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Wed Jan-05-11 02:59 PM
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Ralph Nader to the Times: 'There Is Too a Left!'

Nader to the Times: 'There Is Too a Left!'
By Ruth Conniff
Political editor of The Progressive
January 4, 2011

In a letter To The New York Times, Ralph Nader takes issue with the paper's editorial asserting that Tea Party victories show there is "no progressive champion" for the poor and powerless.

"There are plenty of progressive champions lobbying, rallying, exposing, suing and organizing at the national, state and local level," he says. The problem, he says, is that the mainstream media, including The New York Times, fails to cover their efforts.

You can understand Nader's frustration, particularly as one whose efforts to champion the poor against the powerful were systematically belittled by the Times and other mainstream outlets when he ran for President from outside the corporate-dominated two-party apparatus.

In the editorial that stirred Nader's ire, the Times notes: "In past economic crises, populist fervor has been for expanding the power of the national government to address America�s pressing needs. Pleas for making good the nation�s commitment to equality and welfare have been as loud as those for liberty. Now the many who are struggling have no progressive champion. The left have ceded the field to the Tea Party and, in doing so, allowed it to make history. It is building political power by selling the promise of a return to a mythic past."

Please read the full article at:

http://www.progressive.org/rc010411.html

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How the Left Is Left Out: Ralph Nader�s View
January 3, 2011

To the Editor:

�The Repeal Amendment� (editorial, Dec. 27) asserts that many Americans who are economically struggling �have no progressive champion,� and that the left has �ceded the field to the Tea Party and, in doing so, allowed it to make history.�

Hello! There are plenty of distinguished progressive champions lobbying, rallying, exposing, suing and organizing at the national, state and local level. Yet they have been mostly left out of the mass media, on television and radio and in the news, feature, style, opinion and book review pages of major newspapers, including The Times.

Meanwhile, the Tea Partiers have seen their modest initiatives hugely magnified and therefore expanded by major media. This has mainstreamed the radical right, including Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Pamela Geller, as well as the most extreme neoconservatives who still receive media attention despite their deceptive, disastrous Iraq war-mongering.

Check your own pages and you will see the evidence. Or better yet, have your public editor look into why flagrant, often bigoted right-wingers are given so much time and space compared with fact-based progressive leaders committed to the �equality and welfare� that your editorial espouses.

Ralph Nader
Washington, Dec. 28, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/opinion/l04nader.html?_r=1&ref=letters�

Ralph Nader to the Times: 'There Is Too a Left!'

That makes him a RATpubliCON OPERATIVE

so they got the "High Functioning Moron" they Voted For