By Ralph Nader January 27, 2023 It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma. The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis. He has issued detailed critiques of what others have called a … Read more
By Ralph Nader January 19, 2023 The super successful mega-investor, Warren Buffett, CEO of the giant conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, was heard to say: There are only 535 members of Congress, why can’t 300 million Americans control them? That’s a pretty fundamental question since our senators and representatives are given their sovereign power by the people. … Read more
By Ralph Nader January 14, 2023 Every Sunday about a dozen high school teenagers gather without their iPhones on a little hill in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, USA. They form a circle and quietly start to read serious books (Dostoevsky, Boethius) (paperbacks or hardbacks), or draw in sketchbooks, or just serenely sit listening to the wind. … Read more
Cashed Out
By Ralph Nader The following recent books invite the application of the aphorism, Readers Think, Thinkers Read. They also make good gifts for this Holiday season. 1. Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind the Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas (Dial Books, 2022). I learned much from this eyewitness story of the textile and fashion industry worldwide. … Read more
For Immediate Release: November 29, 2022 Contact: Ralph Nader or Francesco DeSantis, , 202-320-6344, [email protected] New Legislation Would Mandate DOJ Create Database of Corporate Criminal Offenses Rep. Scanlon and Sen. Durbin’s Bill Would End Differential Treatment of Corporate versus Street Crime Data WASHINGTON, D.C. – Consumer safety, labor, environmental and other groups lauded a new … Read more
November 18, 2022 The passing of health and safety champion, Michael Pertschuk concludes a life offering many lessons for members of Congress and their staff. Pertschuk, a Yale Law graduate, was the key staffer for the powerful Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Warren Magnuson (D-WA), for fifteen years. In 1977 President Carter appointed him … Read more
Ralph Nader and his colleagues this week are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Congress Project, which published 20 to 40 page profiles of every member of Congress seeking re-election in 1972, including their voting records. “No citizen group has ever done this before or since,” Nader said. The release of the Congress Project profiles … Read more
By Ralph Nader October 14, 2022 A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on the imbalance of communications success between callers and callees. The latter have all kinds of ways not to return calls, emails and other portals of the so-called communications technological revolution. I noted that getting through to your callee is so … Read more
By Ralph Nader September 23, 2022 Long before the Covid pandemic, it was important to ask, where are the mass movements to enact in Congress majoritarian-supported changes and reforms? Another question: Whatever happened to the mass rallies that used to command the attention of our 535 members of Congress to whom we have given our … Read more