Ralph Nader on the Issues

A Summary of His Positions

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This is overview of a list as contained on the site of Ralph Nader, the new Candidate for President of the United States. For more information on his positions etc. go to link at bottom. Feel free to comment or e-mail: [email protected] Blog ON.

The Bush Administration and the Democratic Party, in varying extremes, are putting the interests of their corporate paymasters before the interests of the people. In the Nader Campaign the PEOPLE RULE. Mr. Nader takes seriously a government “of, by and for the people” within a deliberative democratic society. Below are initial summaries of many of Mr. Nader's positions, as you can see, unlike President Bush and the Democratic Party, Ralph Nader:

Toward a world of peace, justice, and fulfillment of human possibilities within a sustainable environment
Our foreign policy must redefine the elements of global security, peace, arms control, an end to nuclear weapons and expand the many assets of our country to launch, with other nations, major initiatives against global infections diseases (such as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and virulent flu epidemics) which have and are coming to our country in increasingly drug resistant strains. Other low cost-high yield (compared to massive costs of redundant weapons) that extend the best of our country abroad include public health measures for drinking water safety abroad, tobacco control, stemming soil erosion, deforestation and misuse of chemicals, international labor standards, stimulating democratic institutions, agrarian cooperatives and demonstrating appropriate technologies dealing with agriculture, transportation, housing and efficient, renewable energy.

Toward saving lives by increasing motor vehicle safety
About 800 Americans die on the roads every week on the average or over 40,000 a year, plus hundreds of thousands of injuries and tens of billion in economic losses. Since 1966 the irregular implementation of the federal motor vehicle and safety laws have driven down sharply the rate and the absolute number of highway casualties. Regulation worked when tried. In the past 24 years, however, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) – the federal government's regulator of the auto industry – has been transformed into a consulting agency. This must stop if we are to save more lives and prevent more injuries. First, existing standards must be updated. Some have not been changed for 30 to 35 years, including the key crashworthiness tests themselves

Toward consumer justice
The enforcement of consumer protection laws, especially against the terrible abuses in low-income communities, needs to be given the leadership and resources required. Neither Party in control of our city or national government has concerned itself with such predatory practices. The poor pay more and are expendable to them. Hundreds of billions of dollars annually are taken from consumers due to computerized billing fraud, unconscionable credit and financial services charges, price gouging, shoddy merchandise, phony repairs, bogus medical treatments, medical malpractice, real estate scams, identity thefts, and other fraudulent regularly reported and neglected crimes.

Wants to create a new energy policy
We urge a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric and coal mining interests -- an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses – one that breaks our addiction to oil, coal and atomic power. A new clean energy paradigm means more jobs, more efficiency, greater security, environmental protection and increased health.

Environment
The epidemic of silent environmental violence continues. Whether it is the 65,000 Americans who die every year from air pollution, or the 80,000 estimated annual fatalities from hospital malpractice, or the 100,000 Americans whose demise comes from occupational toxic exposures or the cruel environmental racism where the poor and their often asthmatic children live in pollution sinks located near toxic hot spots that are never situated in shrubbered suburbs, to cite a few preventable conditions.

Wants to end the war on drugs
The drug war has failed – we spend nearly $50 billion annually on the drug war and problems related to drug abuse continue to worsen. We need to acknowledge that drug abuse is a health problem with social and economic consequences. Therefore, the solutions are – public health, social services and economic development and tender supportive time with addicts in our depersonalized society. Law enforcement should be at the edges of drug control not at the center.

Wants to reform the criminal injustice system
We need to get smart on preventing crime, invest in education, rehabilitation and restore safe neighborhoods and communities. The United States prison binge has resulted in over 2 million people being incarcerated – the US now holds one out of four of the world's prisoners, half of them non-violent.

Wants to restore and expand civil liberties and constitutional rights
Civil liberties and due process of law are eroding due to the “war on terrorism” and new technology that allows easy invasion of privacy. Americans of Arab descent and Muslim-Americans are feeling the brunt of these dragnet, arbitrary practices. Mr. Nader supports the restoration of civil liberties, repeal of the Patriot Act, and an end to secret detentions, arrests without charges, no access to attorneys and the use of secret “evidence,” military tribunals for civilians, non-combatant status and the shredding of “probable cause” determinations.

Opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq
The quagmire of the Iraq war and occupation could have been averted and needs to be ended expeditiously, replacing US forces with a UN peacekeeping force, prompt supervised elections and humanitarian assistance before we sink deeper into this occupation, with more U.S. casualties, huge financial costs, and diminished US security around and from the Islamic world.

Education for everyone
Education is primarily the responsibility of state and local governments. The federal government has a critical supporting role to play in ensuring that all children -- irrespective of the income of their parents, or their race -- are provided with rich learning environments and equal educational opportunities and upgraded repaired school buildings.

Corporations should not be given equal rights with humans
A national debate is needed regarding the necessity to reverse the dicta in the 1886 Supreme Court Case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad that first awarded the corporation constitutional status as a person and in subsequent decision. Corporations are not human beings, they do not vote; they are artificial entities which should be subordinated to the rights of human beings There can be no equal justice under the law if General Motors or Exxon has all the rights of humans plus all the privileges and immunities to concentrate enormous power and escape responsibility in ways unavailable to the wealthiest of real people.

A federal budget that puts human needs before corporate greed and corporate militarism
The United States needs a redirected federal budget that adequately funds the crucial priorities like infrastructure, transit and other public works, schools, clinics, libraries, forests, parks, sustainable energy and pollution controls.
Wants fair trade that protects the environment, labor rights and consumer needs
NAFTA and the WTO makes commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull-up rather than pull down these standards.

Wants to expand worker's rights by developing an employee bill of rights
The rights of workers' have been on the decline. It is time to reverse that trend and begin to give worker's – the backbone of the US economy – the rights they deserve. Workers need a living wage – not a minimum wage; access to health care and no unilateral reductions in medical benefits and pensions for current employees and retirees.
Wants to create jobs by investing in America's future, invest in Americans
Since January 2001, 2.7 million jobs have been lost and more than 75% of those jobs have been high wage, high productivity manufacturing jobs. Overall 5.6% of Americans are unemployed while 10.5% of African Americans are unemployed. Unemployment among Latinos is nearly 30 per cent higher than January 20, 2001.

Wants to end poverty in the United States
As the wealthiest country in the world, with high productivity per capita, a country that produces an abundance of capital, credit, technology and food, we can end poverty. Yet, according to the Bureau of the Census poverty and hunger for children and adults is increasing rather than decreasing – 34.6 million Americans lived in deep poverty, 12.1% of the U.S. population. Many millions of Americans live in what is called “near poverty” by the Labor Department. We must make ending poverty a priority and weave that goal into a network of policies – truly progressive taxation, end huge corporate subsidies and military budget waste, jobs, equal pay for women, child-care, living wages for all workers and restoring the critical social safety net.

A family farm-consumer agriculture policy
American agriculture is being dominated by two contrary trends in the 21st Century. First, conventional family farm agricultural production is being destroyed by low prices and lack of market access due to mergers, acquisitions by big agribusinesses and their monopsony power over farmers. Second, there is a boom in more sustainable agricultural production and consumption due to increased consumer awareness and demand for healthy, fresh, and nutritious food. Federal policy must focus on the farm and food system as a continuum that provides many benefits.

Opposes media bias and media concentration
The mass media in the United States is extremely concentrated, and the messages that they send are too broadly uniform. Six global corporations control more than half of all mass media in our country: newspapers, magazines, books, radio and television. Our democracy is being swamped by the confluence of money, politics and concentrated media. We must reclaim our democracy from the accelerating grip of big-money politics and concentrated corporate media.

Wants a fair tax where the wealthiest and corporations pay their fair share, tax wealth more than work, and tax activities we dislike more than necessities
The complexity and distortions of the federal tax code produces distributions of tax incidence and payroll tax burdens that are skewed in favor of the wealthy and the corporations further garnished by tax shelters, insufficient enforcement and other avoidances.
Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years and now stand at 7.4% despite massive record profits. A fundamental reappraisal of our tax laws should start with a principle that taxes should apply first to behavior and conditions we favor least and pinch basic necessities least such as the clearly addictive industries (alcohol and tobacco), pollution, speculation, gambling, extreme luxuries, taxing work or instead of the 5% to 7% sales tax food, furniture, clothing or books.

Wants a crackdown on corporate crime and abuse
The US needs to crack down on corporate crime, fraud and abuse that have just in the last four years looted and drained trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders and consumers. Among the reforms needed are resources to prosecute and convict the corporate executive crooks and to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have real power; pay back ill-gotten gains; rein in executive pay; and enact corporate sunshine laws, among others.

Wants electoral reform that creates a vibrant, active, participatory Democracy.
Our democracy is in a descending crisis. Voter turnout is among the lowest in the western world. Redistricting ensures very few incumbents are at risk in one-party districts. Barriers to full participation of candidates proliferate making it very obstructive, for most third party and Independent candidates to run. Obstacles, and deliberate manipulations to undermine the right to vote, for which penalties are rarely imposed, are preventing voters from voting. New paperless voting machines are raising questions about whether we can trust that our votes are being counted as they are cast. Finally, money dominates expensive campaigns, mainly waged on television in sound bite format.

Wants to make health care universally available
We need to get the insurance companies out of administering health care, increase patient choice, expand coverage and save money. The United States spends far more on health care per capita than any other country in the world, but more than 45 million Americans have no health insurance. A single-payer program, with full medical coverage, should provide health care that provides comprehensive benefits with quality care and cost controls to all Americans throughout their lives.

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thanks for posting this. I'm somewht disturbed by all the bashing he's gotten in the past two days. I don't thinkhe'llhave much effect, but I do think it's important to have another voice in the debates to bring light to these important issues. I'm not writing anything off yet, a lot could happen.

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Thanks for the reply. I think the Democrats deserve Nader. If they want to run a pro-corporate frat brother of Bush as the 'Candidate of change', then they are marginalizing a portion of their constituency that does vote, and votes loudly. I cannot see how Kerry represents any change from the status quo of Bush's 'steady-as-she-goes' re-election strategy.

I watched the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot for Clinton and Dukakis and ended up mariginalizing themselves because of the lack of integrity they displayed to Republicans that morality is not important to them. I'd rather stay in bed than support the Clinton's and Kerry's of this world.

If all we're going to hear is Bush say "We need to make the pie higher" and Kerry say "ditto", then we need a Nader to shake things up a bit. NOW, if Kerry tries to marginalize his own Party principles and mimic Bush, there will be a corresponding loss of votes they know they need to win. They are their own worst enemy for it and Nader is not to blame they are neglecting addressing the real issues.

I understand Nader is trying to get the shell of the campaign Dean was running to put back up to use for his own Campaign. I don't see Dean's votes going to Kerry given the choice. It's kind of like the head of the afl-cio saying he endorses Kerry. So what! The members won't support an anti-labor Candidate no matter how much they say they will.

I know a teachers Union in Rochester NY. The teachers hate the union and take every election as a way to pay it back for the constant betrayal by its elitist leadership, which uses corrupt power to entrench itself no matter how they want it changed. Not all Union heads speak for the members, it's just show for the 'controlled-media' to say it does.

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