Washington Straight Talk; Nader

Ralph Nader, crusader for what he perceives as the welfare of the American consumer. Tonight, on Washington Strait Talk, Ralph Nader, critic of products, people, and institutions, advocate of the rights of the average American in the nation's marketplace, now directing his interest and concern at the continuing energy crisis. Ralph Nader is interviewed by NPAC correspondent Paul Duke. Ralph, for the past few days, you've been hitting very hard at the big oil company, suggesting that the oil shortage is contrived. What proof do you have of this? Well, there are several items of evidence. First of all, the oil companies are in joint ventures together, overseas and exploring and producing for oil on this country bidding on offshore leases in pipeline ownership. So they don't really have to conspire so much in a back room as they're in business together. And eight of the largest U.S. oil companies, because of their control of proven reserves

and refineries, pipelines, and retail outlets, pretty much control the level of supply compared to demand and can pretty much exclude or squeeze out independent competitors. And I think the evidence just in the last few days points out to their success. On the one hand, the American Petroleum Institute says that gasoline stocks are about the same level as they were last year, and crude oil supplies are even higher than last year. On the other hand, you've got rocketing prices, and you've got long gas lines, and you've got this kind of stampede bind. How can this occur by a kind of orchestrated shortage, supported by the White House, backing up the oil companies about the shortage, which leads to panic buying on a part of consumers, massive stockpiling by big industries, steel, auto, and other industries, and the withholding or manipulating of supplies regionally around the country in order to maximize this pressure and drive the price higher and higher and higher, which is really the objective of the big oil companies.

But what proof do you have of this? Where do you get your information? Well, first you look at the figures. How can there be a shortage if people, indeed, are driving less than they were last year? How can there be a shortage if, by the oil industry's own figures, gasoline stocks are levels equal with last year, crude oil is higher than last year? Second, if you look carefully at all the reports that have come out, for example, the Federal Trade Commission report, the various congressional hearings and congressional reports, and the kind of litigation that's now bringing forth information about the collusiveness and the collaborative nature of the big oil companies, the conclusion is clear that the oil companies can control supply and control the distribution of much of the oil in the country through their control over pipelines to the retail market. If you can do that, you pretty much can orchestrate a shortage. Well, you're suggesting that the oil companies are perpetrating a gigantic fraud on the American people, which, of course, would be an enormous crime.

Now, the oil companies deny this and the government deny this, too. Well, first of all, if you consider the government separate from the oil industry, that's mistake number one. I mean, for years, the oil industry has regulated Washington, so to speak. Their key executives and officials have always gone for a few years into the government to head the Interior Department's Office of Oil and Gas and other energy offices in the U.S. government. And what has to be made, I think, clear, is that because of their political influence and their lobbying and their campaign contributions, they have managed to legitimize what would otherwise be illegal if other industries were doing it. For example, they were given the right to collectively bargain overseas. They were given the right to set off foreign royalty payments against their federal tax payments, dollar for dollar. They were given the right to limit oil imports in order to keep the type to supply demand relationship in this country for many years since 1959, actually to 1973.

But even with that, they still have conspired over the years to violate the anti-trust laws and every time the Justice Department drew up enough courage, or the Federal Trade Commission drew up enough courage to start prosecuting them, such as in the early Eisenhower days, along came their New York lawyers and hush hush and national security considerations, and these cases are dropped. They've been dropped repeatedly since 1938. Would you advocate nationalization of the oil industry? No, I would advocate the development of a competing federal oil and gas company exploring and producing oil and gas on federal lands where most of the new oil and gas is going to be found, and these lands belong to the public. And we just can't let energy, it's too important to be held in the unfettered control of a few giant oil companies. But particularly since much of the energy is critical for national emergencies, the state of the economy, and the vibrancy of small business competitors to the big oil companies.

Ralph, you first gained fame with your book Unsafe at any speed, which was published in 1965. And since then, the American automobile industry has added many safety features to the car. We have a federal highway safety agency, which is functioning here in Washington. Are you satisfied with the progress that we have made in trying to make the American car a safer car? No, it has been made a safer in terms of crash protection when cars crash and the injury levels are lessened because of seat belt, shorter harnesses, collapsible steering columns, padded dashboards, and other features. But now we're on the threshold of a major breakthrough in auto safety, almost in spite of the auto industry in Detroit. This breakthrough is based on three factors, one, the airbag, which is now on several thousand American cars, has saved lives in actual crashes and is very reliable. Second, the output of the experimental safety car program of the Department of Transportation, which the foreign companies took seriously and the domestic auto companies did not.

The result has been that the domestic auto companies haven't produced these experimental safety cars that would meet the 50-month-on-hour crash standards and the foreign auto companies have. And so Nissan and Toyota and Volkswagen have produced cars all under 3,200 pounds in weight, which meet the kind of safety standards that would prevent over two-thirds of the fatalities and serious injuries in car crashes today. Are you suggesting that the foreign auto makers are doing a better job in putting in safety features than the American manufacturers? Not in actual placing the safety features in the cars yet, but in their experimental work for realistic cars of the future, they are away ahead of what the auto companies in Detroit have been disclosing about their research. I think the reason is simple. General Motors and Ford know that they can handle Washington, particularly under this administration.

So they didn't take the experimental car program very seriously, and they delayed and they built these huge 6,000, 5,800-pound monsters that weren't even as safe as the little car that VW built in its experimental safety program. While the foreign car companies took Washington very seriously, they figured that if they didn't shape up and start cooperating, that the federal government would set tough safety standards that would exclude the importation of cars that could not meet these standards, and that's the difference. Ralph, aren't we faced with a real dilemma today because the big car is the safer car, and the smaller car is the one that saves gasoline, and yet you have repeatedly said that small cars are not as safe and are more dangerous. Now, how do we solve this problem? Do you have any solution for that? Definitely is the dilemma now, and the solution is to recognize that already there has been developed small cars, these are for example the VW experimental, the Toyota and Nissan experimental cars, that are safer than the large cars today. And so the solution is to get the department transportation to set for 1979 cars out in 1978, the 50 mile an hour standard, which three foreign auto companies have shown they can meet in its major features, and then we will have a small car that's more efficient in terms of consuming gasoline, and also safer than the large cars that are presently on the road.

You feel you can have then a very safe small car. No question about it. In fact, it's been shown in these foreign car experimental ventures. You said just a moment ago that the airbag has proved to be very reliable, and yet some people, some technicians I understand, are now having second doubts about the airbag that since it's been tried, it has not turned out to be as effective as they had hoped it would be. Well, I think that, first of all, the tests on the road where it counts have been overwhelmingly in support of the airbag. It has never failed to inflate when a crash has occurred. And secondly, the tests conducted by all state insurance company, which is pushing airbags very, very markedly, which support the reliability of theses.

I think what some of the critics are saying is that at high speeds, say 50 and not miles an hour into a tree or into an abatement, the airbag isn't good enough. And that's true, because at the present time, the airbag does not cover those high speed. Isn't that going to give people a false sense of security? It will, if they are not informed of it. But at the present time, the airbag will cover a very large proportion of the kinds of crashes that now take lives. And I think that the main problem that has to be resolved in the next few years is whether the airbag can be developed to cover the higher speed accidents. And what is required here is a triggering mechanism that works in a split millisecond. You know, I just got to be very, very fast. That's the problem. And to have a combination, perhaps, where the seat belts and shoulder harnesses are still options for the higher speed impacts.

Ralph, you have said many times that you believe the people operating through their government can solve our social problems that the government can be an instrument for good in this country. Have you changed your mind at all because of the Watergate scandals? No, because like any other institution, the government can operate in a corrupt way or can operate in a marvelously creative way. I think what people have to realize is that it's not going to operate properly just by looking at it. That if the public doesn't control the government, then the special interests are going to control the government. Through the techniques that they have refined, campaign financing, and many other maneuvers. The big fallacy in the approach of millions of Americans to their government is that somehow they expect these government agencies to do the right thing without being monitored, pressured, challenged, and given ideas by the people. It's just not going to work. It's never worked in the past, and it's not going to work in the future. And as the problems get more and more serious, the breakdown of government obviously becomes more and more apparent.

Has Watergate made it easier for you to recruit volunteers for your various projects? Not any difference. I mean, we've always had a lot of people applying to work, to keep young people. And I think that if there's been any effective Watergate, people want to get in on the institutions that are trying to clean up after Watergate. So I think, for instance, the Justice Department, is probably in the Federal Trade Commission, have probably received a lot of recruits recently, because many of the young people coming out of our professional schools are saying, well, maybe there is an opportunity here to do something about consumer protection, to do something about law enforcement against large institutions that violate the law. You've talked a lot lately about the new styles of violence. What do you mean by that? Well, this is what we call pollution. For example, radioactivity, carbon monoxide, the things that come out of our car exhausts, the workplace where there are chemicals and gases, in particular matter, deep in the coal mines and the textile mills, as well as food additives that haven't been tested adequately.

These are the greatest spectrum of violence that are affecting people today, far more serious than the street crime, in terms of discernible fatalities and injuries and disease levels. And, of course, much of the silent violence is yet to be discovered as more research is being promoted and as more laws are being passed to support this kind of inquiry and enforcement. Do you see a collusion here between the government and industry to perpetrate this kind of violence? Well, in the sense where government doesn't enforce the laws, where the food and drug administration or the U.S. Department of Agriculture don't enforce the laws against contamination and harmful additives, that can pretty much be traced to a subservience or collusion with industrial interests. Where the government doesn't enforce its job safety laws, that's usually attributed to corporate pressure, although lack of funds and lack of inspectors are certainly elements here.

But I think the big problem is that people aren't sensitive enough to silent violence. They're sensitive to fires, they're sensitive to tornadoes, they're sensitive to riots. But when they wake up in Duluth, Minnesota, and they're told that there's a high level of asbestos in their waters that comes from an iron tailing plant on the shores of Lake Superior, that doesn't strike them with the kind of urgency. And I think as long as people neglect developing sensitivity to these kinds of violence that give people cancer and respiratory ailments and other diseases, there won't be the follow-through in terms of correction. What's sort of tragic here is that we have far more solutions to these problems than we're applying. People are constantly being told we've got to look for the solutions, and we do have to look for refined solutions that are less expensive. But already the solutions and the economy of these solutions are on the shelf, but they're not being implemented.

Do you have any fear Ralph, when you talk about implementation, that your own effectiveness is being diminished somewhat now? I have the impression that business no longer is as frightened of Ralph Nader as it once was. Well, the issue is not to be frightened. The issue is to change. And for example, if we can substitute sheer disclosure of dramatic and new information with the kind of effective legislation or litigation or the kind of creating an awareness inside these factories among the workers and the professionals about safety hazard, then that's certainly a more preferable way to direct our energies. The important thing is that there are more people working in this area. For example, we have almost 50 full-time people. Our group public citizen is encouraging development of citizen groups and student action groups around the country. And so there's just more people working in the area and that's what gives the impression of going into more areas and just auto safety.

Well, as you suggest, you have become something of an organization man. The Ralph Nader enterprise is all over the city of Washington. And some of your critics say that you have spread yourself too thin that the more you cry wolf about what you regard as the various failings of our system, the less the people are really going to listen to you. Do you have any fear about this? Well, I think first of all, if the disclosures are accurate, if we can get some progress, if we can predict accurately two or three years before something happens, then I think people will continue to listen to what we're saying and indeed increase their participation. But above all, if we can give people programs and strategies of what they can do, because it isn't so much people now saying, oh, there are so many problems we don't want to hear anymore. They know about these problems. They're not doubting these problems. And they're beginning to realize that if they say we don't want to hear about them anymore, they're going to get worse.

And so they're going to have to do something about them. And this is what we're moving into now. We're developing citizen action manuals. We're developing concrete programs on what you can do, for example, to root out waste of energy in the community. What you can do to curb supermarket price increases, what you can do on employment discrimination, what you can do to investigate your own favorite government agency in your local area, how to develop a citizen lobby. This is where the consumer environment and movement, I think, should go. Not only keeping up the disclosures, but moving into practical information, practical strategies that people can use at the local and state areas throughout the United States. Well, let's consider the consumer movement for just a moment, Ralph. You, of course, have come to achieve great notoriety as the foremost consumer advocate in the country. And yet food prices are going up very rapidly today. Your pet project, the consumer agency bill has never made it through Congress. Isn't the consumer movement now on dead center going nowhere?

No, it's increasing in strength, except that the disintegration of our competitive economy into monopolies is reaping its toll at the present time. For instance, the consumer protection bill will go through this year, and I think in good and strengthened form, that will give consumers an advocate inside the executive branch independent of the White House to really represent consumer interest before the various regulatory agencies that now ignore consumer interest, like the Federal Power Commission or the Interstate Commerce Commission. But I think that in looking at this from a little longer historical perspective, and the fact that the opposition to consumer justice is so powerful, doesn't denigrate the fact that consumers are becoming stronger and are becoming more aware personally in their purchasing decisions, as well as consumer groups developing throughout the country. It's a long haul. Sometimes you can get quick breakthroughs, but generally it's a long haul that has to be built up with patients, stamina, persistence, and the lack of disillusionment. A lot of people working in the consumer area get disillusioned after two or three years, but if they look at it like a long haul, they'll stick with it and they'll persevere.

At least we'll keep things from getting worse in some ways. Ralph, you've been involved in so many things. I have a number of headlines here. Nader claims ITT evaded taxes, Nader rips industrial safety, Nader's study finds auto work, perilous, Nader assails, oil firms on taxes, Nader blasts, reclamation projects. Now how can you do all these things and do them well? Well, first of all, we work very hard. Second of all, we have various groups. Now we have a tax reform group with public citizens, we have a health research group, and we have a litigation group, and many of these activities proceed from their initiatives and their actions. And that's what I think needs to be recognized, and it isn't any longer just a few people, that this is a growing movement, and it's growing around the country.

For example, 500,000 students in the United States are assessing themselves four to six dollars a year in 18 states to support their own public action and research groups. That is, they have their own lawyers, their own scientists, their own organizers in Oregon, in Minnesota, in Massachusetts, New York, and other states around the country. So this is where a great deal of these efforts are coming forth, and that's what really lasts. Do you ever have any kind of feeling that maybe you give out too many scare statements, for example, you're condemning the building, the atomic plants, you're frequently talking about the danger of the food we eat and the water we drink? Well, we concentrate in a number of areas, for example, there are just many areas that we don't go into because we don't have that many resources. But we do concentrate in the area of pollution, when you concentrate in the area of job safety, food and drug, auto safety, and government reform in terms of campaign finance reform and other changes that are necessary. And I think if you look at your average senator or, say, members of Congress, they're making far more statements based on a staff of two or three that research these.

And I think that the issue is, is what we are saying accurate? Is it important? And is it necessary for people to participate in solving these problems? These are the questions we ask ourselves when we decide to make these disclosures or initiate these actions. Some people see another side to Ralph Nader, for example, Australia's Prime Minister described you as a professional pot sterile. And Senator Ribbakoff of Connecticut said, Ralph's mistake is that he thinks he is God. If you don't agree with him, he's out to kill you. What's your response to these criticisms? First of all, the Australia thing proceeded from our interest in the behavior of American corporations in Australia. And maybe a foreign country, but still we have a responsibility to try to document what these American companies are doing to other people around the world. And I think Senator Ribbakoff made that statement in a fit of peak during a morning when he learned that we were persisting in our inquiry on the Corvera matter.

Basically, we assert our points of view, and we assert them in proper forums, public opinion, legal forums. And if people accept them fine, if they don't accept them, we still pursue proper legal forums, unlike many other groups which operate in underhanded fashion or by trying to buy politicians. Everything we do is assertions in the open with reasons developed behind them. If people are irritated because we happen to be persistent and we don't take no for an answer, then they're the ones who are blistered by moonbeams. Ralph, you're on the list of most admired Americans in this country. And some people have even suggested they like to see you run for president. What is your reaction to that kind of thing? Well, the reaction is simple. I think the most important work is building citizen action because politics and politicians are mirror images of the quality and persistence of the citizenry.

And I'm not interested in elected office. What I'm interested in is seeing the infrastructure of citizen, alert, active, skilled, strategically oriented to really get a more just society operating. There will be plenty of people that will go into politics who now feel that they don't want to go in because it's such a dirty mass or such a jungle. This is my priority. This is where I think the most important work needs to be done. Since you're a hero to thousands, who are your heroes? Well, I don't believe in the concept of hero. That's the point. I mean, when I was a child, I thought Lou Gehrig was a hero in the New York Yankee First Basement. But I think people should measure up to their standards, to their high standards and look at people who have done things that they like as a way to learn from them. But the idea of heroes and autographs and celebrities, I think, develops a crutch mentality.

The people rely on these images rather than learn from them to do more of the same. But I think intellectually, one of the soundest people that I've ever read, who is so relevant today, is Alfred North Whitehead, the British scientist and philosopher. I think his works on education, his works on philosophy are really not up there in the clouds. They're very, very relevant today. Ralph, what is your principal goal for the future? To hopefully accelerate this process of building full-time citizen action groups around the country, where people, whether they're lawyers or scientists or writers or publicists or organizers, are working as full-time citizens, applying their own skills and their own values to the problems of the day, to the various government, business and other institutions. Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about our future?

Well, I'm optimistic because pessimism doesn't have any function in my viewpoint. I think it's a debilitating attitude. And I think I'm optimistic based on the fact that we've got a lot of intelligence in the country. We certainly got a great many resources. And what is most baffling is how we've managed to develop so many problems on stream without applying the solutions that we have on the shelf. Thank you, Ralph. Washington Strait Talk. From Washington, N-Pact has brought you Ralph Nader, with N-Pact correspondent Paul Duke. Next week at Washington Strait Talk, Clarence M. Kelly, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, interviewed by N-Pact correspondent Jim Lehrer. This program has been made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

This has been a production of N-Pact.