Chris Hedges recently, writting on TruthDig, quoted Ralph Nader on the need to Make the Rich Panic, which Nader says is something Bernie Sanders' bid for President running as a Democrat will not do.

“The only way you can get the parties’ attention is if you take votes away from them,” Ralph Nader told me by phone. “So,” he said of Sanders, “How serious is he? He makes Clinton a better phony candidate. She is going to have to agree with him on a number of things. She is going to have to be more anti-Wall Street to fend him off and neutralize him. We know it is bullshit. She will betray us once she becomes president. He is making her more likely to win. And by April he is done. Then he fades away.”

Chris goes on to says that only an independent political party dependent on a mass movement can achieve the revolutionary change needed. Read the rest here. 

Bill Curry, former Clinton White House aide and twice the Democratic candidate for Governor of Connecticut, writes at Salon that "Democrats lost their way chasing Wall Street cash" and that Democrats need to ally themselves with Ralph Nader. He says:

One reason we know voters will embrace populism is that they already have. It’s what they thought they were getting with Obama. In 2008 Obama said he’d bail out homeowners, not just banks. He vowed to fight for a public option, raise the minimum wage and clean up Washington. He called whistle-blowers heroes and said he’d bar lobbyists from his staff. He was critical of drones and wary of the use of force to advance American interests. He spoke eloquently of the threats posed to individual privacy by a runaway national security state.

He turned out to be something else altogether. To blame Republicans ignores a glaring truth: Obama’s record is worst where they had little or no role to play. It wasn’t Republicans who prosecuted all those whistle-blowers and hired all those lobbyists; who authorized drone strikes or kept the NSA chugging along; who reneged on the public option, the minimum wage and aid to homeowners. It wasn’t even Republicans who turned a blind eye to Wall Street corruption and excessive executive compensation. It was Obama.

by Ralph Nader

21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare

Dear America:

Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.

In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!

Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.

Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.

Love, Canada

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch the second part of the interview here.

We've had two great days with Ralph and Rocky in town and we'll have our monthly meeting at our office here starting at 7pm tonight. Below is a sampling of the media. Ralph packed 250 people at noon into Powell's, then had more than 600 people pack into Lewis and Clark to see him debate former Bush admin. official and neo-con Jamie Fly (Ralph won that debate easily)! Today we had a great press conference with Rocky & Ralph (video here) , had an article in Oregonian, two TV channels (KATU and KPTV), and Oregon public broadcasting there.  Then we had a successful rally with Rocky at PSU. This is a great kick-off for the Progressive Party and 2012 Elections let's keep the momentum up and firing...go we go...

• NADER & ROCKY PRESS CONFERENCE: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/04/former_salt_lake_ci...
   
• NADER STEVE DUIN INTERVIEW: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2012/04/st...
   
• NADER AT POWELL'S Coverage http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/04/green_party_staple_...

New hope: Nader

Most of us didn't realize that when Barack Obama talked of hope during his presidential campaign, it meant hope for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the military-industrial complex, banks that were bailed out and the bankers who received huge bonuses.

But when consumer activist and third party presidential candidate Ralph Nader spoke in Portland on Saturday, I felt a sense of hope. It wasn't because he made promises. As a matter of fact, he talked a lot about what our president hasn't done.

Nader was in Portland to promote the Progressive Party. It was the audience reaction to his speech that inspired me, and the hope that perhaps Americans will stop watching sports and television long enough to sift through mass media information and learn what is going on in America and to care.

BEV ANSLOW
Gladstone

RALPH NADER IS COMING TO PORTLAND on Saturday, May 8!
First Unitarian Church Sanctuary
1211 SW Main Street, Portland
Doors/book signing at 7:30 p.m. Program at 8:00 p.m.

“Obama So Far . . . A New Strategy for Progressives”

Mr. Nader will discuss his book “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” and
Ways to Democratically Mobilize the Country for Long Overdue Changes, including:

Wall Street: What Real Reform Would Look Like
Clean/Renewable Energy vs. Subsidizing Nukes and Coal Plants