Listen to all the issues he raises that NEITHER the REPS or DEMS will EVER bring up!
If he is given the opportunity to go toe to toe with ANY DEM or REP I will bet
that all the people who are hating on Nader will say:
hummm That makes a lot of sense to me. Why hasn't my party or the "So Called
News Reporters" EVER talked about that!

Well maybe not the last part, because decades of brainwashing doesn't go away
over night.

And if he is able to light a fire under the Arses of the American people, to
push our politicians to do good by us, then he would have accomplished a lot !

Ron Paul is trying to do the same thing!

CNN — ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES — Aired February 25, 2008 - 22:00 ET

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Ralph Nader turns 74 on Wednesday. Tonight, the consumer advocate and politician is getting plenty of attention after deciding to run for president again. You can be sure the announcement is not going over well with many in the Democratic Party.

Ralph Nader is, of course, the man many Democrats love to hate and blame. To this day, some believe he cost them the 2000 election, a charge he vigorously denies.

In a blog entry he wrote for us today, Mr. Nader called his health care policy, which is a pillar of his campaign, a no-brainer. Is the campaign itself?

Let's ask him. Ralph Nader joins me now from Washington.

Thanks for being with us, Mr. Nader.

NADER: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: This is your — your third major run for president. What made you decide to get into the race?

NADER: Well, the country is being brought down by a combination of big business controlling big government.

You saw the follow-up on Katrina, billions of dollars flowing from Washington to these corporations. And look at the wreckage that still occurs there. I think the Hollywood Oscars are getting more publicity than 300,000 preventable American deaths a year, occupational safety and disease, auto deaths on the highway, pollution deaths from the environment, hospital malpractice, hospital-induced infections.

COOPER: And, so, running for...

NADER: We have got to get serious. We have to get serious.

COOPER: So — so, running for president gets these issues on television time?

NADER: Yes, exactly.

I mean, look at the drug industry. They're subsidized by the treasury called taxpayers. They're given tax-funded discovered drugs free. They fought successfully banning Uncle Sam from bargaining for volume discount for drugs for millions of Americans.

Then they fight a single-payer health plan, which would have regulated the price of drugs. And what do they do when they get coddled and subsidized? They hit the sick Americans with the highest drug prices in the world. They don't dare charge those prices for the same drugs in Mexico or Canada.

We have to get serious, Anderson.

COOPER: Even some of your supporters, folks who have — have followed you for years...

NADER: Yes.

COOPER: ... and even worked for you, say you should not be running.

James Fallows at "The Atlantic Monthly," who used to work for you — he's a big admirer — he wrote today a piece. He said he was — he was very critical of your decision to run for president.

I want to read you some of what he said. He said: "That he stayed in the race in 2000 was tragedy. See invasion of Iraq, 2003, and subsequent occupation. That he came back in 2004 was unfortunate. His entry in 2008 is farce — farce because it suggests detachment from political reality. The differences between the Republican and Democratic candidates — nominees are so faint that we can say, what the hell, and, worse, narcissism. The fact that it won't make any difference in the outcome actually is sad."

Do you worry that your reputation will be tainted? I mean, all the things you have accomplished thus far, will — will people just see this as some farcical and narcissistic run?

NADER: I'm a fighter for justice, Anderson. When there's perennial injustice, you have got to keep going after it, whether inside the electoral arena, or getting progressive forces inside the Democratic Party to take over and replace the corporate Democrats.

We are full of solutions in this country that are on the shelf. They're not being applied to injustices, deprivations on the ground because of the democracy gap. That gap has got to be filmed by mobilized citizens in every congressional district, which is what our Web site is gathering day by day, VoteNader.org.

It's not just fund-raising from individuals. We don't take it from commercial interests or PACs. It's to bring serious people, to mount hardcore Congress watchdogs on Congress, to turn Congress around, so the government works for the people, instead of fights the people for the benefit of giant corporations.

(CROSSTALK)

NADER: I mean, we have a Congress the best money can buy, as Will Rogers said. And we have a president who is engaged in daily impeachable offenses.

COOPER: Is this...

NADER: And we have the American people left behind.

COOPER: Is this a real run? I mean, how much money, at this point, do you have? How much organization do you actually have?

NADER: Well, we just started. The money is pouring in from individuals. We got thousands of e-mail volunteers. We're going to aim to raise $10 million. We're very frugal. That's the equivalent of $30 million of what the major candidates misspent. And we're going to work on volunteers.

Here it is, America. If you really want to change things, this is your opportunity to do so. You're working with a 45-year-old veteran of achieving a lot of health and safety and economic well-being for you, showing that government can work if we jump on the back of government and throw the corporations into a position where they're our servants, not our master, as Thomas Jefferson envisioned many years ago, when he said representative government must curb the excesses of the moneyed interests.

COOPER: Mr. Nader, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you very much for being with us.

NADER: Thank you, Anderson.

Journalist Bob Herbert, writing for the New York Times 26 February 2008, wrote of Ralph Nader:
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He’s owed thanks for seat belts and air bags and cars that hold the road better, that don’t flip or crumple up or catch fire as easily as earlier models. As the nation’s premier consumer advocate, he has waged war with remarkable success against tainted meat, air and water pollution and dangerous food additives. He was a major driving force behind the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Freedom of Information Act? Thanks for your help, Ralph. Food-labeling that’s clear and informative? Thanks again. And, oh yes, it was Ralph Nader who fought for and won compensation for airline passengers bumped from overbooked flights.

Mr. Nader, who will turn 74 on Wednesday, either founded or inspired an astonishing array of public-spirited organizations and citizens’ groups, including the public interest research groups known as PIRGs. He’s waged titanic battles against corruption in government and the unchecked power of giant corporations. I could go on for a few more days, but you get the idea.
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That's because nobody cares what the weird little freak thinks. He is just an insignificant little fly - a minor annoyance at best.

It's something I'd have to think about, though only if Clinton is the nominee.

The simple matter of fact is, I'm all for broadening the dynamic and letting in different perspectives to the race for the Presidency, but what many Ralph Nader supporters have to realize is that it does split the liberal vote albeit to a very limited degree. Having Ralph Nader in the debates would only keep the system democratic if the Libertarian candidate and the other third-party/independent candidates were allowed.

And actually, he launched his 'exploratory committee' once John Edwards dropped out. He isn't fond of Obama but he's least fond with Clinton, just as any person who actually pays attention to who's subservient to corporate America is. But, I fail to see how that's worth giving the presidency to an even worser evil, John McCain.

But what many Democrats need to realize is that they can't blame their miserable failures on Ralph Nader's (at the most) one percent of the vote (most of whom wouldn't vote otherwise).

Published on Tuesday, October 31, 2000 in the London Daily Telegraph
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I Will Work As President For Need, Not Greed

by Ralph Nader

THE Green Party ticket of Nader/LaDuke stands for a strengthening of democratic initiatives by voters, workers, consumers and taxpayers, and a shift away from the increased concentration of economic and political power in fewer and larger global corporations. Politics is principally about who decides, who pays and who is held accountable. When it comes to federal elections for Congress and the presidency, no one has described it better than Senator John McCain, who said that the "campaign finance system is little more than an elaborate influence-peddling scheme, in which both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder".

The highest bidders are overwhelmingly business interests who want lax enforcement of consumer, labour and environmental laws; massive subsidies, give-aways and bail-outs; and government contracts that waste taxpayers' dollars. Cash-register politics must be replaced by public funding of campaigns. Among the ways to accomplish a clean-money/clean-goal is a well promoted, voluntary political contribution of up to $250 (£180) per person on their tax returns with guaranteed free time on television and radio for candidates whose electoral popularity qualified them for federal support.

The decade-long economic boom has resulted in an apartheid economy. In contrast to rocketing corporate profits, stock markets and top executive compensation, a majority of workers make less — inflation-adjusted — and work longer than in the 1970s. Forty-seven million workers — a third of the work force — do not make a living wage, receiving for their labours less than $10 an hour, with millions at the $5.15, $6 or $7 level. Benefits and traditionally defined pensions have declined. The federal minimum wage, at $5.15 an hour, is $2.15 less in purchasing power than the minimum wage in 1968, when economic output was half what it is today.

******

One reason that this economy raises only yachts, instead of all boats, is the declining percentage of the private labour force that is in trade unions. At the moment, less than 10 per cent of these workers are unionised — a 60-year low. The widening of returns to capital as compared to labour reflects the serious decline in workers' bargaining power. Repeal of obstructive anti-union laws would free American workers in places such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's to have a fair chance to band together in trade unions for a living wage, better working conditions and a share of capital.

******

Consumers are exposed to a variety of frauds and hazardous products that take a terrible toll in dollars, lives, injustices and disease. From gross hospital malpractice to massive billing fraud in the health-care industry to accelerating invasions of privacy, corporations are out of control, turning legislators and regulators into patsies.

We call for strong law-and-order programmes against corporate law violators. A recent Business Week cover story documented why nearly three quarters of the American people think that corporations have "gained too much power over their lives". The editors agreed and, in an editorial calling for a "new social contract", declared that corporations should "get out of politics" and embrace campaign finance reform.

Taxpayers are finding that more and more of their tax dollars are going to corporate welfare — hundreds of billions of dollars a year in direct or indirect transfers at the local, state and federal level. As Republican John Kasich, chairman of the House Budget Committee, observed last year, just about every industry and every major corporation comes to state capitols demanding tax dollars for stadiums, while schools and clinics and public transit systems crumble. We urge an end to corporate welfare as we know it and a redirection of tax dollars to broad public necessities.

After many years working to get industries to build safer cars, process safer food, reduce air pollution, pay their fair share of taxes and respect democratic processes, I decided to help build a new progressive political party for four reasons. First, civil society groups of all persuasions were being closed out in Washington from a chance to improve their country. The two major parties are rapidly morphing into corporate power, where corporate money produces a permanent corporate government.

Second, solutions abound in America for renewable energy, modern public transit, preventative health care, safe environments, better schooling, affordable housing, more time for family, children and community and a non-commercial cultural renaissance. But these advances too often are blocked by the concentration of power in the "monied interests" that Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and many other of our nation's historical leaders warned the citizenry to oppose.

Third, many good people who would run for elective office are turned off by corrupt and sleazy politics mired in dirty-money elections. We are losing a wealth of human talent. Finally, great investigative stories about corporate abuses published by the major media go nowhere. Nothing happens to move such information toward corrective action, because we have an underdeveloped democracy and an overdeveloped plutocracy.

Look around the world and see the correlations between democracy and expanding markets, and autocracy and limited markets. Whenever, in our nation's history, people successfully challenge the excessive power of commercial interests, whether over workers, child labour, minorities, consumers and the environment, the country became better and the economy stronger.

Moreover, a strong democracy is good for good business and bad for bad business. Those business executives who ignore this lesson of history are short-changing their own company's potential for serving a deeper prosperity — one that places human need over corporate greed.

The author is the Green Party's candidate for President of the USA
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I remember that in 2000 I went to one of those websites that allow you to find your percentage of agreement with the various candidates. My percentage of agreement with Ralph Nader? ZERO%

When people call names it's usually because they don't really have anything
important to say! Look up "Ad Hominem" Fallacy

What stances that Nader takes on the issues do you think are bad?
Insignificant or trying to go against a corrupt system that will not allow
him a fair shoot at competeing with?

It matters not whether he has a very real plan to bring on world peace. He is too weird to be taken seriously. He has no chance whatsoever of winning the presidency - yet he chooses to run away. He is a fly that needs swatting.

You're expressing that great American political cognitive dissonance. Everyone says they're itching for change and they're tired of the same old politicians, but when someone comes along and attempts to break those traditions and bring real change, they get laughed at as social deviants. The American electorate can't blame it on Washington anymore. They've been offered change at nearly every corner, but they chose to go with status-quo out of fear and willful ignorance every time. It's been like that since our founding.