We are at one of the most pivotal moments in our country’s political history: Americans are more disillusioned with their political leaders than ever before and large majorities of citizens tell pollsters that big corporations have too much political power. The ever-tightening influence of big business on the mainstream media, elections and our local, state, and federal governments, have caused many Americans to believe they have no political voice.
Yet, Ralph Nader—named by Time and Life magazines as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century—has an impassioned and game-changing message for American citizens: You are not powerless.
In UNSTOPPABLE, Nader persuasively demonstrates that there is an emerging Left-Right alliance which has the power to dismantle the corporate-government tyranny. Large segments from the progressive, conservative, and libertarian political camps already find themselves aligned in opposition to the destruction of civil liberties, the bloated and economically draining corporate welfare state, the relentless perpetuation of America’s wars, sovereignty-shredding free trade agreements, and the unpunished crimes of Wall Street against Main Street.
It’s time to use these budding alliances to expand our power on Capitol Hill, in the courts, and in the arena of public opinion to demand a more accountable government. In UNSTOPPABLE, Nader provides a blueprint for how free Americans on both sides of the aisle can fight against the corporate state and crony capitalism. He proposes twenty-five potential reforms that can be accomplished through a Left-Right alliance (see reverse side for list), and further explains how they can be achieved. He also addresses head on the obstacles and consequences facing those politicians, leaders, and opinion makers who are contemplating joining a Left-Right alliance.
Nader rounds out his practical call for action with a rich historical record of Left-Right convergence, demonstrating that this strategy can be successful. And if Americans follow Nader’s lead to form stronger, bolder Left-Right alliances, they can regain their voice and demand a right to consume safe foods and drugs, breathe cleaner air, receive fair rewards for their work, avoid empire, regain control of taxpayer assets, strengthen investor rights, make bureaucrats more frugal and accountable, and achieve a more self-reliant economy. They will be unstoppable.
Twenty-Five Proposed Redirections and Reforms Through Convergent Action
- Require that the Department of Defense (DOD) budget be audited annually, and disclose all government budgets. Secrecy destroys accountability.
- Establish rigorous procedures to evaluate the claims of businesses looking for a government handout which would end most corporate welfare and bailouts.
- Promote efficiency in government contracting and government spending.
- Adjust the minimum wage to inflation.
- Introduce specific forms of taxation reform as well as push to regain uncollected taxes.
- Break up the “Too Big to Fail” banks.
- Expand contributions to charity, using them to increase jobs and drawing on available “dead money.”
- Allow taxpayers the standing to sue, especially immunized governments and corporations.
- Further direct democracy—initiative, referendum, and recall, for starters.
- Push community self-reliance.
- Clear away the obstacles to a competitive electoral process.
- Defend and extend civil liberties.
- Enhance civic skills and experience for students.
- End unconstitutional wars and enforce Article 1, section 8, of the Declaration of War Act.
- Revise trade agreements to protect US sovereignty, and resume full congressional deliberations, ending fast track.
- Protect children from commercialism and its physical and mental exploitation and harm.
- Control more of the commons that we already own.
- End corporate personhood.
- Get tough on corporate crime, providing penalties and enforcement budgets.
- Ramp up investor power by strengthening investor-protection laws and by creating a penny brigade to pay for an investor watchdog agency.
- Oppose the patenting of life forms, including human genes.
- End the ineffective war on drugs.
- Push for environmentalism.
- Reform health care.
- Create convergent institutions
* List is excerpted from Chapter 4, Page 65 of UNSTOPPABLE.