>> hinojosa: many know him as the man who spoiled the 2000 presidential elections, buin the last five decades, he r ought us the seatbelt, the airbag, the clean t, and much more-- four-time presidential candidateumer advocate, and author ralph nader.no i'm maria sa, this is one on one. ralph nader, it's great to have you on the show. >> thank you. >> hinojosa: so here's the first question i want to throw out toc you,se, you know, you're a consumer advocate. as a kid who was growing up in19 ths and 1970s, you know, ralph nader... everybody knew what y were doing. but paint a picture of what our country would look like if you hadn't existed; if you hadn't, you know, brought in the

regulations, what would ourtr colook like? >> well, me and a lot of other people. >> hinojosa: okay, but... but well, for example, we wouldn't have mandatory motor vehicle safety standards, we wouldn't have recall requirements for companies who d sell youective car. we got through meat and poultry inspection laws; there were virtually no inspection standards of diseased meat and all the illness that comes from it, never mind the fraud. environmental protection-- there sn't anything like that in washington. legal services for the poor-- this came out of the 1960s as well. a consumer product safety commission, for example, was crted. the problem is that the corporations know how to ge these systems, and so they slowly, day after day with 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.hi the toyota is an example

of a complete breakdown... >> hinojosa:n fact, i was just... >> ...of the auto safety agency. >> hinojosa: i was just watching something on television. it looks like they hav three minute ad for saying, "we're going to do great now." >> ( laughing ) yeah. >> hinojosa: "we're going to fix it all now". >> yeah. >> hinojosa: and people are saying, "well, wait a second." this is the kind of stuff that was happening in the 1960s and 1970s... >> yeah. a: ...before there was protection, and yet it feels like we haven't made any progress. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: that must fe incredibstrating for you. >> well, it's because we're outnumbered in washington. there are bout 1,000 citizen advocates in washingtotens of thousands of corporate advocates, and they money... much more money to give to the awliticians and many more lawyers to bringits. i mean, they starve these health and safety agencies. this year, maria, we're going to spend... the taxpayers are going to spend $775 million to guardin the embassaghdad-- $775 million. the entire budget of osha-- supposed to deal with tens of thousands of american workers who lose their lives-- is $520 million. >> hinojosa: how many times have you seennumber printed in a major newspaper of record?

>> almost never, butee, the pentagon budget, which 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 wherh r inventory often is, they don't know where the money's being spent, they can be stolen from and there's no accountability because there's no auditing system in place. and that's why blackwater and halliburton and all these people are ripping the xpayer off like crazy. >> hinojosa: so a lot of people probably, you know, if they go back and they look at what it y was like f-- yes, you were leading a team of people, but you... you basically were at the head of this movement... >> mm-hmm. re>> hinojosa: ...and you confronting major corporations and the government, and you have is 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: a lot of people don't know that you're the son of lebanese immigrants. >> mm-hmm.

>> hinojosa: so talk a little bit about how that experience of eyur mom and dad and what taught you helped inform the ma. that you bec >> well, we talked a lot about public issues-- local, state, and tional, international, around the dinner table. so there was no television, no,s you know, textging. ( laughing ) it was... it was good conversation, and they would throw challenging questions at us. and... like one thing my father said: "what's the difference between capitalism and socialism?" well, we started talking...oj >> ha: and how old were you? >> well, i was maybe nine, but i was the youngest in the family. and so we tossed around different things, and he came up with this definition. he said... he said, "socialism n, government ownership of the means of productnd capitalism is corporate ownership of the means of government." anyou see how pertinent... >> hinojosa: wow. >> ...it is today, with the corporations controlling our government, ripping it off, contracts, grants, very often tax system as a grotesque favoritism for the

loople crowd, and turning th government 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 s frool... >> 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. thateally stung me, and i we up to my room and i started s inking about that, and every time i sat in a clth a teacher or a professor, i would say, "is this teacher trying to get us to believe, or trying to get us to think?" i s that one question that was worth a lot of courses, and that's what, at their best, that parents and grandparents do. and that's why i put dow their... my parent's questionss and experien the book 17 traditions. >> hinojosa: which is a wonderful book. a probabot of people may not have read it. it's called the 17 traditions, i and tha book that you say that you basically wrote for you mom and dad. >> yes, and for thousands of

other parents and grandparents who should put this wisdom and these experiences down to connect with their children, who are more disconnected now because all these electronic gadgets that they're... you know, more discoected from their family trail than ever before. this is a modest bestseller, by the way. >> hinojosa: all right! >> oh, yeah, yeah. >> hinojosa: yes, and we'labtalk t your latest book in just a minute, but let me ask you about t was that your mom and dad understood as immigrants that almost they took the american constitution, their civic responsibility almost more driously than people who actually been born and raised in this country what's that about? >> well, once... my father ran a restaurant and he'd alwaysic cre what's going on in the country, but he'd always have a proposal to improve it. but we'd have these factory workers come over, andhey 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, "nader, 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 he turned the tables on them, and he said, country?"ve your "darn right." he said, "why don't you spend a little more time improving it?" ( laughing ) so that's the e nd of dialoat were exposed to all the time. t >> hinojosa: bre must have been times, ralph, when you were just saying, "god, this..." i mean, you were under surveillance... >> mm-hmm, by general motors. on hinojosa: ...by corpora by general motors. they were coming after you. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: in those moments when you're... you know, you whre basically being targeted across the board kept you going? >> i think it's a striving for justice. edlost a lot of friends in traffic crashes ssly. there were no seatbelts, nos, airbo padded dash panels, you know, no rollover support. now, for example, it's much safer-- motor vehicl much

safer-- but i lost high school, college classmes. and i used to hitchhike a lot, and often the truck drivers who picked me up would be first at the scene of a crash, and it was really pretty bloody and grisly and screams. and so i wrote a paper at harvard law school on safe automobile engineering and the law. >> hinojosa: and back then, did peopleind of think, "unsafe automobiles? what's this guy focusing on cars? ers are like, supposed to everything that we want, and..." >> yeah. >> hinojosa: did they all think you were just kind of...el >> yeah, you know, this was in 1950s. the cars were advertised as psychosexual dreamboats with fins and ornaments and 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 justgr mentione in the mid-1960s congressional hearings, theby signinyndon johnson of the various motor vehicle and pollution control laws.

>> hinojosa: so you know that a lot of people... there are people who know you as ther tireless consuvocate... >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: ..and then there are people who didn't know anything about you.. >> mm-hmm. >> hinojosa: ...until you decided to run for president in the year 2000. and then they say, "oh, yeah; he's the guy who ran for president in the year 2000.is t he the one who made bush win?" and you say... >> well, listen., first of allit's factually wrong. i've talked to gore about this, and gore has talked to other peop. first of all, we all have an equal right to run for election, idd why do they put the wrap on the green party cae for? i mean, do these two parties own althe voters? don't we want the voters to have more choice, the way they did, say, in the 19th century and the antislavery party, and t women's right to vote party, labor, farmer, progressive parties? it's harder and harder now for small parties and independen 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 because of the electoral college, so...oj >> ha: which frankly, you know, when people talk about the greatest democracy, and americas is the gredemocracy, it doesn't seem to make any sense. >> not one american has ever voted for a human ber president since the history of the country-- can you imagine that? they vote for the electors in the electoral college whose mes they don't even know it's absurd. but also, it w stolen from him in florida-- from tallahassee in all kinds of ways with kathleen harris and jeb bush. >> hinojosa: but you got 90,000 votes in florida, ri >> yeah. >> hinojosa: so if those 90,000 votes had gone for gore, then ht would have w 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 progressive stands which got him up in the polls, where hely actuot more votes than whatever went to the green party? but you see, even the most sophisticated political analyst never looked at the preelection

day dynamics. there have been some social scientist udies who have concluded that i actually, by pushing him to do what lieberman didn't want him to do... >> hinojosa: mm-hmm.gi >> ...by chall the drug, oil, 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. but it's such a ridiculousus on, because let's all put our best foot forward to the voters and let's have a good, competitive election and n 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!" ( lahing ) >> hinojosa: so would you do it again? i mean now, because this is one of the thingthat people will... and people-- many of your supporters who were die-hard ralphader supporters said, "okay, that's it; i'll never forgive him." thuld you do it again? >> well, you see's a terrible subservience to a two party tyranny. they're not thinking clearly

about the necessity for equal access to the ballet, more choice to the voters, and let the best prevail. >> hinojosa: is that going to happen in our country? i mean... sure, it could. it's very easy. i wrote a book including... only the super-rich can save us, t that talks abo clean elections party. >> hinojosa: a small 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 i engrossing, creative, and funny. i said, "i'll take all three."( laughing ) >> hinojosa: but you're all about grassroots and every citizen can change, and... >> yeah. osa: so isn't this kind of saying, "wait a second. so we can't depend on the grassroots. now we have to depend on these, ultra, ulttra rich who may have their own baggage," but urey're the ones who are going to actually makeountry better, 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 billions of dollars into mobilizing the grassroots. so it's the top down, bottom upt

e requires money. it requires money for lawyers, for organizers in the communities. r uires 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 thefa sterly in the 1950s and 1960s. they poured a lot of money. i mean, these people didn't go south, you know, by hitchhiking and the frdom rides and so forth. naacp was supported by rich people, so we... >> hinojosa: so this notion that if you're wealthy or ymade money, therefore you're aligned with corporate interests and you are therefore bad, you're basically saying, "no, doesn't have to look that way." >> 99%, you're right, but never do 100% stereotype, because allo need is one percent. these 17... in every page, oncet

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

corporations have become fewer and bigger. the bigger ones are fewer, they merge, they're global, they pitr one coagainst 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 where the outside inuence is overwhelmingly corporate.ho >> hinojosa: sdo we... how do we... so how do normal u'tizens-- small, regular citizens-- when saying it's so massive, their level of influence... >> simple. corporations have no vote-- the people have the vote. the biggest...oj >> ha: but you're also saying that the vote in the united states isn't actually a just vote because we're votith foelectoral college. >> right. that has to be repealed, of course. but let's start with congress. congresss the most important branch in government. it controls, you know, the war part, the money part, theap opriations part, health and safety, general welfare. therare 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 wae withajority of these again and again. where are we back home? why don't we organize back home? if in any every congressional district 2,000 people out of na630,000 in each congress- and there are colleges and counity colleges in every district-- if they would form a strong congress watchdog group and they would fund two full-time offices and two full-time people and they would devote 200 hours per person a year, volunteer to establish major redirections, living wage, health insurance, prison reform, tax reform, electoral reform, corporate crime crackdown, on and on, it would happen. there's nothing out there except a few single-interest groups-- nra, pro-life, pro-choice-- there's nothing out there except corporation. auto dealers are out there organized, insurance agents are out the organized, connected to washington and their patron

companies. so the bigge secret of democracy is not just that it can work, it's that it doesn't take that much effort by a smalr nuf organized people who reflect broad public sentiments. who reflect broad public sentiments. it may be passive in a lot of 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, ralph nader, we actually saw that in this country with thelection of president barack obama. there was a movement that wanted change, and some people might say this was, you know, a hopeful change. it actually brought in a change. >> yeah.a: >> hinojou're incredibly frustrated by president obama. >> well, first of all, he has no organized base. i mean, he got a lot of small b contribution he also raised, more than any presidential candidate in history, wall street money,co orate money, corporate law firm money. so he sails into office not from a mass movement-- i mean, he got a t of votes, but that's different from a mass movement

like the farmer progressive movement at the turn othe 19th and 20th century. i mean, they... the candidates leme out of them. they became statslators, governors, senators, and so forth. they knew where they were coming from. he sort of had an electronic victory.te you know, the et and all 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 warneds that he was very much a corporate democrat, and why did all these corporations put so much moneinto 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 hiss rhetorictter. 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 toth declare wars. and the second is too concessionary to big busines he's had personal invitation. six times the head of insurance, six times the head of pfizer drug, have met with him in the white house. he's never called out to us. >> hinojosa: has he called out to you? >> never once. doesn't answer the letters. one of his best friends, dr. r entin young, 85 years old, in chicago, the lea the single payer movement, wonderful doctor who he used to spendqu e a bit of time with, he never invites him for consultation. the he of aetna, the source of the problems? he is conflict averse. hinojosa: so what do american citizens... what do we do, then? because, you kno there are a lot of people who are saying, "well, wait a second. we thought that change was on the way." obviouy some people are saying, "wait a second. we don't see the change coming. now i feel entirely frustrated, and i feel so frustrated that i'm entirely apathetd i don't want to do anything." >> well, that's exactly what the power structure was you to do. in other words, wants you to quit, to withdraw.e, and of couhat is not

acceptable, right, if you carend for your dests 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 yourself, "oh, it's going to take 500 steps-- i'm not going to take the first step, the second step"? rfere are all kinds of won citizen groups in this country who want you to join. civil liberty groups, environment, labor, migrant reform, all these things. but people give up on themselves. ond the moment they give u themselves, the country's on the way into the pits. because they're the only ones who can hold the reins of the power brokers. >> hinojosa: there's something that... you once were asked abo question optimism and pessimism, and you said at?ething like, "you know i'm neither optimistic or pessimistic. i don't really, you know, work in the field of emot yns." h.

>> hinojosa: well, but most people do actually get sad, or they feel inspired, or they don't. but, you know, when they getla into a of entire frustration, and you're just saying, "look, i'm just not emotional, i'm not going to..." well, what do you sa people who are, in fact? >> well, you have to control your moods, because otherwisebe yome discouraged, you know, you want to drop out. that doesn't work. corporations work 24 hours a day. m you keep that d, and you see how they're grinding workers under. i mean, look at the lous wage at most... you know, one out of every three workers making wal-mart, $7.50, eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. they're grinding other consumers. they've got you ght by the ck. your credit score, your credit rating, they've got you in debt. you know, th control so much. urey're even now planning your genetic future, olitical future, your military budget future and so that ought to get you angry. that shouldn't say, "oh, i'm going to give up." it's amazing. for every million people who don't give up on their sports

te, even though their spor 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 insipid, you know, text l ssages. i had a teenager t the other day she did 300 text messages in one day. i said, "well, tell me, phyllis, what's the urgency of the communication here?" >> hinojosa: yeah, what are you talking about that's so important? >> the trivialization in these electronic gadgets... that's why, you know, when you go to citizen meetings around the country, there's hardly anybody under 40. i mean, they're all elderly people. because they grow upith these electronic gadgets, virtual reality, looking at screens. yoheknow a ten-year-old now, average ten-year-old is watching screens seven and a half hours a day. that's the latest report. >> hinojosa: it feels a little bit like 1984, you know? kind of like, "okay, now you're all controlled, you're programmed." >> yeah. >> hinojosa: and thele are going to say, "no, that just sounds really, really strange. we're just regular folks trying to figurthis out."

i mean, big conspiracy here, or... on the part of corporations to... >> corporations, they just want to sell you stuff-- junk food, nk this, junk that, violent programming to the kids, riundermining parental aut. parents are going up the wall. i mean, their kids ang marketed right out of their control. >> hinojosa: and so a parent should do what at that moment? >> just take control.t i mean, at tv aside, you know, put that ipod aside, don't even buy them th stuff. get them to read, to think, to converse, toonnect with their own peer group on a wholesome ievel, to exercise their b 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. >> it is going down the tubes. i mean, the highest average wage in the country's history is 1973. see, right there, poverty's increasingchild poverty is increasing. >> hinojosa: so what's the

motivation on the part of ke thistions to country down the tubes? then they don't have anybody to actually buy their products. >> well, that may occurcr singly. but as long as they can ship jobs and industries 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 the products back here, that's what they like. someday there's going be less and less purchasers here. on the other hand, there'll be more purchasers in china. these corporations are extremely expedient. they have no allegiance to our country, even though they were born in the usa, they profit on the backs of usa workers, they're bailed out by washington when they're in trouble, defended by the marines abroad when they get in trouble with dictatorships and so on. and they still don't have any allegiance to this country. they just go where the serf labor is, where they can pollute the easiest, 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 excuses for ourselves, copping out, you

know, rationalizing our own futility. look at our forbearers at their best. did they cop out? i mean, look what they did-- slavery, women's rights, civil rightsworkers, farmers. we've got to... and it's exciting, too. people live such dreary lives because they're so desperately trying to pay, you know three months ago's bill, and the rent. and this excites people. and you can see that particularly among women cic leaders, who come up from very poor areas-- black americanwo n, hispanic american women. you don't think their lives are enrichedhen they go against injustice? i mean, it's a whole new lifestyle. and there's noing more gratifying than advancing justice for your fellow human ing. >> hinojosa: and on that note, get out there an act, everyone. thank you so much for your words, ralph nader. a real pleasure. >> thank you. essential.org is our web site. >> hinojosa: we'll go. thank you.>> kay.

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

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