Ralph Nader endorses our Vote.org project!

One symptom of America's increasing inequality is the "star system." Normally, it would be almost impossible for a nobody like me to meet someone like Ralph Nader, America's foremost citizen advocate for over 40 years. I've tried several times over the last year to contact him via his nonprofit Public Citizen. No dice.

Yesterday, because of a Colorado snow/slush blizzard, only 50 attended a talk Ralph gave at CU-Boulder, about Single-Payer Health Care. So I was able to talk to him several times at the small reception following. He was enthusiastic about former Senator Mike Gravel's project for better and national ballot initiatives, which I promote at Vote.org And he recognized that "Vote at Vote.org" was way easier to spread than "Vote at ni4d.us"(Gravel's site) and promised to do so!

Having national ballot initiatives will make Congress more humble, as they've done with Switzerland's Parliament since 1848. When they don't represent us, we'll just make law ourselves. This will lessen the star system -and you can bet The People will reduce income inequality too!

Ralph asked about Mike, who's had a hard time since his glory days, when he single-handedly filibustered until the Vietnam draft was ended, reading the Pentagon Papers into the national record. Mike was targeted for defeat by the military/industrial complex and has been out of office since 1981. I told him Mike's considering moving to Switzerland or Korea to promote the National Initiative, since the media ignores or marginalizes him here, even though he sacrificed his retirement to run for President.

Ralph does have a sense of humor, and curiosity. He wanted to know about my Panasonic Lumix LX3, which is supposed to be the best-quality compact digital camera, and does a decent job of video, as you can see if you click the "HD" for high-definition.

You can see here how the media can make a "nobody" out of a popular entertainer who was voted "Best Activist" by Boulderites. You can see why I've devoted 20 years to this project here.

YOU can help bring government BY the people to the U.S., help restore my reputation, and re-balance inequality some by linking here or sharing this story on social networks:

Newspapers digging their own graves -and ours.

My letter to the editors of the Boulder Daily Camera and Colorado Daily:


Editor,

As newspapers wring their hands over their declining readership, they should remember the old dictum: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." In so many ways, from the expected rejection of this letter, to editorials to news "slant," we now usually get the opposite, political dictum: "Kiss up and (defecate) down."

My experience: In 1992 I was voted "Best Activist" by readers of the Boulder Daily Camera, for several reasons which annoyed the rulers of "our" town. So, in 1995, after I'd criticized the Mayor at a City Council meeting, the editor of the Camera falsely wrote "Ravitz virtually suggested the Mayor deserved the cancer she was fighting." The official City video of the 6/6/95 meeting, available at the Carnegie Library, proves this false. Or read the actual transcript. The editor repeated his falsehood a week later.

A month later the editor of the Colorado Daily fired me from the columnist post I'd held for 5 years, for another easily-disproven falsehood: that I'd disrupted a meeting on the future of the University of Colorado. Prof. Estevan Flores, who ran the meeting, wrote in a published letter that I'd instead made a "valuable contribution" to the meeting. Prof. Martin Walter wrote that if anyone had disrupted the meeting it was he, when he rose to passionately second my suggestion that CU "democratize." Chancellor Rod Park was also a witness.

When media thus make inconvenient truth-tellers into non-persons they leave only yes-men and women in the pool of leaders. You can see the results. Happy devolution!

Evan Ravitz