Ralph Nader: Capitol Hill Citizen For Your Civic Empowerment – OpEd

Our Capitol Hill Citizen (CHC) newspaper is just out with its latest edition. (To obtain a copy visit capitolhillcitizen.com). All forty pages in print only (more on that later) are devoted to empowering voters with news beyond official source journalism.

The mainstream press pushes reporters to rely on official source journalism and online clickbait stories. They miss major stories about Congress – the gigantically powerful institution that is delegated so much of our sovereign power under the Constitution. The trouble is that Congress has become a rubber stamp vis-à-vis the presidency and the sprawling Executive Branch. Congress lets the Executive Branch usurp its constitutional authority daily and use this authority to further the interests of corporate lobbyists.

Not surprisingly, except for an article in Politico, both the corporate and the so-called independent media have ignored the CHC’s first five issues. Many media beat reporters regularly write about newspapers closing down. Why wouldn’t they want to write a feature on a rising newspaper, especially one reporting on Congress?

After reading the current issue, you’ll wonder even more why you haven’t been told about this endeavor to attract more attention by citizens to what Congress is doing with the peoples’ power.

Did you know, for example, that corporate crime cases hit a new low under Biden – lower than even under Trump – and still no Congressional hearings to find out why? Or did you know that OSHA – the federal workplace health and safety agency, is now having its enforcement efforts suspended due to the failure of Congress to confirm its key staff positions?

There are Delaware towns that want to give corporations the right to vote in general elections!! No one has heard a peep about this travesty from Delaware Joe Biden or Congress. Is giving artificial entities the right to vote, like real people, bothering any member of the corporate Congress? The CHC also brings to your notice a recent book titled What’s the Matter with Delaware? by Hal Weitzman that shows how this one little state “enables international crime, shelters tax dodgers and diverts hard-earned dollars from the rest of us.” Replacing Delaware’s corporate chartering haven with federal chartering of large corporations was advocated by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson over a hundred years ago but today, mum’s the word in Congress.

Other articles include why Congress needs to protect government whistleblowers, how the U.S. became a multi-trillion-dollar warfare state, and the need for Congress to have an educational program to tutor members and their staff about Congressional authority, history, duty and capacity.

The criminal neglect by Congress in letting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney unconstitutionally invade and destroy Iraq with massive local casualties is noted after twenty years of those two war criminals being fugitives from justice. Thoughtful interviews with Iraq War opponents Cindy Sheehan, former commander Matthew Hoh and courageous journalist (in Fallujah) Dahr Jamail present our nation’s lawless empire story to those on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. (Every member of Congress and each Congressional Committee office receive a copy of CHC the morning of its publication.)

Our new report titled The Incommunicados – published to strengthen your demand that members of Congress respect and respond to your First Amendment right “…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” – is reviewed in the pages of CHC. Congress and the Executive Branch are engaged in our history’s greatest blackout against citizens who care enough to communicate with these so-called public servants. Get informed and act!

The legendary expert on Pentagon waste and fraud – Franklin Spinney – speaks the latest truth, from his many years in the Pentagon, about the wild spending of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Two specialists write on the “Toxic Inaction: No Movement in Congress on the Precautionary Principle.”

I’ve written an article on what people back home can do during the upcoming long Congressional August recess to formally summon their Senators and Representatives to town meetings run by the people on the overriding subject of massive corporate power. Over seventy percent of Americans believe corporations have too much “control over their lives.” On some issues like banning commercial money in politics and cracking down on corporate crime, there are even higher levels of public support.

The Capitol Hill Citizen is, visually, a beautiful multi-colored production with on point photographs and even some poetry and satire.

CHC’s availability in print only has received detailed praise from people who are fed up with online clutter, intrusiveness and vacuous distractions. CHC provides an old-fashioned focus on its clearly painted newspaper in readers’ hands. We and many other groups have had their presentations online for years, yet the internet’s overloading nets little response and great excuses for procrastination by likely readers and viewers.

Tell the editor of your favorite local and national print publications that another newspaper is rising to counter the downward trend of print journalism. Tell NPR and PBS to replace some of their frivolity with vital information and inform their audiences about how they can create a more informed, functional and just democratic society.

CHC’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight.” But democracy also thrives with broad-minded citizens who steadfastly exercise their power.