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Category: Ralph Nader

  • Tribute to Ford, Robinson, and Belafonte

    This week we welcome back Professor Randall Kennedy to help us pay tribute to three principled, uncompromising African American activists, Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, human rights champion, Randall Robinson, and legendary actor, singer, and activist, Harry Belafonte.

    Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He is the author of several books, including Contracts: Happiness and Heartbreak, For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, and Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture.

    You’ve chosen three very interesting people [Randall Robinson, Harry Belafonte, and Glen Ford]. And I think that one thing that the listeners should keep in mind is that the three that you’ve chosen are all progressive; they are very different… Because the tent of progressivism should be a large tent— not everybody’s going to think the same, and indeed there’s going to be some friction between various tendencies among progressives.

    Randall Kennedy

    I don’t think that progressives pay enough attention to the people who have been in their camp. We don’t pay enough attention to people who have passed away. We don’t pay enough attention to recalling people who have been heroic in our midst. And, again, I say this as a person who is sometimes extremely critical of some of the people that you’ve mentioned.

    Randall Kennedy

    We need people like Glen Ford to pull in one direction uncompromisingly—because the corporate interests always pull in the other direction uncompromisingly—and then we need people who are in between and sometimes have to face the hard realities you’ve pointed out.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard

    1. The Wall Street Journal and the Corporate Crime Reporter have announced that, following decades of citizen pressure, and action last year by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, the Department of Justice has finally created a Corporate Crime Database. Under President Biden, the Justice Department has taken a tougher rhetorical stance on corporate crime, but as Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco notes, the department “cannot ignore the data showing overall decline in corporate criminal prosecutions over the last decade…We need to do more and move faster.” Among civic groups, The Center for Study of Responsive Law and Public Citizen lead the charge to create these corporate rap sheets and are already working to expand and strengthen this new resource for corporate crime data.

    2. If you live on the East Coast, you have likely experienced dangerous levels of air pollution in the last week due to smoke moving South from Canadian wildfires. Yet, the Lever reports that under current air quality rules, fossil fuel producers will not have to curb their emissions to offset this spike in air pollution because they have successfully lobbied for a loophole protecting themselves in the case of “exceptional events” outside their control. Environmental regulators are currently mulling a new rule to clamp down on this type of air pollution, but face stiff opposition from industry groups.

    3. The Washington Post reports that, in an exercise of his leverage in the tightly divided Senate, Bernie Sanders has vowed to oppose all Biden health nominees until the administration produces a “comprehensive” plan to lower prescription drug prices. Sanders’ role as Chair of the Health Education Labor and Pensions committee means these nominees cannot advance without his blessing. This notably includes Biden’s nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Sanders said “Politicians for years have talked about the high cost of prescription drugs, relatively little has been done, and it’s time that we act decisively.”

    4. The Progressive International has issued a statement decrying the “soft coup” underway against left-wing President Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Their statement reads “Ever since the election of the country’s first progressive government…Colombia’s traditional powers have been organizing to restore an order marked by extreme inequality, environmental destruction, and state-sponsored violence.” The statement goes on to excoriate officials who have sought to undermine the Petro administration and “former generals, colonels, and members of the Colombian military [who] have not only proclaimed their opposition to President…Petro — but even marched outside Congress to call for a coup d’état against his government.” Signatories to this letter include over 400 political and industrial leaders, including Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Luc Mélenchon, and Former Leftist President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.

    5. The City, a news site covering New York, reports that food delivery drivers in NYC have won a substantial wage increase. This victory caps off a 3-year long campaign by Los Deliveristas Unidos, and makes New York the “first major U.S. city to establish and implement pay requirements for delivery workers.” These workers currently take home about $11 per hour; this will go up to $17.96 an hour starting July 12th, and will increase to $19.96 per hour by 2025.

    6. In a surprise decision last week, the Supreme Court voted five-four in favor of Black voters in Alabama who argued the state had unlawfully diluted their voting power, POLITICO reports. Over a quarter of Alabama residents are Black, but the state crammed most Black Alabamians into a single congressional district following the 2020 census, running afoul of the Voting Rights Act. Many expected the ultra-conservative court to reject the challenge and further hollow out the VRA; instead, this ruling could significantly augment the chances of Democrats retaking the House in 2024.

    7. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has instituted a “highly successful” ban on opium. To cite one example, “In Helmand, by far Afghanistan’s largest opium-producing province, the area of poppy cultivation was cut from over 129,000 hectares in 2022 to only 740 as of April 2023.” However, some in the West – including the US Institute for Peace – believe this could have disastrous implications for the Afghan economy. It remains to be seen whether the new government can find a viable economic alternative fast enough to offset these losses. The Taliban had previously banned opium cultivation when they held power in 2000 and 2001, and achieved a 90% reduction at that time.

    8. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is again licking her wounds after her nominee for the New York Power Authority was blocked by the State Senate, in a similar fashion as her nominee for the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state. Justin Driscoll, whom Hochul had appointed on an interim basis and was seeking to appoint permanently, raised red flags with New York Senate Democrats due to his ingratiation in conservative politics – Driscoll is a registered Republican who has ties to figures like Chris Christie and John Cornyn. Driscoll also opposed the Build Public Renewables Act and has been embroiled in accusations of racial discrimination during his time as general counsel for the Power Authority. On June 9th, POLITICO reported that Senate Democrats will not schedule a vote for Driscoll.

    9. Projectionists at an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in New York City have filed an NLRB petition to unionize. However, instead of coming to the negotiating table, the theater chain sent out an internal email “notifying staff of the company’s intention to do away with the projectionist position and replace it with a more expansive ‘technical engineer’ role.” This reflects how the struggle for labor rights in entertainment goes far beyond Hollywood writers and actors. This from 1010 Wins.

    10. Last week, Henry Kissinger – President Nixon’s controversial National Security Advisor and alleged war criminal – celebrated his 100th birthday. The Real News Network reports that this centennial bash was attended by some of the most prominent diplomatic figures in the country, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and head of the international development agency USAID, Samantha Power. Jonathan Guyer of VOX, documented many other attendees as well, including Larry Summers, Robert Kraft, General David Petreaus, CIA Director Bill Burns, and Michael Bloomberg. The gang’s all here!



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Economic False Prophets

    Ralph welcomes New York Times reporter, Binyamin Applebaum, author of “The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society” about how Chicago School economists of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s “who believed in the power and the glory of markets… transformed the business of government, the conduct of business, and, as a result, the patterns of everyday life.”

    Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead business and economics writer on the Editorial Board of the New York Times. From 2010 to 2019, he was a Washington correspondent for the Times, covering economic policy in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. He previously worked for the Charlotte Observer, where his reporting on subprime lending won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society.

    The central attraction of neoliberalism—of market fundamentalism— is that it tells rich and powerful people that they are right and good. It underscores for them, it affirms them, it tells them that their priorities—their interests— are the right ones. And if society just does what it can to enrich them and empower them, then everyone will be better off. That’s an enormously attractive message.

    Binyamin Applebaum

    In area after area, we saw economists reaching broad conclusions about theories, about long-term truths, about how the world works on the basis of very limited data. Broad data. Data that aggregated everyone and treated them as if they were a single individual, rather than acknowledging the important differences among actors in the economy. Data that took very brief periods of history and extrapolated out to the unforeseeable future. And on that basis, economists reached conclusions that have proven to be empirically wrong as we’ve learned more about it.

    Binyamin Applebaum

    Economic analysis tends to exclude things that don’t fit neatly into its formulas— that can’t be easily counted or tabulated, that don’t count as data in the view of the economists… We can have very good real-world experience of the effects of drug regulation regimes or of corporate behavior and monopolistic contexts, and if it doesn’t tally on the data sheet it gets excluded from the analysis. It doesn’t become part of our policy-making conversation.

    Binyamin Applebaum

    We have a huge societal problem with our conception of spending on corporations as investment and spending on people as spending. When we talk about education, it’s an expense. When we talk about semiconductors, it’s an investment into the future. That’s insane. Spending on education is the most productive investment that we can make.

    Binyamin Applebaum

    What the market fundamentalist economists fail to take into account is greed and power, connected to one another, are infinite. There’s no discernible boundary. And that leads to a regulation by corporations of the competitive free market. So, monopolies distort markets. Subsidies and bailouts by the government distort market discipline. Political influence of big business over small business distorts market discipline. And consumer fraud, corporate consumer crimes, deceptive advertising distorts market discipline.

    Ralph Nader



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • License to Loot

    A “license to loot” is what our guest, economist William Lazonick, calls stock buybacks. Until the Reagan Revolution, stock buybacks were considered market manipulation and at the very least are an unproductive use of profits used only to pump up the stock price and enrich upper management, while neglecting workers’ wages, capital expansion, and innovation. Ralph and Professor Lazonick break it all down for you.

    William Lazonick is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His recent work includes Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored,  and the forthcoming book Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the U.S. Corporation.

    The ideology that enables buybacks, that makes a lot of people including economists say, “Oh, they’re just fine. The money’s just going to the economy,” is what I call the myth of the market economy—the way in which we get capital formation in the economy is just by money zipping around. But it doesn’t work that way. The money has to stop somewhere.

    William Lazonick

    It’s not because the United States does not have the capability to do these things— the capability is in the wrong hands. And it’s being wasted and destroyed. So it’s not simply the amount of money that’s making people rich. But those people who are getting rich are actually getting rich by helping to destroy the industrial base of the United States, including the middle class.

    William Lazonick

    These giant companies— these US companies that grew in the USA on the back of their workers, went to Washington for subsidies or bailouts when they were greedy or in trouble, and had the US Marines defend them around the world— are not only disinvesting on a massive scale in the necessities for a productive economy. But they are engaging in the ironic trend that can be called the corporate destruction of capitalism, whose base, in essence, is investment.

    Ralph Nader

    While these corporate bosses insist on massive domination of our political economy—from Washington to Wall Street— they’re not delivering. For the economy, for the workers, for the people who are trying to make it through every day and protect their families and their descendants. In behaving this way, they have reached a historic level of conflict of interest with their own companies.

    Ralph Nader



    Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Finally Facing Accountability for Some of His Most Brazen Violations of the Law



    If there was a giant composite lawsuit against Donald J. Trump, for his over forty years of recurring criminal and civil violations, (while a corporate boss and politician) the only recourse for his lawyers would be to plead the insanity defense.

    Until this week, in a New York State Supreme Court based in Manhattan, Trump has gotten away with all his serial crimes and torts. He has eluded the “sheriffs” by blatant intimidation, threats, lies on steroids, shifting the blame onto others, gag order settlements, and threats to wear down any private plaintiff or government prosecutors with draining litigation and personal vitriol, widely publicized by a ratings-obsessed media.

    The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston has written three books on Trump over 35 years of watching closely Donald’s moves. He documented Trump’s alleged criminal operations in the construction of his hotels, gambling casinos, and tax escapes, but prosecutors were not interested. Their staff resources were not up to the burdens of bringing a case against Trump and dealing with his publicized slanders and phony countercharges.

    In one instance, “Trump, Inc.” hired hundreds of undocumented Polish workers to dismantle a major building in New York to make way for Trump’s hotel. These exploited workers, exposed to numerous hazards at a toxic demolition worksite, had to sue Trump to get all the pay they earned. Trump settled the case and escaped prosecution for his violations.

    Trump’s business and political careers have consisted of winning by intimidation, and a staggering volume of lies and falsifications encased in egomaniacal delusions and illusions, catered to a sensationalizing press that rewarded him with headlines, invitations to appear on national talk shows, and uncritical reporting of his lies. Year after year, he got press attention by asserting Barack Obama was foreign-born. He falsely charged public figures as likely murderers of specific people. He got away with these antics, along with bragging publicly that the media needed him to boost profits.

    Such notoriety propelled Trump into his role on The Apprentice, a profitable NBC show that helped him to create what he called “his base.”

    Feeling that he was invincible, recall his saying “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” He stunned his 17 Republican primary opponents by sucking the mass media coverage out of them, leaving them with widely publicized nicknames such as Lying Ted (Cruz) or Little Marco (Rubio) and Low-Energy Jeb (Bush).

    Greedy Donald read the Greedy Media like no one ever has. Although he received 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016, he was selected President by the anti-democratic antiquated Electoral College.

    As President, he learned that he could be more lawless than ever – brazenly, openly, defiantly, repeatedly – and get away with it. He learned from Bill Clinton that extra-marital affairs were not a political liability. He learned from George W. Bush that presidents could order unlawful armed forces anywhere, killing civilians and destroying societies, and get away with it. As a certified bully, Donald liked that license.

    Then he learned from Barack Obama that Wall Street’s shenanigans could collapse the economy, un-employ 8 million workers and be bailed out by the American taxpayers without prosecution of the culpable Wall Streeters who profitably speculated and looted other people’s money.

    Trump’s White House became a daily crime scene. His former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir that “Obstruction of justice was a way of life in the White House.” The Mueller Report described ten obstructions of justice by Trump. These are serious crimes blocking or obstructing law enforcement. His then Attorney General, William Barr, redacted and shelved Mueller’s report.

    The Trump White House and his lawless administration (1) ignored the rule of law as they flouted over 150 Congressional subpoenas, (2) illegally shuffled around large congressionally prohibited appropriations to suit Trump’s fancy and (3) used federal property – the White House and the Treasury Department – against his electoral opponents. These were only three criminal violations of federal laws – the Hatch Act, the Anti-Deficiency Act, and the sneering violation of hundreds of congressional subpoenas. But he was protected by his Attorney General, who relied on a prior dubious DOJ memo that arbitrarily declared that a sitting president could not be indicted for a crime.

    To protect Trump’s fragile giant ego, he needs to believe most of his lies. These lies fortify Trump’s frequent sayings that he “has done nothing wrong” and that he is a “very stable genius.”

    He eviscerated his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws by firing law enforcers and shutting down the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and much of the EPA while raking in millions of campaign contributions from the corporations regulated by these agencies.

    Trump mocked the law, the Constitution, and the ethical norms rooted in historically expected behavior from Presidents. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler documented about 35,000 lies and misleading claims personally asserted by Trump during his presidency. (See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/). To Trump’s uncritical supporters, these lies created a false world, that although disconnected from reality induced indiscriminate loyalty from his base. That’s why dictators use lies and propaganda to command unquestioning obeisance. (See, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, 2020).

    To protect Trump’s fragile giant ego, he needs to believe most of his lies. These lies fortify Trump’s frequent sayings that he “has done nothing wrong” and that he is a “very stable genius.”

    As if there remains any doubt that Trump sees himself as uncontrolled by external laws, consider his anarchic declaration in July 2019: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” Really? Is that why our Founders, to eliminate any future prospect of someone like King George III, placed the strongest powers in our Congress, and not the Presidency?

    In fact, Trump proved before and after his 2019 declaration that he is above the Constitution and the law, right up to his insurrectional belief that any election he loses has to have been stolen. As a serial violator of the Constitution – see the list of our 12 impeachable offenses that were inserted in the Congressional Record of December 18, 2019 [H 12197] – Trump was enabled by a weak, insecure Democratic Party and now by the ultra-inhibited Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    Several of Trump’s offenses directly violate criminal statutes. However, Garland keeps saying no one is above the law. Well, let’s see, more than halfway through Biden’s term, Garland has dispensed with all but two of Trump’s offenses. These two are Trump’s January 6th insurrection and his obstructions relating to him illicitly taking away highly classified documents upon leaving the White House in January 2021. All the other crimes committed by Trump that are publicly known as well as others known only to the Justice Departments (e.g., tax violations, misuse of pardons, emoluments from foreign agents) – have been left for the historians to judge, not the courts.

    Out of this adult lifetime of placing the rule of man (Trump) over the rule of law, there are only four criminal investigations underway (including Georgia and New York prosecutions).

    Following the indictment, lengthy trial dates and appeals could consume four years or more absent any plea deal, which is unlikely. By then there could be a Republican in the White House.

    The Trumpian Defiance of the laws of the land continues. He should teach a course at a law school about his peerless expertise in daily defying of laws on the way to becoming a billionaire and President of the United States. Chasing myths out of law schools could be a backhanded contribution to law students’ education.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Reckless Capitalist Banks Rescued by Government Socialism – Again!



    Once again, government socialism—ultimately backed by taxpayers—is saving reckless midsized banks and their depositors. Silicon Valley Bank (S.V.B) and Signature Bank in New York greedily mismanaged their risk levels and had to be closed down. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in return, to avoid a bank panic and a run on other midsized banks went over its $250,000 insurance cap per account and guaranteed all deposits—no matter how large, which are owned by the rich and corporations—in those banks.

    Permitting such imprudent risk-taking flows directly from the Trump-GOP Congressional weakening of regulations in 2018, which was supported by dozens of Democrats, led by bank toady Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.). That bipartisan deregulation provided a filibuster-proof passage by the Senate.

    The other culprit is the Federal Reserve. Its very fast interest rate hikes reduced the asset value of those two banks’ holdings in long-term Treasury bonds, which reduced their capital reserves. With the “What, me worry?” snooze of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, SVB had little supervision from state regulatory examiners and compliance enforcers.

    Actually, big depositors sniffed the shakiness of these two banks and acted ahead of the regulatory cops with mass withdrawals that sealed the fate of SVB. Imagine, SVB was giving out bonuses hours before its collapse. For this cluelessness, the bank’s CEO, Gregory Becker, took home about eleven million dollars in pay last year.

    All this was predicted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). Warren, in particular, specifically opposed the 2018 Congressional lifting of stronger liquidity and capital requirements along with regular stress tests for banks with assets over $50 billion. Trump’s law allowed the absence of these safeguards to cover banks with assets up to $250 billion. Such de-regulation covered SVB and Signature.

    Signature Bank had former House Banking Committee Chair Barney Frank on its board of directors. His name is on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed following the 2008 Wall Street collapse. Even Mr. Frank was clueless about what Signature’s CEO Joseph DePaolo was mismanaging. (DePaulo was paid $8.6 million last year.)

    Of course, the underfunded FDIC doesn’t have enough money to make good all the large depositors in these two banks. So, it is increasing the fees charged to all banks for such government insurance. The banks will find ways to pass these surchargers on to their customers.

    Other midsized banks may be shaky as more major depositors pull out and put their money into mega-giant banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup, which are universally viewed as “too big to fail.” The smaller businesses harmed by these closed banks are now on their own. No corporate socialism is as yet saving them.

    One of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank law was to require federal agencies to rein in bank executives’ pay that incentivizes recklessness and even fraud, as Public Citizen noted. Yet after 13 years, PC declared: “a hodgepodge of federal agencies—the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission—that is supposed to finalize the rule has so far failed to do so.”

    Defying mandates of Congress, often riddled with waivers from Capitol Hill, is routine for federal agencies. They know that when it comes to law and order for profiteering corporations, Congress is spineless. Have you heard of any resignations or firings from these sleepy regulatory agencies? Of course not. They continue to raise the ante for corporate socialist rescue even beyond their legal authority. For example, where does the FDIC get the authority to guarantee all the deposits in the failed banks when the Congressional limit is strictly $250,000 per account?

    Some people will remember Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson telling the Washington Post that there were “no authorities” for massive bank bailouts—think Citigroup in 2008 during a private weekend meeting in Washington, DC— but, he said, “someone had to do it.”

    Meanwhile, the American people remain fearful but silent over the safety of their bank deposits. They heard Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tell Congress that the banking system “remains sound.” Some remember that’s what her predecessor said in the spring of 2008 about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the safest investments after Treasury bonds. By the fall, both of these giants had collapsed taking millions of trusting shareholders down with them.

    Finally, all those brilliant economists at the Federal Reserve surely must know that when midsize banks lose almost 20% on the value of their 10-year Treasuries, due to the very fast interest rate hikes by Jerome Powell’s Fed, trouble is on the horizon. Why didn’t they anticipate this outcome and do some foreseeing and forestalling? Nah, why worry, didn’t you know that the Fed prints money?

    Or maybe the Federal Reserve (its budget comes from bank fees, not the Congress), couldn’t see beyond fighting inflation, something it did not take seriously in time over a year and a half ago. More than a few outside economists repeatedly gave the Fed fair warning. But then the Fed, hardly ever criticized by the mainstream press, was listening to its brilliant economists.

    Stay tuned. This rollercoaster ride is not over yet.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Time for a Showdown With Big Pharma: Chairman Sanders vs. Sky-High Drug Prices



    It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma.

    The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis. He has issued detailed critiques of what others have called a “Pay or Die” industry coddled by Congress that provides huge tax credits, free government-developed medicines, and free, with few exceptions, unbridled power to charge what their monopoly markets can’t bear.

    Americans are charged the highest drug prices in the world. U.S. drug companies feed off taxpayer subsidies yet are under no reasonable price controls even for those new drugs they get free from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

    Senator Sanders has taken busloads of Vermonters to Canada to buy the same medicines sold in the U.S. at much cheaper prices just over the Canadian border. During his presidential campaigns, he assailed high drug prices and supported single-payer or full Medicare-for-All. The latter, he has told the pro-single-payer group, Physicians for a National Health Program, is off the table. Astonishingly, he is not going to push it. That leaves the drug companies on which to focus his power.

    Big Pharma is ready for Bernie’s thunderous denunciations. As witnesses, Pharma executives play humble rope-a-dope and exude courtesy. Their 500 full-time lobbyists outnumber the members of the Senate, and Big Pharma’s backup brigades of corporate lawyers, propagandists and local chambers of commerce add to the power imbalance. They’ve survived Congressional table-thumping for decades by both Democrats and Republicans, knowing that it is largely all theatre.

    The Inflation Reduction Act partially addresses drug pricing but is so full of loopholes and delays that it cannot be relied on to curb Big Pharma abuses.

    The three drug companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi—that control the price of insulin, have withstood verbal blast after verbal blast by candidates campaigning for public office. They’re still jacking up their price, 1,100% since the 1990s, even though it’s the same product and is sold in other wealthy countries for a fraction of what Big Pharma bills Americans in the U.S. Still, uninsured or underinsured people who need insulin have to pay, but are so hard-pressed they often ration their supply of this essential drug. Up to 1 in 4 people with Type 1 diabetes ration insulin. There are fatal consequences to such rationing.

    The bosses of these three companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi—are not ready to budge.

    Nor are other giant drug companies ready to disturb their subsidized and anticompetitive business model. This model includes finding tricky ways to continually extend their monopoly patent period, taking control of the comparable generics, spending more on advertising and marketing than on research and development for which they get a generous tax credit from Uncle Sam, taking good care of key physicians who tout their products and gaming the insurance industry that in theory should be resisting gouging payouts for drugs.

    The Inflation Reduction Act partially addresses drug pricing but is so full of loopholes and delays that it cannot be relied on to curb Big Pharma abuses.

    Big Pharma is insatiably avaricious. They obstruct incoming free trade of lower-priced drugs while they outsource the production of key medicines to countries like China and India where drug manufacturing plants are poorly monitored by the understaffed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Big Pharma has maneuvered Congress into having a large portion of the FDA’s meager budget come from the drug companies with the invisible strings attached. Imagine paying the police who are supposed to be holding you to the law.

    There is more. With some Democratic House members joining the Republican legislators in 2003, a bill was passed expanding Medicare’s drug benefits and prohibiting Medicare from negotiating volume discounts with the drug companies. This has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Thank you, Republican Party – the constant avatar of corporate greed and leaving our country defenseless. For example, no antibiotics are now produced in the U.S. Many come from China. The GOP exhibits both a disregard for national security peril and a lack of patriotism, while it takes campaign cash from the drug goliaths.

    The latest outrage comes from a report by the Wall Street Journal that Pfizer and Moderna intend to quadruple the price of their Covid vaccine, once their government purchasing contracts run out, to a range of $110-130 a shot. Bear in mind, both companies have made enormous profits from a government-guaranteed market of tens of billions of dollars. But readers may ask: “Won’t the higher price lead to fewer people being able to afford the vaccines, especially those not covered by insurance?” Correct. Big Pharma doesn’t care.

    Moderna is a creature of the government’s National Institutes of Health research and development for the mRNA type Covid-19 vaccine. NIH scientists were in the lead, in collaborating with the scientists at this formerly tiny Boston-based company. The result turned Moderna into a multibillion-dollar firm. One would think being bred to commercial success by the taxpayers would result in some restraint. Not so.

    Lives lost, injuries and diseases are at stake. For decades Big Pharma has refined its gigantic profits into an invulnerable racket that is impervious to media exposes, occasional prosecutions and fines, political campaign denunciations and keeping promises of patient relief.

    Here is a solution. Since the NIH R&D programs have developed many drugs to the clinical trial level, let NIH proceed to manufacture these drugs in the good old USA and market them through government health programs.

    There is a precedent from the Pentagon during the Vietnam War when the second leading cause of hospitalization for U.S. soldiers there was malaria. The drug companies were not willing to invest in developing anti-malarial medicines (not enough profit). The Pentagon set up its own “drug firm” inside Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital (now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center). For a tiny fraction of what the drug companies would have charged the government, MDs and PhDs produced three new anti-malarial medicines, plus other medicines, which were positively reported in peer-reviewed medical journals.

    So, let’s go, Bernie Sanders. This is “democratic socialism” fostering domestic and national security replacing unpatriotic, greedy “corporate socialism” that abandons the U.S. to communist China, leaving behind the federal safety regulatory watchdogs.

    Let’s see how Bernie Sanders can use his staff and public hearings to jolt the Big Pharma toadies in Congress with the rumble from the people who are in dire straits. Senator Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and other compatriots can barnstorm the country and energize super majorities of both liberal and conservative Americans to back their cause since they all bleed the same color.

    Otherwise, it’s just going to be the same old song – “There goes Bernie again – baying at the moon.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • A Fresh Plea for the Very Rich to Make a Truly Wise Investment for a More Just Society



    The super successful mega-investor, Warren Buffett, CEO of the giant conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, was heard to say: There are only 535 members of Congress, why can’t 300 million Americans control them? That’s a pretty fundamental question since our senators and representatives are given their sovereign power by the people. Remember the preamble to our Constitution?

    Buffett is a generous philanthropist. Among his contributions, he has given the Gates Foundation (public health projects) about $3 billion each year for over a decade. That’s over $30 billion dollars! Just one $3 billion contribution, devoted to establishing systemic-focused Congress Watchdog locals in every congressional district, would fund such groups for more than thirty years. Their objective would be to organize up to one-half of one percent of adults to volunteer in each congressional district to make sure our elected officials do the general public’s bidding under honest election procedures. The American people and their children have far more commonly desired necessities and wants than the hyped divide-and-rule tactics imposed by the present ruling powers imply. (See, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State by Ralph Nader, April 2014).

    I can hear some readers saying, “Well, if Mr. Buffett is such a public-spirited person, why don’t you ask him to do this? You’ve been writing about these groups for many years.” (See my recent columns: Think Big to Overcome Losing Big to Corporatism, January 7, 2022; Facilitating Civic and Political Energies for the Common Good, February 2, 2022; Going for Tax Reform Big Time, March 11, 2022; and Going for Big Watch on Big Budgets, March 31, 2022).

    Answer: I did once, broadly, in a written letter. No connection was made. In 2011, I wrote a fictional book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” about a Warren Buffett recoiling from the immediate neglectful aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. In the book, he launched, with 16 other enlightened individuals, a just, step-by-step democratic overhauling of American politics top-down and then bottom-up.

    This realistic work of fiction caught his attention. He invited me to showcase the book at his massive annual shareholder’s meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. I went.

    At an earlier breakfast, I mused about the story becoming a Hollywood movie. He amusingly asked who would play his character. I mentioned actors like Warren Beatty or Alan Alda.

    In any event, nothing came of these interactions. My guess is that having to closely supervise over 70 managers of the sizable corporate subsidiaries of Berkshire requires an intensity of focus and time that is incompatible with the additional project of changing Congress to get good things done – popular as that would be in today’s America.

    Some knowing readers might ask why Buffett doesn’t ask his network of some 236 multi-billionaires, who have signed on to his Giving Pledge, to donate half of their wealth to “good works.”

    Answer: A condition for the Giving Pledge is that these philanthropists would not urge or ask each other to support their favored causes.

    The obvious rejoinder to that impediment might be, “Surely this reflective man, who gets his calls returned, can create the necessary institutional network and public investments to make these long-overdue changes” – again top-down then bottom-up. Probably, yes. But the problem is, neither he nor his collaborators want to be the recipients of daily vitriol and smears so easily conveyed to the world through the Internet. They want to be left to concentrate on their own business or other pursuits in retirement.

    So, what it comes down to is the perceived sense of great urgency, coupled with a belief that a group, such as described, is unique to being able to make a significant, lasting difference for the present and for posterity. That is what a civic sense of legacy, demonstrated already by the Pledgors, is – but multiplied many times over by institutional and structural reforms, backed by a critical mass of an alert citizenry, and nurtured by regular civic education for all ages.

    If any readers are in a position to have a few of these otherwise predisposed mega-donors come to a discussion about this opportunity, the generic questions to pose to them are: What if? How to? And why not? Taken together, my four books “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us”! Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, and the Fable The Day the Rats Vetoed Congress provide detailed pathways to deep-rooted transformations of our country backed by about four-fifths of the American people.

    There are, predictably, many readers who will scoff and stereotype all very rich people with a totally dismissive brush. There are, however, enough examples in American history that expose this wave-of-the-hand as an excessive generalization. Some are not like the rest. Even some of the rest should be given the opportunity to make amends.

    Responses are invited: info@csrl.org

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Will Congressional Progressive Caucus Ever Draw a Red Line?



    What follows is an encore for a column I wrote in 2018 for the new progressive Democrats elected to the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party won control of the House in 2018, and again barely in 2020. There was no response nor adoption of any of these power-enhancing suggestions from any of the novice legislators in those two election cycles.

    I am now sending to the entering class of 2022 these helpful tools to strengthen both their efforts and those of the citizen groups in the halls of Congress.

    The rapidity with which the Democratic Party’s political cocoon wraps itself around newly elected legislators, who arrive in Washington determined to change the culture and output of our premier branch of government, is beyond astonishing. Unlike the red-line-drawing so-called “Freedom-Caucus” among the House Republicans, who topple their leadership, or at least are power factors, the Democrats toe the line and surrender to their dictatorial leadership.

    Until the quieted progressives form their own voting bloc, the national citizen groups will remain as powerless as the dominant corporate Democrats in Congress want them to be.

    We shall soon know who, if any, of the progressives in the class of 2022 are serious about their pre-swearing-in determinations and strive to measure up to the yardsticks for empowerment.

    Are the New Congressional Progressives Real? Use These Yardsticks to Find Out

    In November, about 25 progressive Democrats were newly elected to the House of Representatives. How do the citizen groups know whether they are for real or for rhetoric? I suggest this civic yardstick to measure the determination and effectiveness of these members of the House both inside the sprawling, secretive, repressive Congress and back home in their Districts. True progressives must:

    1. Vigorously confront all the devious ways that Congressional bosses have developed to obstruct the orderly, open, accessible avenues for duly elected progressive candidates to be heard and to participate in Congressional deliberations from the subcommittees to the committees to the floor of the House. Otherwise, the constricting Congressional cocoon will quickly envelop and smother their collective energies and force them to get along by going along.

    2. Organize themselves into an effective Caucus (unlike the anemic Progressive Caucus). They will need to constantly be in touch with each other and work to democratize Congress and substantially increase the quality and quantity of its legislative/oversight output.

    3. Connect with the national citizen organizations that have backers all around the country and knowledgeable staff who can help shape policy and mobilize citizen support. This is crucial to backstop the major initiatives these newbies say they want to advance. Incumbent progressives operate largely on their own and too rarely sponsor civic meetings on Capitol Hill to solicit ideas from civic groups. Incumbent progressives in both the House and the Senate do not like to be pressed beyond their comfort zone to issue public statements, to introduce tough new bills, or even to conduct or demand public hearings.

    4. Develop an empowerment agenda that shifts power from the few to the many – from the plutocrats and corporatists to consumers, workers, patients, small taxpayers, voters, community groups, the wrongfully injured, shareholders, consumer cooperatives, and trade unions. Shift-of-power facilities and rights/remedies cost very little to enact because their implementation is in the direct hands of those empowered – to organize, to advocate, to litigate, to negotiate, and to become self-reliant for food, shelter and services (Citizen Utility Boards provide an example of what can come from empowering citizens).

    5. Encourage citizens back home to have their own town meetings, some of which the new lawmakers would attend. Imagine the benefits of using town meetings to jump-start an empowerment agenda and to promote long overdue advances such as a living wage, universal health care, corporate crime enforcement, accountable government writ large, renewable energy, and real tax reform.

    6. Regularly publicize the horrendously cruel and wasteful Republican votes. This seems obvious but, amazingly, it isn’t something Democratic leaders are inclined to do. Last June, I urged senior Democrats in the House to publicize a list of the most anti-people, pro-Wall Street, and pro-war legislation that the Republicans, often without any hearings, rammed through the House. The senior Democrats never did this, even though the cruel GOP votes (against children, women, health, safety, access to justice, etc.) would be opposed by more than 3 out of 4 voters.

    7. Disclose attempts by pro-corporate, anti-democratic, or anti-human rights and other corrosive lobbies that try to use campaign money or political pressure to advance the interests of the few to the detriment of the many. Doing this publicly will deter lobbies from even trying to twist their arms.

    8. Refuse PAC donations and keep building a base of small donations as Bernie Sanders did in 2016. This will relieve new members of receiving undue demands for reciprocity and unseemly attendance at corrupt PAC parties in Washington, DC.

    9. Seek, whenever possible, to build left/right coalitions on specific major issues in Congress and back home that can become politically unstoppable.

    10. Demand wider access to members of Congress by the citizenry. Too few citizen leaders are being allowed to testify at fewer Congressional hearings. Holding hearings is a key way to inform and galvanize public opinion. Citizen group participation in hearings has led to saving millions of lives and preventing countless injuries over the decades. Authentic Congressional hearings lead to media coverage and help to mobilize the citizenry.

    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 and crony capitalism.

    The sovereign power of the people has been excessively delegated to 535 members of Congress. The citizens need to inform and mobilize themselves and hold on to the reins of such sovereign power for a better society. Demanding that Congress uphold its constitutional obligations and not surrender its power to the war-prone, lawless Presidency will resonate with the people.

    Measuring up to these civic yardsticks is important for the new members of the House of Representatives and for our democracy. See how they score in the coming months. Urge them to forward these markers of a democratic legislature to the rest of the members of Congress, most of whom are in a rut of comfortable incumbency.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Helping These Groups Helps You and Reflects Your Generosity of Spirit



    It is that time of the year when generous people make donations to civic organizations that are the bedrock of our democratic society. Some are worthy charities. Others are advocates for change through advancing justice.

    Below are many nonprofit groups working for causes furthering environmental and consumer health and safety, economic well-being, and peace.

    Here are my recommendations for giving to these competent, honest, and results-oriented organizations. Visit their informative websites.

    Alternative Radio: https://www.alternativeradio.org/

    Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest: https://www.appalachia-spi.org/

    Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest: https://aclpi.org/

    Beyond Nuclear: https://beyondnuclear.org/

    Beyond Pesticides: https://www.beyondpesticides.org/

    Center for Health, Environment & Justice: https://chej.org/

    Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment: https://crpe-ej.org/

    Children’s Advocacy Institute: https://www.sandiego.edu/cai/

    Clean Air Campaign, Inc. [Send donations to: 307 7th Avenue, Room 1705 New York, NY 10001.]

    Doctors Without Borders USA: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

    Earth Island Institute: https://www.earthisland.org/

    FlyersRights.org: https://flyersrights.org/

    Family Farm Defenders: https://familyfarmers.org/

    Honor the Earth: https://honorearth.org/

    Indian Law Resource Center: https://indianlaw.org/

    Solitary Watch: https://solitarywatch.org/

    Nuclear Information and Resource Service: https://www.nirs.org/

    Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance: https://www.orepa.org/

    Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: https://peer.org/

    Veterans for Peace: https://www.veteransforpeace.org/

    Western Organization of Resource Councils Education Project: https://www.worc.org/ep/

    Whirlwind Wheelchair: https://whirlwindwheelchair.org/

    Contributions to these 501(c)(3) organizations are tax deductible.

    I have followed and donated to all these groups for several years. Reading their reports and letters is an educational tour de force. They demonstrate how a few dedicated people with small budgets and large goals can overcome immense odds and obstacles to get our society to do the right things for the people. They invite your participation along with your donations to further their quest for justice in their fields of activity.

    Their combined budgets are less than what our military spends in about 3 hours of a 24-hour day. Their budgets are also about how much Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia, receives in a year from a rubber-stamp board of directors.

    These comparisons invite extrapolations about how our tax money and consumer dollars are spent now and could be spent better in cooperative or collaborative endeavors.

    One brief example: For a modest portion of what people are overpaying for their health insurance to a few giant, gouging, wasteful, claims-denying insurance companies, communities can build their own cooperatively owned primary care hospitals or clinics focused on preventative practices and attentive care. There are fewer available hospital beds in the US than we had in the nineteen seventies. The prospect of more pandemics breaking family and public budgets, invites us to band together to build community health care institutions, which makes great sense.

    The same is true for building other community institutions to address local economic necessities in energy, food, communications, housing, education and recreational facilities.

    The energy of democratic cooperation is exemplified by the above recommended organizations of citizen doers and innovators. Pitch in, deepen and benefit from these reservoirs of skilled good will. They bring you restorative tidings.

    (To progressive readers doing some last-minute holiday shopping, be sure to check out the CounterPunch online bookstore. There are plenty of engrossing titles for you to peruse. And it is a way to avoid Amazon.)

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • The Spoils of War

    Ralph welcomes back crack investigative journalist, Andrew Cockburn, who in his latest book “The Spoils of War” outlines how the U.S. military budget has never been about “defense” but about profit. The military-industrial- congressional-media complex profits. We pay. Plus, Ralph answers a listener question.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?

    Ralph welcomes nuclear weapons expert, MIT professor Theodore Postol, to give us his insights into the possibility and the ultimate consequences of Vladimir Putin employing “tactical” nuclear weapons in the Russian conflict with Ukraine. And our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, weighs in on the hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Plus, Ralph answers your questions about the latest Boeing crash and money in politics.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • All About Voting

    Ralph invites his old friend, “The Black Eagle” activist and radio host Joe Madison, to discuss the hunger strike he endured to advocate for the recent voting rights bill and what the Democrats need to do to finally get the job done. Then, Richard Winger, publisher of “Ballot Access News” updates us on the fight to break the stranglehold the two major parties have on our elections by restricting access to a candidate’s ability to get on a ballot. Plus, Ralph answers a listener question.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Still Unsafe At Any Altitude

    Boeing whistleblower, Ed Pierson, joins us to talk about the report he wrote entitled “Boeing 737 MAX – How Is It Really Going?” that paints a troubling picture of current problems with the notorious plane that includes reports of 43 malfunctions and onboard failures and six flights where U.S. pilots declared emergencies. Plus, constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, stops by to talk about how the NATO Treaty should not override the US Constitution, the misuse of the “state secrets” law, and an ongoing U.S. war crime from the Vietnam era.

     


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Woke Racism/Ethnic Atlas

    Ralph welcomes professor John McWhorter, linguist and author of “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” and also Father Al Fritch to talk about his long project mapping and celebrating the various ethnic groups that make up the United States.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How To Take Back Your Power!

    Ralph welcomes consumer advocates, Laura Antonini and Harvey Rosenfield, whose latest report is entitled “Reboot Required” about how in the past fifty years the civil justice system in America has fundamentally been weighted toward corporations and how ordinary people can start taking back that power. Plus, Ralph answers a listener question on the Ukraine crisis, and we pay tribute to two progressive champions, Paul Farmer and Joe Tom Easley.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Twenty Dollars and Change

    Ralph welcomes retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to discuss the ongoing dispute over Ukraine. Plus, Professor Clarence Lusane joins the program to enlighten us about the legacy of Harriett Tubman and the campaign to replace Andrew Jackson with her image on our most common paper currency, the twenty-dollar bill.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukraine Crisis/Nuclear Boondoggle

    Ralph welcomes the editorial director and publisher of the Nation magazine, Katrina vanden Heuvel, to offer her expert insight into ways the U.S. can peacefully resolve our conflict with Russia over Ukraine. Plus, former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner, Peter Bradford, updates us on the latest rise from the dead of that dangerous zombie technology known as nuclear power.

     


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Suggestion for Reporters: February 11, 2022

    -Why not a report on Biden and Trump’s coronavirus relief proposals that have passed Congress? What has actually been spent? Over $4 trillion has been appropriated. Where is the unspent money and why hasn’t it been spent? One NY Times report said that only 34% of the Paycheck Protection Program actually went to the workers…


    This content originally appeared on Reporters' Alert: Fresh Ideas for Journalists and was authored by anthony.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Don’t Toss It! Fix It!

    Ralph and the boys have a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation with Peter Mui, founder of the Fixit Clinic, a worldwide organization that holds “pop up” events where experts teach you how to repair your consumer goods, which not only keeps them out of the landfill but is also a community-based activity that conveys critical thinking skills.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Corporatism Is The Problem

    Ralph welcomes Donald Cohen, the founder and executive director of “In the Public Interest” and co-author of the book “The Privatization of Everything” to discuss the many different ways corporatism has corrupted so many of our public goods. Also, constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, joins us to give us his take on the constitutional ramifications of U.S. involvement in the conflict between Russian and Ukraine. Plus, we wish a happy hundredth birthday to legendary journalist, Morton Mintz and say a heartfelt goodbye to the innovative law professor, who created programs to provide legal representation to low-income Americans and devised the concept of Time Banking, Edgar Cahn.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Apple’s Hollow $3T Valuation

    Ralph welcomes econ professor William Lazonick, to let us know how Apple reached its record 3 trillion-dollar valuation and how what they and other large corporations are doing to enrich themselves is killing the middle class. Plus, Ralph answers more of your questions.

     


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Corporate Assault on Medicare

    In our ongoing campaign against the corporate assault on America’s healthcare system, Ralph welcomes Kip Sullivan of “Healthcare for All Minnesota” to talk about what he terms “the creeping privatization of Medicare,” and tells us the story of how that ongoing corporatization is based on one particularly destructive yet durable myth.  


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Suggestion for Reporters: January 14, 2022

    With all the attention on Senator Joe Manchin’s veto of President Biden’s infrastructure and social safety net proposals, reporters should dig deep into the total unanimity of 50 Republican Senators, especially among the five GOP Senators not running for re-election. Why no dissenters? What are the pressures? Who is wavering? And what are the Democrats…


    This content originally appeared on Reporters' Alert: Fresh Ideas for Journalists and was authored by anthony.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Suggestion for Reporters: January 13, 2022

    -Much reporting is needed on the contracting out of government functions on a massive scale of federal, state and local governments. The federal government provides summaries of these contracts but, despite bipartisan support in Congress, still does not provide the full text of this trillion dollar outsourcing. That effort has stalled in Congress due to…


    This content originally appeared on Reporters' Alert: Fresh Ideas for Journalists and was authored by anthony.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Beating the Healthcare System

    Ralph welcomes investigative journalist, Marshall Allen, author of “Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win,” your “guerrilla” guidebook full of practical ways to keep your costs lower and your satisfaction higher. Plus, Ralph updates the Congress Club.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Play Democracy!

    David and Steve spend the hour reviewing the past year with Ralph and discussing what needs to be done for a better 2022. Topics include a potential military threat to democracy, Joe Manchin, plutocracy, Boeing, and Big Pharma. Plus, Ralph answers more of your questions not covered in our live Zoom from two weeks ago.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Inspiring Activists!

    Ralph welcomes two “doers” to the program, first Devin De Wulf, to tell us about how he and his group of community activists are protecting the food supply in his hometown of New Orleans by outfitting restaurants with solar panels that withstand power outages in a hurricane. Then Nathan Proctor of US PIRG tells us about his organization’s latest victory that gives consumers the Right to Repair their electronics, saving on money, toxic waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Power to the People!

    In a special webinar version of the program, Ralph discusses with our guest, Richard Panchyk, author of “Power to the People!: A Young People’s Guide to Fighting for Our Rights as Citizens and Consumers” how one person can make a difference and how only percent of any given group can make important change. And they answer questions from our virtual audience!


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • For Year End Charitable Giving—Some Worthy Organizations

    There are many active, serving citizen groups that further the cause of, by and for the people. Perhaps you may be interested in the following list of groups which we have donated to recently. They are all 501(c)(3) organizations and therefore tax deductible. If you can, give them a lifting hand. Best wishes for the…


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader and was authored by eweisbaum.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Boeing: Murder Incorporated

    Ralph welcomes investigative journalist for Bloomberg, Peter Robison, to do a deep dive into his new book, “Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy And The Fall Of Boeing” and poses the question, “Did Boeing get away with murder?” Plus, Ralph answers more listener questions.


    This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.