Nader, the Democrats and corporate power

By
Max J. Castro                                                                      Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com

Ralph
Nader has entered the race for the presidency once more, and many
Democrats are moaning and groaning. They say that if Nader had not
run in 2000, Al Gore would have been elected. They are right. They
fear that in 2008, if the race is close, Nader could once again
divert enough votes from the Democratic ticket to hand victory to the
Republicans. History is unlikely to repeat itself in this way, and
Nader does not have the support in 2008 that he had in 2000. Still,
it’s not an altogether unreasonable fear.

Neither
fear of handing the White House to the GOP nor all the Democratic
whining in the world will persuade Nader to refrain from running,
however. Nader is an obsessed man, but he also has a point. What
Democrats need to do instead of bashing Nader is to steal his thunder
by taking his message about corporate domination of the American
political system seriously.

Democrats
in the House of Representatives took a small step in that direction
last week when they voted to take away $13 billion in oil company tax
breaks. The vote is symbolic because no industry exemplifies the
awesome power of mega corporations as does Big Oil. And yet, despite
the adverse House vote, the power of the oil companies, which extends
to all three branches of government, was in full display in
Washington last week.

For
one thing, analysts predict that Republicans in the Senate are likely
to prevent the bill, which would deny tax breaks to the oil companies
and use the money to support alternative energy, from even coming up
for a vote, as they have done on three previous occasions. Just in
case the bill manages to get through the watchdogs for the interests
of Big Oil in the Senate, the White House has promised to veto the
legislation.

But
it is not just in Congress and the White House that the oil industry
has good friends in high places. A generation of Republican
domination of the presidency has ensured that the Supreme Court is a
friendly venue for corporate interests, including the oil companies.
That was evident once again on February 27 when the Supreme Court
heard oral arguments in a case brought by 32,000 Alaska natives,
fishermen, and cannery workers against Exxon Mobil for the 1989 Exxon
Valdez oil spill.

The
disaster occurred when a drunken ship’s captain employed by the oil
company ran his vessel aground, resulting in the spilling of 11
million gallons of oil, the destruction of thousands of livelihoods,
and damage to 1,200 miles of Alaska’s coastlines. A jury awarded
the plaintiffs $5 billion in punitive damages; an appeals court later
cut the award to $2.5 billion.

Concern
over the “excessive nature of the damages” and not the plight of
the fishermen and the damage to Alaska’s economy and ecology was
what was foremost in the minds of most of the Supreme Court’s
Justices, according to press accounts. Predictably, conservative
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed ready to side with Exxon Mobil. The
more moderate Anthony Kennedy also seemed sympathetic to the
defendant. As to Chief Justice John Roberts, Dana Milbank of the
Washington
Post
describes his expression as pained at the apparent injustice of the
damage award. Roberts asked the plaintiffs attorney: “So what can a
corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such
as this?”

The
plaintiffs’ attorney’s answer, that they can hire fit and
competent people, drew laughter from the courtroom. But Exxon Mobil
may have the last laugh; even the moderate Justices seem poised to at
least substantially reduce the size of the award. Among those who
participated in the questioning of the attorneys, only Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg refrained from raising the issue of whether the
damages awarded the plaintiffs are excessive. 

These
events reflect the fact that Big Oil has big power in Washington But
the industry is hardly an exception. Corporate power is firmly and
broadly entrenched in the nation’s capital, and it often wields its
influence in conflict with the public interest. The Democratic Party
can complain all it wants about Ralph Nader, but there will always be
a Ralph Nader until the Democrats stop playing ball with big
corporations only slightly less than the Republicans.