{news} Nader's details on drug war views

[Clifford Thornton]

To: 'alliance reform orgs'<mailto:aro at drugsense.org> 
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 11:58 AM
Subject: ARO: Nader's details on drug war views


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Cliff asked yesterday "where's the beef" when Nader said he opposed the drug
war -- below is the beef!
 
KZ
 

Nader Calls For Crackdown on Corporate Crime, Reversal of So-Called War on
Drugs

Friday, August 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 AM 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                       
Contact: Toby Heaps,                202-471-5833        

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8--At a news conference today Presidential Candidate Ralph
Nader outlined his plan to empty prisons of non-violent drug offenders and
fill them up with corporate criminals. 

"Non-violent drug offenses are being over prosecuted and corporate crime is
being under prosecuted," Nader said. "The Justice Department must begin to
reverse course, crank up the crackdown on corporate crime, and end the cruel
and inhumane war on non-violent drug possession."

"The criminal justice system is broken--so badly that one hardly knows where
to begin describing the breakdown," Nader said. "Let's start with the war on
drugs, since commentators across the political spectrum recognize its
lunacy. We pour almost endless resources--roughly $50 billion every
year--into catching, trying, and incarcerating people who primarily harm
themselves. This insane war on drugs damages communities and drains crucial
resources from the police, courts, and prisons. These resources could be
better used to combat serious street and corporate crime that directly
violates the public's liberty, health, safety, trust, and financial
well-being. As with alcoholics and nicotine addicts, the approach to drug
addicts should be rehabilitation, not incarceration."

"The current drug policy has consumed tens of billions of dollars and
wrecked countless lives," Nader said. "The costs of this policy include the
increasing breakdown of families and neighborhoods, endangerment of
children, widespread violation of civil liberties, escalating rates of
incarceration, political corruption, and the imposition of United States
policy abroad. In practice, the drug war disproportionately targets people
of color and people who are poverty-stricken. Coercive measures have not
reduced drug use, but they have clogged our criminal justice system with
non-violent offenders. It is time to explore alternative approaches and to
end this costly war."

In 2004, Ralph Nader wrote President Bush urging that he grant clemency to
30,000 non-violent drug offenders. Nader's letter highlighted the
three-decade-long failed, and unjust, drug war. His call for clemency
highlighted a similar request made by 400 clergy members to President Bill
Clinton in 2000.

Nader's letter recalled President Bush's substance abuse problems and noted
that if Bush had been incarcerated for cocaine use he "probably would not
have gone on to have the career you have had." 

The letter also highlighted the rapid expansion of the prison system in the
United States which now houses more than 2.1 million people--one-quarter of
the world's prison population. 

Clemency for non-violent drug offenders would save billions of dollars
annually.

"It is urgent that the U.S. reverse the incarceration binge. The U.S.
Department of Justice estimates that if incarceration rates remain unchanged
an estimated one of every 20 Americans and greater than one in four African
Americans can be expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime,"
Nader said. "It is time to make the failed war on drugs a central issue in
the American political dialogue. For too long we have let this injustice
continue to grow unhindered. Taking action on clemency at the federal level
will set an example for the states and begin the process of reversing this
failed policy."

The Nader/Gonzalez campaign also calls for an immediate end to the criminal
prosecution of patients for medical marijuana.

"The current cruel, unjust policy perpetuated and enforced by the Bush
Administration prevents Americans who suffer from debilitating illnesses
from experiencing the relief of medicinal cannabis," Nader said. "While
substantial scientific and anecdotal evidence exists to validate marijuana's
usefulness in treating disease, a deluge of rhetoric from Washington claims
that marijuana has no medicinal value."

At the same time, the Nader/Gonzalez campaign supports industrial hemp as a
renewable resource with many important fuel, fiber, food, paper, energy and
other uses. 

Industrial hemp is a commercial crop grown for its seed and fiber and the
products made from them. Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest
fibers in the plant kingdom, and it has had thousands of uses over the
centuries. 

"In need of alternative crops and aware of the growing market for industrial
hemp--particularly for bio-composite products such as automobile parts,
farmers in the United States are forced to watch from the sidelines while
Canadian, French and Chinese farmers grow the crop and American
manufacturers import it from them," Nader said.

Federal legislators--except for Congressman Ron Paul and a few
others--continue to ignore the issue of removing it from the DEA list. It is
time to allow hemp agriculture, production and manufacturing in the United
States.

Nader would shift the billions saved from the war on drugs to a war on
corporate crime.

Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens
of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of
Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred
violence.

>From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and
financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and
occupational homicide, corporate crime enforcement is widely ignored by
politicians--yet acutely felt by all Americans.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery--street
crimes--costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds--Tyco, Adelphia,
Worldcom, Enron--swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries
combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.

The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year.

Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from
occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of
thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of
pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital
malpractice.

These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are
rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws.

Prosecutors, defense attorneys and other criminal justice experts concur
that corporate crime is under prosecuted.

The decline of criminal prosecution of cartel enforcement is exemplary of
the demise of corporate crime enforcement as a whole.

A recent report from the American Antitrust Institute found that the number
of criminal cartel cases brought by the Division has dropped 49 percent from
1995-99 to 2004-06.

And the number of corporations charged annually dropped continuously from
1995 to 2007.

"There now is a significant and growing backlog of criminal investigations
and unresolved matters," the report found.

Part of the problem lies with the fact that the Antitrust Division is
underfunded and understaffed.

The report calls for a doubling of the Antitrust Division's budget.

Nader/Gonzalez would crack down on corporate crime and violence with a
12-point program:

1.    Increase Corporate Crime Prosecution Budgets: The Department of
Justice's corporate crime division and the Securities and Exchange
Commission have been chronically and pitifully underfunded and therefore do
not have sufficient resources to combat the massive often reported corporate
crime wave in the United States. This results in inadequate investigation,
settlement of cases for weak fines and ignoring many corporate crime
violators completely. There needs to be a strong corporate law-and-order
will in the White House.

2.    Ban Corporate Criminals from Government Contracts: The US should enact
a tough, serious debarment statute that would deny federal business to
serious and/or repeat corporate lawbreakers. The federal government spends
$265 billion annually on goods and services. These contracts should not
support corporate criminals. These standards should also apply to
procurement contracts in Iraq.

3.    Crack Down on Corporate Tax Avoidance: The US should punish corporate
tax escapees by closing the offshore reincorporation loophole and banning
government contracts and subsidies for companies that relocate their
headquarters to an offshore tax haven. The IRS should be given more power
and more budgetary resources to go after corporate tax avoiders.
Publicly-traded corporations should be required to make their tax returns
public.

4.    Democratize Corporate Governance: Shareholders should be granted the
right to democratically nominate and elect the corporate board of directors
by opening up proxy access to minority shareholders and introducing
cumulative voting and competitive elections. Shareholders should be given
the power to approve all major business decisions, including top executive
compensation. Shareholders should be treated as the owners of the
corporation--since, in fact, that is what they are.

5.    Expand Corporate Disclosure: Corporate sunshine laws should be enacted
that require corporations to provide better information about their records
on the environment, human rights, worker safety, and taxes, as well as their
criminal and civil litigation records.

6.    Rein in Excessive Executive Pay: Shareholder authorization should be
required for top executive compensation packages at each annual shareholder
meeting. Stock options, which now account for about half of the executive
compensation, should be counted on financial statements as an expense (which
they are). Tax deductions for compensation 25 times above the compensation
received by the lowest paid worker in a corporation should be eliminated, as
recommended by the famous business guru Peter Drucker. Insiders like Warren
Buffett say excessive corporate executive pay is associated with inflated
profits and other accounting deceptions.

7.    Fix the Pension System: Corporations must be held more responsible for
the retirement security of their employees. At a minimum we need to give
workers a voice on the pension board; not require workers to stuff their
401(k) plans with company stock; and give workers the right to control their
401(k) plans. In addition, an Office of Participant Advocacy should be
created in the Department of Labor to monitor pension plans.

8.    Restore the Rights of Defrauded Investors: Repeal the self-styled
securities reform laws that block defrauded investors from seeking private
restitution, such as the private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995,
which allowed the aiders and abettors of massive corporate crime (e.g.,
accountants, lawyers, and bankers) to escape civil liability.

9.    Regulate Derivatives Trading: All over-the-counter financial
instruments, including derivatives, should be subjected to the same or
equivalent audit and reporting requirements as other financial instruments
traded on stock exchanges. Rules should be enacted regarding
collateral-margin, reporting and dealer licensing in order to maintain
regulatory parity and ensure that markets are transparent and problems can
be detected before they become a crisis.

10.    End Conflicts of Interest on Wall Street: Enact structural reforms
that separate commercial and investment banking services and prevent other
costly, documented conflicts of interest among financial entities, such as
those that have dominated big banks and security firms in recent years. 

11.    Track the Extent and Cost of Corporate Crime: The Department of
Justice should establish an online corporate crime database. Also, just as
the FBI issues an annual street crime report, "Crime in the United States,"
it should also publish an annual report on corporate and white collar crime
with recommendations.

12.    Foster a National Discussion on Corporate Power: Establish a
Congressional Commission on Corporate Power to explore various legal and
economic proposals that would rein in unaccountable giant corporations. The
Commission should seek ways to improve upon the current state corporate
chartering system in a world of global corporations and propose ways to
correct the inequitable legal status of corporations as "persons." The
Commission would be led by congressionally-appointed experts on corporate
and constitutional law, and should hold citizen hearings in at least ten
cities followed by a public report and recommendations.

In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a message to Congress
calling for a similar inquiry--The Temporary National Economic
Commission--said that a government controlled by private economic power "is
fascism."

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