Let the Democrats SAY LOUDLY: "Instant Runoff Voting"
and then maybe Ralph might withdraw near election time if
Democrats LOUDLY agree to push for it. Otherwise,
the Democrats can go to hell. They are losing my vote.
We are living in a modern form of corporate fascism.
Ralph is the only candidate left for drug reform and
cannabis decriminalization-legalization. See end links.

Corporatism quotes. Go, Ralph, Go!
http://corporatism.tripod.com/corporatism.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/corporatism.htm


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------New York Times article begins-------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/23/politics/campaign/23NADER-
TEXT.html?ex=1078203600&en=08fe136754f4ce85&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

TEXT Nader at the National Press Club [February 22, 2004]

Published: February 23, 2004

The following is the text of a news conference with Ralph
Nader at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., as
transcribed by Federal News Service Inc.

MR. NADER: (Applause.) Thank you very much. Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen.

Today I enter the 2004 elections as an independent candidate
for the presidency of the United States, to join with all
Americans who wish to declare their independence from
corporate rule and its domination. The exercised sovereignty
of the people in our history has brought forth solutions to
the people, the justice they created and the futures they
desired for their children.

In times past, the naysayers were organized commercial
powers, whose unbridled greed and authoritarian structures
were denounced by Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy
Roosevelt, Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in quite
memorable statements.

It took a strengthened populace against the malefactors of
great wealth to overcome these corporate naysayers and
abolish slavery, open the vote to women, the unions to
workers, the cooperatives to farmers,

to temper the large mine owners, industrialists, railroads
and bankers. In this manner, American history surged forward
and upward.

Today there is a compelling necessity for a new
strengthening of the people to reform and recover their
public elections from the grip of private financing, to
rescue our public authorities from the corporate government
of big business that prevails today in Washington, D.C.

These mass concentrations of power, privilege, wealth,
technology and corporate immunity have placed their
rampaging global quest for maximum profits in the way of
progress, justice and opportunity for the very millions of
American workers who made possible these corporate profits
but who are falling behind, both excluded and expendable.
Their labors have gone unrequited as these unpatriotic
corporations abandon our country and shift industries abroad
-- along with what is left of their allegiance to our
country and our community.

The dreaded supremacy of corporatism over civil
institutions, stomping both conservative and liberal values
alike, has broken through any remaining barriers by the two
major political parties, the two-party duopolies.

Corporatism has turned federal and state departments and
agencies into indentured servants for taxpayer funded
subsidies, budget-busting contracts of great lucrative
scope, and dwindling law and order against the widely
publicized corporate crime wave. This resistant corporate
crime wave has looted and drained trillions of dollars from
millions of workers, their pensions, and from small
investors. There has been ample media publicity and
documentation of such crimes, abuses and frauds of these
unprecedented self-enrichments of top executives at the
expense of their fiduciary duties to both their own
companies and their shareholder owners. Has the president
supplied the required law enforcement resources for action?
Scarcely. He has, as in so many other domestic matters,
otherwise preoccupied -- very few of these corporate bosses
have been brought to justice and jailed.

Lincoln's new birth of freedom and government of the people
by the people for the people, in his memorable Gettysburg
Address, must indeed not perish from this land. Only an
organized, self-confident people lifting their expectation
levels and applying their time, energy and talent can
achieve Lincoln's foreshadowed horizons, where freedom from
fear, shift of power and just solutions can become realities
in everyday life for Americans. Comparing the Republican
Lincoln's assurance in a period of great peril and daily
destruction in those years in the 1860s -- contrast with the
costly politics of fear peddled daily by the obsessive
Republican incumbent of today, George W. Bush, playing
politics with national security.

Elections should place aspirations in motion.

Only in this way will they have meaning for people's lives.
Movements for change come from more voices and choices, more
debates and proposals, more organizing and more respect for
the voters in the electoral arena, so they have a broader
opportunity to vote for whom they choose to vote for.

At the same time, there ought to be higher levels of
responsibility by voters themselves for their own
governments. The civil liberties and their exercise by a
pluralistic, not a duopolistic, system of political parties
and candidates, regenerate, reanimate a passive electorate
accustomed to betrayal and in large numbers not even voting.

Movements for change also come from the perceived neglected
necessities of the American people in a land of skewed
plenty, where the rich have so much and the rest of America
is denied the just rewards for their labors.

These movements embrace the long overdue abolition of cruel
poverty in America; the provision of genuine, efficient,
honest health care; the illumination of civically inspired
education; and the shift in the burden and uses of taxes
away from corporate plunder, corporate tax havens and cost
transfers to individual taxpayers. Taxpayers always end up
with the bill for this corporate plunder and corporate tax
escapes.

These initiatives for change embrace the conversion as well
to breathable air and clean water; renewable energy;
detoxified agriculture; decongesting transportation
technologies on the highway and in plans -- and in public
transit; the affordability of decent shelter; and the
enabling of workers, consumers and communities to organize
and shape their own political economy. We need more
organization among these constituencies.

Presently, global corporations are bent on strategically
planning our future, our politics, our economy, our military
expenditures, our education, our environment, our culture,
even our genetic inheritance. They're all subject to
corporate strategic planning. Is it not our responsibility
together, as individuals, as real people, to shape our
futures within our own deliberative democratic process?

The unceasing enlightenment of humankind requires sensitive
humans to enlist in a marathon, not a sprint. May there be a
decent tolerance for the release of these creative
individual and community entities inside an electoral system
sadly known more for its straitjackets than for its wings,
more for its routines than its aspirations.

The focus on the fundamental requirement for broader
distribution of power, initiative and opportunity to forge a
resourceful society should be the touchstone of this
election year and its campaigns. We owe at least the
prospect of possibilities to the generations that follow us.
We owe the same to the young people of America as they
ponder and prepare for their leadership obligations. This
campaign will reach out to the young people and to all
people who wish to volunteer for our efforts in 50 states,
who wish to contribute to our efforts in 50 states, who wish
to highlight their own creative solutions in community after
community, that are almost never highlighted by political
campaigns; who wish to communicate to us at our website,
votenader.org.

I urge the liberal establishment to relax and rejoice. This
is a campaign that strives to displace the present corporate
regime of the Bush administration. This is a campaign that
will have many purposes and many functions in a political
system that's rigged from beginning to end, from state-
access barriers to exclusionary debates against third
parties and independent candidates whose hopes and rights we
hope to carry throughout these campaigns at the national
state and local level. This campaign can also be a trim tab
factor turning the rudder of these giant political parties
toward a more dedicated concern for government of, by and
for the people.

We hope to show that increasingly corporations are trampling
conservative values, as we notice increasing conservative
fury with the Bush administration on matters such as
massive, useless deficits due to wealthy tax cuts; on
matters due to the big brother Patriot Act; corporate
subsidies to major corporations paid for by taxpayers; on
matters involving NAFTA and the WTO, undermining our
nation's sovereignty at all three levels of government; on
matters of promise by the Bush administration to do
something regarding corporate pornography and violence
beamed to children at a very impressionable age, undermining
parental authority.

We mean to focus on many local issues as well, which most
presidential candidates dutifully ignore. Local issues like
what's going on in South Central Los Angeles; what's going
on Weirton, West Virginia; what's going on in Anniston,
Alabama; what's going on among our forests and among our
littoral shores; what's going on in terms of the
stratosphere and global warming; what's going on in terms of
what's going on in our great oceans and streams and rivers
and lakes.

We mean to initiate a liberation movement for the Democratic
Party, whose liberals have allowed it to slip away, year
after year, since about 1980, into the hands of corporate
interests too often bought and sold dialing for dollars.

We hope to break the grip of the Commission on Presidential
Debates, a cynical canard against the right of the American
people to hear more voices and choices, and elevate
publicity for the Citizen's Debate Commission that has now
been formed, a truly nonprofit institution controlled by no
candidates and no parties.

We hope to highlight Bush's war on the Bill of Rights and on
civil liberties and on the egregious stereotyping and
violations of due process to people of minority status,
recent immigrants or long- time immigrants, bearing the
brunt of the violations of our civil liberties, especially
Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans.

We hope also to focus on the assets of America, where there
are solutions for almost all our major widespread problems,
working in one town and community after another, by not
having an engine of diffusion behind them. That's what
politics and elections should be about. Our country has so
many problems it doesn't deserve and so many solutions it
doesn't apply.

We hope to show that jobs can be kept here in the United
States, good-paying local jobs, by a massive "repair
America" campaign, a public works or infrastructure mission
by the federal government paid for by a repeal of those
taxes for the wealthy which the Democrats opposed but didn't
bother to stop when they could have in the U.S. Senate.

And finally, we hope to sensitize the media to the growing
desertion of corporations from the country where they were
born, the country where they were raised to the heights of
their profit and power on the backs of workers, on the backs
of taxpayers who were asked to subsidize them, on the backs
of American military forces who were asked to rescue them
when they got our country and themselves in trouble cutting
deals with dictators around the world.

Finally, I'd like to make a personal statement to Terry
McAuliffe, John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Sharpton and ex-
governor Dean: Relax. (Laughter.) Rejoice that you have
another front carrying the ancient but unfulfilled
pretensions and aspirations of the Democratic Party. Do not
deny millions of voters the opportunity to vote for this
candidacy. Everyone should have a chance. Everyone should
argue on the merits, not on the money.

I also urge you, when you analyze this political campaign of
2004, to at least have the sophistication that is revealed
by sports fans when they analyze their sports teams. Look at
the dynamics before Election Day. Focus on what is being
done. Analyze carefully the polls in 2000 before you start
scapegoating the Greens for an election that Al Gore won but
had stolen from him and had Democratic Party blunders fail
to rescue it in Florida.

And lastly, please try to extend some of the finest rhetoric
of John Kerry and John Edwards on the overwhelming dominance
of corporate party -- corporate power in our country and on
the need to reassert popular sovereignty, the sovereignty of
the people, over the sovereignty of giant business; the
sovereignty of real people over the sovereignty of
artificial entities called corporations.

For those of you who want more evidence about the statements
made in this few moments, I not only urge you to contact our
website, votenader.org; I urge you to read back issues of
Barron's Financial Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The New
York Times, The Washington Post, The St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe, The
Cleveland Plain Dealer, The San Francisco Examiner, The Los
Angeles Times, Reuters, AP and many other wire services for
constant documentation of these corporate crimes, abuses of
power, across the entire continuum of our political economy.

I have read these news reports. I have watched "Dateline." I
have watched "60 Minutes." And I take them all seriously.
They all add up to something, don't they -- something larger
than their parts. They add up to a massive challenge to our
democracy, to our systems of justice, to our civil liberties
and our civil rights, and to the ability of people to pursue
liberty, justice and happiness.

Thank you. (Scattered applause.)

Can have questions now. Can you identify yourselves, first?
Yes, sir?

Q Hi. I'm Darrin Garner (sp) for the PBS Democracy Project.
Despite your plans to run as an independent, there's a
strong faction within the Green Party to still nominate you
at their convention. Would you accept the Green nomination?
And if not, can you get on the ballot in Texas and
California without their help?

MR. NADER: Well, they are not on the ballot in Texas. They
are on the ballot in California.

The problem is one of timing. The Green Party convention is
in June, and the decision as to whether they will have a
presidential candidate and under what conditions will be
made then. And that is too late for meeting the ballot
access deadlines of many states.

So we have to pursue our independent course of action,
elicit many volunteers -- young, middle-aged, older people -
- who will learn if they don't know now how to get
signatures that are verifiable on their clipboards in
shopping centers and street corners in order to meet the
deadlines that you mentioned.

And the first deadline and most insistent one is Texas,
which requires over 66,000 signatures verified, which means
you got to get more, in a 60-day period, and no Texan who
votes in a primary is allowed by Texas law to sign a
petition to put our candidacy on the ballot. That's just one
of many types of obstacles that we may have to litigate
against and we certainly have to surmount. So we do expect
to get on the 50 states, and it won't be easy.

Yes?

Q Torrado (sp) -- (name inaudible) -- Azteca Television.
What would you propose as a migratory policy if you became
president? And also, what are your proposals for the
fastest-growing minority, which is the Latino community?

MR. NADER: I didn't hear. Migratory policy?

Q Mm-hmm. Yeah, and what do you propose for the Latino
community as the fastest-growing minority in the country?

MR. NADER: Yes, I think -- did you mean migrant labor, or
did you say --

Q In general.

MR. NADER: In general. One of my first articles in the 1950s
was on the atrocious treatment of migratory labor, many of
them from Mexico. This treatment continues because we
basically have an anarchy within which corporate employers
are seriously mistreating the rights of these workers. I've
always believed that if workers in this country -- whether
they enter legally or not -- are employed by employers, they
should be given the same, fair standards, the same minimum
wage, the same treatment as other workers. Having said that,
I support the following policies.

I don't think this country should be engaged in a brain
drain, luring scientists, engineers, doctors and many other
talented people to this country when they should be building
their own countries. And if they have trouble building their
own countries because of oppression, it would be a good idea
for the United States to change its foreign policy and not
continue to support the oligarchs and the dictatorships and
the authoritarian regimes, from Mexico to Central America to
South America and to other countries in other continents,
which drive people to our shores. Most people don't like to
leave their native lands.

Moreover, there needs to be a legal permiting system so --
for work that has to be done in this country which can't be
done by American workers can be done by temporary entries by
workers who will be well treated.

But if we raised our minimum wage, if we had a minimum wage
of $10 an hour, I think a lot of the work that people say
will not be done by American workers will be done by
American workers.

Yes?

Q Yes, sir. I'm sure you were asked this question before. If
you are so critical of President Bush, why are you helping
him again win another term?

MR. NADER: I don't think this is going to be viewed as an
assistance to President Bush. You see, there's a whole myth
that has to be overturned here. Some of you saw on NBC
yesterday the description of how the Nader-LaDuke Green
Party ticket allegedly cost Bush New Hampshire. What they
didn't say was the exit polls showed that I got more
Republican votes in New Hampshire than Democrat votes. You
see, so they've got to be much more careful in their
reporting.

Now, having said that, John Kerry said the other day -- and
he's quite correct -- that the Democratic members will come
back into the fold. Why? Because the party that's out of
power finds that its members come back into the fold. So
this candidacy is not going to get many Democratic Party
votes. On the other hand, the party that's in power is the
party that we are going to focus on retiring. And
conservatives and independents who are very upset with Bush
administration policies are left with two options: vote for
the Democrats, which is unlikely, or vote for an independent
ticket.

Contrary to popular impression, even in the year 2000 -- and
it will be more pronounced -- 25 percent of my votes came
from Bush voters, 38 percent came from Gore voters, and the
rest came from people who would never have voted. I think
there's going to be lower Democratic votes this year and
more from the other sources. I might add, that was an exit
poll. There was another exit poll that had it about 21
percent Bush, 41 percent Gore, and the rest would not have
voted.

Yes?

Q Mr. Nader, you spoke of Terry McAuliffe. And yesterday,
after he appeared on "Face the Nation," he did come out and
talk at length with the reporters who were staked out there.
If I could read a couple of the things he said about you and
the meetings that he held with you.

MR. NADER: Yes.

Q And I'll pause in between one of them. He did say, "I
spoke to Ralph Nader several times myself because I didn't
want Ralph Nader to use the argument used in 2000, which was
that no one in the party would talk with him. I spent time
with him. He did say to me, in a long lunch that we had, he
said, `Terry, I want to beat George Bush more than you do,'
which I don't find plausible." And that's the first quote.

MR. NADER: Yes. First of all, I'm the one who called Terry
McAuliffe, he didn't call me. I'm the one who called Nancy
Pelosi and Tom Daschle and other leaders of the Democratic
Party to have extended meetings with them. The Democratic
Party scapegoating the Greens in 2000, has never reached out
to the Greens. For heaven's sake, you would think that, as
in Western Europe, if they think the Greens are a challenge
to them, they'd sit down and say: Well, where can we come
together on certain issues which you, the Greens, think we
have ignored, and how can we collaborate against the Bush
regime? So let's clarify that.

The second is that I do hope that Terry McAuliffe will be as
astute a political analyst as he is as a sports fan. Again,
I repeat that point.

You want to add?

Q Let me just ask you then, he went on to say about your
being an independent, "In many states he will not be on the
ballot, and he actually said to me, quote, 'Terry, if you
have some key target states, maybe I won't campaign in those
states.' So he wants to beat George Bush but he wanted to
get out there, get his voice known. So I am hoping that when
he gets out there and campaigns that he's not going to be in
certain states."

MR. NADER: I think on that score he's a bit imaginative and
a bit clairvoyant. I admire him for his latter attribute,
but I never said what he said I said. What I said was that
this is going to be, if I run, and it was all exploratory at
that time, a 50-state campaign that I would help deserving
congressional candidates in key swing districts, because I
wanted the Democrats to recover the House or the Senate or
both; in part because the senior Democrats in the House
represent the finest Democratic traditions and will be the
heads of the committees, like George Miller, Henry Waxman,
independent Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and John Conyers.
That's what I said. Now, I'm going to call Terry McAuliffe
and talk to him so we can clarify the situation.

Yes?

Q Al Milliken affiliated with Washington Independent
Writers. Are you as confused or as indecisive as George W.
Bush and John Kerry appear to be regarding marriage? Do you
see any inconsistency with the vote and stand John Kerry
took in 1996 opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and the
clarity with which George W. Bush defined marriage in the
2000 presidential debates, and the retreats they both seem
to have resorted to recently? Are you willing to take
leadership on this important issue?

MR. NADER: Well, I think the leadership's going to come from
gay-lesbians and their leaders. I think this is a social
movement that can't be stopped. I think you can see over the
years increasing number of people in the polls who support
equal rights for same-sex unions, or they want to call it
marriage. I think that this should not become a major issue
in the campaign because none of the candidates should be
boorish enough to oppose love and commitment under stable
relationships. What undermines marriage is divorce, as Mayor
Daley put it very well a few days ago.

Yes? Right in back there.

Q Les Krepman (ph) with NBC News. You've characterized many
of those who labeled you as possibly being a spoiler as
being contemptuous. Why are they contemptuous and why do you
regard yourself as being anything more than having the
potential for being a spoiler in this election?

MR. NADER: Because they restrict that word to my candidacy.
If they called everyone spoilers, because every candidate
for political office tries to spoil the prospect of his or
her opponents winning, tries to take votes from them, I
wouldn't have any problem with it.

But the fact that they single out third parties and
independent candidates for that term, "spoiler," means that
what they're really saying, what their real agenda is that
you shouldn't run, you should just sit on the sidelines and
watch our country being taken down and taken apart by
corporate politics and two parties who are dialing for the
same dollars and are converging with more and more
similarities towering over the dwindling real differences
that they're willing to struggle over.

I think those who use the word "spoiler" need to reexamine
their otherwise steadfast commitment to civil liberties, to
choice, to freedom. I'm really amused by -- some of the
groups who are pro- choice on the abortion issue are against
candidate choice on the ballot. And there will be similar
ironies transmitted to their tender conscience in the coming
months.

Yes?

Q Sarah Powell, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
You mentioned the targeting of immigrants, especially
Muslims and Arabs. How would your foreign policy and your
policy toward immigrants, especially regarding the Middle
East, differ from the other candidates?

MR. NADER: Well, there's no particular policy toward
immigrants from the Middle East compared to other Third
World countries that are in deep turmoil. So you may be
asking me about the conflicts there. Is that what you want
to ask me?

Q Well, okay. If you would rather answer the question on the
conflict in the Middle East, that's fine.

MR. NADER: Yeah. Well, I'm not aware that there's a unique
immigration policy. Do you want to illustrate it for me?

Q Not that there's an immigration policy, other than the
finger pointing and the US-VISIT, all that sort of thing.

MR. NADER: Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. I understand what you mean
now. Yes. The singling out of visitors and immigrants from
the Middle East raises interesting law enforcement
questions. I think that dragnet law enforcement where you
stereotype ethnic groups is, A, inefficient, B, wasteful of
taxpayer dollars, and C, not just smart ways to apprehend
violent offenders. It's too much of a giant embrace.

If you want legitimate people to inform on violent
offenders, you don't stereotype them, you don't harass them,
you don't rummage through their belongings in an impolite
manner as if they are criminals when they have not been
suspected of anything like that, singling them out compared
to other passenger or other entries into our company -- our
country.

I think that more and more of these cases ending up in the
courts, ending up in the Supreme Court, will either
demonstrate whether our Constitution's going to hold firm
here in terms of our Bill of Rights or whether our
Constitution's going to be perforated by the "Patriot-less
Act" and its presumed renewal and further enlargement next
year from the White House to the Congress.

Q Tom Curry, MSNBC. Both Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards
voted for the Iraq war resolution. Both of them voted for
the Patriot Act. You just said a few minutes ago you don't
expect that your candidacy will get many Democratic votes,
but will you criticize the Democratic nominee for votes for
those two acts, or will you focus more of your -- most of
your criticism on President Bush?

MR. NADER: Well, there's limited media time, isn't there,
for an independent candidate. That media time will be
focused on the giant corporation in the White House
masquerading as a human being, George W. Bush. If the
Democrats want to assail our positions or the exercise of
our entry into this campaign, our candidacy will reply. If
the Democratic candidates persist in supporting the Patriot
Act, which they're showing serious signs of not supporting
the act that they voted for in the renewal battle next year,
they will be -- they will be criticized.

If they persist in supporting a further quagmire war in Iraq
without end, an unconstitutional war that President Bush got
us into based on a platoon of fabrications and misleading
information, well documented now -- if they side with
President Bush, they will be criticized, but I don't think
they're going to. I think they're going to realize that a
major, well-funded U.N. peacekeeping troop replacement,
properly-supervised elections with a decent respect for the
autonomy of Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunnis while they work
toward a unified Iraq, and extended humanitarian assistance
because we owe Iraqis a responsibility for all our years of
supporting their brutal dictator from 1979 to 1991, all of
these are a proper pathway for the Democrats in this coming
campaign.

Yes?

Q Tom Gallagher with Traffic World magazine. You mentioned
that your candidacy is primarily focused on taking votes
from President Bush and removing the Bush regime. The
Democrats seem to be motivated by the same thing, not so
much in terms of "we want to be in and we want the other
guys out," but by a tremendous anger that seems to be abroad
in the nation about some of their policies; that this is
more important than partisan politics.

Some organizations, like MoveOn.org and so forth, have been
organized primarily to remove the Bush regime.

What's the difference between your organization and an
organization like that, that intends to remove Bush? But how
would you do it in a different way?

MR. NADER: Well, the difference is this: that I recognize,
as -- 10 years of amazing losses at the local, state and
national election levels by the Democratic Party, against an
extreme Republican Party. This is extraordinary. The
Democrats, because of their internal decay, repeatedly
described by former Department of Labor Secretary Robert
Reich, even James Carville, Paul Begala, in articles that
they've written, not to mention to Gene -- Eugene McCarthy -
- the Democrats are so decayed -- and we hope they're rising
again -- that they have been very good at electing very bad
Republicans. And that is a sobering thought, that the
extreme wing that now has taken over, the corporatist wing
that's against conservative values, has taken over the
Republican Party, keeps winning elections against the
Democrats.

One might assume modestly that the Democratic Party needs
some help. They need additional strategies, additional
issues, additional reports against the Bush regime that
they're too cautious, they're too indentured to think of
themselves. And if they want to appropriate what we do,
fine. There's no intellectual property on the ways to take
apart the Bush administration that comes from this
candidacy.

I think the mistake the Democrats are making when they use
the mantra "anybody but Bush" is, first of all, it closes
their mind to any alternative strategies or any creative
thinking, which is not good for a political party. And
second, it gives their ultimate nominee no mandate, no
constituency, no policies, if the ultimate nominee goes into
the White House.

And then they'll be back to us. I guarantee you the
Democrats, the liberal groups, the liberal intelligentsia,
the civic groups that are now whining and complaining, even
though they know they're being shut out increasingly, year
after year, from trying to improve their country when they
go to work every day. And they'll be saying, "Oh, you can't
believe -- we were betrayed. The Democrats are succumbing to
the corporate interests in the environment, consumer
protection." How many cycles do we have to go through here?
How long is the learning curve before we recognize that
political parties are the problem? They're the problem!
They're the ones who have turned our government over to the
corporations, so they can say no to universal health
insurance and no to a living wage and no to environmental
sanity and no to renewable energy and no to a whole range of
issues that corporations were never allowed to say no to 30,
40, 50 years ago. Things really have changed.

Yes?

Q You say you will be reluctant to criticize the Democrats.
How, then, are you different from Senator Edwards and
Senator Kerry? What do you offer that they don't offer? Why
should a Democrat or an independent vote for you instead of
one of them?

MR. NADER: Oh, first of all, I'm not going to be reluctant,
I said I'm going to focus on the Bush administration.
They're the incumbents, they're the ones that have the
record. In 2000, it was Clinton-Gore that had the record,
and we focused attention on them.

Why anybody should vote for us? One, because our record for
40 years represents dedicated, steadfast defense of American
liberties, justice, health and safety, access to government,
access to the legislature, to the courts, freedom of
information, and a whole variety of reforms that we have
been proud to initiate and be part of.

Second, we believe, unlike the Democrats, that public
financing of campaigns should be expeditiously pursued. The
first meeting that Speaker Tom Foley and Majority Leader
Senator Mitchell had with the Clinton administration was to
urge Mr. Clinton not to propose campaign finance reform in
early 1993 to the U.S. Congress.

Second (sic), we really believe in labor law reforms and the
repeal of Taft-Hartley. I only hear Dennis Kucinich talking
about that. We believe that there should be many more unions
in places like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, and among the 45
million Americans who are not earning a living wage at
$5.50, $6, $7, $8, $9, $10 gross an hour. We believe that
NAFTA and GATT should be withdrawn from. I haven't heard
Kerry and Edwards say that. There's a six-month withdrawal
option by all signatory nations, so that we renegotiate
these trade agreements, A, to stick to trade; B, to be open
and democratic; and C, not to pull down standards in this
country, for labor, environmental and consumer standards
have no business being subordinated to the supremacy of
international trade. They should be subject to independent
agreements between nations -- environmental, labor, consumer
agreements.

We also are going to engage in modes of campaigning that the
Democrats will not engage in. They avoid local issues like
the plague at the presidential level. We're going to work
with the people, with the neighborhood groups, with the
citizen groups to do that.

And of course, most prominently, they don't come close to
our position on corporate power. I believe in federal
chartering of corporations above a certain size, taking it
away from Delaware and Nevada and their race to the bottom.

I believe in strengthening aggressively the rights of
shareholder owners to control the company that they control.
And I believe that corporations should not be viewed as
persons under our Constitution; that they are artificial
entities, they should never have the rights that real human
beings have.

And I fully agree with this wonderful editorial in Business
Week in September 2000 which, after documenting that there's
too much corporate power; after reporting on an extensive
poll of the American people, 72 percent of whom said
corporations had too much control over their lives; had an
editorial with the singular phrase, quote, "Corporations
should get out of politics." End quote. And I might add that
not long after, British Petroleum, the third-largest oil
company in the world, announced that it would no longer, as
a corporation, give any campaign contributions to any
political campaigns anywhere in the world. A modest step,
but an important one nonetheless.

Yes?

Q I'd like you just to clarify some of the statements that
you have made. Sam Husseini from VotePact.com. You've said
simultaneously that you expect to help the Democrats in a
certain respect, and you have also said that you got
substantial Republican support in the 2000 election. Can
you, A, clarify that and comment on efforts such as
VotePact.com, which seeks to pair up disenchanted
Republicans with disenchanted Democrats and together, by
trusting each other, both vote for a third party that they
truly believe in?

One further point, if I might. You've said that George Bush
is a human being disguised -- is a corporation disguised as
a human being, and you've also talked about the spiritual
impoverishment in this country. Don't you think that
statements like that, which in effect dehumanize someone who
you may disagree with tremendously, impoverish our world
spiritually?

MR. NADER: Well, first of all, a corporation is still a
person under our constitutional regime. (Scattered
laughter.) So if they want it to be a person, let's give it
personal characterization, plus or minus.

There will be extensive use of the Internet. For example,
one proposal is that, in a close state, someone who might
want to vote for our candidacy would pair off with someone
in Texas who might want to Now, when you hear me talk about
Democrats, votes, Republicans, it's because the fourth
estate and reporters, such as yourselves, are so insistent
in describing collateral benefits or collateral deficits of
this candidacy. So sometimes I have to put myself arguendo
in responding to you in the shoes of the Democratic Party or
in the shoes of conservatives.

But I want to point out that we have reached out to both
parties with a 35-page agenda inquiry, which is in your
press kit, that in a very relaxed way, rather than a kind of
accusatory way, puts forth a number of major, thoughtful
policy changes in tax, in environment, in consumer
protection and election reform and international trade, and
so on, and asked them, in late November, to give us their
views. And both of them said that they would respond -- the
Republican National Committee and the Democratic National
Committee. Well, later on, the RNC, through Mr. Gillespie,
stated that -- his response was a simple sentence, that the
response to our agenda inquiry was the Bush administration's
policies. So that finished that. The Democratic response was
a little more fertile. Mr. McAuliffe said that he had read
it on the train to Philadelphia, these 35 pages. But then
came a response, not too long ago, a two-page response
criticizing the Republicans for a number of policies that
were mentioned and raised in this agenda inquiry.

But here you go; you see, they were given all kinds of time.
They had their own complaints against third-party
challenges. Someone reaches out to them, they have a
research capability, it would probably make their day less
daily to ponder these issues, like shifting the incidence of
our tax burden away from work as much as possible, earnings
from work, to wealth; and then shifting it away from things
we like -- like books, furniture, clothing and food --
shifting the tax burden to things we least like, like
pollution, stock speculation, gambling or the addictive
industries. One would think they'd have some play with that,
but they weren't interested. Another documentation as to why
we need broader public debate, broader public dialogue, and
more voices and choices for the American people.

Q Mr. Nader?

MR. NADER: Yes?

Q Two issues. (Name and affiliation inaudible.) Two issues.
One, you're a resident of the District of Columbia. Do you
support statehood or voting enfranchisement for the District
of Columbia? And a second, perhaps more challenging issue,
you mentioned John Conyers for singular praise. Since 1989,
he's sponsored H.R. 40, which is a bill to set up a
commission to study reparations, payments for -- reparations
as a solution to the dilemma of slavery. Would you, as
president, encourage Congress to adopt H.R. 40? And do you
support remedying the voteless status of the District of
Columbia?

MR. NADER: Well, of course, in the year 2000 we took a very
strong stand for statehood for the District of Columbia.
We're going to do it again. And we'll see how supportive the
other two parties are against the colony called the District
of Columbia, where people who are drafted or taken off to
war and people who pay taxes do not have the right to be
represented by a voting representative and two senators in
the U.S. Senate. So that's going to be very clearly
delineated. And I hope that there will even be strategies to
implement that delineation, one of which you will be very
intrigued by when it is announced, as a number of other
innovative proposals we're going to have that's going to
make what could become, by August, a rather dim and dreary
two-party campaign, as they dwindle the number of issues
that they disagree on and repeat ad infinitum.

As far as John Conyers, I think there should be a commission
to study it.

I think a lot of Americans aren't aware that there are
corporations today, pursuant to mergers or even actual
corporations, that were profiting from slavery, such as the
Aetna Corporation, before the Civil War, and there's a
payback there. I think if white people had great
grandparents who were slaves, they would be very concerned
about that. There's got to be justice here. And all John
Conyers is asking is a national commission to inquire into
it to see what the responsibilities of governments are.

After all, slaves built a good part of the U.S. Capitol.
They built a lot of public buildings. And I think the money
is not designed to go to individuals; it's designed to
amplify the budgets that are now being squeezed to rebuild
the lower-income areas in our cities, for example; to expand
health care to African American children, to reduce their
exposure to sources of deadly asthma and lead poisoning.
That is something that we should all discuss.

After all, you know, there were other genocidal or vicious
treatments of ethnic minorities that have gotten some
justice in recent years. And of course the tragedy of
slavery in this country is one of the two worst tragedies in
North American history, the other being the genocidal
annihilation of the first Native Americans. And we should
always remember.

Q Mr. Nader?

Q Mr. Nader?

MR. NADER: Yes?

Q (Name off mike) -- from NBC Newschannel. In 2000, the
state that you did best in was Alaska. You got more than 10
percent of the vote there. How do you think you'll do in
that state again? Can you reiterate your position on
drilling in ANWR? And thirdly, how do you think that you
will affect the Senate race there, because the idea is that
because you'll bring in Green Party members, independents,
that will ultimately help the Democrats in Alaska. Could you
respond to all those?

MR. NADER: I think there will be a spillover vote helping
the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Alaska. I
doubt whether there's going to be a challenge from any other
party.

I did very well in Alaska. It was actually 20 percent at one
time, but we lost a good portion of our votes near the end,
as a lot of third parties do. When people go into the voting
booth, they want to be with what they call as a winner.

No drilling in ANWR, the Arctic refuge. What we should do is
nail the corporate executives in Detroit to liberate their
engineers so they can improve fuel efficiency. One mile per
gallon over the entire range of motor vehicle production
will save more fuel than anything that can be gotten five,
10 years from now from the Arctic refuge.

Unfortunately, under Clinton, among others, a lot of the
northern slope was opened up for exploration, and the oil
companies haven't really done as much as they're permitted
to do outside of ANWR. That's important to do. And I think
the oil companies owe the Alaskan people more taxes. I think
they owe them more revenues for cleaning up their
environmental messes. And also, native Alaskan tribes now
organized in a corporate fashion need to be compensated for
the damage that's been done to their habitat.

Yes?

Q I just wondered, did you ever consider running in the
Democratic primary? I mean, we live in an electoral system
that is not a European parliamentary system. We have a
winner-take-all, as you know, and that's a system that has
produced two parties except, I think, for 1860. There's no
realistic chance of a third party actually getting majority
power, except the 1860 example where slavery completely blew
apart the Whigs.

What's wrong with -- where would you be right now if you had
run in the primary in 2000? Arguably -- a lot of your
friends say you'd be in a lot better position, and then
there's something inherently wrong where you have the Left
divided against itself by your candidacy.

MR. NADER: The simple answer to your question is I don't
choose to run in wealth primaries. I don't choose to run in
a party that plays the for-sale game with their Republicans,
dialing for commercial dollars in order to gain a
nomination. You can't abide by the clean politics rules that
we are abiding by -- refusing to take corporate money and
PAC money and other forms of special interest money --
playing inside the Democratic Party, I'm sorry to say.

Quite apart from that, I don't think they'd have me. You
know that under the rules of both parties they can take away
your registration as a party member, if you think that you
are -- if they think that you are there as a Trojan horse,
for example. So apart from those curlicues, they don't
practice election politics the way I want to practice
election politics.

Did you have another? What was the other point?

Q If there's a problem with the Democratic Party, which, you
know, a lot of people certainly think there are, what's
wrong with going in there to the belly of the beast and
changing it? Because the alternative is what we see
happening, is progressives fighting amongst themselves and
any analogy to a European parliamentary system just don't
apply, because we don't live in that system.


MR. NADER: First of all, you can't compete, following our
rules, in wealth primary that starts in Iowa. I mean, Dean
spent $10 million in Iowa, for example.

Q And he brought a lot of Democrats -- (off mike).

MR. NADER: Yes. Well, fine. But you simply can't compete on
a clean slate. I mean, let me put it more boldly. You cannot
compete on a clean slate in a commercially ridden party,
number one.

Number two, give serendipity a chance. Jesse Ventura started
out running for the governorship of Minnesota at 9 percent,
and then he got on 10 debates in Minnesota, and he got
$350,000 in state public financing, and he is in a state
with same-day voter registration.

So there's always a chance of a breakthrough, with the
blissful permission of the mass media, through which you
campaign. I mean, you can reach 2 percent of the people even
if you speak before the largest rallies in the biggest
arenas of America on campaign in 50 states, as I did in the
year 2000, but the only way you can reach lots of people is
through the presidential debate -- debates and through a
more resourceful recognition by the media that small starts
with long successful records in the civic community deserve
more than three and a half minutes of face time on the three
networks between September 1st and Election Day, year 2000,
which is what I received.

Q Mr. Nader, would you talk to the aspect --

STAFF: Identify --

Q I'm Joel Wishengrad of World Media Reports. Would you talk
to the aspect of conservative versus liberal? We've seen
these talk shows in the last 10, 12 years, such Rush
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others, that you would say were
skewing the political landscape with their rhetoric.

MR. NADER: Yes.

Q Why hasn't your particular advocacy-type career caught on,
not just in the Green Party, but through maybe the
Democratic Party and elsewhere? And why may be there only
one radio network, Pacifica, as opposed to the other radio
networks and television commentary?

MR. NADER: Well, if I understand your question correctly,
the answer is pretty simple. Corporations advertise on
radio, and governments very rarely do. So the vast amount of
revenues -- he who pays the piper plays the tune.

And one of the reasons why 90 percent of talk show hosts are
corporatists -- sometimes they think they're conservative,
but more often they're corporatist -- is that they can go
after government and not lose advertising revenue, they can
go after liberal groups and not lose advertising revenue,
but Rush Limbaugh is not going to go after his corporate
paymasters, because he will lose advertising revenue.

And until we have access to the public media and the public
airwaves -- which belong to the people, after all, and are
licensed for free by the FCC to radio and TV stations --
unless we have a certain amount of time as a people -- not
just liberals, as a people -- to have our own radio stations
and television stations and audience networks, as we have
proposed to Congress over 10 years ago with a detailed
statute, then it's going to be more of the same.

Yes?

Q John Gallagher, Traffic World Magazine. What is your take
on the status of the transportation infrastructure in this
country, both for freight as well as for passengers? And the
$247 billion bill that's being considered by Congress, is
that enough or not enough?

MR. NADER: It's not enough for modern public transit, which
is spectacular and ready to go. It's not just buses and
trains in the old-fashioned sense. We're going to try to
highlight some of this modern public transit technology and
what is available. There's still a huge bias toward highway
building, huge congestion on the highways, which can be
decongested with a broader elaboration of our railway system
and broader utilization of cross-transport modal
containerization, as well as a number of ways where highways
can be made less congested in terms of staggering work
shifts and things like that that have been proposed.

Yes?

Q Hi. I'm Janice D'Arcy from the Hartford Courant. I have a
question, but before I ask it, I want to clarify. Are you
supportive of the Internet vote trading that you mentioned
earlier, where someone in Texas would trade their vote with
someone in Connecticut?

MR. NADER: That is a choice of the voter. I support the
choice of the voter. I don't deny voters opportunity to make
choices, whether over the Internet in exchanges or for
third-party candidates and independent candidates.

Q Then my question is, why you waited so long to announce.
Does it have anything to do with Howard Dean's departure
from the race?

MR. NADER: Well, first of all, we were in an exploratory
mode since October. We were testing the waters. And our
findings can be transferred over into the campaign. So it
isn't that we were totally inactive. We were reaching out
trying to see what kind of volunteers can be recruited; what
kind of money can come in -- now to our website,
votenader.org; what kind of ideas.

The second is that there was an overwhelming opposition by
the liberal intelligentsia that absorbed some of our time. I
think this may be the only candidacy in our memory that is
opposed overwhelmingly by people who agree with us on the
issues.

So we've got a lot of communion here to work out, and I keep
saying just relax and rejoice, wait until the months unfold.
You may see pleasant opportunities to amplify your
opposition to the incumbent Bush regime.

Yes?

Q Yeah, I -- (name inaudible) -- health issues --

MR. NADER: What is your --

Q I write on health issues.

MR. NADER: Yes.

Q On the issue of corporate branding of children in public
schools, you've written far more extensively than any of the
other candidates and acted on it. However, in the last
election you failed to really raise it as a major issue.
Since then, there's been what's been described as an obesity
and the issue of overweight and obese children and adults. I
wonder if you will focus on the issue a bit more this time?

MR. NADER: Well, there's a lot more data on obesity. The
number of obese children under 12 has doubled since 1980,
and now there are -- 31 percent of adults in this country,
according to health statistics, are obese. Coupled with
overweight, the total is over 60 percent; very sharp
increases, and certainly people should restrain some of
their fat food intake. And certainly corporations that have,
from age two to three, seduced children to turn their
tongues against their brain, undermine parental authority,
and sold them junk food; essentially sugar and fat pumps
into their stomachs to the detriment of their present and
future health.

I beg to differ, though, on 2000. There was almost nobody
making as many points as I -- they just weren't reported --
about the commercialization of childhood, the commercial
exploitation of childhood. And rest assured, you'll hear a
lot about the subject you just raised.

Q (Off mike) -- Green Party --

MR. NADER: Yes?

Q Mr. Nader, Terry Campbell (sp) -- (inaudible) -- the Green
Party. I want to urge you and ask you if you're going to
work out and reach out to conservatives during this
campaign. There are many conservatives across the country
that are very upset at the largest federal spending in the
history of the country, the largest deficit in the history
of the country, no accountable accounting system --
auditable accounting system at the Pentagon. You talked
about more trains, less traffic. We have collected thousands
of petition signatures to put these candidates on the ballot
here: Joe Odo (ph) for Congress, a Green, and Brad Blanton
(ph).

So the question is, more trains, less traffic -- are you
going to focus on that, reaching out to conservatives and
calling for candidates all across the country? Forty percent
of all races have no one, no opposition. Today you can reach
out across the country with this big platform and urge
people to step forward and do their patriotic responsibility
to participate in our democracy. Will you do that?

MR. NADER: Yes, sir. I'm enthused by your enthusiasm.
(Laughter.) I might make the point that if you want to see a
distinct evidence of the cleavage between conservative
Republicans and corporate Bush Republicans, on our website,
votenader.org, is my letter to President Bush, in October,
outlining over 20 positions of the Texas State Republican
Party platform of 2002 -- his own party -- diametrically
opposed to the Bush administration's policy, including the
policies by the state party to get out of NAFTA and WTO,
including the severe criticism of the Patriot Act and the
violation of civil liberties as what those conservative
Republicans believe, quote, was "the main threat to our
domestic liberties." End quote. You might want to look into
that and explore.

I might add this nice point that you might be interested in.
A few months ago, Ross Perot sent a private prospectus to
New York publishing circles for a book that he presumably
wanted to write, heavily attacking the deficit policies of
the Bush administration. For some reason, it was pulled
back. Now, Ross Perot made his mark in 1992 excoriating
deficit spending and excoriating the exported jobs incident
to NAFTA. The WTO hadn't been passed then. He's been right
on both scores. I urge all Americans to urge Ross Perot in
Dallas, Texas, to go public with his criticisms of the Bush
regime's devastating deficits, so devastating that the head
of the General Accounting Office described the budget, as I
mentioned earlier, as, quote, "Enron-type accounting," end
quote, and talked about the enormous burden on the children
in this country who are going to inherit not just the
deficit, they're going to inherit huge interest payments
diverted from the necessities of our country, and suffer
enormous budget cuts, which always start with the poor and
with the minorities and with the children; it never starts
at the top with the gold-plated weapon systems that were
designed for a Soviet Union-era of hostility.

Q Mr. Nader, you mentioned that -- Sarah Schweitzer from the
Boston Globe. You mentioned that you were looking for -- how
many volunteers that you were going to get and how much
money you've raised. How much have you raised? How many
volunteers do you have?

And then secondly, in terms of just practical electoral
results, if this time around you're going to get fewer
Democratic votes, and if you're also not running with a
third party and thereby not putting that party in the
position of getting federal funding next time around, what
practical electoral result do you hope to get out of this?

MR. NADER: What practical votes or --

Q Electoral outcome. What do you hope to get in terms of --

MR. NADER: Well, you don't need to get electoral votes in a
winner-take-all-system to qualify for federal funding.

MORE If you get 5 percent of the total votes you qualify --

Q (Off mike) -- the party?

MR. NADER: No, no. It also accrues to independent
candidates. John Anderson, for example, actually got 7
percent or so in 1980 and he qualified for federal funding;
he chose not to take it in 1984. As far as the -- does that
answer that part of your question? And the other part?

Q How much money have you raised and how many volunteers do
you have?

MR. NADER: Yes, okay. In an exploratory mode you can't
really raise big money, because then it will be viewed as
not an exploratory mode. So we raised about $175,000 in the
exploratory mode. But the funds have been increasing;
contributions from all over the country have been flowing
in, especially in the last 24 hours to our website,
votenader.org. We're getting floods of volunteers, resumes
from people. We particularly want people who are good
organizers, good signature gatherers, good in graphic arts,
good in computer software and Web design, and good at all
kinds of creative ideas on how to advance justice in our
country based on what they're doing back home to advance
justice in our country.

Yes? Could you identify yourself?

Q Yeah, Amanda Debenen (sp), Washington Report on Middle
Eastern Affairs. And I'm curious about --

MR. NADER: Did you ask before?

Q I do not believe --

Q (Off mike.)

MR. NADER: Okay, because -- are you together? Because I'm
sorry, you know, we have to give someone else a chance.

Q Okay.

MR. NADER: Yes, hello?

Q Louisa Savage (sp) from The New York Times. Could you
elaborate --

MR. NADER: Could you speak a little lot louder?

Q Sorry. Louisa Savage (sp) from The New York Times. Could
you elaborate on -- (audio break) -- and will you be arguing
that Iraq would have been better off if Saddam Hussein was
still in power? How do you feel about Republican and
conservative voters?

MR. NADER: Yes, well I think there are a lot of conservative
voters who thought the Iraq invasion and its
unconstitutional authorization by the Congress was
inappropriate, to put it mildly. And as more casualties come
back, fatalities, injuries, diseases from sand flies --
sand-fly disease has already afflicted 1,200 soldiers; it's
hardly reported in the press. They're going to be more upset
when 130,000 soldiers are rotated back home; that's going to
mean a lot of communication with millions of families,
including conservative families.

Would Iraq had been better off under Saddam Hussein or under
the present situation? The question should be, would an
American government-entrenched Saddam Iraq had been better
off if the Bush administration in 1991 had overthrown Saddam
Hussein after he illegally invaded Kuwait, and after the
"Bush I" administration had the entire international
community around them. That's where the problem should have
been resolved. Instead, the first George Bush urged the
Shi'ites and the Sunnis to rise up and overthrow the tyrant,
and they did and they had control over about 75 percent of
Iraq when Saddam Hussein got the okay to slaughter them with
helicopter gunships, and put down the rebellion with U.S. F-
16s being held back from doing anything about it.

So I refuse to be put in a situation where you ask a
question now without discussing history then.

And now there of course is more free newspapers; there, I'm
sure -- some small businesses starting. But on the other
hand, the health care system has declined to even worse
levels because of the war and lack of facilities. And to put
it another way, dictators are terrible, but they provide
security in the streets. And as one Iraqi said, "We despise
Saddam Hussein, but we have less food, less electricity and
less security now." That's not the kind of comparison we
want to make. We -- the comparison we wanted to make is, why
do we keep supporting dictators and oligarchs, instead of
workers and peasants fostering democratic societies?

In the Middle East, the answer is oil. That's the answer.

Yes?

Q Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty Rag.

MR. NADER: Radical Honesty Rag?

Q Radical Honesty Rag. I'm the editor. (Laughter.)

I'm interested in secrecy, and it seems to me that a lot of
American policy has been dogged by the 36 separate and
secret agencies of the United States government that our
taxes pay for. They seem to have made a lot of those
policies without any review by the American people. I'd like
for you just to say something about secrecy and the
dishonesty that's implicit in the hiding out in this most
secretive administration in the history of the country.

MR. NADER: Well, democracy dies in the backrooms of
government and their corporate and other allies. We have
long been advocates and were significant promoters of the
Freedom of Information Act of 1974, which the press takes
constant and proper advantage of.

The Bush administration is one of the most secretive. They
also have a Homeland Security Department that can easily
exempt itself from Freedom of Information Act requests,
without judicial review. And of course you get more
misspending by the federal government, you get bad policies
that aren't exposed in time by the federal government when
there's secrecy. Information is the currency of democracy,
and sunlight is the best disinfectant, as Justice Brandeis
pointed out many, many years ago.

And we will make this a major issue. We will make government
secrecy, a major adversary of democratic processes and
public participation in their government, a major issue in
this campaign.

Can we have just one more or two more, please. Yes?

Q (Name off mike) -- American Prospect Magazine. I know that
you've rejected running with the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party. I'm wondering why you've rejected running
with the Green Party, and what you think they're doing wrong
that makes them a party you don't want to be part of.

MR. NADER: Well, they're doing nothing wrong. The Green
Party has a good platform. It keeps getting better. It's
very broad, not just the environment, although that's
important; it's labor, it's tax reform, it's corporate
accountability, it's civic involvement.

I had to withdraw from consideration for the Green Party
nomination because, as I said earlier, they are going to
decide whether they're going to have a candidate and under
what restrictions -- stay out of X states or Y state -- in
June. That's too late to hazard a candidacy that should be
busily collecting signatures to get on the ballot and
surmount the two-party exclusionary statutes that we hope
someday will be removed by one federal statute for federal
elections instead of 50 state statutes varying wildly, from
300 signatures to get on the ballot in Tennessee, to 100,000
signatures in North Carolina for an independent candidate.
There's no rhyme or reason for that. They can have their own
state election standards; for federal elections, there
should be one federal standard, and that's going to be one
of the policies of our campaign.

Remember, if I just may end it in this, I do beseech you --
as the media -- to focus more and more on broader and
broader issues and not allow the candidates of both parties
to narrow the issues to four or five which become very
repetitive and bore the heck out of all of you who follow
these campaigns. Toward that end, I hope you will look with
some measure of devotion to reading the 35-page agenda
inquiry that I sent to the Republican and Democratic
Committees, and perhaps look into some of those in order to
flavor and elaborate the intensity and the diversity of an
election campaign in a presidential year, when public debate
should reach its optimum level.

Again, those who are interested in volunteering and
contributing to our campaign, our new website is
votenader.org.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

-----end of New York Times article------

-----------------

*Greens and the Drug War. Worldwide. LINKS. Green Party
candidates, positions, platforms, etc.. Concerning the Drug
War, cannabis, marijuana, harm reduction, etc.. Ralph Nader
info, links.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/greens.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/greens.htm ___
*9-2000. MAP/DrugNews SEARCH SHORTCUT for many press
articles about RALPH NADER's September 8, 2000 press
conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he called for
legalizing cannabis/marijuana, and for harm reduction drug
reform. Ralph Nader "called for the legalization of
marijuana as part of an overhaul of the nation's 'self-
defeating and antiquated drug laws.' ... Legalizing
marijuana, Nader said, would allow the government to
regulate and potentially tax its use like tobacco products."
-Albuquerque Journal, September 8, 2000.
http://www.mapinc.org/find?BK=nader+johnson+santa&YY1=1997


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