Ralph Nader // Current TV

Ralph Nader endorses Ron Paul

It’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in low regard for decades now: the marginally more palatable alternative in an ugly duopoly, he claims, is still quite ugly. But lately Nader’s disdain has reached a new high. “It’s gotten so bad,” he tells me, “that you can actually say a Republican president—with a Democratic Senate—would produce less bad results than the present situation. That’s how bollixed stuff has gone.”

Not that he was ever particularly optimistic about the Obama administration, especially its potential to make headway on curtailing corporate welfare, now Nader’s signature policy objective. But in that, as with so many aspects of Obama’s presidency, the adjectives “disappointing” or “inadequate” don’t even begin to capture the depths of progressive disillusionment. Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, one might assume that Nader has little to be cheerful about.

Yet he says there is one candidate who sticks out—who even gives him hope: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

That might sound counterintuitive. Nader, of course, is known as a stalwart of the independent left, having first gained notoriety for his 1960s campaign to impose greater regulatory requirements on automakers—a policy act that would seem to contravene the libertarian understanding of justified governmental power. So I had to ask: how could he profess hope in Ron Paul, who almost certainly would have opposed the very regulations on which Nader built his career?

“Look at the latitude,” Nader says, referring to the potential for cooperation between libertarians and the left. “Military budget, foreign wars, empire, Patriot Act, corporate welfare—for starters. When you add those all up, that’s a foundational convergence. Progressives should do so good.”

I thought I’d bring up the subject of Ron Paul with Nader after seeing the two jointly interviewed on Fox Business Channel in January. Nader had caught me off guard when he identified an emergent left-libertarian alliance as “today’s most exciting new political dynamic.” It was easy to foresee objections that the left might raise: if progressives are in favor of expanding the welfare state, how well can they really get along with folks who go around quoting the likes of Hayek and Rothbard?

“That’s strategic sabotage,” Nader responds, sharply. “It’s an intellectual indulgence. … If they’re on your side, and you don’t compromise your positions, what do you care who they quote? Franklin Delano Roosevelt sided with Stalin against Hitler. Not to draw that analogy, I’m just saying—why did he side with Stalin? Because Stalin went along with everything FDR wanted.”

There may be an insurmountable impasse between the camps on social-safety-net spending. “But,” Nader says, “you could get together on corporate entitlements, subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts. Ron Paul is dead set against all that. So are a lot of libertarian-conservatives. In fact, it’s almost a mark of being a libertarian-conservative—in contrast to being a corporatist-conservative.”

“Do you read all these right-wing theoreticians?” he goes on. “Almost every one of them warned about excessive corporate concentration. Hayek did, [Frank] Meyer did, even Adam Smith did in his own way.” He leaves the mechanics of a left-libertarian political coalition to be sussed out later.

If the issues around which progressives and libertarians can coalesce, I ask Nader, are the most intractable, deeply entrenched problems, is he proposing that such a coalition would be more tenable than the one currently cobbling together the Democratic Party, with its many Blue Dogs and neoliberals?

“Exactly,” Nader says. “Libertarians like Ron Paul are on our side on civil liberties. They’re on our side against the military-industrial complex. They’re on our side against Wall Street. They’re on our side for investor rights. That’s a foundational convergence,” he exhorts. “It’s not just itty-bitty stuff.”

Nader cites opposition to “the self-defeating, boomeranging drug war” as another source of common ground, in the face of both parties’ indifference—with the scant exceptions of a few House Democrats who favor decriminalizing marijuana—to drug prohibition’s many ills. Ron Paul’s rejection of the very notion that personal drug use should be a criminal offense is something that has resonated with younger supporters, often catalyzing their first moment of political consciousness.

More at linkIt’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in... more

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Nader Calls out Obama for Citizen Kill list calls him "Dictator"

! He also talks occupy wall street and warns that of OWS takeover from outside... more

Dagum
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Nader, Ron Paul, Kucinich Speak to Occupy Wall Street: Repeal the Federal Reserve Act

Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and Dennis Kucinich offer words of wisdom to the Occupy Wall... more

rodstradamus
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Ralph Nader on Why Ron Paul Is An Excellent Presidential Candidate

Dagum
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Ralph Nader Openly Recruiting Liberal Challenger to Obama

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Ralph Nader: Americans ignore the cause of 9/11

Posted on 09.13.11 By Eric W. Dolan Categories: Featured, Nation After attending... more

KB723
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Ralph Nader: 10 painful lessons of 9/11

The commemorative ceremonies that are planned for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11... more

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Obama Seduced by Evil Spirit of Compromise

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6 months ago
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Progressive Billionaires?

This past Sunday, I attended a meeting sponsored by Rebuild the Dream, a grassroots... more

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Ralph Nader: Waging Another Unconstitutional War – OpEd

The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya.

You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi’s family compound and tent encampment in the desert–killing his son and three grandchildren–and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a “War.” It is in the Obama White House’s evasive nomenclature just a “time-limited, scope-limited military action” Can you find that phrase in the Constitution?

If Obama used the word “War,” he would have a more difficult time explaining to Congress and the American people (three out of four oppose this war) why he did not (1) seek a declaration of war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, or (2) seek Congressional authorization for appropriated funds to further the war with our NATO co-warriors, or (3) comply with the deadlines of the War Powers Resolution. He threw all three lawful restraints on his Presidential unilateralism overboard.

So, in the invidious tradition of George W. Bush and his indentured confessor, Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, now comfortably ensconced on the law faculty of the University of California Berkeley, Mr. Obama is blithely claiming as authority for taking our country into another war “the inherent powers of the President under Article II of the Constitution.” This wouldn’t pass the laugh test by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin Mason or even Hamilton. James Madison believed placing the war-declaring power in the exclusive hands of Congress was the most significant achievement during the convention in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. No more King George substitutes for America’s future, they demanded.

Note that Libya did not attack the U.S. or its appendages, and did not attack a member of NATO. Obama admits these points. Libya’s trusting government sovereign fund even left $37 billion in the U.S. which Obama promptly froze. Lacking even the prevaricatory pretenses for Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama and Hillary Clinton now say the U.S. is militarily involved “to protect our interests and advance our values” in the region and, of course, to protect the “universal rights” of the Libyan people. (Opportunities abound for this Obama doctrine around the world from the Congo to Syria, to Burma, to occupied Palestine and many other areas.)

Desperately seeking legitimacy, Mr. Obama cites the UN resolution, NATO, and the Arab League instead of seeking it from Congress. For all treaties with foreign countries, including the UN Charter, are trumped by the U.S. Constitution (Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)). As a former teacher of constitutional law, the President knows this basic principle but then, as Lord Acton declared: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”...

Continued at:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/ralph-nader-waging-another-unconstitutional-war-ope-19062011/The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes.... more

Dagum
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Ralph Nader on US Land Mine Policy

Everyday around the world innocent people, many of them children, are killed or... more

joeeddy
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Are we at war, or not?

Are we at war -- or not?
The reason I ask this is this:

If we are at war, then there must be a pretty good fucking reason that we’re at war. We must be facing an existential threat so large, so well-organized, and so powerful, that it could wipe our entire nation off the map in an instant. If that is the case, then surely, we must be at war. War is something reserved only for the most extreme situations. War is our Tool of last resort. Because we’re America, and we’re a peace-loving nation.

And so, if this threat we’re facing is so massive, and so threatening, then we better get all hands on deck. We need to institute a draft and be at war for real. We need to tax all income at 90% and fund this thing and get it over with. We need every man, woman, and child to be part of the war effort. We need to institute rationing: No more coffee, no more sugar, donate your steel appliances to the war effort, grow a victory garden. Let’s be all in! Let’s win this thing!

But wait-- we’re not facing down any threat like that. There’s no invading army perched on our border. We’re facing down kids throwing rocks, and disgruntled teenagers with no economic future building bombs in their own backyards, who are a far greater threat to our soldiers stationed there, than to our national security.

Less than 1% of Americans serve in the military, and it’s not fair that we should be asking them alone to shoulder the burden of fighting our wars of convenience. Wars that are the pet projects of pencil pushers in DC, with abstract foreign policy agendas.

Some people complain about the constitutionality of these wars-- and they aren’t wars. But I actually don’t really care about the constitutionality of it. That to me, seems like an academic exercise in the face of the fact that people are dying for no goddamned reason.

Yes, while people bicker about the legality (which is important), back in the real world there are people dying for no goddamned reason (which is more important).

I work with so many women whose husbands are serving right now, who are on their umpteenth deployment, who haven’t been around to see their kids grow up. We, the 99% who do not serve, are far too willing to throw other people’s families through meat grinders. We are too willing to let 1% of the population bear all the burdens-- the heartache, the worry, the lost time with their family that they will never get back, the lost limbs, the vivid nightmares that never go away-- while we talk in the abstract about "Supporting the Troops." It's not fucking fair.

So-- are we at war or not? If we are-- let’s institute a draft and be at war for real. If we’re not at war then BRING THEM HOME.Are we at war -- or not? The reason I ask this is this: If we are at war, then... more

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Morgan Spurlock talks 'Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold'

Call it a Super Sell-Out -- Morgan Spurlock, the director of "Super Size Me," tackles the subject of product placement and integrated marketing in entertainment in his latest documentary by making the film about the process of getting sponsors to make the film. A little too meta for you? Don't worry, Spurlock breaks it down into easy-to-follow, humorous segments -- including his own versions of commercials for sponsors such as Hyatt, Mane 'n Tail, and Pom Wonderful, which paid a million for the film to include its brand in the title, hence "Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold." By doing so, Spurlock uses his own product placement to unveil the inner workings of brand messaging, and opens it up for debate -- with Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, J.J. Abrams, Brett Ratner, and Quentin Tarantino among those chiming in. Spurlock tells us how it all went down, but we have to wonder -- do interviews about the film count as further product placement? As we see here, yes.

Q: We see a lot of the arrangements to get sponsors on camera, but what didn’t we see?
A: Tons of phone calls. We called 600 companies and we got 22 sponsors. When we were first making phone calls, there were a lot of people who felt an obligation to meet me, talk to me, only to tell me they weren’t interested, which was a massive waste of time. It would have been nicer if they just said, “We’re not going to do this,” upfront. They were wondering, “How is this going to be good for us?” The key was that they had to be willing to give up control, and people don’t want to do that. They want to control every frame. But the 22 companies – 15 in the movie – that came aboard said, “We believe in this. We like this idea. We don’t know if we can trust you,” but gave me control anyway.
Q: There’s no mention in the film about how your title sponsor, Pom Wonderful, is being charged by the Federal Trade Commission with making false health claims, in regards to preventing or treating heart disease, prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction…
A: We were in post-production when that hit the trades. And there’s a great question to ask there – is that why they signed on to sponsor this movie? Did they know this was going to happen? Maybe. There’s a distinct possibility there.
Q: Especially when you consider how they turned down your proposed Pom commercial, where you’d have an erection! Or maybe they just don't like erections…
A: That could be it, too! [Laughs]
Q: By pitching these commercial ideas, though, you’re going above and beyond. Filmmakers don't usually propose to put an outright commercial in their films to get funding, or do they?
A: We wanted to do more than the average bear, especially for the title sponsor. Part of the benefit of being a sponsor is being in the film, and part of it is beyond the film. The benefits for them would when I’m talking about the film and going out into the world – staying in Hyatt Hotels, which become the greatest hotel, “Oh, I flew here on Jet Blue,” which becomes the greatest airline, “I’m here talking to you in a Ted Baker suit,” which becomes the greatest suit. Then they understand how it bleeds into the promotion.
Q: Did you just drop some product placement in this interview?
A: I just dropped three of them! [Laughs]
Q: Some of the promises or pitches you make, for instance, telling Ban that you’ll offer Ban deodorant to interview subjects, we don’t see the follow-through in the movie…
A: You can see the Ban on the table with Quentin Tarantino. I offered it to him before the interview started, but you just don’t see that. We offered it to about 10 or 15 of the interview subjects. And most people just laughed.
Q: Some of the sponsors didn’t pay. Mane 'n Tail shampoo, for instance…
A: Who doesn’t like Mane 'n Tail? It’s a shampoo for you and your horse. Just throwing that out there. For the sponsors that didn’t pay, we were explicit in making sure it was clear that they didn’t pay to be in the movie. No one questions that. Carrera didn’t pay. Seventh Generation didn’t pay. Amy’s Pizza didn’t pay. But they came to the table with co-promotions. There’s hard money, and soft money. There’s social media. Amy’s Pizza is putting stickers on 200,000-300,000 pizza boxes. It’s that kind of thing that makes this an event.
Q: But no fast food sponsors…
A: I tried! [Laughs] You can’t have a doc-buster without a fast-food meal, a Happy Meal, but McDonald’s didn’t call me back. No surprise there. I called In-N-Out, and I was like, “Come on, think how cool this will be,” and they said, “We don’t normally do this,” and I said, “That’s what makes it so great! You guys could do an Unhappy Meal, or a Slightly Displeased Meal. We could talk about how there’s good, healthy food inside.” I was so bummed. But they don’t do meals, they don’t do toys. I guess they thought those were kids things, but I don’t think a kid would be going for that anyway. It’s more of an adult kitschy thing. I wanted collector’s cups, but Circle K said no, 7-Eleven said no, and we went all the way down the list, until Sheetz said yes, during the interview.
Q: Same for OK Go – they said yes during the interview? But that’s a little more work, doing a theme song…
A: It’s real work. They had to go do something, not just write a check. Although some of my sponsors would disagree, since cross-promotion can be work. Originally OK Go said no, they wouldn’t have time, because it was over Christmas. But I wanted to talk to them anyway about music marketing, and so we met on December 15, and then they said yes. They came back from the break, recorded the song on January 3, sent us a master, I made some comments, they remixed it, and they got it to us on January 11 – just in time for Sundance. We laid it right in, and that was the last thing we did for the film.
Q: Now that you’ve had this experience, would you go through it again for your next film? Obviously off-camera. More to the point, do you think product placement works?
A: It depends on the movie. Perhaps not for another documentary, although for this documentary, it made sense. But it does work in bigger movies, all the tie-ins, for the Michael Bays of the world. But would this create excitement about a smaller movie? It’s a real experiment. That’s what I’m excited to see, if it does work. For somebody making a $300,000 movie, and they get a sponsor saying, “Sure, I’ll give you $10,000 if you put these paper towels in the back of the shot,” that $10,000 can go a long way. If it’s about making a great movie, and not making a commercial, great -- I want to see a great movie, not a Toyota commercial.
Q: Not even a Hyatt commercial like the one you do in the film?
A: [Laughs] Oh, that’s different. Everyone should stay at a Hyatt! [Laughs]Call it a Super Sell-Out -- Morgan Spurlock, the director of "Super... more

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Labor movement could kick-start a ‘popular revolt’ in the U.S., Nader claims

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Barack Obama Is a 'war criminal,' Ralph Nader says

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Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg: We Need to See Courage and Mobilization Here as Well as the Middle East

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Ron Paul and Ralph Nader Agree on 'Progressive- Liberterian' Alliance.

Ralph Nader and Ron Paul announced that both groups seek the same goal of standing... more

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1/19/20/11 Freedom Watch w/ Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Mike Kelly, Steve Forbes, Nick Gillespie

Here is the Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 edition of Freedom Watch with Judge... more

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Ralph Nader: ‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’

By Chris Hedges

Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore.

“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. “The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.”

Nader fears a repeat of the left’s cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don’t do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don’t fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.

“The left has nowhere to go,” Nader said. “Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.

“Corporate power makes demands all the time,” Nader went on. “It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing.”...

Continued at: http://www.indypendent.org/2011/01/03/ralph-nader-the-left-has-nowhere-to-go/By Chris Hedges Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential... more

Dagum
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Ralph Nader: Progressive-libertarian alliance ‘the most exciting new political dynamic’ in US

Prepare for the rise of libertarian progressives. That was the message earlier in... more

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