Ralph Nader answers questions during a press conference at the Statler Hotel on April 23, before his evening lecture at Bailey Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography
By Jill Goetz
The good news: After more than three decades fighting corporate abuse and calling for corporate accountability, Ralph Nader hasn't lost any of his zeal.
The bad news: His message hasn't lost any of its relevance.
In a rousing two-and-a-half-hour evening lecture at Bailey Hall on April 23, and at an earlier news conference, the nation's premier consumer advocate expounded his theory that "big business is on a collision course with American democracy."
"Corporations were never designed to dominate and dismantle our democracy," Nader said. "But that is exactly what they're doing at the present time. Law and order for corporations is long overdue."
Much of the blame, said the founder of Public Citizen and the Center for Study of Responsive Law, rests with politicians and their "cash-register politics."
"Companies are pouring huge amounts of money into political campaigns at all levels that corrupt the political process," he said. "And none of the candidates at any level are making corporate accountability -- law and order for corporations -- a major issue in their campaigns."
On the contrary, he said: they endorse subsidies for the nation's most irresponsible industries, from tobacco to timber.
"The corporate welfare budget coming out of Washington is double that of the public welfare budget, Nader said, "and we're worried about a $300 monthly check to welfare mothers."
Nader recently allowed his name to be placed on the ballot in Green Party presidential primaries in California, Maine and New Mexico (New York may be next). He said he doesn't harbor serious intentions of being the nation's next chief executive but hopes that by being in the race he can "broaden the agenda."
"Mr. Dole and Mr. Clinton won't talk about corporate crime, fraud and abuse; they won't talk about corporate welfare," Nader said. "The only thing that's going to stop the corporate takeover of our government is the arousal of civic action."
Like a college professor, a stack of books by his side (they're now on reserve in the Cornell Library), the Princeton and Harvard university graduate began his lesson to nearly 600 people in Bailey Hall with a bit of American history.
"What many of us do not learn in our
history books is just how cautious our forefathers were about the rise of corporate power," he said. They'd perceived
the Hudson's Bay and East India companies as instruments of imperial power, he explained, and put limits on company charters. But as the economy grew stronger, such safeguards began to fail.
Today, he said, Americans decry welfare fraud and build new prisons to house drug dealers, while the most dangerous criminals -- manufacturers of faulty intrauterine and heart devices, timber executives destroying publicly owned woodlands, pesticide companies shipping banned products overseas, speculators taking over savings and loan institutions bound to fail -- get off scot-free.
"Between 1990 and 2020, the savings and loan bailout will cost the American taxpayer a half a trillion dollars in principal and interest," he said. "That's a diversion of taxpayer dollars that could have created a huge number of jobs for rebuilding our public works, like mass transit, drinking water purification and schools."
Nader did not exclude the nation's research universities from his list of partners in corporate crime.
"The problem is that universities are not upholding their responsibility to be independent sources of knowledge," he said. Too many faculty are under contract to research and business concerns, he said. "The universities are being 'corporatized.' They're not sufficiently independent of special interests as history designed them to be."
Nader reserved his harshest criticism for the tobacco companies, calling for a surtax on tobacco profits that would be used to finance anti-smoking clinics and a ban on all tobacco advertising. "I don't think it's a free speech issue," he said. "It's commercial advertising of a product that has been shown again and again to be deadly."
For all of his protestations, Nader's message at Cornell was one not of despair but of "rebuilding democracy." He urged students to take advantage of the academic and extracurricular resources at their disposal. "When you leave college, are you going to have your own newspapers?" he asked. "Radio stations? Bulletin boards? Organize yourselves now, in ways that can develop your civic skills."
Nader praised the efforts of the student-based public interest research groups (PIRGS), which he also founded. Cornell's student assembly recently voted in favor of a measure that could lead to formation of a New York PIRG on campus.
As a candidate, Nader said he hopes "to encourage young people to get into the political process."
"The most important skill of all is practicing democracy," he said. "It's a great problem-solver."