211 lines
7.8 KiB
Plaintext
211 lines
7.8 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 52
|
|
======================================
|
|
("Quid coniuratio est?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER -- 03/24/96
|
|
=======================
|
|
Ralph Nader appeared on Meet The Press (a.k.a. "Meet The
|
|
Depressed") on March 24, 1996, and was interviewed by Tim
|
|
Russert.
|
|
|
|
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
We're back on Meet The Press. With us now, consumer advocate
|
|
turned presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Mr. Nader, welcome.
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
Thank you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
*Why* are you running for president?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
Because we're part of a larger and longer-term political movement
|
|
to build democracy in concrete ways; to strengthen the roles of
|
|
the voter-citizen, tax-payer, consumer, worker, and shareholder;
|
|
and to confront, and to give competition to, the two parties:
|
|
Tweedledum-Tweedledee/Republican-Democrat, which are
|
|
increasingly, essentially, a party of, by and for big business.
|
|
The dominance, the supremacy of, these global corporations over
|
|
our government, over our marketplace, over labor, over consumers,
|
|
over small businesses through these franchise agreements, is
|
|
getting completely out of hand, and on a collision course with
|
|
democracy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
Now on Tuesday, voters in California will find your name and the
|
|
"Green Party". If you become the nominee of the Green Party on
|
|
Tuesday, will you run as presidential candidate all the way
|
|
through November?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
In all probability.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
What, what hesitation?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
The only... It's up to the Green Party.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
But as far as Ralph Nader's concerned, you're in the race all the
|
|
way.
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
Correct. Unless a lot of "Greens" volunteering all over
|
|
California aren't in favor of that. But they make the final
|
|
decision.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
Now people in the White House will say, "Listen. When it comes to
|
|
issues, when it comes to the crunch, Bill Clinton has been there.
|
|
When there was a bill which would limit the stockholders' ability
|
|
to sue, Bill Clinton vetoed it. Just last week, when there was a
|
|
bill which would limit product liability, ability of people to
|
|
sue for defective products, Bill Clinton threatened to veto. Bob
|
|
Dole would have signed both those bills. And Ralph Nader, if
|
|
*you* run, in California, you're gonna drain votes from Bill
|
|
Clinton and *you* may elect Bob Dole."
|
|
|
|
How do you respond?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
First of all, those two vetoes were unusually good news from the
|
|
White House and President Clinton deserves to be commended for
|
|
[it]. He took on big business contributors to his own campaign
|
|
and did the right thing by wanting to keep the doorways to the
|
|
courtroom open for people who've been defrauded or wrongfully
|
|
injured.
|
|
|
|
However. In the first 3 years of his tenure, he's been
|
|
consistently on the side of big business when it's conflicted
|
|
with labor and consumers. Jerry Jarzinowski(?) of the National
|
|
Association of Manufacturers said over a year ago to me that he
|
|
really liked Clinton; that Clinton was strong on businesses'
|
|
issues like NAFTA and GATT and he was pretty indifferent on
|
|
issues close to Labor's heart, like raising the minimum wage,
|
|
labor law reform, etc. What we have seen here is, not only Bill
|
|
Clinton, but the Democratic Party, with Al Fromme(?) and the
|
|
Democratic Leadership Council, pushing more into the corporatist
|
|
"right" and away from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic
|
|
Party.
|
|
|
|
And it really is of singular indifference what the impact of this
|
|
"Green movement" is on Clinton and on Dole: they're perfectly
|
|
free to adopt the "new democracy" tools, which we call the
|
|
"Concord principles", that I ran on in a "none of the above"
|
|
write-in candidacy in New Hampshire in 1992. There's no patent on
|
|
it!
|
|
|
|
By the way, of the 6300 write-in votes in New Hampshire in 1992
|
|
that I received, 52 percent were Republican, 48 percent were
|
|
Democrat. I think a lot of the people that are going to vote
|
|
Green, many of them would've stayed home, and some of them
|
|
would've been Republican and some of them would've been Democrat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
But people are gonna say to you, Ralph Nader: "In the end, this
|
|
is a real world. Would you prefer to have Bill Clinton, or Bob
|
|
Dole, sitting in the Oval Office? Because one of those two men
|
|
are gonna be president."
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
I would prefer *neither*, in the "real world."
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
Who would you prefer sitting in the Oval Office?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
That's why we're expanding this new political movement! So we get
|
|
people who rise from a deliberate, established civic confidence
|
|
in our country; who rise from the grass roots; who know where
|
|
they come from; who don't just toss their hat in the ring, go to
|
|
the fat cats, raise money, and say, "I promise you I'll do 'this,
|
|
this' if you elect me president" -- and then all we see are
|
|
broken promises.
|
|
|
|
Our democracy is deteriorating! And it's deteriorating because
|
|
the political government is increasingly captured by the
|
|
corporate government.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
It wouldn't bother you if you woke up in November of '96 and
|
|
said, "Bill Clinton was not re-elected today because he lost the
|
|
state of California to Bob Dole. And the reason was: Ralph Nader
|
|
siphoned off 6 percent of voters who would've voted for Bill
|
|
Clinton?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
If that happens to Clinton because he refuses to adopt very
|
|
important campaign finance reform, sponsor initiative referenda
|
|
recall all over the country, have inserts in various company
|
|
bills that are being bailed out for illegal monopolies to help
|
|
consumers voluntarily to join their own consumer action groups,
|
|
give tax-payers standing to sue the federal government, elect
|
|
shareholders who *own* these companies to have some control,
|
|
including the pension trust -- he deserves it! Because it's so
|
|
easy to up-end Dole by moving with a vision of a concrete
|
|
expansion of our democratic tools! Democracy solves problems.
|
|
It's the best mechanism to solve problems I think ever devised.
|
|
And democracy brings the *best* out of people in this country.
|
|
We've got too many problems we don't deserve, too many solutions
|
|
we don't apply. It's all open for Bill Clinton to move into that
|
|
arena and reduce any challenge that comes to him.
|
|
|
|
|
|
TIM RUSSERT:
|
|
And if he embraced some of your visions, as you're talking about
|
|
this morning, you would be then reluctant to challenge him all
|
|
the way through to November?
|
|
|
|
|
|
RALPH NADER:
|
|
Not at all! Politicians always need an opposition that *stays* to
|
|
its convictions and holds them to their promises.
|
|
|
|
[...to be continued...]
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail
|
|
address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to
|
|
listproc@cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
For information on how to receive the new Conspiracy Nation
|
|
Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
|
|
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
See also: ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
|
|
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
|
|
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
|
|
|