CSPAN Schedule Sunday June 5

[notadmblnd]

CSPAN Schedule
Sunday June 5


CSPAN Journal starts at 7AM eastern, so you (esp west coasters) may wish to submit questions via website -
http://www.c-span.org/community/submitwj.asp

""Ask the C-SPAN Guests" on Washington Journal. Please review the program schedule with guest information before submitting your questions. NOTE: Please keep your questions short, directed to a particular guest & without commentary. Submissions that do not follow these rules may be discarded."

....or call:
support Democrats 202-737-0002
support bush 202-737-0001
others 202-737-0205 OR
Washington Journal: Democrats [phone]
Washington Journal: Republicans [phone]
Washington Journal: Others [phone]

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07:00 AM EDT
0:30 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
Open Phones
C-SPAN, Washington Journal

07:30 AM EDT
0:45 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
Judge Brown Nomination
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Wade Henderson , Leadership Conf. on Civil Rights
Niger Innis , Congress of Racial Equality

08:15 AM EDT
0:30 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
Watergate Scandal Revelations
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Alexander Haig , White House

08:45 AM EDT
0:15 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
Open Phones
C-SPAN, Washington Journal

09:00 AM EDT
1:00 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
Bush Administration Performance and Policies
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Ralph Nader , I, Independent

10:02 AM EDT
0:43 (est.)
Speech
Judicial Nominations
New York Law School
Edward M. Kennedy , D-MA

10:47 AM EDT
0:19 (est.)
Speech
Republican Agenda
Greater Houston Partnership
Tom DeLay , R, Texas

11:09 AM EDT
1:03 (est.)
Forum
Judicial Nominations
Campaign for America's Future
Wade Henderson , Leadership Conf. on Civil Rights
Ralph G. Neas , People for the American Way

01:01 PM EDT
0:59 (est.)
Booknotes
American Culture, American Tastes
C-SPAN
Michael Kammen , Cornell University

01:30 PM EDT
0:55 (est.) Call-In
Bush Administration Performance and Policies
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Ralph Nader , I, Independent

05:35 PM EDT
0:25 (est.) Call-In
Watergate Scandal Revelations
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Alexander Haig , White House

06:10 PM EDT
0:20 (est.) Broadcast
W. Mark Felt Interview
CBS, Face the Nation
W. Mark Felt , Federal Bureau of Investigation

08:00 PM EDT
0:55 (est.) Interview
Q & A with Wesley Pruden
C-SPAN, Q&A
Brian Lamb , C-SPAN
Wesley Pruden , Washington Times

08:58 PM EDT
0:00 (est.)
News Conference
Deep Throat Disclosure
CBS, News Media Stakeout
James Mann

08:58 PM EDT
0:00 (est.)
Broadcast
W. Mark Felt Interview
CBS, Face the Nation
W. Mark Felt , Federal Bureau of Investigation

08:58 PM EDT
1:15 (est.)
Forum
Progressive Politics
Campaign for America's Future
Robert Borosage , Campaign for America's Future
Jan Schakowsky , D-IL

09:30 PM EDT
1:25 (est.) Video Magazine
Road to the White House

C-SPAN
11:00 PM EDT
0:55 (est.) Interview
Q & A with Wesley Pruden
C-SPAN, Q&A
Brian Lamb , C-SPAN
Wesley Pruden , Washington Times

12:10 AM EDT
0:20 (est.) Broadcast
W. Mark Felt Interview
CBS, Face the Nation
W. Mark Felt , Federal Bureau of Investigation

12:30 AM EDT
1:25 (est.) Video Magazine
Road to the White House

C-SPAN
02:35 AM EDT
0:55 (est.) Call-In
Bush Administration Performance and Policies
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Ralph Nader , I, Independent

06:00 AM EDT
0:55 (est.) Interview
Q & A with Wesley Pruden
C-SPAN, Q&A
Brian Lamb , C-SPAN
Wesley Pruden , Washington Times
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08:15 AM EDT
3:45 (est.) Forum
BookExpo America
BookExpo America

12:00 PM EDT
2:55 (est.) LIVE
Call-In
In Depth with Richard John Neuhaus
C-SPAN
Richard John Neuhaus , First Things
The beginning and end of this live program may be earlier or later than the scheduled times.

06:00 PM EDT
0:55 (est.) Interview
After Words with Zell Miller
C-SPAN
John B. Anderson , Center for Voting and Democracy
Zell Miller , D-GA

09:00 PM EDT
0:55 (est.) Interview
After Words with Zell Miller
C-SPAN
John B. Anderson , Center for Voting and Democracy
Zell Miller , D-GA

12:00 AM EDT
2:55 (est.) Call-In
In Depth with Richard John Neuhaus
C-SPAN
Richard John Neuhaus , First Things
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08:59 AM EDT
0:25 (est.)
Tour
Cemetery Hill Tour
C-SPAN
Gary Kross

09:24 AM EDT
0:29 (est.)
Video Magazine
On the Road with School Bus: Battles in American History
C-SPAN, School Bus

09:53 AM EDT
0:06 (est.)
Vignette
Franklin D. Roosevelt Biographical Vignette
C-SPAN

10:00 AM EDT
2:20 (est.)
Forum
Protect and Defend
New York School of Law
Alan Dershowitz , Harvard University
Nadine Strossen , American Civil Liberties Union

12:21 PM EDT
0:39 (est.)
Tour
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station
Department of Defense
Ted Stevens , R-AK
Donald Rumsfeld , Department of Defense

02:02 PM EDT
2:20 (est.)
Forum
Protect and Defend
New York School of Law
Alan Dershowitz , Harvard University
Nadine Strossen , American Civil Liberties Union

04:22 PM EDT
0:39 (est.)
Tour
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station
Department of Defense
Ted Stevens , R-AK
Donald Rumsfeld , Department of Defense

05:03 PM EDT
1:14 (est.)
Speech
Lincoln's Men
Book Revue Book Store
William Davis , Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ.

06:18 PM EDT
0:40 (est.)
Interview
Black Hawk Down: Interview
Simon and Schuster
Mark Bowden , Philadelphia Inquirer

06:59 PM EDT
2:20 (est.)
Forum
Protect and Defend
New York School of Law
Alan Dershowitz , Harvard University
Nadine Strossen , American Civil Liberties Union

09:20 PM EDT
0:39 (est.)
Tour
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station
Department of Defense
Ted Stevens , R-AK
Donald Rumsfeld , Department of Defense

10:00 PM EDT
0:16 (est.)
Speech
Nixon Resignation Address
White House, Oval Office
Richard M. Nixon , United States

10:16 PM EDT
1:02 (est.)
Speech
In Search of Deep Throat
Chapters: A Literary Bookstore
Leonard Garment

11:20 PM EDT
0:29 (est.)
Interview
Breaking the Watergate Story
Freedom Forum
Katharine Graham , Washington Post
Peter Prichard , Freedom Forum

11:49 PM EDT
8:57 (est.)
Interview
Watergate Anniversary
C-SPAN
Richard Ben-Veniste , Watergate Investigation
12:01 AM EDT

1:01 (est.)
Forum
Watergate Revisited
Washingtonpost.com
Ben Bradlee , Washington Post
Bob Woodward , Washington Post

01:04 AM EDT
0:59 (est.)
Booknotes
Kennedy and Nixon
C-SPAN
Chris Matthews , San Francisco Examiner

02:04 AM EDT
0:16 (est.)
Speech
Nixon Resignation Address
White House, Oval Office
Richard M. Nixon , United States

02:20 AM EDT
1:02 (est.)
Speech
In Search of Deep Throat
Chapters: A Literary Bookstore
Leonard Garment

03:24 AM EDT
0:29 (est.)
Interview
Breaking the Watergate Story
Freedom Forum
Katharine Graham , Washington Post
Peter Prichard , Freedom Forum

03:53 AM EDT
1:01 (est.)
Forum
Watergate Revisited
Washingtonpost.com
Ben Bradlee , Washington Post
Bob Woodward , Washington Post

04:56 AM EDT
1:13 (est.)
Speech
The Year 1000
Borders Books & Music
Robert Lacey

06:09 AM EDT
0:49 (est.)
Speech
In the Kennedy Style
Woman's National Democratic Club
Letitia Baldrige , White House

06:59 AM EDT
0:15 (est.)
Speech
Nixon Resignation Address
White House, Oval Office
Richard M. Nixon , United States

[paineinthearse]

1. Alexander Haig , White House

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. (born December 2, 1924) was a general in the United States Army who commanded an infantry division in Vietnam, then returned stateside in 1969 to become a member of Henry Kissinger's national security council staff. Haig helped South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to negotiate the final cease-fire talks in 1972.

From 1973 until 1974, Haig served as Richard Nixon's White House Chief of Staff, during which he played a large "crisis management" role as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin speculated in their 1991 book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President that Haig may have been "Deep Throat," noting Woodward and Haig knew each other when Woodward worked in naval intelligence, but it was revealed in 2005 that W. Mark Felt, the associate director of the FBI, was Woodward and Bernstein's source.

From 1974 to 1979, Haig served as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.


Chief of Staff Haig (far right), Sec. of State Kissinger, Rep. Ford and President Nixon meet on October 13, 1973 regarding Ford's upcoming appointment to Vice-President.In 1981 he was appointed as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State but resigned in late 1982. He was criticized in 1981, after the assassination attempt on Reagan, for asserting before reporters that "I'm in control here" as a result of Reagan's hospitalization. The quotation became seen as an attempt by Haig to exceed his authority. The full quotation, which has often been overlooked, is:

Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.
Nevertheless, Haig was incorrect in his interpretation of the United States Constitution as far as both the presidential line of succession is concerned and in regard to the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution which deals with what happens when a president is incapacitated.

The Falklands/Malvinas War occurred during Haig's tenure as Secretary of State and saw Haig attempt to conduct shuttle diplomacy in April 1982 following the Argentine invasion but prior to the arrival of the British fleet in the war zone. Haig met with both the British government in London and the Argentine government in Buenos Aires but talks broke down and Haig returned to Washington on April 19.

A military hawk, his tenure as Secretary of State was often characterized by his clashes with the more moderate Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger.

Haig unsuccessfully ran for the Republican Party nomination for President in 1988.

Alexander Haig is the father of author Brian Haig.


Chief of Staff Haig (far right), Sec. of State Kissinger, Rep. Ford and President Nixon meet on October 13, 1973 regarding Ford's upcoming appointment to Vice-President.

[paineinthearse]

2. Ralph Nader

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ralph NaderRalph Nader (born February 27, 1934) is an activist attorney who opposes the power of large corporations and has worked for decades on environmental, consumer rights, and pro-democracy issues. Nader has also been a strong critic of recent American foreign policy, which he views as corporatist, imperialist, and contrary to fundamental values of democracy and human rights.

Nader was the U.S. presidential candidate of the Green Party in the 1996 election and 2000 election. In both 1996 and 2000, Winona LaDuke was his vice-presidential running mate. In 2004, however, the Green Party nominated David Cobb, and Nader ran as an independent candidate in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In some states in 2004, Nader achieved ballot access by virtue of winning the nomination of an alternative political party, such as the Reform Party, and in others by forming a Populist Party. His vice-presidential running mate in 2004 was Green Party activist Peter Camejo.

Contents (go to site for links)
1 Early career
2 Clash with the automobile industry
3 Activist movement
3.1 Non-profit organizations
4 Consumer advocacy, public interest, and civic action
5 Presidential aspirations
5.1 1990
5.2 1992
5.3 1996
5.4 2000
5.5 2004
5.5.1 Ballot access
5.5.2 Effect on major-party candidates
5.5.3 Results
6 Personal information
7 External links
7.1 Pro-Nader
7.2 Anti-Nader

Early career
Ralph Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose Nader, were Lebanese immigrants. He has three siblings: Shafeek (deceased), Laura (Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley), and Claire Nader. His father was employed in a nearby textile mill and at one point owned a bakery and restaurant where he engaged customers in discussions of political issues.

Ralph graduated from Princeton University in 1955 and Harvard Law School in 1958. During his time at Princeton, it was rumoured that he had his own key to the main library. He served in the United States Army for six months in 1959, then began work as a lawyer in Hartford. Current Biography in 1986 reported that when he left the Army in 1959, Nader, who is famous for his personal frugality and his objection to commercialism, made one last visit to the Army PX and purchased twelve pairs of shoes and four dozen sturdy cotton military issue socks, which, as of the mid-1980's, he had not yet worn out. Between 1961 and 1963, he was a Professor of History and Government at the University of Hartford. In 1963, Nader hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. and got a job working for then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He later did freelance writing for The Nation and the Christian Science Monitor. He also advised a Senate subcommittee on automobile safety. In the early 1980s, Nader spearheaded a powerful lobby against FDA approval allowing for mass-scale experimentation of artificial lens implants.

Clash with the automobile industry
In 1965 he released Unsafe at Any Speed, a study claiming that many American automobiles, especially those of General Motors, were fundamentally flawed. GM tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to investigate his past and attempt to trap him in a compromising situation, but the effort failed. Upon learning of this harassment, Nader successfully sued the company for invasion of privacy, forced it to publicly apologize, and used much of his $284,000 net settlement to expand his consumer rights efforts. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the high Court of New York, whose opinion in the case expanded the privacy rights that can be remedied in tort. Nader v. General Motors Corp., 307 N.Y.S.2d 647 (N.Y. 1970).

Activist movement
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" and, led by Nader, they investigated corruption throughout government, 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 150,000 members and numerous researchers investigating Congress, health, environmental, economic, and other issues. Their work is credited with helping to pass the Safe Drinking Water Act and Freedom of Information Act and prompting the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Their various divisions include:

Buyers Up
Citizen Action Group
Congress Watch
Critical Mass Energy Project
Global Trade Watch
Health Research Group
Litigation Group
Tax Reform Research Group
The Visitor's Center

Non-profit organizations
In 1980 Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, especially campaigning against the believed dangers of large multinational corporations. He went on to start a variety of non-profit organizations:

Capitol Hill News Service
Corporate Accountability Research Project
Disability Rights Center
Equal Justice Foundation
Georgia Legal Watch
National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform
National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest
PROD (truck safety)
Retired Professionals Action Group
The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest
Congress Accountability Project
Citizen Advocacy Center
Pension Rights Center
Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights
Center for Auto Safety
1955: Princeton Project 55
1969: Center for the Study of Responsive Law
1970s: Public Interest Research Groups
1970: Connecticut Citizen Action Group
1971: Center for Science in the Public Interest
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
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 with Bob on Sesame Street, singing People in Your NeighborhoodBecause much of his early work involved advocacy to protect consumers (and workers) from unsafe products, Ralph Nader is often referred to as a "consumer advocate." This description should not be misunderstood 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 commercially-driven consumer culture. 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 his critique of television news as largely empty sensationalism, Nader acknowledges that most Americans may have been trained to behave as passive "consumers" of what passes for news, but Nader's call for engagement urges citizens to work together to organize community-based news production.


Presidential aspirations

1990
Nader considered launching a third party around issues of citizen empowerment and consumer rights. He stated that the Democratic Party had become "so bankrupt, it doesn't matter if it wins any elections." He suggested a serious third party could address needs such as campaign-finance reform, worker and whistle-blower rights, government-sanctioned watchdog groups to oversee banks and insurance agencies, and class-action lawsuit reforms.

1992
Nader waged a minor write-in campaign for "None of the Above" in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, which had the unintended effect of resulting in a few thousand votes for Nader himself.

1996
Nader was drafted as a candidate for President on the Green Party ticket in the U.S. presidential election, 1996. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Greens/Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader in 1996. Nader qualified for ballot status in relatively few states, garnering less than 1% of the vote, though the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Elections Commission reporting requirements; the unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself.

2000
Nader ran again in 2000 as the candidate of the Green Party of the United States, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign. This time he received almost 3% of the popular vote, missing the 5% needed to qualify the Green Party for federal matching funds in the next election.

The exclusion of Nader and other third-party candidates from events staged by the bi-partisan controlled Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) contributed to the marginalization of those candidates and helped minimize their support on election day. This issue led to an effort to build a more independent Citizens' Debate Commission.

Nader campaigned against the pervasiveness of corporate power and spoke on the need for campaign finance reform, environmental justice, universal healthcare, affordable housing, free education through college, workers' rights, legalization of commercial hemp, and a shift in taxes to place the burden more heavily on corporations than on the middle and lower classes. He opposed pollution credits that make it more profitable to pollute than conserve, and giveaways of publicly-owned assets.

The extremely close race between the two major presidential candidates, Al Gore and Bush, helped to create some additional controversy around the Nader campaign. Before the election, a number of those who supported Gore claimed that since Nader had no realistic chance of winning, those who supported the Nader platform should nevertheless vote for Gore, the theory being that a victory for Gore was preferable to a victory for George W. Bush, even if an individual voter might, in a perfect world, prefer Nader. Late in the campaign, the Gore campaign got prominent liberal celebrities to present this argument to voters in swing states. Nader and many of his supporters, however, claimed that while Gore was perhaps marginally preferable to Bush, the differences between the two were not great enough to merit support of Gore.

When challenged with complaints that he was taking away votes from Al Gore, Nader replied that the voters who preferred Nader did not "belong" to Gore, and that it would be more accurate to say that Gore was trying to take away votes from Nader, by scaring voters into voting for the lesser of two evils. Nader suggested at times that his campaign was offering a chance to save the Democratic Party, and at other times, made the contradictory argument that the party was not worth saving. When Nader argued that he would hold the Democrats' "feet to the fire," he was suggesting that he wanted to move the Democratic Party in a more progressive direction. However, at other moments Nader said that, because the Democratic Party had slid so low and had become so beholden to corporate power, the Democratic Party deserved to go the way of the Whigs. Running as the Green Party's nominee in 2000, Nader indicated that he would support Green candidates who ran against even the most progressive Democrats, such as Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold.

As it turned out, Nader's vote total exceeded Bush's margin over Gore in Florida (as did each other third party candidate's) and in New Hampshire, which meant that, all else being the same, Gore would have won the Electoral College vote (and thus the presidency) if even a small fraction (as little as 1%) of Nader's supporters in Florida had instead voted for Gore, or if a larger fraction of the Nader supporters in New Hampshire had done so. Nader supporters said that many Nader voters would not have voted at all if Nader had not been on the ballot. Regardless, many analysts believed that a substantial number of Nader supporters would more likely have chosen Gore over Bush. Even Nader stated, both in his book Crashing the Party, and also on his website: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." <1> (http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=14)) Most political analysts and experts believe that Nader's presence on the ballot in Florida in 2000 was one of many factors which combined to cause Bush to win the election. For their part, Nader supporters countered that, instead of blaming Nader, Gore should accept responsibility because Gore's own failure to win his home state of Tennessee was a "but-for cause" of Gore's loss. uss Nader supporters maintained that the Democrats could handily have won the election against Bush (whom Nader referred to during the campaign as "a giant corporation masquerading as a human being"), with a better campaign or with a better candidate than Gore, who they say made a series of blunders throughout the campaign, including in his debates against George W. Bush. Nader supporters said that Gore's campaign themes were largely a creature of the "centrist" and corporate-supported Democratic Leadership Council, which had once been chaired by then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. The U.S. presidential election, 2000 was hounded by the Florida situation, and some Nader supporters suggested that if the Democratic Party was so eager to blame someone else in order to avoid responsibility for losing the election, perhaps the Democrats should blame the Supreme Court for calling a halt to the Florida recount, thereby effectively declaring Bush the winner.

Some voters had attempted to minimize the "spoiler" problem by engaging in strategic "vote-pairing," or so-called Nader trading, in which Nader-inclined voters in swing states would agree to vote for Gore in exchange for Gore-inclined voters in safe Bush states to vote for Nader. This strategic idea, which was championed by law professor Jamin Raskin, was based on the observation that, under the electoral college system, individual votes for a losing presidential candidate within a given state (or individual "surplus" votes for the winner within a state) are necessarily wasted. Even though "Nader trading" had the theoretical potential to allow Al Gore to win the election and at the same time to earn the Green Party the 5% that would lead to a possible award of FEC party convention funding, Nader himself declined to endorse the "vote-trading" idea in 2000. Nader and his campaign explained that they were running in every state and that they were encouraging voters to vote according to conscience.

The "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" slogan, which supporters of Gore urged against Nader, was an instance of the so-called spoiler effect phenomenon, in an election where more than two candidates are running and it is feared that the presence of more than one candidate with relatively similar views will split the vote that is cast "against" another candidate, who becomes the beneficiary of the split vote. Such fears often plague third-party or independent candidates, especially those perceived as likely to draw most of their support from demographics who would otherwise support one or the other candidate. Thus, Gore supporters tried to persuade voters who preferred Nader to vote for Gore in order to prevent the election of the "greater evil" (referring to Bush). Some Democrats attempted to convert those who supported Nader by claiming that doing so made them "dupes" of the Republican party.

Ironically, Greens in some states turned on supporters of David McReynolds, the Socialist Party USA candidate in the 2000 race, and used similar tactics to try to push McReynolds supporters to "get in line" and support Nader. (Despite what their supporters argued, there was no evidence that Nader and McReynolds had anything other than a 'friendly-foe' respect for each other.)

The "spoiler" problem is endemic to the First Past the Post electoral system; according to Duverger's Law, such a voting method naturally results in a two-party system. Some, such as Democrat Dennis Kucinich, advocate approval voting or instant runoff voting to address the spoiler effect. Nader has made strong statements in favor of electoral reforms and it was included in Nader's list of 2004 campaign issues (http://www.votenader.com/issues/index.php).

But since, in the long run, both the Democratic and Republican parties appear to be net beneficiaries of the existing state of affairs, and because the major parties control state legislatures, many commentators conclude that electoral reform legislation to make the voting system more representative is highly improbable - unless of course at least one major party begins to suffer because of the lack of reform.

2004

Ralph Nader (right) with Dennis Kucinich.Main article: Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2004

Nader announced on December 24, 2003 that he would not run for president in 2004 on the Green Party ticket; however, he did not rule out running as an independent. On February 22, 2004, Nader announced on NBC's Meet the Press that he would indeed run for president as an independent, saying, "There's too much power and wealth in too few hands." Because of the controversies over vote-splitting in 2000, many Democrats urged Nader to abandon his candidacy. The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe argued that Nader had a "distinguished career, fighting for working families" and McAuliffe "would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush."

On May 19, 2004, Nader met with John Kerry in Washington D.C. for a private session, concerning Nader's factor in the 2004 election. Nader refused to withdraw from the race, citing specifically the importance to him of the removal of troops from Iraq. The meeting itself ended in disagreement. On the same day, two Democratic leaning groups, the National Progress Fund and the Democracy Action Team, were formed. They both sought to reduce the effect of Nader upon Democratic voters that might be persuaded to vote for him. The following day, the Democracy Action Team's Stop Nader (http://www.stopnader.com/) campaign announced they would air TV commercials (http://www.stopnader.com/nadervision.asp) in key battleground states.

On June 21, 2004, Nader announced that Peter Camejo, a co-founder of the California Green Party, would be his vice presidential running mate. Shortly thereafter, Nader announced that he would accept (although he was not actively seeking) the endorsement, but not nomination, of the Greens as their presidential candidate. Later in June, however, the Green National Convention rejected Nader, whose supporters were voting for "nobody" (a.k.a. Ralph Nader), as a candidate in favor of David Cobb, an attorney and Green Party activist. Nader's failure to take the Green Party's nomination meant that he could not take advantage of the Green Party's ballot access in 22 states, and that he would have to achieve ballot access there independently.

Ballot access
On April 5, 2004, Nader failed in an attempt to get on the Oregon ballot. "Unwritten rules" disqualified over 700 valid voter signatures, all of which had already been verified by county elections officers, who themselves signed and dated every sheet with an affidavit of authenticity (often with a county seal as well). This subtraction left Nader 218 short of the 15,306 needed. He vowed to gather the necessary signatures in a petition drive. Secretary of State Bill Bradbury disqualified many of his signatures as fraudulent; the Marion County Circuit Court ruled that this action was unconstitutional as the criteria for Bradbury's disqualifications were based upon "unwritten rules" not found in electoral code, but the state Supreme Court ultimately reversed this ruling. Nader appealed this decision to the US Supreme Court, but a decision did not arrive before the 2004 election.

On September 18, 2004, the Florida Supreme Court ordered that Nader be included on the 2004 ballot in Florida as the Reform Party candidate. The court rejected the arguments that the Reform Party did not meet the requirements of the Florida election code for access to the ballot — that the party must be a "national party" and that it must have nominated its candidate in a "national convention" — and therefore Nader should have attempted to file as an independent candidate. Specifically, the court ruled that the term "national party" must be interpreted as broadly as possible. The Reform Party has a ballot line in only some U.S. states.

In the general election, Nader appeared on the ballot in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Ballot access ultimately became one of the most significant issues of the Nader campaign - in his concession speech, Nader characterized ballot access as a "civil liberties issue" and noted that Democratic attempts to challenge his ballot access were rejected in the "overwhelming majority" of state courts.

Effect on major-party candidates
The expectation among many analysts was that Nader’s candidacy would benefit Bush by taking more votes from Kerry than from Bush. Lending credence to that opinion, a Republican organization in Michigan worked to gather petition signatures to place Nader on the Michigan ballot after Democratic Party lawyers succeeded in having Nader thrown off the Michigan ballot as the Reform Party's nominee.

Democratic Party groups worried about the so-called "spoiler effect," such as "Up for Victory," were formed specifically to undermine and discredit Nader, and to knock him off the ballot in as many states as possible. These groups, as well as some journalists, pointed to FEC filings showing that the Nader campaign had accepted campaign contributions from several individual donors who were also contributing to Bush's campaign, including a donation from one individual who had helped to fund televised advertisements by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that attacked Kerry's military service record in the Vietnam War and Kerry's subsequent activity in the 1970's as a leader of the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Nader's campaign countered that John Kerry had received far more money in 2004 from individual Republican donors than Nader had, and that Nader was in fact not accepting organized Republican help.

An exception to Nader's refusal to accept organized Republican help was in Michigan, where the Democratic Party's legal challenge to remove Nader from the ballot (as the Reform Party's nominee) led the Nader campaign to say that it would, if necessary in order to keep Nader on the ballot in Michigan, accept ballot access petition signatures gathered by Republicans.

In Florida and several other states, Nader’s ballot access came because of his nomination by the Reform Party. The Reform Party nominee in 2000 had been conservative Pat Buchanan; some anti-Nader Democrats took this as evidence that Nader was being helped by supporters of Bush, but most conservatives had left the Reform Party after Buchanan's poor showing in 2000.

A group of Nader’s supporters from 2000 endorsed Vote to Stop Bush, a statement urging voters in swing states to vote for Kerry, in order to prevent a second term for President George W. Bush. Even Nader’s running mate in 1996 and 2000, Winona LaDuke, endorsed Kerry. Another approach was taken by “RalphPlease.org (http://www.ralphplease.org)”, which gathered conditional contributions – pledges to donate to Public Citizen if Nader would withdraw from the race.

The Nader campaign contended that the donations it received were given by "people who agree with him on the issues and want him to get his message out to the public". Nader also responded to such claims by pointing out that Democratic opponent John Kerry received $10.7 million dollars from donors who also contributed to Bush or to some other Republican candidate - nearly 100 times that of the $111,700 Nader received.

A significant number of progressives, felt that Nader was not doing enough to promote election law reform issues. They critized him for trying to change the electoral system through an impractical presidential campaigns (independent and third party presidential candidates are not going to win under the current system) rather then working with interest groups such as ] and Fair Vote to lobby for reforms. The result was that a growing number of Democrats, including the Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean asked Nader to work with progressives to promote fairer ballot access laws, campaign finance reform and alternative voting methods.

Results
Nader received many fewer votes than he had in 2000, dropping from about 2.9 million votes (2.74 percent of the popular vote) to just over 459,000 (less than 0.4 percent). As of December 1, 2004, with some write-in votes for Nader still not tallied in some of the 16 juridictions where Nader was not on the ballot (including California), Nader's vote total placed him only slightly more than 63,000 votes ahead of the fourth-place candidate, Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party, who appeared on 49 ballots. Fears that Nader would play a "spoiler" role that would harm the Democrats proved unfounded -- Kerry's margins of loss in states won by Bush were all substantially larger than the percentage of votes gathered by Nader.

Personal information
Nader has never been married, and has denied rumors that he was gay while running for president in 2000. According to the mandatory financial disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, he then owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. <2> (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26345) Nader's total net worth is between $4.1 million and $5 million. However, the consumer advocate has made more than $15 million in his lifetime, most of which he has given away.

Ralph Nader's lifestyle is unusually austere for an American celebrity (Nader has appeared on the NBC Saturday Night Live television show four times, including hosting the show January 15, 1977). Nader inhabits a modest apartment in Washington DC, equipped with a black-and-white television, which he watches only rarely. His attention is focused on the work of his public interest crusades. Nader has donated the vast bulk of his earnings over his lifetime (from royalties, lectures, legal work, and so forth) to funding public interest causes.

Nader's harsh and uncompromising critiques of corporate and political wrongdoing have earned him a reputation as an angry and gloomy "national scold." Yet, despite this caricature, which no doubt reflects the seriousness and intensity with which Nader approaches his work, people well acquainted with Ralph Nader generally speak of his persistent optimism, his abiding sense of humor, and his unfailing wit.

[paineinthearse]

3. Sunday morning news shows

regular view
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TV NEWS SHOWS
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Sunday, June 5, 2005


Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows:

Channel: 7 ABC's "This Week." Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.; former Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee; rock star Bryan Adams. 8 a. m.

Channel: 5 CBS' "Face the Nation." Bradlee; former Nixon White House counsel John Dean. 8:30 a.m.

Channel: 11 NBC's "Meet the Press." Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. 5 a.m.

CNN's "Late Edition." Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari; Washington Post reporter John Harris; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; former Secretary of State Alexander Haig; Dean; former Nixon White House counsel Charles Colson; former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste. 9:30 a.m.

"Fox News Sunday.'' Amnesty International USA Executive Director William Shulz; Ben-Veniste; Watergate figure and radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy. 4 p.m. on Channel: 2 , 2 p.m. on Fox News Channel.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/05/MNGPAD3KUC1.DTL

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. Sen. Kennedy on now... kick! nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. Take back America - on CSPAN now - this is gonna be good!

Ralph Neas Pres. of People for the American Way

http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2...

George Bush and the right wing of Congress are going for it all. They are trying to...

PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY and dismantle the social safety net

OCCUPY IRAQ and have the United States police the globe

Pack the courts and undermine CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

CRUSH UNIONS and leave workers on their own

Turn back the clock on CIVIL RIGHTS, WOMEN'S RIGHTS, GAY RIGHTS and the ENVIRONMENT

They have the White House, right wing majorities in Congress, an aggressive message machine, an energized base, and hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate lobbies to manipulate our political system.

But we are going to stop them. A new PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY is coming together.


Millions of Americans have had enough. Progressives are mobilizing to stop the right wing blitz and to provide new ideas for an America that works for all of us.

TAKE BACK AMERICA 2005 will feature:

STRATEGIES for building a progressive majority to make America better

Critical ISSUE CAMPAIGNS that will drive America's political debate

NEW IDEAS and winning message with leading progressive public scholars, political leaders and organizers

TRAINING in media, organizing and campaigning, organized by Progressive Majority

New BATTLES. New STAKES. New STRATEGIES. New ENERGY.

This is one gathering you don't want to miss.


discussion thread here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3789293