"He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s
State of the Union Address
Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime
consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says
Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to
live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does
another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s
had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could
prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one
or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless
militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly
astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to projecting the American
empire, in Obama terms.
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by Ralph Nader to talk more about
President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer
advocate, former presidential candidate. His latest book is Getting
Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win." Ralph
Nader, your response to the State of the Union address? It could be
President Obama’s last. It could be the beginning of a new President
Obama for a second term. What do you think?
RALPH NADER: Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the
speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was
very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms,
force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of
how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria,
and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn’t talk
about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are
being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been
destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated
environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should
be ashamed of himself that he tries to drape our soldiers, who were
sent on lawless military missions to kill and die in those countries,
unconstitutional wars that violate Geneva conventions and
international law and federal statutes, and drape them as if they’ve
come back from Iwo Jima or Normandy. So I think it was very, very poor
taste to start and end with this kind of massive militarism and the
Obama empire.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And on the economy, Ralph Nader, on the economy, your
response to what Obama said last night?
RALPH NADER: A lot of good-sounding words. He’s very good at that. I’m
glad he focused on Wall Street abuses on more than one occasion. I’m
glad that he focused on renewable energy. But notice that he just
mentioned climate change but didn’t go anywhere on that one. He still
is not able to use the word "poverty." It’s always the middle class,
which is shrinking into poverty. But you’ve got 60, 70, 80 million
people living in poverty in the United States, and child poverty.
And the most amazing gap was his promise in 2008 to press for the
raising of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 by 2011. So,
he went for equal pay for equal work for women, but millions of people
in this country, one out of every three full-time workers, are earning
Wal-Mart wages, many of them not far over the $7.25 rate. Now, the
$9.50 minimum wage would still be less in inflation-adjusted terms
than it was in 1968, when worker productivity was half of what it is
today.
So, a lot of his suggestions, like the attitude toward foreign trade—
well, he said that in 2008 he wanted to revise NAFTA. He didn’t lift a
finger. So how credible are his words vis-à-vis China, for example, in
the trade area and importing hazardous products into this country? How
credible are his words? How credible are his words when he says he
wants to start a financial crimes unit in the Justice Department? I
mean, what does that mean, unless he demands a much larger budget for
prosecutors and law enforcement officials against the corporate crime
wave? Maybe he needs a subscription to the Corporate Crime Reporter to
tell him that we’ve been through these kinds of rhetorics before by
prior presidents. They’re going to establish an enforcement unit here
and there, but without a major budget, it’s going to go nowhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play President Obama’s announcement last night of
a new unit devoted to investigating major financial crimes.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We’ll also establish a financial crimes unit
of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and
protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-
fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat
offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority
of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing.
So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count. And
tonight I’m asking my attorney general to create a special unit of
federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our
investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky
mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold
accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners,
and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many
Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama announcing that New York
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will head this unit. I’m going back
to the—to August, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman being
kicked off a 50-state task force negotiating a possible settlement
with the nation’s largest mortgage companies, the move coming just a
day after the New York Times reported that the Obama administration
was pressuring Schneiderman to agree to a broad state settlement with
banks over questionable foreclosure tactics. Ralph Nader, your
response?
RALPH NADER: Well, that’s the double standard that he’s such an expert
at, Obama. He says one thing and does another. Where has he been for
over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing
laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t
sent more than one or two to jail. So, it is important to strengthen
the corporate criminal laws through congressional legislation, but
what has he done? This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting
another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real
expansion in the budget.
But then, when he said to the American people, "no more bailouts, no
more handouts, and no more cop-outs" — but that’s what’s been going
on. And it’s going on today and it went on last year under his
administration. Washington is a bustling bazaar of accounts
receivable. They’re bailing out and they’re handing out all kinds of
subsidies to corporations—handouts, giveaways, transfer of technology,
transfer of medical research to the drug companies without any
reasonable price provisions on drugs, giveaway of natural resources on
the federal lands. You name it, it’s still going on. And as far as a
cop-out, how about his deferred prosecution gimmicks with these
corporations under the Justice Department, where they never have to
plead guilty, they never have to make themselves vulnerable to civil
lawsuits so they pay back the American people what they’ve stolen from
them? So, obviously, State of the Union speeches are full of rhetoric,
they’re full of promises, but it’s good to measure them against the
past performance of the Obama administration and what his promises
were in 2008. They don’t really stand up very well.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, I want to turn to the Republican response
to the State of the Union address. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a
former budget director under President George W. Bush, delivered the
response to his address, to Obama’s address. He slammed Obama for
halting the Keystone XL pipeline project that would transport oil from
Canada to Texas, equating the move to a, quote, "pro-poverty policy."
GOV. MITCH DANIELS: The extremism that stifles the development of
homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would
employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no
improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-
poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth
approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of
private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the
public revenues to pay our bills.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ralph Nader, your response?
RALPH NADER: Well, first of all, the XL pipeline is basically shipping
very dirty Albertan oil down through the United States, over very,
very sensitive aquifers and other environmental conditions, down to
the Gulf in order to ship it abroad. That’s the big farce of this
pipeline project. It’s not going to be brought to make this country
more reliant on Canada instead of the Middle East. It’s basically an
export pipeline.
And the second is, Mitch Daniels would have done the public a great
service, in his speech, if he would have urged the corporations in
this country, who are sitting on $2 trillion of cash, like Cisco and
Apple and Google, to start giving some of that cash back to
shareholders in terms of dividends and to pension funds and mutual
funds, which would increase consumer demand and create more jobs, just
the way a minimum wage increase would increase consumer demand to
create more jobs. Instead, he didn’t say that. And Obama has
constantly restricted any kind of stimulant to tax breaks, to tax
incentives, to tax reductions, which of course will not do much to
build up the government’s resources for a major job-producing public
works program in every community, good-paying jobs repairing America—
schools, bridges, public transit, drinking water systems—jobs that
cannot be exported abroad. So, we need to develop a very concrete
critique of these politicians’ statements up against what they could
do if they had the courage of their office.
Imagine Obama never mentioning the Occupy movement. Imagine Obama
never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street movement, the main citizen
awareness movement to be coupled with his alleged concern with Wall
Street abuses. And yet he talks about advancing human dignity for all
people abroad, and he never talks about a major human dignity
initiative, the Occupy initiative, based on peaceful resistance to
oligarchy and plutocracy. He’s a political coward. He’s got to repair
back to the Oval Office and ask himself why he can’t stand for the
people in this country who are really aware and trying to improve our
democracy and advance justice and make government and corporations
accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, you have written a new book called Getting Steamed
to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win. People may be
listening to you right now and agreeing with a lot of what you are
saying, and also saying, "What is the alternative here? Mitt Romney?
Newt Gingrich?" What is your response to that?
RALPH NADER: Well, this is the book, and I’m going to drop it off at
the White House soon. I think he should read it, because the left is
not making any demands on Obama because they’re so freaked out by the
Republicans and their crazed rhetoric on their debates. Well, if that
is going to continue for 2012, that means the corporations are pulling
on Obama and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are pulling on
Obama and Democratic Party, because they’re getting all the media,
because they have a vibrant primary process, and there’s no primary
challenge to Obama, so the progressive agenda is not getting any media
at all, week after week.
So the alternative, Amy, is for the left, such as they are —
progressive, liberal people, I like to call them "justice seekers" —
to make demands on Obama, to make demands for improving the rights of
labor, improving the rights of small farmers, improving the rights of
small business, the environmental demands that need to be made, the
crackdown on corporate crime, a whole panoply of corporate reform
agenda, the kind of crackdown on these global corporations that have
abandoned America and shipped jobs and industries to fascist and
communist regimes who know how to keep workers in their place.
But there is no pull, because they’re so freaked out by the
Republicans. So, one can really say the Republicans could sit around
in a smoke-filled room and say, "Let’s be even more crazed. Let’s be
even more corporatist." This will create a good vacuum for the
Democrats to move into, because both parties are dialing for the same
corporate dollars, and it will bring the left to their knees, because
they’ll say, "We’ve got nowhere to go."
Well, the reason why this speech was so failing, especially in foreign
and military policy, the reason why it was so failing is because Obama
doesn’t have to worry about tens of millions of people who call
themselves progressives or liberals, because they have signaled to him
that they got nowhere to go. Well, I think if they believe they got
nowhere to go, that they don’t want to vote for a third party or Green
Party, they can at least, in April, May, June, hold his feet to the
fire and present him with a set of progressive demands, in order to
tell him that they do have a place to go: they can stay home. And
that’s what hurt the Democrats in 2010. People can just stay home.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I want to thank you for being with us. His
book is called Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It
Together to Win.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/25/he_says_one_thing_and_does