Ralph Nader Hour

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1. you're listening to kpfk 90.7 fm in los angeles and on the web at kpfk.org
2. pacifica radio for all of southern california and beyond
3. i'm tom morello and you're listening to the ralph nader radio hour
4. stand up stand up you've been sitting way too long
5. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
6. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co-host, David Feldman.
7. How's it going, David?
8. Hello, Steve.
9. And our intrepid producer, Hannah Feldman.
10. Hello, Hannah.
11. Hello, Steve.
12. And the man of the hour.
13. Guess who that is?
14. Ralph Nader.
15. Hello, Ralph.
16. Hello, everybody.
17. Ralph, we want to remind listeners of our offer to get Matthew Ho's Armistice Day speech.
18. Tell us about that.
19. Yes. Matthew Ho, who's a 10-year Marine veteran in Iraq and Afghanistan, is disabled, made an address at a historic church in downtown Boston last fall, which I see as the greatest speech by a veteran since Smedley Butler wrote his War is a Racket, the most decorated Marine general in history back in the late 1930s.
20. And we're offering it in print free to anybody who writes in in two weeks.
21. So last week, we had a good response.
22. There's one week left, listeners.
23. You can get this print by Matthew Ho.
24. And it is a tremendous eye opener to a lot of people about war and peace and the way
25. veterans are edified for propaganda purposes by the Pentagon and the military industrial
26. complex.
27. and Steve will tell you how to get it.
28. Yes, we're going to put a button on our Substack page,
29. our Ralph Nader Radio Hour page, like we did last week,
30. and you just press that button and it'll take you to the place you need to go
31. to get the copies of Matthew Ho's speech.
32. Free for one more week.
33. On today's program, we welcome back economist Dean Baker,
34. and we will discuss a number of issues on which he has been elaborating
35. in a series of articles in Money Trail.
36. One of those issues is Social Security.
37. Yes, very important question.
38. If budget hawks in Congress insist on maintaining that Social Security poses a big problem for the federal budget,
39. why aren't they screaming from the rafters about Trump's proposed military budget, which is more than twice as big?
40. The other issue is government fraud, waste and abuse.
41. Elon Musk was supposed to be solving that problem for us,
42. but it turns out they were looking for fraud in all the wrong places among the poor,
43. when it was right in front of them all along among the rich and powerful.
44. Next up, we welcome back journalist and ocean activist David Helvarg.
45. He's the founder and executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy and media group.
46. And he's also the author of the new book, Forest of the Sea, The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.
47. We'll talk to him about why kelp forests need our protection.
48. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our tireless corporate crime reporter, Russell Moe Kiber,
49. But first, the fraud was coming from inside the House, the White House.
50. David.
51. Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
52. where he authors Beat the Press, his regular commentary on economic reporting.
53. He's written several books, including Getting Back to Full Employment,
54. A Better Bargain for Working People The End of Loser Liberalism Making Markets progressive false profits recovering from the bubble economy and the conservative nanny state how the wealthy
55. use the government to stay rich and get richer.
56. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Dean Baker.
57. Thanks a lot for having me on.
58. Yeah, welcome back, Dean.
59. You can see from David's introduction that you deal with basic economic issues, distributable
60. issues and how the conservative capitalists use the government for their own ends as a
61. kind of corporate socialism.
62. Well, you've recently written a very provocative column.
63. You've compared the Trump increase in the Pentagon budget of $500 billion or more with
64. politicians saying, we can't afford to increase the Social Security Trust Fund.
65. Can you explain clearly, as you usually do to our listeners, the thrust of your article?
66. Yeah. I mean, one of the points I've made, not just in this context, but many, many other contexts, that people will hear big numbers. They'll hear $300 billion. Sometimes even the foreign aid budget was $25 billion. And they'll go, oh, my God, that's a lot of money. That's money out of my pocket. It's a buzzing the government deficit, whatever. That's because they haven't given it any context. And I'm not blaming people for not knowing the budget. People have jobs. They have jobs.
67. jobs. I'm an economist. I'm looking at the budget all the time. That's not most people.
68. And what I always say is that reporters should take the responsibility to put these numbers in
69. a context that make them meaningful for the people who read them, people who hear them on the radio
70. or TV. So we have this projected shortfall, and it's a reasonable projection now, I'd say,
71. because we're only a few years out, going to have a deficit of around $300 billion a year. Is that
72. a lot of money. Well, it's not trivial. A little less than 1% of GDP. But you have Donald Trump
73. puts on the table he wants to increase military spending by $500 billion. So, I mean, maybe he
74. won't get that. I sure hope he doesn't get it. But in any case, if we could in any conceivable world
75. afford to pay $500 billion to increase the military budget, surely we can afford to pay
76. $300 billion to ensure that everyone gets their Social Security benefits. So it's just a case
77. put it in context. I'm not going to say it's a small number. It isn't. But it's smaller. $300
78. billion is smaller than $500 billion. And that's really not a disputable point.
79. Of course, Trump didn't break it down into why the generals need another $500 billion to go from
80. $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion military budget, which is over half of the operating expenditures
81. of the entire federal government. The operating expenditures like Department of Agriculture,
82. Department of Treasury, Department of State, Department of Interior. That's one context that
83. should be placed before the American people. And it's also unaudited. The Pentagon is violating
84. every year since 1992, a congressional requirement on all agencies to present annual audited budgets
85. to the Congress. And they have not done that. They've tried to do it recently. It's cost
86. hundreds of millions of dollars to outside accounting firms, and they haven't passed muster.
87. This, for example, the Army doesn't even know where a lot of its positions are around the world.
88. The Air Force doesn't know where its parts are in warehouses around the world. It's totally chaotic,
89. totally wasteful, and huge cost overruns by the greedy military contractors like the F-35
90. Lane and Lockheed Martin. Now, it's very important that you bring that into the public discussion,
91. especially on Capitol Hill because the Democrats and Republicans in recent years have actually increased the military budget beyond what the generals have asked for It a bipartisan increase And they don even really
92. have rigorous appropriation hearings on the proposed military budget by the president anymore.
93. It's just pushed through Congress. So if you had a good response to pitting the military budget
94. increase up against the need to shore up Social Security, which, of course, is for the people,
95. and it's rigorously audited, and it has very few percent administrative costs,
96. and these Americans need it to live on, and they spend it almost entirely.
97. They don't hoard it. Elaborate that. I would think that you got a pretty good response.
98. If you can get the two placed side by side, apart from the military contractors,
99. and I guess a few people really love the military for whatever reason,
100. I don't think many people would say, oh, yes, we should be increasing the military budget like
101. that. And your points are exactly right. I mean, there's so much waste in there. And if you go back
102. to when Elon Musk was running around with Doge and he's going around, oh, we're going to get waste,
103. fraud and abuse. Well, mostly they were looking at the places where I'm not going to say there
104. was none, but there clearly was not a lot. If you want to get waste, fraud and abuse,
105. take your chainsaw to the Pentagon because it's all over the place. But Musk never touched it.
106. And it's unfortunate that we just can't get it framed that way. So they'll find someone
107. who got Medicaid that wasn't eligible because their income was too high last month and make
108. a big deal about that and yell fraud, fraud, especially if the person's black. But with the
109. military, God, everywhere, there's millions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of million dollars.
110. Donald Trump Jr. just signed up with a firm producing drones that just got a, I think it
111. was a $600 million contract from the Pentagon. This is everywhere. But unfortunately, they do
112. their best to shield it from public examination. Yeah. And there's another difference as well,
113. is that the military budget increase proposed by tyrant Trump is not paid for. It just increases
114. the federal debt and passes it on to our children and grandchildren, whereas Social Security is
115. paid for every month. There are deductions from tens of millions of workers' paychecks,
116. for example. Comment on that. Yeah, well, we have a designated tax for Social Security. Again,
117. And that will fall short. It's projected to fall short, I should say, as of 232.
118. But it has been entirely paid for. So every cent that's been paid out in benefits since the program got started in the late 30s was paid for through the designated tax.
119. So we're all paying this tax. We see it in our paychecks or see it come out of our paychecks, I should say.
120. And that's been the case for 90 years now. And by contrast with the Pentagon, it's just you write the check and there's nothing to offset that.
121. There's no claim that there's some designated tax for that.
122. So in that sense, the larger the military budget, yeah, it absolutely does increase
123. the deficit.
124. Here's another article you wrote that should be an eye opener.
125. He takes apart Doge, the criminal enterprise rampaging through the federal government last
126. year, headed by Filon Elon Musk.
127. And they promised $2 trillion of savings.
128. And, you know, they just wrecked one agency after another, particularly the Agency for International Development.
129. Can you tell us in summary fashion the kind of wreckage and how it affected lives overseas and lives and livelihoods here in America?
130. Yeah, I mean, Musk openly took pleasure in laying off workers that we have all these government workers that weren't doing anything.
131. And you have big bureaucracy, of course, you're going to find two, three, four, whatever.
132. There's someone who's been and that's not true just in government.
133. Go to Microsoft go to any major corporation sure In a big bureaucracy obviously someone not doing their job Odds are Elon Musk didn find those people He threw out a lot of people career people people who been in these agencies for 10 20 years
134. and just said, oh, you're out on the street.
135. And basically his guys admitted this.
136. They didn't know what the hell they were doing.
137. But where it had the biggest consequences,
138. I mean, I'm sure we'll see it other places,
139. but is with foreign aid.
140. He just got a big kick out of that.
141. USAID, he just shut it down.
142. He boasted about that.
143. He goes, last weekend, I fed USAID into the woodchopper.
144. That's almost verbatim what he said. Now, what this meant was that you have people and again, you could find waste in that program just like any other program.
145. But this is a program that provided millions of people with medicine, with nutrition, with health care, and suddenly they couldn't get it.
146. And the biggest deal there was the PREPAR program, the President's Program for Aid in Africa, set up under George W. Bush.
147. So this is a bipartisan program, and it saved millions, probably tens of millions of people's lives by providing them with medicine for HIV.
148. It had been a deadly disease.
149. We developed medicines.
150. I know Ralph worked on this.
151. I'm getting it set up that we provided them medicines that are low cost.
152. They were charging $15,000 a year here, but they were able to get generic versions, charge $200 to $300 a year, and literally provided millions of people with the drugs that allowed them to live normal lives.
153. And Elon Musk was boasting.
154. He killed that program. That's great. But millions of people, I mean, thankfully, I don't think it's millions yet, but if that program doesn't get restarted or funded somewhere else, you're going to see millions of people lose their lives.
155. Well, they know some of the death counts. Boston University researchers estimated over 600,000 in Africa died because of cutoffs by aid.
156. You know, we're talking about, for example, tuberculosis medicine. We're talking about AIDS medicine, little children dying because they don't get enough food supplements. And as you say, the budget of AID was peanuts. It's a few days budget of the Pentagon. And Musk had glee. He literally had glee in doing this.
157. The level of sadism that Musk and Trump portrayed in those months when Doge wildcatters rampage through one agency and department after another like a juggernaut of destruction, I don't think it's ever come close to anything like that happening in American history.
158. But the amazing thing that they've gotten away with is they're championing themselves as fighters against government fraud. And here's how they define fraud. They define fraud as Medicaid recipients who cheat or food supplement recipients who cheat.
159. The real big fraud is corporate fraud on the government, on Medicare, on Medicaid.
160. The estimate that I heard a few years ago is by the government is that commercial fraud
161. by criminal billing practices has stole $60 billion with a B from Medicare in one year.
162. And they did the same type of fraudulent billing for Medicaid and government contracts.
163. the military contractors are full of all kinds of shenanigans, as you pointed out.
164. Here's a figure by the nation's leading expert on healthcare billing fraud, Malcolm Sparrow,
165. a professor at Harvard University and applied mathematician. He estimated years ago,
166. conservatively, that 10% of all healthcare expenses go down the drain due to billing
167. fraud and abuse.
168. That is the vendors, the companies selling the services or receiving outsourcing contracts
169. by the government are cheating and looting the taxpayer who is supporting these benefit
170. programs.
171. And that amounts to over 400.
172. hundred billion dollars this year, at least 10% of all health care expenditures. And Mehmet Oz,
173. who's in charge of Medicare and Medicaid programs in the Department of Health and Human Services
174. under Robert Kennedy Jr., as we speak, has not latched on to that. I've brought that to his
175. attention through his immediate assistance by displayed interest, but I haven't heard from.
176. That's the real fraud, isn't it?
177. In your article, you say the wealthy commit more fraud.
178. Explain.
179. Absolutely.
180. And, you know, the story that you have the beneficiaries, it literally doesn't even make sense.
181. So you think about that with Medicaid.
182. So we're saying we have people on Medicaid that are committing fraud.
183. No one gets a check from Medicaid.
184. What would that even mean?
185. Like you signed up for Medicaid and you weren't eligible.
186. So that would mean that they might be making a payment to a doctor or hospital that they don't actually have to make because you didn't qualify.
187. I'm sure that happens sometimes, but it's not like someone's living high on the hog because they were able to get Medicaid to pay for their doctor's visit when it actually shouldn't have.
188. Yeah, again, that's not zero. But my God, all the things, you know, just as you're saying, Ralph, we have billions that are going out to insurers, to hospitals that are ripping off the government.
189. And they're worried that some guy, some woman has put down something wrong.
190. And half the time, it's just an honest mistake.
191. I mean, I've made mistakes.
192. I don't know.
193. I had a PhD in economics.
194. People have less education.
195. Maybe they don't read that well.
196. Yeah, they're going to make mistakes.
197. And that's what we're worried about.
198. Well, Robert Weissman recently testified for the Senate on Trump's administration and fraud.
199. And he showed that Trump and his Trumpsters are the ones who are committing fraud, producing fraud, covering up fraud, not the poor people around the country they claim are ripping off these benefit programs, as you've just mentioned.
200. Give some examples here of Senator Rick Scott.
201. Yeah, I was just going to mention Rick Scott. He was the CEO of UnitedHealth, which is now, I don't know if it was true at the time, but it is the largest health insurer in the country. And anyhow, they paid a settlement of $1.7 billion. You can't say they actually were forced to pay a fine. They agreed to pay a settlement of $1.7 billion. But what you can say is companies don't just pay out $1.7 billion. They paid out $1.7 billion because they knew that they stood to lose a lot more if it actually went to trial.
202. So he was the CEO of UnitedHealth at the time.
203. And again, he's sitting in the Senate, U.S. Senator, and he'll get up there and yell about
204. fraud.
205. Well, he knows about fraud.
206. He did a lot of it.
207. For sure.
208. He was rewarded by Florida voters and elected governor of Florida before he became a U.S.
209. Senator.
210. Once again, showing the voters are not doing their homework.
211. This was widely publicized in Florida.
212. This company's defrauding of Medicaid.
213. But see, if Trump really wanted to go after fraud, why would he fire 17 inspector generals in the first week of his administration in January 2025? Explain that.
214. Yeah, that was something that was infuriating.
215. It didn't get anywhere near the attention it deserves.
216. So the inspector generals, they don't generally get that much attention because they're not
217. supposed to.
218. They're not politicians.
219. But these are people that oversee departments, agencies, and pretty much, there might be
220. an exception, but pretty much every department has an inspector general associated with it.
221. If you want to get rid of fraud, these are the people that have been doing it.
222. They've been doing this in many cases, 10, 20, 30 years.
223. They have staff.
224. They know what they're doing.
225. They know where the problems are.
226. And one of the stories with the pandemic the Paycheck Protection Program there was around billion in fraudulent payments discovered by the Inspector General of the Small Business Administration He was one of the people
227. who was fired by Trump in the first week he was in office. So if you wanted to weed out fraud,
228. you would listen to what these people say. You would give more resources. You would try to
229. support them in their work because they're the ones doing it. And it was kind of incredible
230. because I remember there was some occasion, I forget the exact, whether press conference,
231. whatever. And they dismissed them. They said, well, if they were doing their jobs, why is the
232. fraud still there? Well, they can't unilaterally take action. They write reports. They turn them
233. over to Congress. They turn them over to the Justice Department. They can't just go and arrest
234. people. So insofar as there wasn't action taken, that's the fault of Congress. That's the fault of
235. the Justice Department. They did their jobs. They found the fraud. They identified it. They said,
236. here, go after it. And the fact there was an adequate follow-up, which I'd say in most cases
237. that wasn't. That's not their fault. Well, he also fired them illegally. He didn't follow the
238. statutory procedures of providing notice to Congress, etc. So he's firing the watchdogs
239. in one department after another or putting in, you know, cronies in their place after he fires
240. the authentically confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Exactly. They put in provision because he did
241. this sum in his first term, and they put it in, they changed the law to say that you cannot fire
242. an inspector general without, I forget exactly, you have to provide notice. I forget the time
243. period, you have to give notice, a cause. And he didn't do that, I think, in any of the cases.
244. There might have been one or two where he did, but in most of the cases, he did not.
245. And you mentioned in your article, one of Trump's cardinal characteristics, which is he pardons
246. violent criminals, and he pardons fraudulent convicted criminals. Explain that.
247. Yeah, well, he's taken the pardon power of the president, which is in the Constitution.
248. So in fairness, it's there.
249. But he's taken that to extremes that no president's ever done anything like that.
250. So we go back through prior presidents and it's become kind of a tradition in their last
251. month or so in office.
252. They go through a list of people.
253. There's a process.
254. They have a committee in the Justice Department that reviews them and they make recommendations
255. to the president.
256. And usually the president follows their recommendations, not say 100 percent, because sometimes some
257. will be recommended for pardon. They don't do it or they recommend someone who they chose otherwise.
258. But generally, it's something done late in the term, right at the end of the term,
259. and to a limited number of people. Trump has taken this to a whole nother level where he's
260. just pardoned people left and right. He famously pardoned all the January 6th people. Many of them
261. were convicted of violent crimes, attacking police officers, destroying parts of the Capitol.
262. He pardoned all those people. And then he's had this ongoing process where you have people that
263. have committed, we were talking about fraud, many cases convicted of stealing hundreds of millions,
264. even over a billion in one case. I'm forgetting the specifics of it. And it turns out most of
265. these people have made contributions to Donald Trump's political action committee. So basically,
266. he's selling pardons and selling pardons to people who commit fraud, people who commit violent crime,
267. not the sort of thing we've ever seen. Again, we can go back and see some questionable pardons,
268. but nothing remotely on the scale of what we're seeing with Trump.
269. Which gets us to Trump and his family's own corruption, which is at record highs, blatant, open, shameless. And it's the subject, by the way, of a brand new book called MAGA Inc., The Enrichment of Trump and His Cronies.
270. You've been following this. A lot of people are vague about what the nature of this corruption
271. is It not money in envelopes sent to a high government official surreptitiously It much more meticulous sweeping orchestrated Can you give our listeners some idea of the nature of that self
272. corruption, and the violation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution?
273. Well, he's basically operating businesses out of the White House. The most obvious one is
274. Trump crypto coin, that people want favors from him. They buy millions of dollars. I think someone
275. bought $100 million of his crypto coin. So that's like basically just give me money, buy my crypto
276. coin. So you're seeing that, but he has any number of other scams, the UFC fight, the ultimate mixed
277. martial arts that they had on the White House lawn last week. He has an interest in that. He owns,
278. I don't know exactly what percent, but he owns shares in that. He owns shares in any number of
279. companies that he contracts with, he has the government contract with. So we've never seen
280. that sort of level of abuse. Generally, a president puts their assets in a blind trust.
281. There might be some exceptions, but that's been the case for through my lifetime. I'll just say
282. again, going back further, I don't know what Franklin Roosevelt did or whatever, but generally
283. it's been the pattern, whatever wealth they had, they put aside. They didn't know whether
284. their actions were helping or hurting their wealth. That's not the case with Trump. He knows
285. exactly where his money is, and he's constantly giving contracts to companies where he has a stake
286. in them. And again, none of that's hidden. We don't have to do any investigation. It's all right
287. out in the open. Well, as Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out years ago, if you restored the
288. corporate and wealthy tax rates to the tax rates in the prosperous 1960s, you would raise hundreds
289. of billions of dollars. You wouldn't have so much federal deficit. But it's just going in the
290. opposite direction. And the Democratic Party is not making it a number one issue, even though,
291. by the way, the polls show that 85% or more of the American people, that includes a lot of
292. conservative voters, want to raise or I would say restore the very undertaxed, super wealthy
293. and corporations. So you got a left-right coalition and the Jeffries and Schumer aren't
294. picking up on it. How do you explain that? Well, you know the answer to that, Ralph. It's campaign
295. contributors that they're counting they need money for their elections. And a lot of those people
296. who are going to give the money don't want to pay higher taxes. So I think that's the story there.
297. Well, if the Democrats win in November and they take control of the House and or the Senate,
298. as they should against the most corrupt GOP in history, are they going to be ready like the
299. Heritage Foundation's 900-page report telling the Republicans when they won in 2024 what kind of
300. legislation to pass, what kind of laws to repeal, or are the Democrats going to simply clap their
301. hands and proceed business as usual? Do you see any of the groups that you're related to or that
302. you've worked with putting forth a proposal even before November as to what the Democrats should
303. be obligated to do, starting with public hearings and legislation? Well, a lot of people are putting
304. forward proposals. I think the more important thing is the power. And we just saw this last
305. night, actually. It's a great story that you have progressive Democrats that are challenging the
306. mainstream. And in New York City, there were three progressive Democrats that won congressional
307. seats. They won the nomination, but all but certain means they'll win the congressional
308. seat in November against very centrist mainstream Democrats.
309. So the bigger thing is going to be the political battle.
310. I remember years ago I was at a conference and someone, we were talking about the Powell
311. memo for people who don know us It something written by Justice Powell before he was on the Supreme Court it was in 71 there about how the business community has to unite and beat back the liberals people like Ralph who are causing too much trouble
312. And anyhow, it outlined how they should go about and do it.
313. And much of it was followed.
314. And they were very successful in beating back the liberals.
315. So anyhow, someone at the conference said, well, we need our own Powell memo.
316. And then someone responded, said, we have a Powell memo, many of them.
317. And I'd say that there are a lot of really good proposals.
318. So I have proposals.
319. Other people have proposals.
320. The problem is the power.
321. So can you defeat the Jeffries, the Nancy Pelosi?
322. She's, of course, leaving personally.
323. But the point is, you have this centrist group that has dominated the party, controlled the
324. party for decades.
325. And it's a question of beating them back.
326. And if you have enough people, Mondami, AOC, Bernie Sanders, if you have enough people
327. coming from the left and they have support in the country, then you'll move things. So the key thing
328. is the political power. But we have the ideas. We have the policies. Do you believe that the
329. Democrats will recognize that a lot of the proposals we're talking about have left right
330. support? Conservative liberal families want the same thing for their children, for public services,
331. for upgrading public works, creating jobs, de-bloating the military budget. Do you think
332. they recognize that? I think there is a recognition of it. I think they're being very, I don't know if
333. pragmatic is the best word for this, but they're saying, okay, I know that's where the votes are,
334. but on the other hand, we need however many million to run for Senate, for this House seat,
335. for whatever it might be. And the people that we're counting and gaining from don't want to
336. hear those things. So that's a really big problem. It's very deep in our political structure that
337. money has incredibly outsized influence. Every time an election year comes, the Democrats don't
338. talk about campaign finance reform because they don't want to unilaterally disarm. And it just
339. gets worse and worse as the PACs, the corporate PACs get bigger, richer and more secretive in how
340. they spend their money for or against candidates. Even more important, that's the media that I mean,
341. the media has always been corporate controlled. So it's not as though you had left wingers
342. controlling CBS and the New York Times, whatever you might point to as the media, but you're seeing
343. it being taken over by extreme right-wingers. So Larry Ellison, who's a Trumper, his son,
344. I guess, David Ellison, now controls CBS. And he put in Barry White, who's a total Trumper,
345. running CBS News. And they might take over CNN. They're going to do the same thing there.
346. We already had Rupert Murdoch, of course, who's been started Fox News, controlling it for decades.
347. So we're seeing the right take over the media. And that's a very, very serious problem. At the same time, the rest of the media is like under siege because their traditional model of being paid for by advertising. Here I'm thinking newspapers. That's gone through the floor because all the advertising is on the web, going to Facebook, Google, whatever.
348. So that's, to my mind, in some ways a bigger problem because it's not ads.
349. Obviously, campaign ads obviously influence people.
350. They study this.
351. They know how to do that.
352. But what people see between the ads also influences people.
353. And if that's all Rupert Murdoch, Fox News type stuff, we're in real trouble.
354. That certainly has already happened to help the Republicans win campaign after campaign.
355. Well, we've reached the end of our time. We've been speaking with Dean Baker, economist,
356. advisor to Groups That Matter, author, writer of contemporary articles, and the pride of
357. Swarthmore College and the University of Michigan. Thank you very much, Dean.
358. Thanks a lot, Ralph. Good talking to you again.
359. We've been speaking with Dean Baker. We will link to his work at ralphnaderadiohour.com.
360. When we come back, we're going to find out why we need to start paying attention to the
361. attention to kelp. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
362. From the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., this is your Corporate Crime Reporter
363. Morning Minute for Friday, June 26, 2026. I'm Russell Mokhyber. America has a hidden justice
364. system. In that system, decisions are made in secret and judges are paid for by the corporations
365. that are being sued. Workers and consumers usually lose before these secret arbitration panels.
366. and when they lose they cannot appeal and they cannot turn to real courts for help.
367. They are trapped in this system when they sign on to a streaming service or a job.
368. They are unknowingly signing on to a secret justice system called forced arbitration.
369. Brendan Ballou has now written an expose of this hidden justice system.
370. It's called When Companies Run the Courts, How Forced Arbitration Became America's Secret Justice System.
371. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mokhyber.
372. Thank you, Russell.
373. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
374. I'm Steve Skrovan, along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph.
375. Kelp, I need some algae.
376. Kelp, not just any algae.
377. Kelp.
378. David?
379. David Helvarg is a journalist and ocean activist.
380. He's the founder and executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy and media group,
381. and producer of Rising Tide, the ocean podcast.
382. He's produced more than 40 documentaries for media outlets, including PBS and the Discovery
383. Channel, and he's written several books, including Blue Frontier, The War Against the Greens,
384. and Forest of the Sea, The Remarkable Life, an Imperiled Future of Kelp.
385. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, David Helvarg.
386. Thank you.
387. Great to be here, David.
388. Welcome back.
389. You know, David Feldman left something out, and I'm going to put it this way.
390. How many hours in your life do you think you spent in the oceans, scuba diving and investigating matters below the sea level?
391. Not enough.
392. A few hundred diving, maybe a few thousand body surfing or just getting wet.
393. But, you know, I'm privileged.
394. There's 8 billion of us and only about 30 million are on the other 71% of the planet at any given moment.
395. Well, it's just a way I want to point out to our listeners that David Halberg is not only a writer about the ocean, an advocate to protect the ocean, but spends a lot of his time in the ocean.
396. And that gives him a different kind of credential.
397. Why don't you explain to people who don't really understand the importance of the ocean,
398. not just economically, but to the survival of the planet, can you explain the importance
399. of the ocean?
400. Sure.
401. It's the crucible of life on our Blue Marble planet.
402. It's the oxygenation event came out of the ocean.
403. The algae and the cyanobacteria gave us our atmosphere.
404. The cycle of water all starts evaporation from the ocean, which goes into the clouds
405. over the mountains, comes back in the form of rain that feeds our crops and fills our rivers.
406. The ocean is the driver of life and also major impact in terms of human activity, in terms of
407. transportation, recreation, protein, energy, and just that sense of awe and wonder of being part
408. of something larger than yourself. For the last 20 years since you actually helped me launch Blue
409. Frontier, I've been pushing with my colleagues in journalism the idea of the blue beat, the only
410. resource in the ocean not fully exploited at this point is good investigative reporting and narrative
411. storytelling because people don connect with it You know a lot of people think the environment ends at the shoreline And that really where 95 of the living space on the planet begins We go out to stars In 1977 there was a deep research vessel that went down because there
412. was volcanic activity miles below the surface. And when they got there, they realized there were
413. these geothermal vents that were surrounded by life, by giant white clams and blood red worms
414. and crabs. And it was the realization that not all life in the universe is photosynthetic. It's also
415. chemosynthetic, that all these animals had bacteria that could convert this, what would to us be
416. poisonous, high pressure energy into life. And now we're spending 5 billion sending the Europa
417. rocket to the moon of the Europa moon of Saturn because it has an ice cover and we believe it has
418. a liquid ocean below. And so we're going to look to probe to see if there's life in that ocean below
419. that moon. And of course, we invest much less in an ocean planet that we know exists and that we
420. know is full of life and that we've hardly gotten to know. I mean, we've only mapped at this point
421. about 10% of the deep ocean with the resolution. We've mapped Mars and the moon and the other
422. lifeless places out there. Well, as you say, it's 71% of the surface of the planet Earth.
423. It's very much a part of the increasing global warming.
424. What happens when the ocean is experiencing more and more warming?
425. And relate that to El Nino, because El Nino is coming again.
426. It's going to affect heat and precipitation on land, including the United States.
427. So, listeners, you're not going to get away with just spending time in the hills of the United States without being affected.
428. Explain that.
429. because 90% of our anthropogenic human-caused global warming is being absorbed by the ocean.
430. 90% of the heat that's generated by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation and the like
431. is being absorbed, which means that NOAA and 30 other institutions around the world last year
432. determined that the ocean's hotter than it's ever been in the historic record,
433. which is the mechanical record going back to when we could start measurements in the 1880s.
434. Each year, the ocean warming has multiple effects. One is it's also absorbing the carbon dioxide along with the heat. I mean, the heat absorption is the equivalent of five Hiroshima bombs a second. The carbon dioxide is converted to carbonic acid, which shifts the pH of the ocean. So it's becoming more acidic. And that's threatening the survival of every shell forming feature from zooplankton to clams to corals.
435. And at the same time, we're seeing these marine heat waves. My latest book, Forest of the Sea, The Remarkable Life and the Imperable Future of Kelp, is because people at least know that corals are in trouble and they have some sense of what a coral reef is.
436. People don't know that the planet has this other forest crisis that kelp forests cover an area larger than the Amazon basin.
437. and they're also being impacted by these marine heat waves that are growing every year.
438. And as you add more heat to the system, it gets more energetic, which is why we have more and
439. more extreme storms. I covered Katrina in 2005. I thought that would be a turning point. We had
440. 1,800 people killed and a million environmental refugees, but the propaganda by the oil and gas
441. industry is such that we keep having these disasters from a warming ocean planet. We see
442. the melting of the Arctic ice. You know, instead of an alarm bell, it became a dinner bell
443. for all the shipping industries and people who want to exploit the oil and gas in the
444. increasingly open Arctic waters So we in this crisis point And I more frustrated than despairing because we know what the solutions are It creating the political will to enact them The ocean as I say is absorbing 90 of our heat our average temperature even though they having record heat in Europe right now with temperatures around 100 degree
445. Our average surface temperature would be about 125 degrees, if not for the ocean's ability to absorb heat.
446. But it's a limited ability.
447. And the effects, as I say, are it's acidifying, it's warming.
448. we're changing the physical nature of the ocean, right?
449. Its temperature, its chemistry, its circulation, even its color.
450. It's also a huge garbage dump for plastics and other pollutants, chemical particulates and otherwise.
451. Dump it into the sea. Dump it into the ocean. It's big. It'll absorb it.
452. And now it's getting into the seafood that are harvested and sent to restaurants and kitchens in the United States.
453. Explain to our listeners what a marine park is.
454. We have national forests, national parks on land, and previous presidents have started
455. marine parks, including a big one off the shores of Hawaii.
456. Explain marine parks and whether the Trump administration is going to try to roll that
457. back too.
458. Sure, absolutely.
459. We have national marine sanctuaries that are like national forests.
460. They're not full protection, but like the law, the 1972 National Marine Sanctuary Act
461. says you can't drill within marine sanctuary borders.
462. And of course, to troll California is threatening to release, have oil leases up and down the coast, including in these national marine sanctuaries where that's breaking the law.
463. They're breaking the law about six ways.
464. They see how much law breaking they can get away with and then they pull back.
465. Then you have national marine monuments, which are like the national monuments that started with Teddy Roosevelt in 1906.
466. First, they were in wetlands.
467. Now you have places like Papa Hanamakuakia off northwest Hawaii, which is 70% of the U.S. coral reefs.
468. It's an extensive, it's larger than all our national parks combined.
469. And it was created initially by the Clinton administration.
470. George Bush expanded it.
471. It's a bipartisan protected zone.
472. The world, including the United States, has committed to 30 by 30, protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030.
473. And we already protect 27% with our marine monuments in the Pacific, which he now wants to open up to commercial fishing and deep sea mining and other extractive industries as they come up with them. And I don't think it's going to happen, but the threat is there. I mean, we're in a stage of celebrity fascism where laws, including the law of the sea, are being ignored.
474. with deep sea mining being another example. You asked about El Nino earlier. It's a natural cycle
475. of warming in the Pacific that changes global weather. But with all that added heat that I
476. talked about from the burning of fossil fuels, this El Nino is predicted to be the strongest
477. in recorded history, which is going to mean less storms on the East Coast, more storms and runoff,
478. more torrential rain across the country, huge impacts on agriculture on the West Coast,
479. on the East Coast. We again, it's a moment that's very extreme.
480. These marine sanctuaries actually work to improve the survivability of species, don't they?
481. I've dove in marine sanctuaries off of California where there's been a 400% increase in biodiversity.
482. You see big fish, you see, you know, big lobsters, and there's even this spillover effect. A lot of
483. fishermen now support marine protected areas because, you know, it's not that hard to figure
484. out when you stop killing fish, they tend to grow back. When you protect an area, it's
485. protected. And then there's a spillover effect where they, in marine biology, they call them
486. BFFs big fat females which is the fish that are most productive Not a lot of eudas and barb but these are the fish that grow to size And then there more baby fish more fry that hatch And so you have these
487. healthy marine parks, and then you have healthy ecosystems expanding beyond them,
488. including marine wildlife that's commercially available for protection. So we have our Peter
489. Benshi Ocean Awards in May. We held them at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And the global award we
490. gave to the president of the Azores, who's established a huge marine protected area around
491. the Azores that includes incredible kelp forests, which again, provide habitat for salmon and
492. clod and herring and a lot of species that wildlife we like to eat.
493. But the short answer is yes, they work and the science shows they work.
494. And just like national parks, they're also bioreserves for the future.
495. Let's get to your great new book, which came out in early May called Forest of the Sea,
496. The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. You know, I went through elementary school,
497. high school, college, law school, I never heard the word kelp. You say it's critical
498. to the global ecosystems. Can you explain it to our listeners?
499. Sure. Kelp forest, I mean, people, as I said earlier, know coral reefs. And I talked to my
500. my friend Sylvia Earle, her deepness, who says, yeah, people like warm, comfortable environments.
501. And coral and kelp are like the ivory and ebony of the ocean. Kelp are in cold water. They generate
502. $500 billion a year in goods and services in terms of fisheries, food. They're the mother
503. seed for this seaweed industry, which is generating 40 million tons a year. It's part of
504. Aquaculture is now larger than wild fishing.
505. There's 130 million tons a year of seafood that we grow versus 90 million that we're
506. still extracting from the ocean.
507. And of that 130 million tons, 40 million, as they say, is seaweed.
508. It's both a food source, but it also gives us algin.
509. The kelp, it's what they call evolutionary convergence.
510. They look the same, but they aren't the same as plants.
511. Trees are, their cellular structure is all cellulose.
512. You can't do much with sawdust.
513. You can't eat it. 40%, 60% of these kelp, which are like the bamboo of the sea, they grow a foot,
514. two feet a day. And 60% of their cells is cellulose and 40% is algin. And algin in the 1920s,
515. they discovered was a great emulsifier and stabilizer. And so it's in all our processed
516. foods. It's in all our cosmetics and medicines. I mean, people say, well, kelp, yuck, or algae,
517. yuck, but it's in our shampoo. It's in our toothpaste. It's in our lipstick. It's in
518. ice cream. It makes the ice cream creamier instead of icier. It's in the chicken nuggets,
519. and therefore it makes sense that it's also in the heartburn medicine. But again, people, this is,
520. I opened the chapter one of my book on a salmon river in Alaska, because people know salmon are
521. these heroic, homeric ocean and river fish. They don't know that part of their life cycle,
522. when they leave the rivers, they go into the kelp forest and they eat phytoplankton until
523. they're large enough not to become prey. And so it's a nursery for salmon and cod and herring.
524. I just did a story for American Indian Magazine on herring roe on kelp, which is a traditional
525. food for indigenous people for thousands of years since humans came to the Americas along the kelp
526. highway. And otters, of course, are the keystone predators that keep the kelp healthy. So it's not
527. just the billions that like coral reefs, they also protect our shorelines from erosion and
528. calm the storm waters, and they generate oxygen.
529. I mean, half our oxygen comes from microalgae in the ocean,
530. from phytoplankton, and another 20% comes from
531. a combination of the kelp forest and the seagrass meadows
532. and the mangroves and the
533. the salt marshes, they give us another 20%. So literally more than every other breath you take,
534. you can thank the salty part of the world that is our oceans, our kelp forests, and our coral reefs
535. and the like. Well, in your book, you estimate that 50% of the kelp has been destroyed and it's
536. on its way to extinction off our shorelines. Why is it endangered? It's endangered. As with corals,
537. I mean, when I started Blue Frontier 20 years ago, the main threats were overfishing and pollution, oil, chemical, plastic, nutrient pollution.
538. Today, that's being overwhelmed by these marine heat waves.
539. And we had one that came to California.
540. We called it the blob in 2013.
541. And within a few years, 95% of the bull kelp north of the Golden Gate was gone.
542. And this is for 300 miles.
543. One of my chapters, Fort Bragg, which is also the theme of our documentary, Sequoias of the Sea.
544. It's a community of 7,000 that depended on the kelp. When it went away, the urchin fishery went away. The 25 to 30 million a year they got from the recreational abalone diving fishery went away because the kelp supports all these other species.
545. And without the kelp, in lieu of the kelp, the other effect of this heat wave was it killed off most of the sea stars on the West Coast, literally billions, over 90%, including the last predator, sunflower sea star, that was eating these little purple urchins.
546. The otters were long gone because of the hunting.
547. The big fish and big lobsters were gone because of overfishing.
548. The last predator on these urchins were these monstrous 24-armed, cannibalistic, fast-moving sea stars that would eat these little urchins.
549. When they died off because of the heat, the sea star wasting disease was supercharged by that marine heat wave.
550. Then these little urchins came out of their hidey holes, and they multiplied 10,000%, and basically all the kelp forests were replaced by these urchin barons.
551. And then they go into this dormant state.
552. They call them zombie urchins.
553. and they can survive for years.
554. You know, the gonads,
555. which is where we get our uni for sushi,
556. they kind of contract
557. and they just cover the bottom.
558. The only thing you can do
559. is go out there with hammers,
560. which I've been diving with people
561. who are literally hammering the urchins.
562. And it's worked.
563. I mean, in Southern California,
564. I dove on 80 acres of kelp forest
565. that's been restored.
566. People hammering the urchins out
567. and replanting new fresh spore.
568. And it's interesting that the people
569. used to be at each other's necks,
570. the fishermen and the tribes and the environmentalists and the scientists,
571. they're all now working together to try and restore the kelp. And there's some possibility.
572. When you make the real commitment, South Korea, the fisheries agency understands that
573. wild kelp forests are essential to their food security. So they invest $29 million a year,
574. and they've brought back 50,000 acres of wild kelp, and they plan to have 125,000 acres restored by
575. 2030. So you can do it. The scientist I talked to in Tasmania says we can restore some of the kelp,
576. but it's expensive. And if we don't get off fossil fuels, if we don't reduce greenhouse gases,
577. we lose them all by the end of the century, the kelp forests, the coral reefs.
578. So this is the localized challenge as I go diving with people who are removing
579. urchins and restoring kelp. And I call them the seaweed rebels, the marine grassroots folks.
580. There are thousands of people around the world doing this.
581. We're just not doing it at scale.
582. There's a recent study that says for $14 billion, we could bring back something like 10 million
583. acres of kelp.
584. You can protect the existing kelp, which they're doing in Argentina and Chile and elsewhere,
585. and the Azores.
586. We can restore kelp.
587. It more expensive but it doable because as I say my friends who do coral restoration they take a fragment they cement it onto a dead coral and if it grows 12 inches in a year they thrilled
588. With kelp, you create the environment where it can come back.
589. It'll come back 100 feet in a year.
590. So and then the larger issue, though, is it it keeps getting beat down by these increasing numbers of marine heat waves where there are parts of West Australia where the kelp forests are becoming tropical coral forests because the change is happening.
591. The heat is happening so quickly.
592. So, yeah, as I say, I'm more frustrated and despairing because we know what the solutions are.
593. You know, a quick transition to clean energy is actually market friendly at this point.
594. It's the cheapest energy and the cheapest production.
595. And it's happening. I mean, we get caught up in being trapped in our little bubble in the United States.
596. But globally, the entire system is electrifying based on cleaner energy, China and Portugal and Spain.
597. And when we bought the Strait of Hormuz, who benefited?
598. I mean, everybody hurt, but who hurt less was China and Spain because they've made the commitment to clean energy.
599. They're not as dependent on those tankers full of petroleum.
600. him. I've asked David to give us a little brief reading of an excerpt from the book to give you
601. an idea. It's as if you're with David and you have that feeling without even getting wet. I can't
602. describe how vivid, how specific, how luminous, how inviting this book is. Forest of the Sea,
603. The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. Well, I appreciate that. And of course, as you say,
604. You know, it's an excuse to get wet. So kelp is a new coral chapter. Of course, I had to go to Palau and dive in the coral, which is warm and beautiful. But, you know, kelp diving is like a full contact sport. I love it, too. So I end the book diving in Catalina. And then the last chapter is called triage for the ocean.
605. At some point I write that, you know, if you think I'm doom-scrolling, give a few more pages. I then talk to Sylvia Earle, my friend, who's realistically optimistic. And then I end it with Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci once wrote about a practical way to move forward in this life, pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. And then he died in a fascist prison.
606. Nonetheless, I believe that the seaweed rebels who've entangled their lives with macroalgae,
607. immersing themselves in the science, restoration, protection, and digestion of the world's kelp forest,
608. will in the end protect what they love, eat well, and die trying.
609. We might even suggest that if we become stewards of the most basic building blocks of life,
610. including algae and cyanobacteria, they may help us begin to heal the world.
611. After all, like algae, we all come from saltwater on both an individual and evolutionary basis.
612. And as Isik Dennison wrote, the cure for anything is salt water, wet tears, or the sea.
613. So when you return to the source, when you explore the dark, mysterious, and enchanting forest of the sea,
614. you're also returning home to reconnect to the wonder and scary sacred wildness that is both within you and around you.
615. And it can also be cold, wet, and awesome.
616. It's like a large, fast-moving shadow in the kelp when there's only six feet of visibility and you think,
617. hey, wait, what was that?
618. It's life.
619. End quote.
620. Thank you very much, David. Before we conclude, David, I want you to tell our readers how we first connected years ago and what that led to so they can become active and engage with your efforts.
621. Yeah, no, I was, God, over 22 years ago. Blue Frontier, my first ocean book had just come out.
622. I was with my partner. She had cancer and you called. You read the last chapter, Seaweed
623. Rebellion, about marine grassroots. We have solutions. We just have to scale them up.
624. And you liked it and you suggested we start talking And after she passed I was thinking I go back to war reporting because I knew that was a good antidote to depression This was when Bush Jr was about to invade Iraq
625. And you offered to help me follow through on that seaweed rebel chapter and see if we
626. could build a network of ocean activists.
627. And I decided kind of we're always going to have wars.
628. We may not always have kelp forest or coral reefs or healthy oceans.
629. And so with your support, I recycled, as any good environmental reporter would, recycled the book Blue Frontier into an organization that's now been 20 years and more.
630. And so I always, you know, appreciated your both your readership and your support for the work I do and many others.
631. One of the things you did, you put out a directory of ocean preservation groups all over the borders, Pacific Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast.
632. You brought all these little groups together and enhanced their impact, among other writings.
633. How can people join Blue Frontier?
634. It's a 501c3 nonprofit.
635. It's very lean and has had influence on members of Congress and has had convocations in Washington and elsewhere.
636. And David brings Blue Frontier to your community.
637. He goes to places.
638. How can they join?
639. $3 billion for greening ports, $7 billion for coastal restoration.
640. The money all got out before Trump got in.
641. And, you know, now it's all about rebuilding, rebuilding from the start.
642. Your last discussion, I think that you once said we were interviewing you and hope to
643. do that again for a podcast.
644. But you once talked about how when you bring your family to the beach and if it's closed
645. down due to pollution, nobody goes, oh, well, I'm against government regulation, so I'm
646. fine with this.
647. You know, when you talk about your left-right coalition, I mean, the ocean's one of those places that people come together and realize that there's so much to be gotten out of it. This Homo leader in Fort Bragg told me his arguments with bringing back the sea otters. He said the fishermen, he says, just because you're on the ocean doesn't mean you own the ocean. And I think increasing numbers of people are beginning to understand how much we owe the ocean.
648. And I think thanks to your support and others, we're just trying to spread the word that this is, you know, it's not God's green earth.
649. It's God's blue marble and it's precious.
650. You need to defend it.
651. Well said, David.
652. And listeners, have your children go to this website, bluefront.org, because it's very artistic, very graphic.
653. David is a genius in communication here.
654. And it's never too early for your youngsters to learn about the importance of the ocean.
655. Thank you very much, David. Again, the book, you really will see brilliant writing here, writing that engages you, pulls you, entices you. It's called The Forest of the Sea, The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. Thank you very much.
656. Thank you, Ralph, for all you do.
657. We've been speaking with David Helvarg. We will link to his work at ralphnaderradiohour.com.
658. I want to thank our guests again, Dean Baker and David Helvarg. For those of you listening
659. on the radio, that's our show. For you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material
660. we call The Wrap featuring Francesco DeSantis with In Case You Haven Heard A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour Substack site soon after the episode is posted
661. Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel.
662. And for Ralph's weekly column, it's free at Nader.org.
663. For more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at CorporateCrimeReporter.com.
664. And remember, the American Museum of Tort Law has gone virtual.
665. You can visit tortmuseum.org to explore the exhibits, take a virtual tour and learn about iconic tort cases from history.
666. To order your copy of The Capitol Hill Citizen, Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight, it's at capitolhillcitizen.com or find it on Substack.
667. And remember to continue the conversation after each show.
668. You can go to the comments section at ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
669. The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman, and Matthew Marin
670. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky
671. Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise Up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris
672. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon
673. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour
674. Thank you, Ralph
675. Thank you, and if listeners want to spread this word every week
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