| Background |
Age: |
70 |
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| Marital Status: |
Single |
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| Religion: |
Unknown |
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| Education: |
AB Princeton University in 1955 and Harvard Law School in 1958 |
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| Current Job: |
Consumer Activist |
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| Previous Job: |
Attorney, Author, Activist |
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| Previous Elected Office: |
Unknown |
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| Military Experience: |
USA |
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| Financials (provided by Center for Responsive Politics) Last Updated on 2004-07-31 |
Money Raised: |
$2,202,558 |
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| Money Spent: |
$2,034,885 |
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| % Money from PACs: |
0% |
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| Position on Issues |
Stance on Iraq: |
The quagmire of the Iraq war and occupation could have been averted and needs to be ended expeditiously, replacing US forces with a UN peacekeeping force, prompt supervised elections and humanitarian assistance before we sink deeper into this occupation, with more U.S. casualties, huge financial costs, and diminished US security around and from the Islamic world |
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| Abortion: |
"supports access to safe and legal abortion, to effective birth control, to reproductive health and education... opposes attempts to restrict these rights through legislation, regulation (like the gag rule) or Constitutional amendment." |
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| Gun Control: |
Ralph Nader was the 2000 presidential nominee for the Green Party, which adopted the following position in its 2000 national convention: “We support the ‘Brady Bill’ and thoughtful, carefully considered gun control” |
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| Capital Punishment: |
Asked about the death penalty, Nader stated his unequivocal opposition to capital punishment, quoting statistics that show it to be discriminatory in its application, and said he supports the immediate enactment of a death penalty moratorium. |
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| Same Sex Marriage: |
Ralph supports equal rights for gays and lesbians, including equal rights for same-sex couples. He opposes President Bush’s proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages as adults should be treated equally under the law on this matter. Ralph believes that by attempting to mandate inequality Mr. Bush is leading the country in the wrong direction. |
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| Economy: |
On Taxes: Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years and now stand at 7.4% despite massive record profits. A fundamental reappraisal of our tax laws should start with a principle that taxes should apply first to behavior and conditions we favor least and pinch basic necessities least such as the clearly addictive industries (alcohol and tobacco), pollution, speculation, gambling, extreme luxuries, taxing work or instead of the 5% to 7% sales tax food, furniture, clothing or books.
On Budget: The budget should move away from…the wasteful, redundant “military industrial complex, as President Eisenhower called it, as well as corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy that expand the divide between the luxuries of the rich and the necessities of the poor and middle class.
On Trade: NAFTA and the WTO makes commercial trade supreme over environmental, labor, and consumer standards and need to be replaced with open agreements that pull-up rather than pull down these standards…While global trade is a fact of life, trade policies must be open, democratic and not strip-mine environmental, social and labor standards. These latter standards should have their own international pull up treaties. |
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| Employment: |
By requiring equitable trade, investing in urgently needed local labor-intensive public works (infrastructure improvements), creating a new renewable energy efficiency policy; by fully funding education and redirecting large bureaucratic and fraudulent health expenditures toward preventive health care we can reverse this trend and create millions of new jobs. |
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| Healthcare: |
Health care should be provided by a national, single-payer health insurance program—funded by the federal government and providing comprehensive benefits to all Americans throughout their lives. Under the current system, hundreds of billions of dollars a year are wasted by health-care sellers on billing, fraud and administrative expenses. Excess profits and high CEO (and other executive) salaries at large HMOs and other health-care companies add further costs
On Health Insurance: The Nader campaign has adopted a plan put forward by the Physicians for a National Health Program's. The plan sate the following:
--Everyone would be included in a single, comprehensive public plan covering all medically necessary services, including acute, rehabilitative and long-term care, mental-health services, dental care, prescription drugs and medical supplies.
--Everyone would have access to personalized care with a local primary care physician, and free choice of doctors and hospitals at all times. In a publicly-financed, universal health care system medical decisions would be left to patients and doctors, not to insurance companies or the government.
--Health care sellers would stay private, and the health plan would provide for different payment schemes for health-care sellers, to minimize disruption to the existing system. The payment schemes would be designed to prevent profit motives from unduly influencing physicians, so there would be no structured incentives to recommend too much or too little care.
--A transition fund would be established for insurance-company employees whose jobs would be eliminated due to the simplicity of the single-payer system. |
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| Stem Cell Research: |
Unknown |
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| Environment: |
Ralph Nader has adopted the Apollo Alliance’s project as his energy policy. “Over the course of a single decade, beginning in 2005, the Apollo Project proposes the establishment of a viable infrastructure for the achievement of American energy independence. Calling for a $313.72 billion dollar federal investment in that ten-year period, Apollo progressively shifts the burden of American energy consumption away from fossil fuels and onto domestic renewable energy markets such as the wind, biomass, and solar energy industries… Full implementation of the ten-year Apollo Model Policy Agenda will reduce transportation-related petroleum consumption by 1.25 to 2.55 million bpd (or between 54 and 110% of our current level of imports from the Persian Gulf); reduce national energy consumption by 16% and put the United States on pace to meet 20% of its total electricity demand from renewables by 2020-more than three times 2003 levels. The Apollo Project further promises to revitalize the American job market with an injection of 3.3 million jobs-largely within areas of industry demanding greater skills and providing higher wages, better job benefits, and improved social equity. Over the course of Apollo's ten-year implementation period the overall economy will benefit from an increase of $1.4 trillion dollars in new Gross Domestic Product. Within that same decade-long timeframe, the Apollo Project will pay for itself through savings in energy costs and tax revenues, with further and greater fiscal benefits to ensue thereafter." |
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| Candidate Bio |
| Consumer advocate Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut to Rose and Nathra Nader. Rose and Nathra Nader were Lebanese immigrants. Nathra owned and operated a restaurant called Highland Arms. Rose raised her only child Ralph to be a serious minded boy, never allowing him to play with toys because to her they were a waste of time. But Ralph was an intelligent and inquisitive child who made up for this restriction in other ways.
Ralph Nader played with the neighborhood kids, and was an avid Yankees fan, but in his spare time he eagerly read the Congressional Record and other unlikely writings. His father, Nathra Nader, was a firm patriot who once said "When I went past the Statue of Liberty, I took it seriously." He kept his restaurant patrons talking by stirring up vigorous discussions of the day's affairs, and young Ralph paid attention there, too. As the child of immigrants he was sensitive to the way power was used and distributed in the United States.
Nader was a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton in 1955. He fought against he use of the pesticide DDT when he noticed numerous dead birds on campus. He tried to organize students to support a hot dog vendor who was being forced out of business, but as would often be the case throughout his career, he was appalled at their lack of interest.
He attended Harvard Law school next. It was there that he began to explore automobile safety issues and an article on the subject was published in "The Nation" a year after he graduated. In the article he reported the numbers of injuries, fatalities and disabilities and blamed the car industry for caring more about the bottom line than about consumer safety. He didn't fit in at corporate-minded Harvard. He said, "If you were worried about issues of right and wrong and justice and injustice, you were considered soft intellectually." He graduated in 1958.
In 1963 Nader went to work for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a consultant in the US Department of Labor. He wrote for the Nation and The Christian Science Monitor and played an advisory role to a Senate subcommittee trying to determine what role the government should play in increasing automobile safety.
Nader's work increasingly focused on getting sufficient information to consumers so that they could protect themselves from corporate tyranny.
In 1965, Nader's book, "Unsafe At Any Speed" was published. It was filled with damning evidence against the GM Motor company and their "Corvair" model car which had a tendency to flip over. Nader claimed that the drivers were taking the blame for these crashes was that they couldn't get adequate information about the automobile's engineering to do anything about it. When GM tried to quiet him by hiring private investigators to undermine his credentials, 32 year old Nader sued the company. GM had to admit fault before a Senate Committee and in 1966 several laws were passed requiring vehicle safety standards be implemented by manufacturers. President Lyndon Johnson invited Nader to the White House to attend the law signing ceremonies.
Throughout the years, Nader has continued to write books and articles unveiling abuses of tax payers, employees, consumers and communities. Harvard and GM are far from the only organizations that haven't appreciated Nader's work. Even some consumers don't fully appreciate what they have gained as a result of his activism. Throughout his career he's been the subject of derision, but because he believes in his work, he continues working to protect consumers from big business.
The founding of consumer protection organizations throughout the country followed the GM trial. Activists who support Nader, called "Nader's Raiders" have forced a wide array of industries, government agencies and foreign countries to develop practices to protect consumers and the environment. Nader himself founded, among other organizations, The Public Citizen, a group which encourages citizens to take action. He puts his money where his mouth is and donates most of his public speaking and writing fees to advocacy causes. In 1974 Nader was instrumental in acquiring the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, which he calls one of his proudest achievements. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission are among the consumer protection resources he influenced.
Nader never married and is a practicing vegetarian. He remains active in matters involving the environment, consumerism, foreign policy and campaign finance reform. Ralph Nader was chosen as the Green Party Candidate in the years 1996 and 2000. The Green Party is dedicated to consumer and environmental protection issues. At the turn of the 21st century, Nader was called "one of the most influential people of the 20th century" by Time Magazine. Laws that have resulted from his work over the past fifty years have given consumers the ability to defend themselves against corporations and against the government. In addition, countless lives may have been saved due to increasingly safe products.
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| Vice President |
| Camejo - Peter Miguel Camejo (64) is a financier, businessman, political activist, environmentalist, author and one of the founders of the socially responsible investing movement. Camejo is Chair of the Board of Progressive Asset Management of California an investment firm he founded in 1987. The firm specializes in "socially responsible investing" using investments for economic, social, and environmental transformation as well as to empower the true owners of corporations – the stockholders. In his book, "The SRI Advantage," (2002) Camejo shows how investing in this manner can actually result in greater profit for investors.
Mr. Camejo is a first generation American of Venezuelan decent who was born in 1939 in New York. He has fought for social and environmental justice since his teens. He marched in Selma, Alabama with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., rallied for migrant farm workers and was active against the war in Vietnam. He was admitted to MIT after receiving a perfect score on the Math SAT test. He attended UC Berkeley where he studied history. In 1967, after winning a student council election at UC Berkeley he was suspended for "using an unauthorized microphone" protesting the Vietnam War. When he was 20 he competed in the Olympics in Italy as a yachtsman.
Mr. Camejo has worked to defend the rights of workers and Latinos and other immigrants in the United States. In 1976, twenty-eight years ago, he ran for President as a socialist. His most recent run for office was as a Green Party candidate in the gubernatorial recall election in California. His participation in the debates in that election resulted in him speaking to a worldwide audience.
For the last two decades he has brought his sense of economic, social and environmental justice to investing. He created the Eco-logical Trust for Merrill Lynch, the first environmentally screened fund of a major firm. His current firm allows investors to screen for: corporate governance, environmental performance, employee relations, product liabilities, militarism and weapons, nuclear power, genetic engineering, repressive regimes and alcohol/gambling/tobacco. His firm also empowers investors teaching them how to influence the direction of the corporations they partially own through their shares. His firm also has a community investing program so investors can provide financially underserved communities with needed access to capital for the betterment of their business and communities.
Mr. Camejo, from 1999 to 2002, served for three years as a county-appointed trustee of the three billion dollar Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Association. In the early 1990s, he was appointed by the Lt. Governor of Hawaii to be an advisor to the Hawaii Capital Stewardship Forum.
Active in the environmental movement, Mr. Camejo has served as a member of the Board of Directors of EarthShare in the early 1990s – a coalition of over 40 major environmental groups—and on the Council for Responsible Public Investment which he founded. He also helped form the Environmental Justice Fund, to finance and unify environmentalists of color. Mr. Camejo is married and has two children. He is the author of "The SRI Advantage- Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially," "Racism Revolution Reaction 1861-1877," (1976) as well as other books.
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