Ralph Nader Letter to President Obama Re: The State of the Union Address
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012Posted by Ralph Nader at Nader.org:
Dear President Obama:
As you prepare your State of the Union address, please be advised that those who support you are very cognizant of what you do not mention in such annual presentations to the Nation. For example, last year, environmentalists were shocked that global warming-climate change received no attention. Nor did raising the minimum wage, as you promised in 2008 to .50 by 2011.
Enclosed is my recent column titled “Congress Needs to Get to Work” that reminds and recommends what you and the Congressional Democrats should be advancing this year. They are not only needed legislative actions, but they are both significant and popular.
Try to avoid being drawn into corrosive conflicts with the Congressional Republicans on matters you could have avoided by learning how to bargain for more when you give up much. An example is your concessions on the Bush tax cuts in late 2010 for which you should have demanded concurrence for raising the debt limit. Think of the time that struggle absorbed in 2011,
To call a reduction of the employee side of the payroll tax a “tax cut” for 160 million Americans is beyond disingenuous. You know who pays for this maneuver once this can is kicked down the road.
The many organizations in this country striving to stem the rising poverty in this country have wondered why you never mention “the poor” in your speeches. They are aware of the Clintonesque code that only referred to “the middle class,” and never to “the poor” or “to low income people” who now number nearly 100 million Americans. They did not expect that Barack Obama also would have employed this language of avoidance.
You do not want them to feel they are being taken for granted.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
The column Nader mentions, also posted separately at Nader.org:
The editor of The Hill, a newspaper exclusively covering Congress, said that Congress was not going to do very much in 2012, except for “the big bill” which is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment compensation, which expire in late February. That two month extension will likely reignite the fight between Democrats and Republicans that flared last month.
In 2012, Congress, the editor implied, would be busy electioneering. That is, the Senators and Representatives will be busy raising money from commercial interests so they can keep their jobs. There won’t be much time to change anything about misallocated public budgets, unfair tax rules, undeclared costly wars, and job-depleting trade policies that, if fixed, would increase employment and public investment.
So this year, Congress will spend well over billion on its own expenses to do nothing of significance other than shift more debt to individual taxpayers by depleting the social security payroll tax by over 0 billion so both parties can say they enacted a tax cut! That is what the Democrats in Congress and the President call a significant accomplishment.
Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional. It is an obstacle to progress in America, a graveyard for both democracy and justice. No wonder a new Washington Post-ABC news poll found an all time high of 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
Both Republicans and Democrats say they want to reduce the deficit. But they are avoiding, in varying degrees, doing this in any way that would discomfort the rich and powerful. One would think that, especially in an election year, the following legislative agenda would be very popular with the voters.
First, restore the taxes on the rich that George W. Bush cut ten years ago which expanded the deficit. So clueless are the Democrats that they have not learned to use the word “restore” instead of the Republican word “increase” when talking about taxes that were previously cut for the millionaires and billionaires.
Second, collect unpaid taxes. The IRS estimates that 5 billion of tax revenues are not collected yearly. If the IRS budget increased and more people were hired, every dollar it spent would return 0 from tax evaders, including corporations and the wealthy. When taxes are not collected, the large majority of honest taxpayers are left with the unfair consequences. Imagine that money being applied to jobs that repair our crumbling public works.
Third, end the outrageous corporate loopholes that allow profitable large corporations to pay just half of the statutory tax rate of thirty-five percent. More than a few pay less than five percent and many pay zero on major profits. During a recent three year period, according to the Citizens for Tax Justice, a dozen major corporations such as Verizon and Honeywell paid no taxes on many billions of profits, and the legendary tax escapee, General Electric, managed to pay zero and even receive billions in benefits from the U.S. Treasury.
Fourth, do what most U.S. soldiers in the field have believed should have been done years ago–get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and nearby countries like Kuwait where thousands of U.S. soldiers based in Iraq have moved.
Fifth, to increase consumer demand, which creates jobs, raise the federal minimum wage from the present level of .25–which is .75 less than it was way back in 1968, adjusted for inflation–to per hour. Businesses who keep raising prices and executive salaries (eg. Walmart and McDonalds) since 1968 should be reminded of their windfall in that period.
In addition, President Obama can urge mutual and pension funds and individual shareholders to demand higher dividends from companies like EMC, Google, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and others firms hoarding two trillion dollars in cash as if this money was the corporate bosses’, not the owner-shareholders. More dividends, more consumer demand, more jobs.
Want to know why Congress doesn’t make such popular and prudent decisions for the American people? Because the people are not objecting to all the power that their Congressional representatives and their corporate allies have sucked away from them. Because the people are not putting teeth and time into the “sovereignty of the people” expressed in the preamble to our Constitution which begins with “We the people,” not “We the corporation.”
So citizens, it’s your choice. If you don’t demand a say day after day, you’ll continue to pay day after day.
By the way, the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
Ralph Nader ran for President as an independent in 2008 and 2004, and as a Green in 2000 and 1996. Other alternative parties will no doubt be responding to Obama and the Republicans’ speeches tonight, but I have yet to see their plans for doing so, other than the Green Party and Jill Stein, the leading candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination.
his is the second week of protests, led by Bill McKibben, in front of the White House demanding that President Barack Obama reject a proposed 1700 mile pipeline transporting the dirtiest oil from Alberta, Canada through fragile ecologies down to the Gulf Coast refineries. One thousand people will be arrested there from all fifty states before their demonstration is over [