Ralph Nader Radio Hour

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Corporate Crime Pays!
by Ralph Nader
RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EP 400 TRANSCRIPT
November 6, 2021
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/cor ... rime-pays/

Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Skrovan. David Feldman is having technical issues so he won't be joining us today, but we do have the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. And Ralph, this is our 400th program.

Ralph Nader: Yeah, 400 programs, many of them not replicated by any radio, commercial or nonprofit or public press or NPR [National Public Radio], right.

Steve Skrovan: You are correct, sir. And they're all archived at ralphnaderradiohour.com if you want to catch up on the 400. But this is kind of a landmark episode for us. And today, appropriately enough, we're gonna talk about a subject that is most definitely in our wheelhouse, corporate crime. Our guest will be Mihailis Diamantis, law professor at the University of Iowa and the organizer of last month’s Imagining a World without Corporate Criminal Law symposium. The symposium brought together top corporate crime scholars to explore what corporate punishment would look like if criminal liability was off the table. How would regulatory agencies and our civil legal systems step in? What could replace criminal prosecution for punishing corporate offenders and pursuing justice for victims? Do we actually have a system of corporate criminal law in the US or have we been duped?

We'll ask Professor Diamantis about what he hopes to accomplish with the symposium and delve into his own contribution to the argument which he coauthored with W. Robert Thomas entitled But We Haven’t Got Corporate Criminal Law! Then we'll will revisit another favorite subject, the Post Office. The US Postal Service delivers almost half of the world's mail annually. They serve 160 million addresses. At nearly 250 years old, after a couple of facelifts, they're on time more than 90% of the time. Pretty good for a semiquintennarian. Don't worry, I did the math on that.

Our second guest, historian Christopher Shaw, has written extensively about the vital role of the Post Office as a democratic public service. We’ll ask him about his upcoming book, First Class: The US Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat. As always, we'll check in with our own resolute corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, if PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric Company] can set fires, Takata [Corporation] can blow up people's cars, and Nestlé [S.A.] can use slave labor to harvest cocoa, does that mean arson, murder, and slavery aren't crimes anymore? Mihailis Diamantis is a professor of law at the University of Iowa, where he specializes in corporate crime and legal theory. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Professor Mihailis Diamantis.

Mihailis Diamantis: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Ralph. I'm grateful to be here. Ralph Nader: Welcome indeed, Mihailis. We see you as a rising phoenix from the often moribund law schools when it comes to teaching corporate crime and researching it. We're in a corporate crime wave in this country and around the world. It's been that way for many years because the law has never caught up with corporate criminality. The recent exposures of financial crimes, the Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers, trillions of dollars being socked away, tax evasion around the world, major wealthy corporate interests involved. They set up hundreds of shell corporations. We have the Sackler opiate escape from corporate criminal law. Boeing [Company] has escaped for its killing 346 people with premeditated risky software trying to substitute for an aerodynamic problem with the 737 Maxes.

So here's my first question. Tesla[, Inc.] as the combined stock valuation of the top seven other auto companies, including GM [General Motors Company] and Volkswagen and Toyota [Motor Corporation]. Elon Musk runs Tesla. He has put on the road these autopilots and these autonomous car experiments. There are not that many of them, but they've already killed or injured 12 people. He has known about this. He keeps putting the same autopilot with a little software alteration. He refuses to recall the cars. He's being investigated by the Department of Transportation. Those cars are now a risk to life and limb on the roadways. He won't recall them as I noted. Is he a prospect for a manslaughter prosecution?

Mihailis Diamantis: I think Elon Musk might be. I would first, though, probably focus on Tesla itself as a corporation. Part of what you're getting at here is, as you mentioned in your opening remarks, that our law of corporate liability is ancient. It has not been updated [so] it is literally ancient. It's this old doctrine called respondeat superior, which literally dates back to Roman times. It governed the liability that slaveholders had for the torts and the misconduct of their slaves.

And one of the things which I find particularly concerning about the artificial intelligence driving systems and the Tesla automobiles that are causing these accidents is that they don't fit neatly into this framework that we have for corporate liability. Since it was designed in ancient times, it requires a human being to engage in the misconduct for it to be attributable to the principle – in this case, the corporation.

But what you see corporations doing a lot of times these days is when they have an algorithm, an d artificial intelligence that ends up causing some kind of harm, you see the corporation saying it wasn't us; it was the algorithm. And since you don't have a person there, you have an algorithm rather than a human employee, these doctrines we have for corporate liability turn up short. We've seen prosecutors decline to pull cases/to pursue cases in circumstances where self-driving cars have run over people because they literally can't find the driver through whom to channel liability to the corporation. So given my interest in corporate criminal, that'd be the first place that I would focus. I think it'd be a fact-intensive case to look at Elon Musk individually, but I could see a case developing in there, particularly under some version, maybe of responsible corporate officer doctrine, which allows in certain circumstances attribution of corporate misconduct, or misconduct by subordinates within a corporation, all the way up to hierarchy to the executive officers.

Ralph Nader: Well, let's turn to the Sackler family in the opiate epidemic. There's a huge public record on that. And the settlement allowed the Sackler family to avoid criminal prosecution. They had to pay $4 billion over time. They have $13 or so billion left. It raises the question: Can you really have corporate criminal law enforcement unless you also have corporate criminal executive enforcement? In other words, not just the artificial entity of the corporation chartered by the state. Financiers don't create corporations; the state provides charters for these corporations; their birth certificate financiers fund them. But can you really have one without the other?

Mihailis Diamantis: Well, as a matter of legal doctrine, you can't really have one without the other. In order to have a corporate prosecution, as I said, you gotta find some individual criminal within that corporation. But just as a matter of common sense and good enforcement policy, you can't have effective corporate criminal regulation without pulling the one-two punch of both pursuing the corporation and any responsible identifiable individuals within the corporation. It's individuals that run corporations [so] you got to get at them. It’s their interest. If you're gonna be able to move them to move the corporation, that's the first fulcrum of influence that you have.

Ralph Nader: How do you analyze the Sackler prosecution and their corporation? Give us your view on that.

Mihailis Diamantis: So I would say there's, again, probably a pretty good case against some individual Sacklers involved in the management of Purdue [Pharma L.P.] under the responsible corporate officer doctrine. Just one amendment to your opening about the description of the Purdue case. I don't believe as part of the bankruptcy settlement the Sacklers got immunity from criminal prosecution. I think it was just from civil suits related to opioid distribution. So there's still some remote possibility that DOJ [Department of Justice] or some attorney general somewhere is gonna pick up a case against individual Sacklers, so it's becoming an increasingly remote possibility.

One of the frustrating things about this case as well is that through the bankruptcy, as you know, the Purdue Pharma is now basically in public trust. Or if the bankruptcy proceeds, it’s gonna be in public trust operated for the benefit of the victims. And there's no way that we're gonna get a criminal case against Purdue Pharma either given that it's now being operated for the benefit of the victims themselves. So this, to my mind, is one of the most egregious corporate violations in American history. And we are unlikely to see criminal prosecution of either individuals within Purdue, within the Sackler family or of Purdue itself.

Ralph Nader: We're talking with Mihailis Diamantis, full professor of law at the University of Iowa. We're now in an era of no-fault corporate criminality. We're now in an era where corporate thieves almost never go to jail. The crooks in Wall Street in 2008 were given a pass by [Barack] Obama when he became president. Only a few years earlier, 800 executives in the savings and loan rackets were prosecuted and sent to jail. So the situation is getting worse and worse. I remember in 1970, I wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon urging him to have the Justice Department put out a report on corporate crime. In those days, the phrase ‘corporate crime’ was never used. It was all white-collar crime like a bank teller cheating the bank instead of the banks ripping off their customers Wells Fargo [& Company] style in the hundreds of thousands of fake accounts that they established. I got no answer. In the subsequent years, we have failed to get any comprehensive congressional hearings on corporate crime. Once in a while, there'd be a bill introduced by Congressman John Conyers on endangerment, but it wouldn't go anywhere. Both parties would never talk about corporate crime--how it affects consumers, workers, the environment, communities, patients, children, you name it, in their campaigns. It's a taboo. And as I noted, the immunity and impunity of corporate crime and corporate criminals running these corporations has only in increased as the brilliant strategies and tactics of their corporate law firms become more and more embedded in the reality of the enforcement system at the federal and state level.

So let me ask you this question. Before we get to the lack of any corporate criminal code to speak of, how many of these settlements, these non-prosecution agreements [NPA], deferred prosecution agreements [DPA] or not bringing any grand juries to the pursuit of these corporate crooks at all, are due to the total understaffing of the Justice Department – federal [District Attorney] DAs around the country, state DAs [District Attorneys] around the country and state attorney generals? One law firm, Baker Botts [LLP], for example, has more lawyers than the entire number of lawyers working environmental crimes and antitrust crimes in the Justice Department--just one Houston law firm of hundreds of that size. So how much of it is a deliberate budget squeezing by a corporate lobbyists at the state and federal legislative levels to make sure there are very few federal cops on the corporate crime beat?

Mihailis Diamantis: I wouldn't be able to put a number on the number of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements that are attributable to lack of budget. And just for the listeners out there, a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement is basically a kind of settlement that the DOJ/Department of Justice will cut with a suspected corporate criminal to basically keep the corporate criminal out of trial so they never have to plead guilty to a crime, and so they never have to face a jury or be convicted by a jury. They can negotiate particular terms, whatever the DOJ wants to extract, some combination of fines or suggestions of compliance reform. I don't think the absolute number of deferred prosecution/non-prosecution agreements is really the number that we should be focusing on. Rather, it's the number of DPAs and NPAs that go to the largest corporate criminals. We have a fair number, still a piddling amount, but a relatively large number of prosecutions against small and mid-sized corporations engaged in localized crime. But it's really these biggest corporate criminals – the ones we've been talking about on this show and that you talked about in previous interviews that are getting the deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements.

Now there's several reasons for that. One, as you certainly point out, is budgetary restrictions. It takes a lot of money to investigate a corporation and corporations are a lot of times willing to shell out money to outside law firms to conduct the investigation proactively themselves, rather than have the DOJ come in and do it. And the DOJ, because of budget restrictions, is happy to defer that responsibility to the corporations. But I think in addition to budget squeezing, what we also have is a lack of expertise within the DOJ, that I don't know if they’d know how to carry out an investigation like this; [or] if most of the prosecutors in the DOJ would even know what to look for. So there's also a lack of expertise within the DOJ in terms of conducting these investigations. So that's another reason that I think they're happy to defer to outside law firms paid for by the corporation suspected of crime to basically do the investigation themselves, and then put up in some polished memo to the DOJ [as] an explanation of the corporation's story about what happened to lay the groundwork for negotiating one of these prosecution agreements.

Ralph Nader: Yeah, that's one of the scandals of so-called corporate crime enforcement. They let the law firms report back. They might be considered a little biased. Let's look at the role of these corporate law firms. They're all officers of the court. They're supposed to adhere to professional codes of conduct. Do you think that they engage more often than is generally reported in criminal enterprises that they're actually in collusion [that] they actually devise the strategies, the arguments, the lobbying power for evasion of criminal laws, evasion of tax laws, evasion of environmental laws?

Mihailis Diamantis: If we are talking of about complicity of the law firms in their negotiation with the DOJ and the formulation of a responsive strategy on behalf of the corporation, I would be hesitant myself without strong data to impugn the professional integrity of the lawyers. I was one of them. I worked as corporate defense attorney. It’s how I got into this area of research in the first place. They have a professional responsibility and I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt that they take it seriously.

Now, as part of taking it seriously, there's obviously gonna be a lot of cognitive bias. There's gonna be a lot of sympathetic relationships that develop in the course of an investigation compounded by the fact that these attorneys are hired and they have a professional obligation to zealously represent their clients – in these cases, the corporations that they are investigating. So part of what they're supposed to do is to formulate a sympathetic story about the misconduct that the DOJ suspects might have taken place. I do think it's problematic to outsource so much of this investigative responsibility to private law firms hired by and paid for by the corporations who are suspected of engaging in misconduct in the first place. So that'd be one of the first places that I would look.

Ralph Nader: Well, you know at law school, we're all taught that attorneys should zealously advance the interests of their clients. But I'm not asking the question on when the companies get in trouble, how do these corporate law firms try to defend them? I'm asking a more basic question, which is almost all of these corporate crimes globally and nationally and locally involve schemes that are drafted, conceived, sometimes brilliantly, by corporate law firms. The financial schemes behind all these reports that we read about in the press [and] payday loan rackets. They’re schemes; they’re contractual impositions on their victims – small print contracts. There are finance schemes in terms of monopolizing markets. You have schemes behind Google [LLC] and Facebook and Pfizer [Inc] and ExxonMobil. So we're not talking about defending when they're caught or when they're under investigation. What kind of responsibility do they have for these schemes? Because these schemes not only deal with tax avoidance or law avoidance, they deal with evasion. Outright criminal behavior is enabled by these schemes including destroying documents. They have a fancy word for it in corporate law firms called document retention. Go ahead.

Mihailis Diamantis: Yeah, I suspect and I have a high level of confidence that there are some attorneys who are engaged and complicit in their corporate clients' criminal misconduct. Again, without a good amount of data, I'd be hesitant to impugn the profession more generally. This might be a little Pollyannaish of me, but my first place that I go to when I see a problem is not to blame individuals, but to look for perhaps systemic problems that are pushing individuals to behave in ways that are concerning to us.

So what we have in white-collar criminal law generally is a very ambiguous and poorly drafted code. You look at false claims; you look at mail and wire fraud; you look at insider trading; you look at many of the statutes that corporations are routinely suspected of violating. And what you see is a few words on a piece of paper, which courts then expanded into a very complicated doctrine that still has a lot of gaps in it. It's a fundamental problem of unclarity in our whitecollar criminal law. And so there is a fuzzy boundary between what counts as a sharp dealing and what counts as criminal misconduct. And it's a boundary that I think Congress needs to firm up. Now, as far as the attorneys are concerned, they have this ambiguous law that they're dealing with and trying to advise their clients about how to comply with it. And they themselves face a fuzzy boundary between zealous representation of their client in the face of an ambiguous law, giving them meaningful advice, and crossing over that line into something which borders on complicity in the corporation's misconduct. And it's hard to say – because the line hasn't been defined for us yet – what's on one side and what's on the other. So I think we need more clarity there as well.

Ralph Nader: Well, you know, we've just compiled 35 book titles documenting corporate criminality, very well footnoted. One just came out on the Sackler family, for example. There'll be ones on Boeing. There'll be ones on the oil industry, Wall Street. There already have been. I mean there's plenty of existing documentation and the manslaughter charges have been on the books for years. If you drive a car erratically because you're inebriated down a road and you kill a pedestrian, you can be prosecuted and go to jail. Corporations can refuse to recall cars with lethal defects, which result in death or injury, and they're almost never prosecuted. And I don't understand why some DAs do not use traditional manslaughter law. It's not first degree murder; it's not second degree. It's involuntary manslaughter against these corporations or corporate executives. What's the reluctance?

Mihailis Diamantis: I think the reluctance is that we're both against corporate executives and against the corporations themselves. I mean, you've pointed here to a clear law that we've had on the books. You kill someone with criminal negligence and you're on the hook for manslaughter. The problem here, I think, goes back to a) the antiquated doctrine we were talking about, and b) the standard of proof the prosecutors have to meet. So in order to prosecute an individual, the prosecutor has to be able to show or believe they'll be able to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the elements of the crime were satisfied. And that turns out to be really difficult when you're engaging with a corporation, which is an information black box if the corporation decides not to cooperate; and an information black box where anytime you pull open the lid, all you see is people pointing fingers at each other. It's very hard to reconstruct where the lines of responsibility are. And oftentimes what you'll see is that maybe there's no single individual responsible. You have kind of a diffused responsibility, and so maybe there's not any individual that is solely responsible for the catastrophe that resulted. Now, this has important implications for whether prosecutors can pursue these kinds of cases against corporations themselves. Because under that antiquated rule, respondeat superior or let the master answer, the prosecutor has to be able to find some individual who satisfies the elements of the crime and then be able to, through them, attribute the crime to the corporation. But when you have these distributed types of crimes where each person is contributing maybe just a little bit to a catastrophic harm, you can't find that individual. It’s a real case.

Ralph Nader: How about a solution? What if we had a law that required large corporations to appoint a compliance officer, who is responsible for the conduct of the corporation? And so the prosecution can be focused on the compliance officer's negligence, indifference, corruption. So you pinpoint an office in a corporation and try to avoid the very real problem you pointed out, which is diffusion vertically and horizontally, of responsibility for any particular decision, like building a Corvair or the 737 Max. What's your view on the compliance officer approach?

Mihailis Diamantis: So, I think they have something similar to this, not necessarily a compliance officer, but in Japan, and I had a student once told me from Guatemala, so maybe in Guatemala as well, that there's the executive officer responsible for going to jail if the corporation commits a crime. And so you do have somebody, some token figurehead, who can take the fall if the corporation does something bad. So presumably they're gonna be incentivized to really investigate and find out any problems. I'm not aware of this being an effective system of prevention, in part because there's nothing that one individual can do to manage a corporation that has hundreds of thousands of employees. I think that a lot of these problems are systemic rather than necessarily the responsibility of individuals. And I'd be hesitant to throw someone in jail when maybe even despite their best efforts, there are malicious employees through the corporate hierarchy who perhaps even subvert the compliance mechanisms that the individual put in place. What I think we need is…

Ralph Nader: To be sure, yeah, you have to have evidence of culpability, indifference, collusion on the part of the compliance officer. Let's go to another approach here. Do you think that we should revive the pulling of the corporate charter, throwing the company into a kind of environmental bankruptcy, creating a trustee, removing the rulers of the corporation, the officers, the board of directors? And there's precedent for that. In the late 19th century the Standard Oil [Company] of Ohio got its charter pulled and they didn't think it was that big a deal. You don't shut down the corporation; you just reconstitute it with the new governance. You see any opportunities there to pick some corporations and file at the state level for revocation of the charter?

Mihailis Diamantis: Absolutely. Absolutely. I would hesitate to say revocation and threatened dissolution because I think that would exacerbate some of the problems we have already with prosecutors not wanting to bring cases against corporations for fear of driving them out of business. But in terms of perhaps even temporarily nationalizing certain egregious corporate criminals for the purposes of revising their governments and having some mandatory compliance review and reform directed by a government entity rather than by a law firm or private compliance company hired by the corporation itself; I do see a lot of promise there.

Ralph Nader: It's not putting them out of business, Mihailis.

Mihailis Diamantis: Yeah.

Ralph Nader: It's putting the corporate crooks at the top out of business and reconstituting/reforming the structure with a trusteeship and then putting it on the straight and narrow path.

Anyway, that's one approach. In one of your articles, you have a very seminal paragraph I wanna read to our listeners. It's very short but listen carefully and you'll see how important the insights are. This is a paragraph by Professor Mihailis Diamantis, full professor of law at the University of Iowa, College of Law in Iowa City.

“Criminal justice has four distinctive features. 1) utilizes uniquely demanding procedure, 2) to target the worst defenders with 3) the harshest penalties, and 4) society's deepest moral condemnation. The United States’s purported system of corporate criminal justice lacks all four features. The biggest corporate criminals routinely sidestep all criminal procedure and any possibility of conviction by cutting deals with prosecutors, trading paltry fines and empty promises of reform for government press releases praising their cooperation. The real question is not whether the United States should retain corporate criminal law, but what it would take for the United States to have a corporate criminal justice system in the first place.”

Now I remember the government took Pfizer to court for promoting off-label uses of its drugs. Now doctors can do it, but corporations who sell the drugs can't do it, and they settled for several hundred millions of dollars. And I remember people came to me and said, See, the system works. And I said to them, Well, Pfizer probably made far more than that. And the fines, given the size of Pfizer and the volume of sales, is nothing more than tollgate slap on the wrist.

So wouldn't you say now, even at the highest levels of crackdown on corporate crooks, that what it really boils down to [is] nobody goes to jail, except maybe the janitor, and there's a tollgate by the Justice Department under pressure of corporate law firms. And said, if you pay this much, you're clear. Isn't it really a tollgate system? A commercial dollar tollgate system, and in some instances, even deductible.

Mihailis Diamantis: I couldn't agree more, Ralph. The fact is that corporate crime pays in the United States. The average fine for corporate criminal resolution with the DOJ is just 0.04% of market capitalization. The DOJ gets to represent when it publishes the press release about these deferred prosecution agreements that, Hey, we have pulled/extracted $100 million, maybe a couple billion dollars from one of these corporations. And it impresses people like the listener who came and said to you, look it works. But the fact of the matter is that these numbers, which seem astronomical to us individuals, are drops in the bucket when we're talking about these massive corporate behemoths--the ones who are most likely to a) engage in this type of criminal conduct and b) the most likely to get some of these sweetheart deals from the DOJ.

And so, the conclusion that I take, if I was just a corporate exec without a moral compass, or if I could embody myself as a corporation without a moral compass, it is in my economic interest to engage in the type of conduct that Purdue engaged in [and] engage in the type of conduct that you described Pfizer engaging in.

Ralph Nader: By way of exemplifying what you just said, the Justice Department under [Donald] Trump actually convened a grand jury on the Boeing 737 Max crashes. And it went on for months. Nobody knew what was being heard or ordered in terms of documents; it was pretty secret. And then suddenly on January 5th, 2021, just before Trump left office, the Justice Department announced a deal where Boeing admitted criminal conduct on behalf of two of its test pilots, but not Boeing executives, got wording saying “Boeing executive culture is not attached to this criminal conduct.” And they had a $250 million fine, and about a $1.7 billion assignment of Boeing money to the airline, and $500 million for the families who lost their loved ones in the two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Now, that's two and a half billion for a really massive corporate crime that has not finished its story yet. And in December 2018, at a board of directors meeting of Boeing, CEO [Dennis] Muilenburg proposed a $20 billion stock buyback – one of many – and they approved it and later withdrew it after the Ethiopian crash. But here it is, just one year, [and the] pleased board of directors rubber stamped $20 billion in stock buybacks [that] doesn't create any jobs, [is] totally unproductive, and usually done to improve the metrics of executive compensation. So that's what you're talking about. I mean, even when they do have a grand jury and they do come to a settlement, it's utterly trivial in terms of monetary bite. And also a lot of what Boeing is paying for these disasters is insurable, deductible, and under the strange nature of corporate accounting, in some respects, depreciable.

So, we have to look at all the fundamentals, which is pulling the charter, establishing a real corporate criminal code that requires structural vulnerability inside the corporation so we don't get this diffused problem; gets rid of mens rea for corporations, and more basically establishes for large companies a new federal chartering so that state chartering out of Delaware or Reno is replaced for large companies by federal chartering. We can bring up the birth certificate and the accountability of the constitution of the corporations, which is the charter, up to date. This was proposed by William Howard Taft over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt over a hundred years ago, and most recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren. What do you think of that?

Mihailis Diamantis: Ralph, I think you're going in exactly the right direction. In fact, I would double down on the direction that you're going. I think that focusing on the fines in a settlement, like the one that Boeing reached, is in some sense a misdirection. The Boeing fine ended up being about 8% of its annual pre-crash revenues. If you were an average American with an average salary that equates about $4,100 for the 346 deaths that Boeing caused. It turns out that fines beyond the legitimate use that they have of making sure that victims of the corporate misconduct are adequately compensated, have very little impact on corporate behavior--not just because they're so small, but also because to have a fine big enough to move a corporation, you need a fine that will put the corporation out of business!

The thing that really ticks me off about the Boeing settlement is not the small value of the fine, which itself is just expressively egregious, but is instead the fact that Boeing, a repeat offender who had entered into a settlement with the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] just less than three years before its first 737 Max crash over similar safety issues, got away from the DOJ without any oversight of the reforms that it promised to implement – reforms to its culture, which whistleblowers and investigations have revealed, put profits over safety. Instead, all the Boeing got away with with the DOJ was a promise to reform its compliant systems on its own and then to submit annual reports to the Department of Justice drafted by Boeing and their inhouse attorneys that you were talking about earlier to the DOJ. That's just a promise to do better in the future. Boeing already violated the trust implicit in its charter to conduct business in a lawful manner. I think what we need to do in the criminal justice system, corporate criminal justice system, is exactly the direction that you're pushing. Perhaps deemphasize fines and emphasize instead mandatory government directed reform in the one mechanism of which might be the sorts of public trust that you were describing.

Ralph Nader: I mean, that's what federal chartering can do. It could embrace a lot of the kind of proposals that you and others are advancing just to come up to date. I mean, these state chartering laws are ancient. They cannot address global corporate power skipping out of different jurisdictions, pitting jurisdictions against each other. And by the way, the deal that the Justice Department met on January 5th with Boeing didn't even require a corporate monitor. Mihailis Diamantis: Exactly.

Ralph Nader: It usually requires corporate monitors to report from year to year to see whether the deferred prosecution agreement should be ended or no longer deferred with a renewed prosecution. Well, we're out of time, unfortunately. We've been speaking with Professor Mihailis Diamantis of University of Iowa College of Law and a leader in the deliberative process about what are we gonna do with these gigantic artificial entities called corporations, who have been given by judicial decisions, all the rights of human beings. But they have immunities, privileges, and sheer capital power that no human being could ever attain. And [that] raises the question as to whether there can ever be equal justice under the law with these giant corporations unmoored from constitutional, statutes, and international treaties. Thank you very much, Mihailis.

Ralph Nader: Thank you, Ralph. Thank you, Stephen. It was a pleasure.

Steve Skrovan: We've been speaking with Mihailis Diamantis. We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour.com. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, why does Congress keep letting the dogs loose on the Post Office? But first, let’s check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber.

Russell Mokhiber: From the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., this is your Corporate Crime Reporter “Morning Minute” for Friday, November 5th, 2021; I'm Russell Mokhiber. The Federal Trade Commission [FTC] is sending nearly $60 million to more than 140,000 Amazon[.com, Inc.] drivers. The funds will serve as reimbursement for tips that Amazon allegedly illegally withheld from drivers between 2016 and 2019.

In 2021, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Amazon and its subsidiary, Amazon Logistics, alleging that the company failed to fully pay tips that drivers in its Amazon Flex program had earned. Amazon Flex drivers deliver goods and groceries ordered through programs like Prime Now and Amazon Fresh. The complaint alleged that the company secretly kept drivers’ tips over a two-and-a-half year period and only stopped the practice after becoming aware of the FTC’s investigation. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mokhiber.

Steve Skrovan: Thank you, Russel. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I’m Steve Skrovan along with Ralph. Why does the Postmaster General keep trying to slow down the mail? Well, we're gonna ask that question of our next guest. Christopher Shaw is an author, historian, and former project director at the Center for Study of Responsive Law. His latest book is First Class: The US Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Christopher Shaw.

Christopher Shaw: Oh, glad to be back.

Ralph Nader: Thank you, Chris. I think a lot of people who have been watching the Postal Service in recent months have been wondering why the Democrats, who now have a majority on the Board of Governors of the US Postal Service, have not tried to ease out Louis DeJoy, who is Trump's nominee and who had business dealings profiteering off the Postal Service and who was accused by the very Democrats that now are not easing him out of trying to disrupt the collection and transmission of absentee ballots.

Christopher Shaw: Well, first off, you raise a really good point, which is that the Postmaster General is no longer and hasn't been for 50 years directly appointed by the president. It is by the Board of Governors that as oversight of the US Postal Service. And the thing is, is that that body was the one that selected Louis DeJoy and it has affirmed its support of his policies and they still hold a majority. Those first Board of Governor members who picked this guy in the first place still have a majority on the board. So, practically speaking, he's there until they decide to get rid of him, until we have some more governors rotate off and some new people maybe come on, [and] we get a different mix, a different perspective on DeJoy’s tenure. But until that happens, he's still there. And DeJoy has been very combative in saying that he intends to remain in place and get used to him, and he'll be there for a long time. So he's not interested in leaving either.

Ralph Nader: Am I missing something? Clearly, DeJoy was Trump's nominee. He was a big supporter financially of Trump's campaign. And he was Trump's nominee. And it went over to the Board of Governors, which was controlled by Republicans. And they installed him as Postmaster General. But I thought there were three or four new nominees by [Joe] Biden who have been confirmed by the Senate and that was supposed to give the Board of Governors a majority in the hands of the Democrats.

Christopher Shaw: Well, so right now, there's four Republicans, there's one Independent, and there's four Democrats. But in total, there's still the six governors that picked DeJoy the first place; all six of them are still there. So even though you have the three new governors there, they still definitely hold a majority. Now, there are two spots opening up in December and there's a potential that Biden could pick two new members of the board. And they could come in and send the leadership in a different direction and pivot away from DeJoy. That could happen, but we'll have to wait and see what happens in December when those two spots open up. Otherwise, what could happen is the existing board would just go on and continue those expiring terms for an additional year.

Ralph Nader: Well, I stand corrected. How long is this term?

Christopher Shaw: DeJoy can be in there as long as the governors want him to be. There's no specific expiration date.

Ralph Nader: What do you think of his October 1st decision to slow down First-Class Mail? Why would he think that it's more expensive to send letters from California – airmail – to the East Coast than it is to put them in trucks taking three and a half days on the highway to get them to the East Coast?

Christopher Shaw: DeJoy comes out of the trucking business. I think he's a big believer in the trucking business and there have been issues with air transportation, especially in the last year or so with commercial flights being canceled and things like that. But what is happening here is this is a very short term calculus. And the thing is if you're a postal official, you have direct immediate control over the expenses. So you can always cut those. And then it looks like your financers are getting better. So they tend to look at that side of the ledger more than the revenue side of the ledger. And how do we generate new revenues, where you have to be innovative and creative to do that. And you don't necessarily have complete control over what happens.

So DeJoy has moved in the direction here of cost cutting like so many Postmaster Generals before him. But what it means is that, for instance, if you're in the Northeast there, you used to get First-Class Mail. It would be three days coast to coast, anywhere in the country. Now, if you're mailing a letter from the Northeast, once you get West of the Mississippi River, it's going to be four days also down in the Deep South in Florida. And then once you get to the Rocky Mountains and to the West Coast, it's five days. And it used to be that that mail that now takes five days to get down to the Rockies and out to the Pacific Coast. That used to be the time to get a letter out to Guam. So it's definitely a major slowdown and it's especially impacting certain areas of the country, particularly the extremities of the country. Anytime you start reducing service, that's gonna discourage people to use this agency. So I think there's definitely a potential for revenues actually to decrease because they're cutting service.

Ralph Nader: Well, the right-wing approach to destabilize and diminish the Postal Service and try to privatize more of it, or corporatize more of it, was you cut the service and you raise the postal rates, which is really not a very good business strategy if your interest is in expanding postal services, modernizing it, and doing what many of us, including you, Christopher Shaw, in supporting the reemergence of postal banking. Now, as a flicker of light here, on taking postal banking, which was operating for the first 60 some years of the 20th century, and then under commercial banking pressure, it was a ended around 1967. But now because there's over 30 million people who are unbanked or underbanked, because they just can't afford the fees of banks and banks don't think they're profitable enough to provide them with accounts, they would be natural customers of the reentry of the postal banking service at 33,000 post offices and branches all over the country. Tell us what's going on in that area.

Christopher Shaw: We've had a significant breakthrough. It's the first major step. Or really, at this point, it's actually just a minor step, but it looks major because it’s the first thing that has happened at all since the Post Office stopped accepting savings deposits back in 1966 when they got rid of the savings bank the Post Office used to operate. And so it's small. There's four post offices--one in the Bronx, one in Baltimore, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Falls Church, Virginia. And they are now open to cashing payroll checks and business checks. And so you can go into these post offices and you can cash those checks and you can get the money put on a debit card and it's a single-use debit card, and then you can use that debit card at any location that would accept it. So this move into accepting cashing checks is actually a major step. And there's definitely already resistance from existing check cashing outlets that charge very high fees and also the banking lobby has also voiced its complaints about this. And there's hope; the idea here is that going forward this will be expanded to new and greater things. So for one, the card could be made reloadable. It could be possible then if they put a no-fee ATM machine in the post office that you could use it to actually draw out cash using the card inside the post office and domestic money transfers from one post office to another and also potentially bill payment services. These would all be under the legal purview, a lot of experts think, of the Post Office-- offering these without having major legislative change. So these are definitely the first steps we've seen towards Post Office banking. And the interesting thing here is that it's happening under Louis DeJoy. Because if you look at his predecessor, Megan Brennan, the American Postal Workers Union, this has been age priority for them for years. And they actually had in their collective bargaining agreement that she should explore this. Well, she did not do that. If you look at her predecessor, Patrick Donahoe, he flatly rejected the idea. And, Ralph, if you remember, 15 years ago, when we spoke to John Potter, who was Postmaster General then, he never followed up on the idea either. So it's actually Louis DeJoy where we're seeing the first step towards anything like reviving the bank at the Post Office.

Ralph Nader: You know, I circle in Congress and a lot of people in Congress don't really use the Postal Service. You see in the garages trucks from UPS [United Parcel Service] [and] trucks from FedEx [Corporation]. They don't even prefer US Postal Service trucks! Tell our listeners why you think the Postal Service or the old US Post Office is so critical in the future. I mean in the past they bound the country together; they were known for reliability. You could send a letter 3,000 miles or 30 miles and it's the same postage stamp in terms of cost. They even delivered eggs overnight. People would put a letter in the morning in their town and the person received it in the afternoon. And now we have far fewer post boxes on city streets. You have far fewer postal workers. But tell us how relevant, especially in the era of emergency and rural areas, the Postal Service still is.

Christopher Shaw: Well, I think that history that you're describing, that history of being an agency that binds the nation together, that history of providing uniform universal service to everybody on a democratic basis, which is an affirmation of democratic ideals in this nation, I think that's still very relevant today and it can be something that we should see going forward that the Postal Service continues to promote. And specifically, if we look at democracy, the Post Office from the very beginning, the idea is it was going to transport communications, so we're going to have better educated citizens in this new experiment and republican government distributing newspapers at a lower cost. People are better informed. While they still do that today, there's no reason why we can't have…we're still doing this, but we should be looking towards perhaps having the Post Office offer email accounts, perhaps having a postal search engine. There's no reason that can't transition to electronic services--that same idea of a wellinformed citizenry and the Post Office as an agency of government that helps that to happen.

Also, the fact is that there are lots of people who are postal dependent. They do not have access to broadband internet, for instance. And the Postal Service is the one universal communications system that is accessible to everybody. And so the Postal Service provides service in rural areas where a for-profit business never would go, because the profit just wouldn't be there. And so if you took away the Postal Service, these places would be left out of communications; these individuals would not be able to participate and communicate with others. So these are things the Post Office is doing now. It needs to continue to do it. And also, the financial services we were just talking about--banking for all these people who are being left out. There are 8 million unbanked households without any bank account who have to pay very high fees just to do basic things like cash a check. These are people too that the Post Office can serve. So the Post Office has a great tradition of helping democracy, of serving everyone in an equal manner, of disseminating information and news. And these things are all just as important in the 21st century. So I think it's important to have a reimagining and an updating and an expansion of what the Post Service is.

Ralph Nader: And that's what your new book is all about. Your new book is First Class published by City Lights in San Francisco, a progressive publisher. We're very proud to be a part of your long-term effort, having worked with you on a prior report on the Postal Service. You have a PhD in history from University of California, Berkeley. And I think that more radio stations should interview you at the local level. And there is a group in Washington that is coordinating this. Just contact area code (202) 421-6858; that's (202) 421-6858. And they can arrange an interview with Christopher Shaw on all these matters. Just by way of proportion, Chris, the Democrats and Republicans in the House committee recently added $20 billion to the military budget [that’s] $20 billion more than President Biden asked the Congress to give. Give an example of the size of the Postal Service, what's its revenues, and what $20 billion would do to the Postal Service upgrade and expansion.

Christopher Shaw: The Postal Service’s annual revenues are around $70 billion/$80 billion. It's a lot of variance that’s been going on because of COVID[-19] and how that has changed everything in terms of how the society is operating. It's had a lot of financial problems that has everything to do with this mandate to pre-fund its retirees’ health benefits 75 years into the future at the tune of 5.5 billion over 10 years that no other government agency attempts to do; no other private corporation attempts to do. So, that's really responsible for maybe as much as 90% of the Postal Service’s financial losses.

But if you're constantly operating under financial pressure and under these thin margins, then you don't invest in your infrastructure, and it begins to deteriorate. And you especially see this with the postal trucks. So they're trying to replace those now, but you have trucks on the road that are 30 years old, still. You have a whole network of post offices. And then you have all these ideas that could be pursued that have not been pursued. 20 billion dollars could go a long way in all kinds of directions here. One thing just to point out is the Postal Service has never been able to have its own airline. It's dependent on commercial passenger airlines and actually on his competitors, FedEx and UPS, to move anything by air. There's no reason the Postal Service shouldn't have its own airline just like FedEx and UPS have. So $20 billion could go a long way, especially for an agency that's been starved for resources for a long time now.

Ralph Nader: And distribution of medical supplies in an emergency, for example. You got 33,000 outlets that far is greater than Walmart’s [Inc.] or McDonald's number of stores. These are gathering places in smaller towns in an impersonal internet age. You actually can mix it up with friends and neighbors you meet at the post office. There are intangibles here. Postal delivery people going through residential areas. They've often saved lives. They talk with people. And it's a different quality of life that we should not forsake to put it mildly. I would like to end with this, Chris. How do you describe the mainstream media's reporting and public radio and public broadcasting? Have you been interviewed by any national media? This is your second book on the Postal Service.

Christopher Shaw: I'll just say that I think that media coverage has gotten better since 2020. Because in 2020, you had a lot of people who never used the Postal Service very much. I mean, there are some people in this country who tend to be wealthier, tend to live in cities, and they are not nearly as dependent on it as people who are lower income, who are older, and who are more rural. But in 2020, all of a sudden, they see the fact that, hey, I have to vote during a pandemic. We have a national election happening during the pandemic. Well, thank goodness that we have a national infrastructure here that is prepared and ready to step into the breach and allow this national election to continue. I mean, the presidential election of 2020, just the fact it could even happen logistically was not guaranteed. But the Postal Service was there and it stepped in and it got the job done, and we should be very thankful for that. And so I do think that there is more interest in reporting now on the issue than there was. But at the same time, for an agency that touches all of our lives six days a week, that has post offices in over 30,000 different communities in this country, and is the third largest employer, there ought to be more interest you would think than there is.

Ralph Nader: Well, the people rallied to the Post Office last year surprising some of the Washington media, not to mention members of Congress. They were taken aback by sort of almost a patriotic rally of people all over the country regardless of their political backgrounds. What years ago we thought one solution to preserve, protect, and expand the Postal Service was something we called POCAG [Post Office Consumer Action Group]. Can you describe that briefly?

Christopher Shaw: POCAG is a great idea. The Post Office Consumer Action Group was your idea, Ralph. And we can all be thankful for that idea. But essentially, it's a voluntary nonprofit organization. The Post Office would deliver a letter or a postcard four times a year to all the residential addresses and it would give people the opportunity to pay a small membership due in order to join the organization. And then that money could be used to hire a staff that would be an advocate for the public/an advocate for the American people in ensuring that they receive adequate and frankly a first-class postal service like they deserve. So, instead of just having the lobbyists for UPS and FedEx and the major mailers and these other groups here that are oftentimes talking about cutting service, closing post offices, or not interested in certainly improving services, you would have an advocate in a lobbying group for the average American citizen. So POCAG would really do a lot and go a long way towards giving citizens a voice in the management of their postal service, which is our people's Post Office.

Ralph Nader: And less than 1% of the people who join POCAG around the country can make this a formidable force, both locally, regionally, and nationally. And to read more about it, you should get Christopher Shaw's new book, First Class, and talk it up; get it for your local library and give it to your local postmaster. We're ordering a lot of Chris's books to give to various postmasters so they can educate the community and assure them of the critical importance of the Postal Service even in this automated, computerized internet age. Is there any last thing you want to tell us, Chris?

Christopher Shaw: I just wanna say that the Postal Service is part of our commonwealth. We all own it. It's our agency and we can make it what we want it to be. At one time, it did not offer banking. Grassroots lobbying got it to offer banking. At one time, the Postal Service did not actually deliver packages, but there was a monopoly that was price gouging. People demanded and got it to do that. So it is there for our use and we can make it into a public service that we can all be proud of. And we can think well beyond letters and envelopes in terms of what this means to us as a nation.

Ralph Nader: And the we ends up on Capitol Hill Congress so they can stop succumbing to the commercial mailers and other corporations and free the Postal Service to meet its great potential in the coming decades. [Contact] your members of Congress, once again, listeners. Thank you very much, Chris.

Christopher Shaw: Thank you. Good talking to you.

Steve Skrovan: We've been speaking with Christopher Shaw. We will link to First Class: The US Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat at ralphnaderradiohour.com. I wanna thank our guests again, Mihailis Diamantis and Christopher Shaw. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show. For you, podcasts listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call “The Wrap Up”. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour website soon after the episode is posted.

For more from Russell Mokhiber, go to corporatecrimereporter.com. For a copy of The Day the Rats Vetoed Congress, go to ratsreformcongress.org. And also check out The Ralph Nader and Family Cookbook: Classic Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond. We will link to both of those on ralphnaderradiohour.com. And join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour when we welcome musician and activist, Tom Morello. Thank you, Ralph.

Ralph Nader: Thank you, everybody. I hope this program will help some of our Congress Club members in sending the corporate crime letter to their senators and representatives and demanding specific replies. It was a good education, I think.

[admin]

Overcoming Corporate Rule: A Success Story
by Ralph Nader
RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EP 403 TRANSCRIPT
November 27, 2021
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/ove ... ess-story/

Ralph Nader: Hello all the way from Maui on this program.

Steve Skrovan: Yes. While national elections get major PAC [political action committee] money and infinite coverage on mainstream media outlets, local elections can seem insignificant in comparison. But school boards, zoning commissions, city council, and other local authorities really go a long way to shape our daily lives. On this program, we push listeners to go out and do things. Your local government is a great place to start. Regular listeners may remember Paul Deslauriers, who was a guest on our show back in 2019. He, along with other dedicated activists, took on the entrenched interests in his home county of Maui, Hawai'i. And guess what? They won. Last time he explained how their movement got started. Today we're going to hear about how it's going. As always, it wouldn't be a Ralph Nader Radio Hour if we didn't check in with our intrepid corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, let's get an update on democracy in Maui, David?

Ralph Nader: Paul Deslauriers is a grassroots organizer and the author of Seven Steps to Reclaim Democracy: An Empowering Guide for Systemic Change. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Paul Deslauriers.

Paul Deslauriers: Well, thank you for having me and it's a great pleasure to be here and to have this conversation with Ralph.

Ralph Nader: Well, Paul, you're a success story in Maui. I want our listeners to read your book, Reclaim Paradise [: RESET for the Common Good] [about how] Maui County shifted from corporate rule over decades to home rule--from corporate rule to home rule and the template for global system change. And I've never seen an effort like this reach the level that you've reached. Let's just tell some of our listeners very briefly about Maui. Maui County in Hawai'i is considered one of the most popular vacation spots on earth, a physical form of paradise for a reason--its beauty and year-round pleasant temperatures, waterfalls, beaches, and aloha spirit. In 2018, the county of Maui’s budget was $800 million a year with a population of 166,000. Maui is considered a wealthy county per resident yet the corporate rule still generates hardships causing the struggle for residents to survive. And then you say, “Let's take a snapshot of some key residential needs--housing, water, food education, healthcare.”

In the book, you paint a history of staggering exploitation of the Hawaiian Islands after Western explorers landed on it, toppled the government, concentrated power in five big corporations, dispossessed the land of the natives, contaminated/poisoned the water. It's almost a laundry list of how corporations can control people in their own interest s. Now, Maui is a very high-priced place. The average home sale was $775,000, which requires an income of $198,000 to apply and to make mortgage payments to a bank.

So, just to paint this picture: you land at the airport in Maui and you go around the country and you're just staggered by the beauty, but behind the scenes, there's a lot of exploitation, a lot of poverty, a lot of labor manipulation, and it's dominated by a very few people. So, you decided you were going to live in Maui. You were a consultant to over a hundred businesses as to how they can function at their optimal potential. So, you know the inside of the way corporations behave and this book can only be described as amazing. Step-by-step clear, readable descriptions of what the challenge was, starting a few years ago, how the county government was really a pawn of commercial interests and how you and a small number of people had endless conversations, discussions, analysis, and then hit the ground running.

In 2018, you won 9 of 16 seats, a slim majority. The counterattack was overwhelming. The corporations flooded the island with money, propaganda, lies, deceptions, and you persevered. And the result, you won 14 out of 16 seats. And you did it door by door, person to person, as more and more people encouraged by what you and your small group was doing joined the movement.

Now this is only one island in the chain of Hawaiian Islands and you want people not to just look at it as a sort of quirky, lucky development. You say the template is global, that the same kind of corporate concentration is everywhere. They take over the local governments and the people have to pay the consequences. You have a pyramid in the book where you have at the top, the power structure, very tiny number. And as the pyramid broadens, at the bottom are the voters and their local government.

So, here you are. You’re in 2020. You've had all kinds of obstacles. You even had one of your elected people turncoat on you in 2018 and you show people all the obstacles. This is not a pollyannaish presentation, and you made sure you were not one of the elected. You stood outside so that they couldn't accuse you of anything personal [or] partisan. So, here you are, November election, you're 14 out of 16. You did some things in 2018, but it was a very slim majority. Tell us what you've accomplished.

Paul Deslauriers: Well Ralph, it's really been an amazing process of working with our community here in Maui County. And as you mentioned, this is something that is applicable globally. And I think that a lot of people have been so suppressed and feeling so filled with fear and uncertainty about the future because there's really no mechanism or way that they can see that, yes, this is what I could do to really make a shift and change. But what this does here and what we've done with this process is show, wait a minute, there is an uplifting way of creating systemic change; that we don't have to go along with the system that right now mainstream media is toting with this great reset. The reset doesn't have to be about this fascism and technocracy and taking away our liberties and freedoms. We can reverse that and it's not a difficult process. Once you start to understand that we are dealing with a system and take a system approach, that's where everything becomes visible. Because right now our society has our economic, education, military, medical, judicial, transportation--these are all systems that create a framework around our society and they're like circuit boards that are directing and applying social energy. But what overrides all of that is our governance, so, federal and state. But where we really do have that access point, as you mentioned, is on a local level. And this is where we can really make a difference on towns, cities, and counties.

And I think that all your listeners should realize that, wait a minute, we don't have to go along with what mainstream media is telling us, because they're not allowing us to look at this other avenue, this other track that we can take that can bring about systemic change that is incredibly wonderful in terms of how it supports the people, the community, and the environment; and we can very simply do this. And the engagement process can be uplifting and supportive.

So I think that first of all, realize that we have an entry to the system and that is through counties, cities and towns. And that is where we have a voice. That's where mainstream media doesn't have the level of control because we have this local network that we can co-create of communication. And that's what we did here in Maui County. We really supported it so that we created a way that our organization became an information hub of progressive issues, values, and candidates. And we became a way where people can look at what's really happening, what are the problems we're facing, and what are the solutions that work. And from that, people can start to participate and get involved because these are touching things that affect them on a daily basis.

Ralph Nader: You know, your group is called the Maui Pono Network for those who want to look it up. And what struck me was on page 208, you have this, “Within a short time, entrenched department heads were voted out by the new county council and replaced by bright, experienced and creative coordinators. The $90 million construction project that primarily enriched the good old boy network was canceled. Funds were being allocated for affordable housing. They settled the longstanding injection wells case.” That's contamination of water, serious problem in Maui. [County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund--US Supreme Court]

“They made it so the community associations must approve any development. They proposed seven charter amendments, which were passed in 2020, that would rewire the county system to serve the common good. It would increase transparency and cronyism and increase citizens participation. Big money out of county, corporate super PACs responded with a vengeance in the 2020 county elections, spending $430,000 in the last 40 days of the election. They endorsed and promoted the exact opposite of the Maui Pono Network, including its Ohana candidate slate. The Maui Pono Network helped stop this attempted coup of our local governance.”

So, unlike so many reform movements that temporarily succeed and then the counterattack throws them out of office, you just got stronger in 2020. So, what you did in in 2020 with 9 out of 16 seats; now you have 14 seats out of 16, diversified as can be in terms of members and focusing on class exploitation--a perfect combination! So, what do you expect to be done in the next year or two now that you have an overwhelming majority on the county government? Paul Deslauriers: Well, it's been incredible changes that have happened here in Maui County. Very positive and uplifting again, supporting the people and the environment in ways that it never had before. And you mentioned many of those things that have happened and there is a lot that continues to happen. One of the charter amendments that was passed was that instead of the mayor, who is typically part of the good old boy network, would – every 10 years, our charter is reviewed. That's our constitution. That's the way the county gets wired and how things get allocated and the power structure lines up. So, out of those, basically 11 charter commissioners, that for the first time, the county council now has an opportunity to select 9 of the 11 and the mayor selects 2. So, as a result of that, I'm one of the 11 commissioners on the charter. And right now, we're making so many changes to our whole structure and governance system so that we can eliminate that cronyism and the way things have been wired for so long.

The Hawaiian Islands were taken over in 1893 and five corporations ruled Maui County for all that time. And as you mentioned, it was horrific for many of the residents here and we're still dealing with some of those repercussions, obviously, in terms of developments and environmental standards not being kept. But we're moving forward at an incredible clip. Because again, once you get a majority of the county council and you get them elected, that serves the people and the environment, then things can move very rapidly in terms of how different types of things get changed. So, now I can list a bunch of things that will be coming up in the 2022 election that has to be approved by the voters or these charter amendments that we're proposing at that time.

Ralph Nader: Yeah, go ahead. You're trying to reset the constitution of the county in effect. It may sound dull, but you're trying to shift power from the way it was manipulated over a hundred years. So, tell us about that. I'm also interested, Paul, in the reaction of a million tourists who come to Maui every year [chuckle]. It's a very busy airport. How are they reacting to this new government of, by, and for the people and what are the newspaper and radio stations like? But go ahead, let's do the charter first.

Paul Deslauriers: Well, for example, one thing that just got passed was that the mayor would select the planning department and the people who would then be involved with the planning commission and looking at all of the development happening throughout the entire island. And obviously, it's been rigged for quite some time. And the mayor would select his group of people that was in alignment with him and what his buddies would basically want to see happen. What we've done now is we've disbanded the central planning department and now we're making planning happen through all the citizens. We'll have seven different planning districts where each of the different citizens groups then becomes the planning department for that region; so, they can really have a say in the development and evolution of their local area. And it was a very, very frustrating and obviously a huge problem here in terms of how things were evolving with the residents and the environment. That's one little shift that is going to affect all of the development throughout the entire island for generations to come.

Ralph Nader: You have a real water problem. Listeners should know there's water on one side of the island that is wet and the other side needs the water. And this whole distribution network for decades was controlled by just a handful of powerful people and companies, right?

Paul Deslauriers: Yes. And this is a battle that we're facing still, but we're making tremendous progress in terms of the county purchasing some of the water infrastructure, but also there are a lot of different issues that we're facing in terms of leases. So, the battle continues. Water is a big issue because, whoever controls the water controls Maui County's future, because they can then determine where the agriculture goes, what type of crops are grown and where the developments happen since we need water as a foundation for that. It’s the lifeblood of the island, and yet it's controlled by offshore corporations at this time. So, we're rapidly moving towards changing that.

Ralph Nader: Tell me, are the corporations going to the state government to try to preempt you the way they did in Texas when some cities increased the minimum wage. They went to the corrupt Republican dominated state legislature and preempted local authority. Are they going that way to try to block you?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, I think that we have a real challenge when we look at the Democrat run state government because they're corporate Democrats; [chuckle] they're there for corporate interests, not for the people. So, it's been a real challenge. That's why we're working with the other counties here in Maui, so that they can get and elect progressive state reps. We need that majority in order to really make that shift on a state level. We are working right now with the other counties so that they can form a standard pack like we did with the Maui Pono Network and organize in a way that is effective and efficient, that can influence the community narrative, which is essential in terms of the election process.

Ralph Nader: How is the corporate media treating you in Hawai'i, the newspapers, radio and TV in Maui and in the other islands?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, you'll get a certain twist, but again, we can utilize the existing system effectively and efficiently and also create new forms of communication, which we've been doing proactively here in Maui County. We have, let's say, our newspaper, the Maui News that has been corporate run since its existence, but they have this thing which is highly read in terms of letters to the editor. So, during election time our network of really good writers did a whole training so they would be sending - on a regular basis - letters to the editor; we always maintained a progressive stance in all of the papers through this process. There are ways to even work with some of the media to help make them a little bit more progressive. We have a new newspaper, the Maui Times, which is a really good way of communicating with our community. We also have local radio talk shows and a local television station Akakū [Maui Community Media] that are very open and supportive to informing our community so we've utilized them an awful lot to get the message out.

I would say that social media has been another avenue of communication that has been extremely important. We averaged in this last election about 30,000 hits on our Facebook social media site alone and then we had Twitter and all these other things we had on our website. Our website became an information hub of progressive issues and candidates. We received 128,000 hits on our website because people want to know; they want to be informed. We put together report cards on all the different candidates on how they voted. And there's nothing like [chuckle] getting the reality in front of you when you see the card and you see all these key issues, especially that relate to progressive need and change; and you see the way some candidates vote and some don't. And it became very obvious very quickly who the progressive candidates were and were not.

So, there's a lot of different ways of communicating that I think are extremely important. The community narrative is really one of the main goals that we have. So, we are constantly putting out memes, little cartoons that depict an issue or need with little sayings. And it's amazing how they get spread around. A lot of different tools are available through the internet. And in fact, we did a lot more digital promoting in the 2020 election, compared to 2018 when we were more volunteer based. We had about 250 volunteers who participated for the election process and it was relationship-oriented where we would hand out cards like at the county fair where we had people at all three gates, and they handed out 22,000 cards in three days. And that means having little conversations with people too as they go along so an interconnection happens. We have these Friday events that happen here on the island so, we'd always be there with booths and then touting our candidates and the issues.

There are a lot of ways to get out there and communicate. And I think that when you start to have people involved and see that they can make a difference, especially now. People need something that's positive, that's uplifting, and they see that, whoa, we don't have to go along this route that they're doing right now. We can do something totally different and change the system. And again, that's what we're doing. And when people start to see the changes that have happened and how things are moving forward in such a positive way, they want to participate and be engaged. Ralph Nader: One thing about this book is you really go deep into human motivation. I mean, you have all kinds of ways of motivating people and not taking credit for everything and being extremely aggregate in terms of bringing more and more people in. And I assume you're starting to bring more younger people in because people in your circle were over 50, the original circle, and it's growing. You have almost a 70% voting turnout. You use quotes like you quote Mahatma Gandhi of India. He said, “Non-cooperation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power. I cooperate with all that is good. I desire to non-cooperate with all that is evil.”

I mean, you’re really into this and I say this because we're trying to motivate members of our Congress Club to begin interacting in very specific ways on major ignored redirections in our country with their senators and representatives. And it hasn't been easy. And I know they're going to want to get copies of this book and other listeners want to get it. And we'll tell you shortly exactly how to get it directly because this has not been published by a commercial publisher yet. But tell us, how do you deal with cynicism? How do you deal with the ‘Ah, the pox all our houses; nothing's going to change. I'm just going to live my private life and try to enjoy myself and get a decent standard of living. And I'm not into politics, Paul.’ How do you deal with that?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, certainly, there are people who don't want to participate in and be involved. But when you start to hit things that affect them on a daily basis and they see that there are issues with roads, there are issues with water distribution, there are issues with especially affordable housing at this time; when they see that, wait a minute, if I get involved and participate just a little bit, or even tell my neighbors about some of the positive change and candidates who could support that change, then there's involvement, engagement. I think that the more you make it so that it is a local issue and it hits home viscerally, that's when you start to stir the emotion.

Ralph Nader: There's been inequitable property taxes in Maui, favoring the rich and the big landowners. Are you tackling that problem?

Paul Deslauriers: Oh, it's already been changed. So, new homes over 5,000 square feet just got additional taxes, tax increase for the different hotels that have been undertaxed. So, there's a lot happening. We're looking at some additional means also so that it could really support affordable housing. And we need to subsidize housing here. You know, what you read before in terms of the average house sale was about $778, I think, in 2018; now it's getting over a million dollars. I think that people are seeing Maui as a safe haven and so, the property has been bought up during this post pandemic period. And I think that, again, it really emphasizes the importance of having affordable housing, but affordable housing in perpetuity. So, we're looking at community land trusts and doing all these things that are evolving and developing at a very rapid rate.

Ralph Nader: Are you looking at co-operatives, consumer co-operatives, food co-ops, housing co-ops? Because there's a National Cooperative Bank in Washington [D.C.], which we got enacted in 1978 under President [Jimmy] Carter. And they have more loans available than the demand. So, you could do health co-ops, food co-ops, and housing co-ops. Have you thought of that?

Paul Deslauriers: Yes, we have. And right now, especially with food, actually, one of the charter changes that occurred in last election in 2020 was to get our own agricultural department to separate ourselves in some way from the state agricultural department, which is focused on big agriculture with a lot of toxic chemicals. Instead, what we're focusing on is smaller farmers, education and getting this collaborative, cooperative ways of dealing with food processing. And so, it's underway as far as food goes. And we are right now working with housing issues in that similar manner.

Ralph Nader: Well, think of loan requests to the National Cooperative Bank here in Washington, D.C. How do you give people credit? People like to be given credit when they do the right thing and there are all kinds of ways to give people credit. How do you give them credit?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, I think acknowledging people is important as far as the motivation process and getting people to continue to be involved. I just look at our team; now we have a small group that’s at the core. And then, from there, we have our different committees, and we have volunteers who are participating in those different committees. We always acknowledge the people on the team and put them in the forefront. And especially when it comes to candidates or people who are supporting particular issues, we put them up front and let their name be out there because we want name recognition especially for some of these younger candidates that we're supporting.

One of the things that we do for our candidates, for example, is that we started a minor league, which I think you'll find interesting, Ralph, in that basically it's like a baseball minor league where we have a Double-A and Triple-A. And they look for high school and college players who are really, really good and they ask them if they want to be a professional. We're doing, the same thing. We're going around looking at people who testify, who are involved in civic type of activities, who are working with nonprofits, who have that type of ability and skill in terms of their communication, relationships, and who are focused on progressive issues and needs. And so, we ask these young people to come in and we look at where their interest is, and then we get them involved in different ways.

For example, we have right now, six people involved with the different county council members as assistants, supporting them on specific initiatives. We have people that we help and support to get on boards. So that these young candidates who are coming up in the ranks get more and more skills as they develop, and we give them coaching as they go along. And with that we're able to truly see that we don't elect someone who then does a turncoat on us. Like we did in that first election in 2018. We learned our lesson, and we said, “We have to vet these candidates and understand where they're coming from.” And we do that by getting them engaged, seeing how they show up, looking at their productivity. And from there, we can say, “Okay, here's someone I want to bring up to our Double-A league.” And that means that we get them involved in our meetings. We get them more involved in social media; we start to promote them. And when it comes to election time, if they look like they're a good candidate that we really want to support, they go to the Triple-A. And if they get elected, they're in the majors.

Ralph Nader: Well, your boards like zoning board, your board of education, they're all elected. Are you starting to get the progressive wave there in all these boards?

Paul Deslauriers: Absolutely. We already did. So, with a charter, before the mayor used to select all of the different commissions and boards. But now we have what we call a Blue Ribbon Commission, which is basically main citizens who have been really proactive that are well-respected; they have high integrity. This group then of nine people will then be the people who will select them – all the boards and commissions for the county itself. So, it eliminates a tremendous amount of the issues and problems we've had with not getting qualified people or the right mix or the right representation in those different committees and boards. Now it is just open and clear in the process with a lot more transparency.

Ralph Nader: Well, Paul, in the interest of time, some quick questions and quick answers. Are you trying to get civic skills taught in the schools and connect the schools with outside activities under adult supervision and what is the minimum wage? And are you trying to do some about that? And what are you doing about health insurance?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, let me just say about the wage thing. First of all, we've been trying. It's a state issue and the house rep would not even allow the discussion to go beyond… right now it's $10.20 an hour. Studies have been done where in order to live here with the cost of living for housing and food, about $17 an hour is needed. So, there's such a huge gap. We tried to make it $15 an hour. And again, it's based on the state. So, there's a real challenge in dealing with minimum wage issues. And we're trying to do that more on a local level where a lot of the different businesses now have put in their minimum as $15 an hour. And we're really encouraging that. But as far as the state goes, it remains a challenge. And that's why we're trying to get the other counties to get involved in that way so that we can get the right representation, the right state reps in there.

Ralph Nader: By the way, listeners should know that Hawai'i has been dominated forever since it became a state by the Democratic Party. You have to look here and there to find a Republican, so they are very much corporate Democrats as you said, but they certainly don't have to worry like in Kentucky and Alabama about any resurgent Republican Party. What about civic skills in the schools?

Paul Deslauriers: We have Kelly King, one of our council members [who] is right now helping to bring that more into the schools. And part of what we're looking at then is to actually use that as part of the farm team into the minor leagues, basically, so we can get civic engagement happening early on. And they're putting together a mock county council, which would be done by high school kids. And they in turn will pass legislation and do different things that encourages them and demystifies government functions; it's something that they can easily participate in and understand. And we have a great video that they just did, and the county just did also through Kelly King that lays it all out in terms of civic engagement and how to do that and how to be involved and how to be involved and get elected. It is a great overview that is being shown all civics classes in all high schools.

Ralph Nader: Before we tell people how they can get your book, we have listeners from all over the world. We've had feedback from Hong Kong and Eastern Europe, Canada, of course. And you intend this book to apply to anywhere in the world where there is corporate rule that needs to be replaced by home rule. Why do you think people should read this book?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, first of all, I think that it's an uplifting solution and that's what we need. I hear so much in terms of talk radio and what's out there that the focus remains on the problems, what's happening, what the federal government is doing, what the state government is doing, lockdowns. And it becomes overwhelming. When that's all the message you hear, it gets very depressing. But this is a different message, and this is a different approach where we can actually do something proactive to really make a positive change. And I think that once people start to realize that it dissipates that fear, that anxiety that so many throughout our entire planet are feeling right now. Because I find that if there's something that is bringing up fear or concern, if I can do something proactive that I can see can create a resolution and change this, then I'd become uplifted, excited, and enthusiastic, versus these other low-level emotions of fear.

Ralph Nader: Before we continue on, tell us how people can get this book.

Paul Deslauriers: They can go to reclaimparadise.org and also it's available on Amazon [.com, Inc.], but I would hope that they can come over to this website so that we can start to connect with them. I think that once people get a look at how really easy it is to create the systemic change, that they want to do that within their own town, city or county. So, reclaimparadise.org.

Ralph Nader: reclaimparadise.org. You'll find out how to get this book and apply it to your own circumstances. Now, I know county government is restricted in what it can do in Maui as elsewhere and that state and federal governments have very strong jurisdictional claims on what can be done. But what are you doing in such situations as the prisons in Maui, the healthcare problem in Maui? What can you do given the limits of county government?

Paul Deslauriers: Again, that's where we're really working with the other counties to get a majority of progressive state reps in there. It's not the case right now. Corporate reps are in there controlled by corporations and big money interests. So, that makes it very difficult. However, when you start to, you can control what happens to a large extent. There are things that can work, but home rule certainly varies from county to county and in terms of the level of jurisdictions. But there is a lot you can do within the county that can really make a significant difference.

Ralph Nader: Getting back to the mechanics, how do you avoid bickering? I've seen the Green Party paralyze itself because of internal bickering at the state level. And a lot of other parties often propose things yet weaken themselves by constant bickering. Some have very personal, trivial personality differences, not policy differences. How do you deal with the bickering thing? Because you're actually doing the work on the ground. It's not just proposing or debating. How do you deal with the bickering?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, yeah, the whole issue of divisiveness and bickering and people attacking each other, I think, is something that we're very cognizant of and very sensitive about so that if there are issues that come up for individuals, we sit down and we talk and we deal with that. And one of the things that we've done here, what I think that this should really be based on, it should be issue-based. People are not debating whether we have issues with water or with affordable housing; these are not debatable issues in that sense. And there are very good, clear solutions that have been utilized in other counties that we could also bring within our own group. So, I think the solutions and dealing with specific issues and needs, I find it doesn't become more of a personality issue or anything like that. It's issue-based; you deal with numbers and facts; you deal with specifics in terms of what has worked in other counties and why it's effective. You make it so that it's very rational and you don't come to these far-off conclusions, but you make it so that it's very grounded. In that way, I find that people come along because they want to see these changes happen within their community. And yes, there'll be divisiveness at times. There'll be… talk about divisiveness, look at the whole vaccine issue right now. So, what we've done is we've avoided… the Maui Pono Network is not involved with any of pro-vax or anti-vax or any of these other things around pandemic. Because we see that from our perspective, that's very divisive. So, we avoid divisive, real divisive issues like that, and focus on what's really going to make a difference long-term here in the county itself.

Ralph Nader: And you go through a lot of this in chapter nine. It’s called “The Road to Home Rule: Get Started, Build a Local Citizens Political Action Committee”. This is what you want, listeners, so, pay heed to reclaimparadise.org. And let's get Steve and David in on this. I hope, Steve and David, you talk about how do we apply some of these lessons from Maui to the mainland, to the Congress Club, and get people to think that any level of civic energy can have just returns and replicate the motivation in a kind of leveraged fashion. I take it, Paul, you haven't gotten much media coverage from the mainstream press, have you? NPR [National Public Radio], PBS [Public Broadcasting Service]?

Paul Deslauriers: None, whatsoever. No. No, I haven't. So we're still in the early stages of trying to communicate this, and being on your radio show is certainly a big part of that, Ralph. So, thank you.

Ralph Nader: We're going to try to get the New York Times and Washington Post. Once they do it, then you'll get a lot more media because these are publications that discover the so-called new activities. So, we're going to try to help out, Steve?

Steve Skrovan: Yeah. I wanted to kind of pick up on just what you were saying, because, Paul, we spoke to you almost exactly two years ago, December of 2019. And I was going to ask if other communities have reached out to you? Have you, if you’ll excuse the expression, been able to spread the contagion?

Paul Deslauriers: [chuckles] Well, I would say spread the good news, and yes, it has been. There are a few counties that are engaged in that. But what we did was two years ago, after Seven Steps was published, it was outdated two months after it got put out. And so we said, wait a minute, we have to take a step back and let's not go ahead and promote and get this going. Instead, we had to go back to the drawing board because instead of being more relationship oriented in our approach, we had to become more digitally oriented in our approach.

So, with that, for example, during the lockdown, we reached out to all the candidates, and we got them on video on Zoom [Video Communications]. And basically, we recorded an hour interview with all of the candidates, both progressive and non-progressive. And then we had that on our website and it became a real source for people to become informed. Just on Facebook Live, we were doing this. We were getting over 2,000 views and then we had it on Akakū, which is our local community television station. So, there were a lot of things that we did that basically were a lot different that we wanted to utilize in this next edition. So, we have both. We have post pandemic and pre-pandemic approaches that will work based on the level of lockdown or issues that are faced within each community. We've just finished that, and Steve, we're just putting this out right now. So, there will be more effort after we really got a way/a system/a process that really, really works, working with both lockdown and non-lockdown.

Ralph Nader: You know, I can't let the program end without getting your views of the native Hawaiian sovereignty movement, which has really developed since the mid-1970s. When I was in Hawaii, I met with some of the organizers of this and they're moving to get tribal recognition the way native tribes in the US have under US law. But they also have other programs to recover some of what was destroyed. Eighty percent of the native population was destroyed in the early 20th century and all kinds of diseases that came from the sailors--tuberculosis, influenza, measles--that the natives had never experienced [and] had no immunity toward. Can you give us a capsule of what's going on there? Because I know you're part of that effort.

Paul Deslauriers: Yeah. I think that what happened with all these different types of native Hawaiian movements that were happening in 70s, 80s and 90s; they never really unified in a way that I think is necessary to move the needle. If you have different factions that are fighting against each other or not collaborating in alignment, then that will dissipate the energy being created through that movement. And that's exactly what happened with the Hawaiian movement to a large extent. Now, it was revitalized on the Big Island with Mauna Kea recently and a lot of the Hawaiian groups came together and unified around these issues. And I think that's a key thing to keep in mind regardless of native Hawaiian or any type of group. You’ve got to avoid that divisiveness/separation, because our strength and power comes from the unity and collaboration that can happen among us. So, that's the thing to really encourage. It's still there, but it's in factions to a certain extent. But it got together on the Mauna Kea issue, which was about putting out these huge telescopes, size of three football fields on the top of this very sacred place of the Hawaiians.

Ralph Nader: Is there anything else you want to tell our listeners, Paul, that we didn't cover? Are you available for interviews on local radio around the country?

Paul Deslauriers: Oh, well, first of all, yes, I'm definitely available for interviews. And in terms of just the last message, I really want to encourage your listeners to get involved and participate because there is a way out. We don't have to do this reset that's being promoted by mainstream media or these lockdowns in the way that they're doing. What we can do is have our local governance support the people in the environment and also have a protective screen against any of, let's say, tyranny that may be coming from above down. So, having this grassroot base, this foundation of people supporting each other, their community, the common good, I think, is so crucial as we move forward. And there's a countermeasure that we can do that is involve locally so everyone can participate.

Ralph Nader: Listeners, to be clear, what Paul was saying is this isn't about trying to persuade your elected representatives to do the right thing, representatives who have been indentured to a lot of commercial and invested interests. This is about replacing them! You have a slate of candidates who represent of, by, and for the people and you replace them and take over the local government. [chuckle] That'll save you a lot of time. That's what you're saying, right, Paul?

Paul Deslauriers: Well, exactly. In fact, what I'm really saying also is that you want to go to the primary place of change, not secondary and third-level repercussions that'll get you nowhere. So, when you go and protest, you're protesting to politicians who enacted the problems in the first place and whose loyalty is somewhere else. So those efforts become dissipated and not effective. What I'm saying is take that energy and focus it on this key point: getting a majority of the county council, for example, or the board in the towns and cities. Let that be the focus, not so much what's happening on a national level, vote on a national level, but where we can really have control and influence is by gaining this progressive group of representatives who will provide that protective shield and protect those residents within there. And I think that's what we have to focus on, especially in terms of what's coming down. We don't know exactly how far this is going to spin down in terms of fascism. But I'm just saying that this is a way.

Ralph Nader: This is a way because if you recover the elected county or the elected town or elected city council, then you can begin replacing the corporatist heads of the departments in the local government. You can then get more people elected to the boards of education and zoning and assessors, et cetera. So, it isn't just the electing the legislature, so to speak, of the local government. It transforms the entire local government once you do that first step. Is that right?

Paul Deslauriers: It's systemic change. And this is, from my perspective, the way to do systemic change. I don't think we can access it on a federal level or a state level, but we can on a county, town, and city level. And this is where the protection happens in the future as we move forward.

Ralph Nader: Well, thank you very much. We've been talking with Paul Deslauriers, author of the book, Reclaim Paradise: RESET for the Common Good. Maui County shifted from corporate rule to home rule and the template for global system change. And people listening to this program want to hear Paul talk about this in your local community on local radio or cable, you know where to go, reclaimparadise.org. Thank you very much, Paul. To be continued.

Paul Deslauriers: Thank you, Ralph, and again, a pleasure.

Steve Skrovan: We've been speaking with Paul Deslauriers. We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour.com. Now, let’s check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber.

Russell Mokhiber: From the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., this is your Corporate Crime Reporter “Morning Minute” for Friday, November 26, 2021; I'm Russell Mokhiber. Switching seniors to Medicare Advantage plans has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars more than keeping them in original Medicare, a cost that has exploded since 2018, and is likely to rise even higher. That's according to a report from Kaiser Health News. Richard Kronick, a former federal health policy researcher and a professor at the University of California, San Diego, said his analysis of newly released Medicare Advantage billing data estimates that Medicare overpaid the private health plans by more than $106 billion from 2010 through 2019 because of the way the private plans charge for sicker patients. “They are paying [Medicare Advantage plans] way more than they should,” said Kronick. Giant insurer UnitedHealthcare [Inc], which in 2019 had about 6 million Medicare Advantage members, received excess payments of some $6 billion. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mokhiber.

Steve Skrovan: Thank you, Russell. Hey, we have a special treat for our radio listeners this holiday week. We're going to conclude the show. We're going to play a fun segment that was available only to our podcast listeners couple of months ago. Ralph was complaining about how corporate branding was intruding on his enjoyment of listening to his beloved New York Yankees radio broadcast. So, we put together a parody that highlights that absurdity. Enjoy. We hear the closing chords of the National Anthem.

Radio Announcer (Skrovan): Hello everybody, this is Tommy Dudley and it’s time to “play ball” here in the Windy City for the first of a four-game tilt between your New York Yankees and the Central Division leading Chicago White Sox. Our “Salute to America National Anthem” was brought to you by LensCrafters.

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Okay, the White Sox have taken the field, and we’re ready for the first pitch. Leading it off for the Yankees in your McDonald’s “I’m Loving It” line-up is left-fielder Brett Gardner. Brett Gardner is brought to you by Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Brett is one Gardner who won’t plant himself in the batter’s box before visiting Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Tell ‘em Brett sent ya. And use the promo code: Guiliani

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Giolito winds and we’re underway. Gardner takes a fastball for a strike. Right at the knees that just painted the outside corner. And painting the corner is sponsored by CertaPro Painters. Whether it’s an inside or an outside job leave your painting to the pros at CertaPro.

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The one-one pitch. Up and in with a fastball that spins Gardner out of the box! A little chin music. And if you’re looking to repair a musical instrument, look no further than Raffy’s Musical Instrument Emporium and Repair. Fine workmanship at low prices. At Raffy’s, they’ll get that broken violin back under your chin, so you can keep on making beautiful music.

No score here in the top of the first inning. 2-1 on Gardner, who steps back in. Giolito looks in for the sign, nods, fires. Gardner swings and sends a line drive just over first baseman Jose Abreu onto the right field grass, sponsored by Scott’s Turf Builder. The ball rattles around the corner, which is brought to you by Sal’s Corner Bar and Grille. If you’re looking to heft a tall cold one after the game, like that baseball, head to the corner: Sal’s Corner Bar and Grille.

Gardner motors for second as Eaton airmails the throw over shortstop Tim Anderson’s head. That error is brought to you by FedEx where unlike Adam Eaton’s throw, your package will arrive on time and online. Gardner races for third as Yoan Moncada gloves the ball with a mitt made by Rawlings, the official glove of Major League Baseball.

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I’m looking at Gardner over there at third. He is limping around a bit after that slide. He’s feeling the back of his leg. This hamstring tweak is brought to you by Zoid, Zoid, and Zoid. When life throws you a 95 mile an hour fastball to the face, call the injury lawyers at Zoid, Zoid, and Zoid. Looks like the umpires are removing their Sony headsets, and the call is upheld. Gardner is “safe.” You can hear the crowd doesn’t agree. And neither does Tony La Russa! He’s charging out of the White Sox dugout toward home plate umpire Joe West.

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Oh boy oh boy. La Russa stomps back to the White Sox clubhouse as action resumes and Aaron Judge steps up to the plate for the Yanks. Aaron Judge is brought to you by The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. No one prosecutes a baseball like Aaron Judge. And no one puts as many bad guys on the other side of the fence like The Southern District of New York. Go to nysduscourts.gov.

And the first pitch to Judge, swing and miss on a breaking ball...

Steve Skrovan: Guess what, it's time to say goodbye. I want to thank our guest again, Paul Deslauriers. For those of you listening on the radio, we're gonna cut out now. For you, podcasts listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call “The Wrap Up.” A transcript of the show will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour website soon after the episode is posted.

David Feldman: Please subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel. And for Ralph Nader's weekly column, you can get it for free by going to nader.org. For more from Russell Mokhiber, go to corporatecrimereporter.com. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.

Ralph Nader: Thank you, everybody. Listen to what's going on in Maui. It can happen in your locale.