Ralph speaks to economist Dean Baker about the hypocrisies behind the supposed Social Security shortfall and Republicans' "waste, fraud, and abuse" panic. Then, Ralph talks to journalist and ocean activist David Helvarg about his new book: Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.

Offer for Ralph Nader Radio Hour Listeners— Armistice Day and the Empire by Matthew Hoh

Dean Baker is a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where he authors “Beat the Press,” his regular commentary on economic reporting. He has written several books, including Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

People will hear big numbers. They’ll hear “$300 billion” and they’ll go “Oh my God, that’s a lot of money. That’s money out of my pocket. It’s causing the government deficit,” whatever. That’s because they haven’t given it any context…If we could, in any conceivable world, afford to pay $500 billion to increase the military budget, surely we can afford to pay $300 billion to ensure that everyone gets their Social Security benefits. It’s just a case of: 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.

Dean Baker

Where [DOGE] had the biggest consequences is with foreign aid. [Musk] 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 chipper.” That’s almost verbatim what he said. Now, what this meant was that you have people— and you could find waste in that program just like any other program, but this is a program that provided millions of people with medicine, with nutrition, with healthcare. And suddenly they couldn’t get it…And Elon Musk was boasting that 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.

Dean Baker

So we’re saying we have people on Medicaid that are committing fraud? No one gets a check from 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.

Dean Baker

David Helvarg is a journalist and ocean activist. He is 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 has written several books, including Blue Frontier, The War Against the Greens, and Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.

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, 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.

David Helvarg

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 kelp 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 1,800 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, and 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. I’m more frustrated than despairing because we know what the solutions are. It’s creating the political will to enact them.

David Helvarg

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.

David Helvarg

News 6/26/26

* Our top story this week comes to us from New York City, where democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani has pulled off a stunning hat trick, with all three candidates for Congress endorsed by the Mayor winning their primaries on Tuesday. The most surprising victory is that of Darializa Avila Chevalier, who ousted the powerful incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in New York’s 13th congressional district. This primary had turned ugly, with Espaillat’s campaign seeking to weaponize anti-Haitian racism in the Dominican community against Avila Chevalier, per the Haitian Times, despite the fact that she is not in fact Haitian. Impressive in another way is the victory of UAW organizer and New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez in New York’s 7th district. Much has been made of this race being a proxy battle between Mamdani and his onetime supporter, retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who backed her protégé, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to succeed her in this seat. Reynoso enjoyed the support of a broad range of New York elected officials – including Velazquez along with New York Attorney General Letitia James, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and a broad range of unions and civil society groups, most notably the Working Families Party – but was absolutely trounced by Valdez, who won by over 20 points with the support of Mamdani and NYC-DSA. Meanwhile, in the 10th district, Brad Lander won by an even greater margin, outrunning incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman by over 30 points while running on a pro-Palestine platform in the most Jewish congressional district in America. These victories send a clear signal to the sclerotic, ossified leadership of the Democratic Party. The only question now is will they listen.

* Beyond the congressional races, DSA won a remarkable number of races at the state level. According to Democratic Left, DSA will send as many as seven new legislators to Albany this cycle, for a total of “four state senators and 11 or 12 members of the state assembly.” As the magazine notes, this means that the “2027-2028 socialist bloc in Albany will be the second largest in a state legislature in U.S. history…behind 20 members in Wisconsin in 1919 and ahead of 14 members in Wisconsin in 1911.” Within New York City, DSA endorsed candidates won seven out of eight races for seats in the state legislature, per NYC-DSA. All told, it was a thunderous victory for the left in New York and raises the clout of Zohran and his compatriots to dizzying heights.

* Meanwhile, in Washington DC, NOTUS reports the local DSA has exploded in membership, adding nearly 1,000 new members since this time last year. This growing bloc flexed its political muscle in the recent Democratic primaries, electing DSA members Janeese Lewis George for Mayor and Aparna Raj for the Ward 1 seat on the DC Council, as well as Oye Owolewa for an at-large seat. Axios notes that they are already eying, “two more openings — to fill Lewis George’s Ward 4 seat and the at-large seat of Congress-bound Robert White.” If these votes go in DSA’s favor, Lewis George could assume the mayoralty with a progressive majority of seven out of 13 members on the Council. Since her victory last Tuesday, Lewis George has emphasized her plan to lower utility costs through “expanding government solar,” and “balcony solar” for apartment tenants, opti...