Ralph Nader

"The rats then... follow each other. Ten rats signal to other rats, and there's a rat infestation in the House of Representatives, and then in the Senate... [T]here's an overreaction by the members, the leaders. They don't want this to get out, that they can't even control the rats, much less the Wall Street lobbyists."

"[O]ne reporter... is intrepidly meticulous and he blows the story... [A]ll the cable shows, everybody goes wild with derision as the story unfolds... [T]he overreaction is massive slaughter of the rats. They keep coming. They keep breeding... working overtime... and that is what gets people's attention about Congress."

"Congress comes in, in the poles, under 15% or 12%... or even 9% now... about the lowest of any category, even the proverbial used car dealer."

"People have such a low opinion of Congress that they keep sending bad members... to Washington, but [the people] withdraw... they become cynical... instead of becoming angry and moving to take control of Congress. After all, it's the sovereign power of the people... that is misused and turned against the people on behalf of Wall Street and other corporate supremacists."

"Because of the massive media, you have massive public attention, the comedians, the late night talk shows, have a field day... The activists say... "This is what we've been waiting for"... [politicians] fumbling and grumbling and tripping over themselves trying to deal with the rat infestation, asking for the national security people... on orders of the White House... like... a foreign invasion."

"They would surround part of the Congress with bull horns and shout, "Resign! Resign! Resign!" ...Some of the incumbents ...just ran out of the Congress and joined the crowd."

"One of the themes of the book is don't wait around... [with] steady mobilization. It doesn't work that way. It gives the corporation lobbies too much time to game the system. Look at the health care. It was proposed by Harry Truman in the 1940s, universal health care, and look where we're still at. ...Speed was of the essence."

"In some... legislator's minds... like Mick Mulvaney... he really is mean, and he has no qualms of conscience. But I have met members of Congress... conservative Republicans, who do have qualms... John Boehner... the fictional character is Reginald Blamer, he came from a poor family of 11 children... so I have seen... people who have a public personae of ferocious oligarchy and plutocracy, but deep inside they know they're harming innocent people."

"In the early 60s I wanted to get auto safety bills through the Congress, so I had to go to... ... [people said he was] totally in the pocket of the business lobbyists... Because of the rumble from the people... out of Seattle and other parts of the country, Warren Magnuson put his finger to the wind. ...He became the greatest champion of consumer legislation in the Congress in American history."

"When Reginald Blamer, in the book, went on "Meet the Press" and was questioned by Woodcock Toad, known as "Woody..." [Blamer] revealed his better self. He basically became a more humane person from this jolting experience, and he feared that the majority of Republicans were going to vote him out... some have a soft core... and their better angels [are] revealed under different kinds of stress and pressure."

"In the book, the appeal is to their fear glands... the fear of not getting re-elected. The fear of being challenged in a primary inside their own party... The greed glands were approached by the lobbyists, who tried to turn this mass movement of the people of our country to take control of Congress... They poured campaign money into their stalwarts..."

"American politicians over the past 25 years have learned to quietly dismiss big rallies, demonstrations, and even temporary occupations, because they have gone nowhere."

"I've been part of these mass protests... almost invariably on a Saturday, when the members of Congress are gone. ...The [organizers] ...are so exhausted that they don't... have the energy left to pass the funding buckets around... where they could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and on Monday morning open an office with full-time lobbyists... Members of Congress have very good antennae... [they can sense that] there's no stamina... not a lot of follow-through."

"[I]n this book... the rallies... are different... they build from day to day... and... it's led by people who are full-time... and they open offices in Washington. ...Three enlightened billionaires come to town and they say... "Hey, let's fund this"... and a brain trust."

"Democracy requires work. ...The more they feel they've got the members Congress on the run, the more energized they become."

"On the back of the book, I have the indictment of Congress. People... have no idea the damage... that Congress has inflicted. Its abandonment of its Constitutional powers as the most powerful branch of government. Its selling of elections for money and campaigns. Its closing out, even the people... I've seen Congress degrade to levels I've never believed possible. It's impossible to get through to some members'... offices even now, unless you're a campaign contributor. You might get the switchboard, if it isn't on voice-mail. Can you imagine..?"

"To show you how much of a straight-arm the majorities in Congress are giving the people back home. They had a tax bill... for the rich, and the powerful, and the corporate, increasing the deficit, starving the public works investment and all the rest, and they didn't even have public hearings in the committee level, that's unheard of. Then they had five bills to destroy people's rights to have their day in court, if they're wrongfully injured. They got it through the House of Representatives, blocked in the Senate by the Democrats. They didn't even have public hearings in the House Judiciary. Then they tried to get rid of Obamacare, and they lost by one or two votes in the Senate, and they didn't even have public hearings."

"Congress... has become a secret tyrannical bastion of Wall Street, and that outrages people..."

"My hope is that... I will open Democrats' and other progressives' eyes to the many values shared by the Left and Right... like the desire to end corporate welfare and convert to a renewable energy (solar) economy. ...the way to defeat Trump... is to embrace (not marginalize) issues such as raising the minimum wage. ...It is a question of do or just further fade away."

"If the minimum wage of fifty years ago—$1.60 per hour—were adjusted for inflation, today it would amount to about $11 per hour. A long-overdue minimum wage hike would... end a decades-long windfall for employers... while [they were also] receiving many tax breaks and subsidies."

"People are being pushed around, disrespected, defrauded, injured, and given the runaround by arrogant corporate bureaucrats using nameless, robotic, and tyrannical "fine print" contract barricades."

"[E]stablish a public national complaint-handling system using the Internet to help consumers, taxpayers, and workers... It will also be a good way for policy makers to detect patterns. Patterns lead to deterrence..."

"the legendary consumer advocate"

"Ralph Nader's Breaking Through Power is a brilliant analysis of corporate power and the popular mechanisms that can be used to wrest back our democracy"

"I agree with Ralph Nader that we need to repeal NAFTA and all of those so-called free trade agreements, but they are — they don’t constitute fair trade. And with respect to Colombia, I can say that not only have I been to Colombia, I have seen the devastation of the militarization of our policy, particularly with Colombia, and the displacement particularly of the Afro-Colombian communities across that country."

"I've always been with the one who rebels against false values. My heroes now are Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg."

"I'm voting for Ralph Nader -- even though I think he's an asshole on abortion and issues of sexual politics generally -- in the hope that the Green Party will get 5 percent of the vote...We have to break through the current end-of-history, "no real change can ever happen" mentality on every front, and the best way to do that on Tuesday is to vote for Ralph Nader."

"Imagine how the last presidential campaign would have turned out if instead of the marketing circus that we were treated to, we were just given a weekly round table discussion between Bush, Gore, and Nader for a couple months running up to the election. No staged rallies, no TV images with flags flowing in the sunset, no pollsters. No marketing. Bush would have been luck to get two percent."

"There was a third-party candidate, Ralph Nader, whose national reputation came from decades of persistent criticism of corporate control of the economy. His program was sharply different from the two major candidates, emphasizing health care, education, and the environment. But he was shut out of the nationally televised debates during the campaign, and, without the support of big business, he had to raise money from the small contributions of people who believed in his program."