In the Public Interest

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…

By Ralph Nader September 17, 2022 Consider the harmful, grasping tentacles by corporations around the bodies and minds of youngsters through relentless direct marketing that bypasses parental authority. Now comes my sister Claire Nader’s new book You Are Your Own Best Teacher! Sparking the Curiosity, Imagination and Intellect of Tweens. The corporate creep started out…

By Ralph Nader September 9, 2022 Prospects for Democrats winning in November in the House and Senate have picked up recently. Nonetheless, political pundits are still not counting on the Democrats to win the House of Representatives. Candidates have eight weeks to refine their policies, messages, and strategies to energize and mobilize voters. If they…

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…

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,…

By Ralph Nader August 17, 2022 Labor Day presents a great opportunity for the Democratic Party to compare their election year story of being on the side of labor, as opposed to the GOP which is invariably backing the wealthy and giant corporations. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not been taking advantage of the one national…

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…

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…

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,…

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…