Ralph Nader

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Ralph Nader is a consumer activist long renowned for a career of exposing corporate deception and wrongdoing that result in human harm. Nader, who was a candidate for U.S. presidential election, 2004, is an Arab American, born February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut to Lebanese immigrants Rose and Nathra Nader. [1] [2]

In 1968 he founded the Center for Study of Responsive Law.

• Founding Director, Appleseed Foundation

Nader for President in 2008

Nader is running for President of the United States in 2008 and has launched a website to promote his candidacy.

Nader on Iraq

In a speech Monday night, May 24, 2004, at the Council on Foreign Relations, presidential candidate Ralph Nader "delivered a strong call ... for America to withdraw from Iraq by the end of this year, a stand that threatens to lure antiwar voters to his independent presidential campaign and away from Democrat John Kerry."

"Nader said Iraq faces a choice between two futures. In one, he said, Iraq could stay on its current course and remain a 'puppet regime' under Washington's control. Or, he said, 'we could declare a set date for corporate and military withdrawal - let's say the end of the year.'"

Nader "also called for replacing U.S. forces with a peace-keeping force from the United Nations - although the U.N. hasn't agreed to such a plan and Nader is in no position to negotiate it."

"Nader also called Monday evening for Bush's impeachment, saying he prosecuted a war under false pretenses. 'To say Bush has exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein is pretty much commonly accepted,' Nader said. '. . . The fabrications, deceptions and prevarications rise to high crimes and misdemeanors and warrant impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.'"

2004 Presidential Campaign

Democrats and progressives from around the country have asked for Ralph Nader to withdraw his bid for the WhiteHouse [3]. One group, StopNader.com, has started to air TV commercials warning voters that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.

"Ever since Ralph Nader announced his independent candidacy for president last month, both friends and critics have wondered why he is running -- and where the great gadfly will obtain the enormous resources needed for a national campaign," writes Joe Conason in his March 15, 2004, Salon article "Office Space. Ralph Nader's got some explaining to do. Why is his campaign headquarters housed in his nonprofit's tax-exempt offices?"

Nader's campaign for U.S. presidential election, 2004 is "presently headquartered at 1400 16th Street in Washington [which is] a modern, downtown office building where it shares a suite with an outfit called Citizen Works," a group that describes "itself as 'a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501c3 tax-exempt organization founded by Ralph Nader in April 2001 to advance justice by strengthening citizen participation in power."

Conason cites this as evidence that Nader's "organization may be cutting financial corners and skirting the dubious edge of federal election and tax laws."

Contact

• 2008 Campaign Website: http://www.votenader.org/index.html

SourceWatch Resources

• Nader for President 2004
• U.S. presidential election, 2004: Campaign Ads
• Laura Nader - his sister
• Todd Paglia
• Joseph Browder
• Consumers International

External links

• Stop Nader Campaign.
• Ralph Nader's Citizen Works biography.
• Nader's impact on the 2000 election & the big names that no longer support him.
• Harry G. Levine, "Ralph Nader as Mad Bomber," Department of Sociology, Queens College, City University of New York, March 2004.
• Joe Conason, Office space. Ralph Nader's got some explaining to do. Why is his campaign headquarters housed in his nonprofit's tax-exempt offices?, Salon, March 15, 2004.
• Peter Montague, "Ralph Nader and Barry Commoner: strategies for public interest research, including three original case studies" (Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New Mexico, Dept. of American Studies, 1971).
• William Kaufman, "Ralph Nader, Rocky Anderson, and the Green Party: A Political Un-Love Story", Dissident Voice, April 23, 2012. (Rocky Anderson)

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References

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