http://www.votenader.org/issues/index.php#drugwar

Wants to end the war on drugs
The drug war has failed – we spend nearly $50 billion
annually on the drug war and problems related to drug abuse
continue to worsen. We need to acknowledge that drug abuse
is a health problem with social and economic consequences.
Therefore, the solutions are – public health, social
services and economic development and tender supportive time
with addicts in our depersonalized society. Law enforcement
should be at the edges of drug control not at the center. It
is time to bring some illegal drugs within the law by
regulating, taxing and controlling them. Ending the drug war
will dramatically reduce street crime, violence and
homicides related to underground drug dealing.

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-----Ralph Nader article begins. Emphasis added.
http://www.votenader.org

Friday April 2, 2004

Dear Conservatives Upset With the Policies of the Bush
Administration

There is an old saying in southern American politics which
goes like this: 'you dance with those who brung ya.' Have
the corporate Republicans in Washington forgotten 'who brung
‘em?' That question is being intensely discussed in
conservative-libertarian Republican circles and writings.

Many conservative Republicans are feeling these days that
the Washington, D.C. Republicans are taking them for
granted. You know what happens when that happens – you get
taken! The first basic sign of a platform fissure between
the conservative base and the big business Republicans came
with the 2002 Texas state Republican Party platform which
requires candidates to read every page and initial that it
has been read. In an October 2, 2003 letter I asked
President Bush whether he supports this platform. This
defiant document announces over twenty domestic and foreign
policies diametrically opposed to what the Bush
Administration is doing or not doing.

Since that time the sources of conservative upset have
become more pronounced. Conservative Republicans are furious
with the Washington, D.C. Republicans for fiscal
irresponsibility on a scale that, to them, would have been
unimaginable even for Democrats. From inheriting a budget
surplus in January 2001, the Bush Republicans have produced
nearly half of a trillion dollars in annual deficits,
ballooning the national debt and rocketing the annual debt
service payments each year to about $318 billion—paid for by
your taxes.

Already, around 30 conservative Republicans in the House of
Representatives are in near revolt, despite the iron grip of
Rep. Tom Delay (Rep. Texas), having voted against the
Medicare-drug bill and its enormous subsidies to the drug
industry and other companies. Even so, these legislators did
not know at the time that the cost was $540 billion, not the
$400 billion that was communicated to Congress by the Bush
Administration over the objection of their chief actuary,
late last year. Other budgets that can have any relation to
national or homeland security are rising in all directions
and are out of control according President Bush’s own Office
of Management and Budget Analysis which is trying vainly to
subject them to some cost-benefit rigor.

Besides federal deficit spending as far as the eye can see,
there is the accompanying growth under Republican rule of so
many subsidies to corporations that the government does not
even have a catalogue of their costs. Conservative Think
Tanks and other studies estimate costs of hundreds of
billions of dollars annually in all their complex
versions—cash transfers, bailouts, handouts or grants,
giveaways, loan guarantees, loan forgiveness, tax
expenditures and so on. In 1999, Cong. John Kasich (Rep.
Ohio), then chair of the House Budget Committee and a critic
of wasteful military spending held the first Congressional
hearings on corporate welfare. Afterwards he threw his hands
up in despair at getting the Republican leadership to take
his warnings seriously. He retired from Congress in 2000.
Conservatives were vociferous in their criticism of the
pending energy bill, which has passed the House, for its $50
billion in subsidies to the profitable fossil fuel and
atomic power industries. Using taxpayer money to pay
companies to make a bigger profit is not in accordance with
conservative principles.

Many conservatives believe that the Patriot Act is too
extreme a law and is a threat, as the Texas Republican Party
implied, to our domestic liberty under the 'guise of
preventing terrorism.' Big Government surveillance,
unannounced sneak and peak searches of citizens’ homes and
businesses, and the rise of legions of government snoopers
rub genuine conservatives the wrong way. Moreover, they hear
President Bush making statements supporting a more extremist
Patriot Act II and renewing the most liberty-suppressing
provisions of Patriot Act I when it is up for renewal in
2005.

Our country’s local, state and national sovereignties are
important to conservative Republicans. These sovereignties
are being undermined by NAFTA, the World Trade Organization,
and large U.S. corporations who are turning their back on
America. The Texas Republican Party platform demands
withdrawal from these autocratic systems of international
governance that pull America down and 'outsourcing' the jobs
of American workers who often are required to train their
substitutes before being laid off by the multinational
corporation.

One of the most precious traditions of local self-rule has
been our public schools. The Bush administration, through
the so-called 'No Child Left Behind' law has seized power in
the form of federal regulation of local school districts
beyond the nightmarish alarms of many conservatives. The
federal government can punish schools, close them down and
sanction them in other ways if the notorious multiple-choice
standardized tests are not scored high enough. These
misguided tests distort education with an 'over-emphasis on
high-stakes standardized test and the subsequent impact on
student learning, curriculum and teaching' according to
Citizens for Quality Assessment. They go on to note that
among the problems this leads to are excessive time on
narrow test preparation, de-enrichment of the curriculum,
excessive use of financial resources for testing and false
accountability. Bush’s regulatory demands on local
governments are also an unfunded education mandate.

It may be a surprise to some liberals that many
conservatives are just as outraged at the corporate crime
wave represented by the shenanigans of Enron, Worldcom,
Tyco, Wall Street firms, mutual funds and others whose tops
corporate crooks have looted or drained trillions of dollars
from small investors, workers and pension holders. Many a
401K pension plan was seriously depleted or shredded in the
process. They don’t have to watch Lou Dobbs on CNN to want
tough prosecution, conviction and incarceration of these
corporate outlaws. Instead the Bush Administration keeps
tiny law enforcement resources and even tinier willpower
that declines to put more federal cops on the corporate
crime beat.

On these and other issues, the national Republican Party is
turning its back on millions of conservative and libertarian
Republicans without whom the Party could not win its
elections. What’s more, the Party leaders in Washington are
not listening to the increasing reality that more and more
conservatives are furious with the Bush Administration and
its domination by corporatists. I once noted to William
Bennett that 'Big business is on a collision course with
conservative principles.' He agreed. Certainly he has
demonstrated this point in his less than successful attempts
to have his Party take on the giant media issue of corporate
commercial violence and pornography especially directed to
children with its subversion of family values, parental
discipline and wholesome childhoods. What has Mr. Bush said
about this worsening exploitation on our public airways,
cable channels and videos? Do decent people even have a
right of rebuttal on the same media?

In a lead editorial by the Wall Street Journal, January 30,
2004, the authors wrote what they must believe is the
ultimate criticism: 'Republicans took a rare whack at
spending in 1995, but ever since they have been hard to
distinguish from Democrats.'

What to do? It depends on your depth of disappointment with
the national Republican Party. In the numerous states that
are going easily for President Bush, you can vote for the
Ralph Nader independent candidacy for the Presidency. This
will send them a message that you will no longer be taken
for granted. If you are beside yourself with a sense of the
deep betrayal of conservative philosophy by the national
Republican Party in Washington, D.C., you may wish to vote
for the Nader ticket regardless of the state in which you
reside. I have been for a long time noting the overlapping
agreement between more and more conservatives and liberals
on the above noted issues facing America. Sure they disagree
on other matters, but the specific areas of agreement are
very substantial, pretty fundamental and deserving of some
individual voter messaging in the upcoming elections.

In 1992—I went up to New Hampshire before the primary date
and spent about 10 days of intensive campaigning for a none-
of-the-above option on each ballot line. I met with
thousands of New Hampshirites in civic and school
auditoriums in town after town saying that if they did not
like any of the candidates on the ballot, they could write
in my name as None Of The Above. Write-ins are made
difficult by the authorities in that state. Nonetheless, of
the thousands of votes I received, 51% were Republicans and
49% were Democrats. In the year 2000, exit polls reported
that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would
have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at
all. A poll this March in New Hampshire showed I had the
support of 8% of all voters -- 10% of Independents, 9% of
Republicans and 4% of Democrats.

I hope you will consider joining our Independent campaign
for President.

Sincerely, Ralph Nader

----end of Ralph Nader article----

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*Corporatism quotes. From many people.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/corporatism.htm and
http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/corporatism.htm

*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://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/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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