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Ralph Nader is one of America's most effective social critics. Named by The Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century, his documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power. He is the "U.S.'s toughest customer" says Time magazine. His inspiration and example have galvanized a whole population of consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who in turn have established their own organizations throughout the country.
(60 comments) SHARE Monday, July 18, 2011 The Corporate Supreme Court; Time For Impeachment
Five Supreme Court Justices--Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals.
The artificial entity called "the corporation" has no mention in our Constitution whose preamble starts with "We the People," not "We the Corporation."
(23 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 19, 2011 Time to Topple Corporate Dictators
America needs to follow the example of Egypt today and look in the mirror to find who can rescue the USA from runaway corporate control. Big business is successfully rewriting the nation's charter to assign power, rights and wealth to themselves and their puppets in government and media. Show up now at polls, rallies, marches and public hearings because it's exactly what Jefferson would do.
(8 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Ralph Nader: Only the Super Rich Can Save Us!
Will an awakening of conscience among the progressive super-rich save America from the its baser tendencies? Warren Buffet plays a central role in my first work of fiction, Only the Super Rich Can Save US!
(14 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 25, 2014 The Fukushima Secrecy Syndrome -- From Japan to America
There is good reason why the New York Times continues to cover the deteriorating conditions in the desolate, evacuated Fukushima area. Our country has licensed many reactors here with the same designs and many of the same inadequate safety and inspection standards. Some reactors here are near earthquake faults with surrounding populations which cannot be safely evacuated in case of serious damage to the electric plant.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, April 1, 2011 President Obama Treats Tax Dodging GE's Immelt Better than Consumer Protecting Elizabeth Warren
Selecting Elizabeth Warren and backing her fully through the nomination process will always be remembered by Americans across the land. Not doing so will not be forgotten by those same persons. This is another way of saying she has the enthusiastic constituency of "hope and change" -- that is "change you can believe in!"
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, November 22, 2010 My Friend Barack
After nearly two years out, I can imagine George W. Bush writing his successor the following letter:
First, I can scarcely believe my good fortune as to how your foreign and military policies--"continuity" was the word used recently by my good friend, Joe Lieberman--has protected my legacy. More than protected, you've proven yourself just as able--and I may say sometimes even more so--to "kick ass" as my Daddy used to say.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, January 22, 2010 The Supreme Court decision further weakens our democracy
Yesterday's 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process.
(52 comments) SHARE Friday, September 10, 2010 What keeps the Democrats from making their case?
The Democratic Party's problems are much deeper than the Sunday talk shows indicate. First the Democrats do not have a progressive political philosophy. They could learn from a four time winner--Franklin Delano Roosevelt--when it comes to being perceived as the working families friend.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Time to Allow Farmers to Once Again Start Growing Hemp
Not only does hemp have a wide range of uses, but its cultivation in the United States could help to spur our lagging economy. Since the cultivation of hemp is outlawed in the United States, the U.S. market for hemp and hemp-based products is entirely dependent upon imports.
(14 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 3, 2011 The Empire is Eating Itself -- Painful Lessons From 9/11
We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
(17 comments) SHARE Friday, December 11, 2009 Obama Violates His Own Criteria for a "Just War"
President Obama, the Afghan war escalator, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and proceeded to deliver his acceptance speech outlining the three criteria for a -"just war-"- which he himself is violating.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Taking Progressives for Granted
Cuomo calls himself "a progressive Democrat who's broke." A progressive Democrat would push for sacrifice at the wealthy top and work down if necessary.
(28 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Last Year's Excuses Are Gone. Come On Already
Face it, America. You are a corporate-controlled country with the symbols of democracy in the constitution and statutes just that-symbols of what the founding fathers believed or hoped would be reality.
(13 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 30, 2016 Hillary's Convention Con
An anti-Hillary campaign button sums it up. Imagine a nice picture of Hillary with the words "More Wall Street" above her head and the words "More War" below her head. That's where our nation's two-party political leadership is today. When will the vast left/right majority rise to take over and reverse the eviscerating policies and practices of this political duopoly?
(25 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 29, 2017 Can the World Defend Itself From Omnicide?
Our present educational systems -- from Harvard Law School, MIT to K-12 -- are not rising to these occasions for survival. Our mass media, wallowing in trivia, entertainment, advertisements and political insults, is not holding the politicians accountable to serious levels of public trust and societal safety. Time for new movements awakening our best angels to foresee and forestall.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 27, 2018 Look for Rate Cuts in Your Auto/Homeowner's Insurance Coming Soon
In bragging about the alleged benefits to the middle class from the tax law enacted by the Republicans last month, the Trumpsters neglected to give high visibility to the state regulators who must require utility and insurance companies to pass savings from the tax cuts on to their consumers. Consumer advocate for the Consumer Federation of America, J. Robert Hunter, is pleased to provide the necessary push.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, April 10, 2009 Where were the giant accounting firms?
An indictment of the accounting firms, which are supposed to be our first-line defense against fraud and deceit. These are supposed to be independent professionals with judgment about real, underlying value. Evidence is that they were paid big money to rubber-stamp Wall Street's cooked books.
(13 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Health Ins. "Reform" Over: Dems Failing the People, Republicans Disgracing Selves
The House of Representatives debate on the health insurance “reform†is over with the Democrats failing the people and the Republicans disgracing themselves as having left their minds back in the third grade (with apologies to third graders).
House Democrats were determined to pass any bill with a nice sounding name...
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Discussing a Taboo Subject; Mandatory Voting
The first nationally televised debate (C-SPAN) on the subject of mandatory voting, or voting duty, occurred in Washington D.C. on June 27, 2011 Why did it take so long? Because discussing this topic has been a taboo in electoral, legislative and main media arenas.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 9, 2009 The Single Payer Taboo
Among the giant taboos afflicting Congress these days is the proposal to create a single payer health insurance system (often called full Medicare for everyone).
How can this be? Don't the elected politicians represent the people? Don't they always have their finger to the wind?
Well, single payer is only supported by a majority of the American people, physicians and nurses.
(31 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 5, 2012 Jolting the Democratic Party from Its Stupor
The coming days await a new and open jolting push by prominent outside Democrats who fervently want to wrench their party back from the abyss, from its own self-imposed sense of dread before a devastating, self-inflicted November defeat.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 9, 2019 The World Is Waiting for America to Rise Up
At each event, a list of demands can be presented to decision-makers. At each event, protestors can go to the offices where the decision-makers are or insist that these lawmakers speak to the assembled protestors.
(24 comments) SHARE Monday, August 8, 2011 Call it the "TEA PARTY Downgrade"
these House and Senate Tea Partiers are like mad dogs -- at times even beyond control of their political and corporate masters. Fanatics neither think nor blink in their hostage politics.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, December 27, 2010 Pharmaceutical Industry Fraud
In the past, the Pentagon took top honors at being most effective at defrauding the government,now it's the pharmaceutical companies.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, June 29, 2020 Congress Must Hold President Trump Accountable!
"We the People of the United States" deserve leadership not spectatorship. Our constitutional handiwork is in peril. House hearings are urgent.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, November 8, 2013 The Dynastic Hillary Bandwagon -- Bad for America
Does the future of our country benefit from another Clinton, almost indistinguishable from Barack Obama's militaristic, corporatist policies garnished by donors from Wall Street and other plutocratic canyons? Full Medicare for all, cracking down on corporate abuses, a fairer tax system, a broad public works program, a living wage, access to justice, citizen empowerment, clean election - these are what the American people want.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, August 30, 2019 From Trump Tower to Dictatorial Power
Donald Trump is "dumb as a rock" (to use his phrase) when it comes to the programs and the policies of the federal government agencies over which he is allegedly presiding. However, when it comes to defending and expanding his own political power, Trump is shameless and profoundly cunning.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 22, 2014 Obama to Putin: Do as I Say Not as I Do
As for sanctions deterring any unlikely future Russian moves westward into Ukraine, consider the following role reversal. If Russia moved for sanctions against the United States before Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and other attacks, would that have deterred either you or George W. Bush from taking such actions? Of course not. Sir, concentrate on America, whose long unmet necessities cry out from "sea to shining sea."
(15 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 5, 2013 The Best Solution For Climate Change Is a Carbon Tax
The potential for utter devastation in loss of life, fertile farmland, and infrastructure if climate deniers are wrong is too high to ignore. Spending part of the revenues from a carbon tax on incentives for displacement by clean energy, we would stimulate the economy, create jobs, and improve people's overall health by reducing the pollution they and their children have to breathe.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 3, 2018 Corporate Coercion and the Drive to Eliminate Buying with Cash
The relentless intensification of coercive commercialism has been moving toward a cashless economy, when all consumers are incarcerated within a prison of corporate payment systems from your credit/debit cards to your mobile phone and very soon facial recognition.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 30, 2019 Trump Should Be Impeached for His Climate Policy Alone
Trump is deliberately refusing to enforce the laws mandated by Congress for environmental and workplace protection. He has given our government over to corporations, putting in charge corrupt corporatists qualified only to dismantle and disable these health and safety agencies.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 24, 2017 Trump's War Against His Own Voters
As president, Donald Trump has declared war on regulatory programs protecting the health, safety and economic rights of consumers. He has done so in disregard of evidence that such protections help the economy and financial well-being of the working-class voters he claims to champion.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 1, 2014 Corporate Destruction of Free Markets Rules Us
What financier George Soros has called "market fundamentalism," is opposed to any interference with free markets. Yet, corporatism makes massive exceptions that rig markets and tilt the seller-buyer balance heavily in favor of the former who become bigger and bigger global corporations. The American people have enough evidence to abandon the ideological hypocrisy that corporatism uses to control them.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 14, 2011 In The Public Interest: PBS-NPR-Leaning Right
National Public Radio has been moving right for years. Americans don't seem to understand NPR belongs to them while the corporate welfare bums like Hannity & Limbaugh get richer & richer.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 8, 2020 The Vengeful, Lawless, Corporate Toady Trump Explodes
After his Senate acquittal, Clinton spoke for only two minutes on television and he used his time to express regret and apologize. Trump exploded with rage, vindictiveness, and plans for revenge. His unseemly outburst at the annual National Prayer Breakfast smashed all precedent.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 24, 2010 What would explain a Republican win in November?
How does the Big Business-indentured Republican Party get away with expectations of a runaway election victory this November? If such a victory should occur, it will be due to a ten percent or so shift in voters who voted Democratic in 2008 and are expected to vote Republican this year or stay home in despair or disgust. What would explain such a shift in voter preference?
SHARE Monday, April 20, 2015 For the Conference on the Israel Lobby -- Press Blackout at the Press Club
How about a little retrospective evaluation by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, AP and Reuters to make better judgments about providing balanced news the next time around. As for the "fair and balanced" Fox News -- well, what do you expect? Some of the mainstream media RSVP'd to attend this conference, but they did not show up or write anything about it before or after.
(32 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Expected Countervailing Forces to Trumpism are Failing
Let's give dangerous, dictatorial, corporatist, lawless, unstable, Donald Trump his due. He has shown us just how weak our various countervailing institutions and constitutional standards are in checking the excesses of the most impeachable President in American history.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Wikimania and the First Amendment
Wasn't it Jefferson who said that "information is the currency of democracy" and that, given a choice between government and a free press, he'll take the latter? Secrecy-keeping the people and Congress in the dark-is the cancer eating at the vitals of democracy.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 8, 2016 Divest or Face Impeachment: an Open Letter to Donald Trump
Supporters such as Rudy Giuliani contend that your holdings are so large that divestment is just unrealistic. But size does not erase principle. Self-enrichment is wrong whether an office holder is of modest or great wealth -- indeed, if anything, the greater the amount, the worse the problem. We should not apply the much criticized banking ethic of "too big to fail" in this circumstance.
(12 comments) SHARE Friday, October 6, 2017 How Big Corporations Game Our Democracy Into Their Plutocracy
Remarkably, the artificial creation called the "corporation" has now achieved almost all of the rights of real people under our "We the People" Constitution that never mentions the words "corporation" or "company." Politicians use their ever-increasing corporate cash to saturate voters with deceptive political ads, and intimidate any competitors who have far less money, but may be far better representative of the public good.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 15, 2019 The Congress Has to Draw the Line
The full, despicable portrait of Donald J. Trump must be revealed to provide the maximum possible public understanding. For over two and a half years, too many of his absurd tweets and assertions have gone without official rebuttals.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 18, 2022 The US Senate Is the Bipartisan Graveyard of Democracy
A couple of televised ferocious public contests on the Senate floor will make the solons consider other arrangements to unclog the world's most pompously unproductive legislative chamber.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, October 18, 2013 The Democrats Can't Defend the Country from the Retrograde GOP
There is another story about how all this gridlock came to be, fronted by the question: "Why didn't the Democrats landslide the cruelest, most ignorant, big-business-indentured Republican Party in its history during the 2010 and 2012 Congressional elections?
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, March 19, 2018 Ahoy America, Give Trump a Taste of His Own Medicine Starting on Trump Imitation Day
Trump Imitation Day will take place online on April 1, this April Fools' Day, 2018 -- a day driven by the vast and varied online networks of America with all of their imagination and organizational capability. Trump has proven repeatedly that he is a serial prevaricator, bully, cheater, boaster, malicious myth-maker, racist, abuser of women, slanderer, violator of laws and the Constitution and emerging war-monger.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 20, 2017 Detecting What Unravels Our Society -- Bottom-up and Top-down
Readers think; thinkers read. That includes learning from the mistakes of societies throughout history that wrongly believed that they were impervious to crumbling from within. In our culture of virtual reality and Twitter-length propaganda, we all too often forget the valuable lessons of past mistakes.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Putting the Lie to the Republicans
Wake up Democrats. Learn the political art of truthful repetition to counter the cruelest Republicans who ever crawled up Capitol Hill. You've got massive, documented materials to put the Lie to the Republicans.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 23, 2010 Middle East Game Changer?
What Obama's people are publically starting to say is that regional peace is about U.S. vital interests in that large part of the Middle East and, ultimately, the safety of American soldiers and personnel. As one retired diplomat commented "This could be a game-changer."
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 20, 2011 Nuclear Nightmare
Japan's nightmare should be a wake up call for Americans.We need to deal with issues associated with nuclear enery now.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 17, 2019 The Most Impeachable President in US History vs. The Most Hesitant Congress.
Tyrant Trump is the most impeachable president in the country's history -- hands down. Before he resigned, Richard Nixon was sure to be impeached and convicted in 1974 due to his obstructions of the Watergate scandal investigation. Selected president Donald Trump has committed many more serious offenses than Nixon.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 26, 2012 Obama/Romney: Start Debating the Prison-Industrial Complex
One in four U.S. prisoners are behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses--the majority arrested for mere possession, not production or sale. Instead of wanting more prisoners and treating them in such ways that when they get out they are too unskilled and damaged to overcome the society's exclusionary pressures that half of them end up back in jail, they should be training these prisoners to be contributing members of society.
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 5, 2013 We've Got to Find a Way to Stop the Imperial Presidency Before It Permanently Destroys Our Great Country
The attackers, be they suicide bombers over there or domestic bombers here, are motivated by their hatred of our invasions, our daily bombings, our occupations, our immersion in tribal preferences leading to divide-and-rule sectarian wars. What drives them is their despair and their desire to expel the foreign invaders from their homeland.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, September 20, 2019 25 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare for the 2020 Elections
Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare, and although it has improved access to healthcare for some, tens of millions of Americans still cannot afford basic medical care for their family. No healthcare system is without problems but Canadian-style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal for all basic and emergency medical and hospital services.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 8, 2010 Nader: Talk Dorgan Out of Quitting
Will Senator Dodd use his lame duck status to his advantage? And what of Senator Dorgan?
Ralph Nader gives voice to some intriguing questions.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 12, 2017 Teaching Civic Skills and Action Should Be Standard in Schools
Education by civic practice and experience changes the present and improves the prospects for the future by increasing the number of lifelong civic leaders and the much greater number of part-time public citizens in every community of our country.
SHARE Saturday, February 22, 2020 Three Major News Stories That Need To Be Exposed
There is so much bribery cash in Afghanistan that to stop the flow would seriously affect their shaky economy.
Bribery is a two-way street -- the briber and the bribee. Secret payments and bribes have often backfired against U.S. foreign policies in many undesirable ways.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Dear President Obama; Who Are You Getting Your Afganistan Advice From?
Who would have thought last year that on assuming the presidency, that you would consider plunging deeper in to this quagmire without an exit strategy? The deeper you plunge, the greater your rejection of the history of occupations fueling insurgencies in that region. The more you insulate yourself from contrary judgments to those you have been receiving from your inner councils.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 14, 2010 Majority of One
Last Friday, Sanders tore the covers off an oligarchic driven Congress and a concessionary President with eight-and-a-half hours of non-stop presentations of facts and figures and a plea for fairness and justice. His goal was not heated rhetoric, though he showed deep moral indignation, but to attempt to rally the American people "to voice their feelings" to their members of Congress via phone calls, letters and e-mails.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 10, 2020 Democrats Need to Rip Off the Mask of Timidity and Impeach Trump on All Counts
These are very dangerous times for our Republic, its democratic processes, and our freedoms. Trump is going to "wave the flag" and try to intimidate and bully his opponents and the citizenry. Don't fall for it America!
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 11, 2020 The Week We Should Not Forget for Our Own Sake
Bernie Sanders is right to call for a people's political revolution to roll back the silent corporate coups d'e'tat. Corporatism has taken over.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 7, 2016 Wake Up: These Unneeded Instruments Can Wreak Mass Destruction
Rather than prop up deteriorating nuclear plants with a huge handout, New York officials should be focused on phasing out nuclear energy entirely. Nuclear power has been proven many times over to be unnecessary, uneconomic, uninsurable, unevacuable, unsafe and unfit for use in the unstable modern world.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 3, 2018 The Paradox of Equal Justice
The evicted sexual assaulters did their deeds personally and directly, unlike the more remote corporate bosses or even middle management, their crimes more abstract within the enormity of the bureaucratic machines that they've rigged to avoid accountability. The public outrage was more personal and intense over the high-profile victims in the Hollywood episodes, which set the level of high media visibility.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 3, 2019 Ralph Nader: Trump Can't Be Impeached for Ukraine Alone
Donald Trump said he believes the Constitution lets him do "whatever I want as President." In over two and a half years, Trump has been a serial violator of the Constitution, unmatched by any president in American history. Just about every day he is a constitutional outlaw.
SHARE Sunday, September 8, 2019 Chuck Todd, Labor Day, and Getting Serious
Chuck Todd has allowed his hands to be tied with golden handcuffs. One can almost sense his impatience with his round-table guests spouting guarded opinions or conventional speculations suited to their current careers. But Chuck is very polite with them and his interviewees. As he has said, if you really go after these guests, they won't come back next time.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, August 4, 2017 Will a Mega-Billionaire Rescue America from GOP's Insurance Mayhem?
In a country that spends well over $3 trillion a year on "healthcare," the GOP's various bills leave millions of families fearing loss of insurance, reduced coverage, larger deductibles, unaffordable co-pays and inscrutable insurance and billing fine-print trap doors. This is producing serious fear, anxiety, depression and in many cases absolute terror for sick children and ailing parents.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, August 12, 2011 Ray Anderson: Enlightened CEO and Environmentalist
The loss of Ray Anderson at age 77 took from our country the greatest CEO, the greatest engineer, the greatest hands-on educator of industry making peace with the planet, of them all.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 6, 2022 To the New York Times - "We Thought We Knew Ye"
I never thought that the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos would ever overtake the Times in presenting serious content. They now have especially comparing its Sunday Outlook Section with its remodeled counterpart the Times Sunday Opinion Section.
(14 comments) SHARE Friday, March 9, 2012 Gouged at the Pump
Obama and Energy Secretary Chu keep saying that there is enough oil in world markets and that speculatively-driven higher oil prices are undermining the U.S. economic recovery. Yet Mr. Obama seems unwilling to fully use his administration's existing authority to crack down on the surging speculation.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 12, 2012 The Democratic Party Sleeps on FDR's Legacy
Calling Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the Democratic Party, elected officials, political operatives and labor's leader Richard Trumka. Thirty million American workers want and need a federal minimum wage of $10 per hour, which is slightly less than their predecessors got in 1968 -- yes 1968 -- adjusted for inflation. What will it take for you to make this a priority?
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 24, 2017 The Left/Right Challenge to the Failed "War on Drugs"
More and more conservatives and liberals, from the halls of Congress to people in communities across the country, are agreeing that the so-called "war on drugs" needs serious rethinking.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 19, 2019 Where Are the Influentials Who Find Trump Despicable?
Those who are attacked by Trump should be offered the chance to respond. Rebutting bullies is the first step in balancing the public stage. This would be particularly effective for a nasty, thin-skinned bully like Donald Trump.
(12 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 18, 2018 Twitter Rock Star Obama's Silence Must Delight Trump
The Trump bulldozer is barreling through the positions Obama stood for -- such as protecting civil rights and maintaining long-held diplomatic bonds, preserving the public lands and prohibiting offshore drilling in the arctic, modestly protecting financial consumers and keeping the better remnants of a porous tax code. Yet, Obama still doesn't want to publicly speak truth to Trump's power abuses and fabrications.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 9, 2019 Why Not Also Go With "The Kitchen Table" Impeachable Offenses for Removal?
The signal statement by Trump: "Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President." For almost three years, he has proceeded to engage in monarchical unconstitutional behavior in far more repeated, brazen ways than any preceding president. It is not even close.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 5, 2018 Wake Up to Trump, Distraction and War with Iran
You'd think that the Israeli government couldn't play Uncle Sam a sucker to fight yet another war -- this one against Iran with American soldiers and money. But the three warmongers,
Donald Trump, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, are driving U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Congress regularly disregards its constitutional duties and follows the lead of AIPAC lobbyists.
SHARE Thursday, December 12, 2019 Donald Trump's Big Abuses of Power Demand a Big Impeachment
Impeachment and removal of the president for "high crimes and misdemeanors" was conceived as a preemptive safeguard against an incumbent who, by words and by deeds, has evinced an intent to vandalize the Constitution in violation of the presidential oath of office.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 14, 2020 Trump Minimizing and Sugarcoating Coronavirus Perils; Bernie Must Continue Campaign
Donald Trump can't fake his way through the coronavirus. It's spreading and doesn't respond to his delusions. Donald is flailing, failing, fibbing, stumbling, and scapegoating. With the stock market collapsing and the economy shaking, Donald fears defeat in November.
(17 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 2, 2017 Breaking Through Power: It's Easier Than We Think
With President Trump displaying a revealing ignorance toward the role of governing, now is the time for the people to stand up and shape the future of their families and communities. We must demonstrate stamina and hold accountable those in power until they faithfully serve the interests of the people, and not a handful of corporate paymasters.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2020 Trump vs. Sanders -- Comparisons for Voters
Trump has made over 16,000 false or misleading claims since January 2017. Bernie bluntly tells the truth. Trump is a bigot/racist who uses dog whistles to promote, implement, and enforce racist policies. Bernie is a civil rights fighter going back to the nineteen sixties.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2017 The Rule of Power Over the Rule of Law
For centuries patriarchal mayhem has exploited women in the workplace or the home. Raw power -- physical, economic and cultural, regularly, overpower the legal safeguards against wrongful injury, rape and torture, both in the household and at work.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 28, 2019 Trump Invites Debates Over Omnivorous Crony Capitalism
Donald J. Trump's 2020 election strategy is to connect his potential Democratic opponents with "socialism." Trump plans to use this attack on the Democrats.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 25, 2009 Obama Learned Next to Nothing From the Clintons On Health Care Reform
Affordable health care for all Americans is being sacrificed at the alter of greed. Why President Obama is repeating mistakes from the past by allowing conservative Democrats to sabotage his reforms.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 26, 2018 Audit the Outlaw Military Budget Draining America's Necessities
Warnings about unrestrained military spending have not been addressed. The military budget -- now at about a trillion dollars when you add up all costs -- is spiraling out of control and draining the public budgets for rebuilding America's public infrastructure and services. Now both major parties go along with uncritical rubber-stamping.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 14, 2018 The Constitution and the Lawmen are Coming for Trump -- He Laughs!
The law has never caught up with Trump. Trump always emerged with the gold by profiting at the expense of those around him. Trump made a profit out of the ruins of his companies, flouted the law by hiring undocumented Polish workers, cheated the students who were lured into the Donald Trump University, and often failed to pay his contractors...
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 4, 2020 Trump and Pence - Step Aside for Professional Pandemic Scientists and Managers
A civic jolt can displace him much like the statutes of slavers. Start your "step aside" demand by calling the White House opinion phone number 202-456-1111. Urge your friends to do the same. There is no time to delay.
(12 comments) SHARE Friday, June 1, 2012 Obama at Large: Where Are the Lawyers?
People in countries we target know what we must remember. We are their occupiers, invaders, powerful supporters for decades of their own brutal tyrants. We're in their backyard, which more than any other impetus spawned al-Qaeda in the first place. Lawyers of America, what is your breaking point? When will you uphold your oath of office and work to restore constitutional authorities and boundaries?
SHARE Tuesday, October 15, 2019 The Ukraine Shakedown Is Important, But Not Sufficient to Let People Realize All the Other Things Trump Is Doing
The full, despicable portrait of Donald J. Trump must be revealed to provide the maximum possible public understanding. For over two and a half years, too many of his absurd tweets and assertions have gone without official rebuttals. His tactic is to dominate the news cycle every day as if his presidency is a reality show and he is the star.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 18, 2011 Waging Another Unconstitutional War
In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama stated that "the president does not have any power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Vice President Biden was even more vehement on this issue. And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates originally opposed the attack on Libya before falling in line.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Tar Sands Arrests on Obama's Doorstep
At moments of reflection, those 1,000 citizens standing tall before the White House must look up at the sun and all the forms of available renewable energy it gave this planet zillions of years ago and wonder how nuts our life-sustaining star must think Earthlings have been all these years.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 19, 2019 Will Any Disgusted Republicans Challenge Trump in the Primaries?
Republicans must think "crooked Donald" is invincible. So why try? Plenty of Republican politicians consider Trump to be a clear and present danger to Party and country. They include Former Senators Flake and Corker; current Senator Mitt Romney; former Governor of Ohio John Kasich; former New Jersey Governor and EPA head, under Reagan, Christine Todd Whitman; and former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, May 31, 2019 Society Is In Decay - When the Worst is First and the Best is Last
People who push for our government to start illegal wars (eg. John Bolton pushing for the war in Iraq) are rewarded with top appointments. Former government officials also get very rich when they take jobs in the defense industry.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, July 27, 2015 Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress
what happened to your votes and your trust in your elected representatives? They were nullified and replaced with ungrateful politicians who have forgotten that the authority lies with the people.Our five hundred and thirty-five Senators and Representatives need to be reminded that they were sent to Washington, DC by voters back home who entrusted them with the well-being of their communities and country.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 11, 2017 Public Cynicism Enables Costly Political Hypocrisy
Beware of crony capitalism -- it turns politicians against the taxpayers they allegedly represent in favor of unaccountable corporate interests. Don't let the "welfare kings" pick your pockets, by letting Congress wallow in cash register politics misusing the very power you have delegated to it.
SHARE Sunday, April 21, 2013 He Is Comfortable With Bush's Inferno
The lawless legacy of George W. Bush continues under Obama. The Presidential outlawry continues as a bipartisan dissolution of our constitutional system because the vast majority of "we the people" are not demanding our constitutionally sovereign power. For the first time, President Barack Obama claims to have the right to assassinate an American citizen in his sole secret judgment as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 27, 2019 Which 2020 Democrat Will Go After Trump's Destructive Embrace of Corporate Socialism?
Donald Trump's 2020 election strategy is to connect his potential Democratic opponents with "socialism." Trump plans to use this attack on the Democrats even if Senator Bernie Sanders, who proudly calls himself a "democratic socialist," doesn't become the presidential nominee (Sanders has been decisively re-elected in Vermont).
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 13, 2016 Hillary Clinton Sugarcoating Her Disastrous Record
Hillary Clinton is not "levelling with the American people," when she keeps the transcripts of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contracts mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn't told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 25, 2019 What and who gave us Trump?
Trump has always known how to use power to get more power. He went after his opponents with harsh nicknames, repeated verbatim by a supine press. The name calling stuck and influenced voters. Democrats did not reciprocate with nicknames like "cheating Donald," "corrupt Donald," "Dangerous Donald."
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 21, 2017 Why is Nobelist Economist Richard Thaler so Jovial?
Thaler's skepticism helped him produce books and articles showing an obvious but powerful truth: that people are consistently and predictably irrational and will act in a way that undermines their own self-interest. And contrary to the dogma of mainstream economics, the market overall doesn't filter out such irrationality to avoid messy realities.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 13, 2016 Congress: AWOL and Out of Control
People know that Congress takes a lot of days off -- all with pay. Senators and Representatives work over 100 fewer days than average Americans do. Specifically, members were in session 157 days in 2015 and 135 in 2014. This year the House is scheduled to be in session for only 111 days, with the August recess alone stretching nearly six weeks.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 10, 2020 The Infinite Greed, Power And Controls Of Giant Corporations
When greed and power are exercised by giant multinational corporations that escape the discipline of the nation-state, the potential for evil becomes infinite in nature. Enough is never enough.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 26, 2011 Revitalizing the AFL-CIO
Mr. Obama promised labor in 2008 to press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011, and the Employee Free Choice Act, especially "card check," and then forgot about both commitments.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 16, 2013 America's Miserly Minimum Wage Needs an Upgrade
Poll after poll has shown overwhelming American support--70%--for increasing the minimum wage. All that is standing in the way is Congress. Thirty-nine House Republicans and 24 Republican senators voted to increase the minimum wage in 2007. The moral and economic reasons to increase the lagging minimum wage haven't changed.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 23, 2011 Verizon; Going Increasingly Wireless and Increasingly Shameless
Here are just a few of the concessions the new Verizon CEO, Lowell McAdam, is insisting upon:
-More power to contract out and offshore jobs to add to the 25,000 already in that category; thereby undermining job security.
-a freeze on pensions;
-elimination of the sickness and death benefit program;
-reduction in sick days;
-major increase in employee contributions to and deductibles under their health insurance coverage
SHARE Thursday, June 20, 2019 Congressional Interns and Congress Redirections -- A Meeting
Led by one percent of active citizens in their communities the people left and right can achieve a living wage economy, full health insurance, law and order for corporations, a fair tax system, and organizing rights for workers, consumers, and small taxpayers. We can develop solar energy capabilities quicker.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 20, 2012 Not a gaffe, but the real Romney
If the Democrats are anything but inept and defeatist, they will wrap Romney around Congressman Paul Ryan, his vice-presidential nominee, and recover the Congress in November. The Romney-Ryan campaign is now hanging by a few threads, unmasked even before those millions of American voters who dutifully vote for politicians who disrespect and betray their economic plight and political powerlessness once in office.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 11, 2012 Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again
The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 21, 2020 The Federal Reserve Dictatorship Runs Amok Against Savers
The Fed decides in secret the fate of the monetary policy, which includes the interest rates paid on your savings. There are no public hearings or open dockets for submission of views. No real explanations by the Fed; just dictates. It is a government of its own inside our government the epitome of corporate socialism.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 30, 2017 Crash of Trumpcare Opens Door to Full Medicare for All
Even without any media, and any major party calling for it, a Pew poll had 59% of the public for Full Medicare for All, including 30% of Republicans, 60% of independents and 80% of Democrats. Ever since President Harry S. Truman proposed to Congress universal health insurance legislation in the 1940's, public opinion, left and right, has been supportive.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, August 22, 2016 Hillary's Hubris: Only Tell the Rich for $5000 a Minute!
Why wouldn't Hillary tell the American people, whose votes she wants, what she told corporations in private for almost two years? Is it that she doesn't want to be accused of doubletalk, of "gushing" when addressing bankers, stock traders or corporate bosses? The Clintons are not known for answering tough questions or participating in straight talk. Dodging and weaving is what they do and too often they get away with it.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 2, 2021 Tim Cook, Apple, and Runaway Limitless Corporate Greed
Corporate plutocrats praise their brave workers during this COVID-19 pandemic. When workers ask for living wages, most of these bosses say "No" but take plenty of dough for themselves
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, March 23, 2018 Ten Million Americans Could Bring H.R. 676 into Reality Land -- Relief for Anxiety, Dread and Fear
So will the first 10 million Americans step up and be counted by sending messages directly to their Senators and Representatives in the month of April? The amount of time required to send a letter, an email or a telephone call is so brief that activated citizens could be called the modern "Minutemen" for universal health insurance.
SHARE Saturday, June 23, 2018 The Unsurpassed Power trip by an Insuperable Control Freak
Amazon and Starbucks have just succeeded in a grotesque power play reversing the Seattle City Council's vote to impose a mere $48 million a year tax on large, local corporations to combat the crisis of homelessness and unaffordable housing in your hometown, Jeff. Because of your company's insatiable greed, you have decided to ignore the plight of the homeless.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 4, 2020 Coronavirus Failures Show Trump Is Clear and Present Danger to the United States
Trump ridiculed, then minimized, then delayed the federal government's response to the coronavirus for weeks. Then finally he wrapped his boastful, confused ego around reality. But Trump is actively pushing programs that will endanger more Americans.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, February 12, 2010 Beware the Nuclear Power Lobbyists
Making his case with brilliant concision, Lovins, a consultant to
business and the Defense Department, demonstrated with numbers and
other data that nuclear power "is being dramatically outcompeted in
the global marketplace by no and low-carbon power resources that
deliver far more climate solution per dollar, far faster." However, the swarm of nuclear power lobbyists is gaining headway in Congress, spreading their money.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 15, 2019 It is Time to Rediscover Print Newspapers
By reading the print edition of a newspaper, you might just see something that your online news alerts or search engine algorithms don't automatically present.
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 13, 2015 Afghanistan and Iraq: Lessons for the Imperial
What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 28, 2016 Tripwires for the Trumpsters
the Trumpsters have vowed to dismantle various government programs. They are determined to severely limit the protection of labor, replace public schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, and drop regulatory protections in the health, safety and environmental fields, among others. Acting without the requisite legal authority is of little concern to Mr. Trump.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 16, 2021 "Nobody Is Above The Law" except the "big boys"
Bush violated federal statutes, international treaties, and returned to Texas immunized, in fact, though not in law. He and former Vice President Dick Cheney could still be prosecuted.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, April 8, 2013 The Cruelty of Big Business
We must address the reckless behavior of Wall Street and the excesses of big corporations by placing more cops on the corporate beat and giving them the resources necessary to do their jobs. The alternative is allowing the gamblers on Wall Street and the grossly overpaid CEO's of multinational corporations to continue to take, shred or stall the remaining regulatory system and run our country into the ground.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 19, 2014 Fact-Based Empathy -- Boston and Baghdad
"Boston Strong" can be more than looking back on a tragedy with a stiff upper lip. It can nourish, from the cradle of the American Revolution, a rising sensitivity that tyranny abroad is a Washington export that defies our constitution and the better instincts of the people who stand against foreign wars for oil and an aggressive Empire unrelated to legitimate national defense.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 28, 2016 Hillary's Latest Bow to AIPAC
With all her self-regarded experience in foreign affairs, Mrs. Clinton could pause to ponder why she is backing state terrorism against millions of Arab Palestinians trapped in two enclaves, surrounded by walls, military outposts, and suffering from deep poverty, including widespread diseases and severe anemia among Palestinian infants and children.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 21, 2021 Why Didn't Speaker Pelosi Want Witnesses?
Democrats, as they did with the first impeachment of Trump, were unwilling to use the full evidence subpoena powers they possess. The haunting question that history will raise will be this: Why didn't Speaker Pelosi call the witnesses?
(16 comments) SHARE Friday, June 13, 2014 Can Progressives Learn from Eric Cantor's Defeat?
The stunning upset defeat of House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) by Professor David Brat, an economist from Randolph-Macon College, in Tuesday's Republican Primary has several takeaways for progressives besides envy and shame over why they do not directly take on the corporate Democrats.
SHARE Saturday, February 10, 2018 What is Stalling Wrongful Injury Lawyers?
Personal injury lawyers, except for the few rich ones, are not making big money. They are discouraged. Their own state trial lawyer associations report dwindling membership, smaller budgets and less engagement. Whole areas of practice are nearly disappearing, as in California with its draconian statutory caps and other restrictions on litigating serious medical malpractice injuries.
SHARE Thursday, July 12, 2018 Universal Voting Dissolves the Obstacles Facing Voters
Voter suppression is real and getting worse. Voter fraud is virtually non-existent, but this spurious claim is used as the excuse for unnecessary restrictions. Voter turnout, not surprisingly, is lower than in any other Western country.
SHARE Wednesday, March 7, 2018 Heritage's Corporate Lobby Inside Trump's Government is Not the People's Heritage
Big corporate money bolsters Heritage's various projects, including one recently created initiative "Heritage Action," which dives directly into electoral politics. In its 45 years of operation, Heritage has fed off demanding oil tycoon heirs such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Shelby Cullom Davis, the relentless Koch brothers and, recently, the Trump-backing Mercer financial interests.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 20, 2020 Trump Letting big corporations get away with whatever they want
Trump, during his failed business career and bankruptcies, saw the law as a nuisance and breaking and escaping justice as a competitive advantage. Trump considers himself above the law.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 19, 2012 Congress Needs to Get to Work
This year, Congress will spend well over $3 billion on its own expenses to do nothing of significance other than shift more debt to individual taxpayers by depleting the social security payroll tax by over $100 billion so both parties can say they enacted a tax cut! That is what the Democrats in Congress and the President call a significant accomplishment.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 23, 2017 The Censorious Vortex of the "Flash News" Barons
The domination of "breaking news"-increasingly defined by episodes of violence, natural disasters and celebrity/political outrages and lurid scandals-is rampant. Sunday morning TV "news" display the same subject, the same invited guests that were in that week's newscasts. It has become almost impossible to introduce subject matter, especially fresh and reports, outside of this tightening circle of opinion oligopolists.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 27, 2018 Mugger Mick Mulvaney -- Trump's Sadist-in-Chief
A human wrecking ball, Mugger Mick has pushed to eliminate the Meals-on-Wheels assistance for isolated elderly, to increase rents for poor tenants, to severely gut SNAP (food stamps) and nutritious food standards, and to diminish Medicaid. In addition the Trump administration wants to impose work requirements in Medicaid as a condition of eligibility. He even would plunge a dagger into Social Security and Medicare.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 4, 2019 Trump Is the Most Impeachable President in American History
For the first time ever, life expectancy in the United States is declining. This lawlessness is way beyond what should be excused by "prosecutorial discretion." Trump's defiant wholesale repeal of the rule of law begs for impeachment. This is the road to tyranny and the de facto overthrow of our "constitutional order."
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 14, 2010 GM Pollutes On Our Dime While Community Banks Die On The Vine
Obama is playing corporate favorites with the TARP bailouts, shunning a community bank that has successfully served "red-line" districts but experienced the same default rates as the "too big to fail" banks after they destroyed our economy losing risky bets. GM, on the other hand kept it's pollution-lobbying arm after the US taxpayer assumed 61% of the company with Obama's toothless EPA keeping mum about cleaner cars.
SHARE Saturday, October 25, 2014 Piercing the Technology Bubble
This weekend, October 25 and 26, I will be joining leading critics, from the United States and abroad, of corporate-controlled technologies, who are also proponents of appropriate technologies for the people (Vandana Shiva, Anuradha Mittal, Helen Caldicott, Wes Jackson, Bill McKibben), convening at the historic Cooper Union Great Hall on "Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth".
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 13, 2016 Trump Trumpets His Real Plans
Only if there is a superlative to the word "nightmare" can the dictionary provide a description of Trump's bizarre selection of men and women marinated either in corporatism or militarism, with strains of racism, class cruelty and ideological rigidity. Many of Mr. Trump's nominees lack an appreciation of the awesome responsibilities of public office.
SHARE Thursday, March 29, 2018 Stopping War Pusher John Bolton, Trump's Choice for National "Insecurity" Adviser
John Bolton's career of pushing for bombing countries like Iran and North Korea, and his having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime's criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq, makes him a clear and present danger to our country and world peace. He must be stopped!
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 25, 2013 Boston, Texas and Corporate Criminal Justice
The Houston Chronicle reported last week that for years before the explosion that destroyed the West Fertilizer Co. facility, "neighbors had repeatedly called state authorities with complaints about leaks, the odor of ammonia and concerns about a nearby middle school and nursing home."
SHARE Wednesday, August 15, 2018 Going Fundamental Eludes Congressional Progressives
Although politicians review and sign fundraising letters, rarely do they write them. That lucrative task is left to political consulting firms that also profitably consult for corporations. That's why the letters are so formulaic.
Over the years I've urged incumbents & candidates for elected office to do more than ask people for money. Why not ask them for their time, their minds, and their dedication by having "time-raisers
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 6, 2017 The Republicans' Devious Tax Attack on the People
How much are the American people going to take before they replace the reckless Republicans in the next election? Low and middle-income Americans are bracing for the likely passage of a Trump-supported tax bill that deviously redistributes even more of the people's income to the richest one percent (including a big tax cut for Trump) and the unpatriotic giant corporations.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 31, 2012 If Big Labor Would But Fight, Millions Would Join Them on the Ramparts
What is the AFL-CIO waiting for? Talk is not enough. Resources and muscular lobbying are required along with far more relevant and tough public advertisements than your members are seeing and paying for on TV these days. Enough, already, of the general feel-good mood spots on TV.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 31, 2015 An Open Letter To Chairwoman Yellen From the Savers of America
When it comes to the Fed, Congress is mired in hypocrisy. The anti-regulation, de-regulation crowd on Capitol Hill shuts its mouth when it comes to the most powerful regulators of all -- you and the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, Congress goes along with the out-of-control, private government of the Fed -- unaccountable to the national legislature.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 27, 2012 Barack to Mitt: Corporations Run the Economy
You have declared that "Washington has become an impediment to economic growth." Why then don't you be specific, name and support an end to the vast array of corporate subsidies, handouts, bailouts and inflated government contracts, especially from the defense industry? Imagine what your friends on Wall Street and in Houston would think of you after that burst of candor.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 3, 2020 Ginsburg Institute for Justice Needed for Our Depleted Democracy
Historians will record her decisions, writings, and advocacy. Many people will celebrate her groundbreaking contributions to equal rights for women and other civil rights. Justice Ginsburg's fervent admirers, however, should look not only at past accomplishments but to creative ways to build on a great and enduring legacy.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 9, 2012 The Greediness of Brain Drain
The hatred of public education designed into current Conservative values is self defeating & virtually guarantees a "brain drain" away from where jobs are most needed- here in the U.S.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 14, 2021 Statement By Ralph Nader And Bruce Fein On The Senate's Impeachment Acquittal Of Donald J. Trrump
Donald Trump has once again circumvented justice, but not because of a want of facts or law. His life preserver was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to refrain from calling critical witnesses possessing "smoking gun" incriminating evidence at Mr. Trump's second impeachment trial.
SHARE Friday, July 9, 2010 Ralph Nader's Suggested Summer Reading
Ten books to help you emerge from the summer smarter about politics, the economy, nature -- and life in general.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 14, 2017 "Making America Great" at Americans' Expense
Donald J. Trump was a builder of casinos and high-priced hotels and golf courses. Now he is a builder of a tower of contradictions for the American people that is making "America Great" at their expense.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Restricting People's Use of Their Courts
Courts should not be places of case overloads and long delays. They should be welcoming temples of justice where judge and jurors engage in reasoned deliberation for the advancement of justice as part of a functioning democracy. The demands for justice are such in our country that courts should have more judges, more juries and more trials.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 26, 2020 Recidivist Criminal and Constitutional Outlaw Trump Rushes to Pardon Criminal Lawbreaker
Serial lawbreaker Donald J. Trump is embarking on the most sordid presidential pardon spree in American history. Trump corruptly doles out pardons to spite his list of archenemies and to reward his sycophants as many people are pleading with Trump for pardons.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 21, 2013 Perils of the Keystone XL Pipeline Confront Obama
On Feb 17, 48 people, including Bill McKibben and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were arrested for open, non-violent civil disobedience mostly for refusing U.S. Park Police orders to keep moving on the White House's sidewalk (with some protestors actually attaching themselves to the fence in front of the White House).
This past weekend, McKibben was back at the White House with more than 40,000 anti-Keystone XL protestors...
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 1, 2012 Waiting for Obama, Democrats Will Lose the House
Do the Democrats in Congress feel free to go it alone? Just the opposite. Before they open up new issues, new reforms and new fronts, they've decided to capitulate and wait for Obama to take the first visible step. Yet Obama, ever cautious and conflict-averse, does not make the first move.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 26, 2021 If Biden is a "Union Guy" Go After the Taft-Hartley Monster!
"I'm a union guy." Unfortunately as Vice President from 2009 to 2017, his boss Barack Obama wouldn't let him be a "union guy." Even with large Democratic majorities in Congress and control of the White House worker needs went unmet.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 3, 2017 It's About Bringing Your Congress Back Home, Citizens!
The large marches, in Washington, DC and around the country, calling attention to importance of science and focusing on the calamitous impacts of climate change had impressive turnouts. But the protests would have been more productive if they concentrated more -- in their slogans and signs -- on 535 politicians to whom we have given immense power to influence policies relating to those issues, for ill or for good.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 12, 2013 The Fate of All Empires: Two Obamas, Two Classes of Children
When Barack Obama starts writing his lucrative autobiographical recollections, there may be a few pages where he explains how he endured this double life ordering so-called precision attacks that kill many innocent children and their mothers and fathers while mourning domestic mass killings in the U.S. and advocating gun controls.
SHARE Saturday, December 15, 2018 Are the New Congressional Progressives Real? Use These Yardsticks to Find Out
Adopting these suggestions will liberate new members to challenge the taboos entrenched in Congress regarding the corporate crime wave, military budgets, foreign policy, massive corporate welfare giveaways or crony capitalism.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 18, 2020 Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control to Corporations?
The American people own most of the wealth - private and public - and most of the information in the country. The top one percent do not.
The American people have most of the power in the country. The top one percent do not.
These assertions may surprise you, because the top one percent and the giant corporations work overtime to control what you own.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 13, 2014 The Myths of Big Corporate Capitalism
Large corporate capitalism is a breed apart from smaller scale capitalism. The former can often avoid marketplace verdicts through corporate welfare, strip owner-shareholders of power over the top company bosses and offload the cost of their pollution, tax escapes and other "externalities" onto the backs of innocent people.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, January 14, 2022 Eight New Year's Resolutions for NPR to Consider Now
Congress should hold long needed public hearings in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to ascertain whether the original missions accorded public radio and public broadcasting are being pursued both qualitatively and quantitatively, and whether these networks and their affiliates have steadily strayed from those missions, due in part to the absence of mechanisms for public evaluations and congressional oversight
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 6, 2013 Stopping Barry O'Bombers Rush to War
Dear President Obama:
Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up and down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you "Barry O'Bomber".
Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties...
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Senate Has Become Graveyard of Congress
he Senate lies paralyzed even as it is controlled by 59 Democrats--usually enough for comfortable passage of legislation sought by a majority party that also controls the presidency.
A combination of a few reactionary Dem Senators, a unified pro-corporate Republican opposition, anti-democratic Senate rules and the decades-long weakening of citizen and trade union groups have combined to produce a constipated Senate
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 18, 2013 Time for a Sales Tax on Wall Street
Despite all the lasting harm caused by the casino capitalists, the big banks are now bigger, richer and more powerful than they were when they were bailed out in late 2008. The only ones who were punished were the U.S. taxpayers, who footed the $600 billion bill for the excesses of Wall Street. Brazenly, many firms still continue to gamble with other people's money.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 2, 2016 The Rumble from the People Can Work
With press report after press report documenting how big business stiffs millions of its consumers and workers, why is it that more of these victims do not externalize some of their inner agonies by channeling them into civic outrage? Why can't more people just shout out via telephone, letter, e-mail, text message, to anyone who could do something or at least spread the word.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 9, 2018 New Book about Ethics and Whistleblowing for Engineers Affects Us All!
The stakes from climate disruption to the military arms race to our public infrastructure to the health and safety of posterity and our planet are so high. So must be the expectations accorded the engineering profession everywhere in our midst.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2015 The One Question Reporters Never Ask Candidates
Regardless of their affiliation with either of the two dominant parties, politicians are so used to people being spectators rather than participants in the run-up to Election Day that they have not thought much about participatory or initiatory democracy. Too many of them, backed by the concentrated wealth of plutocrats, have perfected the silver-tongued skills of flattery, obfuscation and deception.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 29, 2018 First Step Post-Election -- Open Up the Closed, Secretive Congress
Following the mid-term elections, progressive citizen groups have to advance an agenda that makes Congress work for all Americans. The first step, however, is to acknowledge that Capitol Hill has walled itself off from the people, on behalf of corporate autocrats.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 6, 2020 The Road to a More Just Society Runs Through Congress
Think about all the dreams for a better world that could come to be realized if our elected officials worked for the big majority of Americans instead of for Big Business interests.
SHARE Sunday, January 17, 2021 Will Trump's Grand Finale Be Conviction by the US Senate?
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, a graduate of Harvard Law School, asked his colleagues: "If inciting a deadly insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, then what is?" Ten Republicans voted for Impeachment, but 197 House Republicans disagreed.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 14, 2013 The Cruel Gap Between CEO Pay and the Stagnant Minimum Wage
According to a recent Gallup poll, over 70 percent of the American public support raising the minimum wage. Many economists agree that it would stimulate the economy through larger sales volume, not harm it. Large companies such as Walmart and McDonald's (who employ over two-thirds of low wage workers) have profited off the backs of the working poor for far too long.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 31, 2013 Obama: You Cannot Start a War by Yourself
Dear President Obama:
Before you decide to attack Syria, yet another Arab or Islamic country that does not threaten U.S. security, there are certain constitutional "niceties" that you should observe. Chronically violating the Constitution overturns the rule of law and can produce costly blowbacks.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 6, 2018 Slogan Voters -- The Road to Political Masochism
Trump has become homeostatic -- whatever goes around, comes around to his advantage for the Slogan Voters. Evidence against Trump is turned around to justify Trump. More than anyone else, Trump has understood this and fed these strange conclusions by inattentive minds. Yeah, "Making America Great Again, Drain the Swamp, and Lock Her Up!"
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 20, 2021 Rare Unionizing Opportunity in Big Box and Retail Chains
This is the most opportune time for millions of workers in Big Box retail stores and fast-food outlets to form unions. McDonald's, Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King and other giant chains are having trouble finding enough workers.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 16, 2013 Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations
Mega corporations have abandoned U.S. workers by entrenching "pull-down" trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Having wages that go backwards into the future means workers cannot afford the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children.
(8 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 28, 2013 How Big Corporations Are Unpatriotic
Giant U.S. companies are strip-mining America in numerous ways, starting with the corporate tax base. By shifting more of their profits abroad to "tax-haven" countries (like the Cayman Islands) through transfer pricing and other gimmicks, and by lobbying many other tax escapes through Congress, they can report record profits in the U.S. with diminishing tax payments.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 13, 2009 In the Public Interest
Here are seven avoidance indicators which outline what Washington is not doing to prevent another round of greed and misdeeds by the Wall Street few against the innocent many throughout the country.
SHARE Friday, December 2, 2016 Trump and His Betraying Makeover
In addition to lacking a mandate from the people (he lost the popular vote), the president-elect continues to believe that mere showboating will distract from his breathtaking flip-flops in his campaign rhetoric. Remember his last big TV ad where he blasted "a global power structure" responsible "for robbing the working class" with images of Goldman Sachs flashing across the screen?
SHARE Friday, April 6, 2018 Degrading Newspapers' Business Sections
Our country is in a midst of a corporate crime wave against consumers, workers, investors, and small taxpayers. Fraudsters are also annually stealing tens of billions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. Massive billing fraud and abuse is rampant in the private marketplace as well.
SHARE Friday, April 13, 2018 The Hour is Late -- Speak Out, Stand Tall, Ex-Officials
Trump is wreaking havoc on the American people as workers, consumers, buyers of medicine, breathers of air and drinkers of water, as taxpayers against waste and spreading corruption, and as children in serious need. These outrages must be counteracted by people who can get their calls returned, get on the mass media, and mobilize the caring public into sturdy citizen challengers of our hijacked federal government.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 22, 2020 Wrecking America: How Trump's Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All
If you don't want such a person as your neighbor, why would you want him as your President where he'd have exponentially more power to harm you and your family?
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 2, 2009 Did Obama Appoint People With Track Record of Making Right Decisions?
Here is a fundamental question that should have been asked of presidential candidate Barack Obama: "If you get to the White House, will you appoint to top positions Americans who have a track record of making the right decisions in their respective fields?"
"Of course, I will," Obama would have undoubtedly replied.
Of course, he did not...
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 29, 2010 Missing the Mark on Deficits
Two deficit commissions & next to nothing from the establishment insiders that indicates our government is even aware let alone actually operates on behalf of the best interests of the American people.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 9, 2013 Toward a Living Legacy for Nelson Mandela Now
Nelson Mandela's exceptional and exemplary life has and will produce worldwide celebrations of his extremely unique blend of character, personality and resolve for broad-gauged justice. To truly memorialize his contributions, however, requires grand actions. Taking immediate recognition of the deep wellsprings of respect, affection and sorrow over the loss of his leadership to the people of South Africa and the world...
SHARE Saturday, May 29, 2010 RESTORE THE CONGRESSIONAL OTA
When the Republican Gingrich devolution took over Congress in 1995, it stripped the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of all its funding and left it a shell with no experts to advise committees and members of Congress.
Bad mistake for America.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 10, 2013 Why Are Democrats So Defeatist?
There is no effort by the Democratic leadership to question the failed strategies of 2010 and 2012. For 2014, it is likely to be more of the same: raising the money and taking care not to offend business interests by talking vaguely about the middle class and ignoring the growing poorer classes that are the Democratic Party's natural constituency.
SHARE Thursday, October 22, 2015 The Downsides of Cheap Abundance
I often wonder why there weren't a few classes about the real-life consequences of abundance, along with scarcity and people's material welfare. The present generation of internet technology is a proper subject of study within an economic framework. It might help us understand what is happening to our society.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 22, 2012 The Rise of Re-Use
Last week I read that the glitzy world of virtual reality created instant multi-millionaires and several billionaires when Facebook went public selling shares.
Last week I also noted the important real world problem of some 250 million tons of solid waste a year in our country alone.
Guess which "world" gets the most investment, status, fame, klieg lights, and attention of the skilled classes and the power structure?
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 26, 2013 Can Right and Left Rally Against Walmart?
One of the most profitable corporations in America is having a holiday food drive. But wait... there's a catch. The food drive is for the company's own underpaid, poverty-stricken workers. You really can't make this stuff up
SHARE Friday, August 1, 2014 Obama and the "Public Sentiment"
Abraham Lincoln once said that "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed." Presumably, he meant Presidential action on popular issues can and should overcome influential interests.
At long last, the "public sentiment" seems to be aligning with some causes you are advancing.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 1, 2013 Kerry Should Get Israeli Peace Leaders Before Congress
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is outwardly going through the motions of supporting peace negotiations but demands preconditions and no cessation of expanding Israeli colonies in Palestine. Netanyahu knows how to play the U.S. government like a harp. He talks about negotiations for peace, but remains intransigent.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 26, 2012 US Media: Examine Thyself
The media coverage of the Presidential campaigns is a dreary repetition of past coverage. Stuck in a rut and garnished by press cynicism and boredom, media groupthink becomes more ossified every four years.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, September 3, 2010 Labor Day pean for underappreciated workers
The hands-on workers who harvest our food, clean up after us, repair our property, look out after our health and safety conditions and serve as nannies to our children receive few honors, status or anywhere near the compensation of those who gamble with our money, entertain us or drive us into wars they don't fight themselves.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, September 14, 2020 Trump's Broken Promises to His Voters - He Didn't Deliver!
The list of broken promises could fill volumes. Compare Trump's words and deeds and misdeeds. "We will honor the American people with the truth and nothing else." Over 20,000 false or misleading statements so far by the Washington Post's reliable count.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 23, 2013 More Exposes, Less Action
We are in a golden age of exposes, detailed revelations about out-of-control polluters, corporate tax escapees, corruption of government, cheating of consumers, abandonment of workers, freezing or reduction of wages, and a general hijacking of America for perpetual wars, militarism and profiteering.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 21, 2010 Senate Goes Light and Leaves Out A Lot on Finance Bill
In the end, late on Thursday's Senate passage of the financial regulation bill, the Senate had no time for independent, non-government consumer power. In the end, after listening to swarms of corporate bank, brokerage, hedge fund, private equity, and insurance lobbyists, the Senate had no time for Senator Chuck Schumer's amendment to create a non-profit Financial Consumers Association (FCA, SA 3772).
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 7, 2013 Condemning the U.S. Postal Service's Move to End Saturday Delivery
The U.S. Postal Service today continued its tradition, under Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, of shooting itself in the foot. The only question that remains is: When will the madness end? By ending Saturday letter delivery in August 2013, as the USPS has proposed, millions of customers who take advantage of its services will be harmed, mail service will be slowed, and the USPS's current death spiral will deepen.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, April 9, 2010 Coal Kills
The tragedy at the Massey Energy Company's very profitable Upper Big Branch coal mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, which so far has cost 25 miners' lives, is another reminder of the immense human and environmental cost of this fuel.
More coal miners have lost their lives from cave-ins, explosions and lung disease since 1900 than all the Americans who died in World War II. The devastation extends to chronic sickness from...
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 6, 2009 Words in the service of corporate masters.
The corporate controlled media and their proxies continue their vicious, and soporific, assault on the citizens of this nation.
This article by Ralph Nader discusses clearly and succinctly the erosion of truth and reality by what is left of journalism today.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 2, 2009 The Drive for Single Payer
After protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit singlepayeraction.org), 6 physicians from Oregon, calling themselves “Mad as Hell Doctors,†are crossing the country in a Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out.
After Obama's met with scores of Health Care CEOS he refuse outright to meet with these advocates
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, August 5, 2013 Love, Corporate-Style
Our corporate "friends" are all around us. They are dominating our publicly owned airwaves with their slogans, filling our skies with their logos on billboards, showing up on the sides of city buses, and collecting our browsing preferences so as to better appeal to us on the internet.