INTERVIEW- New focus: Nader turns attention to families

In Issue 615
By LINDSAY BARNES
In the category

Published April 12, 2007 in issue 0615 of the HooK.

When he has spent a long career fighting for John Q. Public against everything from unsafe cars to greenhouse gases to the two-party political system, what's a consumer advocate to turn to next? Ralph Nader found his answer in trying to right this country's oldest institution: the American family.

In his latest book, The Seventeen Traditions, Nader conveys the lessons of his rural Connecticut childhood in the '30s and '40s, which he says have been lost in the era of soccer moms and iPods.

The Hook: This is a kind of introspective writing we're not used to seeing from you. What made you want to write it?

Ralph Nader: Firstly, it's a love story for my mom and dad, but also in traveling around the country, I found that a lot of parents think things are out of control, including their children. Most children spend 50-60 hours a week in front of a screen. So they're not getting that intergenerational transfer. We have a website called seventeentraditions.org to help people get the ball rolling in their own families.

The Hook: Bill Richardson just put out a memoir, and Barack Obama just published his second. Does this mean you're running for president in 2008?

Ralph Nader: No, that's pretty coincidental. We actually wanted it to come out last year around Christmas.

The Hook: When can we expect to hear if you are?

Ralph Nader: There have to be thousands of volunteers just to get on the ballot, with third party access being made so difficult by phony lawsuits from the Democratic National Committee and their state allies. I'll make up my mind sometime in the fall.

The Hook: What do you think of the Democratic field so far?

Ralph Nader: It's going to be tough to stop Hillary [Clinton]. There are too many IOUs the Clintons can call in. They don't take explicit stands, so they don't offend anyone. They pander and flatter because they're skilled opportunists. She doesn't go after military contractors even though she's on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She hasn't done what [Governor] Elliot Spitzer has done in New York and go after corporate crime. It's going to be hard to stop her.

The Hook: What do you think of Barack Obama?

Ralph Nader: He has great capacity, but he needs to fill in the blanks from a policy standpoint, and I suspect he'll do that in the next few months. None of them will be agents of change unless the citizenry riles itself and organizes. Healthcare for all is an example. There's no grassroots organization. If people continue to be spectators instead of shaping the way presidential candidates campaign by forming coalitions of citizen groups, it's just going to be 30-second TV spots and dialing for dollars.

The Hook: What do you say to those who blame you for putting George W. Bush in the White House?

Ralph Nader: I would say, "Why are you so politically bigoted?" You know as well as I do that Al Gore won the election, and it was taken away from him in Tallahassee and in a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision. My arithmetic tells me that Bush took more votes from Gore than I did. Do you think the two parties should get all the voters? Did they oppose Pat Buchannan running in 2000? Secondly, a study by Solon Simmons at George Mason University shows that, based on exit polls, my campaign led people who would have normally stayed home to go to the polls and vote for Gore. So Gore got more votes than I took from him.

The Hook: In spite of your perceived status as being on the political fringe when it comes to electoral politics, you've managed to get a lot accomplished in terms of getting legislation passed to set up new agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safetay and Health Administration. What's your secret?

Ralph Nader: Knowledge, persistence, stamina, weekends, letting others take the credit on Capitol Hill. Also, you get better at something the more you do it, whether it's stone masonry, or medicine, or public advocacy. I've also learned not to be the lone ranger. The more people you train and have working with you, the easier it is. Do you know about this telephone excise tax act?

The Hook: No, why don't you tell me about it?

Ralph Nader: The tax law was antiquated, and there's $10 billion to be refunded to businesses and $10 billion to go to individuals. So there's a box people can check on their 1040 if you had long distance telephone bills in the last three years, and you can get anywhere from $30 to $60 back, or it will reduce the income tax you owe. You can go to irs.gov to find out more.

The Hook: Do you see anyone else taking up the public advocacy mantle?

Ralph Nader: Sure. It's going on all the time on the local level, but you don't hear about it because of the deterioration of the local news. It's a caricature now. There are probably only four minutes of actual news out of 30 minutes. Weather isn't news unless you have got a hurricane. News is what's going on the community: improving neighborhoods, what local businesses are doing. But they actually advertise the weather segment like you can't get it anywhere else. They promote these weather correspondents as seers. There's nothing funnier than watching the weather forecast when there's six days of sunshine. They take the temperature in two towns that are two miles apart and say, "It was 59 in this town, but it was 60 over here!" It'd be tragic if it wasn't funny.

The Hook: Al Gore elevated the issue of global warming in the national consciousness to its highest level with An Inconvenient Truth. Any chance you'd make a documentary?

Ralph Nader: This is the golden age of documentaries. The Iraq documentaries are great, Michael Moore's going to weigh in in June with Sicko [a look at the American healthcare system]. But, no, I have no interest. They did one on me last year, An Unreasonable Man. I didn't participate in it except to be interviewed for seven hours. It almost got an Oscar nomination, but the voters are all of a traditional Democratic party persuasion. An Inconvenient Truth was a gripping PowerPoint presentation, but it was all about Gore.

Ralph Nader will read excerpts from The Seventeen Traditions at a book signing on Thursday, April 12 at 3pm at Gravity Lounge.

Ralph Nader says he'll decide this fall whether to make a 2008 run for the presidency.
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Discuss " INTERVIEW- New focus: Nader turns attention to families " Below

Posted by 4/12/2007 4:59:41 PM

That is one vote by Cletus for MONEY continuing to run America. Are there any votes for a republic that is by the people and for the people?

Posted by 4/12/2007 9:29:31 PM

Cletus. Your such a leming. You have now accepted the party line of both Republicans and Democrats, which is "prepare to be assimilated. Resistance if futile."

Posted by 4/13/2007 2:58:57 AM

I interviewed Ralph Nader as part of my research for a new biography Citizen Moore. Most people don't knnow that Nader was one of two employer's central to Moore's career (the other was Mother Jones where Moore was fired). He went to work for Nader to edit a media newsletter, Moore's Weekly and secretly began working on the film that became Roger & Me. Although Nader fire him, Moore later campaigned for Nader in 2000 and then ultimately decided to dump him just before the elction. Ironically Bush's election was the best thing that ever happened to Moore career wise, setting up a chain of political events that brought Moore back to the forefront and ultimately led to his blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11. Today of course it appears that Al Gore is emerging as the new Michael Moore, a heavyweight filmmaker with a focus on the central issues of our time. Moore himself has ruled himself out as a candidate claiming that America is not ready for the "eat out more often" platform.

Posted by 4/13/2007 7:10:49 AM

Roger,

Thanks for that irrelevant ramble. Much appreciated.

Posted by 4/13/2007 10:56:40 AM

I disagree with you about that Cletus. And Michael Moore own's Halliburton stock. He's a corporate schill as well, just a little more sophisticated one, for the little more sophisticated types. Just like Al Gore. He's for the "liberal" brand of idiot, who likes to feel good about the environment while accepting the elite's propaganda about the fossil fuel greenhouse effect (not real folks) being instilled into children since grade school, as a means to exploit the current climate change going on due to natural and man-made factors (see "The Sun" and "Weather Modification") by blaming it on the common people, and using that to control society in many different ways, like a global fossil fuel tax, and to have an excuse to inflict tyranny, since the scheme they pulled on 9/11 is losing its effect, they need a new excuse, and Global Warming is the just the chicken little scenario they need to get people into an organized system of control. Al Gore is a petrowhore, just a different brand for a different brand of gullible person. Those military jet chemical trails they spray, forming thin cloud layers of water droplets condensing on these barium and aluminum particles they're spraying, trap more solar warmth in the atmosphere than they block the sun's radiational heating, acting as a greenhouse glass panel would. That's not the only purpose of this project by any means, but it does help in warming up the upper atmosphere, making condensation, and thus precipitation, impossible. Unless they want it to rain, in which case they bounce scalar waves off the particles to ionize the atmosphere and manipulate the jetstream, wind currents, and pressure gradients. Hurricanes can be greatly weakened by man-made cloud seeding, and have been, since at least the late nineteen sixties. If they aren't spending a few million on Hurricanes like Katrina and Rita seeding them to weaken them, that just makes the anomalies (see "perfect symmetry") in the Katrina satellite picture all the more suspicious. In other words, Katrina was modified. And Nader is a clown act.

Posted by 4/13/2007 6:51:28 PM

You may be a brilliant scientist (or not). I really don't care to know. However, you should stay in your lane too. You sound just as foolish when you talk about politics, law and social policy. "I agree that Nader isn't a fit choice. But he seems like a nice guy and he's done some great things for auto safety." We'll there you go. You certainly changed my mind. Anybody that does something for auto safety will surely make a great President. Besides, he is a nice guy! Now I'm laughing :)

Posted by 4/14/2007 8:00:46 AM

Cletus . . . a fitting name for a Virginia hillbilly that cannot converse with somebody with an opposing viewpoint without resorting to personal insults. You go Cletus and ya'll come back now . . . ya here!

Posted by 4/15/2007 8:39:46 AM

You sure seem like a VA hillbilly. The name, your lack of ability to converse without resorting to insult, etc. Cletus . . . your such a dunce.

Posted by 4/16/2007 4:23:40 PM

I'm sorry Cletus. To make things up to you . . . I'll drop a bottle of moonshine off to ya. Now pick up that banjo and play a jig.

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