Ralph Nader

Party: Independent

Age: 75

Job: Consumer advocate, lawyer, author.

Born in Winsted, Conn.

Lives: Washington, D.C.

Web site: www.votenader.org

Job history past 10 years:
Consumer advocate with a number of public-interest groups. Lawyer. Author.

Ever run for public office? When? Outcome?
Ran for president as the Independent Party candidate in 2004 and as the Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2000.

Other civic experience or community service:
U.S. Army 1959. Headed groups instrumental in enacting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Founded Center for Study of Responsive Law.

1) What should be the U.S. course of action in Iraq?
Nader/Gonzalez would reverse the current policy in the Middle East.

The current political strategy of pre-emptive war in the Middle East is a disaster for both the American people and the people of the Middle East. It has bloated the already wasteful military budget and has cost at present over 4,000 American lives, nearly 100,000 American injuries, and over a million Iraqi civilian lives, plus the destruction of their country.

Nader/Gonzalez propose a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

A target of withdrawing troops in six months will be set.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans want troops withdrawn from Iraq and a January 2006 poll shows that 72 percent of American soldiers in the field in Iraq wanted the U.S. out of Iraq within six to twelve months.

The war is costing taxpayers nearly $4,600 every second — and that doesn't include the long-term reconstruction costs.

Nader/Gonzalez proposes that a rapid negotiated withdrawal from Iraq, with UN sponsored elections, is the first step toward delivering peace to Middle East.

2) How would you improve our educational system?
Education is primarily the responsibility of state and local governments. The federal government has a critical supporting role to play in ensuring that all children -- irrespective of the income of their parents, or their race -- are provided with rich learning environments, equal educational opportunities, and upgraded and repaired school buildings.

The government has an important role to play in keeping undermining influences out of the public schools -- among them, commercialism and private school voucher programs. The federal government must not impose an overemphasis on high-stakes standardized tests. Such testing has a negative impact on student learning, curriculum, and teaching, by resulting in excessive time devoted to narrow test participation, de-enrichment of the curriculum, false accountability, equity and cultural bias, and excessive use of financial resources for testing, among other problems. Federal law should be transformed to one that supports teachers and students -- from one that relies primarily on standardized tests and punishment. The government should encourage schools to infuse their curriculum with civic experiences that teaches students both how to connect classroom learning to the outside world and how to practice democracy.

The Nader campaign opposes the over-reliance on high stakes standardized tests included in the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as "No Child Left Behind." High stakes standardized tests have a negative impact on student learning, curriculum, and teaching. Using high frequency test scores to determine funding for a school, retention, and graduation of students, results in numerous unintended consequences. The Nader campaign agrees with Citizens for Quality Assessment that federal policy needs to be transformed from one that uses punishments to control schools, to one that supports teachers and students; from one that relies primarily on standardized tests, to one that encourages high-quality assessments. Broader measures of student learning are needed that include reliance of classroom-based assessments along with testing. Also, broader curricula are needed to enrich students, including development of the civic skill of engagement in understanding the world around them.

A recent study by Harvard's Civil Rights Project reports that schools in the United States are becoming increasingly segregated 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education. Working with the states where appropriate, the federal government must:
Immediately provide full funding for Head Start;
Guarantee pre-school education for all children;
Adequately fund nutrition programs in the schools;
Ensure that the nation's crumbling schools are repaired within three years.

There is, as well, a critical positive role for the federal government to play, by promoting the vision, curricula, programs and projects for a K-12 civics education for democracy. In an era when children are overwhelmed with marketing images that reduce their attention spans and vocabulary, and orient them to an overweening focus on immediate gratification, low-grade sensuality and conspicuous consumption, an emphasis on civics for democracy promises instead to take students from instruction to learning to knowledge to application, until the highest educational goal is reached -- the sustained onset of educational self-renewal of, by and for the confident, motivated student.

3) What should the U.S. do regarding climate change and global warming?
The Nader campaign believes it is time to break our addiction to fossil fuels. The evidence of global warming is mounting. We threaten the global environment with our continued use of fossil fuels. Not only is this an ecological threat, it is a tremendous economic threat, facing all of humanity. Global warming will bankrupt the re-insurance industry, spread infectious tropical diseases, cause massive ecological disruption, and increased severe and unpredictable weather all of which will significantly impact commerce, agriculture, and communities across America and throughout the world.

We urge a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric and coal mining interests -- an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses that would break our addiction to oil, coal, and atomic power. A new clean energy paradigm will mean more jobs, more efficiency, greater security, environmental protection, and increased health.

The Nader campaign endorses the policy contained in Greenpeace on Climate Change, and urges people to get involved with Greenpeace's efforts, as well as the efforts of others, to forge a new energy policy that is sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly.

4) How would you get affordable health care to more Americans?
The state of health care in the United States is a disgrace. For millions of Americans it is a struggle between life, health and money. The Nader Campaign supports a single-payer health care plan that replaces for-profit, investor-owned health care and removes the private health insurance industry (full Medicare for all). This approach is supported by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); the American Nurses Association; the U.S. Labor Party; the California Nurses Association; the National Association of Social Workers; the Associations of Physicians Assistants; and the National Association of Midwives, among others.

The United States spends far more on health care than any other country in the world, but ranks only 37th in the overall quality of health care it provides, according to the World Health Organization. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal health care. More than 44.3 million Americans have no health insurance, and tens of millions more are underinsured. Private corporations pay less than 20% of health costs. Thus, even if you have insurance, you may not be able to afford the care you need, and some treatments may not be covered at all.

For a family living on the edge financially and facing the onset of a serious illness or disabling injury, a lack of health insurance can trigger bankruptcy or even homelessness. Homelessness only leads to more health care problems a world of inadequate hygiene, communicable diseases, exposure to the elements, violence, and emotional trauma. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine find that the homeless are far more likely to suffer from chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and asthma.

The Nader campaign favors replacing our fragmented, market-based system with a single-payer health plan, where the government finances health care, but keeps the delivery of health care to private non-profits, and allows free choice of doctors and hospitals for patients.

The U.S. health care system has many grave faults that could be remedied by a system of universal coverage, including serious gaps in coverage for: prescription drugs and medical supplies; dental, vision, and hearing care; long-term care; mental health care; preventive care for children; and treatment for substance abuse. A recent study by National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 25- to 64-year-old Americans die every year as a result of lack of coverage. That is 18,000 human beings every year, not counting younger Americans.

5) What energy policy should the U.S. pursue?
We urge a new clean energy policy that no longer subsidizes entrenched oil, nuclear, electric and coal mining interests -- an energy policy that is efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly. We need to invest in a diversified energy policy including renewable energy like wind and other forms of solar power, more efficient automobiles, homes and businesses one that breaks our addiction to oil, coal and atomic power. A new clean energy paradigm means more jobs, more efficiency, greater security, environmental protection and increased health.

Ralph Nader praises the Apollo Alliance's "Ten-Point Plan for Good Jobs and Energy Independence," an overdue agenda for the country's energy future, as a welcome contrast to the shortsighted policies of the Bush Administration. By increasing the diversity of the United States' energy portfolio, aggressively investing in the industries of tomorrow, facilitating the construction and retrofitting of high performance buildings, and working in cooperation with public servants at the state and local level to rehabilitate our urban infrastructures, the Apollo Project promises to revitalize the engine of the American economy. As the Alliance illustrates in its report, New Energy for America, the Apollo Project's design articulates a new paradigm for setting America's energy woes aright and serves up an authoritative refutation to the irresponsible policies of the entrenched fossil fuel and nuclear energy lobbies.

In the spirit of its namesake, which galvanized the will of the American people into a national effort to put an American on the moon, the new Apollo Project advocates a full engagement of the federal government with the initiative of the American people in the service of revitalizing our country's approach to its energy plight. Over the course of a single decade, beginning in 2005, the Apollo Project proposes the establishment of a viable infrastructure for the achievement of American energy independence. Calling for a $313.72 billion dollar federal investment in that ten-year period, Apollo progressively shifts the burden of American energy consumption away from fossil fuels and onto domestic renewable energy markets such as the wind, biomass, and solar energy industries. The United States has fallen dreadfully behind in these areas and will be well served to reestablish itself as a leader in technological innovation.

6) How would you change national tax policy?
The complexity and distortions of the federal tax code produces distributions of tax incidence and payroll tax burdens that are skewed in favor of the wealthy and the corporations further garnished by tax shelters, insufficient enforcement, and other avoidances.

Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years and now stand at 7.4% despite massive record profits. A fundamental reappraisal of our tax laws should start with a principle that taxes should apply first to behavior and conditions we favor least and pinch basic necessities least, such as the clearly addictive industries (alcohol and tobacco), pollution, speculation, gambling, extreme luxuries, instead of taxing work or instead of the 5% to 7% sales tax food, furniture, clothing or books.

Tiny taxes (a fraction of the conventional retail sales percentage) on stock, bond, and derivative transactions can produce tens of billions of dollars a year and displace some of the taxes on work and consumer essentials. Sol Price, founder of the Price Clubs (now merged into Costco) is one of several wealthy people in the last century who have urged a tax on wealth. Again, it can be at a very low rate but raise significant revenues. Wealth above a quite comfortable minimum is described as tangible and intangible assets. The present adjustment of Henry George's celebrated land tax could also be considered.

Over a thousand wealthy Americans have declared, in a remarkable conflict against interest, that the estate tax, which now applies to less than 2 percent of the richest estates, should be retained. The signers of this declaration included William Gates, Sr., Warren Buffett and George Soros. Ralph Nader does not believe that "unearned income" (dividends, interest, capital gains) should be taxed lower than earned income, or work, inasmuch as one involves passive income, including inheritances and windfalls, while the latter involves active effort with a higher proportion of middle and lower income workers relying on and working each day, some under unsafe conditions, for these earnings.