Progressives who do this will tell you that this unconditional Party support is necessary and justifiable because no matter how bad Democrats are, the GOP is worse. That’s a different debate. The point here is that — whether justified or not — telling politicians that you will do everything possible to work for their re-election no matter how much they scorn you, ignore your political priorities, and trample on your political values is a guaranteed ticket to irrelevance and impotence. Any self-interested, rational politician — meaning one motivated by a desire to maintain power rather than by ideology or principle — will ignore those who behave this way every time and instead care only about those whose support is conditional. And they’re well-advised to do exactly that.

Generally, another slam-dunk for Greenwald who has a habit of great writing. I think the major theme of Greenwald’s post comes from Frederick Douglass’ famous quote

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
Frederick Douglass

Progressives who go along with the Democrats to get along will get whatever horrors that party dishes out. Douglass was correct then and he’s correct now.

I don’t agree with some of Greenwald’s minor points made along the way:

• MoveOn.org and Rachel Maddow are either not progressives or the word “progressive” has become just another way to say “blind Democrat party supporter”. I’ve never found Maddow’s show to be that compelling (I’ve mentioned some of my disagreement with her perspective on this blog). MoveOn.org never fails to rally behind Democrats at election time, much like the Nation magazine with their periodic anti-Nader editorials published around election time. I’ll be surprised if Maddow doesn’t fall into line supporting the Democrats closer to election time.
• I don’t think the debate over who is worse is as separate a debate as Greenwald says: I don’t think either party is worse overall; I think both Democrat and Republican parties are roughly equally horrible and I believe they support mostly the same big-ticket issues: endless war/world dominance or empire, reduction in civil liberties, running up the cost of government, ecological disaster. Any issue where large sums of money or power are at stake generally find bi-partisan support in the US Congress. Unconditional Party support is never justified as it’s a sure road to being ignored.

While it’s perfectly rational for any candidate to ignore anyone who asks nothing for their support (“support” meaning: vote, campaign contribution, or staffing time on their campaign) the Left has long behaved as if they’re ignorant of the message they send when they behave in this way. I don’t see how the Left or Progressives can expect to maintain their number of supporters when they boast blind Democratic Party support.

I no longer think highly of the Left or Progressives because too many of the Progressives I come across (in person, reading their work, or having worked with them on political stuff in the past) blindly support Democrats and believe in voting Democrat because “[Republicans] are worse” and, just as Greenwald said, are horribly offended when their elected leader doesn’t heed their views. For me, Progressives who do this merely support corporatism, the single thing that undergirds all the horrible stuff the US is involved in.

As a result I have stopped caring about who becomes US President or which of the two US corporate-run major parties leads Congress. I know the same policies will be furthered no matter who wins. Greenwald’s articles point out how one party is no better than the other; you can skim Greenwald’s blog posts and find posts on major issues where Obama’s Democrats kept G.W. Bush’s policies intact or made them worse.

But when Amy Goodman asked him about his appearance on Bill Maher’s program where he got on his knee to beg Ralph Nader not to run for President, he did not justify anything he leveled at Ralph Nader:

AMY GOODMAN: Michael, do you still feel the same way? You and Ralph Nader pretty much agree on a lot of things.

MICHAEL MOORE: I have this basic position about Ralph. I’ve known him for many, many years. He has done so much good for this country. People are alive as a result of the things that he worked on over the years. I also believe that he doesn’t really have a handle on what the proper strategy is to get this country in our hands. And, you know, unlike Ralph, I guess maybe I’m not in this for just to say it so I can hear myself talk or to be some—or to take some poser position. And I hope that doesn’t sound too harsh, but I don’t see him ever working with the grassroots or with the people or being in touch with the people in any way, shape or form.

And so, I just—I think that—I mean, what I’ve proposed for the last few years is that if we really want to try and get this power in our hands, in the people’s hands, in the hands of the working people of this country, then we should, on a very grassroots level, from the bottom up, be doing things to—whether it’s running for local office, taking over the local Democratic Party. The game is rigged in America when it comes to third parties. There’s no way that that’s ever going to work. And so, then how—instead of letting the game, I guess, rig us, what can we do to the game itself? And if the game is, well, we have these two political parties which are really very much like one party, why don’t we make sure that one of those parties actually is a second party and start locally and do that? And that’s what I encourage people to do. That’s my approach.

Ralph’s approach is, put his name on the ballot and run for office. Where are we as a result of that? I don’t—you know, I don’t see us anywhere other than in the same pitiful state we’ve been in for some time.

I don’t take his criticism about Nader not working with the people seriously because Moore doesn’t explain how he arrived at this conclusion and because Nader’s policies sound like people-focused policies to me: end the two major occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, pass single-payer universal healthcare, and stop invading other countries to name a few. I’d like to hear Moore explain exactly how running for US President is an improper strategy for increasing public participation in power. Shouldn’t we fault Democrats for doing exactly that?

I’m currently reading “Grand Illusion” by Theresa Amato, Nader’s former campaign manager (at least twice in 2000 and 2004), where she gives a remarkably detailed accounting of the challenges third parties and independent candidates face just to be heard alongside the colluding Democrats and Republicans. She writes very clearly and critiques the situation facing the nation from the position of fairness and what’s in the best interest of the citizen. She details the vindictive litigation, the double standards, and all the other barriers the two major parties use against Nader’s campaign, schemes which adversely affect anyone else’s chances to run and be taken on their merits. I guess I had become used to such explication when I heard Moore on DN! and expected better from him.

There ought to be room for more than one “approach” and more than two candidates from more than two parties (whom even Moore seems to admit are too similar). I’m not disappointed in Obama because I didn’t expect better from him. The way the corporate media kept talking about him told me that he had been vetted by the major donor corporations and come out favorably—Obama’s campaign was a sound investment that would return many times its worth in money, opportunity, and power. I expected that Moore, while caving to the Democratic Party which helps rig elections against third parties and independents, would at least recognize that Nader’s candidacies give Nader supporters someone with an enviable political record to vote for (as opposed to not voting for president at all). Joining one’s oppressor is not how one fights. Clear, continuing, and repeated opposition is how one fights.

Moore really is a Democrat who takes on all of that party’s values on election fairness—”The game is rigged in America when it comes to third parties. There’s no way that that’s ever going to work.” is encouraging capituation. We know how the Democrats will marginalize someone who isn’t a proper corporatist. Look how they treat Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). He ran for President twice and both times made Medicare for All his health care plan. He gets shafted in so-called “debate” time and his fight for single-payer universal health care goes either unmentioned or ridiculed, despite that the country has long supported it (even if it means paying more in taxes in a country that already pays more per capita for healthcare than any other country and doesn’t cover everyone). Corporate rule is how Obama became “electable”.

At least I know I’m not the only one to react against Moore’s unjustified screed.

Much is already known and documented officially and by academic studies and media reporting. In the category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, are

1. the criminal war—occupation of Iraq,
2. systemic torture as a White House policy,
3. arrests of thousands of Americans without charges or habeas corpus rights,
4. spying on large numbers of Americans without judicial warrants and
5. hundreds of signing statements by George W. Bush declaring that, he of the unitary presidency, will decide whether to obey the enacted bills or not.

To its everlasting credit, the conservative American Bar Association sent to President Bush three reports in 2005-2006 concluding that he has been engaged in continuing serious violations of the Constitution. This is no one-time Watergate obstruction of justice episode ala Nixon that led to his resignation just before his impeachment in the House of Representatives.

Nearly two years ago Senator Obama, contrary to what he knows and believes, vigorously came out against the House commencing impeachment proceedings. It would be too divisive, he said. As one of one hundred Senators who might have had to try the President and Vice President in the Senate were the House to impeach. He should have kept impartial and remained silent on the subject.

As President, he cannot remain silent and do nothing, otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and become soon thereafter a war criminal himself. Inaction cannot be an option.

Violating the Constitution and federal laws is now routine. What is routine after awhile becomes institutionalized lawlessness by official outlaws.

Ralph Nader circa November 13, 2008

How will the liberal Left hold Obama accountable when they were willing to let the Democratic Party get away with taking impeachment “off the table”? Hoping for change won’t be enough. The old excuses tried to make Democrats look powerless to stop Bush while Democrats wrote more checks for war, agreed with Bush on FISA, legalized telecommunication corporation immunity alongside Bush, supported bailouts which will probably come to over $1T, and so on. But excuses won’t hold water with the most facile observer of Congress because Democrats have held a majority in the House and Senate since 2006 and soon there will be a Democrat in the White House. Tight senate races might give the Democrats an unfilibusterable supermajority in the Senate.

This presidency is really a test for anyone who supports the Democratic Party. Will there be organized publicly-visible objection like the opposition to the Iraq war where millions gathered in the streets before that invasion began? Or will there be silence like what happened during Gore, Kerry, and Obama’s presidential campaigns? Without serious organization and objection who will challenge impeachable crimes?

Well, obviously we all congratulate Barack Obama. We wish him well. But the precursor to his election has not been very encouraging, and he has repeatedly taken up the positions of the corporate supremacists, not just his latest vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, but a whole string of votes and policy positions. He opposes single-payer health insurance. Well, the HMOs and the insurance companies do, too. He wants a bigger military budget. So does the military-industrial complex. His idea of a living wage on his website is $9.50 an hour by 2011. That would make it less than it was in 1968, adjusted for inflation.

He matched McCain in the third debate, belligerent—belligerency for belligerency, toward Russia, toward Iran, more soldiers in Afghanistan, supporting the Israeli military repression and occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. And virtually nothing about 100 million poor people in this country. That’s why I really fault him, that he played the Clinton linguistic game by talking constantly about the middle class and not mentioning the word “poor.”

And we expect more of him. And I don’t think he has a public philosophy of where corporations must operate in this country. How? Under what rule of law? Under what regulation? Under what vulnerability to litigation in the courts? He’s proud of tort reform, supports the nuclear industry, supports the coal industry. So we’re really talking about just more of the same, in terms of the corporate domination of Washington.

I detected no concern, no quaking of concern, among the drug industry, oil, gas industry, nuclear, coal industry, Wall Street, over his probable election in the last few weeks. Usually, when they’re really worried about a politician, they will issue warnings. But Barack Obama has raised far more money than John McCain from Wall Street interests, corporate interests and, above all, corporate lawyers. And the question to be asked is, why are they investing so much in Barack Obama? Because they believe he’s their man. So, prepare to be disappointed, but keep your hope up.

Ralph Nader, November 5, 2008 on Democracy Now! (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript)

Add to that, continued presidential support for the death penalty (the change from Pres. Bush being that Obama recognizes that it was used to kill innocents and the death penalty doesn’t have the intended effect of stopping crimes for which capital punishment is used), and I remain fearful about what that means for death row inmates (DN! has been following Troy Anthony Davis’ case). It would be better to send a clear signal that the death penalty isn’t just costly and does nothing to reduce certain crimes, the more compelling reason to reject it has to do with killing people being ethically unjustifiable and offering no room for making mistakes. We simply aren’t going to teach people not to kill while we continue to carve out an exception for the state.

I remain concerned about what Obama’s policies will amount to for the nation’s poor. I don’t see serious change for the better so long as health insurance companies are allowed to control health care policy. I don’t recall anything in Obama’s policies addressing homelessness, and I don’t think a 90-day reprieve on making mortgage payments for those who are close to eviction will seriously reduce the eviction rate after the 90-day window ends. Sending more American poor into war isn’t going to help either (as Sgt. Matthis Chiroux points out, Obama is not an anti-war candidate: “I’m very excited about what an Obama candidacy—or Obama presidency, the kind of racial unity it can bring, but I’m worried that people in this country believe he is truly going to be an antiwar president, and he’s not. He’s very far away from that. He’s got plans to leave troops in Iraq. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan, go into Pakistan.”). Locally, I’ve already seen anti-war efforts decrease just like they did when Sen. John Kerry was the Democratic party candidate and the national anti-war campaigners were unwilling to challenge Kerry’s pro-war message—he’d manage occupation better than George W. Bush.

My friends who supported Obama’s campaign tell me that progressives will challenge him after they give him their support (vote, time, money) and get him in office. I find that strategy to be wholly unwise if your goal is to really help people in need because there’s no clear mechanism for making a candidate follow your advocacy if a candidate knows that they have you in their back pocket. Corporations surely don’t behave that way, they only pay to help campaigners when it’s clear that there’s a deal before the election.

I hope that the good feelings and celebrations going on now change into real progressive political pressure. From what I can tell of Obama’s policies, funding sources, and voting record, he’ll need a lot of pressure to do what’s right by those most in need.

Good question. What’s your breaking point? How much support for the death penalty, corporate welfare, corporate crime, saying one thing and voting differently, and silencing electoral competition will you continue to tolerate? How effectively can major-party candidates use fear to keep you from voting your interests?

I find it amazing that major-party candidate supporters ask everyone nationally to “do the math” (motivated by fear of the opposing major-party candidate, no doubt) and voters from electoral-college-insignificant counties (like all counties in Illinois except Cook county, where Chicago is) obey them concluding that they had better vote “defensively” for a Republican or Democrat. Millions of voters nationwide are in such positions and they apparently aren’t doing the math: their vote for US President is inconsequential because of the structure of the electoral college. It wouldn’t matter if nobody but Cook county Illinois voted for US President because Cook county basically dictates where all of Illinois’ electoral votes go. People apparently know that the way to speak out in such a rigged game is to not vote at all (and tell people you dislike all the ballot-qualified choices, and then organize politically for a binding “None of the Above” choice) or to vote for someone other than a major-party candidate. In counties with sufficient population to steer electoral votes, there is plenty of good reason to vote your values (which almost certainly aren’t well reflected by corporate-funded major-party candidates).

City, county, congressional, and state votes, on the other hand, matter a great deal because you have more power there. Unfortunately those elections are rigged in other ways (we couldn’t, for instance, have a 90%+ Congressional retention rate otherwise—everyone’s Congressperson is corrupt but yours, right?). The media is a major source of problems for any campaign who refuses to spout corporate-friendly views. Interviews are easily blacked out (consider how little air time third-party and independent candidates like Nader/Gonzalez get these days but how much time TV hosts like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have to talk about the latest round of ads from McCain/Obama; Maddow’s segment with Ron Paul on October 30th was getting interesting when she abruptly ended the segment without any real discussion of the issues Paul raised). Media buys are horribly expensive (particularly for cash-strapped small campaigns) and TV debate coverage is prejudicial and unreliable. Sometimes TV debates are canceled when participants don’t meet capricious qualifications (like the New York anti-war candidate, Jonathan Tasini, who couldn’t debate Hilary Clinton for US Senate because he hadn’t raised enough money, or the CPD restrictions which are set to keep everyone but the two major-party candidates out). Or sometimes they’re canceled when media outlets don’t want to push for broadening the terms of allowable debate (like when Google recently canceled its debate because Sen. Obama refused to appear; probably because Google would have had him debate Ralph Nader).

Senators Obama and McCain get plenty of time for lame topics like negative campaigning but third-party and independent candidates get a virtual media blackout. McCain lamented that this “very tough” campaign “could have done at least ten [town hall meetings] by now” but it’s a safe bet that neither McCain nor Obama would have debated anyone but each other in order to narrow the terms of allowable debate. According to Ralph Nader, Google cancelled its debate (where it looked like Nader would have been included) when Obama pulled out. McCain/Obama ignore salient issues as well: discussion of the invasion and occupation of Iraq was scarce, the war in Afghanistan was unmentioned. These two wars are worth trillions of dollars that could have been better spent at home delivering exactly the kind of health care plan both corporate candidacies run from: single-payer universal health care (McCain tries to attack Obama from the left on this and Obama flees from identification with single-payer universal health care despite that’s what a majority of the US public wants). Meanwhile, both McCain and Obama are for giving $700B to corporations under the control of an unelected Goldman Sachs businessman who won’t so much as appear in a public hearing.

DN! invited Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, Independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney to respond to the same questions put to the Democratic and Republican nominees. Barr and Baldwin couldn’t appear so we got to hear from Nader and McKinney.

I highly recommend watching or hearing what these candidates have to say (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript). These are the views you won’t get to hear on the mainstream corporate-led media.

Amy Goodman also announced that she’ll be moderating the third-party candidate debate from 7:00 to 9:00 on October 19th. I hope Nader will participate in that event and I look forward to learning more about the excluded candidates from their own words.

1. The presidential debates are for the benefit of the public. Therefore, the right to speak about the debates ought to be “owned” by the public, not controlled by the media.
2. “Town hall” Internet questions should be chosen by the people, not solely by the media.

and expands on these principles in his letter signed by 23 people.

A much better Open Debates is found online at opendebates.org. Lessig’s call to action is timid and doesn’t address the most salient problem with the Commission on Presidential Debates (or CPD) “debates”—the slim distance between the only two participants allowed on the floor makes for a very narrow discussion. Allowing any candidate who has enough ballot access to theoretically win the presidency would change the debates from a predictable snoozefest to being something worth watching.

The CPD “debates” were designed to only allow in the Democratic and Republican nominees. Under the CPD’s leadership the candidates never face questions outside the range of allowable debate:

• pro-war—whom shall we bomb or invade instead of whether we go to war; if you’re poor and your children are headed to the military to try and get a government-funded college education, these two candidates are asking you where you want your children to die: Iraq (McCain), Afghanistan (Obama), or Iran (McCain/Obama). If Obama gets his way, Pakistan may be on the list as well.
• anti-universal single-payer health insurance—McCain’s comment in the first CPD “debate” (“I want to make sure we’re not handing the health care system over to the federal government which is basically what would ultimately happen with Senator Obama’s health care plan.”) was intended to be a dig at Obama but it fell flat because Obama is just as much against single-payer universal health insurance as McCain. This despite recent CBS and CNN polls that 60-64% of Americans want “guarantee[d] health insurance for all”.
• pro-corporate bailout—neither candidate needs to explain clearly why it’s the American public’s job to take on the loans the lending institutions don’t want to carry, nor any clear guarantee of responsibilities should we bail them out. Instead viewers get more talk along the lines of how quickly we must engage what is called the “rescue” legislation. Should this not work, will the Democrats come to the corporation’s rescue again and call off any talk of investigation or trial like they rescued Pres. G. W. Bush by taking impeachment “off the table”?
• Expressing outrage at Russia for an illegal invasion without acknowledging recent illegal American invasions.

I’m for placing the raw footage in the public domain but increased access to these recordings won’t address any of the more important life and death/big money issues above. And to Lessig’s second principle: it’s trivially easy for the CPD to game that system with shills who won’t ask questions outside the allowable range of debate. Other candidates in real debates would bring up issues and views that the corporate-funded candidates don’t want to answer and offer the American public better perspectives on important issues of the day.

Update (2008-10-12): Amy Goodman’s column focuses on this issue as well providing more background on the CPD (audio, transcript).

In healthcare news, a new study says job-based health insurance premiums have doubled in the last decade. The Kaiser Family Foundation says the increase far out-paces the accompanying rise in inflation over the same period.

Read the full report (PDF, local copy of PDF, HTML)

Keep that in mind when you hear the President tell us

The government’s top economic experts warn that without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold. More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically. And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession. Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen.

and corporatists from the Democrats and Republicans tell us the same.

What can we get now?

If we can bail out corporate leaders (despite no clear need to do so), we must do what the US public has wanted for decades: single-payer universal health care. It’s high time we either reject the corporate bailout or demand something in exchange for the corporate bailout. It’s a matter of political will.

We can also get accountability, something we’re not getting in regard to the illegal and unethical invasion and occupation of Iraq. Ralph Nader, who predicted this disaster years ago, told Democracy Now! today (high-quality audio, audio, video, transcript):

[...] the Democrats should say, if they’re going to concede this bailout, is to say, “Well, we want comprehensive regulation and disclosure of the financial industry to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We want criminal prosecution of the crooks on Wall Street and disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains. We want a securities derivative tax and higher margin requirements to make speculators use their money, more of their money than other people’s money, like worker pension funds, to keep down speculation, as well as to produce revenues, which might lighten the tax load on working families. And we want to give shareholders control over the corporations they own.”

And they’re not even talking about these kinds of reforms. And this is the best time to get these reforms, because this is called a must bill on Congress—in Congress, and if Bush wants his package, he’s going to have to sign them. So, there’s no reciprocity here. It’s the usual fairly good questions by the Democrats at the hearings, but because they don’t follow through, they don’t have adequate leadership, it becomes a kind of posturing. It’s just maddening to watch how vague Bernanke and Paulson are in answering one question after another. It’s just an evasion, where they keep saying, “We need to do it. We need to do it.” And their Chicken Little material is conducted in closed session with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Republican leadership. It’s always in closed session.

“Nader Rips Mae and Mac,” declared the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal on June 16, 2000. “Ralph Nader, warning of a potential taxpayer bailout similar to the savings and loan crisis, urged lawmakers to cut government benefits to mortgage-market giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which he called ‘poster children for corporate welfare.’”

This year Nader, who is also running for president as an independent, is getting credit for his prescience.

“Give one presidential candidate credit for identifying the problem and getting the policy right – and doing so before the twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into the tank in mid-July,” wrote Lou Dubose in The Washington Spectator on Aug. 1. Dubose went on to quote Nader’s June 15, 2000 Congressional testimony about HR 3703, a bill that would have reigned in some of the most dangerous tendencies of GSE’s, had it passed.

Yow.

Be sure to read Nader’s “10-point plan to cool off the financial markets meltdown”

1. No bailouts without conditions and reciprocity in the form of stock warrants.
2. No more lobbying for any company that is bailed out.
3. No golden parachutes and get out of jail free cards for guilty executives.
4. No bailouts without public hearings.
5. Reduce the moral hazard in U.S. mortgage markets by introducing covered bonds for the majority of mortgage products as they do in Western Europe. That gives institutions that finance mortgages an incentive to be prudent, because they cannot just unload them and wipe their hands clean of the liability, but are instead on the hook if the homeowner defaults.
6. Maintain neighborhood stability and housing security by passing a law with a sunset clause allowing below median-value homeowners facing foreclosure the right to rent-to-own their homes at fair market value rates.
7. Avoid future housing bubbles by removing implicit government guarantees for new mortgages that exceed thresholds of greater than 15-20 times the annual fair market rent value of the home.
8. Make the Federal Reserve a Cabinet Position, so it is accountable to Congress, as well as making sure all Federal Reserve Bank presidents are appointed by the President and answerable to congress.
9. Reduce conflicts of interest by taking away power for auditor and rating agency selection from companies and placing it in the hands of the SEC to be administered on random assignment.
10. Implement a securities speculation tax, starting with derivatives to deter casino-style capitalism.

I concur with Richard Curtis and “An Unreasonable Man“: nobody running for US President has the record Nader does benefiting the public and we need to hear from Nader on the mainstream televised debates. I think those debates should include any US presidential candidate that is on enough ballots to theoretically win enough electoral votes to win the presidency.