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Foreign.
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This is ralph nader, and you're listening to radio powered by the people, kpfk, 90.7 fm los angeles, 98.7 fm, santa barbara, and across the globe at kpfk.org.
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This is John Nichols of the Nation
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magazine, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
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Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio R. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello, David.
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Hello.
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You hear that construction noise?
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Yeah.
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That's what I'm living with. It's very hard to read with noise. We live in a very noisy culture. But one of the ways to turn off the noise is to read.
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And that's the theme of our show today. But I also, before we even get into that, want to introduce our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
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Hello, Steve.
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And of course, the man of the hour, Ralph. What do we got going today, Ralph?
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Well, it's an experiment for our listeners. We're having six authors of nonfiction books, each one as compelling as the other one, and by comparison, illustrating the decline in actual reading in our society and compared to the way the media used to treat these books. Phil Donahue had a television audience of 10 million people. He would have authors like the ones you're going to hear about on his show. The book would become a best seller. Editorials would be written about it. Citizens would mobilize around it. I remember the Larry King radio Show. It started at midnight in several hundred stations around the country out of suburban Virginia. I went on that show once with our evaluation of the three presidential candidates in 1980. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Congressman Anderson from Illinois. 20,000 copies were ordered. 20,000 copies. That show has no parallel today. There is no parallel to the Phil Donahue show today. They're gone. So when we have indicators of how our democratic society declines, this is one of them, listeners, and we've got to be alert to it. And we've got to reconstitute the process of a deliberate democracy, which means readers think, thinkers read, and then they move to achieve a better society with more justice and more freedom and more opportunity. So here we go.
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That's right, Ralph. It's book week here at the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. And here's the lineup. We're going to talk about the fight against nuclear power with Beyond Nuclear founder Linda Gunter, the Role of Punitive Damages with attorney Sean Simpson, How Con Men Call Centers and Rogue Doctors Fuel America's Lawsuit Factory with attorney Elizabeth Burch. The Environmental History of the San Francisco Bay Area with naturalist David Schmidt, Workplace Safety with industrial hygienist Mark Axelrod and the State of Our Schools with educator and advocate Jonathan Kozel. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our relentless corporate crime reporter Russell Mokhiber. But first, let's get to it. Let's get beyond Nuclear.
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DAVID Linda Gunter is the founder of the US Based nonprofit Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Previously she was a journalist at USA Network, Reuters and the Times. She launched and writes for Beyond Nuclear's online magazine, Beyond Nuclear International, and she is the author of no to why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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Linda gunter, welcome, Linda. We've interviewed before, but now you've come out with a stunning, powerful new book called no to Nuclear Power. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War. Tell our listeners why you wrote the book and why it matters to them.
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Well, I wrote the book for two principal reasons. One is that we are being, as you know, bombarded with a phenomenal amount of pro nuclear propaganda, almost all of which is purely aspirational, inspirational and frankly, lies. And I felt it was time to have a book out there that really told the human story of this industry and put the human face on that story. So rather than telling it with a lot of charts and graphs and statistics, and that's sometimes intimidating, I think, for readers to tell it through the perspective of the people to whom it happens and also the other creatures we inhabit the planet with and the environment. So there's so much destruction already to our environment. So this book really shows how nuclear contributes to it. And then the second reason, and I think as a lawyer you'll probably appreciate this, is that I wanted to deliver a comprehensive indictment against the nuclear power industry. At the back of the book there is an Appendix, Top 10 Reasons to Reject Nuclear Power. And these are effectively the counts, I would say, against what is really a criminal enterprise, which I also get into in the book. It really the success and the future of nuclear power seems to depend on subsidies, that is our money and crime. And there are plenty of examples of bribery, racketeering, corruption in the book, but also violating basic human rights like the prior free and informed consent or the right to say no. Many of the communities that are targeted from the beginning of the story to the end are communities of color or indigenous or low income. So really the idea was that when you read this book, and I hope it's Written, it's supposed to be written in a very accessible, easy to read way that when you read this book from beginning to end, even if you're a skeptic at the beginning, by the time you finish it, you'll be firmly opposed to nuclear power.
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Well, the case against nuclear power is so overwhelming that it raises the point you raise. Why are the nuclear power lobbies swarming over Congress, swarming over the White House, swarming over the press, the editorial writers? And the answer basically is because it's government guaranteed. They will subsidize it, they will insure it, the taxpayers will bail it out. And they're trying to get around the traditional arguments against nuclear power by saying there are new models coming out that are quicker, better, safer. I've heard that for 40 years. It's never materialized. Tell us about these new models for an industry I have called unnecessary, unsafe, untimely, uninsurable, unprotectable from sabotage and the radioactive release over large areas. And in many ways a technology that has proven itself to be unstable and extremely expensive to the taxpayer.
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Absolutely. I mean, you nailed it right there in all those examples. And I think the only explanation is actually the one that you're going to have on the front page of the next edition of Capitol Hill Citizen, which is really the old adage, follow the money. And when you see the amount of money and the revolving door between the lobbyists and the industry and the politicians and the access they have to make their case, that really is the only explanation because as you say, it's just not logical. When you look at these so called new reactors, they call them small modular reactors. First of all, they're not really new. This idea has been around for many, many decades and has been rejected by because they're too expensive, they have poor economies of scale to build lots and lots of little ones. Doesn't make sense when it's cheaper to build one big one.
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Linda, here's the best argument was by Amory loved and said the same money that would be put into nuclear boondoggles and 10, 15 years before the plant is built, if it's put into solar energy, if it's put into wind power, if it's put into energy conservation, it's quicker, cheaper, safer and decentralized and creates more jobs all over the country. That's the unassailable initial argument against it. But what people should know is that Wall street will not invest in nuclear power without government guarantees. The insurance companies will not insure the plants without government guarantees. And so you have another Uninsurable, uninsured, investable. So what do you think the counterattack should be? Shouldn't there be a conference of all the community anti nuclear who have experience with fighting the first wave of nuclear and now have younger generations needing to be organized? What do you think of a conference?
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I think these days, you know, getting everybody together physically in one place has become much more challenging. The good news is that there are a lot of groups across the country and even some new ones popping up where some of these new threats are being made. For example, in Kansas, not necessarily the place you would predict a sort of revolutionary hotbed to occur, but in Kansas, where Deep Vision is trying to put one of its 10 megawatt reactors, but of course we know it won't be just one deep borehole a mile down. A new group, mostly women, who have alert to the fact that this has serious implications for health and safety, have risen up and form something called the Prairie Dog Alliance. And there are lots of these across the country. And we are in conversation and in alliances with each other. But as you said at the beginning of the discussion, the challenge now to change the minds of politicians has become really difficult with all the money. This is partly to do with Citizens United and the fact that if you can just buy your way to the policy that you want, that's become much harder. So I think the grassroots piece, sort of where we all began many decades ago, has become the essential piece now for us to let our elected officials know that this is not what we want. Because they will, of course, do what they think their voters want. And so they need to hear from their voters in order to do the right thing. Because all they're hearing is from the big tech bros and their huge bags of money. That's who they're listening to. And they need to hear from us.
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Yes, and there are people mobilizing all over the country against these giant data centers and learning the techniques for resistance. One last question. We're talking with Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear, a very formidable and reliable group. It's been around for years in the Washington, D.C. area. Her book just out is no no to Nuclear why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War. Well, the main argument they're using, especially with some environmental groups in the younger generation to start nuclear again, making everybody forget Fukushima, Three Mile island, the disaster in Chernobyl, et cetera, is that it doesn't pollute, doesn't produce greenhouse gases, and so it doesn't contribute to climate catastrophe. Apart from saying, put the same money into solar and energy conservation, you have far, far better effect on climate. How would you answer that assertion?
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There's a couple of other reasons. The Amory reason is absolutely key, and that's what we say. We need to reduce the most carbon the fastest for the least cost, and that's renewables every time. But it's also an issue of as we divert funds towards nuclear power, which these new reactors, which are not here now, they're just aspirational ideas on paper. None of the designs have certifications or licenses yet. So as we divert time and our money to. Towards waiting for something that will perhaps take a decade or two or never to materialize. And as we squeeze out renewables in the process, what do we do? We continue to burn fossil fuels. So actually choosing nuclear as an answer to climate makes the climate crisis worse. And the other piece, I think, especially for the youth movement on climate, who are very concerned with a just transition, is that they need to understand, and that's partly why I wrote the book the way I did, that they need to understand the environmental justice piece of this, the colonialism, the targeting of indigenous communities, the racism endemic in the industry. And they cannot possibly argue then that nuclear power is a tool with which we can address the climate crisis if they feel strongly about having a just transition.
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Nuclear power plants are being shut down. There are about 98 left open. The projection in the 1970s would be a thousand plants around the country, including 100 along the coast in California. Why didn't it happen? Because they're too expensive, they are too dangerous. They are not needed. They are uninsurable. They are full of delays because of safety issues that arisen and the cost overruns are staggering. And because people have realized energy efficiency, solar and wind are far better substitutes for daily needs. And they're far better for the planet and for future generations. Thank you very much, Linda.
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Thank you, Ralph. It was a pleasure to be on.
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We've been speaking with Linda Gunter. We will link to her work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Stand up.
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Stand up.
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Sean Simpson is an attorney specializing in civil jury trials representing individuals who've been harmed by someone else's carelessness or intentional wrongdoing. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Shawn Simpson.
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Hey, good morning. It's great to be here with you and Ralph. It's a great day.
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Welcome indeed, Shawn Simpson. This book on punitive damages, the subtitle is A Lawyer's Tool for Shaping Society, and it's written primarily for trial lawyers, but it's very readable. You should know that we believe that high school students can understand the rudiments of the law of wrongful injury, tort law. And we have a little curriculum for them for high school social studies teachers. You know, they've experienced torts, they've been bullied, they've had parents coming back from unsafe workplaces. They certainly have experienced people, if not themselves, in auto crashes or unsafe pharmaceuticals. So we welcome this book not just for trial lawyers to use, but for people to read about. So tell our listeners why you think people should know about punitive damages after you explain what they are.
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Yes, good question. Punitive damages are really the civil equivalent of punishment, a criminal punishment, where in a civil world we don't have nobody can go to jail. So in order to get some attention and maybe some reaction and some better behavior from misbehaving corporations, we use punitive damages to add on a little above what's to compensate our client to try to say, hey, now you've compensated our client, but now you need to have a little slap on the wrist too, so you can be a better company and get on the right side of the line and not misbehave. It's really that simple. And the book is written so that an 8th grader can read it. Something nice about trial guides, the publishers, they like it to be written so that anybody can read it. One of the favorite chapters, the one on the history which really shows that unfortunately it's punitive damages have this horrible history in the courts. But if you go back to the time of the Bible and back in the Babylonian times, the punitive damages were a great thing. It was what kept society in line, people staying in their own lanes. So I wrote it for mostly for lawyers, but you know, like a Betty Crocker cookbook for every step of the way from opening statement to picking the case to closing the argument for lawyers. But then it is I've had quite a few people, people non lawyers reading it and enjoying it. And actually I know you've seen this on your end route but there's been a lot of people contacting me through no longer SEO search engine optimization, but it's AEO agent engine optimization where they're using AI to search in. This book is getting me cases out in Connecticut not too far from your place in Winstead. I'm a school called Kent. The Kent school has got some sexual abuse going on, I guess. So it's pretty fascinating how the book is getting out beyond just the lawyers, which is nice.
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How interesting. Also it's not insurable. Whereas the compensatory damage the company pays, it's insurable, it's often deductible and you know, they just go on their way. It doesn't really hit them in the pocketbook. So give us some examples of punitive damages.
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Chemical companies. You've got even going back to McDonald's. Where we find a lot of these cases, Ralph, is these companies, we find documents, emails, typically the last 20 years, where they know the risk, are saying, okay, we're probably going to get sued, this is probably going to have some bad outcomes, but we're going to make this much money. Let's leave the water hot and let people worry about their own safety. Because we're not in this for safety, we're in it for money. Words to that effect. And when you have companies thinking that way, it just, it's going to wait a minute. So you're basically knowingly saying we're going to compromise people's safety and wellbeing because we make more money that way. Drug companies, cigarette companies, retailers do it a lot. And one time you were kind enough to notice one of our verdicts, Ralph, against a retail company where they were using their loss prevention security guards to coerce confessions out of people. And a lot of times it was to just get rid of them because the manager didn't want the competition from a hard worker. So they, he said, hey, I think this guy's stealing money. And next you know, he's signed a confession even though he stole no money. Things like that is anywhere there's corporations, unfortunately there's corporate misbehavior and that there's people stepping across the line and that's what I hope to lead the drive. Because a lot of lawyers are afraid of these because they're harder, they're a little more work, a little more uphill. Burden on the burden of proof changes. But you know, if we all run from them, nobody's doing them, then the corporations don't have any pushback. And that's really what motivated me, you know, being a child out of Chicago in the 60s with Martin Luther King and then Bob Marley and I just the people sitting back watching the corporations move into Washington D.C. was just too hard for me to watch.
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But you're right, you know, a lot of lawyers don't want to use it. And why is that the case? Is it because the judges are antagonistic to it or what?
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He has a combination. You, you mentioned before that they're, they're typically not covered by insurance but oddly enough, there's a trend coming now, Ralph, where these corporations, because they're in control, we've let them have the reins and now they're getting insurance companies to sell them coverage to cover their punitive damages, which is totally A1A is it if somebody else is going to pay your punishment for you, it's not going to sting your rump if somebody gets spanked on somebody else's behind. So it just blows my mind to think that that's going to be okay. We're most states won't allow it though. You'll say you can't insure something like that. It's just an insurance. Then people like, oh, I don't want to have punitive damages involved because then it's going to slow down settlement because insurance companies don't speak that language. And to some extent they're right. But now that there is insurance covering it, you have to say, well you got to pay the policy limits then more than that or else it's not going to have any sting. And they're buying up to like 12, 15. I've seen a $30 million. Most commonly is what, what's called EPLI, the Employment Practices liability insurance for employers. So when they do things like make their employees work without respirators with around asbestos and things like that, is it
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correct, John Simpson, author of the book Punitive Damages is it correct that if a lawyer pleads punitive damage on behalf of lawyers clients that they can get better disclosure deep into the files of these corporations than if they just plead for compensation for lost wages or medical expenses?
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Yeah, because the punitive damages open up the financial condition of the company. If you get to phase two, then the, the financial condition of the company is relevant. So you need to be able to dig into it. A lot of times you get it from their 10k. If they're publicly traded, it's pretty easy to get their financial information. But a lot of times they won't give it to you. They bring it to court and give it to the judge to holding camera and an envelope up on the bench until you get to phase two. Because they say, you know, it's not relevant until you get to the second phase of trial when their financial condition is on the table.
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B
If you win a punitive damage, Sean, does that often alert prosecutors, you know, attorney generals at the state level, Justice Department when it was interested in corporate crime? Is there a feedback over there?
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Yeah, absolutely. I mean after one of our verdicts out here in California, the New York Times wrote one of their longest, back in November 2014, wrote a big article on worst confessions. And yeah, it stimulates the newspapers. And I noticed before the press is really slow on these things, but there is still some reaction, fortunately.
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Well, we're out of time, but we do want to suggest to our listeners that all of us should learn about punitive damage, just like all of us should learn about the law of wrongful injury, because everybody's exposed to that risk one way or another in our complex industrial society. Thank you very much. Sean Simpson, that's right.
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Thank you, Ralph.
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We've been speaking with Sean Simpson. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Stand up.
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Stand up.
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Elizabeth Burch is a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law and co author of Perceptions of Justice and Multi District Litigation, Voices from the Crowd. She's the author of the Pain How Con Men Call Centers and Rogue Doctors Fuel America's Lawsuit Factory. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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ELIZABETH burch, oh, thank you all so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
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B
Welcome indeed, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a professor of law at University of Georgia Law School, but she could have been a writer of gripping novels. She could have been an investigative reporter, first class. And I say that because in her new book, the Pain How Con Men Call Centers and Rogue Doctors Fuel America's Lawsuit Factory, she goes off after a real corporate crime that affected thousands of women, which she'll tell you about in a moment with crooked people from the medical legal profession who too often view women's bodies as cash machines and fail to take their pain seriously, to quote from her book's cover. So tell our listeners what this criminal syndicate was all about. How many did it affect and is it still underway?
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G
Yeah, absolutely. So imagine that you are sitting in your kitchen and you get a phone call one night and you answer and the person on the other end of the line knows an inordinate amount of information about you. They know your name. They know your birthday. They know the name of your doctor, the name of your hospital, the date and type of medical implant that you had put in you. And then they tell you that you have a ticking time bomb in you. And if you don't have this removed immediately, that this in this case, was pelvic mesh which is designed to deal with incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, that you are going to die. But not to worry, they are setting up appointments down in South Florida to have the mesh removed. What they don't say is all of the important things. So these calls did not come from mesh manufacturers, which a number of the women actually thought was the case. Mesh was not a good product. It was eventually recalled by the fda, but it had not been recalled at the time. And so essentially what was happening was these calls were coming down from South Florida. There had been a data breach in India. And the people in South Florida began cold calling these women, telling them that they had to have the mesh removed immediately. When they flew down, they had to sign a DocuSign packet, which is something I think many of us are familiar with. The DocuSign packet was programmed to take them straight to the signature page. And so when they signed and it auto populated their initials throughout, they didn't realize that they were taking out a lien against their future settlement proceeds. They didn't realize that they had hired a lawyer. And when they got there, they were not sent to a hospital. Instead they were sent to a chiropractor's clinic and another outpatient center next to a strip mall. The doctor was removing five meshes in a day. Now bear in mind that done right, mesh removal surgery can take between seven and eight hours. It's meant to go in, it's meant to form a protective hammock with scar tissue. It's never meant to come out. It's sort of like putting rebar in concrete. And so when these doctors were ripping out meshes five a day, one of them bragged to me that they were taking it out in 15 minutes a pop. It left many of the women permanently incontinent and the settlement proceeds largely went to the middlemen, to the third party litigation funders, to the lawyers and not to the women themselves. So that's kind of the scheme. And then the book is this, as you said, what I hope is a page turning quest for justice. It involves a defense attorney and it involves, I think more importantly a young lawyer named J.R. baxter, who watched the Hot Coffee documentary during his first year torts class and was inspired by doing plaintiffs lawyers work and ultimately joins his dad's solo practice in small town Benton, Arkansas.
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B
Well, how many women were involved in this grizzly violence, greedy scheme? Was there any follow up? Were there any malpractice suits against the doctors and the lawyers, for example, any prosecutions?
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G
Well, so I should back up a little bit. I mentioned that mesh is not a good product. So it depends on which scheme you're talking about. First of all, there's all this sort of corporate wrongdoing that I'M sure listeners are well familiar with at this point. But the second was the phone calls. And there were over 100,000 women who had been called. It's unclear exactly how many people went through this mesh mill. It was at least in the thousands and there were lawsuits. So I don't want to ruin the book for anyone who reads it, but JR Baxter is out to sue everybody who is involved in this and is trying to recoup some measure of justice for Jerry, Sharon and Barb, the three women who are very much at the center of this book and who are helping to tell the story.
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B
Well, how much did they end up paying on the average when they went to Florida for this scheme? And how much would they have had to pay if it was done right and needed back home?
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G
Well, if it had been necessary and the removal wasn't necessary in many of these cases, but if it had been necessary to remove it, it would have cost their insurance company between 800 and $1,000. And instead there were liens against their future settlement proceeds between $69,000 and $120,000. And when the average mesh settlement, which was only $40,000, when that wasn't enough to cover it, some of these litigation funders then went after the women themselves for the remainder of the money.
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B
And has it stopped? And what stopped it? If it stopped?
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G
Well, what stopped it is that the mesh litigation gradually resolved. So one of the most disturbing pieces I think, in this is some testimony that comes at the end of the book from a fellow named Blake Barber, who is the middleman. You can picture a six foot tall guy. He kind of dresses somewhere between a teenage skater and a Hell's Angel. He's got a flamingo pink goatee and he sometimes dies at smurf blue or St. Patrick's green. But he testifies at the end of the book that he had been recruited not to do this just in pelvic mesh, but in hip implants and esure women's sterilization devices and the Johnson and Johnson drug that is prescribed for schizophrenia but causes male breasts for the male breast removal surgery. So really, in any case, that you could jack up the settlement value of a claim by having the product no longer in place or having some sort of surgery. This becomes right for that sort of abuse.
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B
Well, one of the most gripping parts of your book was a conference in Las Vegas presided over by Mike Pepantonio from Florida. He likes to be called Pep, and he was a master of ceremonies. His law firm invented something he called, quote, mass torts Made Perfect, end quote. And he ran it as a conference for plaintiff attorneys nationwide to come to Las Vegas to rub elbows and strategize. Your description was really quite vibrant when you went there to make a presentation, and one might call it disgusting in terms of what you described. Can you give us a portrait here?
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G
Sure, absolutely. So it just so happened that I was actually at the Mass Torts Made Perfect. And I say that name somewhat ironically. It's a disturbing name for a conference. But it was in Las Vegas. I was there talking about repeat players on the plaintiff side and the defense side and how they oftentimes enrich one another at the expense of plaintiffs, who are, of course, one shot plaintiffs. And what was unbeknownst to me, I said, well, so let me start with what was known. I saw laid bare this whole industry that I had no idea existed. So Mass Torts isn't just about plaintiffs or plaintiffs lawyers or defendants. It's also about this huge underbelly of litigation funders, of discovery engineers, of, you name it, there is some sort of medical or support service that is there at Mass Torts Made Perfect, handing out tote bags and highlighters and pens with all of their company's names inscribed on them. So what was more interesting was what I had no idea was going on, and that's that the whistleblower who ultimately caused me many years later, to tell me the story that was so fantastical, I couldn't possibly believe it was true. But he was upstairs partying with Vince Chhabra, who was a first generation dot com Indian immigrant who was ultimately arrested for running an online pill mill in the early 2000s. He got out. He was rearrested for running an online puppy mill. He got out. He went to bury his father, take his father's ashes to India, where he hooked up with his cousin who was running one of these Indian call centers, who had the information that I mentioned at the very beginning from the outsourcing of private medical records, data keeping. And so thus began the cold calling of all of the women once the two of them hooked up. But he and Ron Lasorsa, who was my whistleblower, as well as a number of other people, were upstairs celebrating with hookers and strippers and cocaine and IV hydration stations to take the edge off in the morning. The sale of over 14,000 women's claims, most of whom were pelvic mesh plaintiffs, to Aiken Mears, which is a law firm down in Houston that has since filed bankruptcy for $40 million. And so they were celebrating with essentially what was a Wolf of Wall street party. It was everything that you can imagine Vegas being. And it was happening while I was there. Unfortunately, I didn't fortunately, maybe fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't see it firsthand.
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B
Well, we're talking with professor of law Elizabeth Birch, author of the book the Pain Brokers. And it really is an understated title, I think, Elizabeth, the description in this book is really horrifying, and there should be ways to hold these rogue lawyers, doctors involved in these intricate schemes of seduction and pain and suffering and deprivation accountable. Thank you very much, Elizabeth.
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G
Thank you so much for having me.
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C
We've been speaking with Elizabeth Birch. We will link to her work@ralphnaderradiohour.com up next, we continue with Book Week. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber.
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H
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate Crime Reporter Morning minute for Friday, May 1st, 2026. I'm Russell Mokhiber. Less than 24 hours after a George Washington University graduate including remarks about the ongoing genocide in Gaza in her May 2025 commencement speech, Ernst and Young illegally fired her. That's according to a lawsuit she filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. According to the graduate Cecilia Culver, the university, Ernst and Young and officials from both organizations engaged in a, quote, coordinated institutional assault on her ability to work and on her reputation. That's according to a report in the ABA Journal. The day after her May 17, 2025 speech, Ernst and Young placed Culver on administrative leave and locked her out of her email account, the lawsuit alleges. For the corporate crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mulkheimer.
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C
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. What's up next, David?
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David Schmidt is a lifelong San Francisco Bay Area resident, naturalist and environmental historian. He worked as a writer in the public affairs office of the U.S. environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco from 1991 to 2021, led dozens of hikes for the Greenbelt alliance and the region's extensive public parklands, and volunteered on habitat restoration projects for the Golden Gate National Parks and the California Native Plant Society. He is the author of San Francisco Bay Area An Environmental History. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. David schmidt, hello.
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Thanks for having me, David.
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B
This is one of the most remarkable books I've ever read. You worked 30 years on this book. It's an intricate biography of the San Francisco Bay area. He calls it an environmental history, but in a way, it's much more than that. It tells you about where you live in 600 brilliant pages with graphs and photographs and quotation marks to show all the people who were involved in building this area, people who were involved in polluting this area. And indeed, you have recovered from history the remarkable people who fought for the good life against greedy, avaricious and harmful interests. And these people would have been lost for history without your many biographies of them at the back of this book. Now, you've been involved in championing the right of initiative, referendum, recall, you've had a history of direct democracy, but then you spent almost 30 years on the Bay Area. So I want to ask you, in your own words, why did you write this book and spend so many years on it? What drove you?
- [35:06]
I
Well, I guess the biggest reason was that I saw the older environmental leaders passing away and I didn't want their stories to be lost. And I wanted people, the younger generation, to learn from them how the environment of the Bay Area was saved against all the polluters and all the developers that were influencing state, local and federal government for decades. In fact, for a century before the environmental movement here in the Bay Area turned it around in the 1960s and
- [35:40]
B
70s, it was quite a remarkable display of using our democratic tools to fight back. I mean, I knew some of these people that you give portraits of, but I didn't know a lot of the others. And it's a great story because the model for the kind of books that should be written all over the country on where people live gives them the sense of place, a sense of history, a sense of protection, a sense of engagement, a sense of posterity.
- [36:10]
I
I totally agree. This is the kind of thing that can motivate people to get involved environmental protection with their local environmental groups or regional environmental groups like Save the Bay,
- [36:24]
B
and people want to order it directly can go to backcountrypress.com backcountry press1word.com this is a book, listeners, that's not going to go out of date. You don't have to worry about that. What else would you like to say to our listeners about this book?
- [36:41]
I
Well, a couple of things. This is the only book that tells the whole story of the environmental movement in the Bay Area, which I think is the most successful regional environmental movement in U.S. history. Its victories have had a tremendous impact on protecting the natural landscape, the agricultural landscape. And this is a landscape that is famous for its scenic beauty. It's among the world's most biodiverse landscapes with more than a thousand species of plants and wildlife. And persistence pays off. That is the theme that comes across time and again with the environmental victories, is persistence pays off. And one of the biggest environmental victories, saving the bay. They had to pass two state laws to do it. It took eight years. And I always say, never give up. You can win even after you lose. A couple of other themes. Government regulations, laws and enforcement are essential. So you have to pass laws in order to get environmental protections to last. And there are many examples of this in my book. And of course, public support is essential. The greatest environmental laws were passed both in the Bay Area and nationally when public support was the highest in the 1960s and 1970s. But it's not just the leaders of the environmental movement that have made the victories possible. It's also hundreds of people who attended hearings, wrote to legislators, made phone calls to legislators. And not only that, but millions of Bay Area voters. We are in an urban area of 8 million people. Millions of Bay Area voters over the past century have passed dozens of bond propositions to fund parkland acquisition, sewage treatment facilities during the past hundred years. They've passed urban growth boundaries during the past 40 years. And thousands of people have volunteered in environmental restoration projects over the past 35 years which have made a great difference in restoring some of the areas that were essentially destroyed and brought back to functioning wetlands, functioning habitats for wildlife.
- [38:59]
B
There you are, listeners. A lot to learn from no matter where you are in the country. Thank you very much, David Smith.
- [39:06]
I
Thank you, Ralph. And if anyone wants to contact me, I'm@davidnaturesfmail.com that's davidnaturesfmail.com There you are.
- [39:17]
B
Thank you.
- [39:18]
I
Thanks, Ralph.
- [39:20]
C
We've been speaking with David Schmidt. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Stand up.
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D
Stand up.
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E
Mark Axelrod is an award winning frontline industrial hygienist and workplace safety professional. He has developed and implemented programs to protect people from industry's most hazardous technologies. He has worked for employers including Boeing, Kaiser Permanente, UCLA and the city of Beverly Hills, is the author of the Flame Bucket Adventures in Workplace Safety. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Mark Axelrod.
- [40:00]
J
Well, thank you. I'm so happy to be here to talk about my book, the Flame Bucket.
- [40:06]
B
Well, your book is an interesting one. I've never quite read a book like this on worker safety. You've worked for all kinds of different employers near the end of your active career on this Beverly Hills. And there's where you had A real conflict. Can you tell us about your book through your lens? Working for the affluent city of Beverly Hills, California?
- [40:29]
J
Well, thank you for that introduction, Ralph. Yes, I did bring a lot of experience to the city of Beverly Hills to be their city safety officer. And probably a little too much experience, as I found out when we were gathering documents in discovery. I was labeled over experience to experience, which could be code, a code phrase for things. But I got to Beverly Hills and I love working there because it's my hometown. I mean, I was president of the Little league here. I ran the soccer referees for ayso new people in the community. I knew people on the city council and mayors of the city. And I thought it would be great to get backstage and see how the city operates and try to make the city safer. And so that's what I tried to do and was successful on some things and had some challenges and other things. And when it really came down to one particular project, I had to remember what the title of my future book was. The Flame Bucket. So let me just describe how I got that title. It's from the Challenger Launch Decision, a book by Diane Vaughan, who is not an engineer or a safety person. She's an anthropologist. And what she was looking at was the culture, the safety culture of NASA and how it led to the decision to launch Challenger with a very risky O ring in the solid fuel rockets. And the rocket engineers had a saying that they used because they knew the O ring was at risk, especially at very low temperatures, and they gave their recommendation not to launch. But the launch deciders thought differently. The rocket engineers, though, had a fallback. Their story is that if you really want to stop a launch, you have to lay down in the flame bucket. That's the concrete trench under the rocket where all the flame and smoke comes out.
- [42:46]
B
Well, apparently, the Beverly Hills officials didn't like what you did in it one instance, and they let you go.
- [42:54]
C
Yes.
- [42:54]
B
You fought back. Can you tell us briefly what was all about? Because it sort of illustrates your whole book.
- [43:01]
J
Yeah. So you can lie down in the flame bucket and stop a launch, but you can only do it once. So I decided that we had a very risky program. It was for testing our commercial drivers for alcohol and drugs. And somehow they got a big percentage of them, almost a third of them got left out of the program. And I can see just being backstage and what happens in city government and people leave and people come and how these kinds of things can occur. But when they do happen, what you got to do is stop everything, blame the people that left and then fix it right away. But this program, even though people knew that there was a big gap in it that just, they just didn't want to fix it. But I knew as city safety officer, I was responsible. So after months of delay, I said, listen, these drivers can't drive anymore. They can't do their safety functions without a clearance test from a art drug and alcohol program. And so that got their attention and we quickly fixed the program and I got a lot of thank yous. And then a few days later I was fired. They say laid off and you know, we reorganized, but really they just, they didn't want me there anymore.
- [44:25]
B
Well, you fought back and you settled. They wanted to gag you, but you finally put out a press release. I want listeners to know about this book is a wonderfully wandering book. This is not just a didactic, stern description of various hazards that Mark Axelrod was retained to minimize for various places in Southern California. Dedicated industrial hygienists and other safety advocates are often treated as pariahs when they press too hard to do the right thing and have their clients produce a safer workplace or a safer community. What would you like to add in conclusion? MARK Axelrod?
- [45:09]
J
I would like to add a statement from a recent lessons learned by the National Nuclear Safety Administration. This accident could have been avoided if the safety culture was one which always questioned the adequacy of current practices, one that pondered the possibility of failure rather than assuming success, one that understood that risk should only be accepted after evaluation and thoughtful consideration, and one that that always pursued improvement.
- [45:45]
B
That's a wonderful description of the profession of which you are a part industrial hygiene. That is what industrial hygienists should be all about. And you are a paragon of that profession. Mark say how people can reach you again slowly.
- [46:02]
J
Mark Axelrod at Axelrod M H A X E L R O D m h@aol.com and the book is the Flame
- [46:15]
B
Bucket Adventures in Workplace Safety. Thank you very much, Mark Axelrod.
- [46:21]
J
Thank you, Ralph.
- [46:23]
C
We've been speaking with Mark Axelrod. We'll link to his work@ralphnaderadiohour.com Stand up.
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D
Stand up.
- [46:31]
E
Jonathan Kozel is a leading advocate for child centered learning, equality and racial justice in our nation's schools, and he travels and lectures about educational inequality and racial injustice. Mr. Kozal is the author of nearly a dozen books about young children in their public schools, including Death at an Early Age, An End to Inequality, Breaking down the Walls of Apartheid, Education in America, and We Shall Not Bow Down Children of Color under Siege, the invocation to resistance. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Jonathan Kozel.
- [47:09]
A
Thank you.
- [47:10]
B
Welcome back, Jonathan. This little book which we want you to describe has two very thoughtful introductions by prominent people. Randy Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers and has championed children and teachers in our public schools. And then the other one is Theodore Shaw, who is the former chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who tried some of the most decisive cases on racial equity and affirmative action before the federal courts. Tell our listeners why you wrote this book and why they should be engaged in reading it, whether they are parents of children in public schools or not.
- [47:55]
A
Okay. And thanks so much, Ralph. It's great to see you again. The book is titled We Shall Not Bow down, and it directly confronts and rips apart Donald Trump's barbarous assault on children, schools, and teachers. It also attacks his assault on critical thinking and his denial of children's rights and power to interrogate an unjust status quo, essentially training kids to grow up into passive and compliant adult citizens without the intelligent irreverence to challenge a demagogic leader. Penalizing teachers who have the courage to speak truth to power. And that part troubles me particularly because I know so many wonderful teachers who refuse to genuflect before in autocratic order, but are beginning to throw up their hands and sometimes tell me that they're thinking of quitting the profession, banning books, and in the case of Trump, denying teachers and children the right to address diversity in any and all respects, just steer away from diversity. Teachers are told having the funds that children need for special needs and now trying to cut Medicaid, which provides those children with medical care. I've known so many children who are emotionally burdened and desperately need the counseling and medical care that Trump is trying to deny them. Finally, among his worst offenses, the vicious language he uses in speaking about immigrants. He speaks of immigrants having bad genes, bad genes, or, quote, poisoning the blood of our society. Those are his exact words, devastating words, which drag us back 100 years to the era of eugenics and perhaps even worse, are almost exact replicas of words that Adolf Hitler used as he rose to power in the 1930s. All of this, Ralph, in my belief, is more than sufficient reason to speak about impeachment and to speak about impeachment of his president. But my book also directly addresses the resurgent segregation of our public schools. When I was a young teacher, as you know, I was. When I was 29 years old, I taught in a deeply segregated School in Boston, a miserable school, which I described in my first book, death at an early age. And the book, to my surprise, won the national book award. So I had, you know, this youthful faith that books could change society. You know, I thought segregation would soon be a vestige of the past. I was wrong. The segregation in our schools today is at its highest level since the early 1980s. And because the schools are so flagrantly unequal, we haven't even lived up to the promises of Plessy vs Ferguson 1896. Plessy, which tolerated segregated schools so long as they were equal. Our schools are both separate and unequal. Brown versus Board is like a ghost of Christmas past. Even worse, in these segregated schools, we now see a disparate agenda targeting children of color. Rituals of shaming, punitive control. Absolute silence, no questions, no laughter, no smiles. Rituals of. Rituals of autocratic control over the children if they interrupt the pacing of the lesson. Many times children are put in lockdown rooms, even very young children. Lockdown rooms, typically in a hallway storage closet. I saw one of these for myself at a school I visited in Boston not so long ago. Corporal punishment has come back, especially in southern states. Even prepubescent or adolescent girls forced to bend over, lift their rear end so they can be beaten. Even worse, maybe in that even more alarming, we're seeing an increasing practice of juvenile arrest. Calling kids out of the classroom, calling in the police, hauling kids as young as 6 years old out of the classroom and dragging them off to some form of juvenile detention. And if that weren't enough, in many of these separate and unequal schools, the buildings in gross disrepair because of lack of sufficient funding. Bio restrooms. I quote one little girl in Boston who said that she didn't go to the bathroom all day long when she had to urinate. She said, I just sit there and hold it in because the bathroom was so disgusting. No hot water, no soap, no towels, broken toilet seats. Some of the same schools are loaded with lead paint. Poison lead crumbling from the walls and ceilings. We've known for decades that lead paint exposure for young children can often cause irreversible brain damage and behavioral damage. I'm just stunned at how frequently our schools remain dangerous for children.
- [53:40]
B
There's such repercussions when these children become adults. They have been so damaged that they withdraw from engagement in civil activity. In strengthening democracy, its grassroots. They haven't been exposed to civic skills, civic experience, civic education. Maybe now they have computers in their classroom, just learning how to be cogs in some giant corporate mill and not knowing what their rights are, not being part of a community spirit, it has very serious damages to our society in many dimensions. JONATHAN which is why your book is so important. It isn't just the kids as kids, or children as children, as I prefer to call them. It's what happens later. And the rise of Trump is a perfect example of tens of millions of people who never learned about civics, never learned about democratic practices, never learned about even the branches of a government and the federal system and all the things that you have to know about voting rights. And they became very susceptible to this failed gambling czar whose name is Donald J. Trump. What else would you like to say in conclusion?
- [54:58]
A
Jonathan kozo well, I'm glad you mentioned the corporations, because one of the most alarming issues I describe in the book is the corporate invasion of the public classroom. It's not simply that the corporate groups promoting right wing charter schools, they also are creating groups that go into the public schools to retrain teachers in order to mute their ability to speak honestly to children and instead training them not to smile, not to treat the children as emotional equals, but to treat the children as adversaries, to be suppressed as potentially dangerous, subversive little creatures. I might end this just by saying my book is not simply a polite description of these problems. It's probably the most militant book I've ever written. It's an open call for militant resistance and I get condemned for that. But I'm not afraid to say that I'm an unregenerate activist and unto all to change my stripes.
- [56:09]
B
Thank you very much. Jonathan Kozel Thanks Ralph.
- [56:12]
A
Bye bye.
- [56:13]
C
We've been speaking with Jonathan Kozol. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com that's our show. I want to thank our guests Linda Gunter, Sean Simpson, Elizabeth Birch, David Schmidt, Mark Axelrod and Jonathan Kozel. For those of you listening on the radio, we're going to cut out now for you podcast listeners. Stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with in case you haven't heard, a transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [56:43]
E
Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free@nader.org for more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at corporate crime reporter.com the American
- [56:57]
C
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.
- [57:06]
E
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com and remember to continue the
- [57:16]
C
conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
- [57:24]
E
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:33]
C
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:39]
E
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:44]
B
Thank you everybody. We want to hear from you because we have a proposal to make to you about an informal book club Stand up, step up.
- [57:53]
D
You are to step up, rise up.
- [57:56]
A
Arise up.
- [57:57]
B
I know you want to rise up.
- [58:08]
A
Step up. I think that.
- [58:29]
D
Donating your car or boat is an
- [58:31]
E
excellent way to help KPFK stay alive and on air.
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B
All you have to do is call 877kpfk auto.
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A
That's 877kpfkauto and we'll take care of everything.
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D
This is Chuck Foster.
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B
I host Reggae Central every Sunday afternoon
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D
right here on KPFK at 2 o', clock, where you'll hear ska, rocksteady, roots,
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B
dub and dance hall every Sunday afternoon
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D
at 2 right here on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA.
- [59:15]
K
Will Gear Theatricum Botanicum returns this June 6th through October 4th with outdoor repertory theater events and educational programs for all ages. A Midsummer Night's Dream is back alongside Romeo and Juliet, Treasure Island, Noel Cowards Waiting in the Wings, and Bernardo Cubria's dark and incisive new comedy, the People of Pompeii. Set in the Aftermath of the 2025 Palisades fire, Theatricum is located in Topanga Canyon, just off the 101 freeway in the shade of the California live oaks. Explore and picnic in the gardens before the show. Further information available at www.theatricum.com and@kpfk.org.