March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Nader brings campaign to Bangor> Green candidate pans Establishment

BANGOR — Ralph Nader took on corporate America Saturday during a campaign stop at Norumbega Hall, where the Green Party presidential candidate demanded greater civic accountability from companies that place profits before principles.

The 90-minute speech delivered by the 66-year-old consumer activist was interrupted by applause several times from more than 450 people attending the first convention of Maine’s Green Independent Party.

In his second presidential bid, Nader said he hopes to get on the ballot in 45 states and attract more than a million votes to offer an alternative to what he described as the indistinguishable “Tweedle-Dum, Tweedle-Dee” differences between the two major political parties.

In fact, Nader said, he could sum up the policies of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, his Republican opponent, and Democratic challenger Vice President Al Gore in one word: “Gush.”

He dismissed both of his adversaries as tools of corporate special interests, a subject that served as a recurring theme of his presentation to the Greens.

Nader was particularly concerned with the unprecedented levels of influence large corporations have on the American political process and challenged his audience to encourage activism as a daily lifestyle.

Without broad-based citizen interest in core issues like housing, employment, education and health care, Nader said, large corporations can set the social agenda in the United States. Corporations, he said, can easily pit one government against another to get what they want and essentially relied on that strategy to create the World Trade Organization “in their image.”

“Corporations are really different from you and me,” Nader said. “They can be in 100 places at once around the world maneuvering and scheming; can you? They can bioengineer our seeds, our human genes and convert them into 20-year monopoly patents called `intellectual property.

“You know we fought a war to get rid of the ability of the business establishment to own human beings as slaves. But here they come again. They now want to own our genes and the genes of animals because there’s profit in it. We’re 30 years away from producing recyclable humanoids and other out-of-control genetic apparatus.”

Nader emphasized that for 50 years, the top chief executive officers in the country had based their salaries on the average entry-level wage. He said that in 1940, that figure was 12 times the entry level wage. It rose to 30 the times entry level in 1980 and 416 times that figure last year.

“The average CEO of the top 500 corporations in America is now making a million dollars a month, not counting benefits, perks and stock options,” he said. “While hundreds of thousands of people are working at Wal-Mart for $5, $6, $7 and $8 an hour, the majority of the workers are making less today than they were 25 years ago in inflation-adjusted dollars, and spending 160 hours longer working than 25 years ago, with 47 million workers making under $10 dollars an hour. They used to say a rising economic tide lifts all boats. It’s now a rising economic tide lifts all yachts.”

Decrying public policies that place greater priority on tax breaks for businesses than public education, Nader said there was “something wrong with our system” when schools and health clinics are crumbling while taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize public stadiums, arenas and ballparks.

“It almost reminds us of the Roman circus and the Roman Coliseum,” he said. “But with one major difference, at least in Roman times they let the fans in free.”

Nader, who gained prominence in the 1960s by drawing attention to the American auto industry’s lack of concern for vehicle safety, also sounded off on a number key issues of concern to Maine Greens, including:

Mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.

“Ninety percent of the people want labeling mandatory on genetically engineered food in their supermarkets, but the Clinton-Gore administration doesn’t seem to want to abide by that overwhelming pubic opinion. There’s going to be a referendum here in Maine requiring mandatory labeling for all genetically engineered food. It may be challenged by Washington, but you ought to pass it anyway because that’s how the ball gets rolling, at the initiative level, at the state level with the people voting.”

This week’s congressional vote on permanent trade relations with China.

“China brutalizes its labor. That means that there’s no such thing as free trade with a country like China, because the costs of labor are repressed by dictators — not by the market. Workers in China who try to form trade unions are jailed.”

Military spending.

“There’s something wrong with the system when after the disappearance of our major adversary, the Soviet Union, next year the military budget — with the support of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore and the Republicans in Congress — will be at the same level in inflation-adjusted dollars as it was at the peak of the Cold War when the Soviet Union was still the Soviet Union. There’s something wrong when we don’t demobilize and spend hundreds of millions of military dollars on the real needs of the American people.”

Gov. Angus King’s “independent” politics.

“I understand your governor’s an `independent.’ Are you kidding? You think he’s independent of big business, big corporations? No, but he sure is independent when he cracks down on those poor workers who want a few cents more an hour, isn’t he?” It was a reference to King’s veto of a bill increasing the state minimum wage.

Warning against simply behaving as a “private citizen,” Nader said Americans must become “public citizens” if they want to protect and nurture the rights of future generations. The lesson of history, he said, is that people who don’t get involved civically allow power to be assumed by the few who decide for the many.

“When the few decide for the many, and when the few are organized to the teeth and the many are not organized, it’s not surprising that they will make decisions that benefit the few,” he said.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like