Ralph Nader's Blog, page 55

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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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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Perils of the Global Economy

For months now our stocks have gone up and down due to various concerns, but none more recurrent than concerns about the financial crisis in Greece. Morning after morning, New York City based casino capitalists trade with Greece and the latest rumors from Western Europe on their minds.



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"

Obama Can Do More on Oil Prices

By Ralph Nader



Gasoline and heating oil prices are ratcheting up. In California, some motorists are paying over $5 per gallon. President Obama declared that "there is no quick fix" for this problem. Meanwhile, the hapless but howling Republicans are blaming him for the fuel surge as if he is a price control czar.



Indeed, President Obama has some proper power to cool off retail petroleum prices. David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, said it plainly on CNN last week, "Stop beating the war drums right now [against Iran], and Obama could do that, and he could say the neocons are history." Having done his stint on Wall Street, Stockman knows that war talk by the war hawks inside and outside of our government is just what the speculators on the New York Mercantile Exchange want to hear as they bid up the price. Your gasoline prices are not charging up due to strains between supply and demand. Speculation, with those notorious derivatives and swaps, is what is poking larger holes in your fuel budget, according to Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyers. The too-big-to-fail Wall Street gamblers - Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley - are at it again.
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Minimum Wage: Catching up with 1968

By Ralph Nader



How inert can the Democratic Party be? Do they really want to defeat the Congressional Republicans in the fall by doing the right thing?



A winning issue is to raise the federal minimum wage, stuck at $7.25 since 2007. If it was adjusted for inflation since 1968, not to mention other erosions of wage levels, the federal minimum would be around $10.



Here are some arguments for raising the minimum wage this year to catch up with 1968 when worker productivity was half of what it is today.


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'Most Gifted Foreign Correspondent in a Generation"

By Ralph Nader



Anthony Shadid, called the "most gifted foreign correspondent in a generation" by his then Washington Post colleague, Rajiv Chandrasekaran (author of the widely heralded book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City"), didn't really need a byline. For anyone who knew of his peerless, unique reports from the Middle East would read them and just know they were a Shadid special.



Alas, there will be no more Shadid reports and features from the streets, alleys, souks, homes, hospitals, workplaces and cultures of the Arab countries. For on an assignment from The New York Times in a dangerous, mountainous area of Syria last week, this humble, brilliant, nuanced, generous, honest, brave double-Pulitzer-Prize winner (with another one likely on the way) died from an apparent asthma attack together with severe allergic reactions and exhaustion.


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The NHL: Boxing Without A License?

Call it what you will, but staged, premeditated or planned fighting in the National Hockey League (NHL), where two big "enforcers" slug each other's heads with their bare fists, has no place in the game of hockey. Such fighting is boxing and as such requires a boxing license under many state laws.
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Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader Calls for SEC Investigation of Pete Peterson, Blackstone and BlackRock

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:



On behalf of Ralph Nader, the Mayer Law Group today asked the SEC to

open an investigation and/or enforcement action regarding actions by

Peter Peterson, BlackRock and Blackstone.



The Mayer Law Group submitted evidence that Peterson, Blackstone and

BlackRock sold to investors, including Mr. Nader, the Blackstone North

America Income and Opportunity Fund ("BNA Trust") which was falsely

presented to the public as a safe and secure fund investing in

government securities when in fact the fund held risky and volatile

derivative instruments.



In the complaint to the SEC, Mr. Mayer, on behalf of Mr. Nader said,

"These transactions and fraudulent misrepresentations took place years

ago, in the 1990s, but we are bringing this matter to the attention of

the Commission now because we believe that this is one of the earliest,

if not the earliest example, of Wall Street firms deceiving investors

and regulators by disguising ultra-risky investment products as safe

government-backed securities."



A full copy of the letter is available here: seccomplaint.pdf

Can Democrats Landslide Republicans?

By Ralph Nader



I often ask Congressional Democrats these days is: "If you agree that your Republican counterparts in Congress are the most craven, corporatist, fact-denying, falsifying, anti-99 percent, militaristic Republicans in the party's history, then why are you not landsliding them?" Their responses are largely in the form of knowing smiles and furrowed brows.



There are answers that are more specific to account for the large election losses in 2010, the loss of the House of Representatives to John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and the prospect of losing the House and the Senate this November. Chief among them is that the two parties are vigorously dialing for the same commercial dollars to finance their campaigns. The resultant inhibitions and self-censorships bring the parties' real agendas closer together, erasing the bright lines that make elections clearer choices for voters.
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Letter to Nestle Pure Life Regarding Their Use of the Denver Public Water Supply

January 26, 2012



Nestle Waters

11700 E 47th Ave,

Denver, CO 80239



Dear Mr. Franceschetti,



The bottles of water you call Nestle Pure Life discloses on its label that the source is
Continue reading "Letter to Nestle Pure Life Regarding Their Use of the Denver Public Water Supply"