Ralph Nader's Blog, page 59
September 22, 2011
Nader Says Postal Service Financial Problems Manufactured, Time to Stop Closing Post Offices
Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader Calls the U.S. Postal Service's Financial Problems a Manufactured Crisis
Calls on Congress to Take Quick, Easy Action to Prevent Further Service Cuts, Post Office Closings, and Job Cuts
In a letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Darrell Issa, Mr. Nader proposed simple solutions to fix the U.S. Postal Service's financial hole. Mr. Nader noted, however, that the financial "crisis" facing the USPS was completely manufactured.
Mr. Nader identified several drains on the U.S. Postal Service's financial resources, including a Congressional mandate that the USPS prefund its future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years by 2016 and $82 billion in overpayments that the USPS has made to federal pension systems which have yet to be refunded.
Mr. Nader points out that the $103.7 billion prefunding mandate is something that, "no other government or private corporation is required to do and is an incredibly unreasonable burden." He continues by revealing that without this onerous prepayment provision, "the USPS would not have a net deficiency of nearly $20 billion, but instead be in the black by at least $1.5 billion."
Mr. Nader ended by calling on Congress to take action that would have a minimal impact on the patrons of the USPS and prevent further post office closings, deterioration of service, or job cuts.
Mr. Nader ended with a simple reminder to "Remember Ben Franklin's vision"
Click here for a full copy of the letter.
Calls on Congress to Take Quick, Easy Action to Prevent Further Service Cuts, Post Office Closings, and Job Cuts
In a letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Darrell Issa, Mr. Nader proposed simple solutions to fix the U.S. Postal Service's financial hole. Mr. Nader noted, however, that the financial "crisis" facing the USPS was completely manufactured.
Mr. Nader identified several drains on the U.S. Postal Service's financial resources, including a Congressional mandate that the USPS prefund its future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years by 2016 and $82 billion in overpayments that the USPS has made to federal pension systems which have yet to be refunded.
Mr. Nader points out that the $103.7 billion prefunding mandate is something that, "no other government or private corporation is required to do and is an incredibly unreasonable burden." He continues by revealing that without this onerous prepayment provision, "the USPS would not have a net deficiency of nearly $20 billion, but instead be in the black by at least $1.5 billion."
Mr. Nader ended by calling on Congress to take action that would have a minimal impact on the patrons of the USPS and prevent further post office closings, deterioration of service, or job cuts.
Mr. Nader ended with a simple reminder to "Remember Ben Franklin's vision"
Click here for a full copy of the letter.
September 19, 2011
Imagining Obama Dressing Down the Big Boys
Imagine a private meeting between President Barack Obama and 25 mega barons of U.S. business at the White House Indian Treaty Room.
President Obama: "Gentlemen and Lady, I've invited you here today to give you a preview of an address I will deliver in a month before the national convention of the National Association for Community Economies in Kansas City, Kansas. Before I do that, let's have some frank talk:
Earlier this year, Warren Buffett wrote an opinion article in The New York Times where he chided Congress for coddling wealthy people and urged higher taxes on under taxed people like him.
Continue reading "Imagining Obama Dressing Down the Big Boys"
President Obama: "Gentlemen and Lady, I've invited you here today to give you a preview of an address I will deliver in a month before the national convention of the National Association for Community Economies in Kansas City, Kansas. Before I do that, let's have some frank talk:
Earlier this year, Warren Buffett wrote an opinion article in The New York Times where he chided Congress for coddling wealthy people and urged higher taxes on under taxed people like him.
Continue reading "Imagining Obama Dressing Down the Big Boys"
September 16, 2011
Ralph Nader: Response to Bill McKibben
How easy it is to miscommunicate. I did not ask to speak at the rally opposing the Keystone XL devastator. On Friday, I went to the area in front of the White House to express my support for this extraordinary demonstration. Assistants to Bill McKibben asked me to return on Saturday and address the rally. If there was an arrest criterion for the speakers, it was not communicated to me when a few hours later they disinvited me. All this is to clarify the record - no big deal.
The other point brother McKibben makes is to equate criticism with a plea or a demand by over 1200 non-violent, civil disobedient arrestees before the White House that President Obama reject the pipeline project when it comes to his desk. They declined to, in their formal speeches and declarations, to criticize Mr. Obama even though on the second to the last day of the two-week demonstration, Mr. Obama rejected the EPA's key pollution control standard regarding ozone. This was preceded during the two weeks of McKibben's group protest by the State Department's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that claimed the pipeline would have minimal environmental impacts.
There was no criticism of Obama by these White House protest leaders, who understandably, chose to position themselves in a way that conveyed to Obama and the media that they supported Obama and hoped he would adopt their position against the pipeline. (Some of the protestors, including McKibben even wore Obama pins or Obama t-shirts.)
We know how environmental groups "position" themselves whether dealing with deregulation of electricity years ago or with their differing stands on nuclear power. All we ask is not to muddle the language and equate demands for future decisions to be equated with criticisms.
The other point brother McKibben makes is to equate criticism with a plea or a demand by over 1200 non-violent, civil disobedient arrestees before the White House that President Obama reject the pipeline project when it comes to his desk. They declined to, in their formal speeches and declarations, to criticize Mr. Obama even though on the second to the last day of the two-week demonstration, Mr. Obama rejected the EPA's key pollution control standard regarding ozone. This was preceded during the two weeks of McKibben's group protest by the State Department's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that claimed the pipeline would have minimal environmental impacts.
There was no criticism of Obama by these White House protest leaders, who understandably, chose to position themselves in a way that conveyed to Obama and the media that they supported Obama and hoped he would adopt their position against the pipeline. (Some of the protestors, including McKibben even wore Obama pins or Obama t-shirts.)
We know how environmental groups "position" themselves whether dealing with deregulation of electricity years ago or with their differing stands on nuclear power. All we ask is not to muddle the language and equate demands for future decisions to be equated with criticisms.
September 15, 2011
Bill McKibben: Environmentalists ARE Criticizing Obama
Bill McKibben, well-known environmental activist, wrote a response to Nader's article earlier this week: "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire."
(You can read that column here)
McKibben:
Mr. Nader didn't get to talk at the rally because everyone else there had gotten arrested; they'd put their bodies on the line. As for not criticizing the president, we just had 1253 people arrested at the White House. Does that sound like criticism? We're busy bird-dogging the president around the country, with actions in four states in the last five days. We've staged 'interventions' at several of his campaign headquarters, with many more to come. I think the Nation got it right: "After Obama's Broken Promises, Will Green Voters Sit Out in 2012?"
(You can read that column here)
McKibben:
Mr. Nader didn't get to talk at the rally because everyone else there had gotten arrested; they'd put their bodies on the line. As for not criticizing the president, we just had 1253 people arrested at the White House. Does that sound like criticism? We're busy bird-dogging the president around the country, with actions in four states in the last five days. We've staged 'interventions' at several of his campaign headquarters, with many more to come. I think the Nation got it right: "After Obama's Broken Promises, Will Green Voters Sit Out in 2012?"
September 13, 2011
Obama's Pipeline Quagmire
It was the most extraordinary citizen organizing feat in recent White House history. Over 1200 Americans from 50 states came to Washington and were arrested in front of the White House to demonstrate their opposition to a forthcoming Obama approval of the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast.
Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in open non-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many people pay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. The first round of arrestees - about 100 of them - were brought to a jail and kept on cement floors for 52 hours - presumably, said one guard, on orders from above to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the two weeks ending September 3, 2011.
Continue reading "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire"
Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in open non-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many people pay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. The first round of arrestees - about 100 of them - were brought to a jail and kept on cement floors for 52 hours - presumably, said one guard, on orders from above to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the two weeks ending September 3, 2011.
Continue reading "Obama's Pipeline Quagmire"
September 12, 2011
Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader
Nader's Update #2 to Upset Cisco Shareholders
September 9, 2011
Dear Cisco Shareholder:
On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 you can register for a live webcast on Cisco's upcoming Financial Analyst Conference led by CEO John Chambers.
Since my last letter to you on June 30, 2011, we have all read the second quarter earnings report from Cisco. For what it is worth, Goldman Sachs upgraded Cisco from neutral to a buy, declaring that Cisco is cutting costs and is not a "broken franchise."
Continue reading "Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader"
September 9, 2011
Dear Cisco Shareholder:
On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 you can register for a live webcast on Cisco's upcoming Financial Analyst Conference led by CEO John Chambers.
Since my last letter to you on June 30, 2011, we have all read the second quarter earnings report from Cisco. For what it is worth, Goldman Sachs upgraded Cisco from neutral to a buy, declaring that Cisco is cutting costs and is not a "broken franchise."
Continue reading "Cisco Update #2 to Shareholders - Ralph Nader"
September 6, 2011
Roundtable Discussion on 9/11 - Monday, September 12 in D.C.
For Immediate Release:
Event date: September 12, 2011
Time: 12:30- 2 p.m.
Location: 2021 14th St NW; 14th and V St NW
(Washington, D.C.) - Ralph Nader and Busboys & Poets will host an unusual roundtable discussion on Monday, September 12 looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a forthright way that promotes forward thinking.
Nader recently suggested in a "USA Today" article that many Americans might want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have gravely harmed our country and other regions abroad. He says we should do this so we don't allow such serial blowbacks in the future.
Roundtable participants will include:
- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and adjunct professor of government at William & Mary University;
- Mike German, policy counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy at the ACLU and former FBI agent;
- Bruce Fein, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and former executive editor of World Intelligence Review.
- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and people's lawyer.
This memorable presentation will be held at 2021 14th St NW, and is open to the public.
Event date: September 12, 2011
Time: 12:30- 2 p.m.
Location: 2021 14th St NW; 14th and V St NW
(Washington, D.C.) - Ralph Nader and Busboys & Poets will host an unusual roundtable discussion on Monday, September 12 looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a forthright way that promotes forward thinking.
Nader recently suggested in a "USA Today" article that many Americans might want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have gravely harmed our country and other regions abroad. He says we should do this so we don't allow such serial blowbacks in the future.
Roundtable participants will include:
- Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and adjunct professor of government at William & Mary University;
- Mike German, policy counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy at the ACLU and former FBI agent;
- Bruce Fein, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and former executive editor of World Intelligence Review.
- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and people's lawyer.
This memorable presentation will be held at 2021 14th St NW, and is open to the public.
September 2, 2011
Obama's Laborious Labor Day
Dear President Obama:
Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity as President to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.
You could convey to 150 million workers that you
Continue reading "Obama's Laborious Labor Day"
Happy Labor Day! This is your third opportunity as President to go beyond your past tepid Labor Day proclamations.
You could convey to 150 million workers that you
Continue reading "Obama's Laborious Labor Day"
August 31, 2011
10 painful lessons of 9/11
The commemorative ceremonies that are planned for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 massacre are those of pathos for the victims and their families, of praise for both the pursuit of the supporters of the attackers and the performance of first responders and our soldiers abroad.
Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.
But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.
2. Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries - a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
3. Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.
4. Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.
5. Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.
6. Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.
7. Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers - so many harmed for life - from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.
8. Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.
9. Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
10. Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?
In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.
The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."
All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on Sept. 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.
Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.
But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.
2. Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries - a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
3. Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.
4. Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.
5. Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.
6. Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.
7. Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers - so many harmed for life - from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.
8. Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.
9. Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
10. Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?
In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.
The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."
All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on Sept. 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.
August 29, 2011
Sun and Sanity
This is the second week of protests, led by Bill McKibben, in front of the White House demanding that President Barack Obama reject a proposed 1700 mile pipeline transporting the dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada through fragile ecologies down to the Gulf Coast refineries. One thousand people will be arrested there from all fifty states before their demonstration is over. The vast majority voted for Obama and they are plenty angry with his brittleness on environmental issues in general.
Continue reading "Sun and Sanity"
Continue reading "Sun and Sanity"
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