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For The Record  

FTR #264 Darth Nader: Ralph Nader’s Politics of Hypocrisy

Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

1. In this most close­ly decid­ed elec­tion, the small per­cent­age of the vote gar­nered by Green Par­ty can­di­date Ralph Nad­er did, as some crit­ics had warned it would, prove to have deci­sive impact. A vote for Nad­er was indeed a vote for Bush, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Flori­da. (Nad­er got more than 90,000 votes in Flori­da.)

2. This pro­gram illu­mi­nates some aspects of Nader’s finan­cial and pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ry that have escaped pop­u­lar atten­tion. The broad­cast begins with an arti­cle by Mar­tin Kil­ian, a char­ter mem­ber of the Green Par­ty in Ger­many. Kil­ian penned a crit­i­cal analy­sis of the Nad­er can­di­da­cy that was post­ed on the Con­sor­tium’s web site. (consortiumnews.com; 11/1/2000.)

3. The Con­sor­tium is an asso­ci­a­tion of alter­na­tive jour­nal­ists. Kil­ian warned against the polit­i­cal imma­tu­ri­ty of the Nad­er can­di­da­cy, fail­ing to take into account both the nature of the Amer­i­can elec­toral sys­tem and the social and envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences of a Bush pres­i­den­cy. (Idem.)

4. The bal­ance of the first side of the broad­cast fea­tures an arti­cle about the hyp­o­crit­i­cal invest­ment pol­i­cy that Ralph Nad­er has exe­cut­ed. (“How Nad­er Prof­its While He Preach­es” by Jeff McMa­hon; bushwatch.net/nader.htm; 10/27/2000.)

5. Nad­er owns up to $250,000 worth of shares of Fideli­ty Mag­el­lan Fund, a firm that is heav­i­ly invest­ed in many of the cor­po­ra­tions that Nad­er has been most vocal in crit­i­ciz­ing. (Idem.)

6. Among those firms that Fideli­ty invests in are Hal­libur­ton oil, head­ed by Dick Cheney up until recent­ly. Fideli­ty also invests in Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um, a firm that has been crit­i­cized by envi­ron­men­tal­ists. Al Gore’s moth­er’s trust owns a sig­nif­i­cant block of Occi­den­tal stock. Gore’s pop­ulist cre­den­tials have been impugned Nad­er Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Winona La Duke because of that stock. (Idem.)

7. The sec­ond side high­lights dis­turb­ing aspects of Nader’s anti-labor activ­i­ties, and his avoid­ance of social issues. (“1.75 Cheers for Ralph” by Doug Hen­wood; Left Busi­ness Observ­er; 10/1996 [#74].)

8. Next, the pro­gram turns to the effect a Bush admin­is­tra­tion will have on issues that are at the core of the Green/Nader cam­paign. (“The Last Green Mile” by Thomas L. Fried­man; New York Times; 12/ 8/2000; p. A31.)

9. The fed­er­al appoint­ments that Bush will make are going to have an immense­ly neg­a­tive impact on the inter­pre­ta­tion of Fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions on the envi­ron­ment, in par­tic­u­lar. (Idem.)

10. The broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that dis­missed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al legit­i­ma­cy of a Bush/Cheney tick­et. (“Cheney Ruled a Res­i­dent of Wyoming” AP; Los Ange­les Times; 12/8/2000; 12/8/2000.)

11. Three of the four judges were appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush, the oth­er by Rea­gan. (Idem.)

12. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Nader’s role in under­min­ing air­line and truck­ing work­ers in the 1970’s (“1.75 Cheers for Ralph” by Doug Hen­wood; Left Busi­ness Observ­er; 10/1996 [#74].)

13. Nader’s fight to pre­vent union­iza­tion in a pub­li­ca­tion he found­ed (Idem.).

14. Nader’s alleged refusal to pre­vent pub­li­ca­tion of CIA/corporate col­lu­sion in his Multi­na­tion­al Mon­i­tor (Idem.).

15. Nader’s role in effec­tive­ly neu­tral­iz­ing a big­ger union dri­ve at Pub­lic Cit­i­zen (Idem.).

16. Nader’s exces­sive secre­cy about his own finan­cial affairs (“How Nad­er Prof­its While He Preach­es” by Jeff McMa­hon; bushwatch.net/nader.htm; 10/27/2000.).

17. A detailed list of the var­i­ous cor­po­ra­tions Nad­er invest in and (hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly) crit­i­cizes at the same time. (Idem.)

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #264 Darth Nader: Ralph Nader’s Politics of Hypocrisy”

  1. Ralph Nad­er has a bold new idea for rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the US two-par­ty sys­tem: find a real­ly rich guy to run for pres­i­dent:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post
    Oprah for pres­i­dent? Nad­er seeks ‘mod­est­ly enlight­ened’ bil­lion­aire to run

    By Aaron Blake
    Feb­ru­ary 24 at 1:56 pm

    For­mer third-par­ty pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ralph Nad­er wants to shake up the two-par­ty Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem, and he’s got just the per­son to do it:

    Oprah Win­frey ... or Bill Gates ... or Ted Turn­er.

    Nad­er, who ran for pres­i­dent as the nom­i­nee of the Green Par­ty in 1996 and 2000 and as an inde­pen­dent in 2004 and 2008, is out with a new memo out­lin­ing 20 “mod­est­ly enlight­ened rich peo­ple” (a.k.a. MERPs) who could run for pres­i­dent and shake up the two-par­ty sys­tem.

    The Dream Team of MERPs include Win­frey, Gates and Turn­er, along with for­mer third-par­ty New York gov­er­nor can­di­date Tom Golisano, for­mer AOL chief exec­u­tive Steve Case and hedge fund founder Tom Stey­er, who recent­ly sug­gest­ed he might spend as much as $100 mil­lion to help Democ­rats win the 2014 elec­tion and push the issue of cli­mate change.

    “Present­ly, only very rich mod­est­ly enlight­ened peo­ple could have a chance to break this intro­vert­ing cycle of polit­i­cal oli­garchy, which unen­light­ened rich peo­ple gen­er­al­ly approve of, that sets its own rules, makes its own laws, appoints its own judges and even brazen­ly forces tax­pay­ers to finance its qua­dren­ni­al polit­i­cal con­ven­tions,” Nad­er writes in the memo, which was shared with The Wash­ing­ton Post.

    Nad­er notes — cor­rect­ly — that MERPs would be more like­ly to poll high­ly enough to be includ­ed in debates and have the mon­ey to get on the bal­lot in all 50 states — the two biggest hur­dles to less well-fund­ed third-par­ty can­di­dates.

    Nad­er said he would pre­fer that one of these MERPs would run as a third-par­ty or inde­pen­dent can­di­date, but that they could also chal­lenge the major par­ties in pri­maries or get involved in the con­ver­sa­tion by some oth­er means, includ­ing threat­en­ing a third-par­ty bid unless a spe­cif­ic issue is addressed in one of the par­ties’ plat­forms.

    Below are the 20 MERPs that Nad­er lists (while also clar­i­fy­ing that he does­n’t endorse any of them or their polit­i­cal posi­tions).

    The descrip­tion of each per­son is by Nad­er:

    Thomas Stey­er – for­mer Hedge Fund entre­pre­neur, and a deter­mined, envi­ron­men­tal advo­cate espe­cial­ly on cli­mate change.
    Ray Dalio – heads the country’s largest hedge fund and is an engaged phil­an­thropist.
    Oprah Win­frey – founder of the Oprah Win­frey Show, advo­cate, actress and phil­an­thropist.
    Jerome Kohlberg – co-founder of KKR – large lever­aged buy­out firm, con­tributes to edu­ca­tion and has fund­ed cam­paign finance reform.
    Bar­ry Diller – media, cable busi­ness, believes in the pub­lic air­waves as a pub­lic trust.
    John Arnold – for­mer ener­gy trad­er, now pro­mot­ing the Giv­ing Library con­nect­ing phil­an­thropists with non­prof­its, among many oth­er projects.
    Ted Turn­er – cable tele­vi­sion busi­ness, phil­an­thropy includes $1 bil­lion to the Unit­ed Nations and oth­er major dona­tions to envi­ron­men­tal, peace and pop­u­la­tion con­trol pro­grams that he advo­cates.
    Thomas Siebel – soft­ware com­pa­ny cre­ator, heads sev­er­al com­pa­nies in soft­ware, real estate and agri­cul­ture, and cre­ator of the annu­al edu­ca­tion­al Siebel Schol­ars pro­gram.
    Chase Cole­man – suc­cess­ful mon­ey man­ag­er and cre­ates ven­ture cap­i­tal firms.
    Marc Andreessen – sup­ports Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neurs and advances all-invest­ing-part­ner phil­an­thropic com­mit­ments.
    David Ruben­stein – for­mer, ener­getic White House assis­tant to Pres­i­dent Carter and co-founder of a suc­cess­ful ven­ture cap­i­tal firm – the Car­lyle Group – expand­ing phil­an­thropist and con­ven­er.
    Steve Case – for­mer CEO and chair­man of AOL and exu­ber­ant phil­an­thropist for inno­v­a­tive projects.
    Sheryl Sand­berg – COO of Face­book, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and a co-founder of the Lean In Foun­da­tion which sup­ports women in reach­ing their career goals.
    Bill Gross – lead­ing bond mutu­al fund man­ag­er, sup­ports, among oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders.
    William Con­way – co-founder of Car­lyle Group – whose pri­or­i­ty phil­an­thropic mis­sion is to gen­er­ate job pro­duc­ing activ­i­ties.
    Stan­ley Druck­en­miller – invest­ment firm man­ag­er, now giv­ing to med­ical research, edu­ca­tion and the fight against pover­ty.
    Abi­gail John­son – Pres­i­dent of Fideli­ty Invest­ments, trustee of the Fideli­ty Foun­da­tion which has pro­vid­ed over $200 mil­lion to non­prof­its in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da.
    Tom Golisano – for­mer inde­pen­dent can­di­date for Gov­er­nor of New York, founder and Chair­man of the Board of Pay­chex.
    Bill Gates, III – co-founder of Microsoft, now more of a phil­an­thropist with empha­sis on pre­ven­tion of infec­tious dis­eases and edu­ca­tion.
    George Kaiser – chair­man of BOK Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, and advo­cate for renew­able ener­gy and tax reform.

    ...

    I’m def­i­nite­ly root­ing for a Ray Dalio can­di­da­cy. Not a Dalio pres­i­den­cy. Just the cam­paign.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 27, 2014, 8:51 pm
  2. Remem­ber when Ralph Nad­er wrote a col­umn pin­ing for a bil­lion­aire to mount a third par­ty chal­lenged in 2016 pres­i­den­tial race and even list­ed 20 exam­ples back in 2014 as a means of chal­leng­ing the US’s two-par­ty sys­tem. Well, while Don­ald Trump’s wild­ly suc­cess­ful chal­lenge to the GOP isn’t quite the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion Nad­er appears to be hop­ing for, that does­n’t mean Ralph still won’t get his third-par­ty bil­lion­aire wish:

    The Boston Globe

    Bloomberg run would break up the two-par­ty tyran­ny

    By Ralph Nad­er Feb­ru­ary 09, 2016

    If you think Bernie Sanders and Don­ald Trump are shak­ing up the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, imag­ine the jolt that could come from a third-par­ty run by mega­bil­lion­aire, and for­mer may­or of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.

    As Ross Per­ot did in 1992, when he ran as an inde­pen­dent, receiv­ing 19 mil­lion votes, a Bloomberg can­di­da­cy would instant­ly pro­duce a three-way race. Rich can­di­dates get instant mass-media cov­er­age and polls, cre­at­ing wide­spread name recog­ni­tion in only a mat­ter of days.

    The rest­less, ambi­tious, supreme­ly self-con­fi­dent for­mer three-term may­or of the nation’s largest city has been more than just think­ing about becom­ing pres­i­dent for a decade. He’s done the sur­veys and solicit­ed the advice of his­to­ri­ans and polit­i­cal ana­lysts about his chances. He’ll only run if he thinks he can win.

    So what does he bring to a cam­paign? His may­oral reign steeped him in urban issues and needs, which he has long believed are not giv­en even min­i­mal cov­er­age in pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns. His con­tacts with the urban polit­i­cal scene in many cities is unmatched. He can forge an imme­di­ate net­work of movers and shak­ers in the busi­ness, phil­an­thropic, and polit­i­cal are­nas. As a pro­tec­tor of Wall Street and a law-and-order may­or who backed police and their stop-and-frisk prac­tices, he reas­sures the ner­vous plu­toc­ra­cy and oli­garchy, who fear loss of their usu­al con­trol over elec­tions.

    He has told asso­ciates that he would run if the like­ly Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nees are either too extreme (Don­ald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders, in his mind) or fal­ter­ing (Hillary Clin­ton). The time for deci­sion is rapid­ly near­ing for meet­ing dif­fer­ent state dead­lines for bal­lot access. Even though Bloomberg is report­ed­ly ready to spend a bil­lion dol­lars on his cam­paign, and can get the nec­es­sary peti­tion sig­na­tures in record time, Richard Winger, pub­lish­er of Bal­lot Access News, says he has got to get start­ed ear­ly next month.

    ...

    How about the elec­toral col­lege? Per­ot didn’t get one elec­toral vote from this embar­rass­ing ves­tige of yes­ter­day, which allows can­di­dates who win the pop­u­lar vote to still lose in the nation­al elec­tion. How­ev­er, with win­ner-take-all plu­ral­i­ties in a mul­ti­par­ty race, the elec­toral col­lege could work in Bloomberg’s favor if he could excite the vot­ers.

    There­in lies the rub. What excite­ment could come out of his announce­ment day? He’ll empha­size his abil­i­ty to get things done — start­ing with found­ing the giant Bloomberg News Com­pa­ny on a shoe­string invest­ment 35 years ago. He’ll recount his may­oral achieve­ments and the absence of any per­son­al scan­dals in the snakepit known as New York City pol­i­tics. But his Wall Street boos­t­er­ism may not go down well with many poten­tial­ly defect­ing vot­ers.

    He’ll reas­sure inde­pen­dent and par­ti­san vot­ers that he is the heavy­weight in the race who can fix bro­ken pol­i­tics in Wash­ing­ton. After all, he has been a reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can, and is present­ly an inde­pen­dent — the ulti­mate hybrid can­di­date who knows how to bring peo­ple togeth­er, as he often did in frac­tious New York City.

    Will it work to meet his bot­tom line — that he has a chance to win and avoid being stereo­typed with that polit­i­cal­ly-big­ot­ed word “spoil­er”? His biggest pro­ce­dur­al prob­lem is time. The out­comes of the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty race may not be known until well beyond March, as many had expect­ed.

    In addi­tion, it is dif­fi­cult to per­ceive what bun­dle of goals, what excit­ing hori­zons, can emanate from a non­charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty who projects a duti­ful man­age­r­i­al image but is not about to start shift­ing pow­er and free­dom from the few to the many.

    Were Bloomberg to run, regard­less of his prospects of win­ning, he would help break up the two-par­ty tyran­ny that believes it owns all the vot­ers in this coun­try. He would con­vey that a com­pet­i­tive elec­tion should mean more choic­es of can­di­dates and agen­das. The rigged pres­i­den­tial debates, espe­cial­ly if he were includ­ed as Ross Per­ot was in 1996, would receive much need­ed pub­lic scruti­ny.

    But such con­tri­bu­tions by them­selves won’t move Michael Bloomberg. To run, he has to believe he’s going to pre­vail. My guess is that his poll-dri­ven answer to this recur­ring inter­est in the White House will be once again to stay put as a full-time, bold advo­ca­cy phil­an­thropist and offi­cial advis­er to favored insti­tu­tions.

    While that was­n’t quite a ring­ing endorse­ment of Bloomberg him­self, it sure sounds like Ralph is look­ing for­ward to a Bloomberg run just to uphold the prin­ci­ple of help­ing to “break up the two-par­ty tyran­ny”:

    ...
    Were Bloomberg to run, regard­less of his prospects of win­ning, he would help break up the two-par­ty tyran­ny that believes it owns all the vot­ers in this coun­try. He would con­vey that a com­pet­i­tive elec­tion should mean more choic­es of can­di­dates and agen­das. The rigged pres­i­den­tial debates, espe­cial­ly if he were includ­ed as Ross Per­ot was in 1996, would receive much need­ed pub­lic scruti­ny.
    ...

    Now what are the odds of Michael Bloomberg actu­al­ly going through with this pledge? Let’s see:

    ...
    He has told asso­ciates that he would run if the like­ly Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nees are either too extreme (Don­ald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders, in his mind) or fal­ter­ing (Hillary Clin­ton). The time for deci­sion is rapid­ly near­ing for meet­ing dif­fer­ent state dead­lines for bal­lot access. Even though Bloomberg is report­ed­ly ready to spend a bil­lion dol­lars on his cam­paign, and can get the nec­es­sary peti­tion sig­na­tures in record time, Richard Winger, pub­lish­er of Bal­lot Access News, says he has got to get start­ed ear­ly next month.
    ...

    So all the oth­er GOP­ers oth­er than Trump or Cruz are less extreme than Bernie Sanders accord­ing to Bloomberg. Huh.

    Ok, so if the GOP nom­i­nates Trump or Cruz and the Democ­rats nom­i­nate Sanders or Hillary, Bloomberg jumps in. But he also needs to make that deci­sion ear­ly in March (pre­sum­ably after see­ing the results of the Super Tues­day pri­maries). So, basi­cal­ly, unless John Kasich (or Jeb Bush, LOL) can some­how pull off a series of stun­ning wins in the next month, we just might have a three-way race on our hands! A three-way race that could make a GOP vic­to­ry much more like­ly. Well, at least Ralph will be pleased.

    Beyond the deeply dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that Michael Bloomberg could pave the way for a GOP vic­to­ry in Novem­ber, this all rais­es an inter­est­ing metaphor­i­cal ques­tion for Ralph: since he referred to the cur­rent two-par­ty sys­tem as a choice between tuber­cu­lo­sis and can­cer in a recent inter­view, what’s Ralph’s metaphor for Michael Bloomberg if he throws his hat in the ring? “A breath of fresh air”? No, that’s how Ralph described Don­ald Trump back in August. How about just “a dream come true”. Or bet­ter yet, “an old dream (cir­ca 2011) come true”:

    New York Mag­a­zine

    Ralph Nad­er Finds a Cor­po­rate Mogul to Love

    By Jonathan Chait

    Octo­ber 11, 2011 1:03 p.m.

    Ralph Nad­er just hates Democ­rats more than any­thing, includ­ing Repub­li­cans. It would be one thing if Nad­er was advanc­ing some the­o­ry that run­ning left-wing spoil­er cam­paigns in the gen­er­al elec­tion will hurt Democ­rats but push the Par­ty to the left. That’s a ter­ri­ble the­o­ry, but at least it’s a the­o­ry. But it’s pret­ty clear that Nad­er isn’t even advo­cat­ing this kind of crazy long-term plan when you con­sid­er things like his advo­ca­cy of a Mike Bloomberg pres­i­den­tial cam­paign:

    “In area after area, you know, whether it’s con­sumer fair­ness, sin­gle pay­er health insur­ance, full medicare for all, for exam­ple, crack­ing down on cor­po­rate crime, a real­ly new kind of tax sys­tem, the two par­ties are too hooked into the estab­lish­ment, the cor­po­rate state that they can’t change. And so, if you ever put that agen­da out in front of peo­ple it would be spec­tac­u­lar, espe­cial­ly if the can­di­date had enough mon­ey to reach those peo­ple. … Let’s say a Bloomberg runs, it would be a three way race in every sense of the term, because he could write a check for $500 mil­lion.”

    Bloomberg is not a left-winger who would force Democ­rats to the left. He’s an advo­cate of hold­ing down tax­es on the rich and an oppo­nent of the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment. If Bloomberg was the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee, Nad­er would be assail­ing him as a cor­po­rate stooge.

    So why would he want to sup­port a spoil­er run for an even more mod­er­ate can­di­date than Oba­ma? There is no coher­ent ratio­nale here. He just has an insane belief that elect­ing Repub­li­can pres­i­dents some­how leads to good things.

    “Bloomberg is not a left-winger who would force Democ­rats to the left. He’s an advo­cate of hold­ing down tax­es on the rich and an oppo­nent of the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment. If Bloomberg was the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee, Nad­er would be assail­ing him as a cor­po­rate stooge.
    Keep in mind that Bloomberg was one of many indi­vid­u­als across the polit­i­cal spec­trum who Nad­er was hop­ing would run in the 2012. Still, for some­one with Nader’s pro­fessed pol­i­tics, it’s all a bit odd. Not remote­ly sur­pris­ing, but odd.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 10, 2016, 7:27 pm
  3. In truth, there are two green par­ties in the US and they are as dif­fer­ent from each oth­er as night is from day.

    “Why are there two green par­ties”
    (greenparty.org)

    The Greens/Green Par­ty USA
    (web site greenparty.org)

    This par­ty is fund­ed by dues and takes no gov­ern­ment, cor­po­ra­tion, or large dona­tions from wealthy peo­ple to avoid hav­ing to answer to any­one. But small, ma and pa dona­tions are wel­come. The par­ty focus is on grass­roots work and the envi­ron­ment alone with social jus­tice issues such as vot­ing rights. And while it is involved in the polit­i­cal process in this respect, it nev­er runs a can­di­date to take away votes from a Pro­gres­sive Demo­c­rat as Green Par­ty of the Unit­ed States (That’s the par­ty that ran Ralph Nad­er and is now run­ning Jill Stein for Pres­i­dent in 2016 as they did in 2012.)
    This par­ty is called Green Par­ty of the Unit­ed States (gp.org) and is run just like the major par­ties in that it depends on lots of dona­tions and does not care from whom the mon­ey comes from.Here’s s short list of arti­cles
    on Repub­li­can mon­ey going to their Green Par­ty can­di­dates:

    Green Par­ty can­di­date Finds He’s a Repub­li­can Pawn, by Sam Ver­hovek
    New York Times of August 8, 2001.

    Flori­da Repub­li­can Mon­ey Flows to Green Par­ty Can­di­date Ursu­la Razum, She Gives The Mon­ey to Char­i­ty, by
    Michele Brei­den­bach (mbreidenbach@syracuse.com) of Novem­ber 1, 2012

    Green Par­ty Scan­dal: Did The Texas Green Par­ty Will­ful­ly Break The Law?
    by Matt Glaz­er of The Lone Star Project Morn­ing News of June 6, 2010.

    And here’s oe about Ralph Nad­er.
    Nad­er Defends GOP Cash/Candidate Says He’s Keep­ing Mon­ey, by Car­la Mar­inc­ci, Chron­i­cle Polit­i­cal Writer of July 10,2014.

    And here’s anoth­er one on Nad­er:
    GOP Donors Fund­ing Nader/Bush Sup­port­ers Give Inde­pen­den­t’s Bid a Finan­cial Lift, by Cala Moor­in­uc­ci, Chron­ic Polit­i­cal Writer of July 9,2004. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, one out of ten dona­tions of $10,000 or more going to Nad­er, came from rich Repub­li­cans

    Now take a look at this: Penn­syl­van­ian Green Par­ty can­di­date for Sen­a­tor run­ning with — hold onto our hat — 99% Repub­li­can mon­ey, accourt­ing to Green Par­ty USA

    But some mem­bers of Green Par­ty US not only deny Repub­li­can mon­ey to greens. One per­son thinks the idea is just great.

    Green par­ty Watch: Green Par­ty Activist Edy: The Green Par­ty Tak­ing Mon­ey from Republicans(or Democ­rats a Bad thing?

    He goes on to write that Nad­er nev­er took a dime of Repub­li­can mon­ey. But why in the world would Democ­rats give mon­ey to a Green Par­ty Us can­di­date? The very idea is not wor­thy of con­ver­sa­tion. But I am writ­ing about to let you know just how out­right stu­pid some of these green Par­ty US peo­ple real­ly are.

    Now we come to the elec­tion of 2016 and I highy recommed:

    “Dis­as­ter Will Come” Dan Sav­age’s epic rant lays out the prob­lem with third par­ty can­di­dates” and the fol­low up, “How Green is Her Bull­shit?” by Dan Sav­age.

    Is Jill Stein The next Ralph Nad­er? by Lau­ra Reston (New Repub­lic)

    And I shall end with a ques­tion for all these who are vot­ing for Stein because their con­science would not let them vote for Hillary. “What is your con­science going to tell you to say to some­one seek­ing an abor­tion under Pres­i­dent Trump because your vot­ing for Jill Stein gave Trump just what he need­ed to win?” Think about that before you vote your con­science.

    Posted by David | August 6, 2016, 3:33 pm
  4. **!Nad­er Alert!**
    Ralph Nad­er just appeared to endorse the idea of Michael Bloomberg run­ning as a Demo­c­rat for Pres­i­dent in 2020. Sure, Bloomberg would unam­bigu­ous­ly bet­ter than just about any Repub­li­can as pres­i­dent, but that’s a pret­ty low bar. Whether or not Bloomberg fits your per­son­al pol­i­tics, the unde­ni­able polit­i­cal real­i­ty is that hav­ing a for­mer Repub­li­can may­or of New York City run in 2020 and fram­ing him­self as a ‘cen­trist’ after the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry fight would be a gift to the Repub­li­cans and a recipe for dis­as­ter. A recipe for dis­as­ter that appears to suit Ralph Nad­er just fine:

    The Dai­ly Ban­ter

    Ralph Nad­er Endors­es Mike Bloomberg 2020 Because Ralph Nad­er Is an A**hole
    Yes, let’s lis­ten to the guy that delib­er­ate­ly gave us George W. Bush.

    Justin Rosario
    Oct 16, 2018

    There is a strain of “thought” (and I use the term in the loos­est pos­si­ble sense) on the far left that says if we make things bad enough, the peo­ple will rise up in glo­ri­ous rev­o­lu­tion. We see this is in the ongo­ing idio­cy that is Susan Saran­don who is more than hap­py to watch the world burn from the safe­ty of her man­sion. But not to be out­done, the OG rev­o­lu­tion­ary ass­hole Ralph Nad­er has one-upped her by say­ing, out-loud, that a Michael Bloomberg can­di­da­cy in 2020 would be a good thing:

    ...on the oth­er hand, he’s not your rou­tine Wall Street guy; he’s an entre­pre­neur and he thinks for him­self. I think he could shake up the Demo­c­rat Par­ty. I think, because I’ve known him and talked with him, I think he rues the day he did­n’t run four years ago.

    Skip to 4:28 for the rel­e­vant part
    [see clip of Nad­er inter­view]

    Let’s be clear here: Ralph Nad­er is not here to advance the pro­gres­sive agen­da. Ralph Nad­er is here to burn it all down to the ground. I am no Rage Against the Machine anti-Cap­i­tal­ist and even I find the idea of Bloomberg as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee to be deeply offen­sive. Since Nad­er is way to my left, it’s ludi­crous to think he likes Bloomberg for any rea­son oth­er than it would break the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in two.

    If you’re not sure what I’m talk­ing about here, let me give you a quick his­to­ry les­son. When it was clear the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty was not going to bend the knee to Nad­er, he decid­ed to pun­ish them:

    That list of states where Nad­er was con­cen­trat­ing near the end of the cam­paign con­sist­ed of the large states that were the clos­est between Bush and Gore. Every­one knew that Nader’s appeal was being made to “the left,” and Nad­er was con­cen­trat­ing his cam­paign now on suck­ing fool­ish left­ist vot­ers away from Gore. He was claim­ing to be the prefer­able left­ist can­di­date. He wasn’t cam­paign­ing at all to draw votes away from the con­ser­v­a­tive end of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. So: Nad­er clear­ly was tar­get­ing to throw this “elec­tion” to Bush — and he suc­ceed­ed in Flori­da, at doing pre­cise­ly that.

    This is his­tor­i­cal record, not opin­ion. Nad­er had a very spe­cif­ic agen­da that con­sist­ed of cost­ing the Democ­rats the 2000 elec­tion. You can draw a straight line from that act of polit­i­cal sab­o­tage which result­ed in 20 years of blood­shed across the globe, cost­ing the lives of mil­lions, to where we are right now, on the brink of dis­as­ter as a nation.

    Dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion, Nad­er was, nat­u­ral­ly, a rabid Hillary hater for her “cor­rup­tion” and “ties to Wall Street” and (insert your favorite non­sen­si­cal far left talk­ing point here). But now, in 2018, we’re sup­posed to believe he’s OK with Bloomberg, a lit­er­al Wall Street bil­lion­aire?

    Nah.

    He wants Bloomberg because he knows the entire pro­gres­sive move­ment would reject him like a dis­eased kid­ney trans­plant. It would be even worse than their rejec­tion of Hillary with the added ben­e­fit of actu­al­ly being hon­est this time. Bloomberg would also be reject­ed by minori­ties because of his years try­ing to turn the NYPD into Amer­i­ca’s most racist police force. I’m super white and even I haven’t for­got­ten how fu cked up “Stop and Frisk” was. Nad­er knows all of this so it’s clear he wants the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to tear itself apart while fas­cists and white nation­al­ists are on the cusp of turn­ing Amer­i­ca into an eth­no­cen­tric police state.

    ...

    ———-

    “Ralph Nad­er Endors­es Mike Bloomberg 2020 Because Ralph Nad­er Is an A**hole” by Justin Rosario; The Dai­ly Ban­ter; 10/16/2018

    “Let’s be clear here: Ralph Nad­er is not here to advance the pro­gres­sive agen­da. Ralph Nad­er is here to burn it all down to the ground. I am no Rage Against the Machine anti-Cap­i­tal­ist and even I find the idea of Bloomberg as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee to be deeply offen­sive. Since Nad­er is way to my left, it’s ludi­crous to think he likes Bloomberg for any rea­son oth­er than it would break the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in two.”

    It’s hard to argue with that analy­sis. Some­one with Nader’s pol­i­tics could only con­ceiv­ably endorse a Bloomberg as a means of trig­ger­ing a big nasty pri­ma­ry fight with an idea of hav­ing anoth­er hyper-acri­mo­nious ‘bat­tle for the soul of the par­ty’ pri­ma­ry. Grant­ed, Bloomberg does­n’t have the same kind of insti­tu­tion­al par­ty back­ing that Hillary Clin­ton had in 2016 that guar­an­teed 2016 would be a fight between Hillary vs some­one. But he does have the per­son­al finan­cial resources to make a seri­ous run with­out sig­nif­i­cant par­ty sup­port. He can buy a lot of ads and inject what­ev­er nar­ra­tive he wants into the pri­ma­ry process and there’s no rea­son to assume that nar­ra­tive won’t be exploit­ed by the Repub­li­cans in the gen­er­al elec­tion. So if Bloomberg casts him­self as a ‘cen­trist’ and ‘busi­ness friend­ly’ and gets thor­ough­ly reject­ed that’s only going to play into the inevitable fram­ing of the Democ­rats as ‘extrem­ist’ and ‘far left’, which we can be sure will be a cen­tral theme to the GOP’s strat­e­gy and helped along by much of the media.

    So if Bloomberg does actu­al­ly run it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see if Ralph Nad­er actu­al­ly backs him in the pri­ma­ry, or sim­ply rev­els in the inevitable tur­moil. But the very fact that some­one with Nader’s his­to­ry of play­ing a left-wing spoil­er is get­ting excit­ed about Bloomberg is a reminder that if Bloomberg does indeed run it’s going to be used as a divide-and-con­quer oppor­tu­ni­ty whether Bloomberg intends that or not.

    It’s also a reminder that Democ­rats should prob­a­bly remind Bloomberg that there are plen­ty of ways some­one with his lev­els of wealth can have a pos­i­tive impact with­out run­ning for pres­i­dent.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 19, 2018, 11:12 am

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