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US Chamber of Commerce Tour Ignores 250 Years of Socialism
To the people of America: You have a people’s economy—much of it still intact—to preserve, strengthen, and bring up to date.
Sep 27, 2026
On September 18, the US Chamber of Commerce announced it is launching a six-week, 20-state “Free Enterprise Express Bus” tour to back Republican candidates and “fight for free enterprise.” This big business lobby ignores the fact that, just like “capitalism,” American “democratic socialism” (supported by the voters for generations) is everywhere in our mixed-economy country.
Here is an incomplete list of public goods, services, benefits, and institutions that Democratic candidates can invoke in asking their GOP opponents: “Which one of the following will you tell voters you want to get rid of?”
- Public Lands - Parks and National Forests
- Public Schools and Universities
- Public Transit
- U.S. Postal Service
- Public Drinking Water Departments
- Public Electric Utilities
- Public Fire Departments
- Public Libraries
- Public Roads and Highways
- VA hospitals
- Mandatory Minimum Wages
- SNAP Food Stamps
- Unemployment Compensation Payments
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- Head Start
- Peace Corps and AmeriCorps
- Meals on Wheels
- Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
The list can go on. During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon begged the big drug companies to work on anti-malaria medicines. Malaria was the second leading cause of hospitalization for US soldiers in that undeclared war. Big Pharma refused, saying there was too little profit in one-time anti-malarial shots, compared with medicines soldiers were taking every day. So, the Pentagon chose socialism, setting up its own drug development entity in its two military hospitals. Pentagon scientists and doctors developed three of the four anti-malaria drugs in use and offered them to any country for use, without imposing patent monopolies.
Probably one of the nation’s earliest and foremost mixed-economy-minded civic founders was Ben Franklin. A successful businessman, he also knew the meaning of the phrase later coined by Amory Lovins: “Markets make a good servant, a bad master, and a worse religion.” Societies have many necessities that markets—meaning private companies—don’t supply when immediate profits are insufficient. Franklin helped create institutions to meet some of those needs: Philadelphia’s subscription Library Company, the volunteer Union Fire Company, and the Academy and College of Philadelphia, a precursor to the University of Pennsylvania. He also played an important role in colonial postal administration. These were not all government-operated public agencies, but they were civic institutions intended to serve broad public purposes.
Public works were crucial in enabling private business enterprises to flourish. Consider the Erie Canal, which opened in 1825 and linked the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. It created a navigable commercial route between the Atlantic economy and the Great Lakes interior, reducing transportation costs and accelerating settlement and trade. The growth of the nation-building national post office is an example of a spectacular universal “democratic socialistic” public institution.
When these and other socialistic enterprises generated consumer or worker demand, private corporate usurpers moved to undermine them, seize a piece of this governmental success and their publicly created value, rip them off as vendors, or persistently disparage these services to get the public to lose confidence in them. This corporate propaganda never stops.
For years, health insurance companies have carved out or hollowed out parts of Medicare and Medicaid. For the former, it is called “Medicare Advantage” (we call it Medicare Disadvantage), a cleverly deceptive trap, heavily advertised for elderly beneficiaries, costing traditional Medicare many billions of dollars a year, going for profits to the likes of giant United Health Care Corp. and Aetna. Both the Biden and Trump Justice Departments have gone after these in-built long exposed corporate frauds.
For example, the Justice Department has pursued Medicare Advantage fraud and False Claims Act cases involving inflated risk scores, unsupported diagnosis codes, and other practices that increase taxpayer payments. Recent settlements include $556 million from Kaiser Permanente affiliates, $172.3 million from Cigna, and up to $98 million from Independent Health. Medicare and Medicaid are highly vulnerable to waste, overpayments, and fraud. Federal estimates placed combined improper payments in the two programs at more than $100 billion in fiscal year 2023 (See Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Fiscal Year 2023 Improper Payments Fact Sheet).
For years, private freight companies have been undermining and restricting the Postal Service’s business—using Congress, for example, to ban the US Postal Service from transporting beer and wine, among other limitations while private carriers may transport alcohol.
The hyper-corporatists do not like to talk about the democratic socialist institutions listed above in taking today’s Democratic Socialists of America to task. So, they seize on some DSA apparatchiks’ media-grabbing declarations such as calls for closing down prisons or defunding the police. Like right-wing extremists, they have learned that to start getting media attention, they have to say off-the-wall or extreme things in absolutist language.
In contrast, elected democratic socialists or candidates generally focus on expanding the frayed “social safety net” for many millions of Americans, restoring taxes on the undertaxed giant companies that pay little or no US income tax or the superrich with their clever tax lawyers, and cracking down on corporate crooks ripping off hard-earned consumer dollars and savings.
To illustrate how modest these elected self-described democratic socialists are, consider New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He has never supported, even while a state assemblyman in Albany, repeal of an enormous daily electronic rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock sales. Under legislation signed by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1977 and fully phased in by 1981, Carey agreed to a deal with the stock market brokerage industry, that has rebated hundreds of billions of dollars back to Wall Street. Still, Mamdani, who needs money for his free childcare, free buses and other programs, is unwilling to demand a stop to the rebate. We’re also still waiting for Mayor Mamdani to call for greater enforcement against corporate crime, fraud, and abuses in the city. (See my columns: Mamdani’s Magnificent Primary Win—What Follows, June 27, 2025 and Open Letter to Zohran Mamdani – Political Moderate, December 5, 2025).
To the people of America: You have a people’s economy—much of it still intact—to preserve, strengthen, and bring up to date. Greet the Chamber’s Free Enterprise Bus when it comes to your state (check the Chamber’s website) with signs like: “Stop the Corporate Crime Wave,” or “Get the Rich Off Welfare.”
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Nader Rips 'Feeble, Weak, Cowardly' Democrats for Eschewing Trump Impeachment
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week."
Sep 17, 2026
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party's leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump's second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
"The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him," the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. "The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day."
"The American public knows it," Nader continued. "The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a 'dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.'"
Yet, "when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: 'We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,'" he noted. "What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority."
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck," he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure's consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green's resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green's resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done," as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts," he wrote, as well as "for educating and energizing the people back home."
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats' fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week," he wrote.
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Why Can't Democrats Outshine a Dangerous, Unstable, Delusional, Egomaniacal Trump?
Trump last week once again lied like hell as he repeated again and again his standard lies about the economy and US standing in the world. Take a minute and ponder why the Democratic Party is befuddled without a coherent way of responding to the crazy person and his GOP cult.
Sep 14, 2026
In his rambling and incoherent remarks for nearly two hours over two nights before a knee-jerk crowd in Dallas last week, Trump provided ample evidence that he is a dangerously unstable, delusional, egomaniacal, and megalomaniacal personality. He pushed for this unusual midterm GOP convention to shore up his dwindling faithful followers and get out the votes in what is likely to be a losing midterm election for Republicans in the House and maybe the Senate on November 3, 2026.
That is, if Trump fails to steal the election, as a 22 single-spaced-page account published by the Washington Spectator documented in alarming detail (See Dancing in the Dark, Part 4 by Mark Medish and Joel McCleary).
CNN reported that Trump brazenly urged his followers “to ‘cheat like hell’ to help Republicans keep control of Congress… and asked supporters to treat November’s elections as if he were on the ballot.”
Trump certainly lied like hell as he repeated again and again his standard lies about the Trump economy and the United States’ standing in the world. He lied about the number of illegal aliens entering the U.S. and the crimes they have committed during the Democratic administration. He lied about “bringing food prices and almost every other item rapidly coming down,” … “no tax on Social Security,” “the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined,” “sixty-five billion barrels [of oil] in Venezuela are ours,” “raking in trillions of dollars in tariffs” “making [America] richer than we ever thought,” “we now pay the lowest prices in the entire world for prescription drugs,” labeled the Democrats “communists” when he extorted companies to give the federal government part ownership as he courts and praises two communist dictators – Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un,
Then there are the legally questionable and unfunded fake promises to give every adult $5,000 if the GOP wins Congress in November. He boasts of having the greatest military in the world as he approves the firing of seasoned, experienced Generals and Admirals who might question the sanity of his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who calls himself “a warrior of God in the service of Jesus Christ,” while running out of ammunition in the service of Israel’s mass murdering genocide of Gaza’s civilian children, mothers, and fathers.
Trump lied about named Democratic politicians and wildly praised Ken Paxton as the greatest state attorney general in history. Paxton is a crook, having been impeached by his own Party in the state House, but was acquitted by the Senate. Conviction on any article required a two-thirds vote—21 of the 30 eligible senators. Paxton escaped conviction by seven votes.
Trump viciously exaggerated Joe Biden’s physical mobility and mental condition and falsely claimed the Biden administration wrecked America in all ways. This is the same polite Joe Biden who transferred power in the White House on January 20, 2025, greeting Trump with “Welcome Home.” Because Biden backed the same genocidal Netanyahu, Trump avoids accurately accusing Biden of aiding and abetting genocide. Tyrant Trump has continued providing powerful weapons and unconditional political backing.
Trump’s practice is to mix lavish praise for loyalists by name while assailing opponents with scurrilous libels, including two Senate Democratic candidates, Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Abdul El-Sayed (typically mocking his last name) of Michigan.
On frantic zig zag displays at his podium, faithfully played on Newsmax—the very biased and often slanderous channel built for Trumpism—were vivid demonstrations of his megalomania and egomania. Trump told the crowd on September 9, 2026, that “everybody loves me, and I love everybody.” The following evening, he asked supporters to raise their right hands and recite a pledge to “the greatest president in the history of the United States”—a reference to himself.
Perhaps these are his greatest lies, as he wrecks the lives of the poor, federal civil servants, firefighters, scientists, the sick and injured who needed insurance and benefits, and key protective and nurturing programs for children in both Red and Blue states and overseas in Africa and Asia. For some reason needing psychiatric explanation, he hates and undermines wind power and solar energy, while embracing oil and gas, “clean, beautiful coal” to worsen global omnicidal warming.
With his polls plunging and his postings on his misnamed “Truth Social” further bolstering the assessment of his worsening mental stability by 30 credentialed mental health professionals – both Democrats and Republicans (see April 30, 2026 of Congressional Record), Trump is running out of words like “lunatics,” “fanatics,” and “maniacs” to tarnish his critics with descriptions that apply to his own zany, lying, corrupt, violent, treacherous, law-violating, vengeful, obsessive, reality-faking daily impeachable behaviors. His endless self-naming mania went viral with his planting American flags on a map covering Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Iceland, Cuba and Jamaica.
The man, with his finger on the nuclear trigger, who calls violent climate intensities “a hoax” and scoffs at scientists’ warning of coming pandemics, is openly and proudly out of control. It is time to fire Duplicitous Doubling-down Donald.
Ponder why the Democratic Party is befuddled without a coherent way of responding to “crazy Donald” or a coherent, authentic pledge to the American people about what they intend to do for and with them should they regain control of Congress and the Presidency.
Ralph Nader’s Advice on How to Counter Trump’s Lie-Filled Primetime Speech
"There should be a huge peaceful crowd in front of the White House, watching the speech tomorrow night... and every time he lies, they can roar out, YOU LIED! YOU LIED! YOU LIED!"
Jul 16, 2026
Renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader called for a large demonstration in front of the White House Thursday night to protest President Donald Trump's primetime speech, during which he is expected to rehash his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen amid fears that he is working to sabotage the upcoming midterms.
“There should be a huge peaceful crowd in front of the White House, watching the speech tomorrow night at 9 pm,” Nader wrote in a Wednesday social media post, “and every time he lies, they can roar out, YOU LIED! YOU LIED! YOU LIED!”
Nader added that “there are already ground-level groups in Washington, DC who can turn out 200 to 300 people” each to protest Trump’s speech.
“If you’re listening, ground-level activists,” Nader emphasized, “this is a great opportunity for you at 9 pm, Thursday.”
After former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede, lied incessantly to sow doubt about the results, tried to enlist officials including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally overturn it, and then incited a violent riot at the US Capitol when those efforts failed.
According to a Tuesday report from NBC News, Trump during his speech is expected to "highlight findings that his administration says show foreign interference in the 2020 election," even though there has never been any proof that actions taken by foreign actors at all affected the outcome.
A Wednesday report from Reuters claimed that the White House was "deciding whether the president's remarks would include the disclosure of sensitive intelligence related to China's intention or ability to interfere in the 2020 US election," as some administration officials "worried the information could be misleading."
Axios reported on Thursday that many TV networks are "in a bind" over whether they want to air Trump's speech.
"The networks face pressure from both sides," Axios reported. "They've spent years trying to avoid amplifying Trump's false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Yet they also must contend with an FCC that, under chairman and Trump ally Brendan Carr, has opened a series of investigations into broadcast networks.
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Putting a Stop to the Cowardly Corporate Democrats
The party leadership's aversion to building their own momentum to answer the basic questions “Whose side are you on?” and “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” remains as pathetic as it was in 2022 and 2024. Enough.
Feb 02, 2026
“How’s the Democratic Party’s ground game in Pennsylvania?” I asked a friend several weeks before the 2024 presidential election. He replied optimistically that there were far more door knockers this year than in 2022. It turned out these door knockers were just urging a vote for the Democrats without putting forth a compelling agenda attached to candidate commitments on issues that mean something to people where they live, work, and raise their families. There was no Democratic Party “Compact for the American People.” Biden visited Pennsylvania, which went Republican, many times, with his most memorable message being that he grew up in Scranton.
Once again, the vacuous, feeble Democratic Party is relying on the Republicans and the cruel, lawless dictator Trump to beat themselves to gain control of the Senate and the House.
Legendary reporter Seymour Hersh last week made the case for the Republicans taking themselves down, to wit: “I have been told by an insider that the internal polling numbers are not good …” and that “Anxiety in the White House that both the House and the Senate might fall to the Democrats is acute. Trump’s poll numbers are sliding …. The public lying of Cabinet members in defense of ICE has not helped the president or the party. Trump hasn’t delivered on the economy, except for the very rich, and he hasn’t made good on early promises to resolve the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine.”
GOP operatives are assuming the Democrats will take back the House by a comfortable number and now think the Senate, where the GOP holds a three-seat majority. There are six seats in play. The GOP’s biggest fear is that their negatives continue to increase, propelled by a pile of unpopular Trumpian actions, ugly behavior, and corruption. The combination of all these things could create a critical mass and produce a landslide comparable to the Reagan-led victory in 1980. In this election, the Republicans defeated seemingly unbeatable Senate veterans like Senator Magnuson, Senator Nelson, and Senator Church, and gave the GOP control of the Senate.
Our Republic has been invaded by the Trumpsters, who are taking down its institutional pillars, its safety nets, and its rule of law. Our democracy is crumbling by the day.
So, what is the Democratic Party doing during this GOP slump? It is Déjà vu all over again. The Dems are furiously raising money from commercial special interests and relying on vacuous television and social media ads. They are not engaging people with enough personal events, and they are not returning calls or reaching out to their historical base – progressive labor and citizen leaders. Most importantly, they are not presenting voters with a COMPACT FOR AMERICAN WORKERS. Such a compact would spark voter excitement and attract significant media coverage.
Their aversion to building their own momentum to answer the basic questions “Whose side are you on?” and “What does the Democratic Party stand for?” remains as pathetic as it was in 2022 and 2024. Ken Martin, head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), recently quashed a detailed report he commissioned about why the Democrats lost in 2024. He has refused to meet with leaders of progressive citizen organizations. We visited the DNC headquarters and could not even get anyone to take our materials on winning issues and tactics. We offered the compiled presentations of two dozen progressive civic leaders on how to landslide the GOP in 2022. This material is still relevant and offers a letter-perfect blueprint for how Democrats could win in 2026. (See winningamerica.net). (The DNC offices are like a mausoleum, except for visits by members of Congress entering to dial for dollars.)
Imagine a mere switch of 240,000 votes in three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin) would have defeated Trump in 2024. That margin would have been easily accomplished had the Democratic Party supported the efforts of AFL-CIO and progressive union leaders who wanted the Dems to champion a “Compact for Workers” on Labor Day, with events throughout the country. (See letter sent to Liz Shuler, President of AFL-CIO, on August 27, 2024).
The compact would have emphasized: raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour, benefiting 25 million workers and increasing Social Security benefits frozen for over 45 years, could have benefited over 60 million elderly, paid for by higher Social Security taxes on the wealthy classes. The compact would also include: a genuine child tax credit would help over 60 million children, cutting child poverty in half; repeal of Trump’s massive tax cuts for the super-rich and giant corporations (which would pay for thousands of public works groups in communities around the nation); and Full Medicare for All (which is far more efficient and life-saving than the corporate-controlled nightmare of gouges, inscrutable billing fraud, and arbitrary denial of benefits).
Droves of conservative and liberal voters would attend events showcasing winning politics, authentically presented, as envisioned for the grassroots Labor Day gatherings, suicidally blocked by the smug, siloed leaders of the Democratic Party in 2022 and 2024.
Clearly, this is a Party that thinks it can win on the agenda of Wall Street and the military/industrial complexes. (See Norman Solomon’s book The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy. It can be downloaded for free at BlueRoad.info.) The Democratic Party scapegoats the tiny Green Party for its losses again and again at the federal and state levels to the worst Republican Party in history – BY FAR.
It is fair to say that, with few exceptions, the Democratic Party apparatus is coasting, playing “it safe,” and expecting that the Trumpsters will deliver the Congress to it in November.
The exceptions are warning about this hazardous complacency, such as adopting James Carville’s ridiculous advice just to let the GOP self-destruct (though recently he also has urged a progressive economic agenda). There are progressive young Democrats challenging incumbent corporate Democrats in the House. They are not waiting for a turnover in the Party’s aging leadership. They believe the country can’t wait for such a transformation. Our Republic has been invaded by the Trumpsters, who are taking down its institutional pillars, its safety nets, and its rule of law. Our democracy is crumbling by the day.
As for the non-voters, disgusted with politics, just go vote for a raise, vote for health insurance, vote for a crackdown on corporate crooks seizing your consumer dollars and savings, and vote for taxing the rich. That’s what your vote should demand, and these are the issues that should be conveyed to the candidates campaigning in your communities.
Tell the candidates you want a shakeup, not a handshake. (See, the primer for victory, “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” 2024).
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An Open Letter to Mayor-Elect Mamdani, a Political Moderate
The social democratic countries in Europe and other countries, including Canada, have long had much broader social safety nets that go far beyond what you have proposed. There's a deeper reason the oligarchy does not like you.
Dec 06, 2025
Dear Mayor-elect Mamdani,
It should not come as a surprise to alert citizens that your decisive victory in the Mayoral race has prompted your opponents – the privileged super-rich and their indentured servants in City Hall – to label you as an “extremist,” “radical,” or, in Trump’s view, a “communist.” How ludicrous! Your affordability agenda is hardly immoderate. Many Democratic politicians have taken these positions over time.
Free bus fares exist in some municipalities in the U.S., including Kansas City, Missouri, Tucson, Arizona, and Alexandria, Virginia. Proposing half a dozen city-run grocery stores in New York City’s “food deserts” (meaning a geographic area with limited access to affordable, healthy food options) is hardly radical. You could even have them structure these stores as consumer cooperatives (owned by consumers). Food co-ops have existed in numerous communities in the U.S. for years. Your rent stabilization proposal is not uncommon – many large cities have rent controls to protect powerless tenants from avaricious landlords, especially from today’s very large corporate landlords with their fine-print contract peonage. Also, there are cities in the U.S. offering partially publicly subsidized child care. New Mexico just launched a statewide universal child‑care program.
The social democratic countries in Europe and other countries, including Canada, have long had much broader social safety nets that go far beyond what you have proposed.
What the oligarchy and large corporations really do not like about you is that you are projecting a consistent and wide-ranging voice for the people, the workers, the poor, and the powerless in the corridors of political power of City Hall. They have had long-game statism, or a corporate state, at the local, state, and federal levels, with little opposition by the two-party duopoly.
Regarding your self-description as a democratic socialist, that doesn’t pass the laugh test. You are not arguing for nationalization of banks and insurance companies, utilities, not even, to our knowledge have you called for a “public bank,” which has existed so effectively in North Dakota (now a Republican stronghold) founded in 1919.
Indeed, President Donald Trump has become a corporate socialist par excellence. As The New York Times reported on November 25, 2025, (“$10 Billion and Counting: Trump Administration Snaps Up Stakes in Private Firms”) the Trump administration has de facto partly nationalized an array of private companies for ulterior political motives under the contrived banner of national security. The companies include Intel, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, MP Materials, Vulcan Elements, and MP Materials. This invites bribery by other means, i.e., a Trump donation in exchange for an administration sweetheart investment. The fabled Central Intelligence Agency now features a venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, ostensibly to fund commercial technologies to fortify the U.S. intelligence community and the Department of Defense. But under Trump, partisan political motives likely will inform the CIA’s investment portfolio.
As for taking a stand on pending legislation ending the unconscionable daily electronic rebate of tens of millions of dollars in stock transaction taxes (a progressive tiny sales tax of one tenth of one percent on stock sales), you have been AWOL despite urgings by your numerous colleagues in the state legislature to sign on to a bill that would end the rebate and specifically allocate the many billions of dollars annually to mass transit, education, health care and environmental protection.
So far, your silence has put you to the RIGHT of former Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG. During his presidential run in 2020, he said:
“Harness the power of the financial system to address America’s most pressing challenges. Introduce a tax of 0.1% on all financial transactions to raise revenue needed to address wealth inequality, and support other measures – such as speed limits on trading – to curb predatory behavior and reduce the risk of destabilizing “flash crashes.”
Note, Bloomberg goes beyond a sales tax on STOCK transactions to include all financial transactions (such as bonds and derivatives).
In addition, a New York Times op-ed of April 17, 2000, by ROBERT E. RUBIN – big banker and former Treasury Secretary under Clinton – wrote, urging increasing revenues, “on a highly progressive basis, for example, by increasing corporate taxes, restoring individual rates, repealing pass-through preferences, AND IMPOSING A FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS TAX (our emphasis).”
Some reporters may wish to ask you, “Why, as a democratic socialist, are you to the RIGHT of Bloomberg and Rubin when it comes to tiny sales tax mostly on Wall Street’s high-frequency stock trades?”
As for your plans to expand the housing supply in New York City to make housing more affordable, all kinds of efforts are underway to do this around the country, including in the California high-priced housing market.
Check out the National Cooperative Bank in Washington, D.C., which provides loans to consumer co-op models in the housing, food, and other areas of economic activity. The Bank was established in 1978 with our support, by the Carter Administration, and then spun off by the Reagan regime. It might be useful in funding your housing and grocery store initiatives.
There is one more example in which you are conventional. So far, you are part of the class of public servants, which we have described as “incommunicados” when it comes to working closely with progressive civic leaders and citizen groups. (See The Incommunicados by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein https://incommunicadoswatch.org/). Put simply, it is too hard for many progressive advocates to get through to you or your top aides. You may wish to assign a staffer as a liaison to these groups whose ideas, experience, and endurance can be of signal assistance to what will probably be a turbulent tenure.
Be guided by the adage that “NONE OF US ARE AS SMART AS ALL OF US.”
May you succeed and put forces in motion throughout the state and country of a deliberative democracy in successful action with sound civic engagement. The cardinal pillar of a democracy, worthy of the name, is JUSTICE, for without justice there is no freedom and liberty for the people.
We anticipate your considered response.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Bruce Fein
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Musk's xAI Is Showing Us Exactly Why We Need Public Interest Lawsuits
When powerful corporations are able to completely circumvent basic democratic accountability, public interest lawsuits are a final backstop to protect the community’s well-being.
Oct 05, 2025
The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center are moving to sue Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. The company has been accused of illegally operating several dozen diesel-fueled turbines to power Musk’s “Colossus,” a massive data center located on an old industrial lot.
According to SELC, the company operated those generators to power Colossus—and released toxic pollutants—without even applying for a permit to use them.
This entire saga is an excellent example of why public interest lawsuits and strong environmental regulations are critically important. Unfortunately, both are under attack on multiple fronts. The Trump administration and the US Supreme Court have both moved to seriously weaken the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The White House and the Roberts court, joined by many “supply-side liberals” and proponents of the “abundance agenda,” are also attempting to impeach environmental regulation and public interest lawsuits in the court of public opinion.
Musk’s Memphis misadventures are a case in point of why that’s so dangerous.
No prominent abundance proponent has even attempted to square Musk’s actions with their insistence that we need to remove opportunities to sue to block development.
Colossus went into operation while adroitly sidestepping the democratic process. By dangling promises of tax revenues and economic development, xAI was able to begin operating its massive data center with even some city officials totally oblivious to the process. A company representative who was supposed to speak at a public meeting with the county commission played hooky. Add it all up and it demonstrates how, especially at the local level, powerful corporations are able to completely circumvent basic democratic accountability. In those cases, public interest lawsuits are a final backstop to protect the community’s well-being.
When the government refuses to enforce the laws and allows corporations to run amok, it falls to activists and community groups to force its hand. This is the central premise of Public Citizen founder Ralph Nader’s decades of progressive politics, and something that many centrist Democratic pundits have begun to deride.
What such pundits invariably miss, however, is that despite Nader’s successes, there are still innumerable instances where governments fail to hold powerful corporate interests accountable. In an emblematic example, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue in their bestseller Abundance that, while Nader’s approach was important in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we are now at a juncture where such litigation serves mostly to delay important policy implementation and no longer serves a critical purpose. But for all too many disproportionately poor and majority-minority communities like South Memphis, a public interest lawsuit of the sort denigrated in sweeping fashion by pundits is their last, and honestly only, means of protecting themselves.
The framework deployed by the abundance movement, which is echoed by the Trump administration and the Supreme Court, assumes away instances like xAI in Memphis. Indeed, no prominent abundance proponent has even attempted to square Musk’s actions with their insistence that we need to remove opportunities to sue to block development.
Unfortunately, Musk’s machinations along the Mississippi are part of a longstanding pattern of the government ignoring, and sometimes engaging in, development that poses acute harms to vulnerable—disproportionately majority-minority and poor—communities. South Memphis has been repeatedly left exposed to toxic waste by exploitative industrial practices and government neglect. The Tennessee Valley Authority dumped its toxic coal ash waste there. The same exact site where Colossus now sits once hosted a polluting factory.
And it isn’t just South Memphis. Across the United States, there are abundant examples of communities hung out to dry. The corridor of petrochemical factories between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana, for example, has been dubbed “Cancer Alley” because its residents are subjected to such high levels of carcinogenic pollution. Other areas with heavy fossil fuel infrastructure are called “sacrifice zones” because of how much cancer and chronic disease residents endure.
Even now waste facilities are almost always sited in poor neighborhoods that don’t have the wealth and political capital to block them. Lawsuits are the final bulwark to defend those communities. Calling for them to taken off the table is dangerous, especially with the White House and Supreme Court eager to ape such talking points to justify removing any means of blockading the whims of the powerful.
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Calls for Impeachment Grow as Trump Floats 'Regime Change' in Iran
The striking of Iranian nuclear sites without congressional approval, said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment."
Jun 23, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump took to social media on Sunday night to express that regime change is on the table for Iran's government, the call from Democratic lawmakers and outside progressive voices for his impeachment continued to grow following the weekend bombing of Iranian nuclear sites.
"It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,'" Trump posted on Sunday night on Truth Social, one day after the U.S. struck three sites in Iran overnight on Saturday. "But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!"
"So we DIDN'T destroy Fordo and we ARE doing regime change? How are there proponents of this anymore?" wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Monday.
On Saturday, the United States dropped several 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Fordo, Iran's heavily fortified nuclear facility. Facilities at Natanz and Isfahan were also targeted.
Independent experts who viewed satellite imagery of the areas told NPR that the strike left Iran's nuclear program damaged but not destroyed.
In remarks on Monday, Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said, "Given the explosive payload utilized, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred." Speaking to the IAEA's board of governors, Grossi called for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Iran so that inspectors could view and assess the damage to the targeted sites.
Prior to the attacks, U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Iran was not attempting to build a nuclear weapon.
Even before Trump made his comments about regime change on Sunday, multiple Democratic members of Congress took to social media to say that Trump's strikes on Iran constitute an impeachable offense.
"[Trump] has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on X. "It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment."
Meanwhile, Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) wrote on Sunday: "This is not about the merits of Iran's nuclear program. No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. without the approval of Congress. This is an unambiguous impeachable offense."
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), "the leading constitutional expert in Congress," should launch an impeachment push. Nader urged Raskin to file an article of impeachment against Trump for "engaging in a major war without a Congressional declaration."
"MAGA claimed to be anti-war when they voted for Trump. Well, he has betrayed you. Time to stand for your principles. Sign the War Powers Resolution and impeach Trump," wrote Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running for Rep. Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) seat in Congress.
The journalist Scott Dworkin wrote "Congress must impeach and remove Trump. Period."
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a war powers resolution in the U.S. House last week, asserting the constitutional requirement of congressional approval for any declaration of war. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced one in the Senate.
Trump's comments about regime change came hours after Trump administration officials told the media earlier on Sunday that getting rid of Iran's leadership is not the administration's goal.
"This mission was not, and has not been, about regime change," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a press conference on Sunday morning. "The president authorized a precision operation to neutralize the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear program."
Vice President J.D. Vance said on NBC News on Sunday morning: "Our view has been very clear that we don't want a regime change."
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The Corporate Media's Refusal to Accurately Cover Genocidal Terrorist Benjamin Netanyahu
It is time to beyond time to examine the shortcomings of the U.S. mass media’s coverage of an out-of-control brutal Israeli regime, weaponized and funded daily first by Biden and now by Trump.
May 31, 2025
Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany—to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific genocidal mass slaughter in Gaza. Former Deputy Minister of Economy Yair Golan called out Netanyahu for “engaging in baby killing as a hobby.”
These denunciations fortify the long-standing documented condemnations by sixteen Israeli human rights groups, including “Breaking the Silence,” whose most recent report details how Israeli platoons in Gaza use Palestinians as “human shields.”
It is time to examine the shortcomings—some imposed and some self-inflicted—in the U.S. mass media’s coverage of an out-of-control brutal Israeli regime, weaponized and funded daily first by Biden and now by Trump.
1. Start with the vast undercount of deaths in Gaza (population 2.3 million) since October 7, 2023. Curiously, the media disbelieves Hamas claims, except for its Ministry of Health report of fatalities. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, only reports the deaths that can be confirmed by name from hospitals, clinics, and mortuaries, most of which have been destroyed or gutted. So, day after day, newspapers dutifully reported Hamas’ fatality toll—now at 54,300.
Nobody in the academic community, UN, and international relief world believes this low number. Their unofficial estimates ranging from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Most of these groups readily agree that almost all the survivors of the deadly bombardments of civilians and their homes, markets, hospitals, and food, fuel and other emergency infrastructures, such as destroyed water mains and electric circuits, are either sick, injured, near death, and starving.
The media has no hesitation in estimating the number of Syrians killed during the civil war over the Assad dictatorship (500,000), or the number of Ukrainian deaths following Russia’s invasion. Somehow, they can’t see that Hamas has an interest in undercounting to avoid greater condemnations by its people for not protecting them. The media should put their reporters to work on documenting a more realistic death toll. At 500,000 fatalities, the intensity of political, diplomatic, and civic pressure is quite different than the fictional 54,300 figure.
2. Netanyahu’s ban on all independent journalists from entering Gaza, including U.S. and Israeli reporters, makes it difficult to get more facts and sources on the ground. The Israeli army has killed over 300 Palestinian journalists, some with their families. Some of their apartments were targeted by U.S.-made missiles. Last year, 75 major media organizations protested this exclusion in a full-page ad in the New York Times. Signers included the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Their effort to cover the carnage in Gaza was to no avail. Bibi Biden would not back them up. The censorship continues under Trump.
However, these are powerful media outfits with reporters close by in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They can do much more to get the gates to Gaza opened to tell the world the grim stories of the mass killing fields that are creating the risk of a wider Middle East War. Why the media does not press harder is itself an untold media story.
3. All this world-shaking violence started when, whether by colossal blunder or contrivance, Netanyahu’s ultra-modern border security apparatus collapsed in all its parts on October 7, 2023. He has tellingly blocked any official investigation. This is a story that must be probed until Netanyahu’s responsibility for enabling Hamas is exposed. Earlier he had bragged about supporting and helping to fund Hamas year after year because of Hamas’ opposition to a two-state solution.
Instead, absence of a full investigation allowed Netanyahu to turn his blunder into a U.S.-backed series of attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As an elderly Nazi holocaust survivor told the New York Times after October 7th, “This should never have happened.”
4. The coverage of courageous Israeli human rights groups—including soldiers, rabbis and joint Israeli and Palestinian initiatives inside Israel—is very thin. The U.S. media has given vastly more coverage to disputed claims by Netanyahu et. al of mass rapes on October 7th, debunked by Israeli media scrutiny, then it gives these truthful strivers for peace. Why?
Moreover, what could possibly be the reason for the major U.S. newspapers completely ignoring the Veterans for Peace’s (VFP) constant street protests via its 100 Chapters in the U.S. including its present 40-Day Fast in communion with the starving Palestinian families in Gaza? Just this week, The Washington Post had a prominent two-page spread showing adopted dogs in Ukraine since the invasion.
5. The slant in coverage is on the other side as well. The immensely powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” domestic lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has escaped investigation or even an arm’s length deep feature in major newspapers. Yet in Congress, powerful AIPAC has a “minder” attached to every Senator and Representative and has sponsored primary challenges to lawmakers brave enough to mildly criticize it for being Netanyahu’s bullhorn. AIPAC won’t even support getting American reporters inside Gaza or allowing airlifts of horribly burned or amputated Gaza children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.
The slant infects words used and words suppressed. The New York Times and CBS regularly refer to Hamas’ terrorism, but Netanyahu has killed vastly greater numbers of Palestinian civilians for political purposes, and that mass slaughter is referred to as “Israeli military operations.” In repeating day after day that 1200 Israelis were killed, the press does not say, as they do for Hamas, that Israel’s government does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. In fact, about 400 of the 1200 were Israeli soldiers and some police officers.
All this mass bloodshed is getting to former elected Israelis. This week in an op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Netanyahu of “war crimes” in Gaza. Look for many more members of Israel’s political and security establishment to start speaking out and protesting.
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians," wrote Olmert. "We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
Shockingly, Donald Trump is still afraid of Netanyahu who arrogantly broke the ceasefire Trump took credit for and thumbed his nose at Trump by doubling down on the deepening Palestinian Holocaust and ignoring Trump’s warnings about people starving in Gaza. Month after month, Netanyahu blocks thousands of trucks with humanitarian aid on Gaza’s borders paid for by American taxpayers.
Soon this pressure cooker will explode in ways either predicted by the Pentagon or unforeseen as a “Black Swan” event. The deadly impact of Israel’s war against a long-defeated small Hamas guerrilla force on our own country’s weakening democratic institutions —from freedom of speech to Congress—is reaching the awareness of ever more Americans.
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The Harvard Law School Dean's Deafening and Dangerous Silence
What does a tyrannical president like Donald Trump have to fear from a law school leader like this? It seems like the answer is clear: not very much to fear at all.
Apr 06, 2025
Tyrant Donald Trump, mega-violator of federal laws Wrecking America, has targeted Harvard University. Trump illegally threatens to cancel $9 billion in committed grants and contracts. One would think that the mighty Harvard Law School – loaded with professors having litigation and federal government experience – would be the vanguard of resistance and counterattack against the critical extortions of Trump, the fascistic dictator.
Wrong!
The Law School is under the control of the University’s Board of Overseers and the University Administration. This exalted edifice of higher education is quivering with fright and bending to the vicious Trumpsters instead of fighting back in the courts and enlisting their vast influential alumni. Such a Law School would have turned a deaf ear to Paul Revere’s Ride on the 18th of April in ’75.
I learned this firsthand as an alumnus of the Law School when I co-sponsored the first VIGOROUS PUBLIC INTEREST LAW DAY on April 1, 2025.
Here is the story in brief. Last December Interim Dean John Goldberg returned my call for a substantial conversation on the need to address the various forms of corporate power and corporate coercion over the rule of law. As a former Tort Professor (tort law deals with wrongful injuries) his awareness of corporate abuses was greater than his less learned predecessors.
I mentioned articles written by me for the Harvard Law Record in recent years that urged more attention by the Harvard Law School to the systemic lawlessness of these corporate supremacists along with more study of congressional surrender to the Executive Branch. He welcomed me sending materials on these topics and said he would read them over the Holidays and we would have another conversation.
A Harvard graduate, John F. Kennedy, wrote a best-selling book titled “Profiles in Courage.” I recommend it to the Dean and all the Harvard law faculty who looked the other way.
That was the last time I ever heard from him. Since that conversation came the second inauguration of Donald Trump and his tactics of winning through criminal intimidation. Many emails, voicemails, and requests in January and February through the Dean’s polite secretary for us to speak went completely unanswered.
Come March, my calls and emails became focused on informing him about the Vigorous Public Interest Law Day events, with speakers of great distinction for their contributions to a more just society. I wanted to invite him to greet the assembly and urge students and faculty to be part of this rare event at the heavily corporatized law school. After all the rule of law was under wholesale destruction because of Trump’s illegal, enforced executive orders.
No answers from his Deanship. Instead, the feedback from students revealed evidence of their anxiety, dread, and fear. Especially by foreign students and supporters of Palestinian rights against U.S. funding and co-belligerent support of Netanyahu’s mass murder genocide in Gaza. As April 1st neared, I sensed that the two large reserved lecture rooms would be too large.
What I saw unfolding was a quiet boycott, almost all the contacted faculty went incommunicado and those that showed some enthusiasm ended up being strange no-shows. The Law School has numerous student associations and over thirty legal clinics run by full-time directors. Students and staff overwhelmingly failed to attend.
It’s not that our organizers, a full-time person and several stalwart students, didn’t publicize these sterling presentations – some in-person and some by Zoom. There were posters and handouts everywhere. Emails, telephone calls, meetings, and word-of-mouth efforts were substantive. Burritos were provided as a free lunch. Requests to Dean Goldberg to meet with the speakers (mostly Harvard law alumni) with hundreds of experience years of pursuing and achieving justice went unanswered. The speakers wanted to share their views with him and the assistant deans as to how best to have the curricula, extracurricular experience, and admission criteria better reflect the law school’s own declared mission: “to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society.”
Sadly, there was not even the courtesy of a response from his Deanship.
What explains this crude and rude rebuff, unlike how the Administration lays out the red carpet for rich corporate alumni from Wall Street and other plutocratic venues?
The Law School is controlled by the overall University policy to shy from challenging Trump and demonstrate flexibility. Harvard retained Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Trump. Astonishingly, the Harvard administration ignored antisemitism against the Palestinian slaughter, with U.S. tax dollars and military support in violation of the Leahy Law, instead adopting a definition of antisemitism closer to Netanyahu’s racist state coverup. Two leaders of Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies were discharged. This led the New York Times to report that: “To some faculty members, the move was more evidence that Harvard was capitulating at a moment of creeping authoritarianism.”
The Law School is part of this capitulation, notwithstanding its historical knowledge that yielding to newly installed tyrants emboldens their tyranny to move against other universities and colleges.
So here is what poor, frightened Dean Goldberg of the once mightiest law school in the world could have seen by looking at our program:
The first speaker was Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen which has already filed eight suits against the Trump regime’s illegal orders, such as the shutting down of serious humanitarian support by the life-saving U.S. Agency for International Development.
He was followed by John Bonifaz, president of Free Speech for People, who is starting an “Impeach Trump Again” national drive against Trump with more than 250,000 signatures. Then came Mark Green, a primary co-author with me of two books on Trump – one presciently called “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.” Then James Henry, a strong advocate of justice for Palestinians, and so on. The Dean’s reaction was not to come within miles of this crowd. He made like this program didn’t exist. Follow the white flag of calculated surrender to Trump, a convicted felon, the most impeachable president in American history (See, Is any Member of Congress ready to impeach Trump? If so, we’ve drafted 14 articles of Impeachment, in the February/March 2025 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen). Avoid strongly calling out Trump for his masked, ICE plainclothesmen kidnapping students and disappearing them to a Louisiana prison. Look the other way at this fast-emerging dictatorship and police state electing Napoleon in lieu of James Madison. Gloat over succeeding in keeping the audience down to about 40 people by going dark as if it never existed. Bruce Fein pointed out that the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence signed their death warrants on July 4, 1776, and we should be inspired by their example to rescue their handiwork from Trump’s mutilations.
Some Law School Deans are speaking up. A leader is Erwin Chemerinsky at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, who is networking with other Deans in standing tall and resolute. He wrote in the Washington Post that “… despite the risks of speaking out, silence itself comes at enormous cost. Giving in to a bully only makes things worse.”
It is not hard to feel sorry for Interim Dean Goldberg. He wants to become the permanent Dean. Toward that quest, you learn how to get along by going along with the wobbly Harvard president Alan Garber and his rubber stamp Board of Overseers.
A Harvard graduate, John F. Kennedy, wrote a best-selling book titled “Profiles in Courage.” I recommend it to the Dean and all the Harvard law faculty who looked the other way.
Former federal judge and now law professor Nancy Gertner did show up, did urge resistance and challenge to what she forthrightly called, on Democracy Now! Trump’s burgeoning coup d’état.
Aristotle would have liked Nancy Gertner. He once wrote that “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
The entire Day’s proceedings were videotaped and will be streamed in due time for nationwide viewership. Watch it in a dark room, Dean.
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