PEN-L message, Nader says why

By Ralph Nader

Washington, DC is corporate-controlled territory. You can see it in Congress, the regulatory agencies, the Departments, the presidency - corporations rule the nation.

The power of corporate influence affects every aspect of our domestic policy as well as our foreign policy, pushing the United States into wars in countries with resources the corporate engine needs and into trade agreements that weaken U.S. sovereignty and undermine environmental, labor, and consumer rights.

The mass concentrations of power, privilege, wealth, technology, and immunity have placed their rampaging global quest for maximum profits in the way of progress, justice, and opportunity for the very millions of workers who made possible these corporate profits but who are falling behind, 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 community.

As a result, jobs are being shipped overseas to China, where a despotic regime forbids trade unions from negotiating fair wages. This loss of jobs leads to a downward spiral in wages in the United States, where today one out of four full-time workers is now paid less than $8.75 an hour - less than an individual, and certainly a family, can live on. Lobbyists from Wal-Mart and McDonalds ensure that living wage legislation goes nowhere in Congress.

Corporatism has turned federal and state departments and agencies into indentured servants for taxpayer-funded subsidies and budget-busting lucrative contracts. Middle-level and top-level corporate executives become mid-level and top-level government regulators and then return to their corporations. The superficially regulated become the regulators and then become the regulated again.

Through their revolving-door officials, thousands of Political Action Committees, donations from executives, day-to-day lobbying by trade associations, company lobbies, and corporate law firms, corporations dominate the actions of government.

There has been a resistant corporate crime wave that has looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers, their pensions, and from small investors. Has the President supplied the required law enforcement resources for action? Scarcely. Has Congress investigated this massive crime wave and demanded action? Barely. As CNN's Lou Dobbs reports regularly, very few of these bosses have been brought to justice and jail.

Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years: once 30% of our income, they now stand at 7.4%, despite massive record profits.

President Harry Truman first proposed universal health care in 1955. We still don't have it. Instead we have a wasteful health care system - where 25% of the costs are spent on redundant and unnecessary bureaucracy because it is built on inefficient profit-driven health insurance industry - and an increasingly bill-gouging network of HMO's and hospitals. The United States spends far more on health care than any other country in the world but ranks only 37th in the overall quality of health care it provides, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal health care. More than 44.3 million Americans have no health insurance, and tens of millions more are underinsured. Each year, 18,000 people die in the U.S. because of lack of health care, according to the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine. Why doesn't the government face up to this issue? Because the healthcare sellers and health insurance industries have donated to politicians to ensure the outcome.

A recent highlight of corporate influence over government was the prescription drug bill. The bill was a big profit maker for the drug companies. They invested $150 million in lobbying the government and in return got a $400 billion drug bill.

Once again, the corporations win - the people lose. In a few years investigative journalists will report how many people died because they could not afford life-saving medicine.

The U.S. military-industrial complex continues to build for Soviet-era enemies that no longer exist. The defense budget, which now accounts for half of the operating spending of the federal government, is driven by weapons procurement for million dollar missiles, expensive airplanes costing tens of millions each, and atomic submarines costing much more.

How are these decisions made? The weapons industry comes forward with plans and ideas and then coordinates a lobbying campaign on Congress.

Presently, global corporations are bent on strategically planning our politics, economy, military expenditures, education, environment, culture, even our genetic inheritance. Is it not our responsibility together to shape our own futures within our own deliberative democratic process?

The Nader-Camejo Campaign believes we have a moral imperative to take a stand, help rescue our besieged democracy, and secure our country and its liberties. We are running to restore the sovereignty explicit in the preamble to our Constitution - "we the people," not for sale, which can displace the "everything for sale" corporate controls.

The condition of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is that the people must rule, not as a manipulated mirage, but as an authentic coming together of a strong citizenry - from the neighborhoods to the national capital - to end the chronic material and spiritual deprivations that our people should no longer have to suffer.

Politics should return to its original meaning - of the citizens - not of the corporate fundraisers.

Ralph Nader is an Independent Candidate for President and author of the new book, "The Good Fight - Declare Your Independence and Close the Democracy Gap."