How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too

[Octafish]

One excellent aspect of journalism is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too

Posted on Apr 5, 2010
By Chris Hedges

EXCERPT...

The Congress, between 1966 and 1973, passed 25 pieces of consumer legislation, nearly all of which Nader had a hand in authoring. The auto and highway safety laws, the meat and poultry inspection laws, the oil pipeline safety laws, the product safety laws, the update on flammable fabric laws, the air pollution control act, the water pollution control act, the EPA, OSHA and the Environmental Council in the White House transformed the political landscape. Nader by 1973 was named the fourth most influential person in the country after Richard Nixon, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and the labor leader George Meany.

“Then something very interesting happened,” Nader said. “The pressure of these meetings by the corporations like General Motors, the oil companies and the drug companies with the editorial people, and probably with the publishers, coincided with the emergence of the most destructive force to the citizen movement—Abe Rosenthal, the editor of The New York Times. Rosenthal was a right-winger from Canada who hated communism, came here and hated progressivism. The Times was not doing that well at the time. Rosenthal was commissioned to expand his suburban sections, which required a lot of advertising. He was very receptive to the entreaties of corporations, and he did not like me. I would give material to Jack Morris in the Washington bureau and it would not get in the paper.”

Rosenthal, who banned social critics such as Noam Chomsky from being quoted in the paper and met frequently for lunch with conservative icon William F. Buckley, demanded that no story built around Nader’s research could be published unless there was a corporate response. Corporations, informed of Rosenthal’s dictate, refused to comment on Nader’s research. This tactic meant the stories were never published. The authority of the Times set the agenda for national news coverage. Once Nader disappeared from the Times, other major papers and the networks did not feel compelled to report on his investigations. It was harder and harder to be heard.

“There was, before we were silenced, a brief, golden age of journalism,” Nader lamented. “We worked with the press to expose corporate abuse on behalf of the public. We saved lives. This is what journalism should be about; it should be about making the world a better and safer place for our families and our children, but then it ended and we were shut out.”

“We were thrown on the defensive, and once we were on the defensive it was difficult to recover,” Nader said. “The break came in 1979 when they deregulated natural gas. Our last national stand was for the Consumer Protection Agency. We put everything we had on that. We would pass it during the 1970s in the House on one year, then the Senate during the next session, then the House later on. It ping-ponged. Each time we would lose ground. We lost it because Carter, although he campaigned on it, did not lift a finger compared to what he did to deregulate natural gas. We lost it by 20 votes in the House, although we had a two-thirds majority in the Senate waiting for it. That was the real beginning of the decline. Then Reagan was elected. We tried to be the watchdog. We put out investigative reports. They would not be covered.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_the_corporations_broke_ralph_nader_and_america_too_20100405/

They're not call "Corporate McPravda" for nothing. Costs money to get "coverage."

[malaise]

1. I just nominated Ralph to replace Justice Stevens

without seeing your post.

Rec. :hi:

[Octafish]

2. Cowards, Corporations and Conservatives. They've already got a party.

While I'm still furious about Florida and blamed him for a lot of it -- Ralph's been with us all along. Wish more of my fellow Democrats were like him.

PS: Hiya, Amiga! Great thinks mind alike!

[defendandprotect]

20. I'll second Ralph Nader to replace Justice Stevens . . . who could argue against him?

Except maybe Democrats who wouldn't want to face his regular and well deserved

criticism of them, as they fulfill their alleged role as defenders of the people

against the "more evil" .... GOP/Repugs!

!

[G_j]

3. K&R!

[Octafish]

7. Why Is It So Hard To Hold Wall Street Accountable?

An interesting question that I hope doesn't hurt the sensitivities of DU's topic purists:

Why Is It So Hard To Hold Wall Street Accountable?

Posted by Zach Carter at 5:38 am
Alternet April 9, 2010

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings continue to be a boring mess, peppered with a few moments of significant insight. Throughout most of yesterday’s hearing featuring the nation’s top bank regulator, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, Commissioners treated their witness as a credible expert, rather than a culpable catalyst of the crash.

You’d never know it from Dugan’s calm, mousey demeanor before the FCIC, but he spent several years working as a high-powered bank lobbyist before being appointed to his current job by George W. Bush in 2005. Since then, he’s been a major defender of big banks, pushing to defang consumer protection regulations and provide legal cover for subprime predators.

Nobody on the Commission ever pressed Dugan on his lobbyist background. Who he lobbied for, what he lobbied for, and how much he got paid were never under discussion. Nobody asked him why he’s been receiving lobbying talking points from major bank executives in secret during the debate over financial reform. Nobody asked him what sort of job he’s likely to take after his term as Comptroller expires in August. This is a tremendous problem: Wall Street’s political influence is so tremendous that they can secure top-level regulatory jobs for their own lobbyists. It’s as if someone appointed Phrma lobbyist Billy Tauzin head of the FDA.

And in Dugan’s warped history of the past decade, both he and the banks he regulates never really did anything wrong. “We made very clear that predatory lending . . . was not something we would tolerate,” Dugan said. “Honestly, those practices never really took root.”

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/09/why-is-it-so-hard-to-hold-wall-street-accountable/

Wish you were head of the FCIC, G_j. Integrity.

[Greyhound]

11. Globetrotters vs. Generals.

Gee, I wonder who will win this time?
:eyes:
:thumbsup::rofl:

[Echo In Light]

4. k/r

[Octafish]

15. Corporate Power Facts and Stats

Old news for you, my Friend. Thanks to our press corpse, it's real news for most Americans:

Corporate Power Facts and Stats

The following are collected from a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. The report is called Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power. Over time, additonal facts and stats will be added from other sources as well.

• Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).

• The Top 200 corporations' sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0 percent to 27.5 percent of World GDP.

• The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10.

• The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty.

• While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world's workforce.

• Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.

• A full 5 percent of the Top 200s' combined workforce is employed by Wal-Mart, a company notorious for union-busting and widespread use of part-time workers to avoid paying benefits. The discount retail giant is the top private employer in the world, with 1,140,000 workers, more than twice as many as No. 2, DaimlerChrysler, which employs 466,938.

• U.S. corporations dominate the Top 200, with 82 slots (41 percent of the total). Japanese firms are second, with only 41 slots.

• Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corporate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation - General Motors.

• Between 1983 and 1999, the share of total sales of the Top 200 made up by service sector corporations increased from 33.8 percent to 46.7 percent. Gains were particularly evident in financial services and telecommunications sectors, in which most countries have pursued deregulation.

Where next?

CONTINUED w loads o' links to pertinent news...

http://www.globalissues.org/article/59/corporate-power-facts-and-stats

Remember the United States? That Constitutions was really something beautiful, too...

[arcadian]

5. Anybody who blames Nader for Bush isn't paying attention.

Bush was gonna get in there by hook or by crook. As evidenced by the Supreme Court ruling.

[Echo In Light]

9. PNAC = Big Plan$ = why so many ensured & enabled since WoT was to be the new national posturing

[Greyhound]

6. K&R, just to piss off the fanatics. n/t

[pnorman]

10. K & R, me too!

Full disclosure: In 2000, I voted for Nader rather than either Bush or Lieberman!

[Ignis]

18. Oh, now you've done it.

You're definitely going onto someone's list now.

:scared:

[pnorman]

19. The pro-Lieberman list.

Thanks for the warning! I'm shitting my britches at the very thought of it!

[Ignis]

21. It must irk some people to no end that ...

They no longer have Holy Joe to hold up as a sterling example of a "centrist" Democrat.

Way to hitch your wagon to a crazy star, guys! :thumbsup: From VP candidate to traitor in only 6 short years!

[leftstreet]

8. K&R

[Selatius]

12. I really think after JFK was murdered, corporate influence became the dominant force on Capitol Hill

A lot of corporate interests stood to lose billions if Kennedy had stuck to his pledge to pull out all remaining combat troops in Viet Nam by 1965. I consider his death to be a herald of where the US would head in the future decades, and the future is an ugly place. The America that FDR and progressives built is gone. Nader's time was numbered after Kennedy and other leaders were removed through violent force.

[defendandprotect]

27. Absolutely . . .

it was the turning point where right wing political violence came out into the open.

And everything changed immediately --

Not only a coup on JFK but on "people's government" -- and couldn't have been done

without the protection of LBJ in White House.

Evidently, near the end of his life he was driven nearly insane by his role in it and

other acts of violence/murder he had been involved with.

The 1960 Democratic Platform that JFK ran on called for the NATIONALIZATION of the oil industry!

And, JFK was ending the oil depletion allowance -- !!

We've had more than 50 years of overt right wing political violence -- but all the TV juke box

plays is celebrities/millionaires!!

[Octafish]

30. Donald Gibson pegged the issues in ''Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency'' in 1994...

...I have not read the book, but people I respect have:

"Gibson captures what I believe to be the most essential and enduring aspect of the Kennedy presidency. He not only sets the historical record straight, but his work speaks volumes against today's burgeoning cynicism and in support of the vision, ideal, and practical reality embodied in the presidency of John F. Kennedy - that every one of us can make a difference." -- Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, Chair, House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs

"Professor Gibson has written a unique and important book. It is undoubtedly the most complete and profound analysis of the economic policies of President Kennedy. From here on in, anyone who states that Kennedy was timid or status quo or traditional in that field will immediately reveal himself ignorant of Battling Wall Street. It is that convincing." -- James DiEugenio, author, Destiny Betrayed. JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[defendandprotect]

13. Didn't know that Carter "deregulated" natural gas . . . !!! More I find out about Carter, worse it

gets!!

[nashville_brook]

24. i've been reading about the history of Miami, and the Mariel boatlift comes to mind

as a big Carter crusterfluck. Maybe he did the best with the hand he was dealt -- but it seems to me that a lot more could have been done for Miami, given that the city itself didn't ask for the boatlift, but had to deal with the aftereffects.


This is an amazing read:


http://www.amazon.com/Miami-Babylon-Wealth-Power-Dispatch/dp/1416576568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270908275&sr=8-1

[defendandprotect]

25. Wow . . . yes . . .

forget how that got started . . .

Didn't Castro empty his prisons? I'll have to read your link later --

But, also very distressed to find out 5 years or so ago that while Carter was

taking us out of the Olympics, this was going on behind the scenes. We were

working to get the Russians to enter and attack Afghanistan!!

Also note the second article -- not only did we create the Taliban/Al Qaeda financing

it thru ISI/Pakistan . . . but we've worked to create a violent Islam in ME!



The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs <"From the Shadows">, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Q: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Q: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_interview_shor...



AND THIS . . . though I'm not clear under which president this occurred ---


The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.

They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.



Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?

Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"

Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.

Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.

Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.

"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)

According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."

So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."

How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?

Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.

But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.

http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.htm



Re right wing religion, also keep in mind it has long been a tool of the right wing --

often used to co-opt other nations and take them over.

GOP gave start-up funding to the Christian Coalition in 1980's --

Richard Scaife funded Dobson's organization -- and other wealthy Repugs funded Bauer's organization.

Most everything right wing does is funded by the wealthy right wing elites.

Including their religious movement!

[Greyhound]

29. Yes, but most importantly is how artfully they cast him as a "librul"

So that his truly disastrous right-wing policies are cemented into the brains of the sheeple as the opposite of what they were.

He was a good man with great intentions but a pre-corporatist/conservative Democrat in the end.

[defendandprotect]

14. Corporations have broken democracy, in general -- as Nader well knows . . .

What Nader is talking about is one arena --

Where has discussion of labor/unions been in the press over decades . . . except

when infiltrated by Mafia . . . which certainly doesn't benefit union leaders nor

members!

Where discussion of feminism, female equality in the press?

And, where any counter MIC discussion -- or Drug War criticism -- it's ALL a farce.

The truth is that corporatism has broken democracy and destroyed the ability of

the public -- or any national consumer advocate -- to influence our elected officials!!

Our elected officials are influenced by one thing -- corporate money -- $$$$$$$$$

And, PLEASE, let's call it what it is "legal bribery"!

[robertpaulsen]

16. Very revealing piece.

I saw the documentary An Unreasonable Man, but I don't remember anything about how Abe Rosenthal effectively censored and in a very real way shut him out of the national discourse. I can't understand why anyone would try to paint Rosenthal as a liberal. To believe that corporatist is a lefty, one would have to ignore this section of his wiki bio:



Writer Mark Hertsgaard cited the Times as having the Iran Contra story a year before it broke (in November 1986) but wrote that Rosenthal killed the story because of his support for Ronald Reagan.

Rosenthal supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and openly suggested that the U.S. should give Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and Sudan an ultimatum that orders these countries to deliver documents and information related to weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations. Otherwise, "in the three days the terrorists were considering the American ultimatum, the residents of the countries would be urged 24 hours a day by the U.S. to flee the capital and major cities, because they would be bombed to the ground beginning the fourth day."<8>

Rosenthal has also been reported to be extremely homophobic, with his views supposedly affecting how the New York Times covered issues regarding gay people (such as AIDS).<9> According to former New York Times journalist Charles Kaiser, "Everyone below Rosenthal (at the New York Times) spent all of their time trying to figure out what to do to cater to his prejudices. One of these widely perceived prejudices was Abe’s homophobia. So editors throughout the paper would keep stories concerning gays out of the paper."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._M._Rosenthal

Corporate McPravda indeed.

[Odin2005]

17. This is just one more example of how the MSM manufactures reality.

Censorship by Omission.

[Chemical Bill]

22. Thanks, Octafish. n/t

[Senator]

23. K&+R

[WillyT]

26. Kick !!! - Too Late To R...

:kick:

[speedcat]

28. but hey, now we gots the internets!

and so far at least, the fucking corporations can't stop viral news via this mechanism.

but watch out for Comcast, AT&T and others trying to control what content gets delivered to you over their internet infrastructure. THIS is scary:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

.
.
.