Wherever they want, listen to whatever music, eat whatever they want, that doesnt mean they are cynically free. That is the emphasis. You have to engage in democracy. My dad used to say, if your user rights, you want to lose your rights. If you had to pick another country in the world, only if you had to, where would you find a country that would maybe do it better than us . On possiblyending holland, scandinavia, canada. I think our democracy is being depleted. It is weaker now. More concentrated power in the hands of few against many, and government snooping, corporations playing with our country, exporting jobs and industry and all the fine print that we have to sign the dotted line, the poverty is increasing. We are not competitive anymore when it comes to justice. We are not the standard. Australia has a minimum wage. If youre over 20, it is 16 and . 90. If youre under 20, disease at 13 an hour or 11 an hour and has a lower unemployment rate. By the way, you have to vote in federal elections in australia. No politician has to spend time and money begging cuba to come out to vote. They see it as a civic duty. Should that be a requirement in this country . I think we should have a referendum and big debate on. In australia, they just accepted. If you have an excuse, its ok,. Ut 97 90 vote if you violated, they fine you ucks. I spoke to the cab driver and told him that you live in a country with a force you to vote. He turned around and looked at me and said why, its a civic duty. Correctly used to be a hitchhiker. You used to be a hitchhiker. Hit the road, whos going to pick you up. You dont follow sleep on the pick you up in the front seat. You talk to them. Everyone picks you up. One guy knows about cutting timber and another guy knows widgets, whatever. I shouted to that. I learned, i learned a lot from the drivers. We often come before the police at the scene of a crash. That really made an impact on me, the blood and the screaming and the silence and the mangled cars. It was got me interested in doing a paper at law school on , youe automobile design know, no seat belts, no padded dash panels, no strong door latches, no head restraints, you name it. Those days, we are bouncing around in a car in a crash like pottery. The dash panel was like a roomful of knives. You to get killed in the 50 mileperhour collision. I lost a lot of my friends, too. Everybody did in those days. Far more serious injuries. I really got angry. The more i learned about how the auto bosses in detroit were suppressing their own engineers. Seat belts, they were in world war i airplanes for heaven sakes to keep the pilot from falling out. I really got angry. How money copies of unsafe at any speed did you sell . Copies, probably close to 100,000. Then it went into paperback. Is still in circulation . Yeah, you can still get it. Something. O show you it goes back to 1960. It features jimmy dean. It is about one minute 20 seconds. Lets latches. Lets watch this. Its fun to see what folks have done for the prizes they have one. Fair, thears state new blueribbon will be going to chevrolet corvair. A car thatss getting all the stairs everywhere goes. There is a reason. More advantages and more appeal than any other compact car on the road today. You take room, for instance. It has room for six adults, this car. And the fiveop kids. Another thing, when you write to the fair in his corvair, known as going to have their knees up under the chain because theres lots of room. The floor is practically flat. And, the engine is in the rear. The chevrolet people put there to give you the best performing compact car on the road today. Is a real for seasoned performer. His corvair can take you practically anywhere. Can have your reaction . I never saw that before. Yeah, there were a few things left out, like you have more Carbon Monoxide and you could tolerate. You cant smell it or see it, the steering column was rammed back into the driver in a left front collision because it was positioned to be very exposed to that. And, of course, danced on you. When turned the corner he could go out of control and rollover. But it wasetty car, a deadly car. Whatitd feel like was your reaction when you found that you were having an impact . I know it is only chapter one of eight. Yeah, the rest of it was safetyhe suppression of Technology Including emission control by the auto companies. There are lots of scientists and engineers who really couldve given a strict Motor Vehicles in every way. Impact at thean beginning, because you couldnt get on tv in those days or radio and mention a car by make and model vertically. , cbc hadgo to toronto a program called this hour has seven days. On with the auto company spokesperson, and then when i came back to washington, i started getting calls to go on tv. This was in 1965. ,he book came out november 30 1965. It is almost the 50th anniversary. Then, the attorney general and i was at hearings, of all places, in des moines. He hauled in the brass from detroit to their. Didnt like it. The New York Times wrote up and my in washington, hes senator from connecticut. He said tuesday, hey, we have to get going on this. Are we being upstaged by an attorney general . So he had hearings. In the meantime, General Motors was following. They hire detectives to get dirt on me. They followed me around the country, even interviewed some of my classmates from law school. His all went public and senatorr, Robert Kennedy and fred harris won the committee of the time. They hauled the heads of gm, unheard of in those days, and the detective that they hired who was out of a damon runyon novel. The outrage resulted in the passage of the Motor VehicleHighway Safety laws in 1966 signed by lyndon johnson. He invited me to the white house for the signing ceremony. , saved over a million lives. It also had an impact on car imports a broad. He had to meet your standards, which then were higher. In the book, you point out an accidentwill saw outside his house, walked outside and saw that there was somebody deceased from the accident, and then endorsed the airbag heard what relevance does it have twos book . It makes my point. The auto safety law was passed unanimously in the house of representatives, republicans and democrats. We get down to where people live and you talk about stats and injuring classes an injury and clashes and losses of loved ones, those divisions disappear. Saw a woman dead on the street and he came back and said, enough of these u. S. Abstractions of these paid pitiless abstractions. Where to get the idea of the need for seatbelts and airbags and things like that . Well, i did a paper in the harvard law school, a thirdyear paper which i turned into the book unsafe at any speed. It is surprising. The pentagon spent 45 million ording some Harvard SchoolCornell Medical School to study what happens in the crash. What happens in a crash. Is when younjury are ejected from the windshield. Losing more air force men on the highways in the u. S. Abandoned the korean war. Those studies came to my attention. I was very absorbed by them. Articles andwrite i decided to interview them on the qt. We would go around detroit in a cab. They would give me plain envelopes and i turned it into the book. Got wind of it and hired private detectives. What i learned is when you talk about safety, and who didnt have a story of someone being injured or there being injured or killed in a car crash, the ideology dissipated, he put his focus area isnt a right thing to do to recalled effective when the companies learn yet effective like the gym scandal right now with the Chevrolet Cobalt and other models. That really impressed me. That is the genesis of this book, unstoppable. The merging right lines to dismantle the corporate state. When you get down to specifics, the sense of fair play comes in. The golden rule philosophy comes in. It is not some corporatist. Epublican or democrat ideology word, throughout your book. Onthere is that agreement very important things is being pushed down by the corporatist grip on both the democratic and republican parties and their leaders. We start, for example, with Public Opinion around the country. It does matter, red state, blue state. Theyre upset with the patriot act restrictions on privacy and Civil Liberties and free speech. Theres a big convergence. Subsidies,like handouts, giveaways to corporations on the backs of taxpayers, especially the wall street bailout type. No crooks are prosecuted or put in jail. They want a crackdown on corporate crime very big business gets away with a lot of stuff. It is kind of main street versus wall street nexus. You dont like empire. Right, left, they dont like empire. They dont like us pushing around all over the world and into countries and losing our soldiers. Theyre wasting trillions of dollars. All these people around the country see public works crumbling. America needs repair. We are blowing it up overseas with trillions of dollars, and we are not repairing them. That is a convergence issue. Theyre like these hold down trade agreements. Thats why mr. Obamas not going to get that transpacific agreement through. It is a left right convergence in the house of representatives against fast tracking his trade agreement with limited debate and no amendments. An operating convergence in state legislatures on juvenile justice crime reform. It is already almost 20 legislatures. Donald ross who is leading this fight with the Macarthur Foundation tells that he could not get these bills through without a leftright alliance. The same things begin to happen with these long sentences for possession, say marijuana. You have Newt Gingrich and others starting a group called right on crime. Theres a movement to put solutions on the shelf. We withdraw from Civic Engagement and dont go out and vote and dont try to get more choices on the ballot with third parties, etc. This is what this book is about. It ise may say well, pieinthesky. No, it is not pieinthesky. As i mentioned, the auto safety bill was a convergence victory. In 1983, there was a rightleft convergence to defeat the boom dollar the boondoggle Water Treatment plant. It was considered unstoppable because of that senator howard baker behind it and Ronald Reagan behind it. We beaded 56 to 40. , thehistleblowing bill false claims act of 1986, that was senator grassley, republican. And, of course, the recent government fraud and corporate front of the taxpayer. We tried to find a first appearance on this network. The one we found was that this one . Heres what youre saying back in 1985. People are looking at the current state of consumer issues. The observation can be made, all the big battles have been fought and some lost her theyre all behind us now. What is up next . Finished. S is not safer pharmaceutical products, Drinking Water that is relatively pure. Theres not a lot of progress, but theres a lot left to be done. What would you say today echo this is 28 years later. Is almost 30 years. What is left . Credit card, debit card, economy. It is full of cows Interest Rates and prints and overcharges. People are hooked into this whole system. They cant get out. We have real project called fear of contracts. Org. Pletely change things. Cars are safer, food is better people are eating more nutritious food, for example. The water in many areas is cleaner. Hand, you have a lot of hospital induced infections that are preventable. Americans die every day. Whether it is meg whitman or harvardligence, medical school with maybe a thousand deaths each year. With regulators being forced to sleep on the job, the mice will play. That is what we have seen in this recent gm situation. The other thing that is troubling is that more and more , the corporate mergers munities termination the communication networks. Dear in their dna to solar power are out. That is strategic. It is not good for competition and innovation. Is that a partisan issue, when we see the rebellion some years ago against the fcc loosening the restrictions on how many tv, radio, newspapers can be ordered can be owned by one country, it was leftright. They get the house of representatives to work both tolls for rumor. It was the nra and colin cox. Think the whole realignment in our country is i dont sugarcoat the obstacles. Requires at realization that theres a big majority here that can be put together, left, right, all important directions for our country and reform. How many years did you live i have to like it here. I like the idea there are no skyscrapers, either. Do you have a credit card . No. You dont. No. Dont have credit . No. Of control you give up when you have credit and debit cards. Unfortunately, theyre forcing you to do it. Try renting a car with cash. More and more the coalition is pushing away from cash, even in taxicabs. Do you own a car. No. Have you ever bought a car . Yes. A car . E you own it is a pain in the mac. When youre living in the city and you have Good Transportation and you can walk, i dont want to look for parking space. It is a nuisance. I try to control my time. I dont have email. I dont have direct email. , have a college who has email but between email and everything else, it is noon. We havent gotten anything done. Time thatse a lot of way. Youre been on this earth 80 years. Do you feel it . No. You work everyday . Yeah, of course. It is a joy to work. Within hours to keep . At pretty much work all the time. Once in a while i take in a movie. I used to take in a ballgame, but when you love your work, it is not work. It is fighting for justice as i see it. You live in a country that gives you a chance to do that, and you see some of the doors starting to close, and elsewhere, you have to keep it open for generations to come. Do you own a Television Set . I was given one, but it is not quite working with the right antenna. I do listen to cspan radio. Do ourselves met all, ever . Once in a rare, rare while. If theres a championship game, for example in sports, or 60 minutes. Once in a while i do. You wrote a lot about conservatives in this book. Of all the conservatives you have known and worked with, which when have you worked the most with . On some issuesed with pat buchanan on trade, Grover Norquist on corporate , on probation. On prohibition. I once visited senator grassley, and he said look what your democrats are up to . Said i was at a hearing, my committee. I was against this tax loophole carrying interest for wall street Venture Capital hedge ands, and john Kerry Charles schumer were supporting wall street. Heres the point, there is convergence under the side theres been running the country into the ground. It is called the corporate liberal, represented by the clintons, and the corporate conservatives represented by the people we all know. Theyre the ones who got rid of Bank Regulation and collect and clag egg spiegel. It was a republican vote that helped clinton get those through. Were talking about something new on the people side in terms of convergence. The corruption of both parties and other attractions has been going on for a long time. Back in 1989, here you are testifying on something that is a constant issue. To think Congress Deserves a theyvery increase . Increased their sarah larry 40 since 1981 to the present 89,500 level. Patient a very generous list. Worth of people returning. 9 00 a. M. Percent of the people earn less. When you look at the deficit in washington, if you look at the scandals that arent corrected involving the executive branch as well, if you look at all program cutbacks in head start and health and safety and education and low Income Housing and the rest, this is not the fellowsraise these income. Therell always need money to get campaign contributions. Personally, i think they get about 170,000 now plus benefits. That should be enough to live on. A lot of people would like that. Did you ever stop to pay increase . Using pop radio, yet using talk radio, yes. You cant believe how hung up they are on this. In one area, speaker of the house, jim wright, and his counterpart, the congressman michael from illinois, held a press conference. They said, anybody who is ryanair ticket who is running who is running on our ticket for whos making a case negatively, we will cut off. Rates he raised the pay grab issue. They cut him off. He didnt have money for a single tv ad. Gingrich was reelected, came back, dumped jim wright as a speaker, took over the house of representatives in 1994. What youre saying is the parties are going to cut the money off anybody was going to the first one is brought up a lot. Get the department of defense to audit its beautiful budget. Department had to audit its budget . It would be too embarrassing. They would have to explain why 9 billion in the first few months in the invasion of iraq by bush cheney, disappeared, unaccounted for. Just recently, 6 billion in the first term of the obama state department. That they cant account for. Here is the biggest business in the united states, the pentagon. 800 billion. Half of the federal government discretionary budget, and we have no more soviet union. It is still humming along. Audited. Even been one accountant would ever, ever operate that way. What business would ever be able to operate . Year, they put the report to congress on the pentagon. Every year they say sorry, we dont have the daily dusty Data Available from the pentagon to have an audit. So i think once you are the pentagon, you know where the money is and you know where it is going and where it is misspent. Obama and Hillary Clinton is in. It is even ask for money from congress. They got a billion and a half dollars somewhere in the pentagon budget. Rights a real big left, alliance. Control, the political heights in congress. You have john boehner, he just wanted areas you let mcconnell, he wants it. What is my secretary of defense want to audit the . Wind that been easy way to do it . Youre all promising. The secretary of defense says we are working on an audit. The latest offense deadline is 2017, just after the election. What you do other than mention them here . Did anything publicly to try to . Et rid of