Ralph Nader’s descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup.

At twelve noon on June 12, 2009, the end of analog television’s era was also when I let my set go dark....There are so many other things to do and learn and evoke than watching screens.

Soon after the passage in 1999 of the Clinton-Rubin-Summers-P. Graham deregulation of the financial industry, I boarded a US Air flight to Boston and discovered none other than then-Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers a few seats away.

Tomorrow I will go to a polling station in Princeton, N.J., and vote for Ralph Nader.

[Nader] showed no love for either major party candidate, calling Democrat Barack Obama "one of the biggest political con jobs," and equating the choice between him and Republican John McCain as choosing between "tuberculosis and cancer."

The bailout of Wall Street was the "collapse of corporate capitalist ideology" and was clearly a case of socialism bailing out capitalism, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said today in an interview with The Denver Post.

Standing on the steps of Federal Hall just after noon on Thursday, Ralph Nader was the same familiar tall, rumpled, graying figure, fervently railing against corporate power and greed.

The derivatives markets of today have become a high stakes casino of unimaginable magnitude. Wall Street's bets have gone bad, and now the whole financial system is in peril.

"The whole thing was a special interest boondoggle, around the core of a $700 billion blank check," Nader told the Globe this afternoon.

Nader, who entered the 2008 presidential race in late February, was on the frontlines of environmental advocacy in the 1970s. He went to bat for the first auto fuel-economy regulations and was a major voice against nuclear-power development. He fought for the passage of cornerstone environmental laws including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. In the years since, he's pressed on with green advocacy, publishing numerous studies, essays, and editorials decrying coal and nuke power and advocating ultra-efficient cars and a solar-powered economy.

Lay off Ralph Nader. He is the only candidate who has not lined his pockets with tens of millions of dollars of corporate campaign money, talked out of both sides of his mouth about the war in Iraq, NAFTA and health care, and has dedicated his life to battling the corporations who make war on working men and women.