There are "naderites" in the Democratic Party too!!!
Booogidie, boooogidie, booogidie!!!! :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:
Nader is not a candidate, he's a voice of complete and utter reason in an age of bullshit, spin and "triangulation"...
--------
And here's some of why I'm a Naderite (and a Kucinich supporter):
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/09/131226&mode=thread&tid=25"RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the corporations are very involved in the war machine. Remember President Eisenhower’s statement about the military-industrial complex. He might have called it today the industrial-military complex, because the industrial part is now a supreme influence on the US military budget, which now is half of the entire federal government’s operating budget, and as well as effecting foreign policy. Even Mr. Koppel has written that oil is very much involved in the invasion of Iraq. In fact, he went to say it’s mostly about oil in an op-ed in the New York Times -- Ted Koppel. So the domination, the corporate sovereignty over our political economy is very much related to our foreign, military and economic policy, including GATT and NAFTA, which are architectures of corporate supremacy over civil values and the rights of workers, environment and consumers."
<clip>
"RALPH NADER: Right now, the media focuses on the horse race: who’s raising the most money. The candidates who raise the most money get the most attention. They get the most specific polls. And the ones who aren’t raising the money, even though their record is far superior and their rhetoric is far superior, like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, they don’t get hardly any attention. So the networks and the mass media have bought into the wealth election. That’s one.
The second is, they have made possible a private form of corporate government, known as the Commission on Presidential Debates. So this commission was created in 1987, as you know, to get rid of the League of Women Voters, which sponsored presidential debates, and they went around and they got money from Philip Morris and Ford and AT&T and Coors beer, and they now control the main gateway to tens of millions of Americans. No matter how many states you run in as a third party or independent candidate, if you don’t get on those debates, you don’t reach tens of millions of people.
And who is the gatekeeper? The Democrat and Republican parties, who even kept Ross Perot off in 1996, after he got 19 million votes in 1992. I called him up, and I said, “Ross, how does it feel for a billionaire to be excluded?” And he says, “Absolutely right.” He said, “I couldn’t even buy thirty minutes of airtime.” They refused him to buy thirty minutes of airtime so he could do his charts on, you know, on the deficit.
And, yeah, these TV stations are using our property. We own the public airwaves. We’re the landlords. They’re just tenants. And they use our property free. They don’t pay as much as you pay for your auto license. And they decide who is on and who isn’t on TV or on the national debates. So if you don’t break that connection between the Debate Commission and ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, you can’t break the power of this corporation called the Debate Commission and have more diverse debates with more voices and choices, which, by the way, the American people want. In the year 2000, at least three national polls had a majority of the people wanting me and Buchanan on the national debates, and I don’t think that’s just because people wanted to stay awake. "
-----------
AND THIS:::
-----------
Activism
Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects. They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" who, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:
* Nader's Raiders (Federal Trade Commission)
* Vanishing Air (National Air Pollution Control Administration)
* The Chemical Feast (Food and Drug Administration)
* The Interstate Commerce Omission (Interstate Commerce Commission)
* Old Age (nursing homes)
* The Water Lords (water pollution)
* Who Runs Congress? (Congress)
* Whistle Blowing (punishment of whistle blowers)
* The Big Boys (corporate executives)
* Collision Course (Federal Aviation Administration)
* No Contest (corporate lawyers)
* Destroy the Forest (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)
* Operation:Nuclear (Making of a Nuclear Missile)
In 1971, Nader founded the NGO Public Citizen as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 140,000 members and scores of researchers investigating Congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Their work is credited with facilitating the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Freedom of Information Act, and prompting the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Non-profit organizations
In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, forcefully campaigning against what he believed to be the dangers of large multinational corporations. He went on to start a variety of non-profit organizations:
* Capitol Hill News Service
* Citizen Advocacy Center
* Citizens Utility Boards
* Congress Accountability Project
* Consumer Task Force For Automotive Issues
* Corporate Accountability Research Project
* Disability Rights Center
* Equal Justice Foundation
* Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
* Georgia Legal Watch
* National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
* National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
* Pension Rights Center
* PROD (truck safety)
* Retired Professionals Action Group
* The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
* 1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law
* 1970s: Public Interest Research Groups
* 1970: Center for Auto Safety
* 1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group
* 1971: Aviation Consumer Action Project
* 1972: Clean Water Action Project
* 1972: Center for Women's Policy Studies
* 1980: Multinational Monitor (magazine covering multinational corporations)
* 1982: Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
* 1982: Essential Information (encourage citizen activism and do investigative journalism)
* 1983: Telecommunications Research and Action Center
* 1983: National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
* 1989: Princeton Project 55 (alumni public service)
* 1991: GLAAD sponsorship committee
* 1993: Appleseed Foundation (local change)
* 1994: Resource Consumption Alliance (conserve trees)
* 1995: Center for Insurance Research
* 1995: Consumer Project on Technology
* 1997?: Government Purchasing Project (encourage the government to purchase safe and healthy products)
* 1998: Center for Justice and Democracy
* 1998: Organization for Competitive Markets
* 1998: American Antitrust Institute (ensure fair competition)
* 1999?: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest
* 1999?: Commercial Alert (protect family, community, and democracy from corporations)
* 2000: Congressional Accountability Project (fight corruption in Congress)
* 2001?: League of Fans (sports industry watchdog)
* 2001: Citizen Works (promote NGO cooperation, build grassroots support, and start new groups)
* 2001: Democracy Rising (hold rallies to educate and empower citizens)
Consumer advocacy, public interest, and civic action
Ralph Nader (right) appears with Bob McGrath on a 1988 Sesame Street episode, singing "People in Your Neighborhood". For the episode, Nader included a verse about consumer advocates, unique for a song featuring mail men and firefighters. Nader has since criticized the types of sponsors the show has accepted, such as McDonald's and Discovery Zone.
Ralph Nader (right) appears with Bob McGrath on a 1988 Sesame Street episode, singing "People in Your Neighborhood". For the episode, Nader included a verse about consumer advocates, unique for a song featuring mail men and firefighters. Nader has since criticized the types of sponsors the show has accepted, such as McDonald's and Discovery Zone.
Because his early work stressed consumer (and worker) protection from unsafe products, Nader is often referred to as a "consumer advocate". This description should not be misinterpreted to suggest that Nader is an advocate of consumption. On the contrary, his message of civic engagement (citizen activism in the public interest), like his harsh critique of "rapacious" corporations, calls for resistance to excessive consumerism. According to Nader, mass advertising creates artificial and often harmful desires. Nader's "consumer" should not be conceived as a free-spending shopper, but rather as an active participant in democratic institutions. For example, in criticizing television news as largely empty sensationalism, Nader acknowledges that most Americans may have been trained to behave as the passive "consumers" of what passes for news; Nader's call for engagement urges citizens to work together to organize community-based news production.