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Ralph Nader
Foreign.
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David Helvarg
You're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM in
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Dean Baker
Los Angeles and on the web at
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David Helvarg
kpfk.org Pacifica Radio for All of Southern California and beyond. I'm Tom Morello and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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Ralph Nader
Stand up. Stand up. You've been sailing way too long.
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Steve Skrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host David Feldman. How's it going, David?
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David Feldman
Hello, Steve.
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Steve Skrovan
And our intrepid producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
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Ralph Nader
Hello, Steve.
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Steve Skrovan
And the man of the hour. Guess who that is? Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
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Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody.
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Steve Skrovan
Ralph. We want to remind listeners of our offer to get Matthew Ho's Armistice Day speech. Tell us about that.
- [00:58]
Ralph Nader
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. And we're offering it in print free to anybody who writes in in two weeks. So last week we had a good response. There's one week left, listeners. You can get this print by Matthew Ho and it is a tremendous eye opener to a lot of people about war and peace and the way veterans are edified for propaganda purposes by the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. And Steve will tell you how to get it.
- [01:56]
Steve Skrovan
Yes, we're going to put a button on our substack page of Ralph Nader Radio Hour page like we did last week, and you just press that button and it'll take you to the place you need to go to get the copies of Matthew Ho's speech free for one more week. On today's program, we welcome back economist Dean Baker and we will discuss a number of issues on which he has been elaborating in a series of articles in Money Trail. One of those issues is Social Security. He asks a very important question. If budget hawks in Congress insist on maintaining that Social Security poses a big problem for the federal budget, why aren't they screaming from the rafters about Trump's proposed military budget, which is more than twice as big? The other issue is government fraud, waste and abuse. Elon Musk was supposed to be solving that problem for us, but it turns out they were looking for fraud in all the wrong places among the poor when it was right in front of them all along among the rich and powerful. Next up, we welcome back journalist and ocean activist David Helvarg. He's the founder and executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy and media group in and he's also the author of the new book Forest of the the Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. We'll talk to him about why kelp forests need our protection. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our tireless corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, the fraud was coming from inside the House, the White House.
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David Feldman
DAVID Dean Baker is a senior economist at the center for Economic and Policy Research and where he authors Beat the Press, his regular commentary on economic reporting. He's written several books, including Getting Back to Full Employment, A Better Bargain for Working People, the End of Loser Liberalism, Making Markets Progressive, False Prophets, Recovering from the Bubble Economy, and the Conservative Nanny State, how the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Dean Baker, thanks a lot for having me on.
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Ralph Nader
Yeah, welcome back, Dean. You can see from David's introduction that you deal with basic economic issues, distributable issues, and how the conservative capitalists use the government for their own ends, a kind of corporate socialism. Well, you've recently written a very provocative column. You, you've compared the Trump increase in the pentagon budget of 500 billion or more with the politicians saying we can't afford to increase the Social Security trust fund. Can you explain clearly, as you usually do to our listeners, the thrust of your article?
- [04:39]
Dean Baker
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 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 day jobs. I'm an economist. I'm looking at the budget all the time. That's not most people. And what I always say is that reporters should take the responsibility to put these numbers in a context that make them meaningful for the people who read them. People hear them on the radio or tv. So we have this projected shortfall, and it's a reasonable projection now, I'd say, because we're only a few years out, going to have a deficit around 300 billion a year. Is that a lot of money? Well, it's not trivial. A little less than 1% of GDP. But you have Donald Trump puts on the table. He wants to increase military spending by 500 billion. So, I mean, maybe he won't get that. I sure hope he doesn't get it. But in any case, if we could, in any conceivable world, afford to pay 500 billion to increase the military budget, surely we can enforce to pay 300 billion to ensure that everyone gets their Social Security benefits. So it's just a case. Put it in context. I'm not going to say it's a small number. It isn't. But it's smaller. 300 billion is smaller than 500 billion. And that's really not a disputable point.
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Ralph Nader
Of course, Trump didn't break it down into why the generals need another 500 billion to go from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion military budget, which is over half of the operating expenditures of the entire federal government. The operating expenditures like Department of Agriculture, Department of Treasury, Department of State, Department of Interior. That's one context that should be placed before the American people. And it's also unaudited. The Pentagon is violating every year, so since 1992, a congressional requirement on all agencies to present annual audited budgets to the Congress. And they have not done that. They've tried to do it recently. It's cost hundreds of millions of dollars to outside accounting firms, and they haven't passed muster. This, for example. The army doesn't even know where a lot of its positions are around the world. The Air Force doesn't know where its parts are in warehouses around the world. It's totally chaotic, totally wasteful, and, and huge cost overruns by the greedy military contractors like the F35 plane and Lockheed Martin. Now, it's very important that you bring that in to the public discussion, 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's a bipartisan increase. And they don't even really have rigorous appropriation hearings on the proposed military budget by the president anymore. It's just push through Congress. So if you had a good response to pitting the military budget increase up against the need to shore up Social Security, which of course is for the people, and it's rigorously audited, and it has very few percent administrative costs, and these Americans need it to live on, and they spend it on almost entirely. They don't hoard it. Elaborate that, I would think that you got a pretty good response if you
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Dean Baker
can get the Two place side by side, apart from the military contractors. And I guess a few people really love the military for whatever reason. I don't think many people would say, oh, yes, we should be increasing the military budget like that. And your points are exactly right. I mean, there's so much waste in there. And if you go back to when Elon Musk was running around with Doge and he's going around, oh, we're going to get waste, fraud and abuse. Well, mostly they were looking at the places where I'm not going to say there was none, but there clearly was not a lot. If you want to get waste, fraud and abuse, take your chainsaw to the Pentagon, because it's all over the place. But Musk never touched it, and it's unfortunate that we just can't get it framed that way. So they'll find someone who got Medicaid that wasn't eligible because their income was too high last month and make a big deal about that and yell fraud, fraud. Especially if the person's black. But with the military, God, everywhere, there's millions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of million dollars. Donald Trump Jr. Just signed up with a firm producing drones that just got a. I think it was a $600 million contract from the Pentagon. This is everywhere. But unfortunately, they do their best to shield it from public examination.
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Ralph Nader
Yeah, and there's another difference as well, is that the military budget increase proposed by Tyrant Trump is not paid for. It just increases the federal debt and passes it on to our children and grandchildren. Whereas Social Security is paid for every month. There are deductions from tens of millions of workers, paychecks, for example. Comment on that.
- [09:43]
Dean Baker
Yeah, well, we have a designated tax for Social Security. Again, that will fall short. It's projected to fall short, I should say, as of 232. 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. So we're all paying this tax. We see it in our paychecks or see it come out of our paychecks, I should say. And that's been the case for 90 years now. And by contrast with the Pentagon, it just. You write the check and there's nothing to offset that. There's no claim that there's some designated tax for that. So in that sense, the larger the military budget. Yeah, it absolutely does increase the deficit.
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Ralph Nader
Here's another article you wrote that should be an eye opener. He takes apart Doge, the criminal enterprise rampaging through the federal government last year, headed by felon Elon Musk. And they promised $2 trillion of savings. And, you know, they just wrecked one agency after another, particularly the Agency for International Development. Can you tell us, in summary fashion, the kind of wreckage and how it affected lives overseas and lives and livelihoods here in America?
- [10:55]
Dean Baker
Yeah, I mean, Musk openly took pleasure in laying off workers that we have all these government workers that weren't doing anything. And yeah, big bureaucracy. Of course you're going to find 2, 3, 4, whatever, there's someone who's done. And that's not true just in government. Go to Microsoft, go to any major corporation. Sure, in a big bureaucracy, although someone's not doing their job. Odds are Elon Musk didn't find those people. He threw out a lot of people, career people, people been in these agencies for 10, 20 years and just said, oh, you're on the street. And basically his guys admitted this. They didn't know what the hell they were doing. But where it had the biggest consequences. I mean, I'm sure we'll see it other places, but is with foreign aid. He just got a big kick out of that. Usaid, he just shut it down. He boasted about that. He goes, last weekend I fed USAID into the wood chopper. 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. But. But this is a program that provided millions of people with medicine, with nutrition, with health care, and suddenly they couldn't get it. And the biggest deal there was the prep our program, the President's Program for aid in Africa, set up under George W. Bush. This is a bipartisan program and it saved millions, probably tens of millions of people's lives by providing them with medicine for hiv. It had been a deadly disease. We developed medicines. I know Ralph worked on this. I'm getting it set up that we provided them medicines that are low cost. They were charging 15,000 a year here, but they were able to get generic versions, charge 2 to $300 a year, and literally provided millions of people with the drugs that allowed them to live normal lives. And Elon Musk was boasting, 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.
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Ralph Nader
Well, they know some of the death counts. Boston University Researchers estimated over 600,000 in Africa died because of cutoffs by aid. 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, is a few days budget of the Pentagon. And Musk had glee. He literally had glee in doing this. 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. 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. The real big fraud is corporate fraud on the government, on Medicare, on Medicaid. The estimate that I heard a few years ago is, by the government, is that commercial fraud, by criminal billing practices stole $60 billion with a B for Medicare in one year. And they did the same type of fraudulent billing for Medicaid and government contracts. The military contractors are full of all kinds of shenanigans, as you pointed out. Here's a figure by the nation's leading expert on health care billing fraud, Malcolm Sparrow, a professor at Harvard University and applied mathematician. He estimated years ago, conservatively, that 10% of all health care expenses go down the drain due to billing fraud and abuse. That is, the vendors, the companies selling the services, or receiving outsourcing contracts by the government are cheating and looting the taxpayer who is supporting these benefit programs. And that amounts to over $400 billion this year, at least 10% of all health care expenditures. And Mehmet Oz, who's in charge of Medicare and Medicaid programs in the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert Kennedy Jr. As we speak, has not latched on to that. I've brought that to his attention through his immediate assistance, displayed interest. But I haven't heard from him. That's the real fraud, isn't it? In your article, you say the wealthy commit more fraud. Explain.
- [15:34]
Dean Baker
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know the story that you have, the beneficiaries, it literally doesn't even make sense. So you think about that with Medicaid. So we're saying we have people on Medicaid, they're committing fraud. No one gets a check for Medicaid. What would that even mean? Like, you signed up for Medicaid and you weren't eligible. 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. 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. Again, that's not zero. But, my God, all the things just as you're saying, Ralph, we have billions that are going out to insurers, to hospitals that are ripping off the government, and they're worried that some guy, some woman has put down something wrong. And half the time it's just an honest mistake. I mean, I've made mistakes on it. I had a PhD in economics. Have less education. Maybe they don't read that well. Yeah, they're gonna make mistakes, and that's what we're worried about.
- [16:37]
Ralph Nader
Well, Robert Weissman recently testified for the Senate on Trump's administration and fraud. And he showed that Trump and his drumsters 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 benefits programs, as you've just mentioned. Give some examples here of Senator Rick Scott.
- [17:03]
Dean Baker
Yeah, mention Rick Scott. He was the President 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't 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. So he was the CEO of UnitedHealth at the time. And again, he's sitting in the Senate, U.S. senator, and he'll get up there and yell about fraud. Well, he knows about fraud. He did a lot of it, for sure.
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Ralph Nader
He was rewarded by Florida voters and elected governor of Florida before he became a US Senator. Once again, showing the voters are not doing their homework. This was widely publicized in Florida, this company's defrauding of Medicaid. 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.
- [18:10]
Dean Baker
Yeah, that was. That was something that was infuriating. Didn't get anywhere near the attention it served. So the inspector generals, they don't generally get that much attention because they're not supposed to, they're not politicians. But these are people that oversee departments, agencies, and pretty much there might be an exception, but pretty much every department has an inspector general associated with it. If you want to get rid of fraud, these are the people that have been doing it. They've been doing this many cases, 10, 20, 30 years. They have staff, they know what they're doing, they know where the problems are. And one of the stories of the pandemic, the paycheck protection program, there was around 200 billion in fraudulent payments discovered by the inspector general of the Small Business Administration. He was one of the people who was fired by Trump in the first week he was in office. So if you want to weed out fraud, you would listen to what these people say. You would give more resources, you would try to support them in their work because they're the ones doing it. And it was kind of incredible because I remember there was some occasion, I forget the exact. Their press conference, whatever, and they dismissed them. They said, well, if they were doing their jobs, why is the fraud still there? Well, they can't unilaterally take action. They write reports, they turn them over to Congress, they turn them over to the Justice Department. They can't just go and arrest people. So insofar as there wasn't action taken, that's the fault of Congress, that's the fault of the Justice Department. They did their jobs, they found the fraud, they identified it, they said here, go after it. And the fact there wasn't adequate follow up, which I'd say in most cases there wasn't. That's not their fault.
- [19:41]
Ralph Nader
Well, he also fired them illegally. He didn't follow the statutory procedures of providing notice, the Congress, et cetera. So he's firing the watchdogs in one department after another or putting in, you know, cronies in their place. Definitely fires the authentically confirmed by the U.S. senate.
- [20:02]
Dean Baker
Exactly. They put in provision because he did this some in his first term. And they put it in. They changed law to say that you cannot fire an inspector general without. I forget exactly yet to provide notice. I forget the time period. You have to give notice, a cause. And he didn't do that. I think in any of the cases there might have been one or two where he did, but in most of the cases he did not.
- [20:22]
Ralph Nader
And you mentioned in your article one of Trump's cardinal characteristics, which is he pardons violent criminals and he pardons Fraudulent, convicted criminals. Explain that.
- [20:34]
Dean Baker
Yeah, well, he's taken the pardon power of the president, which is in the Constitution, so in fairness, it's there. But he's taken that to extremes, that no president's ever done anything like that. So we go back through prior presidents and it's become kind of a tradition in their last month or so in office, they go through a list of people, there's a process. They have a committee in the Justice Department that reviews them, and they make recommendations to the president. And usually the president follows their recommendations, not say 100%, because sometimes someone will be recommended for pardon. They don't do it, or they recommend someone who they chose otherwise. But generally it's something done late in the term, right at the end of the term and to a limited number of people. Trump has taken this to a whole nother level where he's just pardoned people left and right. He famously pardoned all the January 6th people. Many of them were convicted of violent crimes, attacking police officers, destroying parts of the Capitol. He pardoned all those people. And then he's had this ongoing process where you have people that have committed. We were talking about fraud. Many cases convicted of stealing hundreds of millions, even over a billion in one case. I'm forgetting the specifics of it. And it turns out most of these people have made contributions to Donald Trump's political action committee. So basically, he's selling pardons and selling pardons to people who commit fraud, people commit violent crime. Not the sort of thing we've ever seen. Again, we can go back and see some questionable pardons, but nothing, nothing remotely in the scale, what we're seeing with
- [22:00]
Ralph Nader
Trump, 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. You've been following this. A lot of people are vague about what the nature of this corruption is. It's not money in envelopes sent to a high government official surreptitiously. It's much more meticulous, sweeping, orchestrated. Can you give our listeners some idea of the nature of that? Self enrichment, corruption and the violation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution.
- [22:41]
Dean Baker
Well, he's basically operating businesses out of the White House. The most obvious one is Trump crypto coin that people want favors from him, they buy millions of dollars. I think someone bought $100 million of his crypto coin. So that's like basically Just give me money, buy my crypto coin. So you're seeing that. But he has any number of other scams. The UFC fight, the ultimate mixed martial arts that they had on the White House lawn last week. He has an interest in that. He owns, I don't know exactly what percent, but he owns shares in that. He owns shares in any number of companies that he contracts with. He has the government contract with. So we've never seen that sort of level of abuse. Generally, a president puts their assets in a blind trust. There might be some exceptions, but that's been the case for through my lifetime. I'll just say again, going back further, I don't know what Franklin Roosevelt did or whatever, but generally it's been the pattern. Whatever wealth they had, they put aside. They didn't know whether their actions were helping or hurting their wealth. That's not the case with Trump. He knows exactly where his money is and he's constantly giving contracts to companies where he has a stake in them. And again, none of that's hidden. We don't have to do any investigation. It's all right out in the open.
- [23:55]
Ralph Nader
Well, as Citizens for Tax justice pointed out years ago, if you restored the corporate and wealthy tax rates to the tax rates in the prosperous 1960s, you would raise hundreds of billions of dollars. You wouldn't have so much federal deficit, but it's just going in the opposite direction. And the Democratic Party is not making it a number one issue, even though, by the way, the polls show the 85% or more of the American people that includes a lot of conservative voters want to raise, or I would say restore the very undertaxed super wealthy and corporations. So you got a left right coalition and the Jeffries and Schumer aren't picking up on it. How do you explain that?
- [24:38]
Dean Baker
Well, I explain it. You know the answer to that, Ralph. It's campaign contributors that they're counting. They need money for their elections. And a lot of those people who are going to give the money don't want to pay higher taxes. So I think that's the story there.
- [24:53]
Ralph Nader
Well, if the Democrats win in November and they take control of the House and or the Senate, as they should against the most corrupt GOP in history, are they going to be ready, like The Heritage Foundation's 900 page report telling the Republicans when they won in 2024, what kind of legislation to pass, what kind of laws to repeal, or the Democrats going to simply clap their hands and proceed business as usual? You see any of the groups that you're related to or that you've worked with, putting forth a proposal even before November as to what the Democrats should be obligated to do, starting with public hearings and legislation.
- [25:37]
Dean Baker
Well, a lot of people are putting forward proposals. I think the more important thing is the power. And we just saw this last night, actually, it's a great story that you have progressive Democrats that are challenging the mainstream. And in New York City, there were three progressive Democrats that won congressional seats. They won the nomination, but all but certain means they'll win the congressional seat in November against very centrist mainstream Democrats. So the bigger thing is going to be the political battle. I remember years ago I was at a conference and someone, we were talking about the Powell memo, for people who don't know us, is something written by Justice Powell before he was on the supreme court. It's in 71 there about, about how the business community has to unite and beat back the liberals, people like Ralph, who are causing too much trouble. And anyhow, it outlined how they should go about and do it. And much of it was followed and they were very successful in beating back the liberals. So anyhow, someone at the conference said, well, we need our own Powell memo. And then someone responded, said, we have a Powell memo, many of them. And I'd say that that's. There are a lot of really good proposals. So I have proposals, other people have proposals. The problem is the power. So can you defeat the Jeffries, the Nancy Pelosi? She's of course leaving personally. But the point is you have this centrist group that has dominated the party, controlled the party for decades, and it's a question of beating them back. And if you have enough people, Mondami, aoc, Bernie Sanders, if you have enough people coming from the left and they have support in the country, then you'll move things. So the key thing is the political power, but we have the ideas, we have the policies.
- [27:16]
Ralph Nader
Do you believe that the Democrats will recognize that a lot of the proposals we're talking about have left right support? Conservative, liberal families want the same thing for their children, for public services, for upgrading public works, creating jobs, debloating the military budget. You think they recognize that?
- [27:35]
Dean Baker
I think there is a recognition of it. I think they're being very. I don't know if pragmatic is the best word for this, but they're saying, okay, I know that's where the votes are. But on the other hand, we need however many million to run for Senate for this House seat, for whatever it might be. And the people that were counting and getting it from don't want to hear those things. So that's a really big problem. It's very deep in our political structure that money has incredibly outsized influence.
- [28:03]
Ralph Nader
Every time the election year comes, the Democrats don't talk about campaign finance reform because they don't want to unilaterally disarm. And it just gets worse and worse as the PACs, the corporate PACs get bigger, richer and more secretive in how they spend their money for or against candidates.
- [28:21]
Dean Baker
Even more important, that's the media that I mean, the media has always been corporate controlled. So it's not as though you had left wingers controlling CBS and you know, the New York Times, whatever you might point to as the media. But you're seeing it being taken over by extreme right wingers. So Larry Ellison, who's a Trumper or son, I guess David Ellison now controls cbs and he put in Barry White, who's a total Trumper running CBS News. And they might take over cnn. They're going to do the same thing there we already had. Rupert Murdoch, of course, has been started Fox News controlling it for decades. 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 being paid for by advertising. Here I'm thinking newspapers, that's gone through the floor because all the advertising's on the web, going to Facebook, Google, whatever. So that's to my mind in some ways a bigger problem because it's not ads obvious. Campaign ads obviously influence people. They study this, they know how to do that. But what people see between the ads also influences people. And if that's all Rupert Murdoch, Fox News type stuff, we're in real trouble.
- [29:29]
Ralph Nader
That certainly has already happened to help the Republicans win campaign after campaign. Well, we've reached the end of our time. We've been speaking with Dean Baker, economist, advisor to Groups that Matter, author, writer of contemporary articles and the pride of Swarthmore College and the University of Michigan. Thank you very much, Dean.
- [29:50]
Dean Baker
Thanks a lot, Ralph. Good talking to you.
- [29:52]
Steve Skrovan
Again, we've been speaking with Dean Baker. We will link to his work@ralphneiderradiohour.com when we come back. We're going to find out why we need to start paying attention to kelp. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber from the
- [30:06]
Russell Mokhiber
National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, June 26, 2026 I'm Russell Mokheimer. America has a hidden justice system. In that system, decisions are made in secret and judges are paid for by the corporations that are being sued. Workers and consumers usually lose before these secret arbitration panels. And when they lose, they cannot appeal and they cannot turn to real courts for help. They are trapped in the system. When they sign on to a streaming service or a job, they are unknowingly signing on to a secret justice system called forced arbitration. Brendan Ballou has now written an expose of this hidden justice system. It's called When Companies Run the Courts How Forced Arbitration Became America's Secret Justice System. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mulkheimer.
- [31:03]
Steve Skrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. Kelp. I need some algae. Kelp. Not just any algae kelp, David.
- [31:17]
David Feldman
David Helvarg is a journalist and ocean activist. He's the founder and executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy and media group, and producer of Rising Tide, the ocean podcast. He has produced more than 40 documentaries for media outlets including PBS and the Discovery Channel. And he's written several books, including Blue Frontier, the War against the Greens and Forests of the Sea, the Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. David Helvarg, thank you.
- [31:50]
David Helvarg
Great to be here. David.
- [31:52]
Ralph Nader
Welcome back. You know, David Feldman left something out, and I'm going to put it this way. How many hours in your life you think you spent in the oceans scuba diving and investigating matters below the sea level?
- [32:06]
David Helvarg
Not enough. A few hundred diving, maybe a few thousand body surfing or just getting wet. But, you know, I'm privileged. There's 8 billion of us and only about 30 million are on the other 71% of the planet any given moment.
- [32:21]
Ralph Nader
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 he spends a lot of his time in the ocean, and that gives him a different kind of credential. Why don't you explain to people who don't really understand the importance of the ocean, not just economically, but to the survival of the planet. Can you explain the importance of the ocean?
- [32:49]
David Helvarg
Sure. It's the crucible of life on our blue marble planet. It's the oxygenation event came out of the ocean. The algae and the cyanobacteria gave us our atmosphere. The cycle of water all starts evaporation from the ocean, which goes into the clouds over the mountains, comes back in the form of rain that feeds our crops and fills our rivers. The ocean is the driver of life and also major impact in terms of human activity, in terms of transportation, recreation, protein, energy, and just that sense of awe and wonder of being part of something larger than yourself. For the last 20 years, since you actually helped me launch Blue Frontier, I've been pushing with my colleagues in journalism the idea of the Blue Beat. The only resource in the ocean not fully exploited at this point is good investigative reporting and narrative storytelling because people don't connect with it. You know, a lot of people think the environment ends at the shoreline. And that's really where 95% of the living space on the planet begins. We go out to stars. In 1977, there was a deep research vessel. They went down because there was volcanic activity miles below the surface. And when they got there, they realized there were these geothermal vents that were surrounded by life, by giant white clams and blood red worms and crabs. And it was the realization that not all life in the universe is photosynthetic. It's also chemosynthetic, that all these animals had bacteria that could convert this, what would to us be poisonous high pressure energy into life. And now we're spending 5 billion sending the Europa rocket to the moon of the Europa moon of Saturn, because it has an ice cover and we believe it has a liquid ocean below. And so we're going to look to probe to see if there's life in that ocean below that moon. And of course, we invest much less in a ocean planet that we know exists and that we know is full of life and that we've hardly gotten to know. I mean, we're, we've only mapped at this point about 10% of the deep ocean with resolution. We've mapped Mars and the moon and the other lifeless places out there.
- [34:57]
Ralph Nader
Well, as you say, it's 71% of the surface of the planet Earth. It's very much a part of the increasing global warming. What happens when the ocean is experiencing more and more warming? And relate that to El Nino, because El Nino is coming again. It's going to affect heat and precipitation on land, including the United States. So listeners, you're not going to get away with just spending time in the hills of the United States without being affected. Explain that.
- [35:31]
David Helvarg
Because 90% of our anthropogenic human caused global warming is being absorbed by the ocean. 90% of the heat that's generated by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation and the like is being absorbed. Which means that NOAA and 30 other institutions around the world last year determined that the ocean's hotter than it's ever been in the historic record, which is the mechanical record going back to when we could start measurements in the 1880s. 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 creature from zooplankton to clams to corals. And at the same time we're seeing these marine heat waves. My latest book, Forest of the Sea the Remarkable Life and Imperial 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. People don't know that the planet has this other forest crisis that helped forests cover an area larger than the Amazon basin. And they're also being impacted by these marine heat waves that are growing every year. And as you add more heat to the system, it gets more energetic, which is why we have more and more extreme storms. I covered Katrina in 2005. I thought that would be a turning point. We had 1800 people killed and a million environmental refugees. But the propaganda by the oil and gas industry is such that we keep having these disasters from a warming ocean planet. We see the melting of the Arctic ice. You know, instead of an alarm bell, it became a dinner bell for all the shipping industries and people who want to exploit the oil and gas in the increasingly open Arctic waters. So we're in this crisis point and I'm more frustrated than despairing because we know what the solutions are. It's creating the political will to enact them. And the ocean, as I say, is absorbing 90% of our heat, our average temperature, even though they're having record breaking heat in Europe right now with temperatures around 100 degree, our average surface temperature would be about 125 degrees if not for the ocean's ability to absorb heat. But it's a limited ability. And the effects, as I say, are it's acidifying, it's warming. We're changing the physical nature of the ocean, right? Its temperature, its chemistry, its circulation, even its color.
- [38:01]
Ralph Nader
It's also a huge garbage dump for plastics and other pollutants, chemical particulates and otherwise. Dump it into the sea, dump it into the ocean. It's big. It'll absorb it. And now it's getting into the seafood that are harvested and sent to restaurants and kitchens in the United States. Explain to our listeners what a marine park is. We have national forests, national parks on land, and previous presidents have started marine parks, including a big one off the shores of Hawaii. Explain marine parks and whether the Trump administration is going to try to roll that back, too.
- [38:40]
David Helvarg
Sure, Absolutely. We have national marine sanctuaries that are like national forests. They're not full protection, but like the law, the 1972 National Marine Sanctuary act says you can't drill within marine sanctuary borders. 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. They're breaking the law about six ways. They see how much law breaking they can get away with and then they pull back. Then you have national marine monuments, which are like the national monuments that started with Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. First they were in wetlands. Now you have places like Papa Hanaumakua Kea off northwest Hawaii, which is 70% of the US coral reefs. It's an extensive. It's larger than all our national parks combined. And it was created initially by the Clinton administration. George Bush expanded it. It's a bipartisan protected zone. The world, including the United States, has committed to 30 by 30 protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. 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, with deep sea mining being another example. You asked about El Nino earlier. It's a natural cycle of warming in the Pacific that changes global weather. But with all that added heat that I talked about from the burning of fossil fuels, this El Nino is predicted to be the strongest in recorded history, which is going to mean less storms on the east coast, more storms and runoff, more torrential rain across the country, huge impacts on agriculture on the West Coast. On the east coast, we again, it's a moment that's very extreme.
- [40:34]
Ralph Nader
These marine sanctuaries actually work to improve the survivability of species, don't they?
- [40:41]
David Helvarg
I've dove in marine sanctuaries off of California where there's been a 400% increase in biodiversity, you see big fish, you see, you know, big lobsters, and there's even the spillover effect. A lot of fishermen now support marine protected areas because, you know, it's not that hard to figure out when you stop killing fish, they tend to grow back when you protect an area it's protected. And then there's a spillover effect where they, in marine biology, they call them BFFs, big fat females, which is the fish that are most productive. Not a line I'd use in Barb, but these are the fish that grow to size. And then there's more baby fish, more fry that hatch. And. And so you have these healthy marine parks, and then you have healthy ecosystems expanding beyond them, including marine wildlife that's commercially available for protection. So we have our Peter Benchy Ocean Awards. In May, we held them at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And the global award we gave to the president of the Azores, who's established a huge marine protected area around the Azores that includes incredible kelp forests, which, again, provide habitat for salmon and cod and herring and a lot of species that wildlife we like to eat. But the short answer is, yes, they work. And the science shows they work. And just like national parks, they're also bio reserves for the future.
- [42:03]
Ralph Nader
Let's get to your great new book, which came out in early May, called Forest of the Sea, the Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp. You know, I went through elementary school, high school, college, law school. I never heard the word kelp. You say it's critical to the global ecosystems. Can you explain it to our listeners?
- [42:24]
David Helvarg
Sure. Kelp forest, I mean, people, as I said earlier, know coral reefs. And I talked to my friend Sylvia Earle, her Deepness, who says, yeah, people like warm, comfortable environments. And coral and kelp are like the ivory and ebony of the ocean. Kelp are in cold water. They generate $500 billion a year in goods and services. In terms of fisheries, food. They're the mother seed for this seaweed industry, which is generating 40 million tons a year. It's part of aquaculture, is now larger than wild fishing. There's 130 million tons a year of seafood that we grow versus 90 million that we're still extracting from the ocean. And of that 130 million tons, 40 million, as I say, is seaweed. It's both a food source, but it also gives us algin the kelp. It's what they call evolutionary convergence. They look the same, but they aren't the same as plants. Trees are their cellular structures all cellulous you can't do much with sawdust. You can't eat it. 40%, 60% of these kelp, which are like the bamboo of the sea, they grow a foot, two feet a day, and 60% of their cells is cellulose and 40% is Algin. And Algin, in the 1920s, they discovered, was a great emulsifier and stabilizer. And so it's in all our processed foods, it's in all our cosmetics and medicines. I mean, people say, well, kelp yuck or algae yuck, but it's in our shampoo, it's in our toothpaste, it's in our lipstick, it's in ice cream. It makes the ice cream creamier instead of icier. It's in the chicken nuggets. And therefore it makes sense that it's also in the heartburn medicine. But again, people, this is. I opened the chapter one of my book on a salmon river in Alaska because people know salmon are these heroic Homeric ocean and river fish. They don't know that part of their life cycle. When they leave the rivers, they go into the kelp forest and they eat phytoplankton until they're large enough not to become prey. And so it's a nursery for salmon and cod and herring. I just did a story for American Indian magazine on herring roe on kelp, which is a traditional food for indigenous people for thousands of years since humans came to the Americas along the kelp highway. And otters, of course, are the keystone predators that keep the kelp healthy. So it's not just the billions that like coral reefs. They also protect our shorelines from erosion and calm the storm waters. And they generate oxygen. I mean, half our oxygen comes from microalgae in the ocean from phytoplankton. And another 20% comes from a combination of the kelp forest and the seagrass meadows and the mangroves and the salt marshes that give us another 20%. So literally more than every other breath you take. You can thank the salty part of the world that is our oceans, our kelp forests, and our coral reefs and the like.
- [45:13]
Ralph Nader
Well, in your book, you estimate that 50% of the kelp has been destroyed and it's on its way to extinction off our shorelines. Why is it endangered?
- [45:24]
David Helvarg
It's endangered, as with corals. I mean, when I started Blue Frontier 20 years ago, the main threats were overfishing and pollution, oil, chemical, plastic, nutrient pollution. Today, that's being overwhelmed by these marine heat waves. And we had one that came to California. We called it the Blob in 2013. And within a few years, 95% of the bull kelp north of the Golden Gate was gone. And this is for 300 miles, one of my chapters, Fort Bragg, which is also the theme of our documentary Cicars of the Sea. 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. And without the kelp, in lieu of the kelp, the other effect of this heat wave was 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. The otters were long gone because of the hunting. The big fish and big lobsters were gone because of overfishing. The last predator on these urchins were these monstrous 24 armed, cannibalistic, fast moving sea stars that would eat these little urchins when, when they died off because of the heat. The sea star wasting disease was supercharged by that marine heat wave. 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. And then they go into this dormant state. They call them zombie urchins and they can survive for years. The gonads, which is where we get our uni for sushi, they kind of contract and they just cover the bottom. The only thing you can do is go out there with hammers, which I've been diving with people who are literally hammering the urchins. And it's worked. I mean, in Southern California, I dove on 80 acres of kelp forest that's been restored. People hammering the urchins out and replanting new fresh spore. And it's interesting that the people used to be at each other's necks. The, the fishermen and the tribes and the environmentalists and the scientists, they're all now working together to try and restore the kelp. And there's some possibility when you make the real commitment. South Korea, the fisheries agency understands that wild kelp forests are essential to their food security. So they invest $29 million a year and they've brought back 50,000 acres of wild kelp. And they plan to have 125,000 acres restored by 2030. So you can do it. The scientist I talked to in Tasmania says we can restore some of the kelp. But it's expensive. And if we don't get off fossil fuels, if we don't reduce greenhouse gases, we lose them all by the end of the century. The kelp forests, the coral reefs. So this is the localized challenge as I go diving with people who are removing urchins and restoring kelp, and I call them the seaweed rebels, the marine grassroots folks. There are thousands of people around the world doing this. We're just not doing it at scale. There's a recent study that says for $14 billion, we could bring back something like 10 million acres of kelp. You can protect the existing kelp, which they're doing in. In Argentina and Chile and elsewhere and the Azores, we can restore kelp. It's more expensive, but it's 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're thrilled. With kelp. You create the environment where it can come back. It'll come back 100ft in a year.
- [48:56]
Steve Skrovan
So.
- [48:56]
David Helvarg
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, the heat is happening so quickly. So, yeah, as I say, I'm more frustrated than despairing because we know what the solutions are. You know, a quick transition to clean energy is actually market friendly at this point. It's the cheapest energy and the cheapest production, and it's happening. I mean, we get caught up in being trapped in our little bubble in the United States. But globally, the entire system is electrifying based on cleaner energy. China and Portugal and Spain. And when we block the strait of hormones, who benefited? I mean, everybody hurt. But who hurt less was China and Spain, because they've made the commitment to clean energy. They're not as dependent on those tankers full of petroleum.
- [49:51]
Ralph Nader
I've asked David to give us a little brief reading of an excerpt from the book to give you an idea. It's as if you're with David and you have that feeling without even getting wet. I can't describe how vivid, how specific, how luminous, how inviting this book is. Forest of the Sea, the remarkable life and imperiled future of kelp.
- [50:16]
David Helvarg
Well, I appreciate that. And of course, as you say, 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 kelp diving is like a full contact sport. I love it, too. And the book, Diving in Catalina. And then the last chapter is called Triage for the Ocean. At some point I write that. If you think I'm doomscrolling, 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. Nonetheless, I believe that the seaweed rebels who've entangled their lives with macroalgae, immersing themselves in the science, restoration, protection and digestion of the world's kelp forest, will, in the end, protect what they love, eat well, and die trying to. We might even suggest that if we become stewards of the most basic building blocks of life, including algae and cyanobacteria, they may help us begin to heal the world. After all, like algae, we all come from salt water on both an individual and evolutionary basis. And as Isak Dinesen wrote, the cure for anything is salt water, wet tears, or the sea. So when you return to the source, when you explore the dark, mysterious and enchanting forest of the sea, you're also returning home to reconnect to the wonder and scary sacred wildness that is both within you and around you. And it can also be cold, wet, and awesome. It's like a large, fast moving shadow in the kelp when there's only six feet of visibility and you think, hey, wait, what was that? It's life.
- [51:51]
Ralph Nader
End quote. 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.
- [52:07]
David Helvarg
Yeah, no, I was God over 22 years ago. Blue Frontier, my first ocean book, had just come out. I was with my partner. She had cancer. And you called. You read the last chapter, Seaweed Rebellion, about marine grassroots. We have solutions. We just have to scale them up. And you liked it, and you suggested we start talking. And, you know, after she passed, I was thinking I'd 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, and you offered to help me follow through on that seaweed rebel chapter and see if we could build a network of ocean activists. And I decided, kind of, we're always going to have wars. We may not always have kelp forest or coral reefs or healthy oceans. And so with your support, I recycled, as any good environmental reporter would, recycle the book Blue Frontier into an organization that's now been 20 years and more. And so I always, you know, appreciated your, both your readership and your support for the work I do and many others.
- [53:08]
Ralph Nader
Well, 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. You brought all these little groups together and enhance their impact, among other writings. How can people join Blue frontier? It's a 501C3 nonprofit. It's very lean and has had influence on members of Congress and has had convocations in Washington and elsewhere. And David brings Blue Frontier to your community. He goes to places. How can they join?
- [53:50]
David Helvarg
We're meanly an ocean machine. Go to bluefront.org and you can connect with us. You'll get a lot of information on our podcast, on our Ocean Climate action, on our help educational learning project, I. E. Help. So it's@bluefront.org is our starting point. And then we have lots of projects off of that. When the Green New Deal, we read it and saw it didn't have any blue in it. So we partnered up with Tenant for Blue Economy. We eventually got a ocean climate action plan that added 10 billion and 3 billion for greening ports, 7 billion for coastal restoration. The money all got out before Trump got in, and now it's all about rebuilding, rebuilding from the start. Your last discussion, I think that you once said we were interviewing you and hope to do that again for a podcast. But you once talked about how when you bring your family to the beach and if it's closed down due to pollution, nobody goes, oh, well, I'm against government regulation, so I'm fine with this. 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. 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. It's. It's God's blue marble and it's precious. And you need to defend it.
- [55:19]
Ralph Nader
Well said, David. And listeners, have your children go to this website, bluefront.org because it's very artistic, very graphic. David is a genius in communication here and it's never too early for your youngsters to learn about the importance of the ocean. 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.
- [55:54]
David Helvarg
Thank you Ralph, for all you do.
- [55:56]
Steve Skrovan
We've been speaking with David Helvarg. We will link to his work@ralphneiderradiohour.com I want to thank our guests again, Dean Baker and David Helvard. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show. For you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with In Case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [56:22]
David Feldman
Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free free@nader.org for more from Russell Mokheimer. It's a corporate crime reporter.com and remember,
- [56:34]
Steve Skrovan
the American Museum of Tort Law has gone virtual. You can visit tortmuseum.org to explore the exhibits, take a virtual tour and learn about iconic tort cases from history.
- [56:44]
David Feldman
Short of your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com or find it on substack.
- [56:54]
Steve Skrovan
And remember to continue the conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment. A question on this week's episode.
- [57:03]
David Feldman
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:11]
Steve Skrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:17]
David Feldman
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:21]
Ralph Nader
Thank you. And if listeners want to spread this word every week, try to get your local radio station to pick up the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, as dozens around the country have already done so. Rise up.
- [57:44]
Dean Baker
I know you are.
- [58:11]
Ralph Nader
Step up.
- [58:12]
Dean Baker
I think you just step up.
- [58:32]
Ralph Nader
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