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Ralph Nader

Where is Obama’s promised minimum-wage hike?

Fri, 07/27/2012 - 9:26am
In The Public Interest

During the 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour by 2011. Promises like this one inspired a generation of young voters, excited long-neglected progressive voters and gave hope to millions of his supporters across the country.

Growing doubts about the effectiveness of advertising

Fri, 07/20/2012 - 9:32am
In The Public Interest

Ask yourself when the last time was you saw any of those tiny ads on Google and Facebook and rushed to buy the products or services. For that matter, ask yourself whether any radio or television advertisements prompted you to go out and buy the product.

Sure the newspaper ads announcing short-term sales for clothes or household goods may get you to the market, along with the supermarket specials for foodstuffs. But generally speaking, you must wonder what the business community gets for its tens of billions of dollars annually pouring out of their advertising budgets.

Jolting the Democratic party from its stupor

Fri, 07/13/2012 - 9:26am
In The Public Interest

If the Democrats in Congress were all drinking water from the same faucet, there might be a clue to their chronic fear of the craven and cruel corporatist Republicans who dominate them.
But they don’t, so we have to ask why their fear, defeatism and cowering behavior continues in the face of the outrageous GOP actions as the November election approaches.

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I keep getting letters from my pal Barack

Fri, 07/06/2012 - 10:24am
In The Public Interest

I’ve been getting a variety of letters from President Barack Obama. The salutation is often: “Dear Ralph.” One of them asks me for $25, adding “Ralph, this is that moment. This is the time to be in with me.” He writes that “I need your voice,” that America needs the “dreams and the energy and the determination of people like you.”

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Don’t 30 million workers deserve 1968 wages?

Fri, 06/15/2012 - 9:25am
In The Public Interest

Thirty million American workers arise — you have nothing to lose but some of your debt!
Wednesday morning, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) introduced the “Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2012” (H.R. 5901) – legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour. The present minimum wage is $7.25, way below the unrealistically low federal poverty definition of $18,123 per year for a family of three. Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be a little above $10 per hour.

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Where are the lawyers?

Fri, 06/08/2012 - 9:15am
In The Public Interest

The rule of law is rapidly breaking down at the top levels of our government. As officers of the court, we lawyers have sworn to “support the Constitution,” which clearly implies an affirmative commitment on our part.

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The rise of reuse

Fri, 06/01/2012 - 9:26am
In The Public Interest

Last week I read that the glitzy world of virtual reality created instant multi-millionaires and several billionaires when Facebook went public selling shares.
Last week I also noted the important real world problem of some 250 million tons of solid waste a year in our country alone.
Guess which “world” gets the most investment, status, fame, klieg lights, and attention of the skilled classes and the power structure?
Guess which world is more important for our wellbeing and that of the planet?

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It’s time to hear the truth about what’s happening in Gaza

Fri, 04/27/2012 - 10:47am
In The Public Interest

Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world’s largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life — medical items, food, water, building materials and fuel to list a few — has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

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Sensationalist media miss the mark

Fri, 04/20/2012 - 9:49am
In The Public Interest

March Madness comes once a year. Media Madness is year-round. What the mass media choose to cover and feature try to turn the priorities of any sane society upside down.
People of vice, war, money, spectator sports and business receive media attention — oftentimes ad nausem. People of virtue, peace, civics, health, labor and community engagement have to beg for media attention. Which of these two groups represents the most basic values of a civilized society that would restrain the excesses of the other group? You can guess!

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From food to the environment, the United States is selling out regulation

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 9:54am
In The Public Interest

The Republican Party has a sense of humor, however inadvertent. Its ardent advocates regularly accuse the Obama Administration of heavy handed regulation of business.

Tell that to the hundred federal poultry inspectors who just picketed the Department of Agriculture in opposition to a proposal that would allow those crammed, bacterial poultry slaughterhouses to do their own inspections. The picketers fear that with this license, poultry bosses will speed up the slaughter rate to 175 birds per minute from the present 70.