at their Senate confirmation hearings.
The destruction of these federal agencies’ missions, the degrading and marginalizing of their scientists, engineers, ecologists, economists and other professional public servants are without precedent. What is also unique is that your heads of EPA, the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Education, Labor and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are contemptuous of the missions of their agencies. The neglect, reversals or replacements are letting more Americans, including children, die, get sick or be injured – on your Presidential watch! And the enablers of unprosecuted corporate crime and wrongdoing that are just getting underway –revoking or suspending rules and even brazenly pulling back on enforcement actions which are nearing settlements, sanctions or prohibitions. This abdication also creates a climate than can increase corporate abuses of workers and consumers.
Of course, there is prosecutorial or enforcement discretion, with priorities for action. That is not the situation here. This is a wholesale wrecking crew of non-enforcement of laws, taking the federal cops off the corporate crime, fraud and abuse beat. This is a demolition death dance cutting enforcement budgets, pushing conscientious enforcement officials out the door or leaving them with nothing to do, thereby wasting taxpayer money. Such zealotry keeps pushing the envelope until preventable disasters occur or serious scandals emerge. That’s when it reaches your desk.
Pay attention to what those you have appointed are undoing, if only because they will be doing in your congressional supporters in November. You should start with the Rogue’s gallery of Mick Mulvaney, grinding down the CFPB, Alex Acosta, the Secretary Against Labor, Scott Pruitt, Chief Toxifier at the EPA, Ryan Zinke, Oil-Driller-in-Chief on the federal lands and offshore, Sonny Perdue, the anti-nutritionist at USDA, Scott Gottlieb, the drug industry’s man at the FDA, and Betsy DeVos, the corporatist, jeopardizing students at the Department of Education.
It would help if you are seen working on your empathy for the tens of millions of deprived and innocent people, including children, exposed to various forms of risk and exploitation in their daily lives here and abroad whom you are adversely affecting.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
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January 3, 2018
Corporate Coercion and the Drive to Eliminate Buying with Cash
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By Ralph Nader
January 3, 2018
“Sorry we’re not taking cash or checks,” said the clerk at the Fed Ex counter over a decade ago to an intern. “Only credit cards.”
Since then, the relentless intensification of coercive commercialism has been moving toward a cashless economy, when all consumers are incarcerated within a prison of corporate payment systems from your credit/debit cards to your mobile phone and very soon facial recognition.
“Terrific!” say those consumers for whom convenience and velocity of transactions are irresistible.
“This is nuts!” say a shrinking number of free-thinking consumers who are unwilling to be dragooned down the road to corporate captivity and coercion. These people treasure their privacy. They understand that it’s none of any conglomerate’s business – whether VISA, Facebook, Amazon or Google – what, where, when and how consumers purchase goods and services. Or where and when they travel, receive healthcare, or the most intimate relationships they maintain. Not to mention consumers’ personal information can be sent to or hacked around the globe.
Cash-consumers are not alone in their opposition to a cashless economy. When they are in a cab and ask the driver how they prefer to be paid, the answer is near-unanimous. “Cash, cash, cash,” reply the cab drivers in cities around the country. They get paid immediately and without having to have a company deduct a commission.
Back some 25 years ago, Consumers Union considered backing consumer groups to sign up Main Street, USA merchants who agreed to discount their wares if people paid in cash. For the same reason – merchants get to keep all the money on sales made with cash or check. Unfortunately, the idea never materialized. It is, however, still a good idea. Today, payments systems are much more comprehensively coercive.
Once you’re in the credit card system, lack of privacy and access to your credit are just the tip of the iceberg. That is why companies can impose penalties, surcharges, overcharges and a myriad of other corporate raids on your private treasury. They get immediate payment. If you object, you could see a lowering of your credit score or your credit rating. Besides, you don’t even know you agreed to all of these dictates – banks have over 300 different special charges for their revered customers – in fine print agreements that you never saw, read or even possessed to sign or click on. What’s the likelihood that banks would continue to surcharge you if they had to bill you instead of debit you?
The sheer pace and brazenness of corporations when they have instant access to your credit is stunning. The recent crimes of banking giant Wells Fargo, including selling auto insurance and assigning new credit cards to millions of their customers who had no knowledge and gave no consent for these charges, which resulted in damage to these customers’ credit scores and ratings, can only be committed when consumers are turned into economic prisoners. There are still no criminal prosecutions of the bank or its bosses. Wells Fargo bank stock rose to a year high last month. To their credit, the CFPB imposed a $100 million dollar fine on Wells Fargo, which barred them from deducting the fine as a business expense.
Coercive fine print contracts rob you of your consumer rights by preventing you from going to court, imposing fines as high as $35 for bounced checks (which typically cost the banks less than $2), and decreeing that you agreed in advance to all kinds of unconscionable abuses, so long as you are in a “customer” status with them. Some companies are even charging customers for quitting them.
The rapacity inflicted on cashless purchasers prevails across the economy – insurance, mortgages, telecommunications, healthcare, stock brokerage, online buying and, of course, requirements to use electronic payment systems.
The more consumers become incarcerated by the companies that purportedly serve them, the more lucrative commodity consumers become. This leads to, among other problems, massive computerized billing fraud in the US. In the healthcare industry alone, billing fraud amounts to ten percent of what is spent, according to Harvard applied mathematics professor Malcolm Sparrow, author of License to Steal. This year’s expenditure of ten percent of the $3.5 trillion expected to be spent amounts to $350 billion. A cashless economy further facilitates these larcenous practices.
A computerized economy is one where fraud can easily be committed on a massive scale, according to Frank Abagnale who, after serving his time in prison for identity theft, has become an impassioned educator (serving institutions ranging from the FBI to AARP) on how to detect and avoid such crimes, which he estimates to cost people about one trillion dollars each year.
What it comes down to is whether consumer freedom is worth more than consumer convenience or whether the points earned for future purchases (assuming the costs are not passed on in hidden ways) are worth minimizing impulse buying, avoiding big data profile manipulations, keeping personal matters personal and requiring your affirmative consent to transactions where you decide what you want to buy and how you can pay.
However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pay by cash or check. Try renting a car or occupying a hotel room or buying a snack or drink on an airline without a credit or debit card.
In the latest example of such coercion, new boutique eateries like Two Forks, Dig Inn, Dos Toros or Pokee in New York City operate entirely through payment systems that reject all cash purchases. “But isn’t cash legal tender?” you might ask. How could they reject cash on the barrelhead? Simple, says the Federal Reserve, so long as they notify you in advance. It’s that fine print again.
The New York Times, reported these rejections and noted: “Not surprisingly, the credit card companies, who make a commission on every credit card purchase, applaud the trend. Visa recently offered select merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving customers of their right to pay by the method of their choice.” The nerve!
Cash consumers of America arise, band together and organize a National Association for the Preservation of Cash Purchases. You have nothing to save but your freedom, your desire to push back and your precious, affirmative and personal right to consent or not to consent, before you are forced into contract peonage.
Interested? Let’s hear from you at info@csrl.org.
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December 26, 2017
For Year End Charitable Giving—Some Favorites
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Here are some of my favorite, frugal, effective non-profit citizen action organizations that you may wish to favor with your tax-deductible generosity.
1. Veterans For Peace (VFP): Composed of veterans from World War II to the present, VFP takes strong stands, including peaceful demonstrations and marches, for peace and against a militarized, aggressive foreign policy and wars of choice. Donate here: (1404 North Broadway, St. Louis MO 63102 or https://www.veteransforpeace.org/take-action/donate/).
2. Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (PEER): A group of U.S. Forest Service professionals started this remarkable group, which has since spread to civil servants in other federal agencies such as the EPA and the Department of the Interior. PEER’s staff is knowledgeable, organized and relentless in protecting federal employees’ right to bring their conscience to work and speak out against unlawful or reckless devastation of our environmental resources and health. (962 Wayne Ave #610, Silver Spring, MD 20910; https://www.peer.org/give/)
3. Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest (ASPI): This lean, dedicated and productive group works tirelessly to find solutions in one of the poorest regions of America through the application of practical science. They teach how to preserve forests, protect drinking water sources, how to cook without electricity or gas, how to grow their own food and build a home without visiting a big box store. (50 Lair St, Mt Vernon, KY 40456; https://donorbox.org/aspi)
4. The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OPEPA) opposes the nuclear arms race, seeks enforceable treaties abolishing nuclear weapons (the latter is agreeable to numerous retired cabinet secretaries in both Republican and Democratic administrations) and monitors government arms contracts, radiation hazards and facilities such as the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Their newsletter is a must-read.(P.O. Box 5743, Oak Ridge, TN 37831; http://orepa.org/)
5. The Pension Rights Center, the only national civic organization dedicated to reforming pension policies, unfair regulations and protecting and promoting retirement security. They help individual retirees and propose major retirement programs for all Americans. (1730 M Street, NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20036; www.pensionrights.org)
6. The North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) works to start and expand consumer and housing cooperatives, especially for young people in colleges and universities. NASCO provides “on-the-ground training for over 79 cooperative organizations…. Living in a co-op means learning that cooperation is not only an alternative solution but also a way to empower our local leaders and communities.” NASCO will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Their fortune is bright and promising. (1100 West Cermak Road, #514, Chicago, IL 60608; www.nasco.coop)
7. Organization for Competitive Markets Don’t let the name Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) mislead you. OCM is a ferocious, detail-oriented champion of small family farms in our country against giant agribusinesses squeezing farmers from both the supplying and buying their crops. OCM’s newsletter is unyielding in showing how preserving family farms is also good for consumers and the struggle against monopolization from industry giants like Monsanto. (P.O. Box 6486 Lincoln, NE 68506; www.competitivemarkets.com)
8. The Center for Auto Safety: Without this watchdog group holding accountable the auto industry and its federal regulators, tens of millions of cars would not have been recalled over the past four decades. It has been the guardian angel of American motorists and consumers in other respects as well. (1825 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20009; https://www.autosafety.org/make-donation/)
9. The Indian Law Resource Center, based in Montana generates justice and safety for Indigenous Peoples. Under its brilliant executive director, Robert T. Coulter, the Center seems to be everywhere, protecting American Indian and Alaska Native families, fending off the Trump Administration’s move to undermine long-standing trust relationships, keeping indigenous lands in community ownership and supporting sustainable development in Central and South America. (602 Ewing Street, Helena, MT 59601; www.indianlaw.org)
10. Whirlwind Wheelchair helps people in less developed countries construct sturdy, inexpensive wheelchairs from local materials, building self-reliance and addressing the critical needs of safe mobility. Founder Ralf Hotchkiss has invented many improvements in wheelchairs for free public application. (2703 7th Street, #134, Berkeley, CA 94710; https://whirlwindwheelchair.org/donate/)
11. The Salvation Army: And, of course, the old reliable Salvation Army – quick to the scene of natural disasters anywhere in the world with hands-on assistance, unbureaucratic and frugal. On a daily basis it helps the poor, the destitute and the hungry. Over 140 years old, with 15,409 congregations in 127 countries, 1,150,666 million members and many thrift stores, the Salvation Army is consistently rated near the top of the most popular charities/non-profits in America. As incorruptible as humans can possibly be. (615 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, VA 22313; www.salvationarmyusa.org)
I’ve given donations to all these organizations over the years. Consider their selfless work, in the age of Wall Street profit-glutted greed, and support their activities for the New Year.
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December 20, 2017
Needed: A Meter for Trump’s Lies-Per-Minute (LPM)
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Imagine an app that can calculate the lies per minute (LPM) Trump subjects the American public to on a daily basis. Perhaps there should be a national contest for how many Trump lies per minute can be documented by a contestant in a given week.
When the Republican “tax cuts” reach his desk, in a bill which gives massive handouts to the rich and giant corporations at the expense of working families, Trump will envelope this even more complex tax code in a vast cloud of lies designed to reassure the working class that he daily betrays.
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan once said: “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Trump continues to trumpet serial lies about the bill, which was changed repeatedly during the last days to cater even more to commercial interests – in an egregious display of cash register politics. Republican Congressional leaders have also made mendacity their mantra. Moreover, Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan have kept the bill from the Democrats, who had no chance to carefully read the final draft which they were expected to vote on.
Apparently there is no Senate rule preventing the tyrannical majority from keeping the minority in the dark. Today the Senate, split 52 to 48 in favor of the Republicans, is Senator Mitch McConnell’s dictatorship. There were no public hearings on this legislation, no opportunity for the Democrats and the public to regularly read the changes in the bill and very limited debate on the Senate floor. The Republicans, having circumvented the filibuster and stretched the reconciliation procedure to include opening up the Arctic refuge to oil and gas drilling and having more people lose their health insurance.
None of this means anything to Trump, who probably hasn’t even read a memo by his advisors on the bill’s details. His close aides say he doesn’t like briefing materials. Why should he? The Deceiver in Chief need only lie his way to the signing ceremony:
“Biggest tax cuts in history.” False. “Biggest reform ever passed.” False. “Will create many beautiful jobs.” False. “Biggest middle class tax cut ever.” Totally false. Trump also lies when he says he will take a “big, big hit” to his own wealth from this tax bill. Laughably false.
Tax analysts have exhausted themselves counting the number of intricate ways the legislation elevates Trump and his family’s wealth, real estate holdings and estates. If he had any dignity, he would announce that he would not take tax cuts, directly or indirectly, before he signs the bill into law.
As Trump tries to sell the myth that he is somehow “for the little guy” and fallaciously claims the forgotten men and women of America “will never be forgotten again,” his cabinet secretaries and regulatory agency heads are working overtime to roll back health, safety and labor protections for working people. That is, of course, exactly why these agency heads were picked by Trump.
Trump’s corporatized Department of Education is getting rid of protections for students who have been preyed upon and burdened with huge amounts of debt by for-profit so-called universities (Remember the frauds perpetrated by Trump University and his $25 million settlement last year). He has corporate crime abettor, Mick Mulvaney, running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into the ground and trying to dismantle its law and order program for corporate financial crooks.
Trump brags about getting rid of “job-killing regulations,” without specifically mentioning any of them. He just keeps repeating over and over again his false claims. These regulations he wants to kill save the lives, health and safety of the American people by limiting toxic chemicals in the workplace, the consumer marketplace and the air, water and soil. He is letting defenseless Americans, including children, get sicker, be injured more and die earlier by continuing his cruel and vicious abandonment of long-considered legal safeguards. The regulations he is leaving alone are the ones providing corporate welfare, or what ideologically consistent conservatives call “crony capitalism.”
Trump heralds “clean, beautiful coal” (a wild lie about a devastating pollutant) and brags about creating 45,000 more mining jobs. Even barons of the declining coal industry know he’s trying to mislead the public.
Trump’s automatic prevarications keep coming, Tweet by Tweet. He says he is helping the little guy and then appoints his bank regulator, Keith Noreika, who helped banks avoid state laws protecting consumers and helped banks charge more fees. Mr. Noreika continues such anti-consumer practices in his new taxpayer-funded job.
In a recent front page article titled “Champion of the ‘Little Guy’? Trump’s Actions Tell Another Story,” the New York Times’ reporters asks Mike Walden, a truck driver for 30 years, what he thought. Having voted for Republicans in Ohio, Walden’s reply should trouble Trump, who is always sniffing for voter trends: “What has he done for the working man?…You don’t get elected by the working class then throw them under the bus.”
Voters who continue to believe in serial political liars are entrenching a tyranny over themselves. If we do not learn to recognize and reject such dishonesty, we will continue to enable dirty politics to our serious detriment.
For a comprehensive list of Trump’s constantly growing number of LPMs, see Trump’s Lies in the New York Times.
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December 13, 2017
What Does Trump Mean by “Make America Great Again”?
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Donald Trump’s now ubiquitous slogan, “Make America Great Again!”, is often chanted at rallies, but rarely scrutinized in public discourse. What era in America’s past is Mr. Trump referring to when he says “Again”?
Would Mr. Trump prefer America return to the days of slavery, Jim Crow and labor exploitation in unsafe factories, mines, foundries and plantations? How about the late 19th century when “Robber Barons” monopolized one industry after another? Is he longing for the days when women were second-class citizens and couldn’t vote, until securing this right less than 100 years ago, only to still be paid lower wages than their male colleagues for performing the same jobs and faced with consumer and educational discrimination?
Or is Trump referring to a time when the US was less of a giant empire than it is today?
Or, more optimistically, in the nineteen sixties and early seventies when America had its highest real wages and a large trade surplus? Has anyone heard him say he wanted to return America to that prominence that peaked in the nineteen sixties?
He surely doesn’t want to raise wages for workers. On the campaign trail last year he said wages were too high and has not championed raising the frozen federal minimum wage (at $7.25 an hour) since.
He has spoken often about revising trade agreements to reduce our trade deficit, but he’s not going to take on the opposition of the emigrating giant global corporations to reduce our trade deficit.
Maybe he wants to go back to the America before there was Medicare and Medicaid, before dangerous cars had to be recalled, before food had to be labelled, before unions existed to collectively bargain with large companies in the auto, steel and oil industries?
Does he miss the days when there were segregated restaurants, hotels, trains and buses? What about when people could smoke in your space on airplanes, in college lecture halls, hospital waiting rooms, cafes, offices and just about all public spaces, no matter the presence of children and asthmatics? Or when people with disabilities faced physical exclusion and career discrimination?
More benignly, perhaps Mr. Trump is longing for the days when there was less soil erosion, fewer toxic chemicals in the environment and more family farms. Or when there was far less obesity and diabetes and less aggressive marketing to children of fast food full of fat, sugar and salt. If so, he sure is not going to Make America Great with the corporatists he’s appointed to run the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Agriculture.
Does he want to Make America Great Again by returning to the days when there were fewer people in prisons per capita, fewer non-violent drug offenders serving long sentences, including juveniles, fewer if any private corporate prisons? If so, he is going to have problems with his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. What about when casino gambling was highly restricted and only legal in Nevada? It’s unlikely Mr. Trump would have wanted to prohibit gambling in his Atlantic City Casinos before they failed or went bankrupt. With his flurry of statements and Tweets endorsing sexual harasser and accused pedophile, defeated Senate candidate Roy Moore, Trump, given his boastful aggression toward women, certainly does not want to return to an America when such widely publicized misbehavior would have kept men from even running for office.
Maybe, Mr. Trump has a limited meaning to “Again.” Maybe he means going back to a time when America was respected and feared in the world. Going back to the days when a smaller Japan and Germany made war on the US or when Britain played Woodrow Wilson and the US for suckers and got us into World War I, which led to World War II. Oh, such glorious nostalgia for Donald J. Trump.
What a speech Trump could give were he to explain what Making America Great Again means to him. He could explain his desire to go back to the prosperous Sixties when big corporations and the rich paid much higher taxes, didn’t dare pay their CEOs more than 30 times the average wage in their companies and had to comply with a higher real minimum wage. He could wax nostalgic over the larger relative infrastructure budgets of the federal government, or the days when student debt was small or non-existent compared to the huge student debt load now imposed on this younger generation of Americans.
If all this sounds a little confusing, it is. Voters should have rejected such an unrebutted slogan repeated to applauding crowds again and again by Donald Trump in his get-away-with-anything presidential campaign of 2016.
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December 6, 2017
Remarks by Ralph Nader on Senators’ Calls for Al Franken’s Resignation
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 6, 2017
Remarks by Ralph Nader
Many Democratic Senators have demanded that Senator Al Franken resign immediately from the US Senate over accusations by six women that Senator Franken made unwanted advances and engaged in sexual harassment. Strange, isn’t it, that these same demanding Senators are not demanding now that Donald Trump resign as President.
Mr. Trump has boasted and bragged about his sexual aggressiveness toward resisting women and has been accused by more women regarding more serious charges so far than the case of Senator Franken. Mr. Trump has responded by slandering these women, while Senator Franken has shown deep contrition and self-criticism. Why the double standard, Senators?
The same double standard holds true for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s demand for Congressman John Conyers’ resignation, while avoiding demanding the same of tortious Donald J. Trump. Demanding the same result for gross behavior demonstrates a modicum of courage and evenhandedness lacking here, because these Senators know that, unlike Franken, tweeting Trump will go after them with wild, continual denunciations – repeated by the mass media.
Moreover, why have a Senate Ethics Committee investigation process at all if righteous double standard clamor is deemed to suffice? These Senators should be mindful that having a due process procedure and then ignoring it can someday come back to bite them.
Of course, there are many other double standards in the Congress, such as backing illegal aggressive wars with mass civilian destruction without war declarations (Iraq), authorizations and appropriations (Libya) resulting in millions of innocent casualties abroad. Some of these Senators run for the Presidency without any objection by their Senatorial colleagues.
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The Republicans’ Devious Tax Attack on the People
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By Ralph Nader
December 6, 2017
Have the Republican greed-hound toadies gone too far? How much are the American people going to take before they replace the reckless Republicans in the next election? Low and middle-income Americans are bracing for the likely passage of a Trump-supported tax bill that deviously redistributes even more of the people’s income to the richest one percent (including a big tax cut for Trump) and the unpatriotic giant corporations.
Greased through Congress with the support of Republican mega-donors, over the inept opposition of the Democrats who astonishingly offered no tax plan of their own, this tax legislation does exactly the opposite of what House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and their prevaricator-in-chief, Donald Trump, are declaring.
Namely, this utterly complex brew of greed and handouts for the super-rich gives a gut punch to the masses, including people making below $30,000. Far from a tax cut the Republicans are trying to Peddle to the people, the Senate bill is projected to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over ten years to pay for the huge tax cuts enriching the corporate plutocrats who are laughing all the way to the bank. Such unsustainable losses in revenue sets the stage for cutting Medicare, Medicaid and other critical services to vulnerable Americans, with Republicans using the ballooning deficit they created as their excuse.
Slashing and burning in every direction, this legislation endangers the financial security of regular Americans of every age, every occupation and, by ending many deductions for local sales and income taxes, hurting state and local budgets.
Ryan and McConnell undermined the integrity of the legislative process by banning public hearings on this tax legislation in the House and Senate. In doing so, they denied the American people, including honest tax experts, the opportunity to adequately examine these dangerous proposals, especially the huge giveaways to multinational corporations at the expense of working class families. No Congress has ever gone this far. If this shameless lack of transparency proves successful, Congressional Republicans will succeed in driving Capitol Hill further under the dictatorship of the oligarchs, using the people’s delegated power against them.
To make matters worse, Senate Republicans prevented their Democratic colleagues from even seeing clean portions of the bill until just before the final vote at 1:25 am on Saturday, December 2. When faced with such hyper-partisan foul play, the Democrats should have shut the Senate down with a sit-in until they were given a reasonable amount of time to read this raid on the regular taxpayers, before the final vote.
Here are some malicious items from the House and Senate bills:
The Senate bill widens the double standard of favoring corporations over individuals, with a top corporate tax rate of 20% compared to a highest tax rate of 38% for individuals. Such blatant corporate favoritism shows which “people” the Republican Congress truly represents. Chalk one up for corporate supremacy for further inequality.
The House bill retains business entertainment deductions for hard liquor but takes away deductions from teachers who use their own money to buy needed classroom materials for their students, along with taxing fellowships for graduate students.
The Senate bill repeals the individual mandate for buying health insurance, setting the stage for higher health insurance premiums and 13 million more people going without health insurance over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The House bill repeals the medical expense deduction used by millions of ailing citizens. The Senate bill does not.
The House phases out the estate tax, while the Senate bill exempts more rich people from that tax, which only applied to less than 5000 estates a year, according to the Tax Policy Center. These measures were vigorously opposed by 400 very rich Americans, in a public letter to Congress and by another responsible organization called Patriotic Millionaires.
There is a new tax on university and college endowments and tax breaks for parents to send their elementary students to private schools. And this massive piece of legislation is full of escape hatches, such as credits, for preferred vested interests in commercial arenas. Cash register politics.
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that beginning in 2021 taxpayers with incomes of only $10,000 to $30,000 will be worse off, paying nearly $6 billion more in taxes. The Committee also concluded that by 2027, taxes will go up for taxpayers with income below $75,000 by over $27 billion.
Increase a standard deduction here, get rid of an exemption there, cause the increase in deductibles for health insurance policies here, but decrease deductibles used by consumers there – this cruel deception produces a mind shattering complexity and bonanza for accountants and lawyers.
The last minute gifts to monied interests emerged as usual from the darkness at the last minute – what the New York Times called “Last-Minute Breaks for Developers, Banks and Oil Industry” plus tax breaks for offshore profits by the likes of Pfizer, Google and Apple, lower taxes for the top one percent, benefits for car dealers and other goodies for people dealing with speculative security derivatives on Wall Street.
The Republican leadership justifies everything they are doing to the powerless people back home by claiming the tax bill will increase wages, investment and economic growth. This trickery could spark the voters to say “enough” and send the Republican scoundrels packing.
Dozens of impartial experts laugh at the fanciful Republican predictions about the “benefits” of the tax bill, citing historical evidence, and the existing economic growth, enabled by low inflation and low interest rates.
Nothing was more embarrassing for Donald Trump and the Republicans than when Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic advisor, asked a business audience how many of them would increase jobs and wages due to what he called this “tax reform.” Almost nobody raised a hand.
The corporate bosses in the audience knew what the Republicans don’t want us to know. These big companies are already neck-deep in massive uninvested capital, so they’re wasting trillions of dollars on stock buybacks which don’t produced any jobs. They don’t need more tax breaks for any more capital.
It is time for a voter’s revolt!
Tell your members of Congress there is still time to reject the Republican attack on the working class. A shift of just two more votes in the senate (e.g. Senators McCain, Collins and Flake) will defeat the existing legislation.
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Nader Calls Out Pelosi for Double Standard: Pelosi Called on Conyers to Resign But Not Trump?
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For Immediate Release
December 6, 2017
For more information contact:
Ralph Nader
202-387-8030
Last week, Nancy Pelosi called on Congressman John Conyers to resign from office after allegations of sexual harassment were reported in the media.
But Nancy Pelosi has apparently yet to call on Donald Trump to resign for his boastful vulgar comments on the Access Hollywood tape and for allegations from twenty women of sexual harassment and assault.
“How can Nancy Pelosi call on John Conyers to resign but not President Trump?” Nader asked.
Conyers announced yesterday that he would resign.
A recent report in The Independent newspaper lists the twenty women who have made allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Trump, including groping of breasts, grabbing of genitals, forced kissing and walking into dressing rooms of naked teen beauty queens.
“If Pelosi had her priorities straight, she would have started by calling on the bragging Harasser in Chief to resign first, then descended down the perversion scale into the halls of Congress,” Nader said.
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November 28, 2017
Be Aware of the Dark Side of Sports Media
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By Ralph Nader
November 28, 2017
The sports pages of major newspapers, such as the Washington Post, are thriving while other sections of newspapers such as business sections or book review pages struggle to survive.
That doesn’t mean that the sports pages allow the fans, the consumers, the taxpayers and many of the players have their say. Over the years, the sports sections have been neglecting the dark sides of organized sports as a deliberate practice, not as an oversight.
Ken Reed, author of several books, weekly columns, and the Sports Policy Director for our League of Fans, is arguably the leading contemporary essayist of sports at its best and at its worst. Ever hear of him? Probably not. His truth telling rarely makes it onto radio, television and the sports pages or into the sports publications such as Sporting News, because he writes about the greed, the covered-up dangers, the exploitation of youngsters by greedy owners and coaches, and way in which sportsmanship is most often pushed to the sidelines—all issues that the sports industry works tirelessly to suppress and squelch.
Probably no segment of journalism makes censorship so central a part of its craft, and yet receives so little criticism for its failings; no segment of journalism so arrogantly continues to exclude vast regions of crucial reporting from its pages. In his new book, EGO vs. Soul in Sports: Essays on Sport at Its Best and Worst, Reed systematically tackles the most neglected and underreported territories of the athletic world.
And he knows what he’s talking about. He holds a doctorate in sport administration with an emphasis in sport policy. He has taught sports, played sports, worked in sports marketing, and he has a regular blog for the Huffington Post. But mostly, he can’t crack the sports media because he is onto too many serious topics affecting sports—from middle school to the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL—that the giant profiteering sports business doesn’t want to reach you, so as to preserve sports fantasies.
Reed summarizes the driving ethics of organized sports as “win-at-all-costs” (WAAC) and “profit-at-all-costs” (PAAC). Reed writes about the hidden injury epidemics (early onto concussions and how to detect and minimize them); about sports participation for all (not just spectator sports); on the serious decline in physical education in elementary and high schools and how it is connected to the rise of obesity; on the harm of encouraging specialization at age 10 in sports; on athletes’ right to protest; on women athletes still being short changed under title IX; on Division One of the NCAA with its corruption, cheating and exploitation of student athletes; on the need for creating a National Sports Commission, as other western countries have done; on taxpayer and consumer rip-offs in the subsidized construction and operation of stadiums, arenas and ballparks; on the need for oversight that can lead to the benching of tyrannical coaches; on how television and aggressive advertising are not good for sports; on deliberate, brutal fighting in NHL games; on over-commercialization, and why its time “the fans ran the show”—to name a few of these engrossing essays in Reed’s book, EGO vs. Soul in Sports.
Year after year, Reed works relentlessly to sound the alarms and urge our society to get the best out of sports. He gives many examples of efforts that are sidelined by sports media reporters in favor of gratuitous slime and reporting on petty behaviors that they revel in sensationalizing—often without denouncing the roots of the behavior itself. Why should they be critics? Get fewer favors and freebies? Get fewer doors opened to the thrilling inner sanctums of the sports owners and high-dollar players?
Most sports pages have either no letters to the editor sections or they devote very little space to letters to the editor. Why should they allow letters that might expose their incompetence, their sacred cow managers and players, their refusing to give the fans—the source of all their profits—consistent voices, beyond some selected ones calling into sports talk-radio shows with rapid-fire comments on that day’s teams, tactics and strategies. ESPN Radio, for example, needs to think about these exclusions.
Earlier this year I sent a letter to the former General Manager of the New York Yankees, and current Chief Baseball Officer for MLB, Joe Torre, detailing the incessant in-game advertisements (“this is a x company call to the bullpen,” “that’s a x company double play,” etc., breaking the spirit of the action). The letter was also sent to sports reporters and columnists, some of whom I notified in advance. Not a word came in response. Not a reply came from anyone to this longtime Yankees fan since the time of Joe Dimaggio.
People I know, who are inveterate fans, often get brushed aside with no responses to their well thought-out emails, and they are screened out when trying to make calls to talk-radio hosts.
Some impartial observers of contemporary sports trends believe that self-destruction lies ahead for most high school football (concussions, etc.), for unpaid big-time college athletes, and for pushing the commercialistic envelope too far (staggering ticket prices and other extortions) in big time sports.
We’ll see how much spectator fans will take before they demand that the tax dollars and priorities go toward neighborhood recreational athletic facilities so that sport becomes a pleasurable way of life for tens of millions of presently sedentary adults and youngsters.
If you’d like to read Ken Reed’s book, you can order a copy at Xlibris.com.
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March 15, 2012
Perils of the Global Economy
What will affluent Germany do to bail out the collapsing, debt-ridden country of Greece? Will France go along with those plans? Will the massive injection of liquidity by the European Central Bank help the banks to behave in ways that help Greece, among other countries? Day after trading day, the U.S.
Continue reading "Perils of the Global Economy"
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