Ralph Nader should have been car czar by Seth Tane

Ralph Nader should have been car czar
by Seth Tane
December 23rd, 2008
Letter to the editor:

Now that we’re going to bail out the Big Three automakers, perhaps it’s also time for a “Car Czar” oversight pick that would really represent change. How about Ralph Nader?

I can’t imagine anyone else as well informed, well intentioned and completely free of any complicity in the current deplorable performance and condition of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.

Does anyone doubt we’d get a whole different and much better set of wheels out of the deal? Can you imagine how much success the auto executives would have trying to pull the wool over Nader’s eyes?

SETH TANE

http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/12/letter-writer-ralph-nader-should-have-been-car-czar/

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Now that's an idea I haven't heard before and I kind of like it. I'd trust Nader to do the right thing. He's not trying to destroy the auto workers union or the domestic auto industry.

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News Release
Nader Comment on Auto Bailout

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Robert Weissman, director of the advocacy group Essential Action:

In an effort to break the United Auto Workers -- a union that historically has been responsible for raising wages and benefits not just for unionized auto workers but for all working Americans -- Senate Republicans are apparently willing to permit the collapse of the U.S. auto industry.

Unionized auto workers have made steady concessions over the last quarter century, including in the 2007 contract, which will have many new workers start jobs at $14 an hour. These employees will be making about half of what their co-workers earn.

It is both an outrage and illogical for the Senate Republicans to suggest UAW worker wages and benefits should be driven down to the levels at non-unionized Japanese plants inthe United States. It is an outrage because it disrespects the hard and dangerous work done by auto workers, explicitly aims to undermine the benefits of workers joining together to exercise their right to bargain collectively, and acceleratesthe United States' trajectory to ever-descending wages and benefits. It is illogical, too. Although the Japanese plants keep wages close to UAW rates as an anti-union strategy, they can always lower their wages further, on a unilateral basis, in a never-ending race-to-the-bottom.

The action by the Senate Republicans is extraordinarily reckless, challenging the most important institution for advancing working peoples' living standards -- unions -- and threatening to worsen drastically an already severe recession.

Even the Republicans' sense of political self-interest seems dimmed by their anti-union zealotry. Senate Republicans may think they gain political points by standing against assistance to a major industry, but they will suffer political damage lasting generations if they permit the U.S. auto industry to collapse.

http://newsblaze.com/story/2008121214330400005.pnw/topstory.html

With Queen Palin joining him on the throne.

Your silly comment really doesn't address the proposal.

the last three election cycles. Also remember the "Uncle Tom" reference to Obama. Uncalled for uncool...he played his last card. Actually when I think about it he is irrelevant.

And I think he's in it for him now.

himself. He is so far removed from the reality of car manufacturing today as he was in 1965. Gm finally killed the car in 1969 not so much from his book but declining sales. Many improvement and safety innovations were made on the car which was maligned by his book. Nader was too eager to take on GM that he let the Mustang slip by with its major design flaws. How can he know cars when he doesn't own one or drive one. He isn't reading reviews.

goods with his book. He should have gone after VW who used Jews and US POW's to slave away in their factories during WW II.Fuck Nader and the horse he rode in on.

the book was not about the Corvair. Only the first chapter was about the Corvair. It was a broad criticism against the U.S. auto industry's penchant for design over safety engineering. The opening chapter about the Corvair was illustrative; the rest of the book contained the meat. The Corvair was indeed as unsafe as he claimed but also, he never made the claim that it was the only unsafe car.

It's time to piss off a different DU subgroup.

:kick:R
HOLLA

..to come up with a dumber idea than seizing the assets of the wealthiest 1%, this comes along.

:shrug: So much gets buried under the periodic brightshineyrantoftheweek vomit, though.

who voted for Bush. They were registered Democrats for fucks sake! What the hell were they doing voting for Bush?

I would love to see it happen myself, but in only a sick Sci/fi movie staring Alex Baldwin
as Ralph Nader, defending the capitalist system.

it's mostly bullshit.
Lee Iacoca should be car czar.

recommends an upgraded suspension for any pre-1964 Corvair. He won't work on any that hasn't had one installed... he said he wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

you can't be car dictator as a government official. you have to work with people and compromise to get to a solution.

Ralph is more of a think tank type guy, expert witness, expert researcher, avid proponent.

his plan would go the way of Hillary's health plan, sad to say.

Ralph Nader is to cars what sand is to sex.

Remember, he wanted to command two hours of prime time television on every television station so that he, Ralph Nader, the epitome of socialist thought, could give the Americans under his command the orders of the day.

He would downsize the car industry until it was small enough to drown in the bathtub, and then stab it to death. To support the cause of Chairman Ralph we would all ride bicycles made of bamboo, while wearing the standard approved clothing.

If it hasn't occurred to any of you, Nader is a religious/political fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomemi.

His proposal is called the Audience Network and it is modeled after a citizen's network already in existence in the Netherlands. He proposed a half an hour to one hour of commercial broadcasting to be ceded to local democratic citizen members broadcasting groups to produce their own original content outside of the control of corporate broadcasters and advertisers. He's never proposed that he command the airwaves. By the way, Nader is more of an anarcho-syndicalist than a socialist.

not a trait you look for in a "czar"