Here at cato. Its my pleasure to welcome you to a book forum today, where well be discussing the latest book from ralph naadir, unstoppable the emerging leftright alliance to dismantle the corporate state. You heard that right. Ralph nader is speaking at the Cato Institute. And that little popping sound you hear is heads exploding all over washington. The same sound you hear when people discover store the third time the Koch Brothers support drug legalization, because when you look at the world through ideological spectacles and see everything in terms of left versus right, the most interesting things in the world become invisible. In particular, if you look back at recent American History, important parts of the story get lost. So when we think back to the 1960s, and opposition to the military draft, we think of this as a heroic leftwing cause. Student cad cals opposing the war and radicals opposing the war conscription. But the other part of the story is that one of the most influential opponented of military conscription was none other than milton freedman, leader of the Chicago School and economic adviser to goldwater and nixon, but who had long opposed the military draft, had made the case against it in his seminal and then served on the Nixon Commission which paved the way to move to an allvolunteer army. At the end of his life, freedman said his proudest policy accomplish. Was his role in ending the draft. Likewise, when we look back at the heyday of deregulation, what do we think of . We think of Ronald Reagan and the rise of conservativism, when in fact many of the most important deregulatory initiatives of the 70s and 80s occurred during the carter administration, and indeed, airline and trucking deregulation, the leader in congress, was none other than ted expend his young aide, steven breyer, and one of the most influential supporters outside of capitol hill was none other than our guest today, ralph nader. Flash forward to today and ralph nader once again sees interesting developments in the blind spot of partisan conventional wisdom. The prevailing picture of american Politics Today is that of polarization, left is left and right is right and never the twain shall meet. Ralph nader sees something else. He looks past the cable news sound and fury and sees the possibilities of leftright convergence in a number of key policy areas. In particular, he sees potential for principled libertarians, conservatives and progressives, to form a leftright alliance of outsiders against a corrupt and overreaching bipartisan washington establishment. The most promising causes for such alliance that landfill identifies are, one, opposing the massive Civil Liberties violations of the surveillance state. Two, fighting bloated Pentagon Spending and military overreach abroad. And, three, campaigning against corporate welfare and bailouts for privileged insiders. The common denominator is a suspicion of power, power that can be corrupted by using public power to enrich private purses, and power that can be abused by turning the coercive machineries of the state against the people it is pledged to protect. Of course this is a blind spot for the establishment. If theres one thing that washington insiders are united on its love of power, and a complete lack of suspicion of power. Oh, sure, theres suspicion of the other guys having power, burt paw in the abstract is just but power in the an instruct is just fine for in the abstract is just fine for washington insiders. The trick is making sure its in the right hands. For libertarians, suspicion of power is in our dna, so any effort to reorient politics in this direction should come as welcome news, and for my part i cant think of a better leader from the progressive ranks than ralph nader, whose whole car has been characterized bay principled opposition to unchecked power. Notably in recent years, its easy to find people on the left criticizing Civil Liberties abuses during the bush administration. They got a lot more silent, the people on the left, during the obama administration. But ralph nader has maintained that even raised the decibel level as civil liberty abuses have been consolidated and expanded. Of course, ralph mader and libertarians have real differences and those differences are rooted in different conceptions of the power to be worried about. Ralph is much more worried than i am about Corporate Power, and we libertarians tend to worry more about expansions of government power than ralph does in particular instances. But what we can certainly agree on is that when big business and Big Government get in bed together, were very unlikely to ooh and ah over the baby pictures. In any event, libertarians are 0 a tiny minority in american politics so when anybody wants to extend a hand to us, i believe it behooves us to be hospitable and, hence, todays event. Let me bro dues our speakers for what i think is going to be a wonderful discussion. Ill start with the commenters. After ralph speaks our first commenter will be dan mccarthy, who is the editor of the american conservative, a magazine which of direct relevance to todays proceedings has served as a standard bearer for realism and restraint in Foreign Policy in contrast to the more i mention this with special humility has dan was right about these things back when i was dead wrong. It took the dismal experiences of occupying afghanistan and iraq to beat the whole cold war hawk out of me in addition to his work at the magazine he has wherein for numerous other publics click the spectator, reason, and worked on the 2008 ron paul campaign. Tim carn yes, our other commenter, a senior Political Columnist at the Washington Examiner where his beat is the often salad intersection of business and squall quid business of business and government. He examines barriers to competition in all areas of american life. The author of the big ripoff. How big business and Big Government steal your money, in 2006, and obamanonics in 2009. And our main speaker today, ralph nader, surely here is a man who needs to introduction, as the sagos, but its my job to introduce him, and i we got rid of all the unnecessary jobs in washington, then where would we be . So in a public career, now spanning a half century, ralph nader has been an activist, author, critic, gadfly, Coalition Builder and president ial candidate. He is particular a founding father of the modern Consumer Protection varmintal movements. A career that made ralph naadir one of the 100 most influential figures in American History. I met ralph about a year and a half ago in an event related in his book. Before that the last time i actually saw ralph nader on stage i was a freshman at princeton university, 18 years old mitchell roommate and i, both very libertarian and at the time very rahrah proreagan, win to see ralph nader expecting to seedr one of satans henchmen. So if my presentday self could have whispered in the 18 university selfs year that approximately 100 years from now youll host an event with ralph nader, my mind would have been blown. So its my great pleasure to introduce ralph nader. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you all for coming. This book is a long time in being conceived, and goes back a long was in terms of my experience with people of different ideological labels, and it was quite clear to me, many, many years ago, that power structures believe in dividing and ruling, and if they can distract attention from the areas where different groups agree, to where they disagree, they can pretty much change that strategy of divide and rule into an institutional awareness level, and so you see all these arguments and all these descriptions about red state, blue state, conservative, liberal, you see a the polarization word used all the time. And it is true. Leftright, do disagree rather interminably on things like reproductive rights, balanced budget, school prayer, gun control. With variations on the margins, those are generally areas of disagreement. But the areas of agreement are extraordinarily numerous and very fundamental. Theyre fundamental in termed of procedural rights of any society that calls itself democratic, such as Civil Liberties. Theyre fundamental in terms of the misuse of taxpayer dollars. President eisenhower warned us against. Very fundamental in terms of preserving local, state and National Sovereignty from excessive surrender to unaccountable transnational systems of corporate governance, like nafta and the world trade organization. They are fundamental in terms of law and ordinary for the rich and powerful, not just for street criminals. They are fundamental in terms of giving volt voters more voices and choices, that means lower Ballot Access barriers. We have the highest Ballot Access barriers in the western world. And more choice for voters, and structurally it means with we give candidates more rights to get on the ballot, we are irrevocably giving voters more rights to have the choices of both agendas and candidates. Now, those are pretty important areas, and there are more areas of convergence between left and right. This book is for serious people who read, think, and are very serious about our countrys future and its place in the world. Some bry sat ritz might say, you he can get all those people in one room of disagree. The leftright convergence operates from very justins from inception to victory, depending on the issues. It operates, and its already there in terms of Public Opinion. We have large majorities behind the issues ive mentioned. The polls on breaking up the big banks that are considered too big to fail, they come in at around around 90 because the people fear that wall street will crash main street again. The polls come in very high on prosecuting bigtime wall street crooks. That comes in off the chart. People think there was wrongdoing in the crashing of our economy and unemploying eight Million People and burdening taxpayers with a gigantic bailout, not to mention the shredding of worker pensioned and the savings of people. And, yet, nobody was prosecuted and nobody went to jail in contrast to the savings and loan scandals, where there were prosecutions, convictions and jail terms served by over 800 officials of the s ls, a mere 25, 30 years ago. So things are getting worse in terms of wealth. In terms of what franklin del know roosevelt called fascism. He called it in a message in 1938 to the u. S. Congress asking for the contraction of a temporary National Economic commission to investigate concentrate it Corporate Power, and he said, and im paraphrasing him, except for that word, which he used he said, whenever government is controlled by private economic power, that is fast ship. And corporate welfare is a phrase people on the left use. It amounts to extraordinary power over Government Agencies and departments to turn their capitalist guaranteed system, and i used corporate, to contrast the capitalism we associate with Small Business, who, if they dont succeed, theyre free to go bankrupt and big business, if it doesnt succeed because of mismanagement, crime, or other irregularities, they go to washington, or if they do go to bankruptcy, it is immediately tied to a government bailout. As we saw with General Motors not long ago. The basis of the convergence to go even deeper is the preamble to theyn constitution, which is wow be the people, not wow be the corporations. The word corporation, company, political party, none exist in our constitution. So, its interesting to raise the question, well, then why do they control us . Why do big corporations and Political Parties control us . Its largely an out of control judiciary that ascribed increasingly Constitutional Rights across the board, with the exception of the fifth amendment, self incrimination to artificial entities known as corporations. And so the sovereignty of the people began to be subordinated to the sovereignty of the transnational corporation. The basis for the convergence, then, runs in the following stages. It starts in terms of Public Opinion. As Abraham Lincoln said, with public sentiment you can achieve anything. Without public sentiment you cant achieve much of anything at all. The number of convergences in terms of Public Opinion, i reduce to 24. Partly because i ran out of space. There are at least 24 significant areas, including the opposition to the use of imminent domain to seize homes and private businesses, and allows the state to level that area and give it to a Corporation LikeGeneral Motors or4n fisa. The Supreme Court ruled that was okay. Its interesting that a 54 decision, and four of the 54 were liberals. So, a major convergence of opinion that simply is wrong. Its one thing taking private property for building a highway or a bridge or whatever. School. But when you take private property from the powerless and then give it to the powerful private property of corporations, thats wrong. And following the kilo decision, the new london case, the 54 case i just mentioned, about 20some state legislatures immediately passed legislation saying, not in our state are you going to have imminent domain on private property to be transferred to private property. Indeed, at the statelegislative level, a lot is going on that could not go on without leftright legislatures, juvenile justice reform, reduce something horrendous sentences passed in 15 states. It could not have been passed without rightleft cooperation by the state legislators. Moreover, what were seeing in many state legislatures is a reevaluation of the war on drugs, which is a severe economic and Civil Liberties dimensions to it. We are also seeing increasing questioning of Economic Development policies that require taxpayers to fund stadiums, ballparks, and assortment of companies that wouldnt have otherwise made it on their own. Now, i had a talk with ed crane, who had michigan to do with the Cato Institute, and he said, ralph, i oppose all corporate subsidies, unconstitutional wars, Civil Liberties restrictions, the patriot act, and the Federal Reserve run amok. I said, thats pretty good start, ed. Those are not minor issues, are they . So the question becomes, how do you turn large majortary an leftright opinion operationally so it moves into coverage by the press, then being put on the table of candidates at local, state, national elections, and then it becomes part of debates and then the media covers it and the pollsters cover it and basically were off to a strain of political dynamism from which there is no return. They become part of the public discourse. Surprising as it may inside power is corporate. So its important to ask yourselves on issue by issue another what stage from Public Opinion convergence to becoming more coherently visible to being recognized by the media and the pollsters and to me put on the table by the candidates. And to be part of the public discourse. And interesting one is the minimum wage. The minimum wage is an anathema to libertarian. But it isnt just libertarians and liberals converging, maybe libertarians or conservatives would never call themselves corporatists, liberals and progressives, and when you come in 7080 for a restoration of the minimum wage to what it would have been at the level of 1968 adjusted for inflation, which would be just under 11 an hour now, at 7. 25 federal now, when you do that, you know there are a lot of conservative workers in walmart and elsewhere who are notlb going to sacrifice the necessities of life for their family and reject moving up to the 1968 inflation adjusted level because theyre conservatives. And this raises an interesting point. That at a high live of an extraction is where you abstraction is where you get most disagreement because political power brokers realize they can get people disagreeing, fighting each other, rooting themselves in immoveable positions, at abstract levels of general festival, philosopy and general labeling, but when you bring it down to where people work, raise their families, at the community level, the reality begins to weaken the ideological abstract rigidity that people might hold otherwise. In the book, i took an opportunity to see how corporatist masquerading as conservatives, and conservatives vastly outnumber corporatists. Corporatist happen to be more in power. How corporatists misinterpret or conveniently avoid it, recognizing that their principle starting with adam smith, were almost uniformly as worried about corporate coercion as they were about government coercion. Its just that corporate coercion spills over into government coercion, as its principle instrument of control in addition to direct corporate coercion on, say, consumers or other recipients. Adam smith, who is probably the most widely read political philosopher of his time he even went into customs reports. He read travelers who went all over the world at that time in trading, and wrote their accounts, a voracious absorber of knowledge. He believed in public education. He believed in public works. He warned repeatedly about businesses getting together to collude. He was against government regulation because he believed it would always be taken over by Corporate Power and used against the people. Twisted. Even someone like frederick haiy was someone who advocated in the wor