September 1, 2022 The most perceptive ancient historians and philosophers could not have foreseen a time when a certain type of mass convenience and abundance becomes a threat to democracy, justice and dispersed power. Welcome to the incarcerations of the credit card payment systems Gulag and the corporate state’s drive to stop consumers from paying … Read more
By Ralph Nader August 26, 2022 Its failings and subservience to corporatism are historic in scope. This is the 50th anniversary of our Congress Project that profiled in detail members of Congress. No citizen group has ever done this before or since. Our 1972 Congress Project provides a context for measuring the decline of Congress, … Read more
By Ralph Nader August 12, 2022 Norms, in a society or culture, are the accepted ways of behavior we grow up observing and learning in our everyday lives. Norms are rarely backed up by laws, though when norms are grossly violated, calls for legislation may ensue. In our country, voluntarily recognized fundamental norms have been … Read more
August 10, 2022 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tesla’s major deployment of so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades. Tesla should never have put this technology in its vehicles. Now over 100,000 Tesla owners are currently using technology that research shows malfunctions every eight … Read more
By Ralph Nader August 5, 2022 In 1980 we produced a report titled How to Appraise and Improve Your Daily Newspaper: A Manual for Readers, authored by David Bollier, one of our precocious interns, who had just graduated from Amherst and went on to become an expert on the Commons (See, bollier.org). I thought about … Read more
By Ralph Nader July 28, 2022 Most of us play both roles of the Caller and Callee. Guess which role rules? The Callee. I’ve lost count of how many older adults tell me, week after week, how hard it is to get through to powerful Callees. Especially by telephone! The latter include your local electric, … Read more
By Ralph Nader July 22, 2022 Other than being an adjunct booster of overseas Pentagon military operations and refortifying its vulnerable embassies, what does the U.S. State Department stand for and do anymore? Sometimes it’s hard to see much difference with the much larger Department of Defense (DOD). Its more belligerent statements or threats since … Read more
By Ralph Nader July 16, 2022 When it comes to corporate power and control over their lives, now and into the future, today’s college students are perilously dormant. When it comes to putting pressure on Congress to counter the various dictates of corporatism, there is little activity other than some stalwarts contacting their lawmakers on … Read more
By Ralph Nader July 11, 2022 Did the Biden officials know what they were doing when they announced a broad expansion of export controls on China? China is the world’s second-largest economy, which is intricately intertwined with the economy of the U.S. and other nations. This is mainly due to U.S. multinational companies exporting huge … Read more
By Ralph Nader July 1, 2022 How do dictators manage for decades to control 1.4 billion (China) or 146 million (Russia) people and on down to other smaller totalitarian regimes? Answer: one power hungry man at the top. Political scientists have written about the various “pillars” sustaining autocratic regimes. Professor Christoph H. Stefes (University of … Read more