In the Public Interest

By Ralph Nader April 14, 2023 Spring, the season of renewal, is here. The ants are diligently building their little symmetrical ant hills. The robins are in their nests occupied with posterity. And the anointed members of Congress, after a long recess, aka vacation, return to work on April 17th. The next day, April 18th…

By Ralph Nader April 7, 2023 If there was a giant composite lawsuit against Donald J. Trump, for his over forty years of recurring criminal and civil violations, (while a corporate boss and politician) the only recourse for his lawyers would be to plead the insanity defense. Until this week, in a New York State…

By Ralph Nader March 31, 2023 One measure of corporate power’s dominance is its 24/7 relentless, profit-driven capacity to strike back and prevail over reforms or other efforts designed to give the people voice and fairness. Here are some examples that should give us pause in touting civic victories: A few years ago, during lunch…

By Ralph Nader March 27, 2023 To say that in any self-respecting society law professor Edgar S. Cahn (1935-2022) should have been a Supreme Court Justice and a nationally known public intellectual, who organized communities for justice, is simply to recognize his historic career in concrete American jurisprudence. He and his wife Jean Camper Cahn…

By Ralph Nader March 20, 2023 Once again, government socialism – ultimately backed by taxpayers – is saving reckless midsized banks and their depositors. Silicon Valley Bank (S.V.B) and Signature Bank in New York greedily mismanaged their risk levels and had to be closed down. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in return, to avoid…

By Ralph Nader March 10, 2023 A friend just gave me a book by Richard N. Haass with the intriguing title, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. Mr. Haass is a self-described member of the establishment – in his words “people and institutions that have often been vilified and blamed for…

By Ralph Nader March 2, 2023 Most citizen advocates who work with U.S. senators on a wide variety of issues probably would agree that the late South Dakota Democrat, James Abourezk, was one of a kind. It was not that he was so honest, so down to earth, or so engaging with friend and foe…

By Ralph Nader February 23, 2023 I wrote the following column ten years ago. Note the absence of any accountability or regret by Bush, Cheney and their co-war criminals. Ten years ago [now 20 years ago, on March 19, 2003] George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as war criminals, launched the sociocide of the people…

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…

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…