Ralph Nader's Blog, page 60

Nurses to Converge on 60 Congressional Offices in 21 States Sept. 1

From Maine to California, nurses, joined by others fed up with the ongoing economic crisis, will call on members of Congress in their local district offices September 1 to ask the members to support a tax on Wall Street financial speculation, a revenue source fast becoming an international norm, to pay for healing the nation.



Events, from hosting soup kitchens to help feed the hungry and homeless, to community speak outs to street theater are planned in major urban centers like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando, to smaller cities and towns, such as Corpus Christi, TX., Marquette, MI., Bakersfield, CA., Dayton, OH., and Worcester, MA. National Nurses United is sponsoring the actions.



Nurses will visit the home offices of Republicans and Democrats alike, with a common message. Everyday Americans are hurting, and they need jobs, healthcare, housing, quality education, nutrition, and a secure retirement, not more cuts, as has been the obsession of Congress.



For more information on the event itself and to see if there is something going on near you visit the California Nurse's Association's website: http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/sept-1-event-list

Dark Horizon for Verizon

It was only a matter of time before the "pull down" NAFTA and WTO trade agreements on U.S. wages and jobs would be followed by "pull down" contract demands by U.S. corporations on their unionized workers toward levels of non-unionized laborers.



The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon
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Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist

He took his position as the founder and CEO of Interface, the world's largest modular carpet manufacturing firm, and made environmental history that is extending into many sustainability commitments for the industrial managers he educated.



The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.
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Remarks by Ralph Nader on the loss of Ray Anderson

When it came to bending industrial processes to making peace with the planet, Ray Anderson was the greatest of them all. He was the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest educator of his peers in industry, and the most knowledgeable motivator, by example and vision, for the environmental movement.
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Congressional Tea Party Downgrades America

The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company's tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard.



Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives impose its havoc on the American people there, then on the Senate side and on Obama
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Retreat, Surrender, Can He At Least Plead?

The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled "To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default."



It was truly, as the Times pointed out, "a political environment laced with lunacy." But don't blame it all on the Republican "mad dogs" on Capitol Hill playing chicken with the economic plight of the American people and its wobbling economy. It was President Obama who surrendered.
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Warning to Ratings Agencies

Deven Sharma, President, Standard & Poor's

Ray McDaniel, CEO Moody's Corp

Stephen Joynt, CEO Fitch's Ratings



Dear Mr. Sharma, Mr. McDaniel and Mr. Joynt;



You have each indicated that the time may be near for a downgrade of the credit rating of the United States government, with all the negative and uncontrollable consequences that flow from such private corporate decisions.
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Ideological Inebriation on Capitol Hill

Legislating while under the influence of ideological inebriation is not yet a statutory offense. It is only a multi-directional menace to much of what anxious Americans hold dear for themselves and their children.



The dominant Republicans in Congress - both the new and many of the longer-term incumbents - are in heat. It is as if a mob psychology has seized them, starved them of facts, and deprived them of reality. Their chief mad dog is Eric Cantor - he of the sneering soundbites so memorably described in a recent Washington Post column by Dana Milbank.


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Nader Blasts Obama for Bypassing Warren for Consumer Post

Via Institute for Public Accuracy



AP reports: "Reigniting a partisan fight over banking regulations, President Barack Obama intends to nominate former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead a consumer protection bureau that was a central feature of a law overhauling the rules that govern the financial sector.



"Obama plans to announce the nomination formally on Monday, the White House said Sunday. Republicans immediately threatened to block Cordray's Senate confirmation. In choosing Cordray, Obama bypassed Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of consumer groups...


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The Corporate Supreme Court

Five Supreme Court Justices--Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals.
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