Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Occupy it all -- type faster




          We had some communication about a lack of due diligence on our part in not keeping current with things as we haven’t put out an edition for awhile.  Frankly, it wasn’t clear that anyone was really paying attention and we were simply getting tired of the same old crap day after day, just new examples of it.  As a matter of fact, happening faster than I can type.
          The election here?  I heard a good quote about the stock market that applies.  People “Buy on rumor, sell on news.”  No matter what the politician promises and how progressive, or regressive, he sounds, we will likely get the same thing.  There is a nice interview with Ralph Nader below on the political equivalent of the LA gangs, the cripts and the bloods.  Well, if only there was a really difference other than a possible judicial appointment here and there.
          The election in Egypt?  Time to laugh.  Right before it, the Egyptian court, all members appointed by Mubarak, invalidated the entire congress.  Maybe the guy from the Moslem brotherhood will win – at least they have some belief other than profit.  His chances are very good, but then the military will take over.  It’s main goal is to get money and arms.  Screw the people.  Oh, yeah, they say the had to do that in lieu of a constitution.  Well, they can use ours since we don’t seem to have much use for it.
          The leader of Pakistan is now out of office.  No word of a replacement, but their military will make sure all is well.
          Obama and Putin met in Mexico and talked for two hours, mainly on Syria.  That Putin just won’t trust him. 
          Israeli settlers set fire to a Palestinian Mosque.  In fact, no news from or about Palestine, especially Gaza, is allowed on our media.  The truth is, things are worse than usual.
          Another of you kindly acquainted me with an article by one of Obama’s former Law Professors at Harvard.  He thinks Obama should be defeated so the Democrats will reorganize their priorities.  Good luck on that one!  The chances of them changing their priorities are zero.
            We are conducting cyber warfare against Iran without a congressional declaration.  See, we don’t want anyone to find out about it.  Right.  Iran was reluctant to let inspectors in (unlike Israel that won’t let them it).  Seems every time the U.N. visited, a scientist or two was killed by Mossad.  Well, easy come, easy go.  
          Some of you may find this of interest.  Of course, for decades now everything transmitted electronically, e-mail, phone calls, radio signals, the web, everything is monitored and stored, so this should come as nothing new:

LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — As the Federal Aviation Administration helps usher in an age of drones for U.S. law enforcement agencies, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) domestically by the U.S. military — and the sharing of collected data with police agencies — is raising its own concerns about possible violations of privacy and Constitutional law, according to drone critics.
A non-classified U.S. Air Force intelligence report obtained by KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO dated April 23, 2012, is helping fuel concern that video and other data inadvertently captured by Air Force drones already flying through some U.S. airspace, might end up in the hands of federal or local law enforcement, doing an end-run around normal procedures requiring police to obtain court issued warrants.
photo1 The Age Of Drones: Military May Be Using Drones In US To Help Police
Charles Feldman flies a drone in Simi Valley
LISTEN: PART ONE OF KNX 1070′S CHARLES FELDMAN’S INVESTIGATIVE REPORT




Friday, June 15, 2012

A Judicial Coup in Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood-Controlled Parliament Dissolved, Military Gains Power

Days before Egypt’s presidential runoff, the Egyptian Supreme Court has dissolved the newly elected parliament, handing power back to the military. The court also confirmed Hosni Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, can run for president against Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi. Protests have erupted in Egypt, with critics saying the decision is tantamount to a judicial coup. We go to Cairo for an update from Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. "These court rulings have really dealt the final fatal blow to a military-managed transitional process that’s been so deformed as to barely make sense anymore," he says. "Right now Egypt is in a state where there’s no parliament, no constitution or even a clear process for drafting one, and a presidential runoff that will leave Egypt with a ruler who will be a very divisive president." [includes rush transcript]
Filed under  Egypt, Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Guest:
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent reporting from Cairo.

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JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Egypt’s democratic transition was thrown into disarray Thursday when the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled to dissolve the newly elected parliament in what critics have described as a judicial coup. The decision effectively puts legislative power into the hands of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. In addition, the court ruled that former leaders of the Mubarak regime can hold political office, effectively approving the candidacy of former prime minister and presidential hopeful, Ahmed Shafik. The court decision is a major setback to supporters of last year’s uprising, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, which held 46 percent of seats in the newly elected parliament.
The court’s decision comes just two days before Egyptians go to the polls for a presidential runoff between Shafik and the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi. After Thursday’s ruling, Morsi vowed to stay in the race but said that any foul play in the election would be met by a new revolution.
MOHAMED MORSI: [translated] We will continue with our journey and observe closely. And if there’s any fraud, we already know what the consequences will be: a revolution against the criminals, a revolution against those who protect the criminals, a revolution until the goals of the January 25th revolution are fully achieved.
AMY GOODMAN: After the court ruling Thursday, protesters gathered outside Egypt’s constitutional court.
MOHAMED HUSSEIN: [translated] This ruling is void. By what logic or what justice can the one who killed our brothers and the person who was behind the camel battle and the one who was part of Mubarak’s regime and who said that Mubarak is his role model—by what logic can we return to the tyrannical old regime? Where is the justice in that? We had a revolution, and no revolution in the world brings back a tyrannical regime. This military council wants to bring back the old regime, and they want us to return back to being subservient. We will not go back to being subservient. We will continue to struggle and to struggle against Ahmed Shafik. We will go on, God willing.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, to find out more about what’s happening in Egypt, we go to Cairo to talk to Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Sharif, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about what’s developed over the last 24 hours in Egypt.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, these court rulings have really dealt the final fatal blow to a military-managed transitional process that’s been so deformed as to barely make sense anymore. Right now Egypt is in a state where there is no parliament, no constitution or even a clear process for drafting one, and a presidential runoff that will leave Egypt with a ruler who will be a very divisive president. The rulings really set off shock waves. This is the cover of a privately owned newspaper, Shorouk. The top head says, "As You Were." And it reads, "The constitutional court returns all powers to the military."
So, as you mentioned, there was two landmark rulings yesterday, the first of which was on something called a political isolation law. This was a law that was passed by the parliament in April. It was initially intended to target Omar Suleiman, who had put himself as a nominee in the race and who was, of course, Mubarak’s first and only prime—first and only vice president and who was his longtime intelligence chief. He was disqualified out of the race for technical reasons. But the law would also apply to Ahmed Shafik, who was Mubarak’s last prime minister, appointed on January 29th of 2011. So, this law would have banned any top Mubarak officials from running for office for 10 years. The law was passed. It was signed by the military council. However, the Presidential Elections Commission refused to implement the law and instead referred it to the Supreme Constitutional Court, which yesterday ruled this law unconstitutional, thereby leaving Ahmed Shafik in the race, which is scheduled—the runoff is scheduled for tomorrow.
What was more of a bigger blow was the second ruling, which was the ruling that one-third of the—the way that parliament was elected, one-third of them was unconstitutional. The way the elections were set up, the parliamentary elections last fall, was a complicated system where two-thirds of the candidates would be elected on a list-based system that’s also known as proportional representation. The other third would be individual candidates who would run for winner-take-all seats. But in a last-minute change, they allowed members of parties to run for these individual seats, as well. And it was that aspect that the court yesterday ruled unconstitutional. It effectively dissolves the parliament, the first really freely and fairly elected parliament in Egypt for many decades. And it effectively hands the legislature, the powers of the legislature, back to the military council. The military council, of course, had that power up until January of this year, when the parliament was first seated.
So, the response has been varied, but many are calling it a coup. What Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who is a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a liberal Islamist thinker who came forth in the presidential race, called it—called it a coup. The Muslim Brotherhood has said it would respect the decision, but senior Brotherhood member Mohammed el-Beltagy and others have called it a military coup. Hamdeen Sabahi, who came third in the presidential race, is calling on the Muslim Brotherhood to not field its presidential candidate tomorrow, to pull out of the race, and thereby delegitimize the process. However, Mohamed Morsi, the presidential candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, as you heard in the clip earlier, has pledged to go on in the race, putting himself forward as the revolutionary candidate against [Ahmed Shafik].
So, really, these decisions yesterday were really monumental, because this transition process has—over the course of these past 16 months, there has been a crisis of legitimacy at every turn. There has been complicated court rulings at every turn, putting things into question. And right now, it seems that almost nearly all of the power is in the hands of the military council. So while many have called it a coup that happened yesterday, many also point to the fact that this was really maybe a coup on February 11th of 2011, when the military council first came to the helm of power after replacing Mubarak after he was forced out of office.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Sharif, what would happen now in terms of the ruling on the parliament? Would they have to schedule new elections? And to—because, obviously, the presidential election now comes, and if Morsi wins, he will be faced basically with being the president but having no government to work with.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That’s exactly right. He will be president without a parliament or a constitution delineating what his powers exactly are. So it’s a very dangerous situation to be in and a very vague and unclear one. Right now, parliament—the ruling yesterday doesn’t actually—isn’t actually enforced until the military council actively dissolves parliament. But for all intents and purposes, parliament will be dissolved. The military council is the one that was scheduled to—will schedule parliamentary elections to be held. It’s very unclear when these will be held, under what rules they will be held. As with so much else in this erratic transition process, many things are vague.
But what is clear is that the military council has really taken control of the basic aspects of what we were supposed to have been building in a post-Mubarak state these last 16 months. I mean, we spent three months going to parliamentary elections, and that’s just been voided. There’s been no reform in the security apparatus. There’s been no reform of the media. There’s been no reform of the judiciary. So, really, the Mubarak regime is still very much in place. And to top it all off, its last prime minister is now in a runoff against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is really the same political landscape that Egypt has had for many decades now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And is there any sense of possible exhaustion among the population in terms of the continued turmoil that might lead to a movement basically to restore order and which would benefit the old Mubarak regime and those members of that old—of that old regime?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I mean, there has been this idea of people being tired of what they call a security vacuum. Police have not been really deployed on the streets. There has been—protests have continued for these last 16 months. Many say that they lack the leverage that they once had to actually effect change. Ahmed Shafik himself ran on a law and order platform, which seems to have resonated with large segments of the electorate that placed him second in the first round of the elections.
However, I think his election—or his success may also be attributed to the patronage networks that really were part of the former National Democratic Party, Mubarak’s party, that we didn’t see really in the parliamentary elections but seem to have come back with a vengeance in the presidential elections. I just went to a conference of his a couple of days ago, and there were leading members of the National Democratic Party, the now-dissolved party. Mustafa al-Fiqi and Jehan Sadat, the wife of the assassinated former president, was there, all supporting Ahmed Shafik for president, supporting him as a bulwark against the rise of the Islamists, against the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, he’s really had—has a lot of support from the state that the protesters rose up against last year to try and topple.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, earlier this week, Egyptian activists unveiled a campaign to boycott the elections, calling it a false choice under ongoing military rule. Boycott organizer Tarek Shalaby said Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, have effectively rigged the election to ensure their continued dominance. This is what he said.
TAREK SHALABY: So, they do that, and therefore, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to show us that there’s no other way for the revolution to continue, except for collaborating with SCAF in these elections that they’ve made for us. And obviously they make these elections customized specifically for them, so that the result that comes out, whatever it is and whoever it is, works perfectly for them. And that’s why what we need to do is we need to reject these elections, refuse to collaborate with them, and make sure that we organize ourselves and do go for labor strikes and for demonstrations and sit-ins, because that’s how we use popular masses and the workforce to cripple the regime and to bring it down and make it lose its power. And that’s how there could be a balance of power, and then we can bring change that way.
AMY GOODMAN: And Sharif, this news just in: in an interview with The Guardian, Mohamed ElBaradei says he will not vote in the presidential election this weekend. He expects Shafik to win but has harsh words for the Muslim Brotherhood. If you could comment on the boycott movement and also, as all these decisions came down yesterday, Shafik sounding like he had won, in a statement that he was making to the public, and the anger of Mohamed Morsi.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, the boycott movement has certainly grown, especially after the first round of the—the results of the first round of the presidential election. There were a number of—I’d say a small core of revolutionary youth who boycotted the first round of the presidential election, saying that the entire process being led by the military council was illegitimate. But this boycott is being pushed further right now, and I think it’s growing. There’s been people like Alaa Al-Aswany, who’s a leading intellectual here, who was previously backing Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, has now said he’s going to boycott. As you just said, Mohamed ElBaradei said he’s going to boycott.
So there’s a leading movement against it, because—for a number of reasons. One is seeing as—the elections as being rigged, the whole process as being rigged. There were certainly questions surrounding the first round. The Presidential Elections Commission behaved suspiciously by distributing last-minute voter lists and not allowing monitors into the aggregation of vote counts. And so, there’s questions of legitimacy surrounding the poll, but also the outcome of the poll, pitting the Muslim Brotherhood, which is, you know, a conservative Islamist group that is in many ways the mirror establishment to the one that has ruled Egypt for 60 years—highly disciplined, highly hierarchical, secretive, with its own set of patronage networks—of course, not guilty of the same crimes as the regime, so perhaps the comparison is unfair, but I’m pitting that against really a stalwart of the former regime. And so, telling people that there is—it’s not just these two choices. There is a third choice, and that choice is to refuse to participate in this process. A lot of people are going to go in, and have done so already in the ex-pat vote of people voting abroad, Egyptians, have spoiled their ballots, written "Down with military rule" on their ballots. So, the turnout was—the first round of the elections was much lower than the parliamentary elections, and many expect that when the polls open tomorrow, that there will be fewer people going to the polls, as well.
There’s also just one other thing I—a very important point to mention that was announced this week was that the Justice Ministry decreed basically giving military officers, intelligence officers, military police the right to detain and arrest citizens, to arrest civilians. This actual decree was announced on the 13th but was actually made on June 4th. And that’s just four days after Egypt’s 30-year emergency law finally expired, you know, a small gain in this transitional process, where Egypt had lived under emergency law for so long, and now the minister of justice issues this decree basically allowing these widespread powers of search and detention by the military. Seventeen Egyptian human rights groups condemned it, calling it a worse substitute than the state of emergency. So, all of these factors combined—with these court rulings, with Shafik in the race—really throw the entire transitional process into question, and many say that it’s, in fact, dead.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I want to thank you very much for joining us. Of course, we’ll speak to you next week at the end of this election cycle to see what happens. Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a Democracy Now! senior correspondent, speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt. To see all of his reports all through the Egyptian revolution, you can go to our website at democracynow.org.
When we come back, former presidential candidate, consumer activist Ralph Nader on President Obama and Mitt Romney, their speeches on the state of the economy in the battleground state of Ohio, and much more. Stay with us.
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Friday, June 15, 2012

Ralph Nader: 30 Million Workers Would Benefit from Raising Minimum Wage to 1968 Level

In 2008, Barack Obama pledged to raise the minimum wage every year once elected, but the hourly rate of $7.25 hasn’t increased since 2007. Low-wage workers now make far less than they did four decades ago. Last week Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. introduced the Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2012. It draws its name from the idea that the federal minimum wage would be $10.55 an hour now if it had kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. While the bill has about 20 co-sponsors so far, President Obama has yet to endorse it. We speak to longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. "The U.S.’s federal minimum wage is lower than all Western countries," Nader says. "This is basically an issue that reflects the craven, cruel nature of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, but it also reflects the caution, the cowardliness, the betrayal of the Democratic Party of its core constituency." [includes rush transcript]
Filed under  Economy
Guest:
Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate. His latest book is Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build it Together to Win.

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JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the economy. On Thursday, presidential rivals, Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, gave major addresses in Ohio. Both blamed the slow economic recovery on each other’s parties. Romney spoke first in Cincinnati.
MITT ROMNEY: He is going to be a person of eloquence as he describes his plans for making the economy better. But don’t forget, he’s been president for three-and-a-half years. And talk is cheap. Action speaks very loud. And if you want to see the results of his economic policies, look around Ohio, look around the country, and you’ll see that a lot of people are hurting, a lot of people have had some real tough times.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, at a rally in Cleveland, President Obama acknowledged the slow economic recovery. He cast his re-election battle with Mitt Romney as a clash between contrasting philosophies on how to fix it.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The debate in this election is not about whether we need to grow faster or whether we need to create more jobs or whether we need to pay down our debt. Of course the economy isn’t where it needs to be. Of course we have a lot more work to do. Everybody knows that. The debate in this election is about how we grow faster and how we create more jobs and how we pay down our debt. That’s the question facing the American voter.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Concerns about the troubled economy have helped push Obama’s approval ratings to their lowest level since January. But a new Gallup poll finds that two-thirds of Americans blame his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, for the downturn.
AMY GOODMAN: Many economists say more jobs could be created by generating more consumer demand. Well, a new bill introduced by Illinois Democratic Congressmember Jesse Jackson Jr. aims to do that by increasing minimum wage for the first time since 2007. He says the increase could generate tens of billions of dollars in spending by poor families and workers almost immediately. Congressmember Jackson recently introduced the Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2012. It draws its name from the idea that the federal minimum wage would be $10.55 an hour now if it had kept up with inflation over the last 40 years. Instead, it’s $7.25.
While the bill has about 20 co-sponsors, so far President Obama has yet to endorse it despite a campaign promise he made in 2008. His poverty agenda included a pledge to, quote, "raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011 [so that] full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing."
One prominent supporter of increasing the minimum wage has been longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. He’s joining us now from Washington, D.C. His latest book is Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build it Together to Win.
Ralph Nader, welcome back to Democracy Now! Start off by talking about the minimum wage bill that Congressmember Jackson has put forward and what President Obama is doing about it.
RALPH NADER: Well, President Obama has done nothing since he promised in 2008 to go to $9.50 by 2011, as you pointed out. This is a problem of the Democratic Party, Amy. The case for the minimum wage going to $10 is overwhelming. That’s why Jesse Jackson called it "Catching Up with 1968." That’s when the economy was half the size of it is today and half the worker productivity as today. So, if you look at the political scene, all the stars are aligned for the Democratic Party to take the lead and push this through Congress in an election year. For example, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have been on the record of saying they want to—wanted a minimum wage keeping up with inflation. That would break the grip of McConnell, Senator McConnell, and Speaker Boehner over 100 percent of their Republicans and split the ranks. Furthermore, all these large membership groups like the AFL-CIO and the NAACP and La Raza, Center for Council on Budget Priorities [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities], all of them and many more, are for an increase in the minimum wage. This is the signal issue of the old Democratic Party, when the minimum started in 1938 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the Democratic Party has become a party of caution, cash and co-optation. And so, they don’t even know a winning humanitarian, moral and political issue if it was put on their desk.
Well, Jesse Jackson Jr. has broken ranks from the lethargy on Capitol Hill. He has about 20 good progressives in the House supporting him. And this is jolting what everybody’s been waiting for. The AFL has been waiting for George Miller, a congressman, a senior congressman from San Francisco. The White House apparently is waiting for George Miller. Nancy Pelosi is waiting for George Miller. So, in a few days, George Miller, after three-and-a-half years of doing nothing, is going to put in a bill for a three-year stage, going to $9.80 by 2014. That is not a political winner. If you go from seven and a quarter and catch up with 1968 by taking it to $10, that’s 30 million workers that you can appeal to—30 million workers. And that doesn’t count the tipping of restaurant workers and fast-food workers, who are still at $2.55 an hour plus tips. Who knows what they are in terms of getting even to today’s federal minimum wage? The U.S.’s federal minimum wage is lower than all Western countries. Ontario in Canada has a minimum wage of $10.25.
And another star that’s allied, this. They usually cater to the business community. When there’s a minimum wage increase in the past, they say, "Well, let’s give them a tax break." Well, they’ve already given, under Obama, 17 small business tax breaks. And, of course, we all know that Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have got the tax system pretty well gamed. So here we have this gross inequity where workers in Wal-Mart are making $8, $9, $10 an hour before deductions, with hardly any health insurance, and their boss, the CEO of Wal-Mart, is making $11,000 an hour, eight hours a day. So you can see it’s a great, powerful, fair-play political message if the Democrats would rise up.
But I think we have to have another slogan here: "30 million American workers arise. You have nothing to lose but some of your debt." And we have a website to mobilize these workers. It’s a simple one: timeforaraise.org, timeforaraise.org.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph?
RALPH NADER: And H.R.5901 of—Jesse Jackson’s bill, H.R.5901, will do it. So call the White House. Ask for Gene Sperling. He’s the economic adviser to Mr. Obama. And call your members. This thing can really roll, especially if the Occupy movement begins to surround the local congressional districts on this issue.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Ralph, I want to ask you about Mitt Romney’s views on raising the minimum wage. This is what he said in January when approached on the campaign trail.
MITT ROMNEY: My view has been to allow the minimum wage to rise with the CPI or with another index, so that it adjusts automatically over time.
REPORTER: So you’d support that as president?
MITT ROMNEY: I already indicated that when I was governor of Massachusetts that that was my view.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Republican candidate Mitt Romney. He also supported raising the minimum wage in 2002 when he was running for governor. But speaking on CNBC in March, Romney described how he vetoed such a raise in 2006.
MITT ROMNEY: Well, actually, when I was governor, the legislature passed a law raising the minimum wage. I vetoed it, and I said, "Look, the way to deal with the minimum wage is this. On a regular basis," I said in the proposal I made, "every two years, we should look at the minimum wage. We should look at what’s happened to inflation. We should also look at the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate, competitive rates in other states—or in this case, other nations." So, certainly the level of inflation is something you should look at, and you should identify what’s the right way to keep America competitive.
LAWRENCE KUDLOW: In that case, there’s no inflation, or at least very minimal inflation so far.
MITT ROMNEY: So, right. Yeah, so—so that would tell you that right now there’s probably not a need to raise the minimum wage. What I can tell you is, had one indexed the minimum wage back to, let’s say, 1990, the minimum wage would be lower now than it actually is. Democrats make big hay of this every—every few years — "Oh, we’re going to raise the minimum wage" — and get a lot of hoopla for it. Frankly, the right way to process it is to look at the minimum wage, look at how unemployment rates are, make adjustments as time goes on based upon our need to compete, the need of the job market, and, of course, what’s happened to inflation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, Ralph, is he for it or against raising the minimum wage?
RALPH NADER: He doesn’t know where he is. You know, he’s—historically, he’s been for supporting the minimum wage keeping up with inflation. He’s waffling now. After all, his wife only drives two Cadillacs, he’s only worth over $200 million. This is the plutocrat speaking to 30 million workers who are working on a minimum wage that’s the lowest in the Western world. I might add, there are Republicans against that position. This minimum wage keeping up with inflation comes in at 70 percent in the polls, historically. Seventy percent means that a lot of Republican workers in Wal-Mart and McDonald’s and others are not going to say, "Oh, we’re Republicans. We don’t want to go from seven and a quarter or seven and a half to $10." This is a winning issue. In 2004, there was a $1 minimum wage increase on the ballot. There was no money by the promoters to go on TV. Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, all these low-wage big chains plastered TV against it, and they lost. It came in 70 percent winning for the minimum wage increase in Florida.
So, this is basically an issue that reflects the craven, cruel nature of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, but it also reflects the caution, the cowardliness, the betrayal of the Democratic Party of its core constituency. Historically, this would be a no-brainer. This would be on the platform. And Senator Harkin introduces a modest bill in March. Look how late in the season. And George Miller in the House hasn’t introduced it yet. And he comes from a progressive San Francisco Bay Area district. So, this minimum wage issue is the Rorschach test for our two-party tyranny. If they can’t even pick up on that and increase consumer demand in a recessionary economy, and be backed up by the chief economic adviser to Obama, Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, who’s the main researcher, when he was at Princeton, disproving that an increase in the minimum wage costs jobs—it increases jobs. It increases sales. A lot of small businesses know that, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for Women, which is supporting a minimum-wage increase in New York state, which is also stuck at seven and a quarter. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce for Women.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, we’re going to break and come back to this discussion. Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, former presidential candidate. His latest book is called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build it Together to Win. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, ran for president three times. Ralph, I want to turn to the two recent comments made by President Obama and Mitt Romney that have become, well, the most famous comments so far of the campaign, and it’s around the economy. Speaking in Iowa Friday, Romney invoked the recent election in Wisconsin to criticize Obama for pushing a measure to help states regain public sector jobs.
MITT ROMNEY: He wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: So there’s Mitt Romney saying, don’t hire more police, firefighters and teachers. Meanwhile, his campaign has produced an ad featuring President Obama’s comment last week that the private sector economy is, quote, "doing fine."
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government.
WOMAN 1: We’ve seen layoffs, cutbacks.
MAN 1: When it’s all said and done, I’m making $200 a month.
WOMAN 2: I’ve been looking for a job for two years. Haven’t found any.
MAN 2: You know, I had to file my own personal bankruptcy, had to close my business.
WOMAN 3: Here I am—no healthcare and a slashed pension.
WOMAN 4: I just lost my job recently.
WOMAN 5: I have to work part-time in order to make ends meet.
MAN 3: Sometimes I feel like I’m a failure.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The private sector is doing fine. The private sector is doing fine. The private sector is doing fine.
AMY GOODMAN: That ad by Mitt Romney ends with a caption on the screen saying, "No, Mr. President, we’re not doing fine." Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: First of all, there should be presidential debates where they go at each other with a smart moderator. Right now they’re ships passing in the night, hurling general charges against one another, and the issues are not being joined.
There are two ways immediately to increase economic activity in this country. One is to raise the minimum age. Tens of billions of dollars in consumer purchasing power will invigorate the economy. The second is to launch a "repair America" program, a public works program the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others have done in the past, which create good-paying jobs and investment in public facilities, repairing schools, clinics, public transit systems, etc., and jobs that cannot be exported to fascist and communist regimes abroad. The more longer range, of course, is to deal with the tax system, which has a perverse incentive of encouraging companies to go abroad with American jobs, and to do other things that take a little longer.
But, you see, there’s no debate until October, with these hoked-up debates and the predictable questions. And I’ve tried for months to get people around the country to realize: mobilize yourself—in Portland and Chicago and Houston and Miami—and demand presidential debates in your area. Don’t leave it up to this two-party-dominated so-called Commission on Presidential Debates to rig the system. We need a vibrant, multi-month debate process. For heaven’s sake, they had a lot of debates in the primaries. Let’s have more debates earlier between Romney and Obama and third parties like the Green Party and Libertarian Party. What’s—why are they rationing debates in this country? Because they don’t want to arouse the public. They really don’t want to engage the public. They just want to—both parties—dial for these corporate dollars and put these insipid, inane ads on that are not really grounded in any spirit of voter engagement.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you about an issue that’s become an increasing wedge issue, it seems to me, in terms of American workers, and certainly the Republican Party is trying to do that, the whole issue of pensions—worker pensions, especially government pensions and local and state levels. We’ve seen the situation in Wisconsin, the referendums in California to reduce pension benefits in some towns. And there seems to be an attempt to convince private sector workers: why should we be paying taxes to provide cushy pensions for teachers and firefighters and other government workers, when we don’t have those kinds of pensions ourselves? Your sense of this debate, the public debate now over employee pensions, government pensions?
RALPH NADER: Well, this is the latest stage of the divide-and-rule between governmental workers and corporate sector workers that started with NAFTA and WTO and shipping jobs abroad, because when Congress was deliberating these export of jobs trade agreements, the public employee unions were sort of standoffish. You know, they weren’t going to lose their jobs. They did not stand in solidarity with the industrial unions, like the steel workers and the auto workers. Now, it’s the public employees’ turn to get the brunt of this low-wage, downward corporatist trend that is seemingly relentless. So, when you strip private sector workers of any adequate pensions, and they lose their jobs, they are very ripe for this kind of political message: why should you pay for better-paid public employee workers?
That, unfortunately, is going to be a really hard nut to crack. And we’ve got to basically have a pull-up economic strategy, where you don’t have the politics of envy between unemployed workers who have lost their jobs to China—compliments of U.S. companies—and public employee workers. And I think the labor movement has got to reset itself. It’s got to get together. It’s got to become much more aggressive. Rich Trumka, in the AFL-CIO building right near the White House, is not exactly a vibrant fighter, whether for the $10 minimum wage or for any of these policies.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Ralph Nader, about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recent victory, who survived that historic recall election after launching an attack against the state public workers. This is Walker declaring victory, after his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, conceded the race.
GOV. SCOTT WALKER: Tonight—tonight we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country, and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions. But now—but now it is time to move on and move forward in Wisconsin. Tomorrow—tomorrow I’ll meet with my cabinet in the state’s capitol, and we’ll renew our commitment to help small businesses grow jobs in the state. We’ll renew our commitment to help grow the quality of life for all of our citizens, both those who voted for me and those who voted for someone else, because tomorrow—tomorrow is the day after the election, and tomorrow we are no longer opponents. Tomorrow we are one as Wisconsinites, so, together, we can move Wisconsin forward.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Scott Walker, his victory speech in the recall election. Ralph Nader, the significance of this, of Mitt Romney saying that—asking if President Obama has learned the lesson of Wisconsin, and what is that lesson? Is it the message of Walker, or is it that President Obama should have gone to Wisconsin to fight for Barrett, and perhaps he would have won?
RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, it wasn’t a straight, normal recall, because it was just another rerun election midterm, which turned off some people in Wisconsin. And they had the candidate who Walker beat two years ago up against Walker. So it was really a second election. It wasn’t the kind of recall that they would have in a state like California. So I wouldn’t read too much into Walker’s victory. He didn’t have the best candidate up against him. After a bitter primary fight with a much more progressive Democratic candidate, Barrett was not very exciting.
The second is, well, what is Walker planning for Wisconsin? I think he’s planning Wis-Koch-son. The Koch brothers are really the people who are in Walker’s camp and funding all this. Walker has not made one move to get rid of billions of dollars of corporate welfare that have been layered into Wisconsin laws for the last 50 years—subsidies, tax abatements, you name it. Nobody is raising that, because the Democratic Party is not a party that people can rely on to defend the country against the most craven, cruel, ignorant, indentured-to-corporatism Republican Party in history. That’s the problem.
So it all starts with how many people out there are going to take some time and put the pressure on Congress, put the pressure on the White House, start encircling congressional offices back home, with the help of the Occupy people, and push for these changes, like the card check, the federal minimum wage at $10, like cracking down on corporate crime, like full Medicare for all—all of these—and getting rid of those wars, those criminal wars overseas, and bringing the soldiers back home. All of these are long-overdue, catch-up reforms.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph?
RALPH NADER: And they have a large proportion to people polling in favor of them. Who’s against cracking down on corporate crime and ending corporate welfare? There aren’t many people left.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, we just have a—we just have a couple of minutes left. I wanted to ask you about—on another topic. By the end of this month, the Supreme Court is going to make two major decisions, one on the healthcare law and the other on the Arizona "show me your papers" law. And many civil rights leaders believe that the decision is going to uphold Arizona and is going to strike down key aspects of the healthcare law. What do you think this is going to mean for progressives and activists and what they have to do after these decisions come down?
RALPH NADER: Well, I don’t know anyone who can read the mind of the swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy. We’ll see. But if it goes adverse, as you imply, this has got to be a wake-up call for people. Listen, it all comes down to how many people are going to organize and make civic action and political action their chief hobby. Some people play—you know, are in bowling leagues. Some people have bridge game leagues. How many people? And this is who I call "the other 1 percent." The other 1 percent advancing all these changes, all these changes, with the backing of majority polls, can take on the top 1 percent of the super-rich and beat them.
That’s why we want people to log into timeforaraise.org, timeforaraise.org, pick up the phone, just get your feet wet here. If you don’t do this, call the White House and call your member of Congress, (202) 224-3121—there’s a switchboard—and tell them you want to support Jesse Jackson Jr.'s bill. I mean, they're in a bubble on Capitol Hill. We call it "Withering Heights." You cannot believe how stagnant this city is, because the people back home have become so disillusioned and so discouraged that they just give up.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, very quickly—
RALPH NADER: And they cannot give up.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, the whole battle over whether to raise Bain and Mitt Romney and his wealth within the Democratic Party, it seems that they’re heading away from that. What about Mitt Romney’s overseas accounts, both personally and with Bain, and the significance of how far the Democrats are willing to go?
RALPH NADER: Mitt Romney’s record is a losing record for Mitt Romney, but only if the Democrats make a big deal of it. They didn’t make a big deal out of George W. Bush’s Texas record for some bizarre reason. But why don’t they put up on TV the string of companies that Bain Capital, under Romney, bought, strip-mined, loaded with debt, laid off workers—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
RALPH NADER: —and threw into bankruptcy?
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave—we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us.
RALPH NADER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Longtime consumer advocate, three-time presidential candidate, Ralph Nader.
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