[nader-colo-students] Hi from the battlefield

["Damon Haley " <dhaley@greens.org>]

Dubya is leading Gore by about 11% in Colorado polls.  If people tell 
you that they'd vote for Nader but they don't want Bush to win, tell 
them that Bush will probably win Colorado's electoral votes anyway, 
so that a vote for Gore doesn't really help Gore at all.

Gore's finally acknowledged Nader's existence and is running ads 
which try to attract Nader supporters in states with tight races.  He 
isn't really in attack  mode, though.  Asked if he wanted Nader to 
drop out of the race, he said he'd rather have Bush drop.  

Remember to wear your buttons/shirts/etc consistently for the next 
two weeks.  Encourage your friends to get buttons and bumper 
stickers, their value decreases significantly on November 8th.  If 
anyone is low on materials, please email me <dhaley@greens.org>.

Make a plan to hold up Nader signs at key intersections on election 
day in your city, go through campuses
to remind students to vote, and hang banners from freeway 
overpasses.  Besides students, we should remind motorists driving to 
work or to the polls that they need to 'vote their conscious' and 
'not the lesser of two evils.'   This is the last and most critical 
day to finish of our campaign, so please make an effort to be out 
campaign the last three days of the election.

If everyone on this list convinces 10 other people to vote for Nader,
we'll get over 1,000 additional votes.  On your next call home, talk 
to your parents about Nader.  At the next house party you go to, talk 
to the  drunk people.  It's what grassroots is all about.

Not spoiler in Colorado.
KEY POINTS FOR CAMPUS ORGANIZERS
 During last couple of weeks of campaign

1. Set up tables early in the week before the election to get 
volunteers to commit to leafleting and canvassing the days before the 
election, and to walk around with Nader signs reminding people to 
vote.

2. Collect names and numbers of likely Nader voters for get out the 
vote drive.  This is critical for undecided voters, and students who 
may forget to vote or don't know where the polling place is.

3. Set aside 3 full days the week before elections to get the word out
canvassing, etc.

KEY POINTS TO EMPHASIZE

1. Voting for Nader in Colorado is NOT a vote against Gore.  Bush has 
this state.

Damon Haley
dhaley@greens.org
www.coloradonader2000.org
---------------------------------------------------------------
October 30th 2000  Special Event
Time  7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Title  Colorado Springs Halloween Green Party
Location  Gaylord Hall at Colorado College in Colorado Springs
Phone Contact  (719)633-1003
Cost  Free
Sponsor  Colorado Springs Green Party

Come to the Colorado Springs Green Party's Halloween Party at 7 P.M. 
at the
Gaylord Hall at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Gaylord hall is 
in the
Worner Center on Collorado College, at the nortwest corner of the 
Cascade Ave.
and Cache La Poudre St. intersection.

7:00 P.M. - 7:30 P.M. Socialize
8:00 P.M. - 8:30 P.M. Q & A session with moderator
8:30 P.M. - 9:00 P.M. Talk with guests

There will be tables with Nader materials, food and drink. Video will 
also be
shown.

Entertainment will include piano & bagpipe, and Bush and Gore holding 
the
"Democracy" coffin.

There will also be speaches by Nancy Harvey, the Colorado Nader 2000
Coordinator, and members of the Colorado Springs Green Party.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
What a vote for Nader means

To cynics, it's a vote for Bush. But you won't hear Bush or Gore rip 
the auto industry on its Motor City turf the way Nader does in this 
speech.


- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Alicia Montgomery

Oct. 25, 2000 | Many of the attacks against Ralph Nader, the Green 
Party candidate for president, come from Democrats concerned that 
Nader backers will seal a George W. Bush victory. With the race going 
down to the wire in traditional Democratic havens like Oregon, 
Wisconsin and even Minnesota, Nader is being set up as the villain of 
any campaign scenario that ends in a Gore defeat. A vote for Nader, 
according to these critics, is a "wasted vote," one that accomplishes 
nothing, since it's one vote less for Gore. 

Nader backers, for their part, are trying to persuade liberal or 
"progressive" voters that a vote for their man sends a distinct 
message. 

But what, exactly, does a vote for Nader stand for? He's against 
capital punishment; he's for both military downsizing and withdrawing 
troops abroad; he supports "civil unions" for gay couples; he opposes 
many of the trade expansions of the last decade, including GATT and 
NAFTA; he supports public financing of political campaigns; he 
supports a universal, single-payer healthcare system; and he backs 
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. 

There are other issues: He supports jail time, not just civil fines, 
for corporate officers who violate consumer protection regulations; 
he supports a moratorium on irradiating meats; and he supports 
legalizing industrial hemp as a way of diminishing the economic 
crisis among small farmers. 

And, of course, there's the promise of a true straight talker. While 
most politicians do tailor their speeches depending on what audience 
they are speaking to, most don't challenge their audiences as Nader 
did in his Oct. 10 remarks to the Detroit Economic Club. 

At that pro-auto-industry venue, Nader blasted car manufacturers for 
decades of manipulating the government to dodge safety and 
environmental regulations, charges he first leveled in his 
groundbreaking 1965 work "Unsafe at Any Speed." The speech is rude, 
impolitic and completely unapologetic. And it may be the perfect 
Nader primer. 

An excerpt follows: 

Invitations to me from the Detroit Economic Club do not come 
frequently to me for obvious reasons. And I welcome the opportunity 
as an invitation for candor. 

My father came to this country in 1912 and, as he said when he sailed 
past the Statue of Liberty, he took it seriously. And his first job 
was in the Maxwell Auto Works here in Detroit. He had started out as 
an autoworker. 

And in 1939, he and my mother took me to the World's Fair in New York 
City and I was a little boy at the time, and I was very excited by 
the major display at the World's Fair, which was by General Motors. 
And I ran around and saw all these proposed futuristic cars driven by 
non-internal-combustion engines with all kinds of dazzling innovation 
that we still are waiting for today, so many years later. 

Well, I remember, I ran in to my parents, so excited, shouting, "GM, 
GM, GM." Little did GM know, I guess. 

When I started on motor vehicle safety issues back in law school at 
Harvard in the 1950s, what impressed me most was the simple nature of 
safety devices that were not in cars. For example, the padded dash 
panel that was invented by the makers of the Roman chariots in 
ancient Rome. The collapsible steering column was patented before 
World War I. Seat belts were available to pilots in World War I so 
they wouldn't fall out of airplanes when they somersault in their 
area of battles. And head restraints; and other stronger door 
latches. 

And when I started criticizing the auto companies for not putting 
these simple, lifesaving features in cars, that was considered a 
radical move by the auto companies and by quite a few commentators as 
well. One particular struggle illustrated the non-inventive syndrome 
inside the auto industry: when studies showed that in frontal 
collisions, if you hit your head against the rearview mirror and it 
did not break away, it could be a fatal injury. 

And it took us years to get the auto company executives to let their 
engineers do what they knew how to do and to put breakaway rearview 
mirrors in cars that we have today. All of these safety devices cost 
a pittance even on the first round of installation. 

In the mid-'60s, two of the motor vehicle safety and highway safety 
laws, with the support of Lyndon Johnson, managed to get through the 
Congress. Motor vehicle safety has saved over a million lives and 
millions of injuries prevented or reduced in severity and huge 
causalities reduced in Europe and Japan because they have to build 
cars that have to meet our standards. And so their people benefited 
as well. 

The enormous success in the first few years of the Auto Safety 
Agency's administration [is] still to our benefit today. The death 
toll per 100 million vehicle miles in 1966 was 5.6 fatalities for 
every 100 million vehicle miles driven. Last year it was 1.6. 

So regulation does work, and a coordinated national effort to have 
everybody involved, address the problem, can diminish the problem. 
And yet we have so many other problems and injustices in our country 
toward which there is not a coordinated effort in using the genius of 
our scientists and engineers, the rule of law, to push these 
technologies off the shelf and into the marketplace to benefit 
consumers. 

Well, what has happened now is that the Auto Safety Agency has become 
a consulting firm for the auto industry. The process started under 
Ronald Reagan and George Bush and continued unabated under the 
Clinton-Gore administration. With the exception of the airbag 
standard, which had a good push forward from congressional 
legislation, there has been very little advance in automotive safety 
and fuel-efficiency technology in people's motor vehicles in the last 
20 years. The last statutory fuel-efficiency standard was established 
in 1975, and the goal was by 1985, a motor vehicle average fuel 
efficiency would be 27.5 miles per gallon. 

Under Clinton-Gore, motor vehicle fuel efficiency was allowed to 
actually decline. It is now at the lowest level since 1980, at around 
24 miles per gallon. That means more pollution into people's lungs, 
more money out of their family vaults, more importing of foreign oil 
and more impact on the more global issues of the greenhouse effect 
and ozone depletion. 

Of course, Clinton-Gore had a chance in '93-'94 when they controlled 
the Congress, but they didn't take advantage of it at all. And the 
[National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration] has lost a lot 
of great talent. Its crack efficiency team of engineers and 
scientists has been disbanded, and nothing is going on in this area. 
Even though we now are seeing what happens when certain petroleum 
supplies are taken, and how we're driven, not toward efficiency in 
heating, lighting, air conditioning, water or motor vehicle systems, 
but we are now being driven to destroy or impair our wildernesses in 
northern Alaska and others in order to drill for more oil. 

The emphasis now is on electronics and, you know, geographical 
positioning systems, and so forth. Basically, there have been no 
upgrades of standards that were issued by our government for the last 
30 years. The notorious tire safety standard was issued in 1968 and 
not upgraded. This wasn't even designed for radial tires. In fact, a 
lot of the industry decided that they exceed federal safety standards 
because these standards are obsolete and antiquated. 

I wanted to give you a few examples besides the tire safety standard. 
Wheel crush standard is now a useless standard. Fuel economy 
standards, I mentioned, have not been upgraded since 1975. 

Child restraint standards should cover children up to 80 pounds; now 
it's only 40 pounds. Child restraint standards should be dynamically 
tested with various-sized dummies; they are not now. Gas tank, rear 
gas tank and side impact standards have not been upgraded. Uniform 
car quality grading information does not apply to light trucks or 
SUVs. 

And there are other examples as well [of] safety standards that the 
Department of Transportation has not issued, including: seat 
structural strength to keep the seat from ripping up and pushing you 
forward in a collision; seat-back failure prevention; ... tire-
inflation-warning dashboard indicator -- that would have come in 
handy with the Firestone tire/Ford Explorer combination -- there are 
no standards; frontal-intrusion prevention to protect legs and feet; 
a rollover prevention -- that takes thousands of lives a year, 
vehicles rolling over. 

We need, in this country, new motor vehicle statutory authorities. In 
the light of the Firestone tire [defect] coupled with the less than 
stable Ford Explorer SUV, a stability problem was pointed out by Ford 
engineers as early as 1990 inside the company. In the light of the 
104 deaths in this country and several thousand deaths abroad ... In 
the light of that, there is now in Congress an attempt, in the rainy 
days of the session, before they go home, to enact the following 
amendments, which I believe are necessary. One, to put finally, after 
35 years, criminal policies for knowing and willful violation of 
motor vehicle standards or knowing or willful refusal to recall known 
defective cars that are impairing human life. 

There are dozens of federal statutes that have criminal penalties in 
them. The food and drug laws, for example, the occupational safety 
and health laws. Many statutes have criminal policies, but when the 
law was passed in 1996, the auto companies got them excised from the 
legislation that was going through Congress on its way to Lyndon 
Johnson for signature. And we always thought that the chickens would 
come home to roost, and they have on more than one occasion, 
including the Firestone/Ford Explorer situation. 

The second change that's needed is to increase the [maximum] civil 
penalties from $925,000. The Senate and House bills raised it to $15 
million. 

The third is to require the testing before certifying for compliance 
with safety standards. The House bill requires such tests for second 
and final stage manufacturers, where the problem is most prominent. 

Fourth is to extend the statute of limitations. Right now if you have 
a car that is over eight years old, and the company discovers a 
serious defect -- say a metallurgical defect that was not designed 
for -- they don't have to recall the vehicle. After eight years, they 
are in the clear. 

The proposal in the House and Senate was [to] increase it to 10 years 
and to increase [the] tire recall statute of limitations from three 
to five years. And then also to place an obligation on the 
manufacturers to review and collect information. To learn about a 
possible safety defect and report it through the Department of 
Transportation before the disasters start to mount. 

Right now, the manufacturer must act to recall known defective 
vehicles and alert the secretary of transportation, but only after 
deciding to recall not based on what the manufacturer knows before 
making the decision. The agency budget is now 30 percent lower in 
real dollars than it was in 1981. And, of course, they have to deal 
with so much more than [in] 1981. 

It's important also to note that there have been other situations 
that would have incurred criminal penalties in the past. And 
Mitsubishi Motors, for example, has admitted that they have hid 
complaints about defective parts for 30 years. The defects include 
failing brakes, leaking fuel caps and faulty clutches. This coverup 
by Mitsubishi Motors was exposed when Japanese regulators found 
consumer complaints stuffed in employee lockers during a surprise 
inspection at the company headquarters in Japan. 

And closer to home, documents recently came to light showing that 
Ford Motor officials knew for years about problems with a 
computerized ignition system that shuts off engines if they get too 
hot. Although federal regulators looked into the matter several 
times, Ford insisted it had known of no particular defect and never 
gave regulators documents in its possession that could have shed 
light on the problem. 

Now, [for] all of these and other knowing and willful criminal 
behavior, coverups, there is no criminal penalty. But if you are ever 
in Colorado or Wyoming and Idaho, and you get caught harassing a wild 
ass, you can go to jail for one year. 

I'd like to point out a few things about the responsibility to the 
auto industry, if I may. Bill Ford made a very nice speech a few 
months ago on the responsibility [of] the auto industry. But every 
time we read these nice statements and we get encouraged, we trip 
over their lobbyists in Washington who are driving in reverse. 
They're pushing to block all kinds of advances in health, safety, 
emissions control and fuel efficiency. 

Now I happen to know, as many of you know, that there is a big 
difference between what the engineers and scientists are able, 
willing and very pleased to do inside the auto companies, and what 
the executives at the top are willing to let them do. And that's not 
only documented by history, it's documented by people who leave the 
industry, and who are not giving us pie in the sky technology dreams. 
These are solid advances that by now should have taken our motor 
vehicles way over [a] 50-miles-per-gallon average. It should have 
taken our motor vehicles up to 50-miles-an-hour fixed-barrier 
collision, walking away without injury. It should haven taken our 
motor vehicles into new alternative forms of vehicle propulsion 
systems, and not stay with what seems to be the eternal, infernal 
internal combustion engine, which has been with us for far too long, 
over 100 years now. 

But just to show you what happens, here's -- from 1986 -- here is a 
policy and strategy meeting, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1986, Board of 
Directors Room of the Ford Motor Co. And Donald Peterson was chairing 
the committee, and here are the notes from that committee meeting: 

"At the federal level, both the House and Senate struggled with auto 
safety bills during 1985. It is likely that a bill will pass in 1986. 
At the beginning of the session, bills were introduced that would 
reinstate five miles-per-hour no damage bumpers, require full front 
seat air bags, establish passenger car crash worthiness ratings and 
labeling requirements, set performance criteria for occupant 
protection and side impact collision, impose criminal penalties on 
corporate employees who knowingly and willfully fail to inform 
consumers of safety related defects." 

Now watch this: 

"Through the efforts of a broad-based industry coalition led by Ford, 
we were able to keep the mandatory air bag bill from moving forward, 
delete the criminal penalty provisions, modify the vehicles' side 
requirements, and limit the vehicle crash worthiness proposal to a 
DOT coordinated research project. If a bill emerges from the Congress 
in 1986, we expect it to be in a form that we would find acceptable." 

Acceptable to who? To all the people who died because of this type of 
lobbying by Ford and General Motors? And now, when you look back on 
it, doesn't it look even more craven and shortsighted and myopic for 
the leaders of one of the greatest industries in our country to 
behave this way? 

In fact, in contrast to what they say in terms of flowery speeches 
about corporate responsibility, all these provisions would have been 
in years ago to save more and more lives of men, women and children, 
prevent the family anguish, reduce the enormous human consequential 
tragedies, reduce enormous wage loss and other costs and health 
costs, etc., that would've come with it. 

What is it about this industry that sits on such talent -- and it has 
an obligation to the global environment, and to the highways, and to 
a more balanced transportation system, and to the health and safety 
of millions of people, and to energy conservation -- that it is 
constantly putting the brakes on itself, unless it is countervailed 
and challenged by government regulation, or trade union challenges 
for occupational safety, or consumer or environmental group pressure? 

I don't know the answer to this. 

I thought that when they got on the right track after the motor 
vehicle safety laws and fuel efficiency laws they would stay on 
track. That there would be a new culture of innovation, as if people 
mattered, as if our stature as an industry in the rest of the world 
mattered. 

But again and again a lot of companies have to be dragged here in 
Detroit or in Michigan, either by Japanese or by German competition, 
or by government regulation, or by product liability lawsuits, which 
disgorged so much damaging information that the government would 
never have disgorged about safety defects in cars, trucks and vans. 

Now that these pressures are gone, the regulatory pressure is out in 
the period of great corporate profits, when it is expected that the 
industry would really push its technology forward, as if human beings 
and the environment mattered. 

And No. 2, the trade unions don't have any bargaining power anymore, 
in terms of occupational health and safety. 

And No. 3, if the government backs down, the environmental consumer 
groups still [don't] have much leverage on a PAC-ed, greased Congress 
in a system of cash-register politics in Washington, D.C. 

And No. 4, the competition from abroad has been quite neutralized. I 
don't think that DaimlerBenz is ever going to compete with Chrysler. 
Do you? And how about all the cross-ownerships of U.S. companies into 
Japanese auto companies? And all the joint ventures between GM and 
Toyota? 

I'd just like to conclude with a reference to Detroit here. The auto 
companies are the most powerful force in this city. Look around the 
city. Are you proud of the public transit facilities in the city? Are 
you proud of how the roads have been maintained in many areas? Are 
you proud of the quality of your taxicab fleet? I was in a cab years 
ago in Detroit, and went in several other cabs, and I could see the 
pavement in total disrepair. Are you proud of the responsibility of 
the auto industry as part of this community of metropolitan Detroit? 
Many of whose executives have fled and let poverty, and bank and 
insurance company redlining, and consumer exploitations in the ghetto 
go without abatement, without challenge? 

I think it's a disgrace and I think we ought to really raise our 
expectation levels very, very high in accordance with what this 
industry is capable of when it's put under pressure. When it really 
has to move, when it has to really exert the talents that are within 
its ranks. You remember how fast this industry converted in World War 
II. No industry before or since converted the automobile into 
producing tanks and airplanes and armored personnel carriers for the 
effort against the Nazis and the Japanese imperial state. And they 
did it, not just because the government was ready with big contracts, 
they did it out of a sense also of duty. They would rather have sold 
cars; they did it out of a sense of duty and they got it done. 

And what I'm saying now is the health and safety of the American 
people, and the global environment, and the need to become more 
energy independent and self-sufficient, and the need to breathe 
cleaner air, and the need to set an example for the rest of the world 
so they don't say, well, you messed up your area's water and you 
built cars like that. 

Let me just thank the Economic Club of Detroit for their invitation. 
And let me also urge the next time you get a presidential candidate 
here who panders to you, you should feel insulted, as Al Gore [when] 
he came here, and in effect said, "I'm with you" after he wrote a 
book really criticizing the internal combustion engine. I have always 
seen myself as working to make the auto industry proud of itself. To 
make it proud of itself that it has products that save lives and 
prevent injuries and help conserve our energy supplies. 

And yet they always look at my efforts as if they were subversive to 
the auto industry's efforts. But I think the mission of the auto 
industry in this world is quite a bit higher than that defined by the 
executives of the auto industry. This is a time of consistent auto 
industry profits. This is a time when the auto industry should really 
become technologically innovative, and we should take off the shelf 
existing technology to save lives, prevent injuries and help reduce 
the burden on our very polluted environment. 


- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Alicia Montgomery is an assistant editor in Salon's Washington bureau.
 





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