Folks, a weekly email post from Ralph Nader, the patriot who’s been blowing the whistle on how the corporations have been taking away the citizens’ sovereignty, livelihood, health, liberty, and dreams ever since our American experiment began. – Larry Ely

Attention Deficit Democracy

A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops illusion.

One yardstick by which to measure the decay in our country’s political, economic, and cultural life, is the answer to this question: Do the forces of power, which have demonstrably failed, become stronger after their widely perceived damage is common knowledge?

Economic decay is all around.  Poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, job export, consumer debt, pension attrition, and crumbling infrastructure are well documented.  The self-destruction of the Wall Street financial giants, with their looting and draining of trillions of other people’s money, have been headlines for two years.  During and after their gigantic taxpayer bailouts from Washington, DC, the banks, et al, are still the most powerful force in determining the nature of proposed corrective legislation.