>> hinojosa: many know him as the man who spoiled the 2000 presidential elections, but in the last five decades, he brought us the seatbelt, the airbag, the clean air act, and much more-- four-time presidential candidate, consumer advocate, and author ralph nader. i'm maria hinojosa, 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 to you, because, you know, you're a consumer advocate. as a kid who was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, ralph nader... everybody knew what you 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 our country look 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 sell you a defective 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 wasn'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 created. the problem is that the corporations know how to game 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. the toyota thing is an example of a complete breakdown... >> hinojosa: in fact, i was just... >> ...of the auto safety agency. >> hinojosa: i was just watching something on television. it looks like they have like, a 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. >> hinojosa: ...before there was protection, and yet it feels like we haven't made any progress. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: 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 money to give to the politicians and many more lawyers to bring lawsuits. 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 guard the embassy in baghdad-- $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 seen that number printed in a major newspaper of record? >> almost never, but you see, 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 where their 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 taxpayer off like crazy. >> hinojosa: so a lot of people probably, you know, if they go back and they look at what it was 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: 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 your mom and dad and what they taught you helped 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, you know, text messaging. ( 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... >> hinojosa: 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 is government ownership of the means of production, and capitalism is corporate ownership of the means of government." and you 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 loophole crowd, and turning the 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 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 room 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 parents and grandparents do. and that's why i put down their... my parent's questions and experiences in the book 17 traditions. >> hinojosa: which is a wonderful book. probably a lot of people may not have read it. it's called the 17 traditions, and this is a 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 disconnected 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'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 restrant and he'd always criticize 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, 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, "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, "do you love your country?" "darn right." he said, "why don't you spend a little more time improving it?" ( laughing ) so that's the kind of dialogue that were exposed to all the time. >> hinojosa: 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, by general motors. they were coming after you. >> yeah. >> hinojosa: in those moments when you're... you know, you 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 in traffic crashes needlessly. there were no seatbelts, no airbags, no padded dash panels, you know, no rollovesupport.

now, for example, it's much safer-- motor vehicles are much safer-- but i lost high school, college classmates. 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 people kind of think, "unsafe automobiles? what'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. 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 just mentioned grew in the mid-1960s congressional hearings, the

signing by lyndon 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 the tireless consumer advocate... >> 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. isn't he the one who made bush win?" and you say... >> well, listen. first of all, it's factually wrong. i've talked to gore about this, and gore has talked to other people. first of all, we all have an equal right to run for election, and why do they put the wrap on the green party candidate for? i mean, do these two parties own all the 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 the women's right to vote party, labor, farmer, progressive parties? 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 because of the electoral college, so... >> hinojosa: which frankly, you know, when people talk about the 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? they vote for 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 and jeb bush. >> hinojosa: but you got 90,000 votes in florida, right? >> yeah. >> hinojosa: so if those 90,000 votes had 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 progressive stands which got him up in the polls, where he actually got 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 studies who have concluded that i actually, by pushing him to do what lieberman didn't want him to do... >> hinojosa: mm-hmm. >> ...by challenging 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 ridiculous discussion, because let's all put our best foot forward to 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, becausthis is one of the things that people will... and people-- many of your supporters who were die-hard ralph nader supporters said, "okay, that's it; i'll never forgive him."

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 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... >> oh, sure, it could. it's very easy. i wrote a book including... only the super-rich can save us, that talks about the 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 it 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. >> hinojosa: 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, ultra, ultra rich who may have their own baggage," but they're the ones who are going to actually make our country 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 up. justice requires money. it requires money for lawyers, for organizers in the communities. it requires 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. they 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... >> hinojosa: 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 way." >> 99%, you're right, but never do 100% stereotype, because all

you need is one percent. these 17... in every page, once you accept that 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 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 occurs in 2006. >> hinojosa: so are you hopeful, ralph? i mean, you've been at this 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, 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 corporations 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 where the outside influence is overwhelmingly corporate. >> hinojosa: so how do we... how do we... so how do normal citizens-- small, regular citizens-- when you're saying it's so massive, their level of influence... >> simple. corporations have no vote-- the people have the vote. the biggest... >> hinojosa: but you're also saying that the vote in the united states isn't actually a just vote because we're voting for the electoral 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 the majority 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 630,000 in each congressional-- and there are colleges and community 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 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 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, "well, ralph nader, we actually saw that in this country with the election 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. >> hinojosa: you're incredibly frustrated by president obama. >> well, first of all, he has no organized base. i mean, he got a lot of small contributions, but he also raised, more than any presidential candidate in history, wall street money, corporate 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's different from a mass movement like the farmer progressive movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. i mean, they... the candidates came out of them. they became state legislators, governors, senators, and so forth. they knew where they were coming from. he sort of had an electronic victory. you know, the internet 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 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 better. 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 these wars. 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 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. quentin young, 85 years old, in chicago, the leader of the single payer movement, wonderful doctor who he used to spend quite a bit of time with, he never invites him for consultation. the head of aetna, the source of the problems? he is conflict averse. >> hinojosa: so what do american citizens... what do we do, then? because, you know, there are a lot of people who are 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. now i feel entirely frustrated, and i feel so frustrated that i'm entirely apathetic, and i 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, that is not acceptable, right, if you care for your descendants 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"? there are all kinds of wonderful 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. and the moment they give up on 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 a question about optimism and pessimism, and you said something like, "you know what?

i'm neither optimistic or pessimistic. i don't really, you know, 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 place of entire frustration, and you're just saying, "look, i'm just not emotional, 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 drop out. that doesn't work. corporations work 24 hours a day. you keep that in mind, and you see how they're grinding workers under. i mean, look at the ridiculous 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 right by the neck. your credit score, your credit rating, they've got you in debt. you know, they control so much. they're even now planning your genetic future, your political 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 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, tell me, phyllis, what's t 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 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 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 then people are going to say, "no, that just sounds really, really strange. we're just regular 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, junk this, junk that, violent programming to the kids, undermining parental authority. 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 that 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. >> it is going down the tubes. i mean, the highest average wage in the country's history is 1973.

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 tubes? then they don't have anybody to actually buy their products. >> well, that may occur increasingly. 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 to 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 rights, workers, 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 civic leaders, who come up from very poor areas-- black american women, 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 gratifying than advancing justice for your fellow human being. >> 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. >> okay. >> hinojosa: continue the conversation at: captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org