Ralph Nader Interview on National TV June 25

Ralph Nader on Meet the Press Sunday June 25 2000

MR. RUSSERT: Later today the Green Party nominates Ralph Nader for
president. He is with us live.

MR. RUSSERT: Ralph Nader, welcome. Today you become the official nominee
of the Green Party for president. Let me show you our latest NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll: George W. Bush, 43; Al Gore, 38; Ralph Nader, 7; Pat
Buchanan, 4. And the internals of the poll, Mr. Nader, almost every one of
your voters, if you were out of the race, would switch over to Al Gore.
He's only 5 points down. You're taking 7 points away. Are you comfortable
with playing the role of spoiler, even electing George W. Bush?

MR. RALPH NADER: Well, you know, Tim, you can't spoil a spoiled political
system, and people inside and outside the Beltway know that special
interests or largely business money runs this government and that the
corporate government has taken over our government. So you can't really
spoil a two-party system that acts like a duopoly, with one corporate head
wearing different makeup and trying to exclude third-party candidates from
participating in the presidential debates. And by the way, when there is a
four-way match-up in that poll, if you analyze it, Bush and Gore come
closer together, because I'm taking votes from non-voters that are coming
back into the process, some from Republicans and more from the Democrats.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that there should be a special counsel
appointed to look into Al Gore's fund-raising behavior?

MR. NADER: I think enough is known about Al Gore's fund-raising behavior.
He's gone all over the country for years, instead of meeting with citizen
groups and trying to develop an agenda to strengthen our democracy and a
real law enforcement process against corporate crime, fraud and abuse,
which NBC and The Wall Street Journal and others have had good articles
on. He's been going to thousands of-or hundreds, let's say, of
fund-raisers and enough is known about the corruption of the system.

MR. RUSSERT: So you don't need a special counsel?

MR. NADER: No.

MR. RUSSERT: There was an article in The New York Times about you the
other day by Richard Burke, and let me put it on the screen, and this
caught my attention: "Gore advisers say they moved aggressively behind the
scenes to try to keep Mr. Hoffa" - James Hoffa - "from endorsing Mr.
Nader, to the point where they had directed projects through federal
agencies that would use Teamsters."

MR. NADER: Now, that does need an investigation, maybe a congressional
investigation. It's bad enough that the Democratic Party and Mr. Clinton
and Mr. Gore have turned their backs on labor, giving them rhetoric, while
stashing them with NAFTA and WTO, GATT and permanent trade relations with
China and now the appointment of William Daley. The point man for NAFTA
and GATT is the campaign manager for Al Gore. But it's even worse when you
see that there hasn't been a real serious push to deal with income
inequality in this country, which is getting worse in a period of a boom
economy. To really push that minimum wage up to a livable wage, to repeal
Taft-Hartley and other laws that are a chokehold on millions of workers
who could organize trade unions if they had laws just as facilitative as
in western Europe. The Democrats are taking labor, organized labor and
general labor, for granted. And when labor gets taken for granted, it gets
taken.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you comfortable that the Teamsters are free of
corruption?

MR. NADER: They're getting themselves better. As you know, they had a
terrible record. Our efforts over the years have tried to challenge
corruption in the Teamsters. There's been litigation, but I think that
under the pressure, both of the government, the trustee, the monitor, TDU
and others, I think the leadership of the Teamsters knows that their
future is an expansion and in a clean and democratic union. And if they
don't know that, they're underestimating their potential to lift the
standard of living of many workers in this country together with other
unions that we hope will expand.

MR. RUSSERT: As you know, gasoline prices are skyrocketing in the Midwest,
reaching $2.50. As early as 1977 on MEET THE PRESS, you advocated an
increase in the gasoline tax. The 2000 party platform of the Green Party
calls for a progressive tax on gasoline. How much would you raise the tax
on gasoline?

MR. NADER: Not as much as I'd reduce the price of gasoline, that's for
sure. I would never have approved or had a Justice Department run by
people who approved Exxon-Mobil mergers or BP-Amoco mergers. We knew when
these mergers were occurring that this laid the basis for these very
clever glitches in the pipeline of oil from the producers to the gas
stations that could jack up these prices. And, also, I would have
established much more thorough fuel efficiency standards. For eight years
the auto companies have been confronted with no fuel efficiency standard
proposals by the Clinton-Gore administration.

MR. RUSSERT: But the oil companies, Mr. Nader, are saying the reason
gasoline prices have gone up is because of mandates by EPA to clean up the
gas.

MR. NADER: Ridiculous. At the most it's 5 cents per gallon; at the most,
in places like the Midwest. And...

MR. RUSSERT: But why would you want to put a gasoline tax on top of an
already substantial federal gasoline tax?

MR. NADER: Any gasoline tax that is established, and, of course, Congress
has to approve it, would end up with gasoline prices lower than they are
now. Remember, the gasoline prices, because of the oil companies, have
gone up 50 percent, 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent, and any gasoline
tax would be applied back into public transit, into efforts to get people
to work without bumper-to-bumper traffic and wasting all the hours year
after year. You can't look at this out of context. We need a major surface
transportation policy in this country that doesn't depend on more and more
clogged highways.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you in favor of the death penalty?

MR. NADER: Since I was a law student at Harvard, I have been against the
death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against
minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel
defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot
execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for
those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to
pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life
imprisonment without parole.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you in favor of a missile defense system?

MR. NADER: It's not workable. The American Physics Society indicates that
it's very easily decoyed. It's not workable. Any nation that tries it is
going to commit suicide. There are far more devastating, insidious ways to
bring in nuclear weapons and other weapons into the country, the so-called
suitcase approach. We've spent $60 billion as a nation now dealing with
missile defense, and have come up with nothing. It's a program designed to
enrich the giant munitions corporations who are really behind it all, in
addition with some ideologues. Let's have a children defense program to
deal with the horrible poverty and the horrible deprivation of millions of
American children.

MR. RUSSERT: One of the obligations of a presidential candidate is filing
a financial disclosure form, which you have done. And much to the surprise
of many, it says that Ralph Nader is a millionaire worth nearly $4
million, with over a million dollars of Cisco stock. Salon magazine had an
article, which I want to put on the screen for you and our viewers,
entitled Ralph Nader: Millionaire Hypocrite: "By many definitions the
company in which Nader owns most of his stock, Cisco Systems, is a
monopoly. Cisco controls a bit more than half of the overall
data-networking market but has, for example, 89% of the market for
high-end routers. Cisco does pursue many policies aimed at locking in its
dominance of the router market and freezing out other competitors. Its
market power is so great that three of its strongest competitors have
simply dropped out of the running in the last year." The article goes on.
"Cisco's Washington lobbying has been concentrated on objectives like
making it harder for disgruntled shareholders to sue their companies -
something Nader and his various groups have vociferously opposed. It has
also focused on passing legislation to issue more H1-B visas to foreign
workers, while Nader has taken a strong stand against visas." With your
million dollars in Cisco stock, have you insisted with Cisco management
that they not pursue policies that you have publicly found objectionable?

MR. NADER: Well, it's good Cisco doesn't advertise on your program, Tim.
First of all, I have opposed those policies, vis a vis all companies, not
just Cisco. I don't think we should engage in a massive brain drain in
this country, taking talented people from other countries, for example,
when we've got talented people in this country, even though it would have
to be paid a little more by these companies. Second, my funds over the
years from writing and lecturing have been overwhelmingly devoted to civic
projects, starting citizen groups, and supporting foundations that pursue
social justice. Eighty percent of these earnings have gone into those
activities; something no other presidential candidate can even match. I do
have a reserve, however, for present and future projects, and one of them
involves an investment in Cisco. Most of the money is in money market
accounts; not the most exciting investment.

MR. RUSSERT: But a traditional...

MR. NADER: And I'll tell you...

MR. RUSSERT: But you would criticize a traditional politician...

MR. NADER: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: ...for not being more aggressive against corporate America.
Why don't you speak out against Cisco, even though you have these
holdings?

MR. NADER: Well, I have spoken out against Silicon Valley, which Cisco is
a part. And if - by the way, Salon answered that question, no, in their
headline. And if the public really wants me, instead of just opposing all
the bad things that Silicon Valley is doing, in terms of companies and
naming them occasionally, whether it's Intel, or Cisco, or Microsoft, or
whatever, I'll set up a special task force to monitor Cisco.

MR. RUSSERT: Bottom line, it wouldn't bother you if your presence in this
presidential race elected George W. Bush?

MR. NADER: Not at all. I mean, you're dealing with Democratic do-littles
and Republican do- nothings. And that's just not enough for the American
people. Both parties are ignoring major issues, like hundreds of billions
of dollars of corporate welfare, subsidies, giveaways, handouts. They
don't have a strong law and order enforcement program against what all the
major media keeps reporting, Tim: The corporate crime, fraud, and abuse
against taxpayers, against pollution enforcement agencies, against
communities, against consumers, especially, and low-income consumers with
these rackets in the inner city, funded by large investment firms in Wall
Street, like subprime lending or predatory lending. These two parties are
ignoring real campaign finance reform; getting money out of politics and
then letting the democratic process proceed towards solutions of America's
problems.

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. NADER: They're not also paying attention to how do they make voters,
consumers, taxpayers and workers more powerful to shape the future of
their country and address their grievances. You think anyone should lose
any sleep about these two corrupt parties being stripped from their power
over our government? We need a new third-party political force. The
Republican Party started in 1854-anti- slavery, pro-women's right to
vote-and they elected as a third party, they elected their president in
1860. We've to got have a new progressive political movement. And that's
why, I think, people are flooding our Web site, votenader.com, with all
kinds of volunteer ideas.

MR. RUSSERT: OK. All right. Well, Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate for
president, we thank you for joining us.

MR. NADER: Thank you very much, Tim.