The Citizens’ Utility Board, or CUB, is a model approach for bringing together large numbers of diffuse consumers into a voluntary organization, which can then pursue a common citizen/consumer agenda in banking, insurance, housing or dozens of other arenas. I call it the “silicon chip” for the citizen movement because it is a low-cost, high … Read more
By Ralph Nader February 17, 2023 The victims of the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria need your help now. The surviving families and children and those rescued alive from the rubble are in serious danger in affected wintertime impoverished regions. Refugees in other places fleeing their war-torn homelands are also suffering. International aid … Read more
By Ralph Nader February 10, 2023 No other institutions consistently Rule over as Much in the World as the Giant Global Corporations – not governments, not armies, not religions and certainly not trade unions. These fictional corporate entities have largely achieved transcendent imperial status, as they amass coordinated control over capital, labor, technology and governments … Read more
By Ralph Nader February 3, 2023 The word “inequality” is everywhere in the media. It usually refers either to race, gender, rich vs. poor, or other differences between human beings. Absent from the public debate is the biggest perpetrator of “inequality” against human beings – the corporate entity itself. Ever since 1886 when a U.S. … Read more
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