"And Green Party nominee Ralph Nader, famous for his proconsumer, anticorporate stance, is also a capitalist, with more than $1 million worth of Cisco, and millions in cash, Fidelity funds, and other high-tech firms. He says he regrets not owning stock in the Washington Post Co., up more than tenfold since the 1970s, so he'd have more profits for ''consumer and other civic initiatives that its newspaper too rarely covers.''"
So he owns stock in Cisco Systems (http://www.cisco.com/) so what? They aren't exactly a huge megaconglomerate eager to buy out everything. I think they are a very consumer conscious company to invest in.
The articles on Salon.com are all pro-Nader, so what's your case? He owns stock in Cisco, la-di-frickin'-duh, it's not a big oil company or anything, his money isn't being used to support monied interest and squash the competition or muffle the press.
It's not the way it ought to be, but unfortunately it's the way it is at the moment.
Corporatations have a way of using their money to get heard louder because they can buy off the press and stifle what they don't want heard by the public.
Look at it this way, with every new mega-media-merger, our news outlets get more and more biased and pressured to cover only what their bosses, i.e. the corporations, want us to see. . Most of these corporations control the very news sources that the public is *supposed* to get unbiased news from.
It is a fact, all of the major news sources, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and the major newspapers in the country are controlled by large corporations that don't want to see them get bad press and checked up on by media hounds. By controlling the major media outlets, they are able to control what the public can and can't see and hear.
What do people recommend to use for ripping? I use Xing AudioCadalyst, but am wondering if there is anything beytter/faster out there or people's opinions on this ripper? Thanks in advance.
"Corporations are owned by human beings, with rights under the law. They're called the shareholders."
.....that control the media and the way you get your information and are always out to protect their own interests instead of the average joe that can't afford to become shareholders and buy out candidates to push their agendas...
I went to the website you cited about the green platform and then you wrote:
"Now, Nader claims that he doesn't support all of the Green Party's platform. So then tell me, why is he running as a Green? This reminds me of the old Groucho line about being caught in bed with another woman: "who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?""
Did you happen to miss the disclaimer at the VERY TOP of the page in BOLD LETTERING accentuated with a star - "This platform is not binding for candidates on any level."
Now who are you going to believe: the website you cited or your lying eyes?
What he's trying to say is that these companies are spending so much money marketing to children, when they could be putting it to a better cause. Why do they need to spend millions of dollars on marketing? They are using their monied interests to the point where it's abuse of power.
That's what Nader's driving at, if you had bothered to read. "Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly."
"Social Security is a success story providing retirement income to 35 million people, and disability insurance and life insurance to almost all workers. Its sound financial base ensures solvency well into the future. But because politicians and investment firms use scare tactics for their own benefit, millions of Americans believe that Social Security is endangered."
Good point. If he does in fact own the millions in stock perhaps because the media is so controlled by the corporations proetecting their interests I haven't heard about it. Good point nonetheless, where did you find this information?
Nader isn't blaming Hollywood, he's blaming the corporations for marketing the violence.
This is from In The Public Interest
Corporations and Violence
By Ralph Nader
May 5, 1999
Following last week's tragic homicides at Columbine High School and the mourning over the loss of life there, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate majority leader Trent Lott announced they would convene a national conference on youth and culture.
That's good. Such a conference is sorely needed.
But it must not be an empty dialogue. Our country needs better. Throughout the last week, politicians and the media have searched for the causes behind the disaster in Littleton, Colo., and have been quick to ascribe it, in part, to the violence in video games, music, the Internet, pop culture, Hollywood, movies, and television.
Such comments, though understandable, do not go far enough. They stop at the symptoms, fall short of the cause. They fail to grasp the central fact of our commercial corporate culture: it is produced by corporations that are getting rich by promoting products to teenagers, corporations governed by profiteering that impels them to respect no boundaries in their exploitation of teenagers' vulnerable minds.
Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly.
In their quest for larger audiences and greater profits the commercial media predictably races to the lowest and basest standards, with ever more blatant displays of violence, sex, crassness, and nihilism on television, cable, movies, radio, video games, and music. Our society, even 10 or 20 years ago, would not have tolerated such youth-beamed depravity. These are the motivations that relentlessly drive the creation, production, and marketing of ever more Doom, Quake, Basketball Diaries, Marilyn Mansons, Mortal Kombat I and II and III and IV, Jerry Springers, Howard Sterns, South Parks, and the rest of it.
This poison has got to stop. Enough is enough.
There is a crying need in this country to redraw the lines, establish the boundaries, declare to the media industry in no uncertain terms: "Thus far and no farther." It is time to say that our children matter more than this brutalizing entertainment. There are few critiques that Congress or President Clinton could start that would have such a salutary effect upon our children and, therefore, on our nation's future.
After all, the people own the public airwaves and should be given the time to challenge such video muck. It is easy to point the finger at the Marilyn Mansons. But they are merely instruments. Speaker Hastert and Senate majority leader Lott ought to focus on the deeper problems. Behind every Marilyn Manson are corporations and corporate executives who cynically draw their large compensation packages from the fruits of such work.
The Hastert-Lott national conference on youth and culture will be a charade unless they discuss the corporations and the powerful, moneyed interests that produce this dominating corporate culture and vigorously insinuate it into the minds and pockets of American youth.
Will Speaker Hastert and Senator Lott have the courage to trace the problem to its source, to focus their national conference on youth and culture upon the commercial rewards that give rise to this destructive culture, and on how we might alter these dynamics? Can they enable corporations and civic institutions to produce a culture that nourishes and doesnÕt harm its teenagers? If so, they will provide an important service for this country, its parents, and their children, who are surrounded by debasement and conscripted into violence by methodical, calculating corporate huckstering that our teenagers may not understand.
There is nothing Congress could do that is more important than making America's children safe again from the interests that would rob them of their childhood. Many teenagers and children are powerless to defend themselves against the clever media magnates, their advertising and marketing firms, and their hostility or total disregard for teenagers' health, happiness, and well being. Families and children need help. The question is, will Speaker Hastert and Senator Lott help them?
Ralph Nader was born in 1934 in Winsted, CT to Lebanese immigrants Rose and Nathra Nader. Civic duty had a special meaning in Winsted, the small town in northwestern Connecticut where Nathra ran the Highland Arms Restaurant and engaged his customers in spirited debate about public affairs. Studious, bright and intense, Ralph followed the Yankees, played with David Halberstam, the future journalist, and read back issues of the Congressional Record with equal enthusiasm. By age 14 he had read the early muckrakers--Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair and George Seldes--who were to inspire his thinking about the distribution of power in American society and the possibilities of citizenship.
In 1955, he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, and 1958 from Harvard Law School. It was at Harvard where Nader first explored an unorthodox legal topic: the engineering design of automobiles. His research resulted in an April 1959 article published in The Nation, "The Safe Car You Can't Buy," in which he declared, "It is clear Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance and calculated obsolescence, but not--despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities and 1,500,000 injuries yearly--for safety."
In 1963, Nader, then an unknown twenty-nine-year old attorney, abandoned a conventional law practice in Hartford, Connecticut, and hitchhiked to Washington, DC, to begin a long odyssey of professional citizenship. "I had one suitcase," he recalled. "I stayed in the YMCA. Walked across a little street and had a hot dog, my last." (A few years later he would expose the repulsive ingredients that go into hot dogs.) He took a job as a consultant to the US Department of Labor, working for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Nader moonlighted as a freelance writer for The Nation and The Christian Science Monitor. He also acted as an unpaid adviser to a Senate subcommittee which was exploring what role the federal government might play in auto safety.
In 1965, he targeted General Motors and the American auto industry in his best-selling book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile . When GM attempted to discredit him, he sued them for invasion of privacy. This landmark case forced the president of GM to go before a Senate Committee and admit wrongdoing, and a series of safety laws were passed in 1966 which forced the auto industry to make drastic design changes for safer motor vehicles. With the money Nader won in the settlement, he launched the modern consumer movement.
The publicity he received, and the reputation he created for standing up to predatory corporations, inspired activists from around the nation to go to Washington, DC to work with Nader. They became known as "Nader's Raiders." Organizations were launched to push for laws to protect people as consumers, workers and taxpayers, and the environment, combating corporate abuse, and increasing citizen access to government.
Ralph Nader and his Raiders have identified and confronted political and corporate bosses on hundreds of issues. They have fought against insurance companies; global trade arrangements that allow other countries to evade our environment, labor, and consumer protection laws; corporate lobbyists and politicians who attempt to block safety standards, or to deny fair access to court for injured parties.
In 1971, Nader founded Public Citizen, to be the consumers' eyes and ears in Washington, working for consumer justice and government and corporate accountability. More than 150,000 people are involved in the six branches of Public Citizen: Congress Watch, Health Research Group, Litigation Group, Critical Mass Energy Project, Global Trade Watch and Buyers Up, which protect Americans from government and corporate power that threatens our well-being.
Congress Watch protects citizen interests before the US Congress. It works to strengthen protection of health, safety and the environment; demands an end to corporate subsidies; ensures citizens' ability to address corporate wrongdoing; exposes money's corruption in politics and advocates for campaign finance reform.
The Health Research Group works for safe foods, drugs and medical devices. It fights for consumer control over personal health decisions and universal access to quality health care. It promotes system-wide changes in health care policy, and advises and informs and the public about drugs and medical devices. The HRG has exposed the tobacco industry's powerful influence in Washington, the failure of state medical boards to discipline incompetent doctors, and the excessively high rate of caesarean section deliveries.
The Litigation Group is the nation's leading public interest law firm. Its attorneys bring precedent-setting lawsuits on behalf of citizens to protect health, safety and rights of consumers.
The Critical Mass Energy Project protects America's natural resources and promotes safe, economical, environmentally sound energy use through conservation and renewable sources. This organization is a watchdog for nuclear safety issues, and stops the reckless disposal of radioactive waste.
Global Trade Watch educates the American public about the enormous impact of international trade and economic globalization on our jobs, the environment, public health and safety, and democratic accountability. GTW was created in 1993 to focus on an area few public interest groups covered: the international commercial agreements shaping the current version of globalization.
Buyers Up is a home heating oil cooperative group buying program that acts as an information resource on home energy and environmental issues. Its reports have yielded important data on the over-promotion of high-octane gasoline by the oil companies, and the failure of many states to ensure the quality of gasoline sold to consumers.
Nader's organizations have been responsible for federal consumer protection laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act. They have launched federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Administration. They've caused the recall of millions of defective motor vehicles, and created access to the government through the Freedom of Information Act of 1974.
Ralph Nader has written, co-written or sponsored many books, including Action for a Change, Corporate Power in America, Taming the Giant Corporation, Verdicts on Lawyers, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Who's Poisoning America, Winning the Insurance Game, The Frugal Shopper. He has created trust, admiration and respect with his action, integrity, and commitment to the people.
Other groups he inspired include the Aviation Consumer Action Project, Center for Auto Safety, Clean Water Action Project, Disability Rights Center, Pension Rights Center, Freedom of Information Clearinghouse, and the Congressional Accountability Project. Nader helped establish the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), the organizations funded and controlled by students that function on college campuses in 23 states. Their impact alone has been tremendous. The groups have published hundreds of ground-breaking reports and guides, lobbied for laws in their state legislatures, and called the media's attention to environmental and energy problems.
In November 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen in order to devote his energy toward other projects. The organization is now headed by Joan Claybrook, former head of Congress Watch and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Today he lectures on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power. With the passage of autocratic trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the merger of corporate and government interests is escalating. A magazine founded by Nader in 1980, The Multinational Monitor, tracks the global intrusion of multinational corporations and their impact on developing nations, labor, and the environment.
Nader has focused his efforts on empowering citizens to create a responsive government sensitive to citizens' needs. The top of his agenda has been defending the US civil justice system. Corporate lobbyists and certain legislators have worked on both the federal and state levels to limit consumers' rights to seek justice in court in the areas of product liability, securities fraud, and medical negligence. Nader recently co-authored a book on corporate lawyers and the perils of the legal system entitled No Contest.
The Savings and Loan bailout is also a large concern of his: the de-regulation of the banking industry in the early 1980s led to speculative real estate deals which taxpayers must now finance. This is one of many examples of corporate subsidies taxpayers finance through a system Nader calls "corporate welfare." He is an advocate of insurance reform including loss-prevention activity and insurance consumer education. He co-authored the book Winning the Insurance Game, and has been working with consumer activists in Massachusetts and California on lowering the cost and raising the coverage of automobile and health insurance in those states.
Nader is un-intimidated by the deregulations posed by the Reagan and Bush administrations and perpetuated by Clinton. He says, "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizen's movement is persistence." When asked to define himself, he always responds, "Full-time citizen, the most important office in America for anyone to achieve."
Ralph Nader is one of America's most effective social critics. He has been called Muckraker, Consumer Crusader, and Public Defender. His documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power. Time magazine called him "US's toughest customer." His inspiration and example have awakened consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who have established more public awareness organizations throughout the country.
Nader's original research organization is the Washington, DC-based Center for Study of Responsive Law. Since 1969, the Center has produced innumerable reports on wide-ranging subjects such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, food safety, pensions, corporate welfare, and government procurement.
His impact on the American political system is tremendous. As former US Senator James Abourezk observed, "For the first time in US history, a movement exists whose sole purpose is to keep large corporations and the government honest."
The local college radio station (I'm not sure of the URL, I think it's www.vtc.net, my work won't let me access the site), they are completely automated.
They download mp3s, people place requests by looking at the playlists to see what mp3's they have, and then request them, it takes a few minutes, but your song will be played on the radio and on the webcast.
It's definitely a start for the kids to try to overcome whatever censorship they feel they are going up against. A website is a good place for this.
When I was in high school and the faculty was really restrictive on what we could print, some friends of mine started their own grassroots sort of paper and distribute it around the school, taking it to the local print shop to get 100 copies or so printed. Our school's reasoning was that they wouldn't state mandated funds to print controversial material....
I certainly hope this will work for them, kids need to know that they can be heard too. They have a right to freedom of speech too.
This website is for news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Repeatedly posting this same pedophile psychobabble under every new topic is not going to win you any friends or supporters. And it's completely off topic. You are just going to piss off more people in the process who come here for techie news, not you trying to shove your lifestyle down their throats.
I personally haven't noticed a difference in the sites Google returns since it's deal with Yahoo. I still get all the rare sites as before. I do like Yahoo too, but I use Google for the really hard to find sites.
Google is the only site where I can type my own name in and get old websites of mine that I no longer maintain, or old posts to message boards, it's kinda neat. And really is helpful for stalkers I suppose;)
Slashdot Mirror
If he is using his money to help his friends and his causes, then I think that makes him *still* a good man...
Vote for the Greens while you're at it :)
And vote for Ralph Nader while you are being so "Green" :)
The quote from Boston.com is:
"And Green Party nominee Ralph Nader, famous for his proconsumer, anticorporate stance, is also a capitalist, with more than $1 million worth of Cisco, and millions in cash, Fidelity funds, and other high-tech firms. He says he regrets not owning stock in the Washington Post Co., up more than tenfold since the 1970s, so he'd have more profits for ''consumer and other civic initiatives that its newspaper too rarely covers.''"
So he owns stock in Cisco Systems (http://www.cisco.com/) so what? They aren't exactly a huge megaconglomerate eager to buy out everything. I think they are a very consumer conscious company to invest in.
The articles on Salon.com are all pro-Nader, so what's your case? He owns stock in Cisco, la-di-frickin'-duh, it's not a big oil company or anything, his money isn't being used to support monied interest and squash the competition or muffle the press.
Let everyone else decide for you.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/09/10/00592 23&cid=282
And I post ;)
It's not the way it ought to be, but unfortunately it's the way it is at the moment.
Corporatations have a way of using their money to get heard louder because they can buy off the press and stifle what they don't want heard by the public.
Look at it this way, with every new mega-media-merger, our news outlets get more and more biased and pressured to cover only what their bosses, i.e. the corporations, want us to see. . Most of these corporations control the very news sources that the public is *supposed* to get unbiased news from.
It is a fact, all of the major news sources, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and the major newspapers in the country are controlled by large corporations that don't want to see them get bad press and checked up on by media hounds. By controlling the major media outlets, they are able to control what the public can and can't see and hear.
What do people recommend to use for ripping? I use Xing AudioCadalyst, but am wondering if there is anything beytter/faster out there or people's opinions on this ripper? Thanks in advance.
How else is Nader not agreeable with the Party's platform??? I find him very comparable.
We need to end this corporate power!
"Corporations are owned by human beings, with rights under the law. They're called the shareholders."
.....that control the media and the way you get your information and are always out to protect their own interests instead of the average joe that can't afford to become shareholders and buy out candidates to push their agendas...
I went to the website you cited about the green platform and then you wrote:
"Now, Nader claims that he doesn't support all of the Green Party's platform. So then tell me, why is he running as a Green? This reminds me of the old Groucho line about being caught in bed with another woman: "who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?""
Did you happen to miss the disclaimer at the VERY TOP of the page in BOLD LETTERING accentuated with a star - "This platform is not binding for candidates on any level."
Now who are you going to believe: the website you cited or your lying eyes?
That's way off base.
What he's trying to say is that these companies are spending so much money marketing to children, when they could be putting it to a better cause. Why do they need to spend millions of dollars on marketing? They are using their monied interests to the point where it's abuse of power.
That's what Nader's driving at, if you had bothered to read. "Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly."
Exactly. Money isn't always evil, it's what you do with it that counts...
The rest of the quote is:
"Social Security is a success story providing retirement income to 35 million people, and disability insurance and life insurance to almost all workers. Its sound financial base ensures solvency well into the future. But because politicians and investment firms use scare tactics for their own benefit, millions of Americans believe that Social Security is endangered."
Good point. If he does in fact own the millions in stock perhaps because the media is so controlled by the corporations proetecting their interests I haven't heard about it. Good point nonetheless, where did you find this information?
Nader isn't blaming Hollywood, he's blaming the corporations for marketing the violence.
This is from In The Public Interest
Corporations and Violence
By Ralph Nader
May 5, 1999
Following last week's tragic homicides at Columbine High School and the mourning over the loss of life there, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate majority leader Trent Lott announced they would convene a national conference on youth and culture.
That's good. Such a conference is sorely needed.
But it must not be an empty dialogue. Our country needs better. Throughout the last week, politicians and the media have searched for the causes behind the disaster in Littleton, Colo., and have been quick to ascribe it, in part, to the violence in video games, music, the Internet, pop culture, Hollywood, movies, and television.
Such comments, though understandable, do not go far enough. They stop at the symptoms, fall short of the cause. They fail to grasp the central fact of our commercial corporate culture: it is produced by corporations that are getting rich by promoting products to teenagers, corporations governed by profiteering that impels them to respect no boundaries in their exploitation of teenagers' vulnerable minds.
Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly.
In their quest for larger audiences and greater profits the commercial media predictably races to the lowest and basest standards, with ever more blatant displays of violence, sex, crassness, and nihilism on television, cable, movies, radio, video games, and music. Our society, even 10 or 20 years ago, would not have tolerated such youth-beamed depravity. These are the motivations that relentlessly drive the creation, production, and marketing of ever more Doom, Quake, Basketball Diaries, Marilyn Mansons, Mortal Kombat I and II and III and IV, Jerry Springers, Howard Sterns, South Parks, and the rest of it.
This poison has got to stop. Enough is enough.
There is a crying need in this country to redraw the lines, establish the boundaries, declare to the media industry in no uncertain terms: "Thus far and no farther." It is time to say that our children matter more than this brutalizing entertainment. There are few critiques that Congress or President Clinton could start that would have such a salutary effect upon our children and, therefore, on our nation's future.
After all, the people own the public airwaves and should be given the time to challenge such video muck. It is easy to point the finger at the Marilyn Mansons. But they are merely instruments. Speaker Hastert and Senate majority leader Lott ought to focus on the deeper problems. Behind every Marilyn Manson are corporations and corporate executives who cynically draw their large compensation packages from the fruits of such work.
The Hastert-Lott national conference on youth and culture will be a charade unless they discuss the corporations and the powerful, moneyed interests that produce this dominating corporate culture and vigorously insinuate it into the minds and pockets of American youth.
Will Speaker Hastert and Senator Lott have the courage to trace the problem to its source, to focus their national conference on youth and culture upon the commercial rewards that give rise to this destructive culture, and on how we might alter these dynamics? Can they enable corporations and civic institutions to produce a culture that nourishes and doesnÕt harm its teenagers? If so, they will provide an important service for this country, its parents, and their children, who are surrounded by debasement and conscripted into violence by methodical, calculating corporate huckstering that our teenagers may not understand.
There is nothing Congress could do that is more important than making America's children safe again from the interests that would rob them of their childhood. Many teenagers and children are powerless to defend themselves against the clever media magnates, their advertising and marketing firms, and their hostility or total disregard for teenagers' health, happiness, and well being. Families and children need help. The question is, will Speaker Hastert and Senator Lott help them?
Ralph Nader was born in 1934 in Winsted, CT to Lebanese immigrants Rose and Nathra Nader. Civic duty had a special meaning in Winsted, the small town in northwestern Connecticut where Nathra ran the Highland Arms Restaurant and engaged his customers in spirited debate about public affairs. Studious, bright and intense, Ralph followed the Yankees, played with David Halberstam, the future journalist, and read back issues of the Congressional Record with equal enthusiasm. By age 14 he had read the early muckrakers--Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair and George Seldes--who were to inspire his thinking about the distribution of power in American society and the possibilities of citizenship.
In 1955, he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, and 1958 from Harvard Law School. It was at Harvard where Nader first explored an unorthodox legal topic: the engineering design of automobiles. His research resulted in an April 1959 article published in The Nation, "The Safe Car You Can't Buy," in which he declared, "It is clear Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance and calculated obsolescence, but not--despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities and 1,500,000 injuries yearly--for safety."
In 1963, Nader, then an unknown twenty-nine-year old attorney, abandoned a conventional law practice in Hartford, Connecticut, and hitchhiked to Washington, DC, to begin a long odyssey of professional citizenship. "I had one suitcase," he recalled. "I stayed in the YMCA. Walked across a little street and had a hot dog, my last." (A few years later he would expose the repulsive ingredients that go into hot dogs.) He took a job as a consultant to the US Department of Labor, working for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Nader moonlighted as a freelance writer for The Nation and The Christian Science Monitor. He also acted as an unpaid adviser to a Senate subcommittee which was exploring what role the federal government might play in auto safety.
In 1965, he targeted General Motors and the American auto industry in his best-selling book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile . When GM attempted to discredit him, he sued them for invasion of privacy. This landmark case forced the president of GM to go before a Senate Committee and admit wrongdoing, and a series of safety laws were passed in 1966 which forced the auto industry to make drastic design changes for safer motor vehicles. With the money Nader won in the settlement, he launched the modern consumer movement.
The publicity he received, and the reputation he created for standing up to predatory corporations, inspired activists from around the nation to go to Washington, DC to work with Nader. They became known as "Nader's Raiders." Organizations were launched to push for laws to protect people as consumers, workers and taxpayers, and the environment, combating corporate abuse, and increasing citizen access to government.
Ralph Nader and his Raiders have identified and confronted political and corporate bosses on hundreds of issues. They have fought against insurance companies; global trade arrangements that allow other countries to evade our environment, labor, and consumer protection laws; corporate lobbyists and politicians who attempt to block safety standards, or to deny fair access to court for injured parties.
In 1971, Nader founded Public Citizen, to be the consumers' eyes and ears in Washington, working for consumer justice and government and corporate accountability. More than 150,000 people are involved in the six branches of Public Citizen: Congress Watch, Health Research Group, Litigation Group, Critical Mass Energy Project, Global Trade Watch and Buyers Up, which protect Americans from government and corporate power that threatens our well-being.
Congress Watch protects citizen interests before the US Congress. It works to strengthen protection of health, safety and the environment; demands an end to corporate subsidies; ensures citizens' ability to address corporate wrongdoing; exposes money's corruption in politics and advocates for campaign finance reform.
The Health Research Group works for safe foods, drugs and medical devices. It fights for consumer control over personal health decisions and universal access to quality health care. It promotes system-wide changes in health care policy, and advises and informs and the public about drugs and medical devices. The HRG has exposed the tobacco industry's powerful influence in Washington, the failure of state medical boards to discipline incompetent doctors, and the excessively high rate of caesarean section deliveries.
The Litigation Group is the nation's leading public interest law firm. Its attorneys bring precedent-setting lawsuits on behalf of citizens to protect health, safety and rights of consumers.
The Critical Mass Energy Project protects America's natural resources and promotes safe, economical, environmentally sound energy use through conservation and renewable sources. This organization is a watchdog for nuclear safety issues, and stops the reckless disposal of radioactive waste.
Global Trade Watch educates the American public about the enormous impact of international trade and economic globalization on our jobs, the environment, public health and safety, and democratic accountability. GTW was created in 1993 to focus on an area few public interest groups covered: the international commercial agreements shaping the current version of globalization.
Buyers Up is a home heating oil cooperative group buying program that acts as an information resource on home energy and environmental issues. Its reports have yielded important data on the over-promotion of high-octane gasoline by the oil companies, and the failure of many states to ensure the quality of gasoline sold to consumers.
Nader's organizations have been responsible for federal consumer protection laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act. They have launched federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and Consumer Product Safety Administration. They've caused the recall of millions of defective motor vehicles, and created access to the government through the Freedom of Information Act of 1974.
Ralph Nader has written, co-written or sponsored many books, including Action for a Change, Corporate Power in America, Taming the Giant Corporation, Verdicts on Lawyers, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Who's Poisoning America, Winning the Insurance Game, The Frugal Shopper. He has created trust, admiration and respect with his action, integrity, and commitment to the people.
Other groups he inspired include the Aviation Consumer Action Project, Center for Auto Safety, Clean Water Action Project, Disability Rights Center, Pension Rights Center, Freedom of Information Clearinghouse, and the Congressional Accountability Project. Nader helped establish the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), the organizations funded and controlled by students that function on college campuses in 23 states. Their impact alone has been tremendous. The groups have published hundreds of ground-breaking reports and guides, lobbied for laws in their state legislatures, and called the media's attention to environmental and energy problems.
In November 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen in order to devote his energy toward other projects. The organization is now headed by Joan Claybrook, former head of Congress Watch and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Today he lectures on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power. With the passage of autocratic trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the merger of corporate and government interests is escalating. A magazine founded by Nader in 1980, The Multinational Monitor, tracks the global intrusion of multinational corporations and their impact on developing nations, labor, and the environment.
Nader has focused his efforts on empowering citizens to create a responsive government sensitive to citizens' needs. The top of his agenda has been defending the US civil justice system. Corporate lobbyists and certain legislators have worked on both the federal and state levels to limit consumers' rights to seek justice in court in the areas of product liability, securities fraud, and medical negligence. Nader recently co-authored a book on corporate lawyers and the perils of the legal system entitled No Contest.
The Savings and Loan bailout is also a large concern of his: the de-regulation of the banking industry in the early 1980s led to speculative real estate deals which taxpayers must now finance. This is one of many examples of corporate subsidies taxpayers finance through a system Nader calls "corporate welfare." He is an advocate of insurance reform including loss-prevention activity and insurance consumer education. He co-authored the book Winning the Insurance Game, and has been working with consumer activists in Massachusetts and California on lowering the cost and raising the coverage of automobile and health insurance in those states.
Nader is un-intimidated by the deregulations posed by the Reagan and Bush administrations and perpetuated by Clinton. He says, "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizen's movement is persistence." When asked to define himself, he always responds, "Full-time citizen, the most important office in America for anyone to achieve."
Ralph Nader is one of America's most effective social critics. He has been called Muckraker, Consumer Crusader, and Public Defender. His documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power. Time magazine called him "US's toughest customer." His inspiration and example have awakened consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who have established more public awareness organizations throughout the country.
Nader's original research organization is the Washington, DC-based Center for Study of Responsive Law. Since 1969, the Center has produced innumerable reports on wide-ranging subjects such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, food safety, pensions, corporate welfare, and government procurement.
His impact on the American political system is tremendous. As former US Senator James Abourezk observed, "For the first time in US history, a movement exists whose sole purpose is to keep large corporations and the government honest."
I'll record it in a hearbeat :)
The local college radio station (I'm not sure of the URL, I think it's www.vtc.net, my work won't let me access the site), they are completely automated.
They download mp3s, people place requests by looking at the playlists to see what mp3's they have, and then request them, it takes a few minutes, but your song will be played on the radio and on the webcast.
I'm just curious, but what can happen to them?
It's definitely a start for the kids to try to overcome whatever censorship they feel they are going up against. A website is a good place for this.
When I was in high school and the faculty was really restrictive on what we could print, some friends of mine started their own grassroots sort of paper and distribute it around the school, taking it to the local print shop to get 100 copies or so printed. Our school's reasoning was that they wouldn't state mandated funds to print controversial material....
I certainly hope this will work for them, kids need to know that they can be heard too. They have a right to freedom of speech too.
This website is for news for nerds, stuff that matters.
Repeatedly posting this same pedophile psychobabble under every new topic is not going to win you any friends or supporters. And it's completely off topic. You are just going to piss off more people in the process who come here for techie news, not you trying to shove your lifestyle down their throats.
For the Keyboard Krunch (tm) cereal, we should have our own survivor contest with slashdotters, the winner gets to be on the cereal box! :)
tewl
....hair, finger-nail clippings, pieces of paper, pins, and occasionally moldy pieces of food.
That may sound disgusting, but it's not as bad as an ex-boyfriend's that was covered in dried semen, completely sickening!!!!!!
What's the best way to clean the keyboard?
I personally haven't noticed a difference in the sites Google returns since it's deal with Yahoo. I still get all the rare sites as before. I do like Yahoo too, but I use Google for the really hard to find sites.
;)
Google is the only site where I can type my own name in and get old websites of mine that I no longer maintain, or old posts to message boards, it's kinda neat. And really is helpful for stalkers I suppose