{news} Nader endorses Harold Burbank for Congress

[David Bedell]

http://www.thecornerreport.com/index.php?title=nader_channels_eugene_debs_gains_support
[some typos corrected]

Nader channels Eugene Debs; gains support; endorses Burbank for Connecticut'
s 5th Congressional District
English (US)  September 1st, 2008 by admin ( Email )

By Gale Courey Toensing

SHERMAN, Conn. - When people ask presidential candidate Ralph Nader what he
wants to achieve, he has a simple answer: A better world, he says.

"I simply start with what we all hope to achieve -clean elections, universal
heath care, and a living wage - the modest first stage improvements for a
civilized, caring society," Nader told a group of several dozen people at a
private house party on Sunday.

Not many people would disagree with those goals or with Nader's battle to
take back the country from the multinational corporations that now control
the government, or the dozen or more put-people-first issues that he and his
vice presidential running mate Matt Gonzalez have put "on the table" on
their website http://www.votenader.org , Nader said.

A visit to the website details Nader and Gonzalez's platform, but also
provides a reminder of the remarkable list of achievements Nader has gained
as a citizen activist for more than four decades. He was responsible for
safety belts in cars, the creation of the Freedom of Information Act, the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Safe
Drinking Water Act, and more. He founded or helped start more than 100
public interest groups that help improve safety and the quality of life for
all Americans.

"Ralph Nader has saved more lives than anyone else in America," one
supporter said.

The party had two objectives: to raise funds for Nader's presidential
campaign and to announce his support for Harold Burbank II, the Green Party
candidate who is running for Congress in the state's 5th District against
first term Democratic incumbent Chris Murphy, and his Republican challenger
David Cappiello, a state senator from Danbury.


Harold Burbank II is challenging first term Democratic incumbent Christ
Murphy for the 5th District congressional seat.

Burbank, a civil rights attorney, introduced both himself and Nader to the
gathering. The two men's friendship goes back several years. Burbank
volunteered his legal services to Nader's 2004 presidential campaign.

Burbank has worked in the peace and justice movement for 30 years. During
that time he worked in the public sector, including the attorney general's
office, and has never worked for a corporation. Among the issues Burbank
supports are universal health care, full employment with a living wage and
job protection, and ending the war in Iraq and U.S. imperialism.

He calls for the impeachment of President George Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney for war crimes.

"No one is above the law, especially for war crimes under international
treaties such as the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg Charter,
which make war crimes the ultimate crimes against humanity," Burbank said.
More information about Burbank and his positions is available at his website
at http://www.newmenu.org/haroldburbank

Burbank is the only candidate for Congress that Nader has ever supported
during his long career as an advocate for public safety, the environment and
honest government.

Nader launched his fifth bid for president last February. So far, he has
qualified for the ballot in 45 states, plus the District of Columbia without
having filed a single ballot access lawsuit. This year, Nader has exceeded
his "personal best." which occurred in 2000 when he was on the ballot in 43
states and D.C.

Relaxed and informal, Nader spoke extemporaneously to the group and held a
question and answer period afterward.

This is the first time in the history of the country that a minority party
actually represented the majority opinion of the people, Nader observed.

The public's "discomfort" level is reflected in the current polls: 81
percent of Americans polled think the country is going in the wrong
direction; 75 percent think corporations have too much control over our
lives; and 61 percent think the two major parties are failing.

Historically, most third parties espouse issues that are supported by a
minority and later picked up by one of the major parties, such as the 19th
century anti-slavery and pro-women's rights movements.

"So, were coming in on a bizarre situation where we now are the dissenters
and our positions are supported by the majority," Nader said.

But people have bought into the two major party system and the likelihood -
or certainty - that one of its candidates will win - and that's why they
keep voting for them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"This always upsets me because the 60th seat at Wimbledon has a shot at
center court; the 60th seat at the NCAA has a shot for the final four, but
the third seat in the presidential candidacy is considered tilting at
windmills," Nader said.

The major parties understand "intuitively" that the system itself is
"monumentally obstructive," locking out challengers through a variety of
questionable methods, including harassing petitions and getting petition
signatures for specious reasons.

That's why one of Nader's top priorities is to open up the elections process
and the presidential debates. The first step is to get rid of all special
interest funding and have public funding of elections, an initiative that
the two parties claim to support, but they never actually implement, Nader
said.

It's all about civil liberties, Nader said.

"Let's face it, people who are well to do can live in a world of their own
that's pretty comfortable and they have a lot of personal freedom, but along
with tens of millions of other Americans, they don't have civic freedom,"
Nader said.

He quoted Cicero, who said, "Freedom is participating in power."

"That's a fantastic definition of freedom," Nader said. Civic freedom is
having a say in whether the country goes to war or not, how taxpayer dollars
are used, and whether everyone is going to have health insurance, he said.

People often ask Nader why he doesn't try to achieve his goals outside of
the electoral system.

"Because for 20 years ever since the Democrats started dialing big time for
corporate dollars, they've shut the door on solutions and we can't get
anything done. We can't get congressional hearings; we can't get regulatory
agencies to respond to our petitions," Nader said.

Perhaps one of the most cogent questions Nader posed - and answered - was
"When was the last time we solved a major problem? We couldn't even clean up
and help people after Katrina and it's because of the paralyzed government.
The government has been hijacked by big corporations whether it's the
Defense Department or the Treasury. So you try to bring young people into
the electoral area, try to mobilize new energies and you push the system so
its fangs come out when you challenge it and you force people to look at
themselves in the mirror and ask themselves how do they continue to succumb
to a two party duopoly that makes them vote against people they believe in
and for people they don't believe in," Nader said.

He quoted labor leader Eugene Debs, an American labor leader in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, who was one of the founding members of the
International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

More than 100 years ago, Debs said, "It's better to vote for someone you
believe in and lose than vote for someone you don't believe in and win
because that someone's going to betray you."

Nader stressed the importance of bringing young people into the process. "If
you don't do that the future is pretty clear: Things are going to get worse
and the concentration of power gets worse."

He rolled out the statistics:
--100 million poor people "and the Democrats never mention the poor, only
the middle class, which is shrinking";
-- 47 million people who make $10 an hour or less before deductions. "You
can't live on that," Nader said.
--50 million people without health insurance
--50 million who are underinsured
--18,000 people dying each year because they cannot afford health care
--58,000 people dying because of work-related diseases
--65,000 people dying because of air pollution.

"At the end of his career, Eugene Debs was asked by a reporter around 1920 -
and, by the way, he ran for president five times so I have an affinity for
him - 'What's your greatest regret?' And he said, 'My greatest regret is
that under our Constitution Americans can have almost anything they want,
but it just seems like they don't want much of anything at all,'" Nader
said.

Americans' expectations -- or demands - of their government are the worst in
the western developed world, Nader said.

He pointed out that, at the end of World War II when Europe was in rubble
and America was the most powerful country in the world, Europeans through
their social democratic governments, trade unions, associations and other
non-governmental organizations demanded -- and got - universal health care,
decent pensions, living wages, efficient public transportation systems, four
weeks or more of paid vacations, day care, paid maternity leave, paid family
sick leave, and universal free tuition to universities.

"We don't have any of that here today, 63 years later," Nader said.
People are faced with two choices, Nader said.

"We can sort of give up on ourselves and live in our comfortable personal
lives and accumulate our estates or we can elevate our own self respect and
develop a determination to turn things around. And I have no doubt that they
can be turned around. There are a lot of good people in this country. They'
ve just got to get to know each other civically, not just socially," Nader
said.

He estimated that the political system and agenda could be turned around by
about one million people organized into congressional watch dog groups,
2,000 per district with two full time staff to bring the first stages of
improvement to the collective life in America.

"It's not all that much. I'm told there are 10 million bird watchers in our
country," Nader said.