Ralph Nader's Blog, page 56

Follow the Bills

Looking at millions of individual bills that makeup the 2.7 trillion dollars of annual health care costs opens a gigantic window on the massive waste, redundancy, profiteering, fraud and sometimes criminal over-billing.
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The Jirga Medal of Honor

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is testing so much futuristic detect and destroy weaponry that it can be called the most advanced all-seeing invasion in military history. From blanket satellite surveillance to soldiers' infra-red vision to the remotely guided photographing, killer drones to the latest fused ground-based imagery and electronic signal intercepts, the age of robotic land, sea, and air weaponry is at hand.
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Letter to President Obama Re: The State of the Union Address

January 20, 2012



Dear President Obama:



As you prepare your State of the Union address, please be advised that those who support you are very cognizant of what you do not mention in such annual presentations to the Nation. For example, last year, environmentalists were shocked that global warming-climate change received no attention. Nor did raising the minimum wage, as you promised in 2008 to $9.50 by 2011.




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Congress Needs to Get to Work

The editor of The Hill, a newspaper exclusively covering Congress, said that Congress was not going to do very much in 2012, except for "the big bill" which is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment compensation, which expire in late February. That two month extension will likely reignite the fight between Democrats and Republicans that flared last month.


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Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again

The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.
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Third Parties Are Not Spoilers

Open Letter to the Wall Street Journal

By Ralph Nader



How unbecoming it is for the self-styled freedom-loving Wall Street Journal ("Ron Paul Nader?" Dec. 21) to use the politically bigoted word "spoiler" to describe a hypothetical Ron Paul-Libertarian party presidential run.



Why is a third-party candidate called a "spoiler" when the nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties, that have given us a spoiled political system (corrupted by the highest bidder) are never referred to in such a pejorative way? These two decaying parties do not own the voters in this country, though they act that way through their many state laws obstructing outside competition.



Since all candidates are supposed to have the equal right to run for election, then they are either all spoilers of one another in seeking votes or none of them deserve to be called "spoilers." Candidates from smaller parties are not second-class citizens. After all, either of the major party candidates "takes away" far more votes from the other than any third party candidate does.

Ballot Access Concerns

Open Letter to the New York Times

By Ralph Nader



Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. followed his declaration in the New York Times in late December that ballot access for voters "must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative" with a lawsuit to block an allegedly discriminatory South Carolina law. Too bad he does not feel the same way about state ballot laws that obstruct access for candidates who are not members of the Republican-Democratic Party duopoly.



Decade after decade, state laws have erected many barriers against the rights of Third Party and Independent candidates to achieve ballot status, challenge this duopoly and give voters more choices.



Neither a smug Congress nor the federal executive and judicial branches have advanced any comparable rights for candidates as they belatedly have with voter rights. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress have repulsed efforts to seek federal relief from draconian state ballot hurdles.



At the least, Congress should replace the 50 different state requirements for candidates seeking federal office with one uniform federal ballot access law closer to the far more accessible standards for candidates in all other western nations. The value of candidate rights and voter rights are mutually reinforcing.

The Politics of Lowered Expectations

By Ralph Nader



Ezra Klein, the bright, young, economic policy columnist for the "Washington Post" believes that Obama came out ahead last year in the "administration's bitter, high-stakes negotiations with the Republicans in Congress."



He cites four major negotiations in 2011 with the Republicans that Obama won. Obama won the game of chicken played in February by the House Speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to avoid a government shutdown. He won the battle to raise the customarily supported debt ceiling on government borrowing. He avoided an embarrassment after he had to concur in the formation of a "Supercommittee" on deficit reduction when Congress couldn't come to an agreement. And he won all of a two-month extension of the social security payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment compensation benefits.


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Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral

By Ralph Nader



Students of California, arise, you have nothing to lose but a crushing debt!



The corporate state of California, ever ready to seize its ideological and commercial hour during a recession, has a chokehold on California's public universities. With its tax-coddled plutocracy and a nod to further corporatization, the state government has taken the lid off tuition increases big time.



Students of the University of California at Berkeley may pay a proposed $23,000 in tuition by the 2015-2016 school year, up from $11,160 this year (2011) that in turn is up from $2,716 in the academic year 2001-2002. In short, tuition for resident undergraduates has more than quadrupled in ten years.
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Recommended Holiday Reading for the Caring, Agitated Mind

1. America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz (Democracy Collaborative Press and Dollars and Sense, 2011). If you want to see how community economies are spreading to displace the sales and influence of companies such as Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Aetna, ADM and McDonalds, this is your book. Democratic credit unions, local renewable and efficient energy, community health clinics and farmer-to-consumer markets are some of the possibilities outlined in this optimistic book.



2. Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers by Ellen E. Schultz (Portfolio/Penguin Hardcover, 2011), award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal. This book meticulously documents how big business and their attorneys avariciously turned pension plans into piggy banks, tax shelters and profit centers, at the expense of millions of trusting, loyal workers. This is the searing story of corporate greed on steroids.



3. This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement ed. by Sarah van Gelder of YES! Magazine. (Berrett-Koehler Publisher, Inc. San Francisco, 2011). Sixteen short essays viewing the Occupy initiatives around the country from a variety of perspectives. Very lively, forward-looking, and filled with interesting insights.
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