center kirsten gillibrand talks about her book, off the sidelines. >> from the cato institute in washington, dc, consumer advocate and five-time presidential candidate ralph nader. he calls for an alliance between progressives, conservatives and libertarians to take on issues like corporate bailouts, pentagon spending and civil liberties. this is an hour and 30 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, welcome to the cato institute. i am vice president for research

here at cato. it's my pleasure to welcome you to a book forum today, where we'll be discussing the latest book from ralph naadir, "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state." you heard that right. ralph nader is speaking at the cato institute. and that little popping sound you hear is heads exploding all over washington. the same sound you hear when people discover store the third time the koch brothers support drug legalization, because when you look at the world through ideological spectacles and see everything in terms of left versus right, the most interesting things in the world become invisible. in particular, if you look back at recent american history, important parts of the story get lost. so when we think back to the 1960s, and opposition to the military draft, we think of this as a heroic left-wing cause. student cad cals opposing the

war and -- radicals opposing the war conscription. but the other part of the story is that one of the most influential opponented of military conscription was none other than milton freedman, leader of the chicago school and economic adviser to goldwater and nixon, but who had long opposed the military draft, had made the case against it in his seminal and then served on the nixon commission which paved the way to move to an all-volunteer army. at the end of his life, freedman said his proudest policy accomplish. was his role in ending the draft. likewise, when we look back at the heyday of deregulation, what do we think of? we think of ronald reagan and the rise of conservativism, when in fact many of the most important deregulatory initiatives of the '70s and '80s occurred during the carter administration, and indeed, airline and trucking

deregulation, the leader in congress, was none other than ted expend his young aide, steven breyer, and one of the most influential supporters outside of capitol hill was none other than our guest today, ralph nader. flash forward to today and ralph nader once again sees interesting developments in the blind spot of partisan conventional wisdom. the prevailing picture of american politics today is that of polarization, left is left and right is right and never the twain shall meet. ralph nader sees something else. he looks past the cable news sound and fury and sees the possibilities of left-right convergence in a number of key policy areas. in particular, he sees potential for principled libertarians, conservatives and progressives, to form a left-right alliance of

outsiders against a corrupt and overreaching bipartisan washington establishment. the most promising causes for such alliance that landfill identifies are, one, opposing the massive civil liberties violations of the surveillance state. two, fighting bloated pentagon spending and military overreach abroad. and, three, campaigning against corporate welfare and bailouts for privileged insiders. the common denominator is a suspicion of power, power that can be corrupted by using public power to enrich private purses, and power that can be abused by turning the coercive machineries of the state against the people it is pledged to protect. of course this is a blind spot for the establishment. if there's one thing that washington insiders are united on it's love of power, and a complete lack of suspicion of power. oh, sure, there's suspicion of the other guys having power,

burt paw in the abstract is just -- but power in the an instruct is just fine for -- in the abstract is just fine for washington insiders. the trick is making sure it's in the right hands. for libertarians, suspicion of power is in our dna, so any effort to reorient politics in this direction should come as welcome news, and for my part i can't think of a better leader from the progressive ranks than ralph nader, whose whole car has been characterized bay principled opposition to unchecked power. notably in recent years, it's easy to find people on the left criticizing civil liberties abuses during the bush administration. they got a lot more silent, the people on the left, during the obama administration.

but ralph nader has maintained that even raised the decibel level as civil liberty abuses have been consolidated and expanded. of course, ralph mader and libertarians have real differences and those differences are rooted in different conceptions of the power to be worried about. ralph is much more worried than i am about corporate power, and we libertarians tend to worry more about expansions of government power than ralph does in particular instances. but what we can certainly agree on is that when big business and big government get in bed together, we're very unlikely to ooh and ah over the baby pictures. in any event, libertarians are 0 a tiny minority in american politics so when anybody wants to extend a hand to us, i

believe it behooves us to be hospitable and, hence, today's event. let me bro dues our speakers for what i think is going to be a wonderful discussion. i'll start with the commenters. after ralph speaks our first commenter will be dan mccarthy, who is the editor of the american conservative, a magazine which of direct relevance to today's proceedings has served as a standard bearer for realism and restraint in foreign policy in contrast to the more -- i mention this with special humility has dan was right about these things back when i was dead wrong. it took the dismal experiences of occupying afghanistan and iraq to beat the whole cold war hawk out of me in addition to his work at the magazine he has wherein for numerous other publics click the spectator, reason, and worked on the 2008 ron paul campaign. tim carn yes, our other commenter, a senior political

columnist at the washington examiner where his beat is the often salad intersection of business and -- squall quid business of business and government. he examines barriers to competition in all areas of american life. the author of the big ripoff. how big business and big government steal your money, in 2006, and obama-nonics in 2009. and our main speaker today, ralph nader, surely here is a man who needs to introduction, as the sagos, but it's my job to introduce him, and i we got rid of all the unnecessary jobs in washington, then where would we be? so in a public career, now spanning a half century, ralph nader has been an activist, author, critic, gadfly, coalition builder and presidential candidate. he is particular a founding father of the modern consumer

protection varmintal movements. a career that made ralph naadir one of the 100 most influential figures in american history. i met ralph about a year and a half ago in an event related in his book. before that the last time i actually saw ralph nader on stage i was a freshman at princeton university, 18 years old mitchell roommate and i, both very libertarian and at the time very rah-rah proreagan, win to see ralph nader expecting to seedr one of satan's henchmen. so if my present-day self could have whispered in the 18 university self's year that approximately 100 years from now you'll host an event with ralph nader, my mind would have been

blown. so it's my great pleasure to introduce ralph nader. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you all for coming. this book is a long time in being conceived, and goes back a long was in terms of my experience with people of different ideological labels, and it was quite clear to me, many, many years ago, that power structures believe in dividing and ruling, and if they can distract attention from the areas where different groups agree, to where they disagree, they can pretty much change that strategy of divide and rule into an institutional awareness level, and so you see all these arguments and all these

descriptions about red state, blue state, conservative, liberal, you see#a the polarization word used all the time. and it is true. left-right, do disagree rather interminably on things like reproductive rights, balanced budget, school prayer, gun control. with variations on the margins, those are generally areas of disagreement. but the areas of agreement are extraordinarily numerous and very fundamental. they're fundamental in termed of procedural rights of any society that calls itself democratic, such as civil liberties. they're fundamental in terms of the misuse of taxpayer dollars. president eisenhower warned us against. very fundamental in terms of

preserving local, state and national sovereignty from excessive surrender to unaccountable transnational systems of corporate governance, like nafta and the world trade organization. they are fundamental in terms of law and ordinary for the rich and powerful, not just for street criminals. they are fundamental in terms of giving volt -- voters more voices and choices, that means lower ballot access barriers. we have the highest ballot access barriers in the western world. and more choice for voters, and structurally it means with we give candidates more rights to get on the ballot, we are irrevocably giving voters more rights to have the choices of both agendas and candidates. now, those are pretty important

areas, and there are more areas of convergence between left and right. this book is for serious people who read, think, and are very serious about our country's future and its place in the world. some bry sat ritz might say, you he can get all those people in one room of disagree. the left-right convergence operates from very justins from inception to victory, depending on the issues. it operates, and it's already there in terms of public opinion. we have large majorities behind the issues i've mentioned. the polls on breaking up the big banks that are considered too big to fail, they come in at around around 90% because the people fear that wall street will crash main street again. the polls come in very high on

prosecuting big-time wall street crooks. that comes in off the chart. people think there was wrong-doing in the crashing of our economy and unemploying eight million people and burdening taxpayers with a gigantic bailout, not to mention the shredding of worker pensioned and the savings of people. and, yet, nobody was prosecuted and nobody went to jail in contrast to the savings and loan scandals, where there were prosecutions, convictions and jail terms served by over 800 officials of the s & ls, a mere 25, 30 years ago. so things are getting worse in terms of wealth. in terms of what franklin del know roosevelt called fascism. he called it in a message in 1938 to the u.s. congress asking for the contraction of a temporary national economic commission to investigate

concentrate it corporate power, and he said, and i'm paraphrasing him, except for that word, which he used -- he said, whenever government is controlled by private economic power, that is fast ship. and corporate welfare is a phrase people on the left use. it amounts to extraordinary power over government agencies and departments to turn their capitalist guaranteed system, and i used corporate, to contrast the capitalism we associate with small business, who, if they don't succeed, they're free to go bankrupt and big business, if it doesn't succeed because of mismanagement, crime, or other irregularities, they go to washington, or if they do go to bankruptcy, it is immediately tied to a government bailout.

as we saw with general motors not long ago. the basis of the convergence to go even deeper is the preamble to theyñ constitution, which is wow be the people, "not wow be the corporations." the word corporation, company, political party, none exist in our constitution. so, it's interesting to raise the question, well, then why do they control us? why do big corporations and political parties control us? it's largely an out of control judiciary that ascribed increasingly constitutional rights across the board, with the exception of the fifth amendment, self incrimination to artificial entities known as corporations. and so the sovereignty of the people began to be subordinated to the sovereignty of the transnational corporation.

the basis for the convergence, then, runs in the following stages. it starts in terms of public opinion. as abraham lincoln said, with public sentiment you can achieve anything. without public sentiment you can't achieve much of anything at all. the number of convergences in terms of public opinion, i reduce to 24. partly because i ran out of space. there are at least 24 significant areas, including the opposition to the use of imminent domain to seize homes and private businesses, and allows the state to level that area and give it to a corporation like general motors or4n fisa. the supreme court ruled that was okay. it's interesting that a 5-4 decision, and four of the 5-4 were liberals.

so, a major convergence of opinion that simply is wrong. it's one thing taking private property for building a highway or a bridge or whatever. school. but when you take private property from the powerless and then give it to the powerful private property of corporations, that's wrong. and following the kilo decision, the new london case, the 5-4 case i just mentioned, about 20-some state legislatures immediately passed legislation saying, not in our state are you going to have imminent domain on private property to be transferred to private property. indeed, at the statelegislative level, a lot is going on that could not go on without left-right legislatures, juvenile justice reform, reduce something horrendous sentences passed in 15 states. it could not have been passed

without right-left cooperation by the state legislators. moreover, what we're seeing in many state legislatures is a re-evaluation of the war on drugs, which is a severe economic and civil liberties dimensions to it. we are also seeing increasing questioning of economic development policies that require taxpayers to fund stadiums, ballparks, and assortment of companies that wouldn't have otherwise made it on their own. now, i had a talk with ed crane, who had michigan to do with the cato institute, and he said, ralph, i oppose all corporate subsidies, unconstitutional wars, civil liberties

restrictions, the patriot act, and the federal reserve run amok. i said, that's pretty good start, ed. those are not minor issues, are they? so the question becomes, how do you turn large major-tary an left-right opinion operationally so it moves into coverage by the press, then being put on the table of candidates at local, state, national elections, and then it becomes part of debates and then the media covers it and the pollsters cover it and basically we're off to a strain of political dynamism from which there is no return. they become part of the public discourse. surprising as it may

inside power is corporate. so it's important to ask yourselves on issue by issue another what stage from public opinion convergence to becoming

more coherently visible to being recognized by the media and the pollsters and to me put on the table by the candidates. and to be part of the public discourse. and interesting one is the minimum wage. the minimum wage is an anathema to libertarian. but it isn't just libertarians and liberals converging, maybe libertarians or conservatives would never call themselves corporatists, liberals and progressives, and when you come in 70-80% for a restoration of the minimum wage to what it would have been at the level of 1968 adjusted for inflation, which would be just under $11 an hour now, at 7.25 federal now, when you do that, you know there are a lot of conservative workers in wal-mart and elsewhere who are notlb going to sacrifice the necessities of

life for their family and reject moving up to the 1968 inflation adjusted level because they're conservatives. and this raises an interesting point. that at a high live of an extraction is where you -- abstraction is where you get most disagreement because political power brokers realize they can get people disagreeing, fighting each other, rooting themselves in immoveable positions, at abstract levels of general festival, -- philosopy and general labeling, but when you bring it down to where people work, raise their families, at the community level, the reality begins to weaken the ideological abstract rigidity that people might hold otherwise. in the book, i took an opportunity to see how

corporatist masquerading as conservatives, and conservatives vastly outnumber corporatists. corporatist happen to be more in power. how corporatists misinterpret or conveniently avoid it, recognizing that their principle starting with adam smith, were almost uniformly as worried about corporate coercion as they were about government coercion. it's just that corporate coercion spills over into government coercion, as its principle instrument of control in addition to direct corporate coercion on, say, consumers or other recipients. adam smith, who is probably the most widely read political philosopher of his time -- he even went into customs reports.

he read travelers who went all over the world at that time in trading, and wrote their accounts, a voracious absorber of knowledge. he believed in public education. he believed in public works. he warned repeatedly about businesses getting together to collude. he was against government regulation because he believed it would always be taken over by corporate power and used against the people. twisted. even someone like frederick haiy was someone who advocated in the words of his biographer, regulatory mechanisms to prevent fraud, deception and monopolies and said there was a strong case for government providing, quote,

some minimum of food, shelter and clothing sufficient to preserve health and capacity to work. and for organizing a comprehensive system of social insurance for sickness and accidents. he was against medicare:÷ and medicaid because they weren't universal. they were discriminatory. so, it is important to also show that there is a larger convergence between many of thec heralded liberal philosophers as well as the conservative philosophers. i want to say just a few brief words on the issue of government waste. this is one of the early convergences, as far as i was concerned, and what really convinced me that left-right convergence is likely to be the only political re-alignment that

can get things done in this country in the next 12 years. you can see it bubbling up even in congress, with over a year ago differs and liberals in the house of representatives, defying john boehner and nancy pelosi, almost passed a bill to block the dragnet snooping of the nsa of the american people. you can see it in the passage of the whistleblower protection bill of 2012 and the false claims act of 1986, to give public employees the rights and the protections to blow the whistle on corporate and other fraud on the taxpayers, on medicare or pentagon contracts. but in 1983, our groups were fighting a project called the clinch river beard reactor, and

it was on the clinch river in tennessee, a pet project of senator howard baker, who sadly just passed away yesterday, and it was the pet project also of westinghouse and general electric and it was supported by ronald reagan. what was interesting about this was it already spent $1.3 billion and there wasn't a shovel in the ground. and the projection was that it was going to go three to four times over the original cost estimates. now, our side didn't like the breeder reactor because of safety issues, of plutonium proliferation, and risks, and we weren't getting very farred, and senator bumpers called us up from arkansas and say why don't you connect with right wing groups. i have been hearing mumbles here. so i called up fred smith.

libertarian than fred smith. and he was running a competitive enterprise institute. and he says i don't like this for taxpayer protection reasons. it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. so, we created a group called taxpayer protection group, the umbrella group of left and right, and we went to work on capital hill, against all odds, by the way. taking on the nuclear industry, ronald reagan, powerful legislators and the congress, and the lobbies of g and westinghouse is -- of ge andz@ westinghouse is pretty much unsurmountable. the vote came in the senate. we won 56- 40. that was the end of the clinch river breeder react or. now, why did this work? because a new group was formed, wasn't very elaborate, which was

the umbrella eve both sides -- over both sides and the people under that umbrella went to work everyday and only had the clinch river on their mind. the problem with think tanks like heritage, progressive policy institute, economic policy institute, cato, is they've got a lot of issues. all those groups have come out years ago with attacks on corporate welfare they put out reports on corporate welfare. but the next stage didn't occur. they didn't get into an operational mode to do something about it. and that to me is the problem. unless we start nonprofit advocacy groups that are singularly focused on conventioning issues eric not a going to happen because every day people go to work for cato, heritage, public citizen, economic policy institute, they have other priorities for which they get funding, and those other priorities for which they

get funding are usuallyw left-right disagreement issues, and so they're not about to have the elbow room or the space to work on what the idealistically believe in that we call convergence. this happened with john kashich, a perfect example. house budget chair, many of you know. i persuaded him in 1998 to hold the first hearings in american history on corporate welfare. imagine that? the first hearings. and he invited grover nord nordquist and me and others, left right and it was a marvelous day, but the press hardly reported it because they knew it was going nowhere. they read john kashich as saying -- he is a sincere person, believes in restricting corporate welfare.

at the time he even criticized the blooded -- bloated military budget but it would not move to the legislative stage. governor kashich of ohio received three letters from me when he was elected and afterwards, saying, now you can do something about corporate welfare at the state level, and i've received no answer. now, that's because there is no infrastructure for convergence to push these matters further. when i was debating milton freedman, i got him to agree that there should be regulation of pollution. he didn't think there should be licensing for doctors. he thought the american medical association was the worst cartel but agreed there should be regulation against pollutants, much of which you can't see, sense, long-range damage, all the rest of it. not exactly market choice. i was debating ronald reagan

once, and i challenged him on corporate subsidies, and he came right back and he said, i always tell my friends in the business world, not to put their hand in the washington trough. and so he came out against corporate subsidies. but when he became president, he didn't challenge corporate subsidies, and the constant expansion of corporate welfare proceeded under his watch by and large as well. now, again, this lack of an infrastructure. public opinion convergence may raise the alarm in the minds of politicians, but it doesn't get very far unless it can be cogently visible and get media and get polls and start to get on the table of one gyy more of the political candidates' various levels. so, i have a chapter in my book

called "dear billionaire." some people think i'm on a kick trying to find enlightened visionaries. and i figured the following. in have been more billionaires in the united states. some of them don't even know they're billionaires. but they are. in terms of their net worth. there's got to be a few enlightened ones in their%/ 70s 80s that are no longer thinking of just amassing wealth. they're think can of posterity. one of the favorite words of our founding fathers. thinking off their children and grandchildren and very worried before the where this country is sliding, and where the world is going. and so to start these connector, nonprofit advocacy groups to convergence for left-right alliances to dismantle the corporate state, it's going to require some of these groups 0 who are not conflicted with

other agenda priorities for which they are receiving funding day after day. i want to end on this note. brink has the priorities of the bloated military budget and empire, civil libertied and the patriot act and crony capital limp. there's another libertarian in new hampshire, steve ericson. his big thing is term limits, gerrymandering, and election reform. i point these differences out because there will be differences of priorities. these are shifting alliances. they don't have to be written in stone. there will be different priorities, and there will be some disagreements over means to an end, although there are less disagreement on means to the end when you're opposing something and you want to abolish it, and

so the aggregation of concentrated power is so'i(nñ hy that there's plenty of stuff to oppose, and abolish without boiling down into differences of what road do you take to a commonly agreed upon end. last point i want to make is -- this is very important -- crony capitalism, the binding phenomenon, the convergence of big business with big government, run by corporate democrats and corporate republicans. that is the convergence we're up against with the left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state. that is inextricably linked to a double standard in enforcement of the law to the weaken

forcement against the corporate crime wave. whether it's corporate damaging your health and safety through products, soil, air, whether it's corporate corruption and takeover of government, whether it's looting the taxpayer dollars, the issue of corporate crime does not come close in terms of political attentiveness to the issue of street crime. i call corporate crime, crime in the suites. i'm prone to rhyming. crime in the suites has got to raise itself in terms of something which liberal and progressives are much keen early sensitive to than the consecutives and liberal -- conservatives and liberals i spoke to. not that the latter are insensitive. there's just a different level of urgencies. just like conservatives and libertarians have a different

level of urgency about government waste and programs that don't work, than liberals and progressives. but the impunity and immunity of corporate crime and all its complex manifestations, as well as itself global presence of evasions, brings down the very principle of the rule of law in this country. if there's anything conservative liberal economists have agreed on, it's that without the rule of law, without the freedom of contract, without access to the courts, for wrongful injuries,

we have lost the freedom of contract because we cannot go across the street to another vendor because the contracts are pretty much the same, involving unilateral modification, compulsory a. arbitration. i hope i conveyed enough -- it's easy to elicit disagreement. that's with what this is about. we agree we disagree, but now we have to focus on agreeing where we agree, and turning it into operational change for our country and its place in the world. thank you. [applause] >> ralph, thank you for those remarks and thank you also for

this book. "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state." i should say this book does contain just fascinating material, both for conservatives and libertarians. ralph mentioned friedrich hayak as one of the libertarians he finds chon ground with. many others as well and many traditionalists conservatives, too; so wherever you're coming from on the left or right, among conservatives, libertarians or liberals or progressives you'll fine something in this book you didn't know before and will find very compelling, and it will change the wail you look at the political spectrum. so let me thank also the cato institute and brink lindsey for his very kind introductory remarks. ralph's book really gives us a new set of tools for deal waiving very old problem. a problem that the left and right by themselves have both been inadequate for addressing.

a problem that was very well diagnosed about half a century ago. carl oglesby, leader of students for a democratic so i vote, left wing student activist group during the vietnam war era, was asked to name the system, what was this system which the new left was opposing, what was responsible for the vietnam war, the militarization of our campuses and the sense of ennui and hopelessness starting to overtake an entire generation. carls oglesby called the system corporate liberalism. named very well in the fact he got the essence of the system right and the name itself conveys something of the difficulty we face in fighting the system of corporate liberalism, because the name corporate liberalisms sounds as if i might be capitalist mick, might have something to do with free markets, that's what the word corporate sometimes means to men conservatives and libertarians but is it the and

they ralph's book shows very effectively that the kind of political economy that we have is not really a true free market. in fact it is a system that is crony capitalist and libertarian pop lists such as tim kearney have been doing brilliant work expecting how government and big business are in bet together -- in bed together. so corporate liberalism is not capitalism and you can oppose corporate liberalism without opposing capitalism. in the grand coalition of left and right there are people who have critiques they make of capitalism, but they're free to do that and those who support capital him are free to say we want a capitalism but don't want crony capitalism, favoritism, don't want corporations to have special government privileges they use to attain monopolies. corporate liberalisms sounds like it might have something to do with freedom.

liberalism denotes the idea of human rights, perhaps democracy, many of the good thing that come with our system of government and historical freedoms. it is ill liberal if we oppose corporate liberalism? the fact it is not ill liberal to oppose corporate liberalism because corporate liberalism is a hitch critical system of economics, politics and foreign policy. corporate liberalism is responsible for such things as the normalization of torture over the past decade, for the vastly growing surveillance state, which grabs the metadata of every man, woman and child in the united states, and in fact around the world, and the corporate liberalism is also responsible for the erosion of rights that date back to the magna carta in some cases even earlier. now we have detention without trial, detention without charge in many cases, as a result of the direction that our government has taken in an acute

way over the last decade but in a gradual way over the last half century at least, if not even longer. so corporate liberalism is something that is crosssive of many of the things we love most dearly. the free market, of freedom in government, and indeed of human rights and basic decency. so why is it so difficult? why does ralph have to wright this book in order to show us how to fight this system? why is that not everyone simply recognizes the evil for what it is? again, here i think the name is accurate because it kind of shows us how a confusion has been introduced into our political discourse which cripples us and makes us incapable of fighting the system which both left and rightic highses is extremely dangerous. it's very easy for people in the main stream or establishment of the republican or democratic parties to say if your against corporate liberalism -- they use many other words -- itch your

against this, you must be against free markets. you're against corporations? that means you obviously are some oater of communist. or liberalism. are you against liberalism, the idea that humans everywhere are entitled to democracy and human rights? if you're against that, then you -- if you're against american military operations abroad, then you must be against the universal ethics that liberalism has traditionally espoused. so there's this conflict, and there's also the complication which ralph nader's book helps to solve, that whenever the corporate liberals, whenever the establishment in both political parties, wants to prevent any kind of left-right collaboration, they simply say, look at your allsful you may have differences with the main stream of -- or the establishment, rather, of the republican party, with the leadership of the democratic party, but aren't you actually closer whether you're on the left or right to the establishment in either party than you are to the extreme on the other side? isn't someone like ralph nader really against all kinds of

market freedom and isn't even a compromise kind of crony capitalism better tan progressivism which may seem to be totally opposed to what libertarians believe in terms of market economics? nader's book, with -- disspells the myth and shows it's not the case that american progressives are opposed to capital jim, root and branch, but opposed to its abuses and libertarians and conservatives are as well. but there's a deeper and even more fundamental difficulty that we face in going to war with corporate liberalism. and that its that corporate libbal rhythm has enmisched itself in our very way of life. in our way of thinking but institutions of our economic life, in our ways of conceiving foreign policy, and indeed in our government. and corporate liberals are able to say some of justification that you have to be cable not to throw the baby out with the bart water -- with the bath water, and in trying to attack corporate liberalism you will be

doing damage to the free market and will we doing damage to human rights, liberty and democracy. because there's been such a historical convergence, the bad kind of convergence, between corporate liberalism and the american way of life we find ourselves confronting an intractable problem and that's why ralph nader's book is val valuable because it shows us practical steps we can take in starting to separate the american way of life from this perversion of the american way of life that represents corporate liberalism. i explore difficulties in foreign policy in the cover store of my most recent issue, and talking about modern libballism tends to go hand in glove with empire. novelty -- not because it has to but a things have einvolved in a dangerous way. ralph nader's book shows us the building blocks we can use to

start building a much bigger picture over time. and it starts with much common sense practical ideas as auditing the pentagon, conservatives believe in economic rigor and efficiency, progressives believe the pentagon is an institution that has committed a great many abuses. surely we can come together and say the pentagon should be subject to the same sort of auditing almost every other government agency is. this has not been the case until now, and it's something that does i think bring together left and right in a very practical and efficient way. as we walk through these kinds of practical steps that bring us together and that help desspell the myths that prevent us from cooperating i think we can then begin to address the three most fundamental questions the country is facing and i believe as we step back and consider these three questions, we realize they really are questions that can't be answered by left or right alone. that really are not -- they're questions that cannot be answered by some of the more reflexive responses that you get from conservatives lookber

tareans or progressives. the first of these questions is, what kind of economy do we actually have in this country? is it in fact a free market economy, which liberals -- people on the left look at our economy and look at various abuses, look at the plight of the poor and the middle class and say, well, if this is the free market, we're opost officed to the free market. is it in fact the case that the economy we have is a free market economy or is it a mixed economy? or some other kind of economy? the second great question i think we're going to wind up address as we walk through the practical steps that ralph nader presented it the question of what kind of government to we have. >> guest: do we have a democracy and do we have a mixed constitutional regime, perhaps of the sort the founding fathers aspired to? or something else, deformed system, programs al oligarch di, die, and there are -- taking a lard look at the way the political system works and have come to dark conclusions. the final question, very gig one, is what kind of foreign

policy do we want? what is america's place in the world and what strategy is appropriate to achieving it? this question has gone unaddressed for so long that a certain insider establishment which has very little transparency and makes decisions behind closed doors hayes been able to use ideology and rhetoric to get us into a number of wars that have had tremendously negative implications for our economy, civil liberties and our very souls. so i think ralph nader's book, while it can't possibly answer all these questions in a comprehensive way no single book could, it does show us the beginnings of the answers and ground in such a way we can start to find out how to address the problems of corporate liberalism. thank you very much. [applause] >> thanks, dan. thanks, ralph, for writing the book, thank you, cato, for

hosting us. i had a lot of positive stuff and a lot of criticism to give since it's been so positive i might lean a little heavier on the criticism in my comments. i did want to talk about -- first of all i'm now a suburban conservative libertarian catholic dad but i was born a limousine liberal in greenwich village, brought up by liberal parents. my dad was an antitrust lawyer who used reagan rig's name as a curse, and all that we inherited from him was a healthy distrust of big business, and i don't think enough of the right and libertarians started off with that healthy distrust. but the idea that pro business and pro free markets were identical i think dominated the right and prevented any interesting discussion on this topic until the bailouts, and then when barack obama was elected, having gotten a million

dollars from employees employeef goldman sachs, the most anybody rayed from a single company, obama and goldman sachs broke the record in that period whenb, mccain feingold existed and then passed the stimulus with the sport of the chamber of commerce, passed obamacare letting the hospitals and drug companies rye -- that woke up people on the right to the idea that the single biggest in the of free enterprise, the single biggest threat, is the big business lobby supporting more regulation, and i say that to conservative audiences all the time and usually the followup line is, it's not ralph nader. he's not the biggest enemy. holding him out as a bogeyman to the left and that was before this book, and i think this will make it very clear that if what you're fighting against for is free enterprise, then your biggest economy is corporatism so you have to ally with the

left, and the most important things i think in "unstoppable" are the warnings to libertarians that you're being played, being used by big business. at one point he writes the corporatists runs let the libertarians and conservatives have the paper platform, the party platforms, and then they throw out a welcome mat for big business lobbyist with their slush fund whos anything but libertarian or conservative in their demands. i spent hundreds of columns and two books trying to wright this and in one pave you put very well what the dynamic in the republican party is. in fact my first book i was looking for a blush on the back and i -- a blurb on the back and a went to a republican congressman who voted appropriately and the chief of staff came back and say the congressman loves the book but is not going to blurb it. i said why not? he said, who too you think funds or campaigns?

it's the family research -- it's not in the family research council. so this the problem. the concentrated benefits go to the ryenç sippants of corporate welfare. there's not a lobby against corporate welfare, ralph nader also emphasizes the need for institutions to the point that somebody with sort of a libertarian sense like me doesn't like the constant creation of institutions, but it's true. there is a lobby right now, the biggest, most important fight in this regard is the export-import bank, corporate welfare agency, i'll talk about that more later. there's a very strong lobby to keep export subsidies going. there's a very tiny lobby against the export subsidies bus the victims are the guys who don't get the loans because they're guaranteed for somebody else, or maybe whose competitors get them. they're never going to be as concentrated and organized as recipients of the subsidies.

others interesting warning in the book was for conservatives particularly. i consider myself one. but nader writes, since established ways and institutions usually reflect the existing distribution of power, wealth and property, conserve tim has been associated with societies where the few dominate the many, and i just think, especially the first part of that, that the conservativism, that the argument gets used to justify big government in many ways, that this idea of a resistance to change which, again, i think that's a good instinct. it's in the declaration of independence. don't change unless you absolutely have to bass it will bring bat beside things but that argument, resistance to change, is corporateist protectionity. people use protectionism to use to tariff us but i use it to refer to stuff like the wall street bailouts. it was pinstripe protectionism. wall street, people saying we

have0 this economy, five big banks and they do good things, and yes, there are good things brought about by having giant investment banks that can create mere efficient flows of capital and can do things maybe 100 small banks can't do. so the pinstripe protectionism is looking at that and saying because there are good things to this arrangement we need to preserve that and it ignores all the bad things, so the wall street bailouts were directed at saving the big banks, at saving the way wall street was working in '06. they said we need to do that because there was good. it's a lack of imagination and a sort of conservative mindset that if things are good, let's keep them that way, even if the invisible hand in creative destruction would destroy that. i. sitting in an of the record conservative meet little where somebody shows up and says, look, there's a new technology on the internet. this is ruining the record labels' ability to make a profit.

so somebody raises their hand and says why should we worry about the record label'snh abiy to make a profit in the conservative argument is, this is a legal legitimate institution which makes profits, which pays taxes, which has employed all sorts of people, and so we ought to protect it. and buggy whipmakers were a legal, legitimate institution that employed lots of people but it works to some extent. ask and one of my favorite things about the book it warned conservatives they're using conservative arguments to subvert the free market and justify the protection of the status quo. one guy who wrote this most clearly was a liberal, 50 years ago, i think he called himself a socialist, gabriel cocoa, wrote a book called the giant of conservativism. he was just talking about that mindset, the preserve vacation of the status quo, the people in power ought to stay in power. the current structures ought to

be preserved and he was one of the most formidable riders in i my thinking and the book channels some of that. i'm glad you brought up eminent domain. that's where i had liberal friends saying it's so confusing, i can't root for this little lady in new london to have her house taken but then i'm rooting for scalia and just -- it takes moments like that and like the bailout for the right to get your preconceived alliances smashed open. and where you see it today is things like, small business, mostly on the local level. fruit trucks. the restaurants in washington, dc, and in many other cities, are trying to get regulations on food trucks. this is not because the restaurant owners are tripping over the long lines on mcpherson square. it's because they don't want competition and you see it with uber-where the taxi drivers are driving around, decidings that upsetting people, not providing service, and messing up traffic

was somehow a good way to win popularte sentiment over towards regulations they that deny consumers choice. you see it on all sorts of other things, people can rent out their houses. places where technology is allowing for competition with the incumbents is where you get a lot of left-right coalition, and we won on the soft online privacy act, where you did have some corporations opposing the corporatist thing, google was against it. almost all the lobbying was for it. but why did we win that? all these congressmen sponsored the bill and then all withdrew their sponsorship, because you had an active elite, upper middle class, elite, willing to fight against it. ...

of corporate welfare often aren't as visible and aren't as prominent as they are when they say, you know, your blogger wanting to give the limo ride on u. street or whatever. that used to be the neighborhood. i'm learning my hip references are now outdated references. i think "unstoppable" miss the target on a few points and so i offer this criticism in any constructive life.

kind of like we are in a new relationship, things are awkward to get to know each other a little better. some of the things identified under the word conservative enough book included the american bar association and bring clancy and neither of them would probably be identified as conservative. we all look the same to you from far away. it's understandable. i have to defend one of my employers, the american enterprise institute identified as corporatists of the book could have hired me to fight against corporate welfare and this is maybe a new priority for a lot of groups on the right, but it is becoming one and lots of groups on the right that historically might've been more corporatists are coming around to again it took a while to realize it. a lot of these conservatives full text you can incorporate as an excess. aei also has railing against fannie mae and freddie mac.

you have her chief economist peter bush for the ethanol subsidies. so in every corner -- not every corner, there is some organizations bought and paid for by boeing and lockheed martin but there are coming you can see some mobilization against corporatism thanks in part to the bailout. i i think fdr doesn't get in the scrutiny entry into. ft argues the national recovery act which is a government enforced cartel businesses that crush small business. schechter brothers were the two brothers who want a jewish deli poor abused by the nra. at roscoe phil burton. might've heard his name during the obamacare mandate debate because what they did it so you're not allowed to grow corn for yourself. you have to be putting it into the economy because the article trueness treated like people doing that. ralph, you do a good job of pointing out a left and right are people who are principled

and people who basically are either corporatists were partisan. but sometimes you miss how the liberal games are really tied up in the liberal entities are tied up at the corporatism. minimum wage fight is not an easy issue. part of the reason there is so much popular support or it and then some conservative opposition is because, in income and this is obviously a self-serving answer for someone who imposes a headache but tricky economic issue in that we think it will cost issues. but wal-mart at cosco both support a hike in the minimum wage. what i look at that, they think is that because we'll crush mom and pop were more likely to pay lower wages? every regulation as to overhead cost that will far more disproportionately on mom-and-pop. for probably the skepticism of regulation, huber airline regulation, all these things not to teach us every regulation makes it harder for the small guy.

sometimes it's justified, but typically they make it harder for multiunit put the ball mcwhorter. every time i bring something into the arena government, it is big as this. that's not against all regulations. it's just a warning. i would say a final note and then i will go on to where i think the fed can. in your argument discussion with phil crane and grover norquist, the question is sort of who started this, who is to blame? is corporatism a question of government taking control of the answer is that a question of business taking control of government. the answer is both and a lot of people on the left including don't see the culpability.

a lot of it is the institution. average of the definition of corporatism and critique it. corporate status and is grover norquist calls it is a doctrine of supremacy. whatever status over the constitutionally from sovereignty of the people comprises of widening all-encompassing corporatist agenda. that leaves out the corporate culpability government. he downplayed the fact corporatism is an alliance between government and business and that needs to be more strongly seen. conservatives need to be much more wary of corporations. liberals need to be made much more wary of politicians and government. with that said, there's a couple fights that can win. the easiest way to do it when getting something passed is really hard. you might think that's good if you're a libertarian especially. by killing things a little

easier, especially the way a lot of things work in washington is writes that could eat the real fight of a left right coalition against corporate welfare. the current price has to do with experts that city. at the end of the fiscal year, the export import bank expire. typically almost unanimous. in fact, there's been unanimous consent a voice vote to renew it. this year there is a real fight because you have just had serling has somehow became chair of the house financial services committee despite not doing everything the bank asking to any of the opposing reauthorizing it. you're eric cantor as majority leader who is a champion and something happens rare cancer a month ago where two new replacement kevin mccarthy flip up and said no, we're not going to authorize the bank. so if no bill passes in the export import bank is dead.

if no bill passes, the private corporation investment instead. it's not an easy fight to chamber of commerce, manufacturers are lining up a time server in the fight. that's winnable because you don't have to have a majority of either fans chamber. you just need one for the majority leader stopping it. before last month, nobody heard of export import bank. he said xm, the teacher talking about the satellite company. you say opec, they think you're talking about the herb oil companies. but these are the people cared about and knew about, they would say it's a bad idea for u.s. taxpayers to be forced to subsidize boeing sales to the chinese government. at the knowledge another one. it has to get renewed. the ethanol tax credit died in vietnam and a half to get renewed. this took place for some people used to think he was good for the environment. it's not. it's supposed to be good for farmers to help score farmers at the expense of.

it is simply there for a few companies to profit. now here's where it gets murky. in a comfortable, especially for liberals and for me is the way to kill ethanol is probably to rope in big oil and mcdonald's who pays more for their corn. although that said, if there's anything you've done over the years that make you uncomfortable alliances work and the other one i would put up there after export subsidies and ethanol this one source of the sugar program. part of the farm bill. it's unconscionable. we keep out foreign sugar and loan money to sugar growers and if the prices are high enough, they forfeit to the government, just repay it. we pay 20 cents a pound for raw sugar, and then we sell it to the ethanol makers for 1 cent a pound. it's wonderful. sugar export subsidies come

ethanol or three fights that are winnable because they all involve killing a piece of legislation. i think there is broad left right agreement on the senate would be amazing to see that they concentrated industries about the strategy bringing together businesses that lose from them and trying to get people to care about it and the groundswell. going forward we could have some exciting time. we could change the way business is done in washington if he can get enough people, enough libertarians, not conservatives to concentrate on this idea. you got to get to know each other better, figure out where we agree about are nothing to bring bring up like the relationship. maybe minimum wage really beside her public-sector unions and just focus on the government should not be taking money from regular people and giving it to big business. that is something we can rayon and that is the fight that i think we can actually win. thank you.

[applause] >> row are did you want to or commenters have said before we open out the >> yeah, listening to the interaction reminds me one of the purposes is to go right down to the neighborhood in the living room the people were left right can have this discussion are and move the firm back home all the way to wall street washington later. recently on this book tour and in the audience, they actually form an ad hoc group right in the audience and said they were going to meet and discuss a number of these issues and then try to move them operationally. so it's in the peoples hands. no one can stop people from

doing this. the whole point of this discussion is to show what the potential is for people now that they are watching on c. are watching on c. span, people all over the country can or russian. there's no one more fearful of a left right alliance, not them then the plutocrats of the oligarchs. in the congress, whenever there is a rash of e-mails or letters, the senator says, where are they coming from quiet to usually know they are coming from the lefties or righties. when they say they are coming from both, the center pales. that is why i call it "unstoppable." when the fcc put the rollout in 2003 to allow more concentration of big media over local tv radio and newspapers, there was such a huge uproar coming from the nra

types, common cause types on congress that for the first time in congressional history, the house of representatives challenge big media and voted to overrule the fcc rule i-4 hundred to 21 and was about to go in to the unnamed. there it getting a left right arise from the public in the senate machinery slowed it down until the stamina of the big media prevailed and blocked it. you see that is why when you get the left right, there is this idea of gridlock, this idea of paralysis, severely destabilized in terms of reflecting the will of the people. >> all right. let's open up for questions now. i will call on you if you can give your name and make give your name and make it a crush rather than a comment. rehear. >> citizens united was greeted with as much enthusiasm in this building of the return of the hidden imam greeted in some

shiite circles. is there any hope of ending the wedding of government and big business without overturning citizens united? >> is that for -- which one? i don't think that corporations should have differing constitutional rights of human beings because i think there tension for concentrating power in receiving immunity and impunity make sure that there will be supreme over ordinary people. so when it comes to citizens united, i think that was a bad decision not only because it enhances secret money and influence over our election procedurally bad decision, but it basically allows corporations to independently spend as much

money as they want at the local, state and national. there's no contest with individuals on that. the entire presidential and congressional campaign in 2012 was late the under $8 billion, right? that is a quarter's profit for exxonmobil a few years ago. so i would be against it. i found left right are worried about big money and politics can't agree because they haven't spent enough time with each other and how to get it done. >> i think there are ways to get it done. first of all, look at the republican party of what happens in citizens united. one of the indirect effects has been a second power center against k street. the business lobbies to be the only way for republicans to get money can buy you have groups like the club for growth, heritage action, outside groups funded by basically which

conservatives, which is different than big events and they go ahead and win one of these contests on primaries. we have come you know, just in a mosh is getting attacked by the business lobby, but other groups are able to back him. thad cochran almost got driven out of part because they're outside groups. the same groups opposing export import bank and not sort of thing. the second thing is regulation in general puts the ball in the court when you get government involved in his life to participate in political debate and how much come you are going to skew things. we see the individual campaign where you can only get $2500 to a politician. first of all, why you get $2500 is beyond me. we are supposed to be libertarians here. to each his own. that means politicians a month started getting a big check have to go around to get safety checks from a bunch of people.

who do you know that could go out his friends at a politician friends at the politician in the safety of their business then click empowers lobbyists because a lot of times it's the unintended consequences. looking at the revolving door be a good place to look for my regular politicians more of what they can do for regulating outside players in political debate. there's an argument for it but i'm incredibly wary of it. >> you zeroed in on one of the issues that could completely blowup the left right romance that awkward getting to know you phase. right here. >> hello, i am interning here in the summer in washington d.c. at a venture capital private equity startup fun. my question is certainly -- so my question is certainly a really good point came from both sides about how we could eliminate the corporate state,

but wouldn't it be a challenge especially to convince the republicans to say a corporate state is not the best given the chamber of commerce or wall street donors have been flooding into the republican party in many has been taken by people who do support by these business lobbies in the wall street many contracting firms in particular. how hard would it be to convince the republican party to challenge the corporate state? >> well, would simply reiterate tim has just said. what we've seen over the last five or six years has been the rise of a counterforce up in the republican party against the chamber of commerce in making so much of the corporate state. now sometimes it is not her one set of rich guys versus another set of rich guys, but having a

competition is much better than having a system which combines economic power with little party to restrict competition. answering this question than the previous one in some of these cases with citizens united, for example, you can perform judo here and say the case in favor of citizens united and not having regulation and political spending is a part of speeches you want as much competition as possible. you want the money to come from as many different sources in whatever quantities as possible in order to have the most evolutionary and combative system possible so you don't have a few people who of all the resources in terms of power in terms of money. you can connect that with the themes will talk about in terms of access because the argument about access and widening the availability of ballot positions

to third parties and independents is the same as the case for having unlimited donations in terms of our political system. if you should have as many voters as possible, you should look closely restrictive regulations that dictate only certain kinds of candidates, only certain parties have the most privileged access to ballots. you can create a left right fusion here come the madness fairly long blind bluff has envisioned, but maximal decision within the political system. >> one of the points in the book is community self-reliance, whether energy and agriculture food credit unions, community banks, which is burgeoning around the country as a way to shift power back from wall street to main steam. this is a huge area of convergence and there's a lot going on here just magazine is a magazine that chronicles what's going on around the country in

terms of local community self-reliance. the most interesting comment by david ratto overturned eric cantor and this reflects liberals. why is concerned with too much money in politics from all sides. but too much emphasis on this begins to ignore the wisdom of his comments, which was he was outspent 27 to one by eric cantor and on the evening of his election he was interviewed by fox news and he said money doesn't vote. voters vote. he said that as a reflection of get down to the grassroots and mobilize people. said the obsession with money and politics we should not forget about the other side, which can negate a lot of money in politics, which is local mobilization of the voters. >> woman here on the i/o.

>> thank you here this is a question for the panel, but mr. nader in particular and particularly the housing collapse we spent a lot of time talking about balancing the benefits and risks of government-sponsored enterprise like fannie mae and freddie mac. what i find interesting is we are not the discussion about what is happening with the farm credit system, which was intended to help small farmers, but is now giving multimillion dollar loans to corporations like verizon. i'm curious to see if you guys think this is an opportunity for a left right alliance to try and read in the mission and return the focus back to small farmers by the credit system. >> i've never heard of that issue and that's great. also, my father-in-law worked

for the administration was i probably shouldn't say anything until he retires and then we should abolish it. but in general, what you are pointing that happens in all farm subsidies with the purpose of working fish that ends up serving the big guy. in my mind i actually learned the phrase regulatory capture from ralph nader and his regular. so the guys were supposed to be regulated capture it or if it's an organization that hands out money come in and that the big guys get their hand on it. even the small business administration is happening. for me that is a lesson in that kind of conservatism of saying when you create an institution in washington, the guys at the best lobbyists are going to be the ones to get their hands on it. >> let me just at the beach or regulatory capture is it simply in the fact that the regulated industries can buy politicians to do their favor. it's the fact you can't regulate

an industry without having massive amounts of information so you can make intelligent decisions. the only place you can get the information is from the industry itself. they have a monopoly on the relevant information. they feed it to you, regulators and the right way. and so, it's very difficult over time for regulators not to succumb to the world view of the regulated industry intellectually or fiscally. >> one more quick point. this is a convergent point on this issue okay. the bank regulations are going to way it is and not asking for capture. a tap on the size of the bank doesn't involve much math. it doesn't involve looking to expertise. it does involve much lobbying. the rules are called for such as banks which are backed up by the taxpayers, the rule should be as simple as possible and is transparent enough one of the great ways to make it not

getting captured. >> gentleman in the blue shirt. >> thank you. i am alan abel appeared mr. nader, you mention the phrase 12 years when you're speaking. i don't know if you're talking about to terms with hillary in one of chelsea, but someone here needs to ask you about 2016 in your thoughts about it. >> what was the question quick >> terms of ventura in the billionaire. >> it looks like right now if you want to guess it is the two dynasties, jeb bush and hillary clinton unless the republicans want to impose on people like rubio were crews. the big as this is going to get behind jeb bush. either way, he's different from george w. bush. he's known to read a lot of books. [laughter]

>> in the back. >> good afternoon. jeff steele. notice skepticism given the argument could be made the american system has been deformed and having to compete in the 20th century against two arguably very deformed systems, not to germany and soviet communism. given that our power structure had been built up to compete against those monstrous entities and we still have a one-party state in china and the argument was made that coming in now, most of them, the islamic caliphate risk is a monstrous threat. it seems easy that the status quo just continues because this

power structure has been built in this very difficult to deconstruct the massive power structure that was necessary to defeat 20th century enemies. >> i think the issue of past agendas, how we got to the national security state in particular is of great importance and the kind of failure of imagination to rethink the premises of the national security state after the cold war and the reflex to look for enemies of equivalents -- or is part of what is maintaining the failure of imagination. >> some of it is just a matter of time. rink in his introductory remarks and similar discussion before the event talks about how the experience of the cold war has shaped his reception in the war on terror. now the worst now the word here is one shape our perceptions going forward will lead to

rather substantial reforms of military, industrial national security states. and that's only if we have at we have a different level civic motivation back home. people define themselves as powerless and take them out of the equation and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. people have no idea how powerful they are, even if you point to areas in american history. again and again, major changes have occurred by less than 1% of the people organizing, reflecting broader segment. that is true for american history. occupy wall street that the richest 1% might attack about the 1% that mobilized the public sentiment can turn this country around again and again and not almost inherently means the left right reflection of opinion. so the book does talk about shifting power from the few to the many it's a rather unique

areas providing facilities of people can voluntarily be in together more easily as consumers, as taxpayers, as voters, as workers, but we didn't have time to discuss it. a lot of these paddles of left right about the anime politics, the rights of big business can be handled by shift of power in the private sector and you can see a lot of the environmental advances in our country came by a handful of nonprofit environmental advocacy groups, starting with thursday and they represented a majority i should go about air pollution and unsafe food. that is why they got. is just a hand will tear brookside a lot of examples.

>> this gentleman here should the microphone will come to you. >> on the i/o. two chairs back. >> hi, my name is ryan from new orleans, louisiana. i am here in d.c. and my question is based on the ballot access you guys were talking about earlier. the federal election commission is seeking my opinion is one of the biggest buyers for third-party and other candidates on the ballot. my question is would you recommend reform in it, abolishing it and if you recommend reforming it, how would you do so? >> one of our presidential campaigns, we had enough information about the democratic party pushing us off ballot, all kinds of unsavory manners and

tiredness at the core. we received 24 times in 12 weeks to get us off the ballot in the states in the summer of 2004. our petitioners were harassed and intimidated on and on premise of the compiled this major brief, asking the federal elections commission to investigate and they turned it down and never sent a brief to and affect the defendant at the paradise agent because it's going to break through with, three democrats. i would urge to flee you are is a new manner because there are candidate would have to be dealt with. but not the way the fec has been doing it. they are totally outlawed.

any major accusation against one party or the other. to this brings up that way myself is your sister. let's make a new one. it finds to me like lucy pulled the football away from charlie brown last time, but trying to say it almost suggests the problem with something just in this particular government institution and we can just wipe it clean and make a new government institution, that one won't be captured by the powers of the industry and that is always for my skepticism pops up. they got captured last time. it will be captured this time. it will become that again. >> i also worried about that, too, tim. but i don't associate that with inevitability. he think that simpler systems that give incentives to go to

court instead of the fec are very preferable. but if you put all kinds of procedural obstructions to non-so they can never have their day in court on the merits of their complaint, you've got to give them more rights to initiate their own grievances in a court of law. if you do that, a lot of what the fec is supposed to be doing but doesn't do can be replaced. when you can't have your own cord and we fired all kinds of cases on what happened to us in pennsylvania and every time we were thrown out, we were thrown out by procedural issue. never on the merits. we never got a single day in court on the merits. so if you block the access to the courts come you got to go some sort of regulatory agencies. if you hope if you open the access to court, you don't need that level of regulation.

>> i think we're out of time now. in closing there was a radio program about the houseboat and often i've interviewed separately, so i heard a segment and at the end of a study by the interviewer that ralph had recently marked his 80th birthday in ralph replied the only real aging is the erosion of one's ideals, someone in a lot of on real aging these days remarkably inspirational. i'm not wonderful now, let's think ralph nader and the commenters. i think all of you for coming. [laughter] who will come upstairs now for lunch in ralph will be sitting outside to sign up if you'd like one. thanks again. [inaudible conversations]