>> hinojosa: many know him as the man who spoiled the 2000 presidenti elections, but in the last five decades, he brought us the seatbelt, theag aithe clean air act, and much more-- four-timeti presid candidate, consumer advocate, and author ralph nader. i'm maria hinojosa, this is one on one. ralph nader, it's great to havee you onhow. >> thank you. >> hinojosa: so here's the first question i want to throw out to you, because, you know, you're a conser advocate. as a kid who was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, lph nader... everybody knew what you were doing. ur but paint a piof what our country would look like if you hadn't existed; ifou hadn't, you know, brought in the

regulations, what would our country look like? >> well, me and a lot of other people. >> hinojosa: okay, b... >> but well, for example, we wouldn't have mandatory motor vehicle safety standards, we wouldn't have recall requirements for companies who sell you a defective car. we got through meat and poultry inspection laws; there were rtually no inspection standards of diseased meat and rol the illness that comes it, never mind the fraud. environmental protection there wasn't anything like that in washington. legal services forhe poor-- this came out of the 1960s as well. a consumer product safetysi comm, for example, was created. the problem is that the corporations know how to game y ese systems, and so they slowly, day after th their lobbyists and their money, bring these agencies down so that they don't do very much. year after year they decline. they don't enforce the law; they don't have the prosecutions. owe toyota thing is an example

of a complete brea.. >> hinojosa: in fact, i was just... >> ...of the auto safety ageiny. >>osa: i was just watching something on television. it looks like they have like, a three minute ad for saying, "we're going to do gre." >> ( laughing ) yeah. >> hinojosa: "we're going to fix it all now"... >> yeah. >> hinojos saying, "well, wait a second." this is the kind of stuff that was happening in the 1960s and 1970s... >> yeah. >> hinojosa: ...before was protection, and yet it feels like we haven't made any progress. >> yeah. >> hinoja: that must be incredibly frustrating for you. >> well, it's because we're outnumbered in washington. there are bout 1,000 citizen advocates in washington and tens of thousands of corporate advocates, and they money... much more moneto give to the politicians and many more lawyers to bring lawsuits.an i they starve these health and safety agencies. this year, maria, we're going tn .. the taxpayers are going to spend $775 million to guard e embassy in baghdad-- $775 million. the entire budgeof osha-- supposed to deal with tens of thousands of american workers who lose their lives-- is $520 million. >> hinojosa: how many times have you seen that number printed in a major newspaper of record?

>> almost never, but you see, the pentagon budget, whi is half of the federal government's operating expenditures, isn't auditable. the government accounting office of congress every year says the pentagon budget is not auditable. you know what that means? that means they don't know where their inventory often is, theyt doow where the money's being spent, they can be stolen seom and there's no accountability bechere's no auditing system in place. and that's why blackwater and halliburton and all these people are ripping the taxpayer off like crazy >> hinojosa: so a lot of people probably, you know, if they go back and they look at whatt s like for you-- yes, you were leading a team of people, but you... you basically were at the head of this movement... >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: ...and you were confronting major corporations and the government, and you have this belief that says just one individual can actually take on any issue and make change. here's what i want to know, though. >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: aot of people n't know that you're the son of lebanese immigrants. >> mm-hmm.

>> hinojosa: so talk a littlet bit abw that experience of your mom and dad and what they taught youelped inform the man that you became. >> well, we talked a lot about public issues-- local, state, and national, international, around the dinner table. so there was no television, no, u know, text messaging. ( laughing ) it was... it was good conversation, and theyro would challenging questions at us. and... like one thing my father said: "what's the difference talism and socialism?" well, we started talking... >> hinojosa: and how old were you? >> iell, i was maybe nine, b was the youngest in the family. and so we tossed aroundff ent things, and he came up with this definition. he said... he said, "socialism is government ownership of theme s of production, and capitalism is corporate ownership of the meansf government." and you see how pertinent... >> hinojosa:ow. >> ...it is today, with the corporations controlling our government, ripping it off, contracts, grants, very often tix system as a grotesque favo for the

loophole crowd, and turning then gont against its own people so it doesn't serve the people. >> hinojosa: your dad also said something really beautiful, which is one day you came home from school... >> yeah. >> hinojosa: ...and your dad said to you, "so what did you learn in school? did you learn to believe, or did you learn to think?" >> yeah. that really stung me, and i went up to my rm and i started thinking about that, and every time i sat in a class with a teacher or a professor, i would say, "is this teacher trying to get us to believe, or trying to get us to think?" so it's that one question that was worth a lot of courses, and that's what, at their best, that paand grandparents do. and that's why i put down their... my parent's qstions and experiences in the book 17 traditions. >> hinojosa: which is a wonderful book. probably a lot of people may not have rd it. it's called the 17 traditions, and this is a book that you say that you basically wrote for you m and dad. >> yes, and for thousands of

other parents and grandparents who should put this wisdom and hiese experiences down to connect with theirren, who are more disconnected now recause all these electronic gadgets that the. you know, more disconnected from their family trail thaever before. this is a modest bestseller, by the way.>> inojosa: all right! >> oh, yeah, yeah. >> hinojosa: yes, and we'll talk about your latest book in just a minute, but let me ask you about what it was that your mom and dad understood as immigrants that almost they took the american constitution, their civic responsibility almost more seriously than people who had actually been born and raised in this country. what's that about? >> well, once... my father ran a restaurant and he'd always waiticize what's going on in the country, but he'd have a proposal to improve it. but we'd have these factory workers me over, and they all knew each other and dad, and he'd irritate them deliberately. you know, try to get them angry when they were drinking their

coffee. and they'd say, "nad, why don't you go back where you came from?" and he would say, "listen, when i sailed past the statue of liberty in 1912, i took it seriously. do you?"so e turned the tables on them, and he said, "do you love your country?" "darn right." he said, "why don't you spend a little more time improving it?" that's the kind of dialogue that were exposed to all the time. h ojosa: but there must have been times, ralph, when you were just saying, "god, this..." i mean, you were under surveillance... >> mm-hmm, by general motors. >> hinojosa: ...by corporations, er general motors. they were coming aou. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: in those moments you you're... you kno were basically being targeted across the board, what kept you going? >> i think it's a striving for justice. i lost a lot of friends infi trcrashes needlessly. there were no seatbelts, no airbags, no padded dash panels, you know, no rollover support. now, for example, it's much safer-- motor vehicles are much

safer-but i lost high school, college classmates. and i used to hitchhike lot, and often the truck drivers who picked me up would be first at the scene of a cra, and it was really pretty bloody and grisly and screams. and so i wro a paper at harvard law school on safe automobile engineering and t law. >> hinojosa: and back then, did people kind of think, "unsafe automobiles? at's this guy focusing on cars? cars are like, supposed to be everything that we want, and..." >> yeah. >> hinojosa: did they all think you were just kind of... >> yeah, well, you know, this was in 1950s.e rs were advertised as psychosexual dreamboats with fins and ornamentsnd so on. never mind fuel efficiency, crash safety, or ease of maintenance to repair, pollution control. that's what we changed completely. the demand by the public for all these points that i just mentioned grew in the mid-1960s congressional hearings, the signing by lyndon johnson of thi various motor e and pollution control laws.

>> hinojosa: so you know that a lot of people... there are people who know you as there ss consumer advocate... >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: ..and then there are people who didn't know anything about you... >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: ...citil you d to run for president in the year 2000. and then they say, "oh, yeah; he's t guy who ran for president in the year 2000. isn't he the one who made bush win?" and you say... >> well, listen. first of all, it's factually wrong. i'vealked to gore about this and gore has talked to other people. first of all, we all have an equal right to run forlection, and why do they put the wrap on the green party candidate for? i mean, do these two parties ows all the vo don't we want the voters to have more choice, the way they did,sa in the 19th century and the antislavery party, and the women's right to vote party, labor, farmer, progressive paies? it's harder and harder now for small parties and independents just to get on the ballet. all kinds of petition requirements, all kinds of obstacles.

but gore, of course, won the popular vote, so we have this monstrosity that you can come in second and become president cause of the electoral college, so... >> hinojosa: which frankly, you greatest democracy, and america is the greatest democracy, it doesn't seem to make any sense. not one american has ever voted for a human being for president since the history of the country-- can you imagine that?e they vr the electors in the electoral college whose names they don't even know. it's absurd. but also, it was stolen from him in florida-- from tallahassee in all kinds of ways with kathleen harris a jeb bush. >> hinojosa: but you got 90,000 votes in florida, right? >> yeah. >> hinojosa: so if those 90,000 votes d gone for gore, then he would have won the state of florida. >> that's not the way to look at it the way to look at it is how did i affect gore before the election? did i push him to take more otprogressive stands whichim up in the polls, where he actuallyot more votes than whatever went to the green party? but you see, even the most sophisticated political analyst never lookede preelection

day dynamics. there have been some s scientist studies who have concluded that i actually, by pushing him to do what lieberman didn't want him to do... >> hinojosa: mm-hmm. >> ...by challengioi the drug, you know, insurance companies in speeches-- remember "the people, not the powerful," that was his slogan-- that he got more votes than if i wasn't even in the arena.t 's such a ridiculous discussion, because let's all put our best foot foto the voters and let's have a good, competitive election and not say, "oh, someone siphons votes." when somebody said, "did you siphon votes from gore," i said, "no, no-- gore siphoned far more votes from me!" ( laughing ) >> hinojosa: so would you do it again? i mean now, because this is one of the things that people will... and people-- many of your supporters who we die-hard ralph nader supporters said, "okay, that's it; i'lle never forgm." would you do it again? >> well, you see, that's a terrible subservience to a two party tyranny. they're not thinking clearly

about the necessity for equale access to llet, more choice to the voters, and let the best prevail. tr hinojosa: is that going to happen in our co i mean... >> oh, sure, it could. it's very easy. i wrote a book including... onli the supe can save us, that talks about the clean elections party.ma >> hinojosa: a book of 700 and how many pages? >> 700 pages, but it's big print and it's fiction, so it has a real gripping, exciting narrative. lesley stahl read this on her vacation and wrote me a nice letter. she said she found it engrossing, creative, and funny. i said, "i'll take all three." ( laughing ) >> hinojosa: but you're all about grassrts and every citizen can change, and... >> yeah. ec hinojosa: so isn't this kind of saying, "wait ad. so we can't depend on the grassroots. now we have to depend on these ultra, ultra, ula rich who may have their own baggage," but they're the ones who are going to actually make our cttntry , or our world better? >> yeah, i selected them because they're enlightened, in advanced stage, had a different perspective on life, and had a lot... were willing to put llions of dollars into mobilizing the grassroots. so it's the top down, bottom up.

justice requires money.mo it requirey for lawyers, for organizers in the communities. it reqres money for transportation. it requires money to constantly reach people directly. and people don't understand. the abolition of slavery movement? a lot of it was funded by proper bostonians in the 19th century. the civil right movement? try the curry family and the stern family in the 1950s and 1960s. ey poured a lot of money. i mean, these people didn't go south, you know, by hitchhiking and the freedom rides and so forth. naacp was supported by rich people, so we...oj >> ha: so this notion that if you're wealthy or you've made money, therefore you're aligned with corporate interests and you are therefore bad, you're basically saying, "no, it doesn't have to look that y." >> 99%, you're right, but never do 100% stereotype, becausall you need is one percent. these 17... in every pag once

you accept that you have these influential-- who get their calls returned-- 17 people, super-rich, older age, enlightened americans, they put y and raise $15 billion and they turn the counound from the grassroots all the way to washington. so every page could happen, once you accept that predicate. warren beatty thinks it'll make a good movie. by the way, i have him in there running against schwarzenegger. all this occs in 2006. >> hinojosa: so are you hopefulp i mean, you've been at this for, what? you're 75 years old now.ca you've been bay... todd purdum from the new york times said your public life has been one long, unyielding argument with the world. so... >> look, i'm... >> hinojosa: ...are we making progress here? >> yeah, sure, we're making progress, but... >> hinojosa: or are we three steps forward, two steps back? >> both. you know, cars are safer, for example. we have a great freedom of information act to get information, which is the currency of democracy. but on the other hand, the

corporatns have become fewer and bigger. the bigger ones are fewer, they merge, they're global, they pit one countragainst another, they control these trade agreements, and they never stop concentrating power. they have to, to get their way, control government. they have to. there isn't a single government agency and department ere the outside influence is overwhelmingly corporate. >> hinojosa: so how do we... how do we... so how do normal citizens-- small, regur citizens-- when you're saying it's so massive, their level of influence... >> simple.at corpns have no vote-- the people have the vote. the biggest... >> hinoj saying that the vote in the united states isn't actually a just vote because we're voting for thelectoral college. >> right. that has to be repealed, of course. but let's start with congress. congress is the most important branch in government. it controls, you know, the war part, the money part, the appropriations part, health and safety, general welfare. there are only four... 535 men and women. they put their shoes on like you and i do.

1,500 corporations who don't have a single vote get their way with theajority of these again and again. where are we back home? why don't we organize back home? if in any every congressional district 200 people out of 630,000 in each congressional--r and thercolleges and community colleges in every district-- if they would form a strong congress watchdog group and they would fund two full-time offices and twoop full-time and they would devote 200 hours per person a year, volunteer to establish major redirections, living wage, health insurance, prison reforml tax reformtoral reform, aprporate crime crackdown, on and on, it wouldn. there's nothing out there except a few single-interest groups-- nr pro-life, pro-choice-- there's nothing out there except corporation. auto dealers are out there organized, insurance agents are out there organized, connected to washington and their patron

companies. so the biggest secret of democracy is not just that it can work, it's that it doesn't take that much effort by a small number of organized people who mereflect broad public sens. who reflect broad public sentiments. it may be passive in af people, but that's what i did with the auto safety. >> hinojosa: okay, but i'm sure that people are watching this and they're saying, "well,alph nader, we actually saw that in this country with the electionac of president bobama. there was a movement that wanted change, and some people might say this was, you know, a hopeful change.ou it actually t in a change. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: you're incredibly frustrated by president obama. >> wel first of all, he has no organized base. i mean, he got a lot of small contributions, bute also raised, more than any presidential candidate in history, wall street money, corpate money, corporate law firm money. so he sails into office not from a mass movement-- i mean, he got a lot of votes, but that'sff

ent from a mass movement like the farmer progressive movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.an i they... the candidates came out of them. they became state legiators, governors, senators, and so forth. they knew where they were coming from. he sort of had an electronic victory. and all, the intern that. he didn't campaign much in poor areas at all, hardly mentioned the poor. said he was going to expand the war in afghanistan, said he was against single-payer full medicare for all. so he warned us that he was very much a corporate democrat, and why did all these corporations put so much money into him? because they knew he was their man. so i'm not surprised. what i am disappointed in is his extraordinary belligerence overseas. he's bush light-- meaning his rhetoric is beer. but he's made some... many of the same claims, the same national security state, going anywhere, never mind international law, et cetera. and the second... i mean, he's into pakistan now.

i mean, when... you know, congress is supposed to declare theswars. and the second is too concessionary to big business. he's had personal invitation. six times the head of aetna insurance, six times the head of pfizer drug, have met with himhi in the house. he's never called out to us. >> hinojosa: has he called out to you? >> never once. doesn't answer the letters.t one of his biends, dr. quentin young, 85 years old, in chicago, the leader ofhe single payer movement, wonderful doctor who he used to spend quita bit of time with, he never invites him for consultation. the head of aetna, the source of the problems? he is conflict averse. >>aninojosa: so what do amer citizens... what do we do, then? because, you know, there are ao lot of people e saying, "well, wait a second. we thought that change was on the way." obviously some people are saying, "wait a second. we don't see the change coming. atnow i feel entirely frus, and i feel so frustrated that i'm entirely apathetic, ani don't want to do anything." >> well, that's exactly what the power structure wants you to do. in other words, wants you to quit, to withdraw.

and of course, tt is not acceptable, right, if you care for your descendan and your children and your country and your world? i mean, where's the courage here? where's the guts? is it just on the sports field or in the battle arena? how about civic courage? how about moral courage? how about your own self respect? you know that if you're going to a destination and it's going to take 500 steps, do you say to"o yourself it's going to take 500 steps-- i'm not going to take the first step, thend setep"? there are all kinds of wonderful citizen groups in this country who want you to in. civil liberty groups, environment, labor, migrant reform, all these things. but people give up on themselves. and the moment they give up on themselves, the country's on the way into the pits.e because theye only ones who can hold the reins of the power brokers. here's something that... you once were asked a question about optimism and pessimism,nd you said something like, "you know what? i'm neither optimistic or pessimistic. i don't really, you ow, work in the field of emotions." >> yeah.

>> hinojosa: well, but most people do actually get sad, or they feel inspired, or they don't. but, you know, when they get into a pla of entire frustration, and you're just saying, "look, i'motust not nal, i'm not going to..." well, what do you say to people who are, in fact? >> well, you have to control your moods, because otherwise you become discouraged, you know, you want to op out. that doesn't work. corporations work 24 hours a day. you keep that in md, and you see how they're grinding workers under. lousan, look at the ridi wage at most... you know, one out of every three workers making wal-mart, $7.ght, nine, ten dollars an hour. they're grinding otherco umers. they've got you right by the neck. your credit score, your credit rating, they've got you in debt. you know, they control so much.v they'r now planning your genetic future, your political future, your military budget future.gh and so that to get you angry. that shouldn't say, "oh, i'm going to give up." a itzing. for every million people who don't give up on their sports

team, even though their sports team's got a losing record, why do they give up on themselves, if only for their children? we have to have this kind of agitational dialogue with one another, instead of these insipid, you know, text messages. i had a teenager tell me the other day she did 300 text messages in one day. i said, "well, telphyllis, what's the urgency of the communication here?" >> hinojosa: yeah, what are you talking about that's so important? >> the trivialization in these 'selectronic gadgets... th why, you know, when you go to citizen meetings around the country, there's hardly anybody under 40. i mean, they're all elderlyle pe because they grow up with these electronic gadgets, virtual reality, looking at screens. you know a ten-year-old now, the average ten-year-old is watching screens seven and a half hours a day. that's the latest re >> hinojosa: it feels a little bit like 1984, you know?ke kind of "okay, now you're all controlled, you're programmed." >>eah. >> hinojosa: and then people are going to say, "no, that just sounds really, really strange.ul we're just r folks trying to figure this out."

i mean, big conspiracy here, or... on the part of corporations to... >> corporations, they just want to sell you stuff-- junk food, tnk this, junk that, viol programming to the kids, undermining parental authori. parents are going up the wall. i mean, their kids are being marketed right out of their control. >> hinojosa: and so a parent should do what at that moment? >> just take control. i mean, put th tv aside, you know, put that ipod aside, don't even buy them that stuff. get them to read, to think, to converse, to connect with their own peer group on a wholesome level, to exercise their bodies. look at the obesity, child obesity. it's because of a, junk food, and b, they're sitting hour after hour looking at screens. >> hinojosa: but the way you paint it it's almost as if, you know, this country is going down the tubes, ralph nader.is >> ioing down the tubes. i mean, the highest average wage in the country's history is 73. see, right there, poverty's increasing, child poverty is increasing. >> hinojosa: so what's the

motivation on the part of corporations to take this country down the tub then they don't have anybody to actually buy their products. >> well, that may occur increasingly. but as long as they can shipnd jobsndustries to communist and fascist regimes like china at 50 cents an hour, where they know how to keep workers in their place, and then ship theac productshere, that's what they like. someday there's going to be les ss purchasers here. on the other hand, there'll be more purchasers in china.co thesorations are extremely expedient. they have no allegiance to our country, even though tre born in the usa, they profit on the backs of usa workers, they're bailed out by washington hey're in trouble, defended by the marines abroad when they get in trouble withor dictips and so on. and they still don't have any legiance to this country they just go where the serf labor is, where they can polluts the ea get away from not paying taxes, bribe officials. this country starts with the constitution, "we the people." we the people have to get together. we've got to stop making excus for ourselves, copping out, you

know, rationalizing our own futility.fo look at our earers at their best. did they cop out? i mean, look what they did-- slavery, women's rights, civil rights, workers, farmers. we've got to... and it's exciting, too. people live such dreary livesus bethey're so desperately trying to pay, you know three months ago's bill, andent. and this excites people. and you can see that particularly among women civic c leaders, we up from very poor areas-- black american wome hispanic american women you don't think their lives are enriched when they go against injustice? i mean, it's a whole new lifestyle. and there's nothing more t gratifyin advancing justice for your fellow human being. hinojosa: and on that note, get out there an act, everyone. thank you so much for yourph words, rader. a real pleasure. >> thank you. essential.org is our web site. >> hinojosa: we'll go. thank you. >> okay.

>> hinojosa: continue the conversation at: captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.or

robert: president trump rattles obal markets after threatening china with billions in new tariffs. i'm robert costa. u.s. troops head to the border and the embattled e.p.a. chief fights to keep his job. tonight on "washington week." trade war. president trump: you have to go after the people that aren't treating you right. robert: president trump calls for an additional $100 billion in tariffs on chinese goods,ng escalahe feud between the world's two largest economies. plus- >> this president has shown tremendous courage. robert: will e.p.a. administrator's scott pruitt' unwavering support for the president he him with a storm of controversy. questions about his hou