of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. >> this week on "q&a" our guest is ralph nader who discusses his career in political activism and his new book, "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state". host: ralph nader, in your new book you start off the book and introduction by saying when thinking about the genesis of this book i remember the days working in my family's restaurant. why did you start that way? guest: because we were opposite all of these textile factories and down the street was the county courthouse with the jurors and a lot of sales people

going through town and they would end up in my dad's big restaurant. they talked. they talked about sports, yankees, red sox, local factory situations or politics in general. i realized that even though they would always answer whether they were epublican or democrat or neither, that isn't the way they talked. they talked in terms of what people react to when they work and live in a community. so, it was not ideological. i began to realize that they didn't come in with labels, red state, blue state mentality. they just came in talking about things on the ground. and when you go from the abstraction of ideological clashes which the manipulators love to divide and rule us down to where people live on the grounds it is a different type of conversation. host: how long did you work for

your dad in the restaurant and what was your age? guest: i was in high school. and in summers from princeton. and in summers from harvard law school until the great flood destroyed the main street in 1955 and my dad's restaurant. host: is the town still in connecticut where you grew up still there? guest: yes, winston, connecticut. the factories are pretty much closed. it is a bedroom commuting community to hartford and waterbury but it has a nice community college that my reveered big brother started. it was the second smallest town in america with a college. it is northwest connecticut community college. host: you remember who first influenced you to think about issues, about government? guest: it was my father and mother.

i put it in a book how they raised the four children, two boys and two girls, in a factory town in new england. it was conversation around the dinner table. there was no looking at tv or listening to radio or looking like this. we talked. they challenged us. in a nice way. they asked us questions and needled us, joked with you. you can't just say i want freedom. most people think they are free because they are personally free. they can buy their own clothes, make their own friends, go wherever they want, listen to whatever music, eat whatever they want. that doesn't mean they are civically free. you have to engage in democracy. my dad used to say if you don't use your rights you are going to lose your rights. host: if you had to pick another country in the world, only if

you had to where would you find a country that would maybe do it better than us? guest: well, possibly holland, scandinavia, canada. i think our democracy is being depleted, it is weaker now in so many ways. more concentrated power in the hands of a few against the many. government snooping and corporations playing with our country, exporting jobs and industry and all of the fine print that we have to sign on the dotted line and the poverty is increasing. we are not competitive any more when it comes to justice. we are not the standard. even australia. australia has a minimum wage. guess this. if you are over 20 it is $15.90 and the australian dollar is roughly equal. if you are under 20 it is either $13 an hour or $11.

and they have a lower unemployment rate. and you have to vote in federal elections. they have 98% turnout and no politician has to spend time and money begging people to vote. they see it as a civic duty. host: should that be a requirement in this country? guest: i think we should have a debate on it. in australia they just accept it. if you have an excuse it is ok but 97% to 98% vote. if you violate it they fine you $25 and put it in the electoral fund. i was in a cab once in sydney and i wanted to have a conversation with the cab driver. you live in a country they force you to vote. he gave me this most disgusted look like it is a civic duty, mate. host: you talk about in your introduction you used to be a hitchhiker. guest: yes.

host: tell us about when that happened and why is it relevant to this book? guest: i found travel tedious and hitch hiking was adventure. you don't know who is going to pick you up and you don't fall asleep when they pick you up. you talk to them. everyone picks you up. they have some expertise. one knows about cutting timber, the other selling widgets. i learned a lot from the drivers. we came before a scene of a crash and emergency vehicles. that made an impact. the blood and screaming and silence and mangled cars. that is what got me interested in doing a law paper at school on unsafe automobile design. no seat belts, no padded panels, no strong door latches. in those days we were bouncing

around in a car like pottery with the dash panel being like a room full of knives. you could get killed in a 15-mile-an-hour collision. i lost a lot of friends. everybody did in those days, far more from serious injuries in high school, college. so i got angry. the more i learned about how the auto bosses in detroit were suppressing their own engineers, seat belts were in world war i airplanes to keep the pilot from falling out. i really got angry. host: how many copies of "unsafe at any speed" did you sell? guest: well, in hard copy probably close to 100,000. then it went to paper back. host: is it still in circulation? guest: yes, you can still get it. host: this goes back to 1960. i don't know if you have ever seen this before.

it features jimmy dean. it is about a minute and 20 seconds. [video clip] >> i would like to state that a state fair is fun. it is fun to see what folks have done or the prizes they have won and this year at this state fair that blue ribbon will be going to the chevrolet corvair. yes, sir, that is the car that is getting all the stares everywhere it goes. there is a reason. it gives you more advantages and more appeal than any other compact car on the road today. you take room for instance. there is room for six adults in this car. you saw there mom, pop, and five kids. another thing. when you ride to the fair in this corvair, nobody is going to have their knees up under their

chin because there is lots of room. that floor is practically flat. and the engine is in the rear. the chevrolet people put it there to give you the best performing compact car on the road today. this beauty is a real performer. it can take you practically anywhere. host: your reaction. guest: i never saw that before. well, there are a few things left out like you got more carbon monoxide than you could tolerate. you can't smell it or see it. the steering column was rammed back into the driver in a left front collision because it was positioned to be exposed to that. and it danced on you when you turned a corner. it could go out of control and roll over. so, it was a pretty car but it was a deadly car. host: what did it feel like -- i really don't like the question

but what was your reaction when you found that you were having an impact when you wrote that book? i know it was only chapter one of eight about the corvair. guest: the rest was about the suppression of safety technology, including emission control by the auto companies. they had a lot of scientists and engineers who could have given us terrific motor vehicles. i didn't have an impact at the beginning because you couldn't get on tv in those days or radio and mention a car by make and model critically. so i had to go to toronto, cbc had a program called "this hour has seven days" and beamed through windsor into detroit and they put me on with an auto company spokesperson and when i came back to washington i started getting calls to go on tv. this was in 1965. the book came out november 30, 1965, almost the 50th anniversary. then the attorney general of iowa had hearings in des moines

on auto safety and he hauled the brass from detroit to there. they didn't like it. then "new york times" wrote it up and down here in washington senator ribicoff, he was my senator from connecticut he said to his aide we have to get going on this. we are being upstaged by an attorney general in iowa. so he had hearings. meantime g.m. was following me. they hired detectives to get dirt on me and followed me around the country. even interviewed some of my classmates from law school. so, this all went public and a great furor and robert kennedy and fred harris were on the committee and they hauled the head of g.m., unheard of in those days, and the detective that they hired who was like out

of a damon runyon novel, for a hearing. anyway, the outrage resulted in the passage of the motor vehicle highway safety laws of 1966 signed by lyndon johnson. he invited me to the white house for the signing ceremony. it saved over a million lives and millions of injuries diminished. it had an impact on car imports because they had to meet u.s. standards that were higher. host: back to this book you point out that george will saw an accident outside of his house, walked outside, saw there was somebody deceased from the accident and endorsed the air bag. what relevance did that have to this book? guest: it makes my point. the auto safety law was passed unanimously in the house of representatives. republicans and democrats. when you get down to people live and talk about death and injury and crashes and loss of loved ones the ideology tends to dissipate.

george will has writing, he writes his columns and there was a crash in front of his home and he saw a woman dead on the street and came back and said enough of these pitiless abstractions -- nice phrase -- the government should mandate seat belts. ronald reagan campaigned against them in michigan saying they inhibited freedom. i was called by a detroit reporter and i said i agree with mr. reagan. it restricts your freedom from going through a windshield. host: where did you get the idea for the need of seat belts and air bags? guest: i did a paper at harvard law school, third-year paper which i turned into the book on "unsafe at any speed" and it was the pentagon who spent $4 million to $5 million funding some harvard school public health and cornell medical school to study what happens in

a crash. the so-called second collision. the first collision is you hit an abutment or truck. the second is when you are in the crash and you go through the windshield or you are ejected. why did they do this? because they were losing more air force men on the highways in the u.s. than in the korean war. those studies came to my attention. i was very absorbed by them. i decided to write articles and i decided to interview on the q.t. engineers from the auto companies. we would go around the detroit metropolitan airport in a cab and they would give me plain envelopes and i turned it into the book and g.m. got wind and hired private detectives. what i learned is when you talked about safety and who didn't have a story of somebody being injured or their being injured or killed in a car crash, the ideology dissipated.

is it the right thing to do to recall defective cars like the g.m. scandal with the chevrolet cobalt and other models. it impressed me. that is the genesis of this book "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state." when you get down to specifics the sense of fair play comes in. the golden rule philosophy comes in. it isn't some corporatist republican or democrat ideology. >> convergence. you use that word throughout the book. what does it mean? guest: throughout the country there is a convergence of left-right agreement on very important things that is being pushed down by the corporatist group on both the democratic and

republican party and their leaders. so we start direction with public opinion around the country. it doesn't matter they are upset with the patriot act on privacy, simple liberty and free speech. there is a big convergence. they don't like subsidies, handouts and give aways to corporations on the backs of taxpayers especially the wall street bail out type where nobody was put in jail. they want a crackdown on corporate crime. they think big business gets away with a lot of stuff. it is main street versus wall street. they don't like empire. right, left, they don't like empire. they don't like us pushing all over the world and into countries and losing our soldiers and they come back traumatized and wasting trillions of dollars while all of these people around the country see crumbling public works. america needs repair and we are blowing it up overseas with

trillions of dollars and not repairing. that is a convergence issue. they don't like the pulldown trade agreements. nafta and w.t.o. that is why mr. obama will not get through that trans-pacific agreement if he ever negotiates it with the asian countries because there is a left-right convergence in the house of representatives against fast tracking this agreement through with limited debate and no amendments. so, there's now an operating convergence in state legislatures on juvenile justice crime reform. almost 20 legislatures. and donald ross who is leading this says that he couldn't get the bills through without a left-right alliance. the same thing is beginning to happen in rethinking the war on drugs and the long sentences for possession, say, of marijuana. you have newt gingrich and others starting a group called

right on crime. you have these convergences which can have a complete new political realignment to get things done in this country, to put these solutions on the ground that are on the shelf unused while we wallow in our problems and get discouraged about our country and withdraw from civic engagement and don't go out and vote and don't try to get more choices on the ballot with third parties, et cetera. so, this is what this book is about. and some will say this is pie in the sky. it is not pie in the sky. as i mentioned, the auto safety bill was a convergence victory and then in 1983 there was a right-left convergence to defeat the boondoggle clinch river breeder reactor in tennessee which was considered unstoppable because it had senator howard baker behind it and ronald reagan and we got together right

and left groups and beat it 56 to 40. and at the whistle blowing bill, the false claims act of 1986 that was senator grassley republican and congressman berman democrat that got that through which was opposed by the corporations. the more recent whistle blowing bill on government fraud and corporate fraud on the taxpayer, left-right alliance. host: we tried to find your first appearance on this network. what we found was november 22, 1985, not sure but here is what you were saying then. [video clip] >> people are looking at current state of consumer issues. the observation can be made all the big battles have been fought, some won, some lost but nothing but the small fights lie ahead. how would you respond? >> that is not true. there are a great many problems.

asbestos in schools. a lot of unfinished business making cars more crash worthy. safer pharmaceutical products. drinking water that is relatively pure. there is a lot left to be done. host: what would you say today? this is 28 years later, 29 years later. almost 30 years. what is left? guest: credit card and debit card economy that is full of gouging interest rates and fine print and penalties and overcharges. people are hooked into the whole system and can't get out. we have a whole project called faircontracts.org to completely change the contract servitude that we are in. we have lost our freedom of contract. cars are safer. food is better labeled. people are eating more nutritious food. the water in many areas is cleaner. the air is cleaner.

on the other hand, i have a lot of hospital induced infections that are preventable and maybe 200 to 250 americans die every day the c.d.c. terms us from that. medical negligence that is not being controlled. harvard school of public health estimates that about -- or harvard medical school as well as maybe 100,000 deaths a year. with new technologies and regulators being forced to sleep on the job the mice will play. that is what we have seen in the recent g.m. situation. the other thing that is troubling is more and more giant corporate mergers. the drug companies are merge being, communication companies, cable, time warner. when you have fewer and fewer corporations they will throw

their power around. it is in their d.n.a. that is called predictability by the corporate executives, strategic planning. but it is not good for competition and innovation. host: is that a partisan issue, right, left, republican, democrat, the bringing together of these large corporations? guest: you know, when you see the rebellion against the federal communications commission loosening the restrictions on how many tv, radio or newspapers can be owned by one company in an area, it was left-right. they got the house of representatives to vote to overrule it. it was left-right. it was the n.r.a. and kevin cross. you want to think more left-right than that? i think the whole realignment in our country is ready. but, as i say in this book, and i should quote the obstacles.

-- i don't sugar coat the obstacles. as i say, it requires a realization that there is a big majority here that can be put together, left right on very important redirections for our country. host: how many years have you lived in washington? guest: since about 1963. host: do you like it here? guest: i have to like it here because that is where the federal government is. i like the idea that there are not skyscrapers. host: do you have a credit card? guest: no. never. host: how do you travel? guest: travel bureau and i use cash. i don't believe in impulse buying or invading privacy. there is a lot of control you give up when you have credit card and debit cards. unfortunately they are forcing you to do it like try to rent a car with cash and more and more the coercion is pushing from cash. even in taxi occasion.

-- even in taxicabs. host: do you own a car? guest: no. host: have you ever owned a car? guest: yes. host: did you buy american or foreign? guest: it was a 1949 studebaker. host: that is the last car you had? guest: yes. host: why don't you own a car? guest: it is a pain in the neck. when you live in the city and you have good transportation and you can walk and i don't want to look for parking space. it is a nuisance. i try to control my time. that is why i don't have e-mail. i have a colleague who has e-mail but between e-mail and everything else it is noon. you haven't gotten anything done. you can lose a lot of time that way. host: you have been on this earth 80 years. do you feel it? guest: no. host: do you work every day? guest: yes, of course. it is a joy to work. host: what kind of hours do you keep? guest: i pretty much work all the time. once in a while i take in a movie. i used to take in a ballgame but when you love your work and it

is citizen work. it is fighting for justice as i see it. you live in a country that gives you a chance to do that and you see doors closing in congress and elsewhere you have to keep it open for your generations to come. host: do you own a television set? guest: i was given a television set but it is not quite working with the right antenna but i listen to c-span radio. host: do you watch television at all ever? guest: once in a rare while. if there is a champion game in sports or "60 minutes" once in a while i do. host: so, of all -- you wrote a lot about conservatives. which one have you worked the most with? guest: well, i worked on some issues with pat buchanan on trade. grover norquist on corporate welfare.

fred smith on competition. he's the competitive enterprise person. but on capitol hill you get your calls returned quicker from conservatives than liberals these days. it is sad to see. i once visited senator grassley and he said look what the democrats are up to. he said i was at a hearing my committee and i was against this tax loophole carried interest for wall street venture capital or hedge funds and john kerry and charles schumer were supporting wall street. so, here is the point. there is convergence on the other side that has been running the country into the ground. it is called the corporate liberal represented by the clintons and the corporate conservatives represented by the

people we all know. they are the ones who got rid of bank regulation and glass stegall and any chance to control derivatives. they are the ones that concentrated agra business more and tell communications more and drug companies more and gave us nafta and the world trade organization. it was republican votes that helped clinton get those through. we are talking about something new on the people's side in terms of convergence but the corruption of both parties with money and other attractions has been going on for a long time. host: in 1989 here you are testifying on something that is a constant issue. [video clip] >> ralph nader do you think congress deserves a 350% salary increase?

-- 50% salary increase? >> not at all they got a $14,500 increase 23 months ago. they have increased it 48% since 1981 to the present. they get generous pension comprehensive health and life insurance, $3,000 housing deduction and list of perks the lengths of a train so i think that they are now in the top 1% of income in the u.s., 99% of the people get to earn less. if you look at the deficit in washington, if you look at the scandals that are not corrected involving the executive branch and all the program cutbacks in head start and health and safety and education and low income housing and the rest, this is not the time to raise these fellows' income? >> what about the issue if you paid them more they wouldn't need the money from outside and help they get from lobbying groups? guest: they will always need the money to get campaign contributions because that is going sky high.

personally, i think they get about $170,000 plus benefits. a lot of people would like that. a lot of people would like that. host: did you ever stop a pay increase? guest: yes, using talk radio and just roaring back. it was a bipartisan effort to raise their pay. and you can't believe how hung up they are on this. in one area the speaker of the house jim wright and his counterpart congressman michael from illinois had a press conference and they said anybody who is running on our ticket for congress who raises the pay increase negatively we will cut off. so, there was a fellow challenging newt gingrich and he was going to beat newt gingrich and he raised the pay grab issue in georgia and they cut him off and he didn't have any money for a single tv ad and annuity was

re-elected, came back, dumped jim wright as the speaker and touched tom foley and took over the house of representatives in 1994. host: so the parties were going to cut the money off on anybody who used that issue? in chapter five you have 25 suggestions of convergence. first is brought up a lot. it is your first one. get the department of defense to audit its budget. why hasn't the department had to audit its budget? guest: because it would be too embarrassing. they would have to explain why $9 billion in the first few months of the invasion of iraq disappeared. unaccounted for. or $6 billion in the first term of the obama state department they can't account for t. you are not talking about peanuts here. the biggest business in the

united states, the pentagon, $800 billion, half of the federal government's discretionary budget and we have no more soviet union and it is still humming along and isn't even audited. what accountant would ever, ever operate that way? what business would ever be able to operate that way. host: why hasn't the g.a.o. audited them? -- august them? guest: they can't. every year they put their report to congress on the pentagon and every year they say sorry we don't have the data available for the pentagon to have an audit. so, i think that once you audit the pentagon then you know where the money is and where it is going and where it is misspent. obama and hillary clinton attacked libya, they didn't even ask for money from congress. they got $1.35 billion somewhere in the pentagon budget. that is where left-right supported. but the military industrial complex that eisenhower warned

us approximately control the political heights in congress so you will have john boehner. he doesn't want it and you have mcconelley. he doesn't want it. the democratic counterparts they are not speaking up much about it. host: why do not a secretary of defense want an audit? the ones that go in and talk about cutting back, wasn't that be an easy way to do it? (202) 737-0001 they are all promising. second of defense said we are working on an audit. the latest deadline is 2017. just after the election. host: what do you do in order to bring this issue up other than mention it here? have you ever done anything publicly to get an audit of 9 pentagon? guest: i have a weekly column at nader.org. i talk about it on capitol hill. i talk about it with conservatives who want the audit. but, you know, as i say, eisenhower warned by the military industrial complex. you see the enormous waste and

enormous giveaway contracts to k.b.r. and and haliburton and lockheed martin and boeing and raytheon. people think there is waste. they have no idea what is going on with their own tax dollars. there is a great convergence of left-right on that which has to emerge. host: has this president done anything about this? guest: i have heard him talk about -- it is now a lip service issue. the pentagon. the government accountability office, g.a.o., they have been told by the pentagon that they will have data for an audit by 2017. we have heard that song before. they don't even know where billions of spare parts are sometimes. they have to buy new spare parts. they have stuff all over the world. this is by ron paul and barney frank formed a caucus in 2010, libertarian and massachusetts

liberal democrat to cut the bloated pentagon budget. host: why has not the big media covered things like this? or have they? guest: they have covered it very little. walter pincus in the "washington post" covered it a little. the coverage of military foreign policy other than independent media is ditto coverage. at the cover it the same no matter whether different newspapers. once in a while there is investigative work from the "washington post," insurance times, but by and large this couldn't occur if the media was on it day after day. you would have to have public hearings. host: in 2013 you showed a side of yourself that we don't often see and i want you to -- this has something to do with the 19th annual funniest celebrity contest.

[video clip] people think i don't laugh. i saw you on "saturday night live". five times and i didn't see you laugh. and that hurt me. [laughter] so, i have chosen three different laughs and i'm going to audition them. and i hope by your reaction i will pick one. because if you are going to be a current personality you have to learn how to life and hide the cruelty of it all. [laughter] so, the first laugh. it is one from al franken. it goes like this. [laughter]

the second laugh is inspired by desmond tutu the great human rights leader. it is like this. hee, hee, hee, hee. [laughter] the third laugh is when i call the wall street authority laugh. ho, ho, ho. [laughter] host: where did you get this? host: we found it. guest: i was in the clip. host: who talked you into doing that? guest: grover norquist. he was competing too. the tax cutter now turned into antiunion. i don't think he should get into that area. but he's also against corporate welfare, corporate subsidies and bailouts. we testified years ago. now he is give of ohio and presiding over corporate welfare and not doing anything about it.

it is a tough thing to break through. in the book i show how to break through here. remember the prerevolutionary committees of correspondents of the patriots? they start with committees of correspondence in people in your neighborhood, left, right. joke about it, get together and make your needs known to your members of congress and your state legislature. and then the media starts saying hey, this is bubbling up. maybe away ought it poll it. if they poll it like corporate welfare or patriot act or corporate crime enforcement, then what might happen is the media starts covering it. then maybe the think tanks and academic world put out reports and it bubbles up on the election scene. the problem with all of these 25 areas and more of left-right convergence is they are off the table. they are not on the table when

republicans and democrats run for election. when they are not on the table you can't get to first base. so, all of these bottom up that i just described and plus maybe a billionaire or two who might support it on a bigger scale, will put it on the table. once it is on the election table there's no stopping it. host: the second one is establish rigorous procedures to evaluate the claims of businesses looking for a government handout that with end most corporate bailouts. three restore efficiency in government procurement. number four is lengthy minimum wage within inflation. guest: that is going operational. left-right almost 80% support the restore minimum wage to 1968 levels adjusted for inflation which would be $11. that is operational. host: enact taxation reform.

break up the two big to fail banks. guest: that comes in almost 90% of the polls. it hasn't moved into the political arena or electoral arena because the banks own it place as senator durbin said. host: redirect contributions to charity. guest: that is -- if president obama spoke as i urged him to, to leaders of citizen groups, charitable groups, religious charities, in washington as jimmy carter did, urging them to give more money to tell, it with create more jobs. the private fund sector, the service sector, is a huge job producer and if the president got behind say 10 or 15 billion more a year you would get

hundreds of thousands of new jobs working to help young children in need or to clean up the environment. they would expand all of these nonprofit groups. host: how big is the nader operation these days compared to when you were doing the most? guest: well, you know, i spin off groups. i'm not a control streak. we have probably created close to 100 groups directly and indirectly all over the country. the student public interest research groups which i hope the kettering foundation will write up. they are big on citizen engagement. we have the pension rights center, but i spin them off. public citizen the biggest. i don't believe in controlling. when i help people do our nader raider reports they were the authors. i wrote the introduction. they were the authors. age 21, 22.

so when you ask that question it is a ripple effect throughout the country. i don't know what it amounts to in terms of budgets. i don't know, $40 million or $50 million a year. host: who pays for it now? guest: most of it is small contributions, foundation grants. some publication sales. most of it is the usual traditional giving. host: what would you say to somebody that -- and it would be interesting to know what young people think of you today, whether they have any idea what you have been involved in -- what if somebody said i want to be the next ralph nader. what would they need to do in order to know what you know? guest: i will say you are going to have a very gratifying life. go for it because justice is a great work of human beings on earth. you can't have liberty or freedom without justice. then i would get down to specifics apropos your question.

one is you have to share the credit. you can't have ego control because you minimize yourself. the second is you have got to have what i call civic personality. that is, you can't be discouraged and burn out. you are going to lose a lot of battles. you win some but you will lose some so you have to have a built-in resiliency. when the doctor goes to a hospital every day he doesn't expect only healthy people there. he expects people who need the doctor's help. so, you have to have a resilient cy. that is very important. the third thing is you have to keep up to date. you don't want to sound like a tired tire. you have to keep up to date and self-renew yourself. host: what did you read that we wouldn't think about to stay up with what is going on inside the

government? guest: it is good to leave through the congressional record and various congressional reports. it is very important to read the business press. i read often baron's financial weekly, "wall street journal" every day. "washington post," "new york times". sometimes i look at what the patents are being issued and say solar energy patents. court depositions. sometimes we get good material out of tort litigation. we saw that in the asbestos area and tobacco area. that is what got "60 minutes" and the media interesting. host: do you pay any attention to the internet? do you have a computer on your desk? guest: no. why would i have a computer? i have an underwood typewriter. when the lights go out due to electrical storm i'm working. host: you are not on the internet? guest: no, but i have people who are on the internet and they

give me reams of material, sometimes too much. but there is no information retrieval problem here. it is putting the information on a continuum to knowledge, to judgment, to experience and to wisdom. a lot of young people today never get past the information button. they are overwhelmed by bits of information. host: do you think it is worse than when you started this? guest: in a way. i find young people today know less history than 20, 30, 40 years ago. they don't know prominent people. they have people who don't know who phil donohue. he was one of the best known people in the country 20 years ago. host: was he your running made or campaign manager? guest: no, no. host: but he was on your side.

guest: phil donohue is the greatest exponent of the first amendment practice in the 20th century in america. he had me on 32 times and he had reverend falwell on 32 times. he had people on he disagreed with and he gave them air time. that is when you know he believes in the first amendment. host: you are in the 2000 campaign for president. [video clip] >> i hope that those of you have who are talking with others who are wavering on the least of the worst or lesser of two evils syndrome will remind them of what franklin delano roosevelt said each citizen is equal to each other citizen in the ballot booth where privacy reigns and they can only answer to their

conscience. and a vote for conscience, a vote for your hopes, a vote for your dreams, a vote for a higher expectation level of what our country can become to what it can mean to the world, those are the votes that you need to register, not the lesser of two evils where at the end of the day you are still left with each. host: what did you get out of the three times you ran for president? guest: we demonstrated that it is a two-party tyranny and doesn't tolerate competition. it doesn't like more voices an choices for the voters even though the voters poll that they want more voices an choices. and we fought them in the courts and got some victories in the courts on ballot access, for example. also i learned that people are very demoralized and their worst enemy is giving up on themselves. the old motto you can't fight city hall that is the big

problem today. if people realize that that constitution starts with we the people, not we the corporation. it never mentioned corporation in the constitution. if they only realized the power that they have that is what this book is all about. just the alliance of left-right on one area after another. the things that they could have stopped and started they would not recognize our country in a lot of the world. host: people still mad at you in the democratic party? guest: yeah, they have a residual. not the average democratic voter it is what i call the liberal intel general sa. intelligencia. some for gore everybody else being equal if you got tennessee you won. if they didn't steal it in florida they would have won. if he got clinton's arkansas he would have won. he doesn't blame the green party.

but it is easy to blame the green part for these things. because they feel a little guilty that they couldn't beat a bumbling governor from texas who had an awful record that was not paraded around the country by the democratic party during that campaign. host: why didn't you keep running the last time? guest: in 2012 i ran three times officially. 2002, 2004, 2008. it is almost impossible unless you are a billionaire to fight the two parties squeezing out of debates. the majority of people wanted me on the debate but the debate commission was created and controlled by the republican and democratic parties and they squeeze you off the ballot and you try to get back on. it is labor day by the time you are on or off and you are exhausted. you have no money and you have an eight-week campaign. the media is ignoring you because you can't win. i keep telling people who say why support a third party you can't win.

i say aren't you glad the liberty party existed against slavery or women's right to vote or farmer progressive parties they never won but they are put on the table the redirections that were eventually picked up by one or two of the major parties. host: do you have any hope that that can be changed where the two parties loosen their control of the system? guest: yes, i put out a letter to 20 billionaires who have some enlightened people urging them to throw their hat in the ring as an independent just to break up the two-party tyranny that is turning so many voters off that they are not going to vote if it is that tedious repetitious gaffes or the news of the day all kinds of issues off the table. i kept my website in 2008 open

because i had 18 issues taken off the table by republicans and democrats, not discussible on my website. they include things like majority support for medicare. everybody in. much more efficient and humane. living wage, cracking down on corporate crime. pulling back from empire, getting rid of the corporate indent toured tax code and putting in something much better and equitable and productive. public works investments. on and on and on. they don't want to talk about it. republicans and democrats. so you end up with two or three or four repetitive issues and they assail each other than and the press is so bored every day it is the same they are looking for a gaffe in order it break the tedium. this is what we deserve in this country? that is absurd. we are better than that. we have to think of each other

as individuals locking arrangements on these areas. host: conservatives or liberal relies might find it interesting at the end of the back you have acknowledgments and special thanks to intercollegiate studies for keeping a new declaration of independence co-edited by allen tate and herbert agar and so many other works by thoughtful people where you can get all of these books. why are you throwing them a bone in this? guest: they reprinted a book written by people in the 1930's during the depression, authorses, poets, who owns america and they called themselves decentralists and there is a chapter. they couldn't be fooled by wall street or the two parties. they couldn't be fooled by even the new deal. that is how basic they were in terms of connecting freedom and

decentralization of property ownership including share ownership. all of these conservatives, they are really most of them are corporatist masquerading as conservatives who refer to adam smith and frederick hayek and i went back and read tease philosophers, smith was hated giant combines. he wanted public works and living wage. he was fearful of government regulation being taken over by business. this is 1775, 1776. frederick hayek the bikini guru for paul ryan, he was against medicare and medicaid because it was not universal. he wanted universal health insurance. he wanted a living wage. he had a safety net for the impoverished. even though he was very much against socialist planning of the economy. so they are distorting these icons for their own purpose.

host: you say in the book really only 10% of the voter change their mind or have to be convinced to go one side or the other at the last minute. 10% only? guest: yes because most of them are hereditary voters and will vote republican or democrat because of their grandparents and parents. host: so they spend $10 billion it is only for 10%. guest: they would be lucky. host: about six million. guest: you could swing. host: more than that. guest: 10% going the other way you could get a huge landslide. this is what we have to focus on it is within our hands to bubble up these left-right alliances on one issue after another and connect them to the state legislatures and congress and force the campaigns when they go into your area to put these

issues on the table. i debated ronald reagan once and he agreed with me against corporate welfare. i said i tell my business friends not to put their hands in the washington trough. this before he was elected president. i debated milton friedman. he was against licensing for doctors. i said what about barbers saying they are doctors and surgeons. he said people would figure it out but i got him on pollution. he said you have to have either taxing pollution or regulation of pollution. host: which liberal in history would you put at the top on the pedestal and which conservative? guest: i like fighting bob lafollette and eugene debs. a reporter said to debs what do you most regret fighting for working people. he said i regret that under our constitution the american people can have almost anything they want but it just seems they don't want that much at all.

wow! see. the way to control people is keep their expectation level down. host: what about a conservative? guest: obviously edmund burke is a great conservative. but even on some areas even robert taft from ohio he opposed the internment of japanese america. he was the only one in congress. host: the only person? guest: the only person. he was for a living wage. was for public housing. he wanted assistance to the poor. he believed in public works. he passed the taft hartley bill against working people and in two years later he realized he tipped the balance too much in favor of corporations and he wanted to reform it. this is -- he would be driven out of the party today by the republicans in congress. we have a huge breaking ground for justice and forward looking.

this is why i wrote the book. it is a short book. host: it is. it is about 215 pages. what happens if all of a sudden -- i'm not suggesting this -- ralph nader can't do what he does any more? what happens to your movement? guest: they are roaring away. that is the key thing. i always followed the principle purpose leadership is to produce more leaders not more followers. i really tried to do that. i have got young people being authors of books, access it media, start their own groups. you can call me johnny appleseed. host: if ump not doing what you have done what would be your profession. guest: a satirist. a humorist. if there is total justice you can say the purpose of life is laughter. it is so insightful. host: how unusual was it for you

to do the humor on that clip we showed? guest: every day you come to so many grievances and injustices it is hard to go down to connecticut avenue and do humor but you have to switch once in a while. i did get on "saturday night live" five times but not since the 2000 campaign. they don't let me on anymore. host: do you think you know who is in charge. guest: democrats, of course. host: name something you want to pleasure before you quit all of this if you ever do? what would that be? what is number one on the list? guest: there are two number ones. number one is getting youngsters learning civic skills in their community, connecting with adult supervision and learning how their community runs, how it isn't run, how to improve it, right where they live. then they will emerge high school and college as stalwart

civic leaders and activists and building civic institutions, which is what our democracy has to have. host: you have in here a letter to billionaire. why? guest: justice needs money. the abolitionists in 19th century against slavery were supported by rich bostonians. women were supported by rich widows or spouses. even the civil rights movement the money came from the courier family and stern family in substantial degree. so, this movement, this left-right alliance it dismantle the corporate state are what conservatives call crony capitalism needs money. and we have a lot of billionaires and all we need are one or two to say i'm in my 70's's and 80's's. i don't like where our country and world is going. i want to help this effort to revive our country. host: who thought of the name of

this book? guest: i did. once you put those two together. it is unstoppable. it is unstoppable in congress, unstoppable in legislature. once you get that public opinion moving into political and electoral arena it is unstoppable. we have a decorate whistle blowing law in congress protecting government whistle blowing on corporate fraud and government waste. unstoppable. huge majorities. even though the corporations and military and industrial complex didn't want it. that is what this book is all about. it puts the tools in your hands, folks. it takes away your excuses. host: ralph nader our guest, "unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state." we thank you very much. guest: thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> he sees his newest book "sundays at eight," collection of interviews. >> we are sitting in the city of design by a frenchman, a french engineer and architect. the great symbolic work of sculpture, the gateway to the country in new york, the statue of liberty, a gift from france, a french sculptor, bartoli. townsess rivers and