Paul Sabin
Appearances
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader
Throughline
Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
He publishes what's effectively a consumer guide to Congress. And this was a broadening of his definition of consumer.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
These are things that include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, but it's also things like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration getting created.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
I think you see an immediate backlash to him from corporate interest.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
There's a very famous memo that gets written by Lewis Powell, the Powell memo. Lewis Powell, who becomes a justice, but at the time he is working with the Chamber of Commerce. And he publishes this sort of confidential memo at the time, which later gets leaked, in which he is warning of these threats on the horizon. And Nader is very prominent in that.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
The Powell memo is really a calling to action to conservatives and to business that they need to develop an ideological counterbalance to this new public interest and citizen movement.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
Carter and his brother, they're all playing softball.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
And Nader's behind the base, you know, in a suit and in a tie, jacket and tie. He's a lifelong Yankees fan, you know, calling balls and strikes and things like that.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
Carter is cultivating Nader as a candidate would to try to win over his constituency. And Carter declares that he wants to be the great representative of the consumer. And he's going to sweep, you know, sweep the halls of Washington, D.C. clean. And Nader, you know, supports him and is very excited.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
Is Nader going to be an umpire or is he going to be a player? Is he going to join the administration or is he going to stay on the outside watching over the administration and judging it?
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
He would have easily had a high-level appointment in the Carter administration. He decides he's going to be an umpire. He believes in the permanence of this whole sector that he's been involved in creating, and they need to stay outside the government, and they need to watch over the agencies and hold even their allies accountable.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
The failure of the Consumer Protection Agency, that is his life's work and it fails. And it's a sign that he's no longer on the ascendance and you're starting to move to a more defensive positioning to try to protect the gains.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
So you have inflation and issues about employment, and these things start to get blamed on environmental regulation and safety. If only we would get rid of these regulations, things would be cheaper, the economy would be doing better.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
You start to see the emergence of ideas that would be held more, that would be articulated by the Reagan Republicans in the early 80s, but this includes attack on sort of socialistic, nanny state, government interventions, out of control government agencies, out of control public interest.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
There's a little bit of lack of accountability about the ways in which the public interest movement itself might be flawed and limited.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
People are looking to the government to try to do big things, and there's a question of like, why can't we do these big things?
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
Across the American consumer landscape of this time period is the question of, can companies and governments that have become increasingly powerful, can they be trusted to look out for the interest of the individual?
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
There's a sense that really there needs to be someone looking out for this consumer.
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Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)
I think for Nader, the consumer citizen is an active citizen, one that is investigating, learning, and engaging in political processes. And so he wanted the informed citizen.