Ralph's Revolt : The Case for Joining Ralph's Revolution

Rating:
Summary: Very effective defense for a third party, even now
Review: Support for the Central American death squad regimes was organized by many of the people currently in power. The Reaganites, the author writes, spied on activists opposed to such support and the director of FEMA drew up plans to intern Americans on a massive scale if such opposition got too intense. Cheney and Powell presided over the murderous Panama invasion and to that resume should be added the massive war crimes against Iraqi civilian infrastructure, etc

The democrats are no different. Bates quotes George Kennan, the State Department policy planning chief under Truman in 1948, explaining that the United States should devise a pattern of relationships where it could keep a large part of the world's wealth.. Jimmy Carter sent arms to Morrocco,Indonesia and Turkey to support their ethnic cleansing in their occupations of Western Sahara, East Timor and Cyprus respecively. He covered for the South Korean military's Tiannamen square style massacre at Kwangju, sent officers from the Argentinian neonazi military regime to train the Contras, etc.

Clinton's welfare reform forces mothers with children to go to work for minimum wage, which even for a full time worker is not close to a livable income. Poverty decreased slightly during the Clinton years. After years of decline, wages rose back to their level of 1974. The slight improvements in the plight of ordinary Americans in the 90's is contrasted by the author (quoting Pollin) with the fact that from 1974 to 2000 the Gross Domestic product rose 70%, productivity rose 61%, etc. But the "booming" economy was based on fraud, huge debt-financed consumption and speculation. The democrats helped the Republicans effectively repeal the Glass-Steagal Act of 1934, eliminating much government oversight and restrictions on close relationships between corporations with stock, accountants and other sectors. Thus banks, accountants and corporations could conspire to cover up bad corporate financial data to keep the corporation's stock high.. During the Clinton years, the gap between CEO and worker pay went from 113 to 1 to 449 to 1. According to Bob Woodward, Clinton privately said in late 92' that his administratiion was Eisenhower Republican and that his policies would "help the bond market and hurt the people who voted us in."

Bates shows how provisions in his first budget to restrict gold mining and federally subsidized grazing and timber sales on federal land were removed by his chief of staff Mack McLarty. This reduction in corporate welfare and land preservation could have saved the taxpayers a billion dollars. Clinton signed an Act in 1996, which lifted the ban on the export of Alaska's crude oil and limited the government's auditing of corporate profits on oil taken from federal lands. It allowed oil companies to sue the government to get interest payments. Bates then points out how Clinton-Gore curiously used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to preserve mountainous areas and forests in swing states. Other than election periods in 1996 and 2000(both of which Bates suggests was to take steam out the Nader campaign) the Antiquities Act was never utilized by Clinton.

Mr. Kerry recently announced that he is willing to appoint anti-abortion judges. He has called for lowering corporate taxes, already very low or non-existent, to bribe manufacturers to bring jobs back to America. His health care plan consists of nothing more than partially subsidizing some corporate health plans. He voted for aid to the Contras back in 1988, when two years before the world court had ruled that support illegal. At the World Court, a French priest training nurses told of horrific atrocities of the contras, gouging out eyes, forcing a girl into prostitution,etc. The Bush II regime has been handing off the Iraqi economy to American corporations often without any bidding, regardless of what the Iraqi people might think. The author quotes the Wall Street Journal explaining that the "democracy" imposed in Iraq consists basically of commissions with American representatives that can veto anything detrimental to American interests. Mr. Kerry is not against any of this-he just claims that he can do it better and not alienate the allies. Kerry refers as an ideal to the coalition Bush I assembled in 1991, which was got together with bribes and threats. His foreign policy advisors include Rand Beers, architect of the odious fumigation campaign in Colombia. Another is Richard Morningstar, pusher of a disgusting pipeline project in Central Asia. Kerry is well aware of the need of American imperialism to vigorously participate in the new "great game" in Central Asia.

The author writes that Kerry is such an unbelievably weak candidate; a leftist needs to fill the vacuum. Bush has an economy that may or may not rise on the strength of his Keynesian military spending. He has the support of large numbers of people, fearing the terrorist bugaboo. In many swing states, gay marriage bans will be on the ballot; thus the evangelical base of the Republicans will be out in full force. Kerry has hid behind the "civil union"/state's rights position on this issue, failing to encourage the many Americans who already support some rights for gay couples to become more progressive. President Kerry might be more militaristic and socially regressive in some ways than Bush. The democrats can often put through extreme measures favorable to the ruling class better than the Republicans can. The democrats have kept hanging the bugaboo of Republican extremism before voters, but keep moving to the right themselves. The author suggests that socialist Norman Thomas's 1932 presidential run might have played a role in forcing The New Deal on the democrats.

I do not agree with the author that Nader had no responsibility to build the Green party after the 2000 election. He's not my ideal canidate; he seems to have something of an authoritarian leadership style. I'll probably vote for him as I did in 2000. Gore might have won that election if he had carried his home state or Clinton's .


Rating:
Summary: Vote Strategically; Vote Nader
Review: It is farcical that the left demonizes the current president and his administration as being particularly egregious in their criminality, and by doing so affirms the lackluster Kerry as the antidote. Bush is more successful at being cruel says Bates, and little more; compared to Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and Truman, he is "bushleague by comparison.." There is much analyzing too of the rightward drift of the Democratic Party here, and explaining how this is likely to continue without the threat posed by a serious and necessarily third party challenge; or second for that matter.

Nader has easily done more for the American people than all of the other candidates and their running mates combined. Contrary to much even progressive conventional wisdom, he has continued his public service since 2000. When his name and the words "public servant" are uttered together it is not a cliched and perfunctory gesture. As opposed to the frontrunners and their ubiquitous cant and subterfuge, on the stump, in an interview, Nader's every word frames real issues in their proper context, is urgent, without a trace of superfluity, aware of the magnitude of the problems we face, with viable solutions. By natural right his message ought to appeal to the vast preponderance of the electorate.

It is unfortunate, although not to underrate its significance, that the strongest argument Bates makes to encourage support of Nader's campaign is that of voting strategically under the rules of the Electoral College. Bates says the upcoming election is really 58 elections, each state's and the District of Colombia, and Maine and Nebraska wherein each district counts its votes separately. It is crucial to consider this in building momentum for a third party. Bates avers that in the other than about fifteen swing states, progressives will not be supporting Bush by voting for Nader. He goes even further and examines meticulously scenarios that may likely develop in which progressives even in smaller states with few electoral votes should feel safe voting for Nader. Noting that it is easier to sway power when it feels vulnerable Bates says in any event, progressives would do well to make a potential Kerry win as narrow as possible.

Bates here clarifies that both Noam Chomsky, who wonders aloud how anyone could have taken his ABB comments otherwise, and Howard Zinn plan to vote for Nader because they are in the safe state of Massachusetts. Beyond that, however, he cites the ever astute Chomsky: "Activist movements, if at all serious, pay virtually no attention to which faction of the business party is in office, but continue with their daily work, from which elections are a diversion - which we cannot ignore, any more than we can ignore the sun rising; they exist."

It hardly goes without saying that a Kerry win does not at all promise a progressive agenda. Kerry's supposed high minded ideals, says Bates, could translate into nefarious deeds. He points out that often the party that supposedly stands for a certain principle, the Democrats for social programs for example, is better able to lead the charge for its amendment, even its destruction. The Republicans were better able to open China under Nixon because they didn't have to fear being called soft on Communism like the Democrats, notes Bates. Similarly Clinton and the Democrats were able to destroy welfare, for which the Republicans would have faced outrage and wide resistance. A Kerry presidency may well more legitimate an attack on Social Security or a stepped up war effort in Iraq, writes Bates.

A large part of this book rightfully critiques the political positions of Kerry and the demise of the Democratic party, as much as it forwards the Nader run, who just happens to be the progressive alternative. Kerry has backed every major regressive policy of the Bush administration, including among others, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, expansion of the military budget, and the tax cuts for the rich, according to Bates. As senator, he has also advocated sanctions against Iraq which killed more than a million Iraqi children, perennially promoted Israel's murderous seige of the Palestinians, and approved NAFTA and GATT. He wants to build coalitions and exercise multilateralism reports Bates, not because it would allow for international decision-making through the U.N. or so that the U.S. obeys international law, but because it would strengthen and extend U.S. imperialism.

Bates observes that Kerry wants to cut corporate taxes still further. Roger C. Altman, a top Kerry aid, thinks the right tax code is the way to help the poor. "Gone is any whiff of aid to the poor," writes Bates, "any sense that government could reinvigorate the New Deal politics of FDR." Kerry's proposal for national health care is not single payer, the most efficient and effective way to provide such care, says Bates, but more corporate tax subsidies. Of Kerry's economic program, Bates cites Altman as saying, "It is a credible, enforceable policy that will position Kerry to the right of Bush on fiscal policy."

There are other strategic factors to consider in supporting Nader, according to Bates. He writes that in 2000 Nader brought a million voters to the polls who otherwise wouldn't have voted. A similar number could be decisive in helping the Democrats make gains in congressional elections, where not all Democrats are as regressive as Kerry, and help stymie a Bush agenda.










Rating:
Summary: Eye Opener
Review: This is an outstanding summary of the case not only for Ralph Nader but for a third party. Great facts, lucid thinking and well presented with no wasted words.