Ralph Nader's Blog, page 58

Occupy Wall Street on the Move

The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?



This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent attention of the mass media in the past five weeks. Television cameras from all over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street.


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Let Our Farmers Grow

Congressman Ron Paul introduced H.R. 1831, the "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011" on May 11th of this year. It is a simple bill at just two pages in length, and it would legalize the growing of industrial hemp in the United States.



Currently farmers can grow industrial hemp only if they have received a permit from the DEA - a prospect that the agency has made all but impossible for decades. Otherwise, it is illegal to grow.


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Cisco Update #3 to Shareholders

Cisco Update #3 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader



Dear "Upset" Cisco Shareholder:



Attached is my latest letter to Mr. Chambers which describes a course of

action that we together can take. Bloomberg Financial reported this letter

to the public on Monday, October 10, 2011. (Read it here:

http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/...)




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Rumble from the people

Inside the barricading bubbles surrounding the Wall Street plutocrats and the Washington oligarchs who service them, there must be worry. After three years of disclosed "lying, cheating and stealing" as one prosecutor put it, with nary a visible stir from the masses, suddenly the barricades are beginning to quiver.



Could this "Occupy Wall Street" challenge in New York City that is spreading to hundreds of communities from Prescott, Arizona to Hartford, Connecticut, be the real thing they have dreaded? Could this be the revolt of the multitudes, the "reserve army of the unemployed?"


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Letter to CISCO CEO John Chambers

October 10, 2011



John Chambers, CEO

Cisco Corporation

170 West Tasman Drive

San Jose, California, 95134-1706



Dear Mr. Chambers:



Now that your quarterly report and forward prospects, together with the press briefing on September 13, 2011, are behind us, the following points need to be made:


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Why is Bill O'Reilly Afraid of Bruce Fein?

FOR RELEASE:

October 10, 2011



Remarks by Ralph Nader:



For weeks Bill O'Reilly's producer Jesse Watters has been saying that his boss does want to have Bruce Fein on his show to talk about the unconstitutional and unlawful overseas aggressions of the Obama Administration, much like those of the Bush Administration but extended. It has not happened. It never seems to be the right time, despite the lurid headlines of ObamaBush.



On his cable show, Bill O'Reilly is not the Bill O'Reilly I knew and worked with years ago at Inside Edition. There, he was considered a genial working class type New York liberal. He is a different Bill O'Reilly now. His theatre is one where he sharply draws the line with many of his guests, often bullying and overtalking them, before he dismisses them. So he has to disagree with Bruce Fein, but he knows that Mr. Fein, a high official in the Reagan Justice Department, a constitutional scholar and litigator who has testified over 200 times before Congressional Committees, knows how to respond and rebut. He can't be bullied. And he speaks quickly and persuasively from his deep historical and contemporary knowledge of American legal history.



Bill O'Reilly has a practice of calling out guests who are invited but decline to go on his show as being "afraid of coming on the Bill O'Reilly Show." He has made this assertion more than a few times. Well, Bill, Bruce Fein is decisively not afraid to go on your show. One-on-one! It would be a show much viewed. But there is one precondition. Bill O'Reilly has to find the guts to stop procrastinating and invite him.

2011 Callaway Awards

THE SHAFEEK NADER TRUST FOR THE COMMUNITY INTEREST PRESENTS THE ANNUAL JOE A. CALLAWAY AWARD FOR CIVIC COURAGE ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2011 at 6 p.m.



The awardees are:



Harry Kelber

Grassroots labor organizer and reformer, pamphleteer and author



In recognition of his 75 years of union participation and criticism of trade unions to fight harder for workers, to democratize their leadership and his refusal to excuse moribund union leaders from more energetically confronting the dire crisis of sharply declining union membership.





Concepcion Picciotto

Peace and Justice Activist Extraordinaire



In recognition of her unique 30-year, 24/7 antinuclear, peace and justice vigil directly across the street from the White House, arguably the longest continual civic-political protest in US history, setting the highest standards for testing the authenticity of free speech protection under the Constitution.






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Ralph Nader Encourages #OccupyWallStreet

Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader Encourages #OccupyWallStreet Protesters to Challenge Wall Street Abuses



Statement by consumer advocate, Ralph Nader October 8, 2011



The frustration seen in the protests on Wall Street over the past few weeks demonstrates a widespread and growing citizen discontent with the two political parties in Washington, D.C. and with a political system that is dominated by corporate interests.



It is time for citizens to push their elected officials to break the corporate stranglehold on our economy. Congress should start by enacting a financial speculation tax that would help curb the wheeling and dealing on Wall Street and that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to help with the our country's economic recovery.



Congress has done more to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. Wall Street crooks have avoided penalties and prosecution and continued to receive bonuses and excessive compensation while pensions and savings have been looted.



Wages have remained stagnant while the largest corporations and executives have seen record profits and bonuses year after year. Congress has done little in the face of a staggering - and growing - income inequality in this country, where the top 1 percent of the population has financial wealth equal to the combined financial wealth of the bottom 95 percent of the people.



And Congress has done nothing either to disclose or stem the flow of millions of corporate dollars into the electoral process. Corporate Political Action Committees are corrupting the electoral process and blocking the voices and concerns of millions of people.



These are not the signs of a healthy democracy. Those taking part in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests and in similar protests cropping up across the country are working hard to make their voices heard. It is way overdue for the President and Congress to listen.

Putting the Lie to the Republicans

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. "Job-killing regulations," exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall Street-licking side-kick Eric Cantor and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.



Then all the way down the line, the Republicans are on cue bellowing "job-killing regulations" must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA (protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer). Imagine how much more civil servants could do to accomplish the statutory missions of their respective agencies if they could get the Republicans and their corporate pay masters off their backs.
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As The Drone Flies...

The fast developing predator drone technology, officially called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, is becoming so dominant and so beyond any restraining framework of law or ethics, that its use by the U.S. government around the world may invite a horrific blowback.
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