From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: Ralph Nader: Plutocracy and the Citizen Agenda for '92 and beyond
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Summary: growing up corporate, we never think of what we own/is the commonwealth
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: the plutocracy continues to take more and more control of what we own
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 17:40:30 GMT


   Ralph Nader spoke to students at Harvard Law School on January 15th about 
   the continuing concentration of plutocratic power being exercised in the 
   United States.  Corporate crime, corporate socialism at the expense of the
   taxpayer.  Why is this issue never addressed in Presidential campaigns?
   At least read the following excerpts, taken from the speech starting 109 
   lines below this one, for a perceptive analysis of what is happening in 
   this country AND ways to address it.                            --ratitor


	. . . "plutocratic power" . . .  is really the singular index of 
     what has been going on, decade after decade, in this country.
        . . . those people who have civic power accorded them--freedom to 
     vote, freedom to speech--if they do not *use* the authority that they 
     are empowered to use in a constant, daily, diverse manner, power tends 
     to concentrate itself and before you know it, you have a plutocracy 
     that uses the symbols of government, and the symbols of democracy, to 
     regale itself and to achieve legitimacy.
        Now, the avaricious triumph and spreading tragedy of corporatism
     *should* be the singular, most important issue in the presidential
     campaign.  Part of it is an issue in the presidential campaign, but
     only in an oblique manner. . . .  
        Now this is why I am standing in in New Hampshire for a write-in
     vote for "None Of The Above."  I am up in New Hampshire saying to
     people, after the groundwork is laid, "I am `None Of The Above.'  And
     I'm not running for president."  This is initially confusing.  But
     later on it becomes invigorating.  Because when people have a "None
     of the above" option, and, presumably, giving visibility to a write-
     in for "None Of The Above" will lead states to pass laws putting
     "None Of The Above," formally, or a No-Vote, on the ballot.  That's
     what they have now in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we should
     not be too far behind--or in Russia, the Ukraine.
        When there is a "None Of The Above," then the No-Vote congeals.
     It's quantifiable.  It can be discussed.  It can have substance lent
     to it by those who prefer that option.  It also is a silent third
     party.  Because the candidates will not only have to look at each
     other when they campaign, they will have to risk the ultimate
     humiliation of being defeated by "None Of The Above."
        Furthermore a "None Of The Above" which is binding means that if
     "None Of The Above" gets more votes than any of the candidates on the
     ballot, it cancels the election and the candidates, and a new
     election is ordered--with new candidates.  This might have happened
     in Louisiana a few weeks ago.
        Now it's not likely that "None Of The Above" will too frequently
     win, because there will be a reaction to it in anticipation of a
     possible win by the candidates to broaden out their message and how 
     they interact with the public.  If they don't, more people will vote
     for "None Of The Above."  Remember please that half the people do not
     vote in a presidential election, and sixty percent of the eligible
     voters do not vote in congressional elections.  So there's a big
     constituency out there who for a variety of reasons--and it is a
     *variety* of reasons--choose not to participate in the electoral
     process. . . .
        When we're talking about plutocracy, what are we talking about?
     Here's an example of plutocracy:  corporate socialism.  That is,
     corporations who get in trouble if they're important enough or big
     enough, do not go bankrupt, they go to Washington.  They are then
     subject to a process known as corporate welfare--entitlements--where
     their bankruptcy, mismanagement, speculation or corporate crime
     generates losses which are socialized on the backs of the taxpayer.
        This corporate socialism and corporate welfare is booming.  In
     fact most of what Washington does is conduct a bazaar of "Accounts
     Receivables" for corporate requestors.  There are dozens and dozens
     of corporate welfare projects that we can conveniently call "aid to
     dependent corporations."  Now look what this does.
        First of all it reduces corporations incentive to work,
     productively.  Because they know they're going to be bailed out.
     They know that there are a certain number of banks in this country
     which are too big to fail and the federal reserve had them on the
     list:  Citicorp, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guarantee,
     Chemical, etc.  In other words, they were too critical to avoiding a
     domino affect and they would be bailed out. . . .
        I mentioned plutocratic power versus democratic power . . . 
     plutocratic power exercises its will on us everyday. . . .  The 
     plutocracy takes control of what we own. . . .  Look at what we own:  
     we own, as a commonwealth, the public airwaves, the public lands, three
     trillion dollars of public and private pension money, a trillion 
     dollars of savings, a half a trillion dollars at least of mutual 
     insurance monies--all these we technically, legally own.  Some as a 
     commonwealth, some as *pooled* assets.  Can you imagine how our 
     political economy would be different, how our standards of living 
     would be different, if we *controlled* what we legally owned?  And that
     is *never* discussed in any political campaign that I have been aware 
     of in the last several decades.  Can you imagine anything more 
     fundamental to discuss than the incidence of popular and commonwealth 
     ownership of assets?
        Here's how it goes:  we grow up corporate.  By growing up
     corporate, we never even *think* of what we own.  We never even
     *think* of what is the commonwealth.  We are told to "go for it"
     individually and make a pile of money.  And because we're growing up
     corporate, our minds are anesthetized so they can be controlled by
     the corporate ethos. . . .
        The unaccountability of government has become a complex and
     little-studied phenomena except a public grunt here and there.  The
     unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very
     use of the law is the instrument of illegality.  The very use of the
     law is the instrument of illegality.  The color of the law.  And it
     has become so intricate, and so broad-based, that law schools don't
     even study it:  government lawlessness.  Not just Watergate.
        . . . democracy is like a tree--branches, twigs, fruit, trunk, root.
     The people are the root and the trunk, the elected officials are the 
     branches and twigs.  If the root and the trunk do not provide the 
     nutrients, the branches and the twigs become very brittle and don't 
     produce fruit.  I've spent all these years working at the root and the 
     trunk, and I'm not at *all* persuaded that the root and the trunk is 
     sending enough nutrients for *any*body to aspire to become a branch or
     a twig.

  ___________________________________________________________________________
                          The Citizen Agenda for '92
                           Disolving the Plutocracy

         Ralph Nader speaking @ Harvard Law School, January 15, 1992


        Thank you very much Ross, ladies and gentlemen--it's nice to be
     here at the Arco Forum.  Was Arco a professor here?  A revered
     professor?  With this rampant commercialism now that buildings on
     campuses around the country are named for the corporations who fund
     them.  They used to be named for deans and professors who performed
     in a distinguished manner in the past.  But I can see by the
     architecture that it does reflect the cold-blooded nature of that
     corporation.  Those of you who are somewhere way up there please
     forgive me, I couldn't see you if I tried because of the lights.  But
     I hope the acoustics will reach you.
        My discussion this evening is not a conventional one.  It will
     border, to some of the uninitiated, on tedium because it involves
     important and fundamental redistribution of power through
     constitutional, statutory, regulatory, and other changes in our
     society.  This is what politics should be all about.  Politics should
     address the questions of the proper distribution, balance of power,
     between the various roles that people play in a democracy as voters,
     taxpayers, consumers, workers, as people in political office,
     elected, people appointed in the formal decision-making forums of the
     judiciary, executive, legislative branches, in the trade union and
     non-trade union areas, in the business areas and other sources of
     activity and impact on the society.
        Now, I suppose the best way to describe what I'm going to talk
     about is first of all to use the phrase "plutocratic power."  That is
     really the singular index of what has been going on, decade after
     decade, in this country.  Formerly we are a republic--operationally
     we like to talk about our being a democracy.  There are deep
     democracies and thin democracies around the world.  There are
     societies that call themselves democracies because their constitution
     reads that way but everything else reads dictatorship or
     authoritarianism.  There are other countries that have democratic
     roots, and custom, and tradition, rather than constitutional
     enablements and prescriptions.  Britain has displayed the fragility
     of that foundation under the Thatcher regime.  And there are
     countries that have their foundations in more written fashion,
     elaborated hundreds of times through judicial interpretation, and
     that's our country.
        But, what happens of course is that those people who have civic
     power accorded them--freedom to vote, freedom to speech--if they do
     not *use* the authority that they are empowered to use in a constant,
     daily, diverse manner, power tends to concentrate itself and before
     you know it, you have a plutocracy that uses the symbols of
     government, and the symbols of democracy, to regale itself and to
     achieve legitimacy.
        Now, the avaricious triumph and spreading tragedy of corporatism
     *should* be the singular, most important issue in the presidential
     campaign.  Part of it is an issue in the presidential campaign, but
     only in an oblique manner.  For example, national health insurance is
     now being discussed.  It was not discussed in '88 to any appreciable
     degree;  it was not discussed in '84;  it was not discussed in '80,
     or '76, or '72--yet, tens of millions of people in those years,
     including millions of children, had no health insurance.  And of
     course there are other adverse effects of the euphemistically called
     "health care" or "health provider industry," on them.
        In contrast, years ago, energy was the big issue in the
     presidential campaign in 1976, 1980, and now we hear very little
     about energy, in terms fossils, nuclear, efficiency, renewables,
     geo-political conflicts, pollution, impact on the consumer budget,
     etc.
        So what is the characterization of the presidential campaign
     anyway?  Is it the novelty of the quadrenial period?  Is it whatever
     the candidates think will play in Peoria?  Is it the limited range of
     the candidate's backgrounds?  Is it what conflicts with their
     campaign contributors priorities?  What really determines it?  You'll
     notice I haven't raised the most important determinant, which should
     be what the citizens instruct them, urge them, to talk about.
        Now the reason of course, is that the citizens are not at a level
     of expectation that is in accord with their true significance and
     participating in a democracy.  They have very low expectations.
     Their expectations now, under the conditioned response of the dozens
     ever-decreasingly significant campaigns, their expectation is one of
     a bystander.  Basically they watch the ads, they listen to speeches
     and the slogans, And, if they care to, they will go to the polls.
     And if they don't care to, because they can't can't conceive that
     their single vote has any significance, or they adhere to the
     philosophy of "que sera sera," or they don't like any of the
     candidates, whom they regard as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  They stay
     home, is the option--the only option--is stay home, don't vote.  Of
     course, not voting exposes themselves to a characterization of being
     apathetic, democratic dropouts, lethargic, people who are resigned to
     futility.  And not voting has no electoral significance at all, in
     terms of congealing a point of view.
        Now this is why I am standing in in New Hampshire for a write-in
     vote for "None Of The Above."  I am up in New Hampshire saying to
     people, after the groundwork is laid, "I am `None Of The Above.'  And
     I'm not running for president."  This is initially confusing.  But
     later on it becomes invigorating.  Because when people have a "None
     of the above" option, and, presumably, giving visibility to a write-
     in for "None Of The Above" will lead states to pass laws putting
     "None Of The Above," formally, or a No-Vote, on the ballot.  That's
     what they have now in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we should
     not be too far behind, or in Russia, the Ukraine.
        When there is a "None Of The Above," then the No-Vote congeals.
     It's quantifiable.  It can be discussed.  It can have substance lent
     to it by those who prefer that option.  It also is a silent third
     party.  Because the candidates will not only have to look at each
     other when they campaign, they will have to risk the ultimate
     humiliation of being defeated by "None Of The Above."
        Furthermore a "None Of The Above" which is binding means that if
     "None Of The Above" gets more votes than any of the candidates on the
     ballot, it cancels the election and the candidates, and a new
     election is ordered--with new candidates.  This might have happened
     in Louisiana a few weeks ago.
        Now it's not likely that "None Of The Above" will too frequently
     win, because there will be a reaction to it in anticipation of a
     possible win by the candidates to broaden out their message and how
     they interact with the public.  If they don't, more people will vote
     for "None Of The Above."  Remember please that half the people do not
     vote in a presidential election, and sixty percent of the eligible
     voters do not vote in congressional elections.  So there's a big
     constituency out there who for a variety of reasons--and it is a
     *variety* of reasons--choose not to participate in the electoral
     process.
        I mentioned plutocratic power versus democratic power.  Now
     plutocratic power exercises its will on us everyday.  It's important
     to give a few examples because, when you're talking to students at
     Harvard University, you are talking to students who, unfortunately,
     develop intellectual rigor in an intellectual cage.  And they too
     often think they have it made by simply matriculating here in life,
     and too often they're right.  Too often it is the status, rather than
     the substance, that carries you leaping over other more meritorious
     competitors after you graduate.  Because we live in a society that
     gives Harvard University graduates the benefit of the doubt.  They
     even give Harvard Law School graduates the benefit of the doubt.
        It certainly helped me when I was challenging General Motors.
     People would say on Congressional committee, "Who is this fellow?
     Why is he attacking American capitalism?"  And some other one would
     say, "Hey you better listen.  He's a graduate of Harvard Law School."
     Now if I had graduated from Cumberland Law School I wouldn't have
     gotten very far at that congressional hearing.  So you want to use
     that asset as a source of humility rather than arrogance, so you can
     continue learning even after you've gotten your diploma, which people
     who blend uncertainty with self-confidence do the rest of their
     lives.  They do continue to learn.  And people who just are very
     self-confident tend not to learn after they finish their formal
     education.  They have year-after-year similar experiences that are
     ever more lucratively compensated for.
        Now if you were to have an exam over at Memorial Hall which asked
     you the following question as a government major, `Would you a please
     rank the fifty states in terms of their democratic quality (small
     `d') and their democratic product.  That is enablement and result.'
     And you wrote that you really don't know enough about fifty states,
     but you're going to establish the criteria for the quest.  How would
     you establish a ranking for Mississippi, Massachusetts, Oregon,
     Florida, on that scale of being less democratic and more democratic.
     Now I have never seen a single course in government in any university
     in the country that exercises the student's minds in that way.  I
     took government courses and I learned all about John Locke, and Mr.
     Hobbes, and the others, and sometimes it comes in handy.  It comes in
     handy.  For example it stimulated me to describe presidential
     campaigns as "shallow, narrow, redundant and frantic."  (Instead of
     "poor, nasty, brutish and short.")
        But somehow there's an empirical starvation that associates itself
     with political theory and commentary.  The latest rage on some
     campuses is Fucco.  Do you understand Fucco?  Disciplinary power,
     sovereignty power, other kinds of power.  I heard a lecture on it at
     Princeton recently.  It was a very logical lecture.  She did an
     excellent job of de-mystifying the occult.  But there weren't many
     empirical examples in the discussion.  And that's the problem.  There
     is a language of avoidance that afflicts politics and politicians.
     It's one thing that afflicts science advisory committees to the
     government.  It's one thing that afflicts faculty meetings.  But to
     afflict politics and politicians is really unforgivable.
        When we're talking about plutocracy, what are we talking about?
     Here's an example of plutocracy:  corporate socialism.  That is,
     corporations who get in trouble if they're important enough or big
     enough, do not go bankrupt, they go to Washington.  They are then
     subject to a process known as corporate welfare--entitlements--where
     their bankruptcy, mismanagement, speculation or corporate crime
     generates losses which are socialized on the backs of the taxpayer.
        This corporate socialism and corporate welfare is booming.  In
     fact most of what Washington does is conduct a bazaar of "Accounts
     Receivables" for corporate requestors.  There are dozens and dozens
     of corporate welfare projects that we can conveniently call "aid to
     dependent corporations."  Now look what this does.
        First of all it reduces corporations incentive to work,
     productively.  Because they know they're going to be bailed out.
     They know that there are a certain number of banks in this country
     which are too big to fail and the federal reserve had them on the
     list:  Citicorp, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guarantee,
     Chemical, etc.  In other words, they were too critical to avoiding a
     domino affect and they would be bailed out.
        Now the S&L's are a case in point.  The government, under pressure 
     by the banking industry, expanded the deposit insurance to $100,000 
     per account (in 1982).  It also allowed the S&L's to veer away from 
     their housing mortgage duties and invest money, with very little 
     criteria of accountability, in Equity Real Estate, which they read to 
     include, skyscrapers in Dallas and Houston, and in junk bonds and 
     other reckless investments--certainly from a traditional, prudent
     banking standpoint.  And because these deposits were guaranteed,
     speculators could take over a small S&L in Texas called Vernon
     Savings and Loan--boom!--it's deposits by offering higher interest,
     attracting brokered CD's from Merrill Lynch and Paine Weber and
     others, and then proceed to put these monies in speculative ventures.
        When they got in trouble, then of course they were subject to
     being rescued, in terms of the deposits, by the FDIC or FSLIC before
     it.  Notice, the sequence:  the people who have to pay for the
     bailout--the taxpayers--are largely middle class taxpayers.  Not a
     progressive tax, specially suited for the rich and the corporate, who
     participated, condoned and/or benefited from these capers and these
     excessive interest rates.  Yet the taxpayers are going to have to pay
     for it over thirty to forty years, it'll total with interest over a
     trillion dollars.  They did not cause it.  They weren't direct
     beneficiaries of it.  They were direct adverse recipients of the
     resultant collapse in unemployment, real estate, etc.  And they had
     no say.  See they had no say.  The executives of the banks--some of
     them were prosecuted, some of them got away, some of them will never
     be prosecuted even thought they're on the list.
        Notice however:  the taxpayers could not get any documents from
     the federal banking agencies--they were secret.  The House Banking
     Committee couldn't get many documents.  There was no standing to sue
     by taxpayers against this enormous requisition of taxpayer dollars
     over the next thirty, forty years.  They were basically shut out--
     they weren't part of a democracy.  They were supplicants subject to 
     the coercion of a plutocracy.  This happens all the time in 
     Washington.  Time and time again.
        Defense contracts for example.  Defense contracts are signed in
     great secrecy by Pentagon contract specialists and McDonnell-Douglas
     or General Dynamics.  Most of the important parts of these contracts
     are not public.  They are amended in a format know as the `golden
     handshake.'  Whenever they engage in cost overruns, or, excuse me the
     latest phrase is "cost growth."
        When the taxpayers through the Pentagon pays $450 for a $10 claw-
     hammer you can get at your hardware store, the vendor to the Pentagon
     describes it as a "uni-directional impact generator."  Well, when
     you're getting $450 you don't say "a claw hammer."  You call it a
     "uni-directional impact generator."
        This goes on, and it continues to go on, and it transcends
     exposure.  Now when an abuse transcends high-level, relentless
     exposure, and still continues, you know how entrenched the plutocracy
     really is.
        1986 tax reform law, so-to-speak, small paragraph, which nobody
     really understood what it meant because nobody read it.  Hundreds of
     pages in this tax bill.  It was put in by a senator from the midwest
     to benefit John Deere equipment Company, which was in trouble at that
     time.  But it was written in a general enough fashion that the
     lawyers from General Motors and Ford spied on it, and within weeks
     took advantage of it to a level of two billion dollars.  The
     provision--the amendment--was discovered by the "Washington Post" six
     months after enactment of the law.  *Discovered* you see?  Even
     though its on print.  They are so esoteric, so abstruse, the cross-
     references are so intricate that probing newspapers can take months
     to discover this.
        Back in the '70s twelve billion dollars of deferred profits on
     exports by corporations such as Boeing and General Electric were
     forgiven in a one sweeping few lines in a large piece of legislation.
     No knowledge to the taxpayer.  No challenge by the taxpayer.  No
     standing.
        Energy bill--last year proposed by Senator Bennett Johnston and
     his republican counterpart--it was going to open up ANWR [(a portion
     of Northeastern Alaska's) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge --ratitor]
     in Alaska and it was going to speed up nuclear licensing by cutting
     out community participation, compressing the two stages of license
     and challenge.  But deep inside this *huge* piece of legislation, was
     a forgiveness of an eleven billion dollars debt by the utilities to
     the U.S. government for uranium enrichment services.
        You know:  eleven billion dollars here;  twelve billion dollars
     there.  As Dirksen once said, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
        Now let's look at contrast.  There's not enough contrast in public
     dialogue.  Let's look at the opposition by the Reagan-Bush
     administration to a seven hundred million dollar infant nutrition
     program, which was reducing infant mortality, which is a disgrace in
     this country, in 1981.  How about the few tens of millions of dollars
     to make sure that fundamental inoculation programs are available to
     infants in this country.  The inoculation incidence for childhood
     diseases among minority children in Washington, D.C., is lower than
     that which prevails in the country of Botswana.  It's at fifty-eight
     percent.  "Don't have the money."
        The agency that establishes standards to protect children's safety
     from household products is going at thirty-eight million dollars a
     year, and dropping.  This is for millions of children and all the
     appliances, and ways they can get burnt, and cut, and harmed, toxic
     and so on.
        The agency that establishes standards for motor vehicle safety
     does it, apart it from its highway safety wing, does it on less than
     forty million dollars.
        A B-2 bomber is running at 850 million dollars per bomber;  its
     radar evasiveness doesn't operate properly, and there's no longer any
     Soviet Union against which it was designed.  That is about what the
     very controversial childcare bill would have cost, per year.  Which
     finally got through congress, under great opposition, threats of
     veto, etc.  See?  That's the plutocracy.
        The plutocracy is agribusiness in California which makes *you* pay
     for *their* water, and then they make tons of money (great subsidy),
     they over-produce agricultural products--and therefore the price
     would go down except you also pay for the price supports--and what's
     left over is in warehouses which you also pay the rent for.  This
     excessive use of water where it shouldn't be used in a wasteful
     manner is increasing salinity and having other contrary environmental
     affects.
        Has that been on your mind lately?  It's just a few billion
     dollars a year.  It's O.K.  It's depleting the acquifer which took
     ten thousand years to fill up in south-central Nebraska, Oklahoma.
     These are profit-making corporations.  They call themselves farmers,
     they're agribusiness.  Why aren't they paying the freight?  Maybe
     they wouldn't waste as much water.  Maybe certain crops wouldn't be
     in over-supply rotting in warehouses.  Or taking a portion of the
     twenty-seven billion dollars in price supports, very few of which go
     to small farmers, under a federal agriculture policy that's driving
     small farmers over the cliff and into oblivion.  Think about that
     lately?
        What's the small talk on campus at Harvard these days?  Does it
     relate to matters above the belt, or below the belt?  What do you
     talk about?  What do the law school students say?  Do you hear them
     talk about corporate crime?  Saying what they should do about it,
     taking stands, doing research?  Or are they talking about "fly outs"
     to law firms where they're wined and dined and considered for
     partnerships preceded by six years of associateship?
        Plutocracy conditions the distribution of resources.  Poverty is
     higher today than it was in 1960.  Children's poverty in many ways is
     even more dire.  We have crack babies now.  That didn't occur in
     1960.  Did you ever see a two-and-a-half pound little infant born of
     a crack-addicted mother?  Go to some of the hospitals and take a
     look.
        We have chronic unemployment.  We have unemployment statistics
     that don't count people that stop looking for work after a few
     months.  We have more homelessness.  Housing is at atrocious levels
     in this country because "the single room," that used to be place that
     poor people and individuals lived, is at a minimum these days.
     Gentrification, condominiums, higher rents, out into the streets they
     go.  Two thousand children are homeless in the greater Washington
     area who have to go to school every day.  That's George Bush's home
     town.  Excuse me, technically, Houston is his home town.  But where
     he lives, a lot of the time, is in Washington.  And within view of
     the White House, you see a level of poverty and misery that can only
     be called "third world" 1960 imagery and content.
        The plutocracy takes control of what we own.  This must be a hot
     topic and the Kennedy school.  Look at what we own:  we own, as a
     commonwealth, the public airwaves, the public lands, three trillion
     dollars of public and private pension money, a trillion dollars of
     savings, a half a trillion dollars at least of mutual insurance
     monies--all these we technically, legally own.  Some as a
     commonwealth, some as *pooled* assets.  Can you imagine how our
     political economy would be different, how our standards of living
     would be different, if we *controlled* what we legally owned?  And
     that is *never* discussed in any political campaign that I have been
     aware of in the last several decades.  Can you imagine anything more
     fundamental to discuss than the incidence of popular and commonwealth
     ownership of assets?
        Here's how it goes:  we grow up corporate.  By growing up
     corporate, we never even *think* of what we own.  We never even
     *think* of what is the commonwealth.  We are told to "go for it"
     individually and make a pile of money.  And because we're growing up
     corporate, our minds are anesthetized so they can be controlled by
     the corporate ethos.  Such a thesis is so easily proven that it's not
     worth spending much time on other than to give one example:  who is
     raising our children today?  Ask parents who's raising the children.
     Children are raised by those environments in which they spend most of
     their time.
        Children today spend less time with adults, including their
     parents, than any children in *history*.  They are spending, pre-
     teen, thirty-five hours a week on the average, watching TV, video
     games, and in between, walkman audios.  So for thirty-five hours a
     week they are Pavlovian specimens.  They are not engaging in human
     conversation.  They are not interacting with their their siblings and
     their parents, except modest squabbles during ad time perhaps.  They
     are watching programs that convey basically three themes
     relentlessly.  Look at Saturday and Sunday morning TV if you doubt
     that.
        Theme one is violence is a solution to life's problems:  zapping,
     vaporizing, terminating.  Theme two is low-grade sensuality
     illustrated by junk food, turning their tongues against their brains.
     And getting them to nag their parents--which is the purpose of these
     ads and the accolades are given to the ad writers when these ads
     "have high nag factors"--to demand that food with high-fat, high-
     sugar, low-fiber, coloring, additives, etc., are purchased.  Hostess
     Twinkees, not apples.  For desert they ask to purchase Hubba Bubba.
     Tony the Tiger is the authority figure, not President Myier (sp?) of
     Tufts University, a world-renowned nutritionist.  Who knows Mr. Myier
     among the children of America?  It's Tony the Tiger.  It's Morris the
     cat.  And thirdly, they convey addiction.  Addiction comes in many
     forms--not just addiction to certain kinds of food additives, or
     addiction to drugs, or to alcohol, or to tobacco--it's behavioral
     addiction:  sitting there, letting their little minds rot in front of
     that television.
        That's whose raising the children.  War toys--five year old boys,
     cosmetic companys--seven year old girls, over medication--starting
     from almost day one.
        Mother's breast milk is now replaced by infant formula,
     compliments of the Nestle Company.  Nowhere near as good.  Kindercare
     is raising our kids more and more, McDonalds is feeding them more and
     more, and HBO-Time/Warner is entertaining them more and more.  Pretty
     soon parents will be obsolete . . . when they're around.
        Now when you grow up corporate like that do you develop a critical
     mind?  Do you develop a civic spirit?  Do you understand what
     community is?  Do you ever thirst for *feedback*?  For talking *back*
     to the TV set, in front of you.  Never occurs to people to even ask
     for an electronic Letters-to-the-Editor time on TV.
        And what is TV?  It's ninety percent entertainment--including
     ads--, ten percent redundant news, zero percent mobilization.  But it
     is our property.  We own the public airwaves.  That's federal law,
     approved by the Supreme Court of the United States.  We are the
     owners, we are the landlords.  The Federal Communications Commission
     is our real estate agent.  It licenses portions of the spectrum to
     corporate broadcasting TV and radio stations--they are the tenants.
     They pay nothing for the rent of a TV station.
        Some of the greatest fortunes in American history have been made
     by television and other electronic communication company executives-
     -tens of millions of dollars--using public property free of charge.
     The tenant pays the landlord nothing, decides who says what on radio
     and TV, and laughs all the way to the bank, and because we grow up
     corporate, we don't even *think* of challenging it because we never
     *heard* of it.  We never reflected on it.  Our courses never *talked*
     about it.  We never majored in it.  And therefore, we're
     anesthetized.  It's a controlling process.
        The challenge in our country, in getting democracy upgraded to
     override plutocracy, is not the challenge that is contained in
     Orwell's "1984," it's the challenge that is contained in Huxley's
     "Brave New World."
        Now, the plutocracy continues on.  The candidates talk about
     street crime--it's bad, it's really bad.  But they don't talk much
     about certain remedies.  Immediate ones and, shall we say, causative
     ones.  People who have work, decent housing, who have realistic
     opportunities, who have health, who have certain decent comforts, who
     have people who care about them--especially when they're children--
     are historically, less likely to commit street crime.
        Remedial ones are, there've never been more police--five out of
     seven of them are sitting behind desks, because patrolling is hard
     work--foot patrolling--being part of a neighborhood, *living* in a
     neighborhood, going to the neighborhood, and knowing the
     neighborhood.  That's hard work.  Much better to be back at the
     office in front of switchboards, computers, feet on the desk, or in
     patrol cars.  Zooming in when there's a crime, and zooming out quite
     as rapidly.  Leaving the terrified behind.
        Where did we ever see a campaign that focuses not just on crime in
     the streets, but on crime in the *suites?*  Corporate crime--at
     epidemic levels--read the "Wall Street Journal," apart from its
     editorial pages, and you'll get a does of it every day.  Corporate
     crime comes in many modes:  occupational diseases, illegal
     contamination of air, water and soil, bribery, and various forms of
     corruption.  Violations of all kinds of criminal laws.  And there is
     less money spent on enforcing the criminal laws in our country, at
     the federal state, and local level, than is spent in six months of
     catfood purchases in the United States.  Billion and a quarter
     dollars if you're interested in the figure.  Six months worth of
     catfood;  billion and a quarter dollars--not counting *gourmet*
     catfood.
        That is what the plutocracy wants.  They don't want the emphasis
     on corporate crime.  They don't want to develop new kinds of
     behavioral sanctions, deterrents.  They don't want the Attorney
     General to have a list of the ten most-wanted corporate criminals.
     They don't want any research done on corporate crime--go over here at
     Harvard and see how much research has been done in the last fifty
     years at the law school, on corporate crime.  Compared to street
     crime.  Look at the index to legal periodicals.  Look at the LEAA and
     the justice department.  Three or four, maybe a half-dozen reports on
     corporate crime.  Thank goodness for them.  Not much compared to its
     range.  And more people in this country are dying, being injured,
     being exposed to diseases, and being defrauded by corporate crime by
     *far* than street crime, bad as the latter is.
        Just think of the scandals--equity funding.  Twenty years ago when
     corporate crime scandals were modest, 250 million dollars there.
     Drysdale Securities was another 200 million.  That's twenty years
     ago.  Today they're running *billions* of dollars of swindles and
     fleeces.  And they're not just the hard-core boiler-room type of
     stock solicitation on the telephone.  You've read about a lot of
     them.
        So much for the plutocracy, we don't have time to really go into
     great detail.  There are books--a book called "Corporate Crime and
     Violence," by Russell Mochiver (sp?) (Sierra Club Books).  There's
     "The Corporate Crime Reporter," published by the same author *every
     week* out of Washington, D.C.  And there are other articles--not too
     many--but that give you a flavor.  I hope I have conveyed enough to
     indicate that we *do* grow up corporate.  We *do* grow up
     acculturated according to corporate parameters.  No matter how smart
     we may be.  No matter what scores we may get on the SAT or the
     Graduate Record Exams.
        What are our assets?  Well look at what we own, but don't control.
     Look at the redirection of investment, for sound employment at the
     community-level, for sound output that three trillion dollars in
     pension moneys can provide.  Not to mention *other* huge pools of
     money legally owned by people but controlled by banks and insurance
     companies.
        They took a trillion dollars of people's money to finance mergers
     and acquisitions in the 1980s in the United States of America,
     largely for empire-building--not for any rational reasons--largely
     for empire building, huge fees for investment bankers, huge
     emoluments for the corporate executives, ingoing, outgoing or
     staying.  And to top it off, these mergers and acquisitions often
     strip-mined the acquired company, and bellied it up, and they usually
     didn't create a single job or any wealth.  One trillion dollars,
     thank you very much.
        Any of the presidential candidates talking about that?  But that's
     an asset we can recover.  The public lands.  The taxpayer's assets
     are great assets.  People talk about taxes mostly in terms of rates.
     How about the *assets* they create?
        For example, government R&D is half of the R&D in the United
     States.  Half--science, engineering, medical.  Much of it is given
     away to private corporations, some of it under monopoly patents.  Who
     asked them to do that?  Our representatives.  To be sure, our
     appointees at National Institutes of Health.  AZT, clinically
     discovered for application against the AIDS disease by the National
     Institutes of Health--*your* doctors, *your* taxpayer scientists.  It
     was then given by Mr. Reagan's regime to the Burroughs-Welcome
     Corporation, a British firm, under a seventeen-year monopoly patent.
     They turned around and charged AIDS patients eight thousand dollars a
     year.  They're now down to maybe four or five thousand.  A third of
     AIDS patients couldn't pay--Medicaid paid, that means taxpayers paid.
     So the taxpayers paid for the discovery, they then witnessed its
     giveaway, they then witnessed its gouging price, and then they paid
     for the Medicaid.  That's a taxpayer asset.
        Information is a taxpayer asset.  *Huge* information databases in
     the government that can be used for civic purposes, for justice
     purposes, for consumer purposes.  They know which drugs work, which
     don't.  They know what the side-effects are.  Our health research
     group has to assemble them every few years and put them out in
     paperbacks.  A little tiny health research group--not the Food and
     Drug Administration, or the Health and Human Services Department.
     That's a taxpayer asset.  It's increasingly being privatized.  So
     that Mead Data and McGraw Hill and others, in the information
     industry, can resell it to industry, graduate students, etc., for
     prohibitive prices.  Increasingly graduate students are being
     confronted with twenty thousand dollar bills that they cannot pay to
     do their PhD. research with.
        Highways are taxpayers assets.  The plutocracy likes highways just
     the way they are,  They break down, crack open, a lot of potholes.
     But it's eight to nine inches of cement and asphalt.  There are
     better highways that can be built--six inches of cement, virtually
     maintenance free, the highways breath, they have a plastic sheet
     half-way in between so they breath in the summer and in the winter.
     They don't buckle and crack.  But it's less asphalt, less concrete,
     less maintenance and repair.  Who's controlling that taxpayer asset?
     Look at all the idling cars waiting in line while there are detours.
     Look at all the axles that are broken.  Look at the wear-and-tear,
     and the fuel waste.  Look at the asphalt which doesn't have . . .
     [tape goes blank here and then comes back in with:] . . . city office
     buildings would be considerably lower.  Reference for that?--one of
     the country's most brilliant physicists who's now working at Berkeley
     on energy conservation, professor Arthur Rosenfeld.  If you're
     doubtful, write him, and find out.
        We have a lot of assets.  A lot of assets that are not in the
     control of a broad spectrum of citizenry.  So what do we do?  We
     start taking control of presidential campaigns.  We don't let advance
     people, and photo opportunity specialists, and other campaign
     slicksters, completely shape the tempo, timing, content, locale, of
     presidential campaigns, leaving us with nothing but a passive,
     bystander role.  That's the purpose of the citizen's campaign in New
     Hampshire to which I recommend some of you might want to contemplate
     volunteering for.  A little card will be passed around, which
     indicates whether you want to help, where, etc.  Volunteer time and
     talent.  We want your talent and your time.  To do what?  To start
     putting up on the front agenda, the new democratic toolkit for the
     21st century.  We are operating with citizen rights and remedies that
     are anywhere from two hundred to a hundred years old.  And we're up
     against a 21st century array of skills and tools by corporate and
     governmental powerholders.  It's not a fair contest at all.
        To give you an illustration.  Two hundred years ago we got free
     speech--first amendment--ratified.  That meant that a big merchant in
     Boston and a worker in Boston could get up on a soapbox on the Boston
     Commons and tell it the way it is.  Who could hear?  As many people
     as wanted to congregate, and as powerful as the speaker's voice could
     be.  Two hundred years later, a worker can get up on the soapbox in
     the Boston Commons and say his or her pitch.  But the big merchant
     can buy television time and reach millions of people.  There is a
     decibel level quality to the exercise of our first amendment rights
     due to new technology.
        What is the tool?  The tool is to recognize that we own the public
     airwaves.  We're entitled to have our own network, let's call it the
     audience network.  It could be chartered for legal purposes as a
     non-profit federal corporation (chartered by Congress the way the Red
     Cross and the Salvation Army is).  It would be a private-sector
     corporation, chartered by Congress, open to any viewers and
     listeners, and the asset which would be returned to it would be one-
     hour of prime time TV and drive-time radio.  Therefore we will become
     part of a communications commonwealth that will let us develop our
     electronic literacy, and let us put on television what we want to put
     on through a deliberative process that reflects great diversity among
     its membership, which is voluntary, from entertainment to politics to
     science to mobilization of the community.  Doesn't cost the taxpayer
     a cent, voluntary to the viewers and listeners, and it's our property
     being returned.
        Now if we had that, and if we had a cable viewer's group--because
     cable is a monopoly and there's a reciprocity that should be accorded
     monopolies, and one of them should be the presentation of the cable
     viewer's address and telephone number and description at least ten
     times a day on all cable channels so the cable viewers can
     voluntarily band together and organize and have their own staff and
     begin feeding back the kind of programming they want.
        If we just had *that* tool, the political campaigns would never be
     the same again.  We would be able to foresee and forestall problems
     instead of confront them after they've erupted volcanically and
     festered and damaged.  We would be able to bring the best humane
     value systems together with the best evidence and the best technology
     to begin solving problems which we shouldn't have.  Because the
     solutions have been frozen on the shelf and not applied, we really
     can't solve the housing problem in this country.  Why are we the only
     country in the western world without universal health insurance?  Why
     are we the only country in the western world without free pre-natal
     care?  Why are we the only country in the western world without
     children's allowances?  Even in the third world countries, they have
     certain social services that are ahead of ours.
        I was speaking to someone from Mexico recently from a town about
     eighty miles from Mexico City, and they were calmly saying how they
     went to the clinic when they were pregnant, and they got free care.
     We don't ordinarily think of Mexico as being ahead of us in social
     services.  We better stop just thinking we're number one, and start
     looking into the areas where we're not number one, we're not number
     ten, we're not number twenty, in too many areas.  We're 21st in
     infant mortality incidence for example.  I certainly don't think
     we're number one in the way we manage our prisons.  I don't think
     we're number one in the way we treat the elderly.  Try the
     Netherlands, try Sweden, try West Germany, try Norway.  That's the
     tool, the communication tool.
        How about voters?  Your vote is diluted by money and politics--
     campaign finance money, PACs.  Your vote is diluted in a variety of
     ways.  What would be the new democratic tools?  It would be to
     consider public financing of campaigns, with a certain amount of free
     access to radio and TV time by all ballot-qualified candidates.  That
     gets politicians off the auction block where they are now for sale or
     for rent, depending on their versatility.
        Not diluting the vote would also deal with the problem of the
     one-party district.  In ninety percent of House congressional
     districts in this country, the elections are not competitive, as
     defined by the challenger having less than twenty-five thousand
     dollars for a campaign kitty to challenge the incumbent.  Seventy-
     four congressional districts had no opponent on the ballot of the
     opposite party in the 1990 congressional elections.
        It would also deal with the question of limited terms.  Whether we
     generically want to limit congressional, and other terms, as
     presidential terms are limited.  It would deal with "None Of The
     Above," statutorily established.  And above all it would deal with
     the direct democracy back-up when representative democracy is a
     mockery.  That is the initiative referendum recall which is in over
     twenty-two states, and which together with electronic media access,
     can become a much more potent force and accountability for elected
     and appointed officials in terms of their *use* and their success of
     passage:  the initiative referendum recall.
        The taxpayer rights--this tools of democracy--do you know that in
     the federal courts today, the taxpayer has virtually no standing to
     sue the government no matter how corrupt, fraudulent and wasteful the
     activity.  The federal judges now say, `you are only a taxpayer, you
     have no standing to sue.  Go home.  You're not even going to be able
     to *try* to go through the courtroom door and prove your case.'
        The government buys almost everything we buy as a consumer.  They
     buy energy, pharmaceuticals, clothing, food, insurance,
     telecommunications, and as the big consumer that they are, they can
     leverage safety and health standards for all the rest of the
     consumers in the country--get more value for the tax-procurement
     dollar, stimulate innovation, advance recycling, set models for
     pollution control, further critical markets for solar energy, etc.,
     without adding any more to the tax burden.  Indeed, it would tend to
     reduce tax expenditures by improving the efficiency of the tax-
     procurement dollar.  You won't find that discussed very much in the
     campaign, even though, the procurement dollar by the U.S. Army many
     years ago, brought us generic drugs over the opposition of the drug
     industry;  even though airbags broke through in cars, not due to the
     Department of Transportation (which was controlled by Reagan's anti-
     airbag White House--would you believe he campaigned against airbags
     in 1980?  I guess it fit his definition of freedom:  to give people
     freedom to go through a windshield.), it was the General Services
     Administration buying fifty-five hundred cars, putting out bids for
     airbag-equipped cars for federal employees that brought Ford back
     into airbags, then Chrysler, then the rest of them.  One out of every
     five people in this auditorium, on the average, will be saved from
     death or significant injury some time in their life by an inflated
     airbag. That's an illustration of the break-through power of
     government procurement after eighteen years of log-jam under the
     regulatory structure, influenced by General Motors at the Department
     of Transportation.
        These are the kind of tools.  How do you organize taxpayers?  They
     should have a check-off on the 1040 return.  I suggested that to the
     head of the IRS in the Carter administration.  I said, "Look, don't
     you taxpayer input?  Don't you want taxpayer feedback?  Don't you
     want taxpayers to take an interest in the tax system and how money is
     spent?"  So he said, "Well those are fairly regarded goals."  I said,
     "Well why don't you put a square on the 1040 which says `taxpayers
     you can get a little pamphlet on how you can join the taxpayers
     group, and if you want to add to your tax bill and join it with the
     dues, the government has good computers and they can whisk it over
     into a trust fund that will fund the taxpayers group and you as a
     member will be the electorate for the directors and the staff.  Why
     don't you do that?  It's just printing.  It doesn't cost virtually
     anything extra."  And he said, "Well I'm opposed to that."  And I
     asked him why, and he said because he thought it would add undue
     clutter to the tax forms.  Those were his exact words:  undue
     clutter.
        Now you can see where there are carriers that provide facility for
     us to band together at our choice.  The true index of democratic
     rights is that they can be used by anyone--it doesn't matter who they
     are, how much money they have, what party they're registered by.  The
     true spirit of a person who believes in democracy is to advance
     universally accessible rights and remedies.  And we have all kinds of
     carriers which we are not using, and as consumers, here are some of
     the carriers.
        If we're going to give legal monopoly rights to utilities, what's
     the reciprocity?  Recommended, that they be required to put a little
     postage-paid envelope inside their monthly bill, that they send to
     you.  It falls out.  It says it's not printed by the utility, it's
     printed by the consumer group chartered under the reform legislation.
     It says `Do you want to join this utility consumer group to deal with
     electric, telephone, gas, water, environmental and economic issues?
     If you do, send ten dollars and you'll be part of this group with a
     full-time staff to advocate, inquire, research, organize, and
     communicate.'  Now that doesn't cost the utility anything--the insert
     is paid for by the consumer group.  It doesn't cost anymore postage
     because they don't use up their one ounce.  It's voluntary for
     anybody to join.  And once they join, you have a countervailing
     pressure, a collective community intelligence, that can move forward
     on telecommunications and utility policies which involve everything
     from nuclear power to satellite communication use.
        Now this idea was proposed by us, and enacted into law in
     Illinois, Wisconsin, San Diego, and, by referendum, the state of
     Oregon.  Along came the Supreme Court of the United States and ruled
     that requiring a monopoly utility to carry this envelope--even though
     it doesn't cost it a dime--violated the utilities first amendment
     right to remain *silent* and not succumb to an irresistible urge to
     respond to the polemic in this insert.
        Now next time you take anthropology course and you hear some of
     your classmates snicker about those primitive tribes in New Guinea
     who ascribe animistic qualities to rocks and trees and totems, you
     can stand up and say, `When it comes to ascribing animistic qualities
     to inanimate objects, no society in the history of the world has gone
     as far as our society has, in giving corporations these animistic
     rights.'  The corporation is an inanimate institution--we're not
     talking about the executives or the employees, they have flesh-and-
     blood, human rights as any of the rest of us do.  The *corporation's*
     first amendment rights was violated to remain *silent,* and here it
     is a monopoly, which contracts with lawyers, PR firms and advertisers
     to propagandize consumers into accepting higher rates and then is
     permitted by this same legal system to hand you, the ratepayer, the
     bill.
        Now this was too much even for Rehnquist who, in a brilliant
     dissent, ridiculed and excoriated Lewis Powell, a former utility
     lawyer from Richmond, Virginia, who wrote the majority opinion,
     five-three, the decision.  That will be turned around I think, in the
     foreseeable future.  But in the meantime, all of those government
     envelopes that go to you, can be carriers for these kinds of
     invitations so that we can band together, as bank consumers, as
     insurance consumers, as utility ratepayers, and develop a community
     intelligence and a countervailing force, to dissolve that plutocracy
     more closely to the level of a true democracy.
        What about workers?  The NLRB is now a management tool.  Those of
     you that may have read that great little book by a Harvard graduate
     called "Which Side Are You On?"--it just came out a few months ago--
     it shows so clearly that, compared with other western countries,
     industrial workers have very little right to organize anymore.  That
     workers can be fired in an industrial plant if they start showing
     they want to organize a trade union.  They then can appeal through
     the NLRB, it takes an average of three and one-half years and is
     costly.  And by the time that comes around there's not much left of
     the active worker's metabolism is there?
        Now in Canada and Western Europe if the workers sign cards and
     they vote--it's a majority vote--there's a trade union, that's the
     end of it.  That's not the end of it in the United States, and that's
     one reason why the trade unions--apart from their often unimaginative
     leadership and too frequent corruption--are now down to sixteen
     percent of all workers in the United States are organized compared to
     Canada's thirty-two percent.  That's a very important reason, just in
     terms of the right to organize.
        They should also have the right to be ethical whistle-blowers and
     have due process of law so they're not fired or ostracized or
     demoted.  They should also have the right to have some sort of
     deliberative control over their pension money investments.  It would
     of course be enough just to have their pension investments disclosed
     and what's going on by the banks, and insurance companies, and
     corporate employers--it's *their* money, they should want to decide
     whether they want to invest it to feed the RJ Reynolds-Nabisco
     merger, which was twenty-four billion dollars of capital, or whether
     they want to bring it back to their own community in Gary, Indiana,
     or Toledo, Ohio, in order to improve the conditions in their own
     community where *they* live and where their money was earned.
        There is also and finally the access to justice.  We have now the
     Quayle-Bush-Reagan trilogy which is trying to federally pre-empt your
     right to have your day in court if you're injured--in state court--
     against manufacturers of dangerous products:  pharmaceuticals,
     flamable fabrics, toxics, unsafe cars.
        They don't say it that way.  Notice the use of language.  Mr.
     Quayle says, "There is too much litigiousness in our country."  No
     data to support it, because the data contradicts it.  He then says,
     "These suits are frivolous."  And he then says, "They are damaging
     our global competitiveness."  This is exactly the line of multi-
     national corporate goliaths who want to use the phrase "global
     competitiveness" and "international trade pacts" as a way to drive
     down our rights, remedies, and standard of living to lower foreign
     country denominations.  Lloyds of London makes no bones about it.
     They want to destroy our tort law system and bring it down to the
     level of England where it's almost impossible to win a case against
     the manufacturers of a hazardous product, or even to get a jury
     trial, or to get punitive damages, or to get pain-and-suffering.
        Now most students--even law students--are not privy to this
     important pillar of our democracy.  Democracies have basically three
     important pillars:  civil rights, civil liberties, and safety rights,
     broadly conceived.  And the ability of people to challenge powerful
     corporations and bring them down to a reasonable level playing field
     because they have to be judged by a jury of their peers, and by a
     judge subject to appellate review.  And they have to disgorge some of
     their internal files and memorandums that expose the asbestos
     disaster, the Dalcon shield mutilation, among others--those weren't
     regulatory agencies, they don't have the *courage* to do that.  But,
     an injured worker, with a contingent-fee lawyer, can take these
     companies on, and hold them accountable.
        That is what is being driven into the ground.  And attack after
     attack by the Reagan-Bush regime is going unanswered by the Democrats
     in Congress.  When Mr. Mitchell comes here you might want to ask him.
     Mr. Mitchell now has been politicized way beyond his fundamental
     intelligence.  He is fundamentally one of the most intelligent and
     compassionate politicians on the scene.  But he is now a prisoner of
     the very power structure that internally he would probably like to
     change.
        He was the architect of the pre-midnight pay grab last July for
     his Senators, who just couldn't make it on a hundred and one thousand
     a year plus pension benefits, housing allowances, and perks a mile
     long.  Breaking the moral authority of the elected official at a time
     of recession, stagnant minimum wages, corruption, waste,
     unemployment, and instead of setting leadership-by-example they say,
     `O.K. folks we know you're all suffering there, and we're running a
     debt-broke government with four hundred billion dollar deficits, but
     we just can't make it on a hundred and one thou' plus perks and
     benefits.'
        This is the same Congress that froze the federal minimum wage a
     $3.35 an *hour* from 1981 to 1989, April, telling seven million
     Americans that they can make it on seven thousand dollars and change
     a *year,* but they couldn't make it on eighty-nine thousand dollars
     (which was their pre-pay grab level).  That's how they produce
     cynicism, and turn-off, and revulsion.  And they don't know that
     political leadership's greatest asset is example, setting example.
     And Senator Mitchell should be asked about access to justice because
     I know what he believes.
        He believes that people *should* have access to civil justice
     systems if they are injured.  He doesn't want to federally pre-empt
     product liability law.  And he doesn't want to restrict and regulate
     state judges and juries.  And he doesn't want to cut back on pain-
     and-suffering like Mr. Reagan, who in May, 1986 proposed to the
     Congress, that all injured people in the country, who filed suit
     against the perpetrators of their harm be held to a *maximum* limit
     of $250,000 pain-and-suffering for their *lifetime*.  He did not say
     that insurance company *executives* should be held to a $250,000
     salary--the kinds of executives who are making a *million* dollars a
     year without *any* pain-and-suffering.  He didn't put a cap on
     insurance premiums.  He didn't put a cap on insurance company
     profits.  He put a cap on the most *vulnerable* people of all--the
     political bully that he always has been--on the most vulnerable
     people in the country:  paraplegics, quadraplegics, brain-damaged
     infants, who are trying to get a little compensation and whose cases
     would generate deterrents for greater care in the future by these
     perpetrators.  Ask him about it.  You should ask.
        You should ask yourself how little you know about the record of
     these candidates.  How little you know about their voting records,
     other than that which they wish to tell you.  The National Safe
     Workplace Institute, a citizen group, run by a man whose brother was
     killed in a construction accident, he was a Vietnam Vet, the head of
     this institute, he started it in Chicago, probably the chief monitor
     of OSHA.  He put out a report two weeks ago ranking the fifty states
     on their occupational health and safety programs.  Arkansas came in
     last.  Mr. Clinton should answer to that.  Harkin and Kerry raised
     their own pay after Harkin opposed it before he was re-elected in
     Iowa in 1990.  He should be asked about that.
        Their records should be common parlance for anybody interested in
     participating in the civic culture.  And it can't be done by relying
     on them.  They'll put forth--obviously--the rosiest picture, and
     they'll tell you what they think they want you to know, and not
     discuss their other performances and records.
        Let me conclude on this point.  No matter how well-intentioned
     these candidates are, they can't deliver, and they haven't been able
     to deliver once they're elected, because on one yardstick measurement
     after another, out country is declining.  Problems are getting worse
     that were considered bad ten-twenty years ago.  And they likely to
     get even worse.  Read the papers.  Whether you are concerned about
     fiscal deficits, health and safety, environment, worker rights,
     consumer well-being, housing, infant care, you name it.  It's not
     getting much better.  In many cases it's getting much worse.
        The unaccountability of government has become a complex and
     little-studied phenomena except a public grunt here and there.  The
     unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very
     use of the law is the instrument of illegality.  The very use of the
     law is the instrument of illegality.  The color of the law.  And it
     has become so intricate, and so broad-based, that law schools don't
     even study it:  government lawlessness.  Not just Watergate.
        The challenge to you is two-fold as I see it.  Do you want to
     participate in this experiment of a citizen's campaign in New
     Hampshire, and in Massachusetts, where there is a visibility given to
     the need for a "None Of The Above" option--a citizen agenda--bringing
     the tools of democracy up to the challenges that confront it, some of
     which I've elaborated this evening, and to develop more self-
     confidence among citizens so they can establish their citizen forums
     in their community and *summon the candidates* and begin shaping the
     campaign and vectoring out to the rest of the country in a more
     genuine and authentic manner, rather than on the most polished five-
     minute delivery of the leading candidate.  So you can sign this and
     the people who are running the campaign, the citizens, many of them
     volunteers, will be in touch with you.
        The second is a little bit more long-range.  Think of what you
     want to do in life, not from the point-of-view of the most available,
     lucrative opportunity that comes before you.  You'll regret it.
     There are sixty-five and seventy year-old corporate lawyers in New
     York, Boston and Washington, who've made a ton of money, and been
     elected head of their bar associations, and have been described as
     pillars of their community, who look back on how they used their time
     with great sadness.  Because they were using their time primarily as
     secondary human beings, animated and absorbed by their retainers.
     Not as primary human beings seeking justice under the law and shaping
     the justice system in our country.  Every occupation and profession
     that you go into will give you that seductive opportunity to make a
     lot of money, and then to look back with sadness on what you might
     have been, and what you could have done.
        The next fifty years of your productive life, are going to witness
     either the most spectacular breakthroughs in establishing mechanisms
     of peace and justice and human fulfillment, or the most spectacular
     disasters of greenhouse effects, pestilence, famine and violence.
     You want to take your pick:  you want to work for perpetrators, you
     want to work for victims;  do you want to work for light, or do you
     want to work for lucre?  This is the time for you to contemplate it.
        The dialogue on campuses today is disgraceful in terms of its
     priority, in terms of its importance.  And while the dialogue may be
     of personal concern to you, remember the following:  you're more than
     just a person absorbed with personal concerns, if you want to live in
     a world that spells humanity instead of brutality.
        Bring the sources of secular power into your deliberations.  Ask
     yourself how corporatized has Harvard University become.  Ask
     yourself why Harvard watches inquiries that corporate university
     contracts be disclosed.  That the president of Harvard University
     have a State of the Student address every January followed by
     sessions with students in auditoriums to discuss the address which
     would be circulated in pamphlet form throughout the student body.
     Ask yourself why your roles are increasingly subordinated to other
     functions, commercial in nature, of the university's players and
     administrators.  Ask yourself why you never have a day where you meet
     the University's rulers.  Do you know who your rulers are?  The last
     count was that there was seven of them.  Can any of the students
     state their names?  Why don't you have a day where you meet them?
     One would think they'd want to meet you.  That's what they're meeting
     for up there in that nice conference room.
        If you don't know, if you don't desire, how to shape a university
     subculture in a more democratic way, when you have great leverage and
     great potential allies among alumni and faculty, it's doubtful
     whether you've prepared yourself for elaborating the democratic
     societies of the future which you would play a part.  Thank you very
     much.



                          some Question And Answers


        Q:  Your critique of corporate control of American society has a
     loud ring of truth to it and I think by injecting it into the
     presidential campaign, you're performing a great public service.  My
     question relates more to one of political strategy, especially for
     those people who agree with your views, than to the substance of your
     critique.   As you know there has been some speculation that you're
     considering running as an independent candidate next November for
     president.  And I'm wondering how you would respond to people who
     feel that by doing so, and by draining votes away from the Democratic
     nominee, you might very well, however inadvertently, turn the
     election over to Bush.
        RN:  Well, I'm not running as a candidate--independent or
     otherwise--I've made that clear up in New Hampshire.  We're running
     something that is described in my prior remarks as a citizen's
     campaign focusing very heavily on the citizen empowerment agenda, the
     tools of democracy, so we can enrich the quality of the campaign.
     You should know that if I ever decided to run for office there would
     be absolutely no ambiguity about it.  The Massachusetts statute
     allows the Secretary of State to put non-candidate's names on the
     ballot, according to a very discretionary set of criteria (which we
     don't have to go into now), so that that was the basis of which I was
     put on the ballot.  And I want to discuss these issues with people in
     Massachusetts in the sense that that slot on the ballot represents a
     certain set of principles and a certain agenda, and if it gets enough
     attention and support, the candidates on the ballot, whose principle
     quest is to get elected, will have to pay more attention.  So that
     subsequently in Washington, when all these citizen's groups from
     around the country and their Washington headquarters go up on Capitol
     hill and say, "We do want an insert in the Savings and Loan Bill so
     that bank customers can organize and deal with mortgage funds, red-
     lining, and prudent banking," the politicians say, "What?  What was
     that?  We've never heard of that.  We'll have to set that aside and
     deliberate it in the next decade."

        Q:  First of all I want to say I've been an admirer of yours for
     over twenty-five years since the mid-1960s and I appreciate your
     comments about government lawlessness which I think is very
     widespread.  One other comment before I ask my question--we *are*
     number one, we have a number one rating of the highest incarceration
     rate in the world, per 100,000 citizens.  And finally what could you
     recommend to try to address the problem of government lawlessness and
     hold our government officials accountable?  Accountability I agree
     with you is the issue.  For example the FBI, police, CIA lawyers--how
     do you get to those groups?
        RN:  You get to them from the top, from the bottom, and from the
     side.  You get to them from the top by having new political
     movements, and parties.  You get to them from the bottom by
     developing community-based advocacy units that can resist and expose.
     For example, the way the FBI got into the student files in the 1950s
     and 1960s:  through university approval--there was no resistance, no
     infrastructure of resistance there to expose it and to do something
     about it which would have stopped it early on.  And you get to them
     on the side, by allowing what we call "government accountability
     lawsuits" where people who have standing to sue can get the officials
     discharged, fired, fined, etc.  The only law now that would prevent
     what permits that in a very modest way is the Freedom of Information
     Act where you could persuade the judge that the withholding of
     information was so outrageous by the government official that the
     government official could be suspended for thirty days without pay.
     That's about as far as the lateral challenge through the judiciary
     has gone.

        Q:  I like your message very much and I support a "None Of The
     Above" option and thank you.  There is a candidate who I do like who
     is also on the democratic ballot, and his name is Larry Agran, and
     I'd like to ask you what you think of him, of his candidacy, and
     especially what you think of the way his candidacy--and this is a way
     of getting into yours and other peoples--the way his candidacy is
     being handled both by the Democratic National Committee in terms of
     the debates, and by the press.  I notice that the "New York Times"
     even in their editorials refer to--they don't even bother to use the
     subterfuge anymore of the six, now five, *major* candidates, they
     even said, the six *announced* candidates in a major editorial not
     long ago.
        RN:  Well I knew Larry Agran just after he got out of law school
     and as some of you may know, he went to California and he was mayor
     for a number of years of Irvine, California.  But he was a very
     unique mayor.  He would develop agendas and connect with cities all
     over the world in terms of developing a constituency of mayors facing
     problems that everyone confronts and he was also always thinking,
     always innovating, in the mayors office.
        But notice what he's coming up against.  In our country there is
     permissible pool of about five hundred people who are considered
     presidential candidates if they choose, themselves, to be.  That is
     members of congress, governors, former governors, and president and
     vice president.  That's roughly the pool.  Anyone else is considered
     a futile wild card or a self-aggrandized egotist.  To use a little
     redundancy.
        Now the question is, why can't a former mayor of a city, with an
     established record of some significance, be considered seriously?
     Well, the platform isn't big enough, the table isn't big enough for
     the debates.  It's ungainly.  Where do you draw the line?  This is
     what happens when we have to get on our knees and beg the networks to
     give three or four debate opportunities for the candidates.  So I
     sympathize very much with him, and I hope that if he persists he'll
     finally break through, at least on some of the televised debates, or
     someone taking up his cudgel.
        In past years people have said to me, `Who do you prefer for
     president?'  And just to make the point I say, `Ken Stoffer' (sp?).
     They said, `Ken Stoffer?'  I said, `Well, you asked me and I told
     you.'  They said, `Well who's he?'  And I said, `Well, he started out
     as a farmer in South Dakota, became a civic activist, ran for
     governor (unsuccessfully), became chairperson of the state utility
     commission, and has a lot to commend himself.'  And then this
     silence--nobody wants to follow it up.
        You, what they're really asking you when they say, `Who do you
     favor for president?' is `Which of fifteen celebrities in the
     political sphere, do you favor?'  Now, do you realize how much talent
     is being discounted with that attitude?  Think of the people around
     the country who have proven records of achievement, who are solid,
     who are consistent, who are open minded.  All the talent, and they're
     completely precluded from running for political office because
     they're not willing to go through this ladder from city council to
     mayor, to governor or to members of congress, and play the political
     game so that the politicians can support them.  Or to be corrupted by
     political campaign money.  So they go around with marbles in their
     mouth.  So we really have got to challenge that convention that is
     stifling the talent.
        Q:  Do you have any specific suggestions as to how that might be
     done in this situation to break the lock that they have?
        RN:  Yes, well he did it by challenging the debate protocol, he
     got on the debate.  Another way is to demand that the other
     candidates be given a debate themselves, even if they're not in with
     the major ones over cable.
        Q:  And your name, I understand it, is not included by pollsters.
     That's another area:  in polling they will not include certain
     people's names and I understand yours is not yet one they're willing
     to include.
        RN:  That's not as important as mobilizing citizens and being able
     to write-in or getting on the ballot.  The important thing is that
     the media has a very novelty orientation to covering the campaign.
     For example, Jerry Brown hammers again and again on money and
     politics and they get sick of it.  `O.K. Jerry, you did it once, and
     it's *very* important, we know that politics are shaped by money,
     but, what are you repeating it so often for?'  See they try to
     portray a candidate as a tired, one-note candidate.  And we all know
     that most of the pioneering, social justice breakthroughs were
     repeated quite often, weren't they, in American history?  You want to
     count how many times the case against slavery was made before it was
     heard?

        Q:  Have you read B.F. Schumacher's, (sp?) "Small Is Beautiful"?
        RN:  Um-hum.
        Q:  I've taped you, Bernie Sanders and Jerry Brown here.  You all
     read B.F. Schumacher's book, and I would assume that you found it
     interesting and in fact quite applicable.  Yet what I don't
     understand is this:  that if it's applicable to economics--small is
     beautiful--why isn't it applicable to government?  And in that I ask
     this question:  Would you support the bust-up of the empire, the
     United States of America empire, as we have witnessed in the Soviet
     Union, so that the ten or twenty or fifty nations of North America
     could finally emerge and be manageable?
        RN:  Well, let's see.  Would I want Maine to be dominated by the
     paper and pulp industry completely, instead of being able to be lent
     a hand from outside of Maine.
        Q:  Sir, I'm from Maine, and for twenty years--from Augusta,
     Maine--I've been involved in politics up there, in fact I've served
     on the PERT (??) board, for twenty years we were 49th in per capita
     income.  This past year we've slipped to 50th.  What's the advantage
     of staying with the empire?
        RN:  Larry, the reason why I raised that is the following:  is
     that if you break it up politically and you don't break it up
     corporately, you are making it even worse.  The corporate government
     runs the political government.  And unless you deal first with the
     corporate power, you are basically setting the stage for company
     states and company towns, even worse than what you now see in Dupont
     and Delaware or-- what's the name of Muskie's home town?--Rumford,
     Maine.  I mean--you know--the corporations control the *rivers* for
     heavens sake.  The rivers.  Riparian rights are in advance in Maine.
     These paper and pulp industries control the use, diversion, daming of
     the rivers.  We did a book on this called "The Paper Plantation" a
     few years ago.
        By the way I might say that you're seeing more of these separatist
     movements in Canada and the West, Quebec, northern California
     counties now have organized to split off from California because they
     can't get their say.  But you wouldn't agree with some of these
     people.  You wouldn't agree with some of their reasons.  Some of them
     represent some pretty powerful vested interests, natural resource-
     based vested interests.

        Q:  Yes, you obviously have a lot of ideas and a lot to say.  And
     you also have a unique opportunity--like you said only a very limited
     number of people can be taken seriously as a candidate, but you have
     the national recognition and national groundswell of support.  Why
     don't you make yourself a full-fledged candidate and therefore get
     much more visibility for your campaign?
        RN:  There's several responses to that.  The easy one is that I'm
     a citizen advocate, not a politician.  That means that I don't like
     to censor myself for my contributors, to begin with.  The second is,
     let me give you a little organic metaphor:  democracy is like a
     tree--branches, twigs, fruit, trunk, root.  The people are the root
     and the trunk, the elected officials are the branches and twigs.  If
     the root and the trunk do not provide the nutrients, the branches and
     the twigs become very brittle and don't produce fruit.  I've spent
     all these years working at the root and the trunk, and I'm not at
     *all* persuaded that the root and the trunk is sending enough
     nutrients for *any*body to aspire to become a branch or a twig.



     For a copy of this casette tape please write to:

          Roger Leisner, P.O. Box 2705, Augusta, Maine   04338

     Or call 207/622-6629 for a free copy of the Radio Free Maine tape
     catalog, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope--52 cents
     postage--to the aforementioned address.  Thank you and good night.


--
   I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes 
   me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . .  Corporations have been 
   enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the 
   money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working 
   upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few
   hands and the Republic is destroyed.

              --- Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel").



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