This post started out to be a rant about my VW bus being seized by the city I live in because it was full of books and sitting in my car port. Then I remembered my first van and how it was also destroyed by people with good intentions, namely Ralph Nadar and his cohort, and how the current Liberal Purist again are attempting to grab defeat in view of victory.
This is my Corvair. It was considered "unsafe". Why because Ralph Nadar convinced everybody that it was. By 1972, I couldn't find any parts for it or anyone who would work on it. It ended up somebody else's dune buggy.
In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senatesubcommittee on car safety. He picked this car, the Corvair sedan as his target.
They were:
Ralph became an environmental consumer icon and an expert on everything. Thus his ego grew. In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senate subcommittee on car safety.
And he is ego grew some more and more and more, finally...Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects.They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:
Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states, garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall).
In 2000, Nader and his running mate Winona LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall).
In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.)
Ralph Nadar made George Bush President of America.
There are only two ways to go this year. One is really really BAD. One is not so bad. These are your only two viable choices. As a good woman or man, which I know you know you are, which do you chose? Or are you going the way Ralph went in 2000.
