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Congress Needs to Get to Work

January 18, 2012
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The editor of The Hill, a newspaper exclusively covering Congress, said that Congress was not going to do very much in 2012, except for “the big bill” which is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment compensation, which expire in late February. That two month extension will likely reignite the fight between Democrats and Republicans…

Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again

January 11, 2012
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The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul’s inimitable words, “lie their way into invading Iraq” in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight…

Third Parties Are Not Spoilers

January 10, 2012
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Open Letter to the Wall Street Journal By Ralph Nader How unbecoming it is for the self-styled freedom-loving Wall Street Journal (“Ron Paul Nader?” Dec. 21) to use the politically bigoted word “spoiler” to describe a hypothetical Ron Paul-Libertarian party presidential run. Why is a third-party candidate called a “spoiler” when the nominees of the…

Ballot Access Concerns

January 10, 2012
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Open Letter to the New York Times By Ralph Nader Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. followed his declaration in the New York Times in late December that ballot access for voters “must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative” with a lawsuit to block an allegedly discriminatory South…

The Politics of Lowered Expectations

January 3, 2012
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By Ralph Nader Ezra Klein, the bright, young, economic policy columnist for the “Washington Post” believes that Obama came out ahead last year in the “administration’s bitter, high-stakes negotiations with the Republicans in Congress.” He cites four major negotiations in 2011 with the Republicans that Obama won. Obama won the game of chicken played in…

Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral

December 28, 2011
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By Ralph Nader Students of California, arise, you have nothing to lose but a crushing debt! The corporate state of California, ever ready to seize its ideological and commercial hour during a recession, has a chokehold on California’s public universities. With its tax-coddled plutocracy and a nod to further corporatization, the state government has taken…

Recommended Holiday Reading for the Caring, Agitated Mind

December 22, 2011
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1. America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz (Democracy Collaborative Press and Dollars and Sense, 2011). If you want to see how community economies are spreading to displace the sales and influence of companies such as Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Aetna, ADM and McDonalds, this is your book. Democratic credit unions, local renewable and efficient energy,…

Letter to Airline CEOs

December 21, 2011
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Dear Mr. CEO, Most airlines treat unused non-refundable tickets with the fine print dictate of monetary confiscation after one year of issuance. That is, if a passenger buys a non-refundable ticket to somewhere and for some reason does not use that ticket to fly on the prescheduled date, she/he has one year to use it,…

Congressional Tyranny, White House Surrender

December 15, 2011
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Paraphrasing Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Capitol Hill. A majority of Congress is just about to put the finishing touches on an amendment to the military budget authorization legislation that will finish off some critical American rights under our Constitution. Here is how two retired 4 star marine generals, Charles C. Krulak…

Update Report #4 to

December 12, 2011
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Our two representatives at the annual Cisco shareholders’ meeting (December 7, 2011) at San Jose, California filed with this report: CEO John Chambers declined to announce any increase in dividends or special dividends. He conditioned any consideration of dividend increases on the Congress and the President approving a tax holiday for the repatriation of Cisco…