Source: http://www.votenader.org/
Maintain Commitment to Affirmative Action
After more than 300 years of de facto affirmative action to benefit white males, we need affirmative action for people of color and women to offset enduring historic wrongs as well as present day inequalities. Affirmative action programs should not be based on quotas. Race and gender should not be the predominant factor in choosing qualified applicants. A good affirmative action program uses a variety of methods to achieve the goal of increasing diversity, including using race and gender as one of many factors in evaluating the suitability of an applicant.
More structural solutions are required to promote economic and educational equality, including a long overdue and practical Marshall Plan to eliminate poverty in the United States, and an education-focused restitution trust fund.
However, affirmative action remains an important opportunity-enhancing tool, as Americans for a Fair Chance, a coalition of civil rights organizations, has demonstrated. At the federal level, authentic minority set-asides and affirmative-action arrangements are a modest way to support the growth of businesses owned and controlled by people of color. Affirmative action is a modest means for businesses to redress historic discrimination. Affirmative action at universities is an important tool to promote campus diversity and educational equality.
On June 23, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its landmark ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, concerning the admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School. In a 5 to 4 decision, the majority ruled that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify using race in university admissions. On the same day, in Gratz v. Bollinger, the Court ruled, in a 6 to 3 opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, that the undergraduate university’s use of race was too broad to achieve the university’s asserted interest in diversity and needed to be recast.
The federal government should maintain its commitment to affirmative action — even though such arrangements may violate the rules of the World Trade Organization binding on the US. We believe the WTO’s powers to be unconstitutional. The Justice Department should intervene to oppose judicial rulings against affirmative action in higher education and other spheres.
Civil liberties and due process of law are eroding due to the “war on terrorism” and new technology that allows for easy invasion of privacy. Americans of Arab descent and Muslim-Americans are feeling the brunt of these dragnet, arbitrary practices.
Mr. Nader supports the restoration of civil liberties and the repeal of the Patriot Act. He also supports an end to secret detentions, arrests without charges, restricting access to attorneys, the use of secret “evidence,” military tribunals for civilians, misuse of non-combatant status, and the shredding of “probable cause” determinations.
These policies represent a perilous diminishment of judicial authority in favor of concentrated power in the executive branch. Sloppy law enforcement and dragnet practices are wasteful and reduce the likelihood of apprehending violent criminals. Mr. Nader seeks to expand civil liberties to protect basic human rights in employment regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race or religion.
The Nader Campaign urges the Department of Justice to take action regarding civil rights violations against Muslim and Arab Americans.
According to a report released on March 3 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2004, Muslims in the United States experienced more than 1,000 incidents of asserted harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment in 2003, a jump of 70 percent over the previous year.
The largest number of incidents had to do with employment and the refusal to accommodate religious practices. But there were, however, 93 reported hate crimes (i.e., incidents of anti-Muslim violence), more than double the total in 2002. And there were numerous cases in which Muslims alleged that laws were applied to them more harshly because of their ethnic or religious identity.
The report also noted that the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act has been associated with law enforcement abuses. The report points to a number of questionable national security policies including:
The Nader campaign strives for equal opportunity and justice for all.
During times of war, civil liberties and due process of law are threatened. During World War II the United States moved to intern Japanese-American families. This was shameful. It must never be repeated again.
Today, in the war on terror, civil liberties are eroding as Muslims, primarily of Arab and Asian decent, are targeted. Even from a law enforcement perspective, racial profiling is sloppy law enforcement that leads to ineffective and unjust dragnet sweeps, which is wasteful and reduces the likelihood of apprehending violent criminals. The Nader campaign seeks to expand civil liberties to include basic human rights in employment and equal rights regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race or religion.
This specifically includes passage of the End Racial Profiling Act, championed by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. in the House and Senator Russell Feingold in the Senate, that would dissuade law enforcement from engaging in profiling by requiring collection of race data, and providing legal options to victims of racial profiling.
Regarding discrimination in employment, after more than 300 years of affirmative action to benefit white males, we definitely need affirmative action for people of color and women to offset enduring historic wrongs as well as present-day inequalities. Affirmative-action programs should not be based on quotas, and race and gender should not be the predominant factor in choosing qualified applicants. A good affirmative- action program uses a variety of methods to achieve the goal of increasing diversity, including using race and gender as one of many factors in evaluating the suitability of an applicant. Regarding Asian Americans, the Nader-Camejo campaign supports the enforcement of Executive Order 11246 which forbids any organization from receiving federal money if they practice discrimination. This should be applied to Asians as it is to other groups. Cases of racial discrimination should be vigorously prosecuted.
The United States government should set an example regarding discrimination against Asian Americans by appointing qualified Asian Americans to policy-making positions in the Judicial and Executive branches of the federal government.
Asian issues have been a long-term concern of Ralph Nader’s, as an undergraduate at Princeton University his major was East Asian studies including language study in Chinese.
Ralph supports equal rights for gays and lesbians, including equal rights for same-sex couples.
He opposes President Bush’s proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. All adults should be treated equally under the law. The Nader campaign believes that by attempting to mandate inequality, President Bush is leading the country in the wrong direction.
The Nader campaign agrees with Marie C. Wilson, the president of the Ms. Foundation, who recently said: “The most important thing is really having equal rights. It’s not about the marriage. It’s having the same rights that you would get if you were married.”
The Nader campaign also believes that love and commitment is not exactly in surplus in this country and should be encouraged. The main tragedy of marriage, what undermines marriage, is divorce, as Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago recently said.
The Nader campaign supports full equal rights for gays and lesbians. While civil unions are a step in the right direction under current federal and state law, they do not afford full and equal rights. There are 1,049 federal rights that are only conferred with marriage. Additionally, at the state level, a civil union is only recognized in the state where it occurs, while a legal marriage, and all the rights that go with it, is recognized in all the states. Thus, the only way to ensure full equal rights is to recognize same-sex marriage.
In more than 200 years of American history, the U.S. Constitution has been amended only 17 times since the Bill of Rights and in each instance (except for Alcohol Prohibition, which was repealed), it was to extend rights and liberties to the American people, not restrict them. For example, our Constitution was amended to end our nation’s tragic history of slavery. It was also amended to guarantee people of color, young people and women the right to vote.
The amendment urged by President Bush (called the Federal Marriage Amendment) would be the only one that would single out one class of Americans for discrimination by ensuring that same-sex couples would not be granted the equal protections that marriage brings to American families.
Ralph Nader endorses the full eleven-point agenda for economic, social and political rights of women advanced by the National Organization for Women (NOW).
The NOW agenda endorsed by Nader includes:
The Nader campaign calls for the decriminalization of marijuana, the legalization of industrial hemp, and an end to the war on drugs.
Medical marijuana: The criminal prosecution of patients for medical marijuana must end immediately, and marijuana must be treated as a medicine for the seriously ill.
The current cruel, unjust policy perpetuated and enforced by the Bush Administration prevents Americans who suffer from debilitating illnesses from experiencing the relief of medicinal cannabis.
While substantial scientific and anecdotal evidence exists to validate marijuana’s usefulness in treating disease, a deluge of rhetoric from Washington claims that marijuana has no medicinal value.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 defines marijuana as a Schedule One narcotic, making it very difficult for American researchers to perform rigorous double-blind scientific studies on marijuana. Even without these difficulties, research has shown marijuana to be a safe and effective medicine for controlling nausea associated with cancer therapy, reducing the eye pressure for patients with glaucoma, and reducing muscle spasms caused by multiple sclerosis, para- and quadriplegia.
Internationally, scientists are undertaking massive studies to determine the healing powers of cannabis. In August 2003 the esteemed British medical journal The Lancet reported that the world’s largest study into the medical effects of cannabis have confirmed that the drug can reduce pain and improve the lives of people with multiple sclerosis. The three-year study was the first proper clinical appraisal of whether cannabis-derived drugs can help treat MS.
Harvard medical doctor Lester Grinspoon has said he would have loved to do a similar study, but has been held back by the law. On his website, www.rxmarijuana.com, and in his book The Forbidden Medicine, Grinspoon documents how marijuana relieves the pain of people enduring more than 110 different medical conditions like AIDS, Crohn’s Disease, glaucoma, cancer, and many more. Marijuana helps increase appetite, reduce blood pressure and intraocular pressure.
Whenever given the chance, the American public has voted to allow seriously ill people to relieve their pain with marijuana. Despite well-funded opposition from the federal government, citizens in nine states have cast ballots to legalize the use of medicinal marijuana. No state has ever rejected such a voter initiative.
Medical marijuana community health centers have opened up in the states, like California, only to be aggressively attacked and closed by federal law enforcement agents.
Physicians must have the right to prescribe this drug to their patients without the fear of the federal government revoking their licenses, and doctor-patient privacy must be protected. The Drug Enforcement Administration should not be practicing medicine.
Industrial hemp: The Nader campaign supports industrial hemp as a renewable resource with many important fuel, fiber, food, paper, energy and other uses. Industrial hemp is a commercial crop grown for its seed and fiber and the products made from them such as oil, seed cake, and hurds (stalk cores). Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest fibers in the plant kingdom, and it has had thousands of uses over the centuries. In need of alternative crops and aware of the growing market for industrial hemp—particularly for bio-composite products such as automobile parts, farmers in the United States are forced to watch from the sidelines while Canadian, French and Chinese farmers grow the crop and American manufacturers import it from them. Federal legislators, meanwhile, continue to ignore the issue of removing it from the DEA list. It is time to allow hemp agriculture, production and manufacturing in the United States.
Clemency for Non-Violent Drug Offenders: In 2004, Ralph Nader wrote President Bush urging that he grant clemency to 30,000 non-violent drug offenders. Nader’s letter highlighted the three decade long failed, and unjust, drug war. His call for clemency highlighted a similar request made by 400 clergy members to President Bill Clinton in 2000.!—end summary—>
Nader’s letter recalled President Bush’s substance abuse problems and noted that if he had been incarcerated for cocaine use he “probably would not have gone on to have the career you have had.” The letter also highlighted the rapid expansion of the prison system in the United States which now houses more than 2.1 million people – one-quarter of the world’s prison population. Clemency for non-violent drug offenders would save more than $1 billion annually.
“It is urgent that the U.S. reverse the incarceration binge. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that if incarceration rates remain unchanged an estimated 1 of every 20 Americans and greater than 1 in 4 African Americans can be expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime,” said Nader. “It is time to make the failed war on drugs a central issue in the American political dialogue. For too long we have let this injustice continue to grow unhindered. Taking action on clemency at the federal level will set an example for the states and begin the process of reversing this failed policy.”
In 2004, Ralph Nader personally welcomed representatives of the thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives who visited Washington to celebrate the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. A contingent from Albuquerque, New Mexico briefed Nader on the continuing neglect of two million-plus off-reservation Indians by the federal and state governments, as well as some tribes, in matters of health care and educational support. So-called welfare-to-work programs have had the impact of other historic Indian removal programs and sent single mothers and their families into cities far away from health care, tribally influenced education, or even extended family support.
Nader’s concern with Native Americans first blossomed when he published a lengthy article in 1956 on tribal sovereignty during the termination era in the Harvard Law Record. He has steadfastly supported tribal authority and America’s commitment to treaty obligations pertaining to human services, land rights, governmental authority and hunting and fishing rights.
Nader sees the Museum as an opportunity for non-Indians to understand the continuing Constitutional obligation of a government-to-government relationship between the United States and the five hundred-plus tribes. He views the fidelity of our commitment to treaty and statutory commitments, which flow from this trust relationship between our government and the tribes, as a test of the application of our Constitution.
The museum’s focus on modern Indian communities offers a second opportunity for non-Indians, according to Nader. Indian peoples have developed critical survival skills over many generations as each confronted systematic efforts to destroy their cultures and their communities. These tribes offer object lessons of stamina for American citizens who must now confront powerful efforts by concentrated corporate power to erode our culture and our democracy.
The Full Integration of People with Disabilities Into All Aspects of Life is Fundamental To Creating A Just Society
The struggle for disability rights is not a question of “us” and “them.” It is not a question of a charitable government taking pity on lesser human beings. It is not a question of throwing money at an issue and hoping for a quick fix. It is a question of recognizing that ALL of us deserve a just society, which of course includes persons with disabilities. It is a question of recognizing that the same corporate domination that harms the earth, robs citizens of their constitutional right to equal participation in government, and endangers the health and well being of our children, also limits the potential of people with disabilities and in turn limits us all. It is a question of recognizing that guaranteeing the rights of people with disabilities also guarantees that all citizens, all disadvantaged groups, all responsible businesses the many opportunities of growth, fulfillment and worthwhile public endeavor that the United States can offer. The Americans With Disabilities Act is now 10 years old – but it has only begun to correct the fears that have kept people with disabilities in isolation since the beginning of history. Disabled people are still too often refused access to health care, transportation, school, housing and jobs. Disabled women and people of color are hit especially hard. By eliminating each and every form of discrimination, we can create the just society to which we aspire — a society whose fairness inspires the confidence that will enable Americans from every sector to reach their full potential.
To illustrate the universality of disability rights, we must take disability rights issues out of the disability ghetto where we usually find them. It is instructive to look at how a fully integrated society would benefit employers, both public and private. Mistakenly, employers often see their interests as juxtaposed against those of persons with disabilities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Especially in this day of work force shortages, we as a society can not afford to exclude an entire group of people simply because of the manner in which they do or do not move their legs, use their eyes, or process information. Employers need all available expertise and creativity. Thanks to the integration of students with disabilities into our public schools over the past 26 years, there is now a rising swell of highly trained graduates with significant disabilities. Employers who have taken full advantage of this pool of talent — among them IBM and NASA — have set very high expectations for their disabled employees, while exposing them to the rigors of fast-paced mentoring programs. The employees have in most cases exceeded the expectations of their employers, and thus put the moderate costs of work site and job task modification in perspective — these costs are seen as a normal and reasonable cost of doing business. Hiring disabled applicants is a good start, but an employer needs the support of a just and civil society — backed up by the ADA — to be sure that their new employee has a good chance of succeeding on the job. Every neighborhood near each site of the employer must have wheelchair accessible housing and public transportation in place. The telecommunication system, including the Internet, must be usable by employees with every type of disability. Airlines, trains, and buses must accommodate business travelers with disabilities promptly, at any location. Many employers provide local transport with a variety of trucks and vans, none of which is easily or safely usable by a wheelchair rider. Low-floor minivans are available, with gently sloped entry ramps and nearly a foot of extra headroom giving easy entry for heavy deliveries. Unfortunately, the lowering of the floor is currently done after the minivan is manufactured, adding more than 50% to the cost of the van. A large enough order from the postal service — easily justified to save the backs of postal workers — could result in the original manufacture of low-floor minivans for nearly the same price as a standard minivan. Once these vans became available at a lower cost, they could provide transportation to many wheelchair riders, taxi and delivery services. People with disabilities need a wide variety of other equipment to get around and to function effectively, but wheelchairs and other forms of adaptive equipment are priced so high that they are often unavailable to the people who need them most. The wheelchair industry, controlled by a virtual monopoly of a single maker of poor-quality chairs for thirty years, was finally opened up to dozens of new competitors by a Justice Department antitrust settlement in 1979. With new competition, prices dropped to one-half of what they had been, while the chair quality became much better. But recent swallowing of many of these small companies by one large company again threatens to return the market to its former monopoly status. As employees with disabilities adapt to the changing schedules, locations, and other needs of their employers, they in turn will need the support of a well-developed civil society. The goal of most workers, disabled or not, is to create a seamless web of support for their families. If they worry about health or safety, the worker’s productivity suffers. Available child care, nearby and in synch with the schedules of the employer, must be physically accessible either to a disabled parent or to a disabled child. In-home extended care for elderly family members can be vastly safer and less expensive than nursing homes; the lessened worry can boost the employee’s productivity. The Olmstead decision of 1999 of the U.S. Supreme Court stated that a person receiving long term care should receive it in the “least restrictive setting appropriate.” The proposed bill MiCASSA [Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act – HR 4416 — Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)] will take funds away from nursing homes and make them available for in-home care. I strongly support MiCASSA. Health care is paramount to the care of an extended family, but many employers offer no health insurance. High prices and the exclusion of pre-existing conditions make adequate insurance unavailable to many people with disabilities. Central to building a civilized society in the U.S. is the provision of Universal and Accessible Health Care. Contact with an Independent Living Center, run by disabled people with years of experience in solving the day-to-day puzzles of living well with a disability, could be invaluable. State-of-the-art adaptive equipment developed in the network of Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers, under the direction and consultation of people with disabilities, could be made available to the employee. Group health insurance must remain available and affordable to employers that hire disabled persons. Individual health coverage must also remain in effect for the disabled employee during all periods of unemployment; only Universal Health Care could protect against the catastrophes that occur during gaps in coverage. Adult education facilities for advanced training must be physically accessible and ready to accommodate students who are blind or deaf.
Enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act and lead the U.S. by example in the full integration of persons with disabilities into all public programs Complete the full integration of students with disabilities into all schools, public and private. Decreased class size will help achieve this goal. Monitor and enforce the full integration of disabled employees into the workplace Rewrite the Uniform Building Code to require all new homes to be visitable and adaptable for disability access. This can be achieved at very little cost on new construction. Speed up the conversion of all over-the-road buses, light rail, and airplanes for disability access Monitor the wheelchair and medical device industries to prevent anti-competitive practices and to prevent the over-pricing and lack of technical progress that result from monopolization Fund Child Care for all lower income workers Fund In-Home Extended Care by passing MICASSA; help the states in every way possible to carry out the directive of the Olmstead decision to provide extended care in the least restrictive setting. This is cheaper than institutionalized nursing care. Increase support for Independent Living Centers that are run by disabled people in decision-making roles. Increase support for Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers that are run by disabled people in decision-making roles Contract with auto makers to manufacture Low-Floor Minivans for postal and fleet use, so that the vans become widely available for use by persons with disabilities at low cost. Every person, disabled or not, has the need to travel freely without the risk and encumbrance of an automobile. Sometimes it’s just because the darn Chevy broke down again. If public transit is available but inaccessible, each one of us has the right not to scuttle the trip just because one of our friends or family has a disability. Our freedom to live, our liberty to pursue happiness is dependent on mobility. What about the scores of thousands of us who can never, ever drive a car? A civil society owes its citizens some alternative to that Chevy. The problem in the vast majority of cases is that no bus is available - buses don’t come where you are or go where you need to go. The ideal solution for everybody is more and better modern public transit. New buses could be comfortable, low floor, easy to enter buses with ramps to the doors of the lowest models…buses to every neighborhood at every reasonable hour, coupled with urban development policy that fights the automobile-driven suburban sprawl and rebuilds the cities for better living.
Education is primarily the responsibility of state and local governments. The federal government has a critical supporting role to play in ensuring that all children – irrespective of the income of their parents, or their race – are provided with rich learning environments, equal educational opportunities, and upgraded and repaired school buildings.
The government has an important role to play in keeping undermining influences out of the public schools – among them, commercialism and private school voucher programs. The federal government must not impose an overemphasis on high-stakes standardized tests. Such testing has a negative impact on student learning, curriculum, and teaching, by resulting in excessive time devoted to narrow test participation, de-enrichment of the curriculum, false accountability, equity and cultural bias, and excessive use of financial resources for testing, among other problems. Federal law should be transformed to one that supports teachers and students – from one that relies primarily on standardized tests and punishment. The government should encourage schools to infuse their curriculum with civic experiences that teaches students both how to connect classroom learning to the outside world and how to practice democracy.
Empower students with the knowledge and tools needed to become a major reservoir of future democracy. Help people to grow up civic instead of corporate.
The Nader campaign opposes the over-reliance on high stakes standardized tests included in the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as “No Child Left Behind.” High stakes standardized tests have a negative impact on student learning, curriculum, and teaching. Using high frequency test scores to determine funding for a school, retention, and graduation of students, results in numerous unintended consequences. Citizens for Quality Assessment of the Education Department of Southwestern University in Texas highlights many of these negative consequences including:
The Nader campaign agrees with Citizens for Quality Assessment that federal policy needs to be transformed from one that uses punishments to control schools, to one that supports teachers and students; from one that relies primarily on standardized tests, to one that encourages high-quality assessments. Broader measures of student learning are needed that include reliance of classroom-based assessments along with testing. Also, broader curricula are needed to enrich students, including development of the civic skill of engagement in understanding the world around them.
These tenets apply equally to home-based as well as public education. Every effort should be made to ensure that home-educated students are afforded the same opportunities and quality of education as their school-based peers. Equal Access to Education
A recent study by Harvard's Civil Rights Project reports that schools in the United States are becoming increasingly segregated 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education. Inner city public schools are in need of major repair, and often, total replacement. These same schools are frequently short of the financial resources needed to attract and retain good teachers and to provide a quality learning environment for children. The Leave No Child Behind Act – with its focus on high frequency, high-stakes, standardized testing – is a counter-educational, a narrow gauge of assessment, and for tens of thousands of children, highly deleterious to their emotional and intellectual development.
The government has an important role to play in keeping negative or depleting influences out of the public schools – among them, commercialism and private school tax-funded voucher programs. The federal government must not impose useless, costly, and counterproductive mandates on schools. It should discourage, not demand, the use of misleading and narrow multiple choice standardized tests. The government should encourage schools to infuse their curricula with a citizenship emphasis that teaches students both how to connect civic skills classroom learning to the outside world and how to practice democracy.
The United States stands now as the overall richest nation in the history of the world. There is no excuse for not smartly investing sufficient resources in education.
Working with the states where appropriate, the federal government must:
There is, as well, a critical positive role for the federal government to play, by promoting the vision, curricula, programs and projects for a K-12 civics education for democracy. In an era when children are overwhelmed with marketing images that reduce their attention spans and vocabulary, and orient them to an overweening focus on immediate gratification, low-grade sensuality and conspicuous consumption, an emphasis on civics for democracy promises instead to take students from instruction to learning to knowledge to application ,until the highest educational goal is reached – the sustained onset of educational self-renewal of, by and for the confident, motivated student.
The state of health care in the United States is a disgrace. For millions of Americans it is a struggle between life, health and money. The Nader Campaign supports a single-payer health care plan that replaces for-profit, investor-owned health care and removes the private health insurance industry (full Medicare for all). This approach is supported by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); the American Nurses Association; the U.S. Labor Party; the California Nurses Association; the National Association of Social Workers; the Associations of Physicians Assistants; and the National Association of Midwives, among others.
The United States spends far more on health care than any other country in the world, but ranks only 37th in the overall quality of health care it provides, according to the World Health Organization. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal health care. More than 44.3 million Americans have no health insurance, and tens of millions more are underinsured. Private corporations pay less than 20% of health costs. Thus, even if you have insurance, you may not be able to afford the care you need, and some treatments may not be covered at all.
For a family living on the edge financially and facing the onset of a serious illness or disabling injury, a lack of health insurance can trigger bankruptcy or even homelessness. Homelessness only leads to more health care problems a world of inadequate hygiene, communicable diseases, exposure to the elements, violence, and emotional trauma. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine find that the homeless are far more likely to suffer from chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and asthma.
The Nader campaign favors replacing our fragmented, market-based system with a single-payer health plan - where the government finances health care, but keeps the delivery of health care to private non-profits, and allows free choice of doctors and hospitals for patients.
The U.S. health care system has many grave faults that could be remedied by a system of universal coverage, including serious gaps in coverage for: prescription drugs and medical supplies; dental, vision, and hearing care; long-term care; mental health care; preventive care for children; and treatment for substance abuse. A recent study by National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 25- to 64-year-old Americans die every year as a result of lack of coverage. That is 18,000 human beings every year, not counting younger Americans.
Health care should be provided by a national, single-payer health insurance program funded by the federal government and providing comprehensive benefits to all Americans throughout their lives. Under the current system, hundreds of billions of dollars a year are wasted by health-care sellers on billing, fraud and administrative expenses. Excess profits and high CEO (and other executive) salaries at large HMOs and other health-care companies add further costs. PNHP highlights the trend:
Our pluralistic health care system is giving way to a system run by corporate oligopolies. A single-payer reform provides the only realistic alternative.
A few giant firms own or control a growing share of medical practice. The winners in the new medical marketplace are determined by financial clout, not medical quality. The result: three or four hospital chains and managed care plans will soon corner the market, leaving physicians and patients with few options. Doctors who don't fit in with corporate needs will be shut out, regardless of patient needs.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School points out that “we are already spending enough to provide every American with superb medical care - $5,775 per person this year [2003]. That’s 42% higher than in Switzerland, which has the world’s second most expensive health care system, and 83% higher than in Canada.” Indeed, 14.9 percent of our gross domestic product is spent on health care and the cost is growing rapidly. Japan spends 7.6% of its GDP, Australia 8.5%, Holland 8.6% and Canada 9.5%. By 2013, per capita health care spending in the U.S. is projected to increase to 18.4 percent of GDP.
A recent study by David U. Himmelstein, MD and Dr. Woolhandler found that our current system is wasteful and obstructively bureaucratic:
Over 24% of every health care dollar goes to paperwork, overhead2, CEO salaries, profits, and other non-clinical costs. Because the U.S. does not have a system that serves everyone and instead has over 1,500 different insurance plans, each with their own marketing, paperwork, enrollment, premiums, rules, and regulations, our insurance system is both extremely complex and fragmented. The Medicare program operates with just 3% overhead, compared to 15% to 25% overhead at a typical HMO.
Some research has found even higher levels of administrative cost in our current health care system. A December, 2002 report for the state of Massachusetts, designed to develop a statewide plan for “universal health care with consolidated financing,” reported that 40 percent of every health care dollar spent in the state goes to administrative costs. Prepared by the pro-HMO consulting firm Law & Economics Consulting Group, the report studied three options; only the single-payer option met the developmental criteria.
Studies show that savings from a single-payer system would be more than enough to provide universal coverage for the same amount that we are now paying. In 2001, a federally funded study of single-payer universal health coverage, prepared for the Office of Vermont Health Access by the Lewin Group, found the state could save more than $118 million a year over current medical insurance costs-and still cover every Vermonter. “Our analysis indicates that the single payer model would cover all Vermont residents, including the estimated 51,390 uninsured persons in the state, while actually reducing total health spending in Vermont by about $118.1 million in 2001 (i.e., five percent). These savings are attributed primarily to the lower cost of administering coverage through a single government program with uniform coverage and payment rules.”
The impact of overhead on private physicians is also significant.
Physicians in the U.S. face massive bureaucratic costs. The average office-based American doctor employs 1.5 clerical and managerial staff, spends 44% of gross income on overhead, and devotes 134 hours of his/her own time annually to billing. Canadian physicians employ 0.7 clerical/administrative staff, spend 34% of their gross income for overhead, and trivial amounts of time on billing (there's a single half page form for all patients, or a simple electronic system).
Typical government estimates put the figure for billing fraud and abuse at 10 percent of annual spending, amounting to over $150 billion annually. PNHP urges the banning of investor-ownership health care sellers in order to dramatically reduce fraudulent billing. Single-payer will reduce fraud because all of the medical information will be in one system - not multiple systems, i.e. multiple insurance companies, employer records, hospital records. Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard University points out that about 90% of hospital bills have mistakes, with overcharges comprising two out of three of the errors, according to business surveys. Unlike the single-payer system in Canada&mdashwhere everybody has health insurance and no one sees a bill here in the U.S. complex and fragmented bills devour huge amounts of time and resources. Single-payer would reduce both bureaucracy and the opportunity for fraud and bring to light patterns regarding outcomes or other areas needing attention.
A recent study by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School suggests that care in the U.S. could be just as good, or better, and cost a lot less - perhaps as much as 30 percent less - if conservative practice patterns were adopted. In regions with nearly identical health care needs, the Dartmouth team found that the overall quantity of services performed could vary by as much as 60 percent. The differences were due to more frequent physician visits, greater use of specialists and minor tests, and more in-patient stays. More expensive care does not necessarily result in better chances of survival or greater levels of satisfaction with that care. Indeed, by some standards, such as quality of care, access to outpatient services, and preventive care-like flu shots and Pap tests-higher-intensity regions actually fared worse than conservative regions.6 Sometimes too much medical care does harm to a patient, such as unnecesary x-rays, and even operations, having adverse side effects. The single-payer system helps to minimize this problem-physicians ordering unnecessary tests or performing needless surgeries will be spotted. This can only contribute positively to every patient’s ability to do real health planning.
The Nader campaign finds persuasive a plan based on Physicians for a National Health Program’s A National Health Program for the United States: A Physicians’ Proposal, first published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989, and A National Long-Term Care Program for the United States; A Caring Vision, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1991 (both available at www.pnhp.org). Founded by Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School, PNHP has received endorsements for its plans from over 12,000 physicians and medical students, among them: former Surgeons General David Satcher and Julius Richmond; Marcia Angell, MD-Past Editor, New England Journal of Medicine; Quentin Young, MD-Past President, American Public Health Association; Joel Alpert, MD-Past President, American Academy of Pediatrics; Christine Cassell, MD-Past President, American College of Physicians; Elinor Christiansen, MD-Past President, American Medical Women’s Association; and Gary Dennis, MD-Past President, National Medical Association (titles for affiliation only).
The Nader Campaign wishes particularly to applaud the soundness of PNHP’s focus on prevention as a critical part of health care. Adequate provision of prevention services not only fosters healthier lives but also proves highly cost-effective in the long run. A commitment to prevention services will require the implementation of systems ensuring the reduction of environmental factors leading to chronic illness (i.e. reducing or eliminating lead in our water, mercury contamination in our food, and asthma-inducing air pollution), especially in our urban areas. Public health policies are needed to wean our culture away from fatty fast foods and encourage healthier life styles, via sound diets, exercise regiments, and reductions in smoking and drug use. As PNHP notes:
Quality requires prevention. Prevention means looking beyond medical treatment of sick individuals to community-based public health efforts to prevent disease, improve functioning and well-being, and reduce health disparities. These simple goals, articulated in {the National Center for Health Statistics'} Healthy People 2000, remain elusive. Nine preventable diseases are responsible for more than half of the deaths in the United States, yet less than 3% of health care spending is directed toward prevention.
A single-payer health plan that includes a prevention focus will be integral to mitigating behaviors and environmental conditions that increase health problems. Again, in the words of PNHP:
Health care financing should facilitate problem solving at the community level. Community-based approaches to health promotion rest on the premise that enduring changes result from community-wide changes in attitudes and behaviors as well as ensuring a healthy environment. Stores that refuse to sell tobacco to minors and promote low-fat foods, schools that teach avoidance of human immunodeficiency virus infection, and a (public) health department that can guarantee clean air and water have a more vital role in ensuring health than does private health insurance.
The views of nurses are also persuasive. As Deborah Burger, RN, President of the California Nurses Association notes:
The U.S. Labor Party’s Prescription for a Healthy America also makes a contribution to the cause of fundamental reform. The Labor Party Plan, called Just Health Care, calls for:
Any system, even one animated by service and our non-profit structures, requires oversight by the consumers-requiring inserts in communications (paper or electronic ) from health care vendors and the single-payer agency, inviting consumers to join and voluntarily contribute minimum membership dues. The Nader campaign proposes that a federally-chartered non-profit membership organization be created through a Congressional charter to serve as a national patient watchdog (with state chapters) to keep this large part of our economy on its toes. Patients would be able to sign up at their local doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic. This organization — call it the Consumer Health Vigilance Association — would have full-time advocates overseeing relevant governmental agencies, Congress, and the private health sector. Empowered with all the rights that corporations wield-advocacy, lobbying, litigation, research, and alliance-development with other citizen groups-this modest organization would be chartered so as to ensure that public policies affecting the provision, quality, and cost of health services reflect fairly the needs and concerns of consumers and continue to be informed by their organized voices.
Although we can easily provide universal, single-payer health insurance for the same amount that we spend and waste on health care now, public funding will be required to replace the portion now paid for by employers and individuals. Consider PNHP’s model:
A universal public system would be financed this way: The public financing already funneled to Medicare and Medicaid would be retained. The difference, or the gap between current public funding and what we would need for a universal health care system, would be financed by a payroll tax on employers (about 7%) and an income tax on individuals (about 2%). The payroll tax would replace all other employer expenses for employees' health care. The income tax would take the place of all current insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and any and all other out of pocket payments.
For the vast majority of people a 2% income tax is less than what they now pay for insurance premiums and in out-of-pocket payments such as co-pays and deductibles, particularly for anyone who has had a serious illness or has a family member with a serious illness. It is also a fair and sustainable contribution. Currently, over 44.3 million people have no insurance and thousands of people with insurance are bankrupted when they have an accident or illness. Employers who currently offer no health insurance would pay more, but they would receive health insurance for the same low rate as larger firms. Many small employers have to pay 25% or more of payroll now for health insurance - so they end up not having insurance at all.
For large employers, a payroll tax in the 7% range would mean they would pay less than they currently do (about 8.5%). No employer, moreover, would hold a competitive advantage over another because his cost of business did not include health care. And health insurance would disappear from the bargaining table between employers and employees.
However, before assessing any income tax, the Nader campaign would tax the corporations polluting the environment, industries manufacturing addictive products, and stock speculation — in addition to closing corporate tax loopholes. These tax law changes will be more than sufficient to make an income tax surcharge on most individuals unnecessary.
Providing universal health care can only be accomplished through a single-payer system: no country ever achieved universal coverage with private health insurance. President Harry Truman proposed universal health care in 1948 but was rebuffed by Congress. The time to act is yesterday. Let us end our disastrous descent into the corporatization of medicine and its callous consequences.
American agriculture is being dominated by two contrary trends in the 21st Century. First, conventional family farm agricultural production is being destroyed by low prices and lack of market access due to mergers, acquisitions by big agribusinesses and their monopsony power over farmers. Second, there is a boom in more sustainable agricultural production and consumption due to increased consumer awareness and demand for healthy, fresh, and nutritious food. Federal policy must focus on the farm and food system as a continuum that provides many benefits. We must advance the production, marketing, use and disposal of food and fiber in accordance with consumer, environmental, worker and family farm standards of justice and sustainability. Additionally, we must challenge misallocation of resources caused by the growing concentration and wealth by agribusiness, chemical, biotechnology and financial corporations over the food and fiber economy. This entails shifting government policy to provide research and information relevant to independent food producers, organic farmers, insuring open and competitive markets, promoting new food infrastructures, and preventing pollution and degradation of natural resources.
Ralph Nader concurs with USDA, Inc.: How Agribusiness has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report illustrates how an agency that President Lincoln once described as the “People’s Department” has become the agency for Agribusiness over a series of Administrations during the last several decades supporting big corporate farming that destroys the environment, produces often unhealthy food, and undermines traditional farming, families, and their rural way of life.
USDA Inc. highlights what occurs in many federal agencies: appointees are representatives of industry and trade associations, their lawyers, and lobbyists. It is a prime example of how Washington, DC has become corporate-controlled territory. The Department of Agriculture epitomizes this big-business takeover of government. For example:
The voices of consumers, environmentalists, and family farmers have been shut out. As a result of this agribusiness takeover, the short-term profits of a few economically powerful companies come before protection of the environment and the family farm, production of healthy food, and the interests of consumers. USDA has:
The past and future financial interests of many regulators (who usually return to their industries) are getting in the way of effective legislation, effective regulation that advances protection of the environment, the public health, and a diverse farm economy. With each decade the perspectives of family farmers, consumers, and environmentalists are being increasingly shut out of USDA and being replaced by the destructive policies and demands of giant agribusiness corporations.
The Nader campaign is concerned about food safety in the United States. Agribusiness has taken control of the Department of Agriculture, ramping up advocacy for biotech food and support for agribusiness production approaches, while weakening inspection policies and limiting regulation of food. At the same time, increased consumer awareness and demand for healthy, fresh, and nutritious food is resulting in the production of more healthy, organic foods.
Federal policy must focus on the farm and food system as a continuum that provides many benefits. We must advance the production, marketing, use, and disposal of food and fiber in accordance with consumer, environmental, worker, and family-farm standards of justice and sustainability. The Nader campaign favors shifting government policy to provide research and information relevant to independent food producers and organic farmers, thereby insuring open and competitive markets, promoting new food infrastructures, and preventing pollution and degradation of natural resources. We support the following campaigns of the Center for Food Safety (CFS):
These issues are described by the CFS below.
The genetic engineering of plants and animals is looming as one of the greatest and most intractable environmental challenges of the 21st Century. Already, this novel technology has invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries by fundamentally altering some of our most important staple food crops.
By being able to take the genetic material from one organism and insert it into the permanent genetic code of another, biotechnologists have engineered numerous novel creations, such as potatoes with bacteria genes, “super” pigs with human growth genes, fish with cattle growth genes, tomatoes with flounder genes, and thousands of other plants, animals and insects. At an alarming rate, these creations are now being patented and released into the environment.
Currently, up to 40 percent of U.S. corn is genetically engineered as is 80 percent of soybeans. It has been estimated that upwards of 60 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves—from soda to soup, crackers to condiments—contain genetically engineered ingredients.
A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to humans, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture will lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of all non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material.
Despite these long-term and wide-ranging risks, Congress has yet to pass a single law intended to manage them responsibly. This despite the fact that our regulatory agencies have failed to adequately address the human health or environmental impacts of genetic engineering. On the federal level, eight agencies attempt to regulate biotechnology using 12 different statutes or laws that were written long before genetically engineered food, animals and insects became a reality. The result has been a regulatory tangle, where any regulation even exists, as existing laws are grossly manipulated to manage threats they were never intended to regulate. Among many bizarre examples of these regulatory anomalies is the current attempt by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate genetically engineered fish as “new animal drugs.” Yet, at the same time, the FDA claims it has no jurisdiction over genetically engineered pet fish like the Glofish.
The haphazard and negligent agency regulation of biotechnology has been a disaster for consumers and the environment. Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite a finding by FDA scientists that these foods could pose serious risks. And new genetically engineered crops are being approved by federal agencies despite admissions that they will contaminate native and conventional plants and pose other significant new environmental threats. In short, there has been a complete abdication of any responsible legislative or regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods. Clearly, now is a critical time to challenge the government’s negligence in managing the human health and environmental threats from biotechnology.
CFS seeks to halt the approval, commercialization or release of any new genetically engineered crops until they have been thoroughly tested and found safe for human health and the environment. CFS maintains that any foods that already contain genetically engineered ingredients must be clearly labeled. Additionally, CFS advocates the containment and reduction of existing genetically engineered crops.
For over 30 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have been flirting with a mad cow disease epidemic. The public has largely been kept in the dark about regulatory decisions leading toward this potential public health catastrophe and even about the dangers associated with eating contaminated meat and meat products. Recently, some of the glaring deficiencies in the regulation of the U.S. meat production system were revealed when a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in Washington.
Mad cow disease, or BSE, belongs to a group of related brain-wasting diseases known as “transmissible spongiform encephalopathies” (TSEs). While TSEs are known to occur spontaneously, they also are spread through cattle herds by feeding infected nervous system tissue to other animals. Beginning in the 1970s, the meat rendering industry began processing dead, dying, disabled, and diseased animals for use in livestock feed—and pet feed—as a way to increase the protein consumption of cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry (cattle can get the disease by eating less than one gram of diseased meat and bone meal fed to them as a protein source). Consequently, these quasi-cannibalistic feeding practices quickly spread the fatal TSE diseases, resulting in hundreds of thousands of diseased animals, some of which ended up in the food supply in Britain and Europe. Over 140 people in Britain have been infected with vCJD from contaminated beef.
Humans who eat contaminated beef products are at risk of contracting the human version of mad cow disease known as new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD). The disease slowly eats holes in the brain over a matter of years, turning it sponge-like, and invariably results in death. There is no known cure, treatment, or vaccine for TSE diseases.
Tissue from infected cows’ central nervous systems (including brain or spinal cord) is the most infectious part of a cow. Such tissue may be found in hot dogs, taco fillings, bologna and other products containing gelatin, and ground or chopped meat. The process of stripping every last piece of meat from a cow carcass, including connective tissue from bone, can contaminate this meat with infected nervous system tissue. Transmission of vCJD between people has also occurred in over two-dozen cases as a result of transplants or injections of body tissue from infected people.
Despite the adoption of additional safeguards following the discovery of mad cow in the United States, the FDA still allows the risky practice of recycling animal offal into feed: ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats, deer) are fed to non-ruminants (pigs and poultry), and these non-ruminants are rendered and fed back to ruminants. Such practices are banned in Britain and Europe. Also, in spite of the wake-up call the FDA and the USDA recently received, only a small percentage of slaughtered or soon-to-be slaughtered cows are tested for BSE in the U.S. By contrast, Britain tests 70 percent of its beef cattle and Japan tests 100 percent.
So far, none of the vCJD cases diagnosed in the U.S. have been linked to domestically-produced beef, but this fact may have little bearing on the reality of the situation: the disease has a long incubation period and few dementia-related deaths in the U.S. are investigated. Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is not yet a reportable disease with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
CFS seeks to make CJD a reportable disease so occurrences can be tracked, and to plug the loopholes that still exist in FDA and USDA regulations, i.e., require testing of all cattle over 20 months of age and ban all animal products from feed.
The farming of fish and seafood, often referred to as aquaculture, is the fastest growing sector of the world food production industry—and one of the fastest growing threats to our water environments and native species. More than 100 fresh and marine water species are farm-raised in open-water net pens, land-locked ponds and fully enclosed land-based systems. Rapidly increasing demand for fish and fish products has outpaced our regulatory agencies’ ability to manage emerging environmental and human health threats from the burgeoning aquaculture industry. The exponential growth in the industry has created enormous pressure on fresh water and marine environments and native, non-farmed species. In the absence of minimal state and national regulatory standards, this country’s 4,000 aquaculture facilities are largely left to their own designs.
The environmental problems arising from the industry are altering the biodiversity of entire ecosystems. Some of the impacts include the introduction of non-native farmed fish species that diminish or replace indigenous fish populations; the propagation of deadly fish diseases; and the over-fishing of vast quantities of non-commercial fish to feed carnivorous farmed fish, such as salmon. Yet fish are not the only organisms affected—federally protected marine mammals and birds are continually harmed by entanglement in net pens and by the concentration of harmful wastes and industrial drugs and chemicals escaping into open waters.
Consumption of aquaculture-bred fish is raising serious human health and food safety concerns as well (almost all the catfish and trout, and close to half the salmon and shrimp sold in the U.S. are raised in aquaculture facilities). Farmed fish often receive large doses of antibiotics to protect them from disease and are exposed to a variety of pesticides used to kill parasites and body fungi—all of which accumulate in the fish’s tissues.
CFS is working to activate and educate federal agencies, consumers, chefs, grocers, fish retailers and legislators on the need to protect seafood consumers and our water environments from the dangers posed by existing aquaculture practices.
With little regard for the cows or the humans that eventually eat them, the beef industry pumps growth hormones into upwards of 80 percent of beef cattle raised in the U.S. each year. These hormones are intended to boost growth rates and increase body mass—think cows on steroids. Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not allow producers to treat chickens or pigs with hormones, the agency does permit the practice for cattle and sheep.
In addition to hormones used to increase milk production (see rBGH), there are six hormones approved for use in beef cattle. Two of these hormones, estradiol and zeranol, are likely to have negative human health effects, including cancer and impacts on child development, when their residues are present in meat. Concerns about these potential health impacts have left many scientists doubtful of the safety of hormone use in meat production.
The negative environmental impact of hormones entering waterways from livestock feedlots also is cause for alarm. Researchers have found that fish can exhibit significant effects from this pollution, e.g., females begin to exhibit male characteristics, and vice versa, in areas of high hormone concentrations.
The European Union has criticized the use of hormones in meat production since the 1980s due to strong concerns about their safety. The EU prohibited the use of hormones for non-therapeutic purposes in 1985, and banned the importation of U.S. beef in 1988 to avoid importing hormone-treated meat. Since then, there has been a heated dispute between the United States and the EU over the ban, and, in a 1999 ruling, the World Trade Organization (WTO) decided in favor of the US. However, in April of that year, the EU’s Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures relating to Public Health (SCVPH) released a report indicating that the use of the six growth hormones posed a risk to consumers. The EU ban remains in place.
Every time you flush your toilet or clean a paintbrush in your sink, you may be unwittingly contributing fertilizer used to grow the food in your pantry. Beginning in the early 1990s, millions of tons of potentially-toxic sewage sludge have been applied to millions of acres of America’s farmland as food crop fertilizer. Selling sewage sludge to farmers for use on cropland has been a favored government program for disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal wastewater treatment plants. But sewage sludge is anything but the benign fertilizer the Environmental Protection Agency says it is.
Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into our nation’s wastewater system—a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer—suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.
The compounds added and formed during the sewage treatment process create an unknown and unpredictable product, one that should fall under the category of hazardous waste. Monitoring and regulating the content of these dangerous combinations has fallen terrifyingly short of protecting public health and the environment. Currently, no records are kept on the date or location of these lethal land applications, allowing these toxins to enter the soil of our nation’s cropland untraced.
Despite the apparent danger of using sludge in food production, federal regulations are woefully lax. The EPA monitors only nine of the thousands of pathogens commonly found in sludge; the agency rarely performs site inspections of sewage treatment plants; and it almost never inspects the farms that use sludge fertilizer. Regulations governing the use and disposal of sewage sludge have been criticized by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Research Council, as well as numerous medical professionals, engineers, and activists.
CFS seeks to end the use of sewage sludge as an agricultural fertilizer—first through an immediate moratorium on its application to croplands. CFS strongly suggests that the government launch an independent investigation into all specific claims that sludge has caused harm to people, animals, and the environment.
An historic struggle is currently raging in this country over the future of food in the 21st century. A grassroots movement for organic, ecological and humane food is now challenging the decades-long dominance of “industrial” corporate-controlled agribusiness. While industrial agriculture still dominates our crop fields and supermarkets, organic agriculture is now expanding faster than any other sector in U.S. food production. It is now a $9 billion industry growing at 20 percent per year. Moreover, thousands of farmers and producers are even pushing beyond organic to establish food production systems that are locally based, humane, and socially just and that encourage biodiversity.
Despite organic agriculture’s positive growth, it has reached a critical juncture in its struggle for a more sustainable food future. On October 21, 2002, national organic standards became law. While these standards are worthy of celebration, they are not the final word in the protection and promotion of organic food systems.
Unfortunately, the future of organic food is in the hands of an Administration and a regulatory agency — the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — that are backed by powerful agribusiness interests, all of which are openly hostile to the organic and beyond alternative. In less than a year from passage, the Bush administration has sought to seriously undermine the national organic standards in a number of significant ways, including creating numerous potential loopholes that would allow placing unacceptable chemical materials on a list of substances approved for organic use; a number of unapproved additives to be used in processing organic foods; eliminating outdoor access requirements for poultry; eliminating the requirement that livestock feed be 100 percent organic; and forcing small-scale, farmer-based organic certifiers out of the program. If the Bush administration’s current policies are continued, the integrity of all organic food could be fatally compromised, and this crucial alternative to industrial agriculture would be lost.
CFS seeks to maintain strong organic standards that live up to the quality and integrity that consumers expect from organic foods while evolving the ethic by promoting agriculture that is local, small-scale and family operated, biologically diverse, humane, and socially just. The ultimate goal of the Organic & Beyond campaign is to replace the industrial agriculture model with a new vision of farming with the natural world.
In September 2004, the Bush Administration decided that it will not appeal to the US Supreme Court a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision (February 6, 2004), Hemp Industries Association v. DEA. The decision allowed the sale and consumption of hemp food products in the United States. Three years ago the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a rule attempting to ban hemp food products. For more information on the decision, visit: www.votehemp.com.
Ralph Nader supports industrial hemp as a renewable resource with many important fuel, fiber, food, paper and other uses. Industrial hemp is a commercial crop grown for its seed and fiber and the products made from them such as oil, seed cake, and hurds (stalk cores). Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest fibers in the plant kingdom, and it has thousands of potential uses. In need of alternative crops and aware of the growing market for industrial hemp - particularly for biocomposite products such as automobile parts, farmers in the United States are forced to watch from the sidelines while Canadian, French and Chinese farmers grow the crop and American manufacturers import it from them. Federal legislators, meanwhile, continue to ignore the issue. They have failed to hold a hearing or introduce a bill that would remove industrial hemp from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration list of illicit substances. The United States should implement a licensing system, similar to the one that Canada has in place, that ensures only legitimate farmers are allowed to grow industrial hemp from seeds certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The certified seeds would guarantee that the psychoactive substance in the plant is so low that it has no effect (analogous to the negligible amount of psychoactive material in poppy seeds).
Grown in rotation, industrial hemp increases the yields of future crops grown on the same field. Because it is weed resistant, hemp production is less reliant on herbicides, and because it is naturally bright, paper made from hemp requires no chlorine bleach, which produces environmental toxins, in addition to its rail transportation risks.
As a fast-growing plant, it can be a good candidate for biobased fuel blends, helping to minimize our reliance on petroleum. This is why James Woolsey, former head of the CIA strongly supports legalizing industrial hemp agriculture. It is already making automobiles more sustainable by replacing toxic and difficult to recycle glass-filled car parts.
One of the most promising technologies to come from the hemp plant is bio-composites — plastics reinforced with natural fiber. Already, more than 2 million automobiles made in the United States by Ford and DaimlerChrysler contain interior parts made from hemp fiber. These parts are lighter, cost less to manufacture and recycle more easily than conventional fiberglass-reinforced parts. Although they are the most promising large market for industrial hemp, biocomposite automobile parts are not the only products that could rely heavily on industrial hemp. If a domestic supply of industrial hemp were available, Interface, Inc., the largest commercial carpet company in the world said it would produce industrial hemp carpets. And, the clothing manufacturer Patagonia would be able to use domestically produced hemp rather than hemp from China. Other opportunities for industrial hemp use exist in the beauty products, clothing and paper markets.
Hemp seed is one of the very few significant dietary sources for omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid, which is chronically deficient in the American diet. Alternative sources for omega 3 are increasingly important as fish and fish oil supplements. These traditional omega 3 sources, have been found to be contaminated in many cases with unhealthy levels of mercury and other environmental contaminants.
The U.S. government is waging an expensive and unnecessary war against industrial hemp. In 1999, the U.S. Customs Service seized a shipment of hemp seed from Canada, intended for use as bird feed. The New York Times called this “one of the more bizarre episodes of Washington’s campaign to curb illicit drug use.” In October, 2001, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a rule banning the sale of foods produced from industrial hemp. The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) sued to force the DEA to rescind its rule, and last February they won their case in a unanimous 3-0 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a continuing waste of taxpayer money, however, the U.S. Department of Justice has petitioned for a rehearing of the HIA v. DEA decision by the full Ninth Circuit, asserting that the three-judge panel misread the law.
In March 1998 a petition was filed with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Agriculture by a coalition of farmers, businesses, environmental groups and others seeking the enactment of regulations permitting the domestic production of a crop known as industrial hemp. Groups petitioning included Essential Information, Resource Conservation Alliance, AHA - Vote/ American Hemp Association, The Body Shop, Co-op America, Institute for Local Self Reliance, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Joe American Horse, North American Industrial Hemp Council, Patagonia Inc., Penokee Mountain Products Co., Preston Parish, Farmer, Rainforest Action Network, Real Goods, Rethink Paper, Tierra Madre Co., Neal Jorgenson, Dean, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, U. of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin Agribusiness Council, Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives, Wisconsin Fertilizer and Chemical Association, Wisconsin Industrial Hemp Initiative, Wisconsin National Farmers Organization, Ohio Hempery, Deep E Co. Interface Inc. Without addressing the substance of the issue the DEA denied the petition during both Clinton and Bush II administrations.
Even more shameful is the government’s ongoing assault on First Native American sovereignty in the persecution of Alex White Plume for growing industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in accordance with Oglala Sioux Ordinance No. 98-27, under which growing hemp is legal and growing marijuana is not. In 2000 the DEA raided South Dakota’s prime ridge Indian reservation, near the Black Hills. The DEA used helicopters and agents spread across White Plume’s property on the Pine Ridge Reservation to uproot the growing plants. These Native Americans were trying to eek out a living in an area that is one of the poorest in the nation with a per capita income of one-quarter the nation’s average. The Lakota claim they have the right to grow hemp on their land under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty that encouraged the Oglala to take up farming as a way to end their nomadic travels across the plains. The treaty gave each family the right to take up to 320 acres for farming, and promised free seeds and supplies.
U.S. farmers, universities, and workers should be allowed to benefit from the research development of bio-composites and from the other outcomes of growing industrial hemp in the United States. These benefits can only be realized with reasonable regulations.
More and more state legislatures are recognizing the importance of hemp as a cash crop. State laws concerning research on the use of hemp, the economic impact of hemp and decriminalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp have been passed in Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia. For a detailed review of legislative activity on hemp see: http://www.votehemp.com/state_legis.html
There are a lot of companies, large and small, involved in importing hemp and hemp products in the U.S. Among them are Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Johnson Controls, Wal-Mart, Michaels, The Body Shop, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Living Tree Paper Company, and the list goes on and on with all kinds of manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and Mom & Pop’s. See http://www.thehia.org/membersites.cfm for a listing of members of the Hemp Industries Association. The North American Industrial Hemp Council, a trade association, is made up a variety of corporations including International Paper, Booz Allen Hamilton, Interface Research Corp., as well as government officials, academics and researchers to advocate for hemp production in the United States. See http://naihc.org/
Hemp has long been demonized by the DEA, other government agencies, and non-governmental organizations to advance their dragnet agendas — and their budgets — to the detriment of legitimate U.S. businesses and consumers. In September, 2003 the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture passed a resolution urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to “collaboratively develop and adopt an official definition of industrial hemp that comports with definitions currently used by countries producing hemp.” The Canadian Mounties, the British Bobbies, and the French Gendarmes have all found a way to address the law enforcement issues associated with industrial hemp while allowing their country’s farmers to grow and profit from the crop. U.S. law enforcement officials should be able to adopt similar reasonable standards.
The Nader campaign believes it is time to break our addiction to fossil fuels. The evidence of global warming is mounting. We threaten the global environment with our continued use of fossil fuels. Not only is this an ecological threat, it is a tremendous economic threat, facing all of humanity. Global warming will bankrupt the re-insurance industry, spread infectious tropical diseases, cause massive ecological disruption, and increased severe and unpredictable weather all of which will significantly impact commerce, agriculture, and communities across America and throughout the world.
We urge a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric and coal mining interests — an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses that would break our addiction to oil, coal, and atomic power. A new clean energy paradigm will mean more jobs, more efficiency, greater security, environmental protection, and increased health.
The Nader campaign endorses the statement below, Greenpeace on Climate Change, and urges people to get involved with Greenpeace’s efforts, as well as the efforts of others, to forge a new energy policy that is sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly.
For more than a century, people have relied on fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas for their energy needs. Now, worldwide, people and the environment are experiencing the consequences: global warming, caused by burning fossil fuels, is the worst environmental problem we face today.
People are changing the climate that made life on earth possible and the results are disastrous extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, disruption of water supplies, melting Polar regions, rising sea levels, loss of coral reefs, and much more. Scientists and governments worldwide agree on the latest and starkest evidence of human-induced climate change, its impacts, and the predictions of what is to come.
It is not too late to slow global warming and avoid the climate catastrophe that scientists predict. The solutions already exist. Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, offer abundant clean energy that is safe for the environment and good for the economy.
Other green technologies, such as the refrigeration technology Greenfreeze, offer viable alternatives to climate-changing chemicals.
Corporations, governments and individuals must begin now to phase in clean, sustainable energy solutions and phase out fossil fuels. Major investments must be made in renewable energy, particularly in developing economies, replacing current large scale fossil fuel developments.
At the same time, immediate international action must be taken to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (the gases that cause global warming), or the world may soon face irreversible global climate damage.
Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the climate treaty finally agreed at Marrakech in November 2001, is a crucial first step in this process. However, the greenhouse gas reduction targets agreed at Marrakech are only a fraction of what is needed to stop dangerous climate change and the Kyoto Protocol is under fierce attack.
The US refuses to sign the climate treaty and take action to reduce emissions. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the US is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases and is responsible for 25 percent of global emissions. Also, governments continue to subsidize the fossil fuel industries, keeping dirty energy cheap while clean energy solutions remain under-funded.
Greenpeace is campaigning globally on a variety of fronts to stop climate change from the campaign to pressure the ExxonMobil and George W. Bush to work with the rest of the world to halt climate change to researching and promoting clean energy solutions.
The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (COP) issued a report on April 20, 2004 that recognizes that the coasts and oceans are in serious trouble. The problems on our coasts and oceans are caused by bad decisions by government that allow overfishing for the global seafood market, in addition to coastal development and sprawl, agricultural and industrial, pollution and fossil-fuel driven climate change.
The report echoes concerns raised by the independent Pew Oceans Commission report that came out in June 2003. While the two commissions made similar findings, they had different recommendations. Pew’s commission was made up of scientists, fishermen, and environmentalists; US COP emphasized industry reps, academics and admirals. Not surprisingly, the former had stronger recommendations. Below is a comparison by the Blue Frontier Campaign — a non-profit environmental group.
They both agree on the need for Ecosystem management (recognizing that nature doesn't recognize political boundaries). They both call for a National Ocean Council within the White House. But where Pew also calls for an independent ocean agency, COP suggests strengthening the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), while keeping it within the trade-driven Department of Commerce. Where Pew suggests establishing Watershed based Regional Councils to carry out ecosystems management, COP suggests establishing voluntary programs on a trial basis. While Pew suggests establishing no-take Marine Protected Areas (like National Parks in the sea), that could also help restore depleted fisheries, COP takes a far more timid position calling for more study and definition.
Both Commissions call for reorganizing fisheries management to separate the science (“dead fish tend not to reproduce”) from the allocation (“who gets the last fish?”) The U.S. Commission doesn't really challenge built-in conflict-of-interest however. The eight regional fisheries councils that set fishing policy in US waters are the only federal regulatory bodies exempted from conflict-of-interest law. The result is they're dominated by the fishing industry. The original idea is that the fishermen had the expertise, which is true. They're expert at killing fish. Now even many fishermen are suggesting it's time for a more radical change.
The Nader Campaign shares the views of the Blue Frontier Campaign’s official comments on the US Commission on Ocean Policy Draft Report, which are on the web at bluefront.org and reprinted below.
Public Comment on US Commission on Ocean Policy Draft Report: Submitted by David Helvarg, President Blue Frontier Campaign, Washington, DC
America is and always has been an Oceanic society. From the Bering Sea Land-bridge to the Jamestown Settlement to the processing lines of Ellis Island we have been a tempest tossed people, a saltwater people, a coastal people.
We have lived well on the abundance of our seas and coastlines from the earliest canoe tribes setting fish-traps along the Jersey shore, to today’s giant gantry crane operators unloading container ships at the Port of Long Beach.
As the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy Draft Report emphasizes, America owes much of its wealth, bounty and heritage to the blue in our red, white and blue. It provides us the oxygen we need to breath, is a driver of climate and weather, brings rain to our farmers and food to our tables. It provides us recreation, transportation, food, medicine, energy, security, and a sense of awe and wonder from sea to shining sea.
Our oceans also extend our identity as a frontier nation. Unfortunately our frontier waters are facing a cascading series of disasters that could turn America and the world’s oceans into dead seas within our lifetime. We are witnessing the collapse of marine wildlife with over 90% of the world’s large fish decimated by unrestrained global fishing. We’re seeing our nearshore waters poisoned by toxic and nutrient runoff from factory farms and city streets, leading to growing numbers of beach closures, harmful algal blooms and oxygen-depleted dead zones where nothing can live. Uncontrolled coastal sprawl is degrading and destroying the salt-marshes, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and barrier islands that act as the filters and nurseries of the seas, while fossil-fuel fired climate change, which the draft report unfortunately fails to address in a meaningful way is causing sea-level rise, beach erosion, coral bleaching and intensified hurricanes that put growing numbers of Americans at risk.
What the Draft report confirms is that there are common sense solutions that can save our blue frontier. Protecting and restoring our nation’s public seas makes sense both morally and economically. Healthy seas also help assure vibrant coastal communities and economies.
Protecting our blue frontier has to be as integral a part of our public polices as protecting our terrestrial environment, our trade routes, our health, our sciences, and our national security, because in the end, they too depend on our oceans. Just as broad sectors of the nation mobilized in the last century for passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts that have helped revitalize our environment, and improved the quality of our lives, the time is right for an American Oceans Act for the 21st Century.
Having reviewed the Ocean Commission Draft Report and its more than 200 recommendations, we believe that the following key principles should to be incorporated in US Ocean Policies and also be used to inform any Ocean Act that focuses on on erring on the side of what is known about how marine ecosystems function.
Ocean Management should be multi-jurisdictional, open to public participation, and transparent. Decision-making should be based on the best available science and the ethical standards of society.
At the regional level it should be organized around watersheds rather than arbitrary political boundaries and include participants from local, state, tribal and federal agencies.
Nationally there should be an independent ocean agency, a kind of EPA for the seas, whose primary mission is the sustainable use, exploration, protection and restoration of America’s seas as a common public trust. In addition, following the Commission recommendation, there should be an interagency national oceans council within the executive branch to coordinate the work of all agencies that impact America’s seas.
We believe this is all necessary and achievable but only when we’re able to mobilize a seaweed rebellion of citizen activism and convince large sectors of the public who get so much out of our living seas that it’s now time to give something back. As has been said before, when the people lead the leaders will follow.
The US needs to crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse that have in the last four years looted and drained trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders and consumers. Among the reforms needed are resources to prosecute and convict the corporate executive crooks and to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have real power; pay back ill-gotten gains; rein in executive pay; and enact corporate sunshine laws, among others.
Below are twelve initial steps for an effective crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse. The Nader campaign will return to this issue and expand the discussion on the solution to corporate crime and abuse.
Twelve Steps to an Effective Crackdown on Corporate Crime
Our democracy is in a descending crisis. Voter turnout is among the lowest in the western world, and America ranks in the bottom three of countries that hold free elections. The reasons for this democracy crisis are many:
-Redistricting often leads to gerrymandering, which ensures that very few incumbents are at risk in one-party districts.
-Barriers to full participation of candidates proliferate, such as restricting participation in debates, or setting prohibitive ballot access laws, making it very obstructive for third party and Independent candidates to run.
-Potential voters are confronted by obstacles, and deliberate manipulations to undermine their right to vote, for which penalties are rarely imposed.
-New paperless voting machines are raising questions about whether we can even trust that our votes are being counted as they are cast. When voter confidence decreases, citizens vote less and less, leading to a culture of non-voting.
-The expense of political campaigns creates a clear advantage for the highest spender. Money dominates the dissemination of campaign messages, mainly waged on television in the form of sound bites. This economic stranglehold of campaigns makes politics a game for only the rich or the richly funded. This silences alternative viewpoints and turns off many voters who do not feel represented by privileged candidates.
Major changes are needed to ensure that every vote counts, that all voters are represented through electoral reforms like instant run-off voting, none-of-the-above options, and proportional representation, and that non-major party candidates have a chance to run for office and participate in debates, and that elections are publicly financed.
Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) allows voters to rank their candidates in order of choice: 1 for their first choice, 2, 3, and so on. If a candidate receives a majority of the votes, then that candidate wins. But when no candidate has a majority of votes, then the last place candidate is defeated, and in an instant second round of counting, the eliminated candidate's votes go to each voter's next choice. Your vote for second choice thus counts if your first choice is unable to win. Rounds of counting continue until there is a majority winner.
The system of IRV encourages electoral competition. Because each voter does not have to worry about “spoiling” the election or “wasting” their vote on a less popular 3rd party candidate, more citizens will be encouraged to participate in elections - both as voters and as candidates. Encouraging more candidates to run will foster a broader political debate and create a more engaged citizenry.
Currently, the US electoral system is in crisis; less than half the potential voters vote - the lowest in the Western, industrialized world. The winner-take-all election system often pushes voters to vote their fears and not their beliefs - or to simply not vote at all. We have not had a President win an election with the majority vote since the first President Bush. Having a president with less than majority support undermines the perceived voter mandate of the government, and reduces voter confidence in the overall electoral system. IRV will help fix these problems and will allow more citizens to vote for the candidates they truly support.
Advances for IRV are being made both around the world and within the United States. IRV is currently used in over 11 cities and states including Burlington, Vermont; Cary, North Carolina; San Fransisco, California; and Takoma Park, Maryland. It will soon be implemented in 8 additional cities; and for the 2007-2008 legislative session, IRV is being considered for gubenatorial, congressional, and local elections in 7 additional states including Minnesota, Arizona, Arkansas, and Colorado. IRV is also used in major elections in Australia, Ireland, and Great Britain.
Implementation of IRV will also save taxpayers money. By erasing the need for two-round runoff elections, IRV saves cities the cost of holding a second election. Before adopting IRV, San Fransisco spent as much as two million dollars on each runoff election. IRV would also alleviate the need for politicians to rely on special interest donors for large sums, since they would only need to raise money for one election instead of two.
Compared to the traditional electoral system, IRV is quicker, less expensive, and is more likely to reflect the desires of more voters. IRV is endorsed by the USA Today, The Nation, the League of Women Voters, as well as the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. IRV also enjoys bipartisan support in the 110th Congress.
As former Independent candidate John Anderson said in an article about the Ralph Nader 2004 Independent presidential campaign: “Having an election between two candidates is obviously better than a one-party dictatorship, but having an election among more than two candidates is better than a two-party duopoly.” He then highlighted how Ross Perot's candidacy increased voter interest in the presidential election and how that was healthy for our democracy. Anderson concluded: “With Instant Run-off Voting, we would determine a true majority winner in one election and banish the spoiler concept. Voters would not have to calculate possible perverse consequences of voting for their favorite candidate. They could vote their hopes, not their fears.”
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org
http://www.midwestdemocracy.org Paperless Electronic Voting
A bedrock of democracy is ensuring that every vote counts. There needs to be a transparent system of vote counting so that people can trust that their vote is counted as they cast it. Paperless electronic voting on touch screen machines does not provide confidence to ensure votes are counted the way voters intend.
The software on which votes are counted is protected as a corporate trade secret, and the software is so complex that if malicious code was embedded, no analysis could discover it. Further, because there is no voter verified paper record, it is not possible to audit the electronic vote for accuracy, nor is it possible to conduct an independent recount. This is a grotesquely designed, over-complicated, expensive system fraught with the potential for mistakes and undetected fraud. We should not trust the future of our nation to such malleable technology.
On July 23, 2003, the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute reviewed the electronic voting system in Maryland and found that it had security far below even the most minimal security standards.
In the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2004, four top computer scientists from the University of California, Johns Hopkins University, and Rice University similarly critiqued Diebold's voting system:
“We found significant security flaws: voters can trivially cast multiple ballots with no built-in traceability, administrative functions can be performed by regular voters, and the threats posed by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and janitors is even greater. Based on our analysis of the development environment, including change logs and comments, we believe that an appropriate level of programming discipline for a project such as this was not maintained. In fact, there appears to have been little quality control in the process.
”…The model where individual vendors write proprietary code to run our elections appears to be unreliable, and if we do not change the process of designing our voting systems, we will have no confidence that our election results will reflect the will of the electorate.”
Computers are inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. If we are to ensure fair and honest elections, and retain voter confidence in our democratic process, we need to ensure that there are no such questions. Therefore, it is crucial that any computerized voting system provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and that random audits of electronic votes be conducted on Election Day. Paperless electronic voting machines make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of our vote - thereby threatening the very foundation of our democracy.
Moreover, the seller of the machines, the Diebold Corporation, is a supplier of money to one of the major party candidates, George W. Bush. The CEO and top officers of Diebold are major contributors to the Bush campaign. A corporation with vested political interests should not have control over the votes of the populace.
Voters using Diebold machines should immediately report any suspected malfunctions or deficiencies at voting precincts to their Board of Elections. Voters should also urge their legislators to require a voter verified paper ballot trail for random audits and independent recounts. Count every vote!
Initiatives in California (Proposition 62) and Washington State (Initiative 872) play into many voters' dislike of the two party system, but these initiatives would actually manipulate voters into blocking non-major party choices and entrenching major party candidates.
The two initiatives would create a blanket non-partisan primary, whereby all candidates would be included. The top two contenders would then be the only two included on the November election ballot. While a primary for all candidates is tempting to voters because it seems to subordinate political parties, the result will be to prevent non-major party candidates from being on the ballot in November.
The initiatives were bankrolled by the insurance, finance, development, and banking industries, as well as John Walton of Wal-Mart. These initiatives will increase the costs of campaigns since candidates would have to run in what amounts to two general elections. The likely beneficiaries will be wealthy candidates - denying candidates of modest means the opportunity to offset the money advantages of a wealthy candidate.
In jurisdictions where one party dominates, it is likely that the two final candidates will be from the same party, creating virtual one-party jurisdictions and entrenching interests. At the same time, third party and independent candidates will be at a disadvantage because name recognition, major funding, and party machinery would be essential in the “primary.” Insulating the top two political parties from competition eliminates an important check and balance on their political power.
Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, has come out against the approach, stating, “It is no surprise to me that big money is behind Proposition 62, and its efforts eliminate real choice for the voters in upcoming California Elections. In Minnesota, September 1998, I only received 3% of the primary vote in the race for Governor. Despite these numbers I went on to win the general election in November. Under Proposition 62 I would have been excluded from the general election in November and never would have been able to serve as Governor of Minnesota.”
If passed, these initiatives will prevent minor parties from ever appearing on the November ballot. Only the top two vote getters in the Primary Election will emerge to the General Election in November.
The solution to the problems in the anemic U.S. democracy is more choices and voices - not less. Restricting the ballot to only two candidates will limit voter choice to the point of repressing other voices outright. The Nader campaign opposes these initiatives.
More than 500,000 people live in the District of Columbia. As the capital of this nation, the District is the symbol of freedoms for which that nation stands. While the light of democracy shines from the District, it does not illuminate this city. The core is of democracy is hollow. The values of equality and political participation that Washington, D.C. symbolizes are denied right here, in our nation's capital.
Most Americans do not know, and many would find it hard to believe, that under our current system D.C. residents are second-class citizens. The District is denied local control of government. Congress must approve the District's budget, and can override any action of the city government. At the same time, District residents do not even have one voting representative in the Congress that controls them. D.C. is effectively a colony, with all local decisions directly subject to change by a Congress largely out of touch with local realities.
Most people who live outside of the District do not know that D.C. citizens pay about $2 billion a year in federal income taxes - more than several states - yet cannot elect people to decide how their money is spent. D.C. residents have served and died in our armed forces over the last half century in disproportionately high numbers, but have no representation in the Congress that decides whether or not to go to war. The U.S. is the only democracy in the world that deprives the residents of its capital city the basic rights granted to all its other citizens.
Even more damaging than the lack of congressional representation is the colonial-style control that Congress exerts over the District. Adding one, or three, D.C. representatives to the 535 members of Congress would, by itself, do little to solve this problem. D.C. must be allowed to self-rule like any other city in the nation.
Unaccountable power is by its nature abusive and uninformed. The places where unaccountable power is exercised are, and must be, dysfunctional. Members of Congress approve the budget and all the legislation, but they do not themselves have to live with their decisions. They foist pet projects on citizens who are perfectly capable of deciding these issues locally. They prevent the District from taxing income where it is earned. They regularly overturn the judgment of local elected officials on public health, tax, budget, and school issues - all with impunity.
The results of Congressional interference and the inefficiency of colonial-style management are as distressing as they are predictable. Poverty has increased during a time of economic expansion, with the percentage of residents in poverty going from 16.6 % in 1988 to 22.1 % in 1998. Even more astonishing was the growth in income inequality. The richest 20 % of D.C. residents earned 16.4 times as much as the poorest 20 % in the late 1980s and 27.1 times as much in the late 1990s.
The voters of the District of Columbia should be allowed to hold a referendum to choose their future status. With legislative and appropriations delays, regular governing confusion, and congressional interference eliminated, the District would be more able to exercise local control and deal with its pressing problems. Eliminate taxation without representation!
Ralph Nader favors lowering the voting age to 16 years old. He recognizes that 16 year olds work, pay taxes, and are increasingly subjected to the passage of criminal laws which sentence them as adults. If 16 year olds perform the civic duties of adults, they should receive the civic privileges of adults. Working teens currently experience taxation without representation.
Additionally, democracy in the United States needs to be re-invigorated. Allowing youth the right to vote will increase voter participation, not only of 16 to 18 year olds, but also in the longer term as youth would learn at an early age the importance of voting. Alongside this change in law, the Nader campaign also favors increased education about civics, government, and the importance of voting.
Consider these words by supporters of youth voting, which eloquently explain the importance of this historic movement:
“At the founding of our nation, only rich, white, land-owning men over the age of twenty-one could vote. Later, it was any white man over twenty-one. Following the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment gave the vote to African American men. Next, in 1920, women's suffrage finally paid off with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Finally, in 1970 the voting age was lowered to 18 due to the counter-cultural movements of the 1960's. Over hundreds of years, the vote has spread from the clutches of an elite few to an ever-greater percentage of the population. Youth are simply the next item on the timeline of Democracy's growth.”
- Brad Vogel, “Youth Suffrage,” Between the Lines, www.btlmag.org
“What kind of twisted message do we send when we tell youth they are judged mature, responsible adults when they commit murder, but silly, brainless kids when they want to vote? This is a double standard, no different than during the Vietnam War. War isn't a dead issue now either, leaders who youth can't vote for today may send them to war tomorrow. Lowering the voting age is the just, fair way to set things straight.”
-NYRA, National Youth Rights Association, youthrights.org
“For several reasons lowering the voting age will increase voter turnout. It is common knowledge that the earlier in life a habit is formed the more likely that habit or interest will continue throughout life. If attempts are made to prevent young people from picking up bad habits, why are no attempts made to get youth started with good habits, like voting? If citizens begin voting earlier, and get into the habit of doing so earlier, they are more likely to stick with it through life.
-NYRA, National Youth Rights Association, youthrights.org
A 1996 survey by Bruce Merrill, an Arizona State University journalism professor, found a strong correlation between youth voting and increased adult voter turnout. Merrill compared turnout of registered voters in five cities with Kids Voting, a mock-election program, to turnout in five cities without the program. Merrill found that between five and ten percent of respondents reported Kids Voting was a factor in their decision to vote. This indicated that 600,000 adults nationwide were encouraged to vote by the program.
-John Stuart Hall, “Elections and Civic Education, the Case of Kids Voting USA,” National Civic Review, Spring 1998, 79.
“When the USA was founded, suffrage was restricted to white male landowners. Over time, it was extended to non-landowners, women, lower-class people (through the elimination of the poll tax), and minority races. There are no longer any groups whose voting rights are automatically denied except for people under 18. It's a matter of social progress. When other groups demanded the right to vote, many treated their cause with hesitation or ridicule, but eventually social progress prevailed. But the evolution of suffrage is not complete until it is extended to everyone who deserves it, and we're working to move closer to that goal.”
-Teen Vote http://teenvote.us/why
http://www.youthrights.org/voteproposal.php
Federal Ballot Access Standards
Nader/Gonzalez favor one federal standard for federal ballot access in all of the states.
Right now, each state sets its own standards and third party and independent candidates must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours for a chance to get on the ballots of the various states.
In some states, it is fairly simple to get on the ballot.
For example, in Louisiana, Nader/Gonzalez writes a check for $500, line up electors—and we’re on the ballot.
But that’s the exception.
Check out the requirements in these nightmare states: (And remember, we need to collect double the number required in each state because many are arbitrarily invalidated.)
Ballot access was much easier in the nineteenth century. Voters had more candidates and small parties to choose from. Ballot access is much, much easier in other Western democracies.
As a result small parties were able to pioneer the great social justice movements such as abolition of slavery, women’s right to vote, and protections for workers and farmers.
Currently, ballot obstruction can consume upwards of a quarter million dollars in a federal campaign’s budget to get on the ballot in one or more states.
Without candidates’ rights to be on the ballot—in a country where ninety percent of House districts are one-party dominated heavily due to gerrymandering—voters are becoming further disenfranchised.
We urge a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric and coal mining interests — an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses one that breaks our addiction to oil, coal and atomic power. A new clean energy paradigm means more jobs, more efficiency, greater security, environmental protection and increased health.
Ralph Nader praises the Apollo Alliance’s “Ten-Point Plan for Good Jobs and Energy Independence,” an overdue agenda for the country’s energy future, as a welcome contrast to the shortsighted policies of the Bush Administration. By increasing the diversity of the United States’ energy portfolio, aggressively investing in the industries of tomorrow, facilitating the construction and retrofitting of high performance buildings, and working in cooperation with public servants at the state and local level to rehabilitate our urban infrastructures, the Apollo Project promises to revitalize the engine of the American economy. As the Alliance illustrates in its report, New Energy for America, the Apollo Project’s design articulates a new paradigm for setting America’s energy woes aright and serves up an authoritative refutation to the irresponsible policies of the entrenched fossil fuel and nuclear energy lobbies.
In the spirit of its namesake, which galvanized the will of the American people into a national effort to put an American on the moon, the new Apollo Project advocates a full engagement of the federal government with the initiative of the American people in the service of revitalizing our country’s approach to its energy plight. Over the course of a single decade, beginning in 2005, the Apollo Project proposes the establishment of a viable infrastructure for the achievement of American energy independence. Calling for a $313.72 billion dollar federal investment in that ten-year period, Apollo progressively shifts the burden of American energy consumption away from fossil fuels and onto domestic renewable energy markets such as the wind, biomass, and solar energy industries. The United States has fallen dreadfully behind in these areas and will be well served to reestablish itself as a leader in technological innovation.
“While the Apollo Project places more emphasis on tax incentives instead of tax penalties, and more emphasis on subsidies than on technology-forcing regulation supported by in-house government research and development than I would have preferred,” says Nader, “at least it shines over the darkness of the fossilized Bush position.”
Full implementation of the ten-year Apollo Model Policy Agenda will reduce transportation-related petroleum consumption by 1.25 to 2.55 million bpd (or between 54 and 110% of our current level of imports from the Persian Gulf); reduce national energy consumption by 16% ; and put the United States on pace to meet 20% of its total electricity demand from renewables by 2020-more than three times 2003 levels. The Apollo Project further promises to revitalize the American job market with an injection of 3.3 million jobs-largely within areas of industry demanding greater skills and providing higher wages, better job benefits, and improved social equity.
Over the course of Apollo’s ten-year implementation period the overall economy will benefit from an increase of $1.4 trillion dollars in new Gross Domestic Product. Within that same decade-long timeframe, the Apollo Project will pay for itself through savings in energy costs and tax revenues, with further and greater fiscal benefits to ensue thereafter. This is to say nothing of the benign environmental benefits to be reaped from the consequent decreases in air and water pollution and greenhouse gases.
The Ten-Point Plan for Good Jobs and Energy Independence excerpted from the Apollo Alliance’s “New Energy For America” Jobs Report, jointly produced by The Institute for America’s Future & The Center on Wisconsin Strategy, with economic analysis provided by The Perryman Group, Waco Texas:
The epidemic of silent environmental violence continues. Whether it is the 65,000 Americans who die every year from air pollution, or the 80,000 estimated annual fatalities from hospital malpractice, or the 100,000 Americans whose demise comes from occupational toxic exposures, or the cruel environmental racism where the poor and their often asthmatic children live in pollution sinks located near toxic hot spots (that are never situated in shrubbered suburbs), preventable, harmful, situations abound.
Now, as the evidence of global warming mounts, it is evident that we threaten the global environment with tremendous economic threats facing humanity, including bankrupting the reinsurance industry, the spread of infectious tropical diseases, massive ecological disruption and increased severe and unpredictable weather, all of which will significantly impact commerce, agriculture, and communities across America. Toxic standards need to be strengthened. Currently toxic standards are designed for adults, not for more vulnerable children. This should be reversed. We need to make environmental protection a priority for our energy, trade, industrial, agricultural, transportation, development, and land use policies. Indeed, protecting the environment must be weaved throughout our governance.
Mountain-top removal, as it is aptly named, is a form of surface mining in which explosives are used to remove up to 1,000 feet of mountaintop in order to reach the coal deposits lying within the mountain. Forests are first clear-cut, destroying ecosystems and displacing or eliminating any resident wildlife. The now-bald top of the mountain is then exploded and excavated. Soil and the remaining rock are pushed out of the way into adjacent valleys or streams, a tactic which earns this vicious practice the additional name of Valley-fill Mining. Over 1, 200 miles of Appalachian headwater streams have been filled in.
The harms of this mercenary practice are both short and long-term. The process destructively rips out forests, carves away soil and rock, and destroys neighboring streams and valleys. The adjacent areas are often endangered by both the solid waste dumps in streams and wetlands, and the liquid slurry waste which is stored in silos. These toxic slurry dams house the run-off from the coal processing, a “blackwater” laden with carcinogens and heavy metals.
Not only harmful to the environment when they are intact, the slurry dams are much more dangerous if they fail; when they fail. In 1972, 125 people were killed, 1,121 injured, and 4,000 left homeless when The Buffalo Creek Dam gave way.
At the behest of the Clinton administration and carried to fruition under the Bush administration, the May 2002 rule change to the 1977 Clean Water Act allowed mining spoils to be included as “fill material,” and sanctioned the burial of hundreds of miles of streams by the coal companies. In The Good Fight, Ralph Nader said, “Trashing the environment for short-term profit amounts to a radical assault on freedom perpetrated by corporations who have bought our state and federal politicians.” The coal companies assault local people with massive explosions, debris, rain, flooding and fouled water supplies and leave them with flattened land, fewer jobs, and in poverty, while they increase mechanization and shareholder profits.
That’s why, at the request of Ohio Citizen Action, an environmental advocacy group, Mr. Nader was the first presidential candidate to sign a letter stating: “If elected President, I will ban mountain-top removal mining by appropriate executive authority and by signing the Clean Water Protection Act when it reaches my desk.” http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/08/14/MountaintopRemoval/
It is tragic and ironic that Ralph Nader is once again at the forefront of protecting the environment, here speaking out against a destructive change to the very water protection act that he helped bring about. Now, as then, Ralph Nader stands with those who would seek to preserve our biological resources for ourselves and future generations.
http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php
Oppose Offshore Drilling
Offshore Drilling is fool’s black gold
Ralph Nader criticizes Obama and McCain for not standing strong against offshore drilling 15 Sep 2008
As we begin to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Ike, which forced the shutdown of this country’s oil industry and sent adrift two oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, our members of Congress are poised to vote on legislation this week that would undermine a decades-old ban on offshore oil drilling.
Offshore drilling is severely damaging to the environment, and dangerously vulnerable to turbulent weather and hurricanes. For 27 years, beginning under an initiative signed by Ronald Reagan, our country has managed to protect sensitive parts of our ocean coastlines from the ravages of offshore drilling — a commendable feat considering the many pristine areas of our public lands and ecosystems that have been violated by extractive activities. After initially indicating his intent to uphold the 1981 ban on offshore drilling, Barack Obama, following the example of his Republican rival John McCain, flipped on the issue. This reversal by Obama and McCain could open the door for one of the last remaining vestiges of our country’s natural beauty to be trampled upon by commercial forces.
The case against offshore drilling has been made time and time again, illustrated by the numerous incidents in which oil rigs have led to ecological destruction and severe contamination of waters. In 2001, for example, an explosion on board the world’s largest oil rig helped sink it to the ocean floor off the coast of Brazil, killing 11 workers and spewing 316,000 gallons of diesel into the Atlantic. These types of spills will no doubt escalate with the increased frequency of violent hurricanes, fueled by global warming.
As for rigs that do manage to stay afloat, the Rainforest Action Network estimates that a single oil rig, in its lifetime, dumps more than 90,000 metric tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the ocean, and may drill up to 100 wells, each dumping 25,000 pounds of toxic metals including lead, chromium, and mercury.
Our country’s coastal wetlands, bays, and beaches — and the many creatures that live in them — are not just in danger from potential big spills, but under threat from the business-as-usual streams of pollution flowing from offshore rigs. If the ban on offshore drilling were reversed, the potential for harm would soon increase significantly.
The biggest strike against offshore drilling this election year is that, contrary to what some candidates would have you believe, it will not reduce gas prices anytime soon, or at all.
If we are really serious about bringing down gas prices, we should implement long-overdue increases to fuel-efficiency requirements. The Nader/Gonzalez campaign calls for increasing the average efficiency of our gas guzzlers from about 20 miles per gallon to more than 40 mpg over the next five years. That would save us 5 million barrels of oil a day — barrels that do not have to be produced or imported.
On offshore drilling, McCain and Obama differ in a most peculiar way. Obama acknowledges the futility of drilling to reduce gas prices but supports it anyway out of political expediency, in part as a bargaining chip if needed to get a comprehensive energy deal, and in part to take a populist arrow out of McCain’s quiver. McCain, who also once opposed offshore drilling and acknowledged its futility in reducing gas prices, now chooses to ignore what most analysts say concerning offshore drilling: that because of the time it would take oil companies to secure permits, obtain and set up equipment, and conduct research required to extract oil, we won’t start to receive oil shipments or feel the relief of lower gas prices for 10 years. Nor does McCain mention a widely cited report from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration that predicts peak production of offshore drilling would not be reached until 2030, and would still produce too little oil to affect world oil prices.
The House Committee on Natural Resources released a telling report in June appropriately titled The Truth About America’s Energy: Big Oil Stockpiles Supplies and Pockets Profits. In it, the committee points out that there has been a sharp increase in the number of drilling permits issued to oil companies starting in the 1990s and concludes that “there is simply no correlation” between the number of drilling permits issued and the price of gas. Moreover, the report shows that of the 91.5 million acres of federal land being leased to oil companies, nearly 68 million acres are not being worked.
Rather than exposing McCain’s categorical falsehoods and misrepresentations about the issue, Obama — who has thus far in his presidential campaign accepted more than $450,000 from executives and other employees of oil and gas companies (McCain has taken $1.6 million) — instead chooses to ride along with the Republicans and the oil companies. By capitulating to the Republicans, as he has on other matters, he surrenders moral authority on struggles concerning the health, safety, and well-being of individuals and the environment. Obama is not only selling out our environment, but displaying political behavior that does not stand its ground. Defend Wildlife
The Nader campaign endorses The Defenders of Wildlife’s Wildlife Conservation Agenda for the Next Administration. The agenda calls on the next administration to:
Tax Wealth More than Work; Tax Activities We Dislike More than Necessities
The complexity and distortions of the federal tax code produces distributions of tax incidence and payroll tax burdens that are skewed in favor of the wealthy and the corporations further garnished by tax shelters, insufficient enforcement, and other avoidances.
Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years and now stand at 7.4% despite massive record profits. A fundamental reappraisal of our tax laws should start with a principle that taxes should apply first to behavior and conditions we favor least and pinch basic necessities least, such as the clearly addictive industries (alcohol and tobacco), pollution, speculation, gambling, extreme luxuries, instead of taxing work or instead of the 5% to 7% sales tax food, furniture, clothing or books.
Tiny taxes (a fraction of the conventional retail sales percentage) on stock, bond, and derivative transactions can produce tens of billions of dollars a year and displace some of the taxes on work and consumer essentials. Sol Price, founder of the Price Clubs (now merged into Costco) is one of several wealthy people in the last century who have urged a tax on wealth. Again, it can be at a very low rate but raise significant revenues. Wealth above a quite comfortable minimum is described as tangible and intangible assets. The present adjustment of Henry George’s celebrated land tax could also be considered.
Over a thousand wealthy Americans have declared, in a remarkable conflict against interest, that the estate tax, which now applies to less than 2 percent of the richest estates, should be retained. The signers of this declaration included William Gates, Sr., Warren Buffett and George Soros. Ralph Nader does not believe that “unearned income” (dividends, interest, capital gains) should be taxed lower than earned income, or work, inasmuch as one involves passive income, including inheritances and windfalls, while the latter involves active effort with a higher proportion of middle and lower income workers relying on and working each day, some under unsafe conditions, for these earnings.
NAFTA and the WTO make commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull up rather than pull down these standards. These forms of secret autocratic governance and their detailed rules are corporate-managed trade that puts short-term corporate profits as the priority. While global trade is a fact of life, trade policies must be open, democratic, and not strip-mine environmental, social and labor standards. These latter standards should have their own international pull up treaties.
The United States needs a redirected federal budget that adequately funds crucial priorities like infrastructure, transit and other public works, schools, clinics, libraries, forests, parks, sustainable energy and pollution controls. The budget should move away from the deeply documented and criticized (by the US General Accounting Office, retired Admirals and Generals and others) wasteful, redundant “military industrial complex” as President Eisenhower called it, as well as corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy that expand the divide between the luxuries of the rich and the necessities of the poor and middle class.
Half of the operating costs of the U.S. federal budget is spent on the military. The federal budget should move away from the wasteful, redundant “military industrial complex.” Wasteful spending on expensive military equipment and post World War II deployments that we do not need makes the U.S. less secure in many other neglected ways.
The Task Force on A Unified Security Budget for the United States, drawing on the knowledge of analysts with expertise in different dimensions of the security challenge, made recommendations in March 2004 that would cut defense spending by $51 billion. The Task Force was organized by the Center for Defense Information, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Security Policy Working Group. In addition, they recommend a unified approach to fighting terrorism and increasing security that includes increases in non-military expenditures, noting that in a 2002 speech President Bush identified development assistance as a security tool, linking the desperate resort to terrorism with the hopelessness of persistent poverty.
The Task Force report is excerpted for your information. Our views go beyond these positions.
Our military is still dominated by an obsolete conventional and nuclear structure, designed to counter the least likely threat: a large-scale conventional challenge. As a result, the United States is burdened with a very expensive but misdirected military prepared for large-scale warfare rather than the challenges and operations that American forces now face with increasing strain. The dangers we face today come less from a potential superpower rival and more from failing states that have the potential to destabilize entire regions and to become magnets for transnational terrorist groups.
Currently seven times as much is spent on military vs. non-military security spending. The Task Force brings this into greater balance reducing the ratio to 3:1. In order to achieve this better balance the Task Force notes that the nature of today’s threats allows the U.S. to:
New technologies and systems will be developed and tested as prototypes, but they need not be manufactured in quantity unless the threat warrants it. It is simply a waste of money and other resources to keep a huge military force on hair-trigger readiness for the conflicts of the last century.
In addition, a more restrictive policy of exporting advanced aircraft and other weapons to potentially unstable regions would also help us to safely slow down the pace of developing future weapon systems.
At the same time, the Task Force recommends increases in spending on non-military security including:
The collapse of the cold war, changing trade relationships with China, Russia, and other countries, and the post-9/11 world require a rethinking of U.S. security spending. Continuing to build weapons for old threats results in waste that we cannot afford. The recommendations of the Task Force are a good beginning point for a re-evaluation of U.S. security strategies and spending.
Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader continued his dialogue with Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. The dialogue, which began this summer when Foxman criticized Nader for questioning the militaristic approach of the Sharon government and the U.S. government’s puppet-like support of Israel, has focused on whether criticizing Israel is akin to anti-semitism.
Nader favors a two-state solution and believes that the United States needs to highlight the broad and deep peace movement in Israel and its counterparts among Palestinians and among Americans of the Jewish faith. In this letter Nader urges Foxman to meet with these people so Foxman “can play a part in the historic effort to establish a broad and deep peace between the two Semitic peoples.”
October 12, 2004
Mr. Abraham H. Foxman \ National Director \ Anti-Defamation League \ 823 United Nations Plaza \ New York, NY 10017 \
Dear Mr. Foxman:
You started your last letter with the sentence: “We are not engaged in a dialogue about the issues you raised in your letter.” That is precisely the point, is it not, Mr. Foxman. For many years you have eschewed engaging in a dialogue with those in Israel and the United States who disagree with your views. Your mode of operation for years has been to make charges of racism or insinuation of racism designed to slander and evade. Because your pattern of making such charges, carefully calibrated for the occasion but of the same stigmatizing intent, has served to deter critical freedom of speech, you have become sloppy with your characterizations when it comes to attempts to hold you accountable. Of course citizen groups make charges all the time but their critics and corporate adversaries do review and rebut which keeps both sides more alert to accuracy especially when they desire press coverage. Few groups get the free ride that has been the case of the ADL when it ventures beyond its historic mission into covering the Israeli militaristic regime and its brutalization and slaughter of far more innocent Palestinians it occupies, than the reverse casualties inflicted on innocent Israelis.
Your insensitivity here is legion. You fail to understand that your studied refusal to reflect the condemnations of Israeli military action and mayhem against civilians, by the great Israeli human rights organization B’T selem and the major international human rights organizations, contributes to the stereotypic bigotry against Palestinian Arabs and the violent Gulag that imprisons them in the West Bank and Gaza. Yours is more than the “crime of silence” so deservedly condemned in other periods of modern history when despots reigned. You go out of your way to silence or chill others who are raising the same points that B’T selem and Rabbis for Justice and other U.S. and Israeli peace groups, such as Rabbi Lerner’s Tikkun initiative, do.
You are not above twisting words of those you take to task in order to be able to deploy the usual semantic vituperatives. My comments related to the Israeli government – with the fifth most powerful and second most modern military machine in the world – through its prime minister possessing the role of puppeteer to puppets in the White House and Congress. You distorted the comment into “Jews controlling the U.S. government.” Shame on you. You know better. If you do not see the difference between those two designations, you yourself are treading on racist grounds. Indeed, you are too willing to justify any violence against innocent Palestinian children, women and men in the mounting thousands on the grounds of inadvertence and security when such casualties are either direct or foreseeable results of planned military operations. Your refusal to condemn bigoted language, cartoons, articles and statements in Israel up to the highest government levels, can be called serious insensitivity to “the other anti-Semitism.” Both Jews and Arabs belong to the ancient Semitic tribes of the Middle East –either genealogically or metaphorically. There is, as you know so well, anti-Semitism against Jews in many places in the world. There is, as you always ignore, aggressive anti-Semitism against defenseless Arabs in many places in the world and in Israel whose military might and nuclear weapons could destroy the entire Middle East in a weekend.
Consider for example, one of many, many episodes of similar impact excerpted from a publication by Jules Rabin, “An Israeli Refusnik Visits Vermont, The Man Who Didn’t Walk By,” August 3, 2004:
The man who “didn’t walk by” is Yonatan Shapira, until recently pilot of a Blackhawk helicopter and captain in the elite Israeli Air Force. I met Yonatan not many days ago when he came to speak in my town, Montpelier, Vermont, about a major turning point in his life.
Yonatan is a lover of his country, a composer, and a handler of extraordinary machines. He was dismissed from Israel’s air force in 2003 because he refused to take part in aerial attacks in areas of the Occupied Territories of Palestine where there exist large concentrations of civilians liable to become a “collateral damage.” In Yonatan’s view, such attacks are both illegal and immoral because of the near-inevitability of their killing innocent civilians. In support of his position, Yonatan cites the authority of the Israeli army’s own code of ethical behavior, and the fact that, (by a recent reckoning) of 2,289 Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in the current Intifada, less than a quarter (550) were bearing arms or were fighters.
At the same time, Yonatan has declared himself absolutely ready to fight in the defense of Israel proper.
Yonatan was shocked into his refusal to obey orders by two occurrences, among others.
One was the action of a fellow Israeli pilot who fired a 1-ton bomb from his F16 fighter jet, as ordered, at a house in Al-Deredg, where a suspected Palestinian terrorist was staying. Yonatan identifies Al-Deredg as one of the most crowded districts of Gaza, and indeed of the world. Besides the targeted Palestinian, 13 local people were killed in that attack: 2 men, 2 women, and 9 children, one of whom was 2 years old. 160 other people were wounded in the explosion. A 1-ton bomb, Yonatan calculates, has approximately 100 times the explosive power of the type of lethal belts worn by Palestinian suicide bombers. In proportion to the US population and the fatalities of the original 9/11 disaster, now an icon and classic measure of terrorist devastation, the fatalities of that single attack on tiny Gaza (population 1,200,000) were greater by 10% than the fatalities in America’s own 9/11.
Nor was the bombing of Al-Deredg unique in the scale of its impact on civilian life. Yonatan has cited the casualties resulting from 7 other targeted assassinations conducted in Palestine by the Israel Defense Forces, where, along with 7 other targeted individuals, 44 bystanders were killed. Taking Palestine’s overall population at 3,500,000 and that of the US at 290 million, those 44 bystander deaths would represent, in proportion to the US population, another one and a-third 9/11’s.
As a volunteer in Selah, a group that assists victims of Palestinian terror, Yonatan has first-hand knowledge of the appalling effects of the multiple 9/11-scale attacks that Israel has itself experienced, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. He was nevertheless – or – consequently – appalled by the action in Al-Deredg of his fellow pilot. He considered the means used in the attack, a 1-ton bomb, and its goal, the assassination of one man, to be wildly disproportionate to the attack’s predictable collateral effects, and a violation of the rules of engagement concerning which all Israeli soldiers are instructed. Those rules, as Yonatan has understood them, include the obligation to refuse to obey orders that are clearly illegal and immoral.
The other occurrence Yonatan cited, that pushed him to become a refuser, came out of a disturbing exchange he had with the commander of the Israeli Air Force, General Dan Halutz, concerning his refusal to serve on a mission in the Occupied Territories. In Yonatan’s words:” In the discussion of my dismissal, I asked General Halutz if he would allow the firing of missiles from an Apache helicopter on a car carrying wanted men, if it were traveling in the streets of Tel Aviv, in the knowledge that that action would hurt innocent civilians who happened to be passing at the time. In answer, the general gave me his list of relative values of people, as he sees it, from the Jewish person who is superior down to the blood of an Arab which is inferior. As simple as that.”
As simple as that.
Yonatan is convinced that actions like those of his fellow-pilot and attitudes like those of his commanding general are destroying Israel from within, whatever their effect on Palestine.
Superficially, Yonatan conforms to a stereotype of a career military officer, air force style. He’s tall and lithe, dresses trimly and wears his hair closely clipped.
He departs from the military stereotype in other respects. There’s nothing of the eagle in his bearing. He’s unassuming, and in conversation and argument, he’s almost humble in his appeal to his interlocutor’s reason and understanding. He listens and speaks with the innate respect and the close attention of a scholar pursuing an investigation, or a navigator studying a chart.
If you do not condemn such behavior as anti-Semitism against Arabs, by your international stature, you are not restraining the present Israeli government’s sense that it can conduct such operations with impunity, with a free pass from moral condemnation by a man so accustomed to moral condemnations.
Attached is a copy of my letter to you of August 5, 2004 in which I urged you once again to address. In addition, would you use the same words in your previous letter regarding my characterization of the puppeteer-puppets relationship to the writings of Tom Friedman, Rabbi Michael Lerner and many other Americans and Israelis of the Jewish faith? If not, why not? Is there a thinly veiled bias working here or would you have to use another one of your semantic sallies – portraying them as “self-hating” Jews?
In conclusion, Abraham Foxman has a problem. He is in a time warp and cannot adjust to the new age of total Israeli military domination of the Palestinian people. A majority of the Israeli and Palestinian people believe in a two state solution – an independent, viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel. This is the way to settle this conflict and live in peace for future generations. The ADL should be working toward this objective and not trying to suppress realistic discourse on the subject with epithets and innuendos. As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak stated in Chicago last June, Israel needs to begin disengaging from the occupied territories and not wait for the right Palestinian Authority. The overwhelming preponderance of military force permits this to happen.
If you have not met frequently with the broad and deep Israeli peace movement, you might wish to change your routine so that you can play a part in the historic effort to establish a broad and deep peace between the two Semitic peoples. The exchanges should be videotaped and widely distributed to further the cause of peace and to witness Abraham Foxman dialoguing without his customary lines that evade the issues.
Sincerely, \ Ralph Nader
In late September, Senator Obama said to the Democrats – vote for the bailout. Senator McCain said to the Republicans – vote for the bailout. President Bush said to the Congress – vote for the bailout.
But the American people were fed up. They told their members of Congress – if you vote for the bailout, we will vote against you.
And now, the action is shifting from the corporate occupied territory of Washington, D.C., back to the country. Where the uprising continues. Nader/Gonzalez is taking the lead. Standing with the American people. Against the corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats.
From the beginning, we were against the McCain/Obama/Bush bailout. And now we stand with the American people, in the electoral arena, against the corporate campaigns of McCain and Obama.
The “sustained orgy of excess and reckless behavior” (as Dallas Federal Reserve chief Richard Fischer put it) would never have happened on our watch.
In October, we’re hoping to sustain the grassroots uprising against the bailout. So please, hit the donate button now, and give whatever you can afford to Nader/Gonzalez.
We’re building on September’s uprising. \ And hoping for an October surprise. \ Onward to November.
Since January 2001, 2.7 million jobs have been lost and more than 75% of those jobs have been high wage, high productivity manufacturing jobs. Overall 5.6% of Americans are unemployed while 10.5% of African Americans are unemployed. Unemployment among Latinos is nearly 30 per cent higher than January 20, 2001. By requiring equitable trade, investing in urgently needed local labor-intensive public works (infrastructure improvements), creating a new renewable energy efficiency policy; by fully funding education and redirecting large bureaucratic and fraudulent health expenditures toward preventive health care we can reverse this trend and create millions of new jobs.
We need to get smart on preventing crime, not by increasing the prisoner population, but by investing in education and rehabilitation, and restoring safe neighborhoods and communities. The United States prison binge has resulted in over 2 million people being incarcerated – the US now holds one out of four of the world’s prisoners, half of them non-violent.
To reverse this, we need to invest in humane treatment, personal involvement of youth, and job creation. We need to restore sentencing discretion to judges by repealing mandatory sentences and arbitrary “three-strikes” laws. We also need to restore due process, judicial discretion, and constitutional restraints on law enforcement that violate equal protection and due process of law. Mr. Nader opposes the death penalty because its implementation tends to discriminate by race and class, does not deter crime, often results in innocent people being executed, and corrupts the exemplary status of the state. Racism in the Criminal Justice System
The Nader campaign recognizes the pervasiveness of racial disparity in the U.S. criminal justice system. At every stage of the process, discretion results in people of color being treated unfairly. It begins with police focus on communities of color and use of racial profiling, continues with prosecutorial discretion on how people are charged or not charged, and the types of plea agreements that are negotiated. Racism shows itself again in sentencing decisions by judges and the application of post sentencing relief by parole officers. The Failed War on Drugs
The Nader campaign supports ending the war on drugs and replacing it with a health-based treatment and prevention-focused approach. Enforcement of drug laws is racially unfair, and dissolution of the drug war would begin to make the types of changes needed in our criminal justice system.
According to the federal Household Survey of drug use, “most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.” And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%.
The drug war has failed – we spend nearly $50 billion annually on the drug war and yet problems related to drug abuse continue to worsen. We need to acknowledge that drug abuse is a health problem with social and economic consequences. Therefore, the solutions are – public health, social services, economic development and tender supportive time with addicts in our depersonalized society. Law enforcement should be at the edges of drug control, not at the center. It is time to bring some currently illegal drugs within the law by regulating, taxing and controlling them. Ending the drug war will dramatically reduce street crime, violence and homicides related to underground drug dealing. Reform the Injustice System
The Nader Campaign supports reforming the (in)justice system. The Nader Campaign believes we need to get smart on preventing crime, invest in education, and rebuild and restore safe neighborhoods and communities. The United States prison binge has resulted in over two million people being incarcerated – the US now holds one out of four of the world’s prisoners, half of them non-violent. The US prison complex could be considered, perversely, the nation’s major public housing project.
To reverse this condition, we need to invest in humane treatment, personal involvement with youngsters, and job creation. We need to restore sentencing discretion to judges by repealing mandatory sentences and arbitrary “three-strikes” laws. In place of mandatory sentencing we need sentencing guidelines, however, these guidelines need to allow judges to treat each case individually and not be mandatory guidelines like the federal sentencing guidelines. We also need to restore due process, judicial discretion and constitutional restraints on law enforcement that violate equal protection and due process of law.
The Nader Campaign also supports passage of the End Racial Profiling Act, championed by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. in the House and Senator Russell Feingold in the Senate. The End Racial Profiling Act would dissuade law enforcement from engaging in profiling by requiring collection of race data, and providing effective legal remedies for victims of racial profiling. The root cause of racial unfairness in the criminal justice system starts with a law enforcement focus based on racial profiling.
This fall, several Members of Congress plan to re-introduce the “End Racial Profiling Act” to address this endemic problem. This bill is both timely and necessary considering the increase of racial profiling post 9/11. The Department of Justice has already banned federal law enforcement officials from engaging in racial profiling during the course of their investigations, although we have seen that this is not stringently enforced.
Each year, more than 23 million Americans become victims of crime. The Nader Campaign recognizes that crime and violence are caused by complex factors and that there is no quick fix. The many factors include: increasing poverty, unemployment, and the growing rich-poor divide; from the failure to invest and nurture children, from family breakups, to the incessant marketing of violence and corporate pornography; our inability to provide treatment for those addicted to drugs and alcohol; the proliferation of guns; the rise in intolerance based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual preference… all these contribute to crime.
The criminal justice system should include approaches to making the victims of crime whole again through victim compensation funds and other programs. The Nader Campaign also sees the value of restorative justice, which requires that those who break the law have sentences imposed that require them to pay back the community that they damaged. The concept of restorative justice can be a progressive one. For example, youngsters who vandalize a building could be sentenced to cleaning the building.
The Nader Campaign opposes the death penalty because its use is racially unfair, is applied to the poorest who cannot afford an adequate criminal defense, does not deter crime, results in innocent people being executed, costs the state more than life in prison sentences, and corrupts the moral status of the state. The Nader Campaign supports a moratorium on the death penalty. Tort System
The civil justice system is one of the last places in this country where individuals can successfully challenge insurance companies, the corporations that make dangerous consumer products, and those who injure and kill through environmental and occupational dangers.
But for the past twenty years, corporations have been in the forefront of an all out attack – they call it tort reform, we call it tort deform— on the American right to trial by jury in civil cases.
This tort deform movement has invested millions of dollars into a campaign to create hundreds of think-tanks, public relations, polling and lobbying firms – the propaganda machine of reckless companies seeking to escape the law.
These groups keep chipping away at state and federal laws designed to protect individuals from the rapacious wrongdoing of large multinational corporations.
The ultimate goal of the tort deform movement is to immunize corporations from lawsuits brought by injured citizens seeking justice against the perpetrators of harm.
The corporations pursue this goal in a myriad of ways – but primarily by lobbying legislators to deny injured citizens their full day in court by denying them a variety of long-established remedies and procedures—and by targeting for electoral defeat conscientious judges.
The corporate lobbyists are not absolutists. They will take what they can get. And they have gotten a lot – one slice at a time, year after year.
In many states, their tort deforms campaigns have capped real damages, pain and suffering damages, and punitive damages.
They have also successfully limited contingency fees, and restricted joint and several liability.
The corporate tort deformers falsely argue that the civil justice costs too much.
But they say nothing about the human destruction that results from unsafe corporate practices that are responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, injuries, and diseases and enormous economic costs to workers, consumers and the environment.
They say nothing about how the civil justice system reduces these costs by deterring companies from engaging in the wrongdoing in the first instance and making harmful and polluting corporations pay for their “torts.”
Despite corporate propaganda to the contrary, the American people want a chance to obtain justice before judge and jury.
Nader/Gonzalez would reverse the federal tort deforms of the past two decades, encourage the states to restore and strengthen the civil justice system, defend Americans’ constitutional right to a jury trial, and assign the resources necessary to bring to justice those corporations that unjustly injure innocent consumers and other citizens.
The mass media in the United States is extremely concentrated, and the messages that they send are too broadly uniform. Six global corporations control more than half of all mass media in our country: newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television. Our democracy is being swamped by the confluence of money, politics and concentrated media. We must reclaim our democracy from the accelerating grip of big-money politics and concentrated corporate media. This requires real campaign finance reform, which means public financing of public elections; some free access to ballot qualified candidates on television and radio; vigorous antitrust regulation and enforcement; ending broadcasters’ free licensed use of the public airwaves; and the reversion of some organized time on our publicly owned airwaves to establish audience-controlled radio and TV networks to ensure the diversity of voices and solutions necessary for a really free press and a true civic democracy.
The current political strategy of pre-emptive war in the Middle East is a disaster for both the American people and the people of the Middle East. It has bloated the already wasteful military budget and has cost at present over 4,000 American lives, nearly 100,000 American injuries, and over a million Iraqi civilian lives, plus the destruction of their country.
A target of withdrawing troops in six months will be set.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans want troops withdrawn from Iraq and a January 2006 poll shows that 72 percent of American soldiers in the field in Iraq wanted the U.S. out of Iraq within six to twelve months.
The war is costing taxpayers nearly $4,600 every second — and that doesn’t include the long-term reconstruction costs.
Nader/Gonzalez proposes that a rapid negotiated withdrawal from Iraq, with UN sponsored elections, is the first step toward delivering peace to Middle East.
On Israel/Palestine, a recent Haaretz poll showed that 64 percent of Israeli people want negotiations for peace between Israel and Hamas, while only 28% oppose it.
The Israeli people want peace. The Palestinian people want peace.
All kinds of people to people peace groups are forming in Israel and Palestine.
Among them:
And of course, the majority of the American Jewish community want peace.
By a 46-to-43 percent plurality American Jews continue to support the creation of a Palestinian state. Other polls show even higher support, among Jewish Americans, for a two-state solution.
Instead, both Democrats and Republicans reflexively support the militarists in Israel.
Israel has militarily occupied Gaza for forty years. It pulled out its colonies in 2005 but maintained an iron grip on the area — controlling all access, including its airspace and territorial waters.
Its F-16s and helicopter gunships regularly shred more and more of the areas’ public works, its neighborhoods and inflict collective punishment on civilians in violation of Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Israeli government’s blockade of Gaza prevents critical food, medicine, fuel, electricity and other necessities from coming into this tiny enclave through international relief organizations.
The resulting humanitarian crisis is received with predictable silence or callousness by members of Congress, including John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Nader/Gonzalez will continue to speak out about this humanitarian crisis and side with the strong and courageous Israeli/Palestinian peace movements who are working for a peaceful two-state solution. References:
Below is the complete letter Ralph Nader sent to the Washington Post in response to an editorial criticizing his comment that Israel is a puppeteer of the US government. When it published the letter on August 21st, the Post edited out the 4th to 6th paragraphs. These are important paragraphs illustrating that Nader’s positions are consistent with those of many Israelis and American Jews. These paragraphs highlighted the views of the Refuseniks, members of the Israeli Defense Force who refuse to participate in the occupation of Palestinian territory; and the views of over 400 rabbis who criticize the demolition of homes of hundreds of Palestinians. They also highlighted Senator John Kerry’s failure to face up to the human rights abuses of Israel.
Below that is another letter the Post refused to publish that highlights how charges of anti-semitism are used to stifle debate on Israel-Palestine in the United States.
Nader Continues to Urge Peace in Middle East
Dear Editor
Your editorial’s (Aug. 14th) juxtaposition of my words, taken from my statement which was rooted in an advocacy for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, with a passage from a domestic group, rooted in prejudice, was shameful and unsavory, at the very least. Suffice it to say that your objection to my description of the need to replace the Washington puppet show with the Washington Peace Show serves to reinforce the censorious climate against open and free discussion this conflict in the U.S., as there has been among the Israeli people. When Israelis joke about the United States being “the second state of Israel,” it sounds like they are describing a puppeteer-puppet relationship. Or, would The Post prefer using the descriptor “dominant-subordinate?”
The New York Times columnist and Middle Eastern Specialist, Tom Friedman, used stronger words than “puppet” when on February 9th, he wrote: “Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he’s had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates … all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing.”
When AIPAC works to obtain a recent 407-9 vote for a House of Representatives’ resolution which supported the latest Sharon strategy and rejected any mention of an independent Palestinian state, how would you describe such a surrender of the privately held positions of many Representatives, favoring a two-state solution?
Half of the Israeli people and over two-thirds of Americans of the Jewish faith believe the conflict can only be settled by allowing an independent Palestinian state together with a secure Israel.
Four hundred American rabbis, including leaders of some of the largest congregations in the country, protested the Israeli government’s house demolition policy. Hundreds of Israeli reserve combat officers and soldiers signed a declaration refusing, in their words, “to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.” www.seruv.org.il
That these and many other Israeli and American peace advocates with impressive political, business, academic, military and intelligence experience, receive no hearing in official Washington is further indication of a serious bias inside both political parties. George W. Bush is a messianic militarist with a tin ear toward these courageous collaborators in peace. And what is John Kerry’s problem? He told us he has “many friends” in the broad and deep Israeli peace movement. Yet, Mr. Kerry issues a pro-Sharon statement that in its obeisance goes to the right of Bush.
Given that your editorial did not have any problem with these views, why do you object to a description of AIPAC as an awesome lobby on Capitol Hill, labeling it “poisonous stuff?” AIPAC has worked hard over the years to enlist the support of both Christians and Jews. Its organizing skills are the envy of the NRA and other citizen groups. Muslim-Americans are trying to learn from its lobbying skills to produce a more balanced Congressional debate on Middle Eastern policies. How does acknowledging such an achievement “play on age-old stereotypes?” The bias may be in your own mind.
Sincerely, Ralph Nader
Debating Israel
August 19, 2004
To the Editor:
It is difficult to find an acceptable language with which to criticize the hard-line policies of successive Israeli governments.
Ralph Nader is charged (Washington Post Editorial, August 14, 2004) with anti-Semitism for speaking of the Israeli government and the Israeli Jewish lobby as “puppeteers” and American politicians as the “puppets” by the same people who charge Arafat and the Palestinians of being the “puppeteers” who mastermind votes critical of Israel in the General Assembly and in the Security Council of the United Nations.
The danger of anti-Semitism is a red-herring in a country in which the two major parties and their presidential candidates – cheered on by Christian Zionists — are competing for first prize in championing the cause of Sharon.
It is an open secret that the Israeli-Jewish lobby is among the most influential lobbies in Washington and beyond. Indeed, the leaders AIPAC and of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations would be the first to make this claim. What is so distressing is that these leaders arrogate to themselves the right to be more Catholic than the Pope in their support of Israeli hard-liners but also far more hard-line than most American and Israeli Jews. Indeed, the likes of Ronald Lauder and Malcolm Hoenlein never accepted Oslo and the principle of “land for peace.”
The American supporters of the Peace Now and affiliated peace organizations in Israel are frozen out of these Jewish-American organizations.
In any case, the accusation of anti-Semitism is a tried and effective tactic for silencing criticism or opposition to the policies of Israeli governments and of American administrations.
The Nader campaign is a natural home for American Jews committed to the peace process who are appalled at Kerry’s efforts at out-Bushing Bush on the Israeli question and many others. It is neither Jewish nor Democratic to stifle debate with false charges of anti-Semitism.
Arno J. Mayer -Arno J. Mayer is professor emeritus of history at Princeton University and the author of “Why Did Not the Heavens Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in History.”
As the wealthiest country in the world, with high productivity per capita, a country that produces an abundance of capital, credit, technology and food, we can end poverty. Yet, according to the Bureau of the Census, poverty and hunger for children and adults is increasing rather than decreasing — 34.6 million Americans lived in deep poverty, 12.1% of the U.S. population. Many millions of Americans live in what is called ‘near poverty’ by the Labor Department. We must make ending poverty a priority and weave that goal into a network of policies:
The three documents below provide the “tools of democracy” that shift the power so people can regain control of their government, empower themselves as consumers, and strengthen themselves as workers. Without the facilities making it easy for Americans to band together to develop organizations with staff and budget to protect their interests, workers, consumers, and voters have few ways to challenge those organized for other purposes - for example, corporations organized with contrary policies and demands. These “Shift the Power” organizations are voluntarily funded by citizens who choose to participate. The documents below deal with three issues: reclaiming our democracy, gaining some control over the public airwaves (owned by the people!), and giving consumers bargaining power over telephone, gas, electric, and utility monopolies. These facilities for a stronger democracy provide models that could be applied to any aspect of our lives, so that corporations become more our servants than our masters.
The Audience Network Act would take back just a small portion of the television and radio airwaves — the precious resource our Government gives away, mostly to the benefit of wealthy corporations — and put it in the hands of the American people.
Despite rapid changes in the communications field, television remains the most powerful medium — and television licenses and franchises the most desired properties — in communications today. At the same time, market consolidation, aided by the laissez-faire attitude of federal regulators, has led to increased concentration of possession of scarce broadcast licenses and cable franchises — all of which the Government gives away for free. The limited broadcast spectrum, which is owned by the public, and valued cable monopolies, conferred by public authorities, are increasingly controlled by a handful of powerful media conglomerates.
Television today suffers not merely from a concentration of power, but also from a shortage of quality, thought-provoking programming. There are, of course, some quality entertainment, educational, and public affairs programs. The major broadcast and cable networks sometimes come through with intelligent entertainment and solid news reporting. C-SPAN has substantially expanded access to the raw material of democracy — the proceedings of government, interest groups, and elections. Public television stations have offered quality programming, particularly for children. The Independent Television Service (ITVS), created by Congress in 1988 to address the needs of unserved and under served audiences, has added an important voice.
But the vast bulk of what appears on television today is of low quality — tabloid, sensationalist “news,” both from local stations and national syndicators, ugly talk shows, mindless comedies, endless violence, half-hour toy advertisements disguised as children’s shows, and, everywhere, droning commercials and “infomercials.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, PBS, and ITVS face yearly threats from Congress to eliminate or sharply reduce Government funding for public television efforts. Public broadcasters are therefore turning increasingly to corporate sponsors and advertising, and to commercial network cast-off programming, and thus starting more and more to resemble their commercial cousins.
C-SPAN’s funding and distribution is at the mercy of cable operators, many of whom have eliminated one or both C-SPAN channels to make room for commercial offerings. Public access channels, provided by many cable operators as a price of obtaining franchises from local governments, offer a true forum but few resources — resulting, for the most part, in no-budget vanity programming that is difficult to watch. Television’s “vast wasteland” — the famous description provided by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow in 1961 — has become more vast and no less of a wasteland. As Bruce Springsteen has described it, what Americans are generally offered today is “57 channels and nothing on.”
The television industry’s lobbyists insist that the struggle for ratings and revenues is free-market democracy in action — people vote with their eyeballs, and the most popular shows and channels are the winners. But that is simply not the case. Commercial programming choices are driven by appeal to the demographic group advertisers seek — young adults. Older Americans and children receive short shrift. Moreover, the drive for ratings leads to lowest-common-denominator programming, often devoid of subtlety, creativity, or responsibility. The cable revolution, once seen as promising far greater diversity and appeal to a wider range of audience, has failed. There is just more of the same. As a society, we deserve better.
The Communications Act of 1934 and the regulatory framework established under it conferred public trusteeship status on broadcasters. Broadcasters, while succeeding in their effort to enrich themselves, have generally failed to meet the obligations of their trusteeship.
To return to the people just a small slice of the airwaves — not just television, but also the powerful medium of radio — in order to improve the quality, diversity and responsiveness of programming, we propose the Audience Network Act. The Act would empower the television and radio audience — the people of this country — by providing the public with limited access to television and radio time and facilities. The Audience Network proposal was the subject of a 1991 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and finance, then chaired by Representative Edward Markey.
The Act would create Audience Network, a federally-chartered national non-profit membership organization. Anyone sixteen years or older who contributed $10 or more annually would become a member of Audience Network. The Act would grant Audience Network one hour of prime time television and one hour of drive time radio on every commercial station every day. Audience Network could then lease some of these desirable time slots to station owners in order to finance varieties of engrossing, quality programming to be shown at other times. The control of these time slots would give Audience Network, and hence citizens concerned with diverse, high-quality broadcasting, strong bargaining power vis-a-vis broadcasters.
Audience Network would function as a separate FCC licensee. Its management would be chosen by direct election of the members. Audience Network would air programming shaped by member interests and needs. It would produce and acquire for presentation a range of quality public affairs and entertainment programs. Management would conduct quarterly membership surveys to ascertain the programming priorities of members. Boards comprised of Audience Network staff, members, and contributing creative artists, would select programming. Audience Network would provide national programming, while local Audience Network chapters would contribute additional local programs.
Audience Network public affairs and entertainment programming, aired without commercials, would address issues of interest to a broad range of viewers — including, as a core concern, issues related to communications policy. Audience Network would provide a strong outlet for the discussion of social and political issues, as well as elections and referenda at the national and local levels. It would also help turn the passive television medium into a vehicle for action by focusing on citizen participation, education, and organization — ways for people to become involved in social and political causes of concern to them. Audience Network would frequently provide viewers with names of groups to contact, events to attend, publications to read. An Audience Network site on the Internet would provide computer-capable viewers with additional, detailed information on matters addressed on television and radio. It would also provide computer users in this country and around the world, access to audio and video materials from Audience Network programming.
Non-profit organizations — from community groups to the Girl Scouts to the Sierra Club to the American Cancer Society to the Junior Chamber of Commerce to labor unions — would be offered opportunities to create and broadcast programming. Such groups have a wealth of important information to share with the public, yet rarely have an opportunity to communicate over the airwaves at any length.
Well-known entertainers and civic leaders would be recruited to participate, to lend their talents to the cause of more diverse and intelligent media, and to educate audiences on issues of concern. Less well-known creative artists and citizen advocates would be given an opportunity to reach broader national and local audiences.
There is a precedent for the Audience Network approach, and it works. In the Netherlands, radio and television air time is apportioned to citizen groups, with the size of membership determining the extent of access to the airwaves.
Audience Network would also maintain a small staff of communications policy experts who would be charged with representing consumer interests before the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and the courts. They would also interact with the public on communications issues, including not only traditional television and radio, but the whole range of issues affecting our technological future, such as telephone, cellular, high-definition TV, direct-broadcast satellite, the Internet and other computer on-line services.
When the FCC considered proposed hikes in cable television rates or rules for awarding scarce broadcast and cable frequencies, and the giant media corporations appeared with scores of lawyer-lobbyists, Audience Network’s presence would have helped ensure that the consumer viewpoint was not lost in the crowd.
Audience Network, as conceived by the Act, is fully consistent with the First Amendment rights of broadcasters. Under the Communications Act, a broadcast license does not confer ownership, only temporary use of a designated frequency, with the First Amendment rights of viewers and listeners remaining paramount. The scarcity inherent in the broadcast spectrum, the Supreme Court and the FCC have long recognized, justifies government regulation in the public interest. The advent of cable television has not undermined that rationale: 40 percent of households have no cable service, and rising cable subscription prices, resulting from government deregulation, may increase that percentage, especially among lower-income families. The “must-carry” provisions enacted by Congress, and the entry of new cable channels owned by the broadcast networks, are just some of the indications of the continued economic and political power of broadcasters. Moreover, even cable has not eliminated scarcity; there are more channels, but even more programmers seeking access.
The Supreme Court has clearly left the door open for Congress to expand access to the airwaves. As the Court stated in CBS v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 131 (1973), “Conceivably, at some future date Congress or the Commission — or the broadcasters — may devise some kind of right of access that is both practicable and desirable.”
The Audience Network Act would not strip from broadcasters editorial control of their own broadcast time or otherwise implicate the free speech rights of broadcasters. Instead, it would in effect redefine the broadcast license to cover 23 hours, instead of 24, with the remaining hour becoming the property of Audience Network. In no respect would the content of the Audience Network’s programming be imputed to the broadcast licensees sharing a particular piece of the spectrum. The Supreme Court, in its landmark decision in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 390-91 (1969), recognized that ”[r]ather than confer frequency monopolies on a relatively small number of licensees, … the Government could surely have decreed that each frequency should be shared among all or some of those who wish to use it, each being assigned a portion of the broadcast day or broadcast week.” The only connection between the television and radio broadcasters and Audience Network would be that the national broadcast networks and local broadcasters would provide Audience Network with reasonable access to their transmission facilities, and Audience Network would reimburse the broadcasters for the actual costs.
The Audience Network Act says that we can free ourselves of the trap we have set: We have given away the people’s airwaves and received very little in return that enhances the public interest. We need not be at the mercy of broadcasters and cable providers and simply hope that these enterprises will offer high-quality, public-spirited programming. We can reserve for the public just a small piece of the airwaves, and thereby enhance our culture and our democracy.
CUB is a non-profit, consumer-controlled organization that represents residential utility ratepayers before regulatory agencies, courts, and legislatures on telephone, gas, electric, and water rates, as well as other safety and economic issues involving utility monopolies. It is designed to redress more closely the imbalance of consumers’ power vis-a-vis the utility companies. The utilities spend millions of dollars of your ratepayer money hiring armies of lawyers, economists, and scientists to advocate the companies’ interests before state Public Service Commissions and legislatures. Although residential ratepayers have direct interest in proceedings, they lack the resources, expert advocates, or organization to respond to the utilities’ arguments. The cost and complexity of a typical ratecase effectively prohibit regular active consumer participation.
CUBs help rectify this imbalance by giving consumers a mechanism to pool their resources and hire their own staff of professionals. At the heart of the idea is CUB’s right by law to enclose notices inside monthly utility bills to communicate with the public and solicit memberships. This enclosure provides CUB with an efficient and effective way to reach and organize ratepayers: the insert is inexpensive to print, costs CUB no postage to deliver, and reaches the residential ratepayer at the peak moment of interest (or outrage) - upon opening the monthly bill.
Organizationally, CUBs have broad appeal. They do not cost the taxpayer a cent, are voluntary to the consumer to join, and do not create another government agency. In states where CUBs operate, any residential consumer can join by contributing a minimum of $5 per year. Members are entitled to vote in the election of the CUB Board of Directors, which governs the organization, determines its policies, and hires its staff. Because CUB depends on donations, it must work for public support. If it does not perform, or is not accountable to its members, people will not contribute and CUB will shrink or go out of business.
The experience of Wisconsin CUB shows the impact that even a modestly-well financed, well-organized consumer group can have. Established by the state legislature in 1979, CUB has developed into the largest and most effective consumer group in Wisconsin, with about 110,000 members. CUB is credited with saving consumers more than $80 million in unneseccary rate increases, defeating measured billing for local telephone calls and securing a $23 million refund (about $15 per customer) from Wisconsin Bell.
The success of Wisconsin CUB has sparked interest in the model throughout the country. In late 1983, after a two-year campaign by consumers, the Illinois legislature approved a CUB bill. Illinois CUB, in full operation for just 16 months, has 120,000 members and is involved in several major rate cases. The city of San Diego, California, has a CUB which focuses on the local gas and electric utility. Last November, Oregon became the third state to set up a CUB when voters passed a ballot measure despite a utility-backed anti-CUB campaign which outpsent CUB supporters 20 to one. CUB proposals are pending in almost a dozen other states, including Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.
A key ingredient in the successful campaign to establish CUBs is the broad-based, grassroots support for the proposal. Consumer, environmental, church, labor, and senior citizen groups, recognizing the need for ratepayer input in the regulatory and legislative arenas, have led the legislative fight for CUB. Their task has not been an easy one. The utilities are well financed and have considerable influence in the state legislatures. But as experiences in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Oregon demonstrate, if consumers are organized on the grassroots level, they can counteract the utilities’ clout and break through with this important institution.
The CUB concept, an independent group of full-time staffers funded by, and working on behalf of, consumers of a particular service, has many applications. Tenants, insurance policy holders, and banking customers can all band together in groups this way to protect their interests (the Audience Network is an extension of this idea to television and radio users). These groups have one key feature in common: the right to enclose a solicitation in the billing envelope or other seller’s communication of the service industry they wish to reform. Democratic Revolution in an Age of Autocracy
By Ralph Nader originally published April 1993 in Boston Review
The Clinton Administration says it has big plans for “fundamental change” in the way our government and economy work. Change was certainly the mandate of the 1992 election, and the Clinton people have already set out some ambitious plans (keeping in mind, of course, that virtually any presidential leadership seems bold after four years of the Bush administration).
What neither Clinton, nor his Cabinet, nor most other Democratic Party proponents of change seem to realize is that significant, enduring change will require an institutionalized shift of power from corporations and government to ordinary Americans. While politicians have now made an art of populist symbolism, virtually none have a serious agenda to strengthen Americans in their key roles as voters, taxpayers, consumers, workers, and shareholders.
To deliver on his promise for change, President Clinton must adopt a more fundamental priority: the rejuvenation of the democratic culture of this nation through specific institutional reforms. It is, after all, the failure of our “civic infrastructure,” not simple fate or isolated mistakes, that is the root of many of our intractable national problems. If civic standards got the television airtime of Morris the Cat and associates, the savings and loan scandal would have never occurred: outraged citizens would have intervened long before it became a $500 billion scandal.
Thomas Jefferson said that “a little rebellion now and then” might be a good thing. He was right, and we need such a rebellion now: a democratic revolution that will reinvent and rediscover democracy. All sorts of latent energies are waiting to be tapped. But they will never be released by simple exhortations to “good citizenship,” or by celebrating the values of civic engagement, praising a thousand points of light, and hosting quadrennial candidate forums.
Instead, reinventing democracy requires that we create new tools of empowerment: new mechanisms of civic communication, political organization, government assistance, and legal rights that can advance the distinct interests of citizens, taxpayers, consumers, workers and shareholders. These structural and procedural reforms will help to foster a new “fifth estate” of individual Americans, capable of acting independently from entrenched institutional that is, chiefly corporate and governmental power. Pursuing new forms of joint action, we can reclaim our government from the oligarchy that has made it a caricature of the Jeffersonian vision and overcome the sense of powerlessness, alienation, and fatalism that threaten to erode the commitment to democracy itself.
Here, then, is the North Star of a democratic revolution: reassert democratic principles by giving the ideal of self-government new and creative applications in everyday life. What follows are ten urgent, practical empowerment strategies that will help to advance the democratic promise by reclaiming democracy and checking corporate power.
1. Facilitate voter initiatives. The 1992 campaigns dramatically illustrated the depth of voter disillusionment with politics as usual and the deep yearning of ordinary Americans to participate in the democratic process. Unfortunately, except for a few media-driven vehicles such as call-in talk shows and candidate forums (which, significantly, were convened by candidates, not by voters), citizens have few opportunities to take the initiative in bringing issues to public attention.
One of the best tools for breaking this log jam is the voter initiative; the process by which citizens may enact or reject laws directly through the voting booth rather than through elected officials. The process is simple: citizens gather a specified number of signatures on petitions. An initiative then appears on the ballot, and is enacted or rejected by popular vote. Through this initiative process, citizens can propose new laws, state constitutional amendments, or city or county charter amendments.
Citizen initiatives are an important democratic remedy for unresponsive state legislators or city officials. Without initiatives, self-government all too often means only giving voters a choice of electing the lesser of two evils. With the initiative process, voters can control specific policies of government, and even change its structure. Frequently, just filing an initiative petition inspires legislators to pay attention to a citizen or community campaign. Government becomes more responsive. Political power cannot be so easily monopolized by a few influential officials. New and often crucial items can be put on the political agenda. And citizens, reacting to direct democracy, are more likely to participate in civic life.
Any politician who is serious about rejuvenating our democratic traditions must promote the use of the initiative process. Where initiatives are not now permitted — at the national level and in some states, this means changing the rules that prevent them. Congress, by majority vote of both houses, could create a non-binding national initiative process or mandate national advisory referendums on any subject at any time. This act alone would send a powerful message to the American public: that democratic principles are indeed valued; that citizen-driven participation is important in our public life; and that legislators are willing to be directly responsive to the public will.
2. Reform our corrupt campaign finance system. It is now a well-accepted fact that our system for financing presidential and congressional campaigns is fundamentally corrupt and pernicious. The only way to ensure effective and honest representation by lawmakers is through decisive campaign finance reform, with public funding of campaigns. Ellen Miller’s article on “Money, Politics, and Democracy” (in this issue of the Boston Review) [June-August 1993] presents one proposal for such reform.
An important first step in the campaign to limit the impact of money in politics was taken in February. A major coalition of 300 citizen organizations launched a massive “Clean Up Washington” campaign, announcing its own 800 number to marshal citizen support (800-847-6611). The object of the campaign is overall spending limits for congressional races, a reduction in the limits on P.A.C. and individual contributions, a ban on “soft money” contributions (which are channeled through political parties), and the elimination of special tax breaks for lobbying. By loosening the grip of entrenched interests, these reforms promise to unleash other new possibilities for the culture of citizenship.
3. Set term limits for Members of Congress. Few issues have so galvanized spontaneous citizen action as the idea of term limits. The chief value of such limits is their ability to liberate new energy for political elections. A fresh crop of candidates can emerge and win, and more citizens can become excited recruits to electoral campaigns. Because incumbents typically have a hammerlock on re-election, ordinary citizens who used to participate actively in campaigns have largely given up. They reasonably say, “Why bother? How could I possibly make a difference? There’s no chance that a challenger-candidate could possibly unseat a well-funded lifetime politician.”
Limiting terms to twelve years changes this equation. Congressional elections matter again. New blood enters the democratic process. Diversity of representation is enhanced. Legislators can be elected who have energy and determination, who are not burnt out or bought off. Newcomers will generally be closer to their constituents than the career politicians of Washington. Their arrival can help end the reign of the ruling cliques, whose entrenched power is such a potent barrier to progressive change.
Opponents of term limitations warn that inexperienced citizen legislators will be at the mercy of special-interest lobbyists and that the voters will lose the experience and wisdom of career lawmakers. This argument is not convincing, given what the established “experience and wisdom” has accomplished in Washington. There were a lot of amateurs in Philadelphia 200 years ago; they didn’t do too badly. Constitutional objections may be more formidable. Some experts argue that congressional term limits require a constitutional amendment, and not simply legislation in individual states. This was the method used to limit presidential terms in 1951. At the very least, however, it is clear that the states can limit the terms of state officials. Twenty-three states already limit the number of terms that their governors can serve.
Members of Congress are not likely to approve a constitutional amendment limiting their own terms. So attention must turn to ways to compel Congress to act. The 22 states with the initiative/referendum process where voters have direct access to the ballot box will have a head start in organizing term limit campaigns. These states account for nearly half of the House of Representatives, and 44 of the nation’s 100 senators. A state-by-state blitz of term limitation initiatives will create tremendous national momentum to limit Congressional terms, even in the 28 non-initiative states. In those states, citizens must demand that their legislators vote for term limits, or that the question be placed on the ballot for the public to make their voice heard.
4. Expand citizen standing rights. What can be done when government itself becomes lawless, flouting the very Constitution and congressional laws that it is duty-bound to uphold? This is one of the most important yet neglected problems of self-governance of our time.
Historically, one important tool for citizens and taxpayers has been a broad right of legal standing; a right to gain access to the courts to sue the government and challenge its arbitrary and capricious actions, its failure to enforce existing laws, and its illegal behavior. The Supreme Court recognized the importance of broad taxpayer and citizen standing in a series of decisions in the 1960s and early 1970s. They upheld, for example, the standing of taxpayers to challenge expenditures of tax revenues that were alleged to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and the standing of ordinary users of the environment to challenge the legality of environmentally harmful government regulations even though the interest of the particular plaintiffs was generalized and diffuse.
Unfortunately, since the mid-1970s the Supreme Court has reversed this tradition, and developed an increasingly restrictive law of standing. Narrowing citizen access, the Court has transformed the law of standing into a smokescreen that masks and sanctions many governmental misdeeds. The Court has refused, for example, to grant standing to taxpayers who were challenging government spending alleged to violate the Establishment Clause, or to taxpayers arguing that secret C.I.A. funding violated the Constitution’s requirement of a public accounting of public expenditures. These changes in effect license government officials to violate the law whenever it is expedient for them to do so, because no one, except perhaps an attorney general, will ever be able to hold them accountable in court.
This is no way to promote official compliance with law or citizen confidence in the operation of government. If public confidence in the legitimacy of government is to be restored, Congress must immediately enact remedial legislation that gives taxpayers and citizens broad standing to sue government. Such a reform would be a virtually cost-free way to improve the quality and responsiveness of government operations. It would also send a strong message that our nation is indeed governed by law and not by the arbitrary caprice of political officials or government bureaucrats.
5. Regain control over “taxpayer assets.” On behalf of the American people, the U.S. government owns and manages a wide variety of taxpayer assets: national forests, grazing lands, mineral deposits, power projects, information resources, research and development rights, broadcast frequencies, among others. The Reagan and Bush administrations boasted of their intention to run government “like a business” before proceeding to host a massive fire sale of taxpayer assets to assorted corporate interests. Here, too, citizens and taxpayers must be empowered to stop the widespread abuses of government stewardship of publicly owned assets.
The federal government has historically funded about half of all U.S. expenditures on research and development (R&D) some $74 billion in fiscal year 1992. Over the past twelve years, the allocation of property rights in these research projects has dramatically changed. Before Reagan/Bush, the government generally sought to have research products enter the public domain, or to patent its inventions or license them on a non-exclusive basis. Exclusive licenses were used, but only sparingly, and often for limited terms. After 1980, however, a series of statutes, rules, and policy memoranda sanctioned a broad use of exclusive licenses. In effect, taxpayers invest billions of dollars in R&D every year and then the returns on these investments are privatized.
One of the more egregious abuses of taxpayer assets involves azidothymidine (AZT), the A.I.D.S. treatment developed chiefly through government grants. Despite the government’s development funding, Burroughs Wellcome later gained monopoly rights to the drug, initially charging $10,000 ($3,000 today) to A.I.D.S. patients, many of whom have no health insurance.
This same pattern is replicated in the government’s stewardship of federal information resources, many of which are available through electronic means. The U.S. Government is the largest publisher of information in the world. Yet the government has raised prices sharply for these taxpayer-sponsored information resources; has given them away to private vendors who sell the identical materials at inflated prices; and has eliminated many publications altogether, effectively barring public access to government information and policy.
One partial solution that deserves immediate congressional action is pending legislation that would require the Government Printing Office to set up a one-stop-shopping program for on-line access to hundreds of federal databases. The service would be free to 1,400 federal depository libraries, and would be available to everyone else through subscriptions priced at the relatively low “incremental cost of dissemination.”
Another way to help taxpayers defend public assets against waste and abuse is to create a taxpayer watchdog group, in the form of a set-aside program, as a requirement for all uses of taxpayer assets. This money, say one or two percent of a given subsidy, would finance ongoing citizen oversight of private use of taxpayer assets. Like other accountability mechanisms, this expenditure could be one of the most cost-effective ways for the government to prevent waste and abuse of public assets.
The government does seem newly receptive to such ideas. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recently announced, for example, that the U.S. Government will no longer charge nominal fees for grazing rights, mineral rights and other private exploitation of federal lands. Instead, taxpayers will begin to receive market rates, and that will encourage private users to treat these resources more responsibly. Whether President Clinton will be able to overcome the cattle, farming and mining interests is, of course, another matter which is precisely why democratic reforms are so vital.
6. Reclaim the public airwaves. The privatization of the broadcast airwaves one of our most important taxpayer assets has caused serious deformations of our politics and culture. The basic problem is that private broadcasters control what the public owns. And in return for free licenses to use taxpayer property, broadcasters give us a steady stream of increasingly coarse, redundant, superficial programming and, of course, exclusively decide who says what on our public airwaves.
The result is that there is no place to hold a public discussion. Ordinary citizens can speak to their neighbors, but they cannot speak to millions of their fellow Americans without paying a giant toll and obtaining the permission of large corporations. The grotesque paradox is that a First Amendment originally intended to empower citizens for self-government is now being used to shield business entities, who control the major channels of communication and have little interest in using them as public forums. (See Cass Sunstein’s article “Is Free Speech the Enemy of Democracy?” in this issue [June-August 1993] of the Boston Review).
To give the audience access to the airwaves that it already owns, Congress should create a new broadcast vehicle, the Audience Network. A national, nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization, Audience Network would be granted one hour of prime-time television and one hour of drive-time radio on every commercial channel each day. It would function as a separate licensee, airing diverse programming shaped by the membership, which would be open to all citizens over age 16 for a nominal fee (say, $10 annually). In addition, Audience Network would represent consumer interests before the Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.), Congress, and the courts. This would redress the long-standing disenfranchisement that millions of viewers and listeners have suffered under the current regulatory regime.
The Audience Network would be democratically controlled. The Network and its professional staff would be managed by persons accountable to the membership through a direct elective process. Besides membership fees, it could lease some airtime back to stations or networks. This would help assure the Network’s financial security, and allow it to avoid paid advertisements. During its time slot, the Audience Network could air a variety of cultural, political, entertainment, scientific or other programs that it produced or obtained. Freed from the constraints of corporate advertisers, the Audience Network would air major abuses which are not publicized for years by the commercial media.
Over time, Audience Network would transform a powerless, voiceless audience, conditioned to a debased regime of programming, into an active audience with the ability to initiate innovative and consequential programming and reforms. Its open programming by diverse non-commercial groups would greatly invigorate the civic marketplace of ideas a signal challenge for our times.
7. Create shareholder democracy. Corporate democracy has been an illusion for nearly 100 years which has not, of course, deterred business executives and the New York Stock Exchange from annually proclaiming its vitality. What is the scope of management power and what are the checks upon it? In nearly every large American business corporation, one person or a small coterie of executives have unquestioned operational control. In theory, this small group of managers serves as an agent of the board of directors. In reality, it is just the reverse. The chief executive or executive clique chooses the board, and, with its acquiescence, controls the corporation.
The legal basis for such a consolidation of power is the proxy election, what British law professor L.C.B. Gower calls “this solemn farce.” Given the nearly insuperable barriers faced by insurgents challenging management, it is no surprise that the board of directors has ceased to perform its statutory function of “managing the business and affairs of every corporation.” Indeed, it is often hard to tell whether the boards of many corporations perform any independent function at all. “Directors,” William O. Douglas complained as early as 1934, “do not direct.” Management control has overwhelmed the rule of law.
Such autocratic corporate governance imposes serious economic and social costs — in terms of self-dealing, inefficiency, and illegality. Even Business Week now concludes, “So much of this trouble for America’s corporate titans [General Motors, IBM, Westinghouse, American Express] might have been avoided had the same parochial perspectives not clouded the judgment of many outside directors. They simply failed in their duties.” Many institutional shareholders such as the California State Employees Pension Fund, newly aware of the long-term economic costs of unaccountable managements, have mounted campaigns to oust lackluster management teams. This is a step in the right direction, but the impulse needs to be taken much further.
What is needed is a Corporate Democracy Act to give all stakeholders in corporate decision-making a real voice in corporate governance. Redesigning the rights and obligations of shareholders, boards of directors, and executives, can make giant companies both more efficient and law-abiding. Critical to this task is installation of full-time outside directors selected by beneficial owners in elections entirely funded by the company. To short-circuit wasteful competition among states, to woo corporate investment by sanctioning unfair labor practices, pollution, and wasteful subsidies, federal chartering of corporations with minimum national standards are essential. Moreover, victims of corporate malfeasance workers, consumers, local communities, shareholders, and small businessmen should be accorded greater access to the court system to redress their complaints (see point 9 below for more details).
Adding together all the social costs of our baroque, ineffectual sham of corporate governance, it becomes clear that corporate autocracy is not conducive to a prudent, productive economy, nor to socially benign corporate behavior. But this will not change until corporations begin to abide by minimal national standards of business responsibility and shareholders are empowered to gain greater access to reliable corporate information, participate in fair elections for board seats, and exercise meaningful oversight of management.
8. Establish a new model of consumer representation. Mancur Olson, in his excellent book, The Logic of Collective Action, asks, “Why is it that throughout history large numbers of people are preyed upon by small numbers of people? What is it about the victim class that makes it incapable of asserting itself?”
One answer is that the “victim class” has great difficulty in bringing itself together, as a group. If only because of sheer numbers, it typically lacks organizational means for asserting its collective will or developing a common identity and culture. This dynamic is played out in dozens of milieus in our political economy. For example, sellers who are consummately capable of organizing themselves to protect their interests develop myriad ways to exploit buyers who have preciously few means of organizing themselves. Public interest groups can help, but they often cannot provide a consistent presence that is technically competent, financially stable, and directly accountable to consumers.
The 1980s saw the emergence of a promising new solution to this classic problem. The Citizens’ Utility Board, or C.U.B., is a model approach for bringing together large numbers of diffuse consumers into a voluntary organization, which can then pursue a common citizen/consumer agenda in banking, insurance, housing or dozens of other arenas. It is the “silicon chip” for the citizen movement because it is a low-cost, high versatility, powerfully effective device.
How does a C.U.B. work? Typically, residential consumers lack the organization, resources, or expertise to respond to utility arguments on such matters as ratesetting and safety. C.U.B. offers an ingenious way to provide effective citizen representation. By authority of state legislatures, a C.U.B. is given the right to enclose notices inside certain company and state mailings to invite the public to become voluntary members of the C.U.B. for a modest annual fee of $5 to $10. C.U.B. pays for this enclosure. This “piggybacking” on state mailings provides a convenient, effective way for the C.U.B. to organize a membership and to communicate with it, and a basis for self-sufficiency and financial accountability.
All members of the C.U.B. have the right to vote in the election of the C.U.B. Board of Directors. This process ensures that the leadership of C.U.B. reflects the interests of the ratepayers. The Directors serve without pay and hire full-time staff of accountants, attorneys, economists, organizers, and lobbyists. The staff can intervene, for example, in rate proceedings; advocate before the legislature; research issues of concern to consumers; survey public opinion on energy and telecommunications issues; analyze the way the utilities are handling complaints; and provide information and assistance to consumers interested in conserving energy.
Illinois C.U.B., for example, attracts tens of thousands of members and has blocked literally billions of dollars in gratuitous rate hikes. It would be easy to apply the C.U.B. idea to organizations like the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Postal Service. Big mailers (magazine publishers and the direct-mail industry) routinely use lobbyists and trade associations to advance their interests in postal commission rate hearings. Don’t residential mailers deserve their own independent voice?
The beauty of the C.U.B. concept is that, as a voluntary group, it costs taxpayers virtually nothing. It is anti-bureaucratic, because no new government personnel or procedures are needed. It enhances civic participation, because the C.U.B. depends for its success on the energy and vision of its members. And it counters the massive inequities of power that afflicts consumers in their dealings with government and business.
9. Protect victims’ rights. Another constituency of individuals that is increasingly impotent are the innocent victims of dangerous products, unsafe workplaces, toxic waste, and other hazards. In recent years, insurance companies, manufacturers, and other corporate interests have waged a massive campaign to roll back the legal rights of plaintiffs to obtain full compensation for their injuries. In one of the most unprincipled public relations scams in the history of American industry, this coalition has pursued a draconian package of changes that it calls “tort reform.” Among others, the proposals seek to place arbitrary caps on “pain and suffering” awards; eliminate punitive damage awards (often the only effective deterrent against intentionally unsafe practices); impose mandatory limits on plaintiff lawyers’ contingency fees (without setting any corresponding limits on fees for defense lawyers); eliminate strict liability (one of the most effective deterrents against unsafe products and workplaces); and restrict the role of both judge and jury.
The coalition’s fundamental message is that the jury system is out of control because the common law and jury awards are so unpredictable. Claiming a ruinous “litigation explosion,” insurance companies dislike the jury system because they cannot precisely budget damage awards as a cost of doing business. But this unpredictability is the very essence of deterrence a function of the civil justice system which is just as important as compensation and which, like the system’s other social benefits, cannot be precisely quantified in dollars and cents.
A citizen empowerment agenda must deal with the structural problems of the insurance industry. Congress should repeal the industry’s exemption from antitrust laws, federal regulation, and Federal Trade Commission scrutiny. A cycle of surge-and-decline of cash flow almost every decade has precipitated the bogus “insurance crisis.” Congress should also establish a federal office of insurance to monitor the industry and establish standards for state regulators to follow. Voter Revolt, a California-based citizen group, broke important new ground by mobilizing broad-based support for Proposition 103 an initiative measure that reformed the property-casualty insurance industry in California and rolled back excessive insurance rates.
At the state level, insurance companies must be required to disclose routinely how much they take in on premiums and investment income, and how much they pay out in verdicts and settlements (plus reserves and other expenditures). State insurance departments need more authority and funding, and consumers need greater consumer representation before insurance regulatory bodies. Insurers should be required to engage in greater loss prevention efforts, and to disclose evidence of known defective products or hazardous conditions to appropriate law enforcement and regulatory authorities. And, C.U.B. style insurance-consumer organizations should be established to enable consumers to grapple with this powerful industry.
Eroding basic victims’ rights will not stop premium-gouging and policy cancellations. Only effective insurance reforms will stop the cyclical insurance crisis which leads to the volcanic eruptions of premiums and contracted coverage.
10. Ensure an hospitable environment for whistle blowing. Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events.” Since the early 1970s, this insight has given rise to the ethics of whistle blowing — the lone individual of conscience within a corporate or governmental organization who sees wrong and tries to right it, often at great personal risk.
Society has an acute interest in fostering a more muscular whistle blowing ethic. Corporate and government employees are among the first to know about fraud and corruption, industrial dumping of toxins into waterways, defectively designed automobiles, or undisclosed adverse effects of prescription drugs and pesticides. They are the first to understand how to prevent existing hazards. But they are very often the last to speak out.
There is a great need now to extend the reach of this ethic into such organizations as corporate and governmental bureaucracies. But the ethic will only flourish in these settings if employees have the right to due process within their organizations, and if rights now used to protect people from state power for example, the right to speak freely are expanded into protections from corporations and comparable bureaucratic powers. Large corporations should have a bill of rights for their employees and a system of internal appeals to guarantee these rights. Unions and professional societies should strengthen their ethical codes. The courts, professional and citizen groups, the media, the Congress, and other sectors of society must actively work to prevent the trammeling of a fortified conscience within their midst.
If carefully defined and protected by law, whistle blowing can become another of those adaptive, self-implementing mechanisms which distinguish a free society, which empowers people to govern themselves instead of being subordinated to autocratic controls.
The tools for democracy have fairly common characteristics. They are universally accessible; they provide instruments of self-funded voluntary community action; they can make government deliver, and have constructive effects on other areas of policy. Without a reconstruction of our democracy in order to ensure facilities for informed civic participation to all citizens, no ambitious program of political and economic change will succeed. Nor can worries about poverty, discrimination, joblessness, the troubled conditions of education, environment, street and suite crime, budget deficits, costly and inadequate health care, and energy boondoggles be addressed in a constructive and enduring way. These facilities are the magnets for the genuine exercise of rights, remedies, and responsibilities.
So it is time for a civic rebellion, Jefferson style.
The plight of the Tibetan people is one of the great human rights tragedies of the Twentieth Century. The Chinese government has brutally oppressed the people of Tibet and engaged in a conscious campaign to wipe out traditional Tibetan culture.
Unfortunately, the political reality does not currently allow for an independent Tibet state, but the people of Tibet must be given autonomy over their domestic affairs. In addition, the horrific human rights abuses and widespread limitations on free speech, assembly, and movement must end.
Tibet existed as an independent, sovereign nation for hundreds of years prior to the Chinese occupation in 1950. For centuries, Tibet held a strategic position at the nexus of historical powers India, Mongolia, and China. Tibet had complex linguistic, economic, political, and cultural interactions with each of the surrounding nations, but there is a clear consensus among historians that Tibet was for many years an independent nation-state.
The International Committee of Jurists declared in 1960 that “acts of genocide were committed” by the Chinese against the Tibetan people. Only a handful of the over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet have escaped Chinese occupation unscathed. Thousands of Tibetans have been killed, raped, or tortured by Chinese forces in the half century since the onset of occupation. Tibet’s natural resources have been unsustainably ravaged for use in the population centers of Eastern China. Millions of Han Chinese have been brought to Tibet in part in an attempt to dilute the influence of Tibetans in their own land.
The Dalai Lama, the political and spiritual leader of Tibet, has led a noble attempt to resist the attempt to wipe out Tibetan culture, and his constant calls for just treatment of his people have been an example for social movements across the world. His demand for sane treatment of the Tibetans must be mirrored by global community and heard by the Chinese government. Unfortunately, bowing to the financial interests of predatory transnational corporations, the United States has given up its best bargaining chip by ending the annual review of China’s human rights record.
The affronts to human dignity must end. The Chinese Government must:
There needs to be a concerted effort to have:
The plight of the Tibetans is a true travesty. In contrast to their oppressors, the Tibetan people have set an extraordinary example in their organized non-violent resistance to tyranny. The United States and the world community would do well to follow their example.
The rights of workers have been on the decline. It is time to reverse that trend and begin to give workers, the backbone of the US economy, the rights they deserve. Workers need a living wage not a minimum wage; access to health care and no unilateral reductions in medical benefits and pensions for current employees and retirees. Employers should not be able to avoid these benefits by hiring temporary workers or independent contractors. The privacy of employees needs to be vigorously protected. The notorious Taft-Hartley Act that makes it extremely difficult for employees to organize unions needs to be repealed. It has resulted in less than 10% of the private workforce being unionized, the lowest in 60 years and the lowest percentage in the western world. Non-union workers need upgraded rights against the likes of Wal-Mart.
Washington, DC: The Nader Campaign joins Paul Tobias of Workplace Fairness in calling for a civil rights movement for workers. Under current law, a worker’s freedom is subordinated to employer property rights.
The general rule of law for employees is employment at will: an employee can be fired for any reason, no reason, or a bad reason, without recourse. Workers gained rights in the early twentieth century when the union movement developed, with workers joining together to bargain with employers. But that movement was stalled by laws that put up barriers to workers’ joining together in a union. The civil rights movement for workers should seek a Bill of Rights for Workers, including the right to organize a union and the right to earn a living wage for all full-time workers.
America’s working men and women have been abandoned by the corporate-dominated two-party system. The evidence is everywhere. The percentage of union members in the private economy has dropped below ten percent, the lowest in over sixty years. At the heart of this decline are labor laws which throw insurmountable barriers before organizing efforts. A professional class of public relations consultants and lawyers has evolved to counsel employers on ways to take full advantage of the Taft-Hartley Act in fendeng off organizing efforts. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives employers plenty of ways to prevent workers from exercising their supposed right of freedom of association.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 makes it extremely difficult for employees to organize unions and should be repealed. Among the key provisions of
The president needs to appoint federal judges who are supportive of the rights of workers, not those judges who summarily dismiss employee claims, who narrowly read the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), or who do not allow punitive damages. Efforts to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, to create explicit employer neutrality, and even to make modest reforms such as card check voting have been abandoned by the two-party system, with few exceptions among legislators. This systemic failure to enforce labor rights allows for retaliatory firings of organizers and even those who vote to unionize in secret elections.
With the demise of union influence, almost every aspect of workers’ rights is given short shrift. The minimum wage has been allowed to languish far behind inflation as executive pay skyrockets. The gap between the wages of now two-job (or more) working families and wealth of the privileged widens, even as worker productivity rises. The average worker takes home takes home $517 per week, while the average CEO of the largest companies takes home $155,769 per week. The gap between workers and large companies is now greater than 300-to-1. In 1982 the gap was 42-to-1. Over 45 million workers one in three do not make a living wage, namely under $10 per hour gross. This is insufficient for an individual to live on and certainly not enough for a family. The Nader campaign advocates immediately increasing the minimum wage to $8 per hour, from its current $5.25 per hour. Two years after that increase, we advocate a $10 per hour living wage.
The battle for a living family wage and battles to repair the workers compensation systems to secure the rights of injured workers to treatment and re-training are fought without the steadfast support of most unions or major political parties. Universal health care, available in nearly all democracies, languishes as a movement in this country for lack of power by organized labor within the American political system. Finally, the Enron scandal showed the need for employees to be allowed to diversify their stock holdings in 401(k) accounts and the need for employees to sue under ERISA for breach of fiduciary duty when employers deliberately deceive employees in matters that will affect anticipated benefits. Where employee rights are at the pleasure of management, management takes care of its own.
The marginalization of organized labor and its agenda for working people within our corporate-dominated political process is in sharp contrast to Western Europe. There unionization is industry -wide and not within a single company. The political support enjoyed by labor results in statutory rights available to union member and non union member alike. A month’s paid vacation, longer sick, maternity and family leave and of course health care that is entirely portable are benefits taken for granted in other Western capitalist economic systems. Landmark legislation in 2000 prohibited companies within the European Union from discriminating against workers based on their age, disability, sexual orientation, religion in addition to racial and sex discrimination.
With every election, unions are pressed to donate and get out the vote to protect the political status quo. Yet the same candidates whom unions seek to reelect stand by passively (or actively support), trade agreements which allow vast outsourcing of skilled jobs to third world countries where labor laws are much less protective if they exist at all.
One idea is to view labor rights as civil rights. Suppose workers enjoyed the same rights to form or join a union as they enjoy for other forms of discrimination? If workers seeking to unionize could sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (instead of depending on existing unions to press for remedies before toothless federal agencies) they could secure:
For the first time every citizen would be empowered to go out and push the cause of dignity and fair pay at work.
A Worker’s Bill of Rights is needed because the rights of worker’s have been on the decline. It is time to reverse that trend and begin to give workers the backbone of the US economy the rights they deserve. Among the items that should be included in a Worker’s Bill of Rights are:
When it struck down Alabama’s debt peonage law in Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219 (1911), the United States Supreme Court wrote that the purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment was not simply to eliminate slavery, but to make labor free by prohibiting that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit without the rights to organize, strike, boycott, and picket. (at 241) Early labor law, notably, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, was grounded in this Constitutional imperative and the guarantees of speech and association flowing from the First Amendment. During the New Deal worker freedoms under the Thirteenth Amendment diminished when the U.S. Supreme Court made the Commerce Clause dominant. This interpretation even turned the pro-worker Wagner Act into a law that gave the government power to eliminate strikes. The Commerce Clause put the needs of business first asking whether labor organizing encumbers the free flow of business and led to the federal government having the power to intrude into union organizing, as well as in disputes between labor and business on the side of business to keep commerce moving. An entirely new initiative must be undertaken to ground freedoms of speech, association and an effective freedom of labor on firm constitutional grounds.
The restoration and expansion of the rights of workers are timeless principles about basic human rights, fairness and justice.
AN AGENDA TO RESTORE RETIREMENT SECURITY FOR MILLIONS OF OLDER AMERICANS
In recent years, hundreds of large companies have broken long-standing pension and health insurance promises to their loyal, longtime employees and retirees. These unfair practices are accelerating, rather than diminishing, and are undercutting the retirement security of millions of people. The Ad Hoc Coalition to Restore Retirement Security is asking candidates for elective office to pledge to work to:
STOP COMPANIES FROM BREAKING PENSION PROMISES TO OLDER EMPLOYEES BY UNFAIRLY CHANGING PLAN RULES:
AT&T’s switch to a cash balance “pension plan” increased its operating earnings by millions of dollars, at the expense of long-service salaried employees who lost as much as half of their expected pensions. The AT&T employees are asking candidates to support legislation that would require companies to make good on their pension promises by giving employees the choice at retirement between receiving their promised pensions and those offered under any new rules.
STOP COMPANIES FROM BREAKING PENSION PROMISES TO OLDER EMPLOYEES BY THEIR SELLING DIVISIONS:
Halliburton’s sale of its Dresser-Rand division seemed like a routine business deal, until employees learned that it would cost them the full early retirement pensions they had spent their careers working for. Although the employees continue to work in the same jobs for the new owner, a loophole in the law allowed Halliburton to shift the money put into their plan to pay their expected benefits into a plan for its own employees. The Dresser-Rand employees are asking candidates to support measures that would prevent companies from using the sale of a division as a pretext to short-change employees of their promised pensions.
STOP COMPANIES FROM BREAKING PENSION PROMISES TO OLDER EMPLOYEES BY RECLASSIFYING THEM:
Just as thousands of Allstate insurance agents were reaching eligibility for their promised early retirement pensions, Allstate changed their status to independent contractors, and told them they would get a small fraction of their anticipated benefits. The action increased Allstate’s reported earnings and infuriated the agents, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the reclassification unlawfully deprived them of their pensions. The Allstate employees are asking candidates to support measures to restore their full benefits.
STOP COMPANIES FROM BREAKING PROMISES TO RETIREES THAT THEY WOULD PAY THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE COSTS:
Thousands of GM retirees accepted early retirement packages because they were promised generous pensions supplemented by lifetime health insurance coverage. Years into retirement their companies told them that fine print allowed the companies to cutback (and even cancel) health insurance payments. The GM retirees are asking candidates to support measures that would make it unlawful for companies to change the rules after people have retired.
STOP COMPANIES FROM BREAKING PROMISES TO EMPLOYEES ABOUT THE VALUE OF THEIR COMPANY’S STOCK:
MCI/WorldCom employees believed their company officials when the officials told them that WorldCom was a sound investment for the employees 401(k) money. In fact, the officials knew that the company was in financial trouble and were selling their WorldCom stock. After the company collapsed, the employees learned that gaps in the law could prevent them from being made whole. The WorldCom employees are asking candidates to support proposals that would ensure full remedies for misrepresentations by company officials.
These are but a few of the many ways that companies have failed to keep pension and health insurance promises to employees and retirees. While we recognize that there are other retirement policies that beg for urgent attention, we believe fulfilling these commitments would be a critically important first step toward restoring retirement security for older Americans.