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( . . and not to the happiest place on earth either!)

In 1975, the big concern (post-Watergate) was where our consumer society was heading. Ralph Nader, riding the crest of the Consumer bandwagon was actively pursuing the development of a Consumer Advocacy Agency, geared toward safeguarding the people of the U.S. against unsafe water, unsafe cars, unsafe food and anything else seen as endangering our society.

Then, as now, it was met with a lot of resistance and fear. Fear that all these regulations would indeed hurt and doom our society, our economy and our free enterprise system, not improve on it. Trying to protect the American people from unscrupulous business practices was seen as a dangerous red flag in the eyes of the Republican leadership.

As part of its continuing series of National Town Meetings, broadcast by NPR, a debate and Q&A session took place on April 23, 1975. It featured Ralph Nader - Consumer advocate and Senator Carl Curtis (R-Nebraska).

It is interesting to note the level of desperation Curtis addresses the Meeting, citing dire consequences to even our Foreign Policy should such legislation become law.

Ralph Nader:

"The Consumer Advocacy Agency deals with such things as dangerous drugs, flammable fabrics, unsafe cars, gouging energy prices, contaminated food, and these are the areas that will be the province of the consumer agency. It also doesn’t regulate a thing. All it does is just make the government agencies, hold their feet to reason, and data. And if they can’t support their procedural and substantive courses of action, then this agency can take other agencies to court. That’s all. And that’s enough for big business."

Carl Curtis:

"I hold in my hand a letter from the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, vigorously opposing this act. They say is will disrupt emergency food aid to foreign nations through the beneficial PL-480 Assistance Food Program, and thus seriously affect U.S. foreign policy. I’ll illustrate how that can happen: The Consumer Advocacy Agency can challenge a decision to send some food abroad, on the ground that any food that is shipped out of this country, it will effect the price here. They can drag that on for a long time."

As I've pointed out in the past, and as I've shown with posts dealing with the question of Health Care, the wages of fear and distortion are enormous. The resistance towards anything that opposes the status quo is almost immediately met with the threat of dire consequences. Consequences that are not based on anything remotely resembling facts.

But it is all fear. It is sometimes the only card those about to lose power can play.

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(1971 - the brief respite between the World's Longest Party and Our Great National Nervous Breakdown)

Hard to imagine that 1971 was a sort of resting point in our rather skewed history. At the time of course, it didn't seem that way - in 1971 Campuses were still hotbeds of disturbance, Vietnam was still grinding on, cities were falling apart. But we were optimistic all was going to be okay with the world and prosperity was just around the corner.

Sadly, no.

This documentary, part of the NBC Radio series "Second Sunday", aired in April 1971 was concerned about our place in the world. A reassessment of who we were as a society - the old "who am I, what am I doing and where am I going" mantra that was so popular during those years.

And questions are posed to a number of people - Ralph Nader, newly elected Governor Jimmy Carter, Senator Howard Baker, Gunnar Myrdal, Jean-Francois Revel, John Gardner (founder of Common Cause) and Dr. Milton Eisenhower who offers this interesting observation:

Dr. Milton Eisenhower: “We do seem to have a new kind of violence in this country, we have some people who are actively advocating revolution, which I think is relatively new in America.”

Question: Where do think this will lead? Do you think this is a self-defeating thing?

Eisenhower: “ First let me say that there are nihilists, there are revolutionaries; most of them young. Many of them, in our colleges and universities. But it’s terribly important that the American people understand that they constitute a very small minority. They make a lot of noise and I may say the mass media give them a great exposure to the American people, but they can’t be more than one, two or three percent of the total. Yes, this is something new.”

Question: “How do you answer the argument that we engage in violence in Vietnam, so violence is warranted here in America. And those who argue that the system is so rotten and has such basic defects that the system itself is not worth preserving and hence you need revolution in this country to purify the government.”

Eisenhower: “Well I think that’s a terribly specious argument. If we lived in a dictatorship, and the dictatorship had proclaimed and carried on the war, and therefore citizens could do little if anything about it, one could well argue that in these circumstances revolution, internal revolution would be the corrective measure to take. But once the people themselves have taken possession of the basic social power, which is the situation in our free democratic society, and we exercise this power through a representative form of government, then the only way, the only reasonable way to get action is to work through these political procedures. All other methods are illegitimate and are self-defeating. Margaret Chase-Smith made a speech in the Senate that was worth the attention of the American people, in which she said that, if the left-wing extremists, who are causing a good share of the trouble don’t look out, they are going to drive America to the right. The danger in America is not going too far to the left – the danger in America is going too far to the right.”

That last quote is particularly telling considering where the country would wind up in the next decade.

Of course, at the time no one suspected a thing . . . .

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(Acknowledging coffee as a food group)

In 1974 the argument was whether or not to call it a Recession or a Depression, but without any doubt we had one.

The economic woes of the 1970s extended well into the 1980's, with fits and starts and forays into inflation and deflation and stagflation - a veritable plethora of 'flations confronting the country for the better part of a decade. President Ford initiated the somewhat feeble Whip Inflation Now as gas prices went spiraling up, home values came cascading down and unemployment skyrocketed. Sound familiar?

There was a lot of analysis to be had - one was a panel discussion broadcast by NBC Radio in 1974 and later edited into a one hour documentary called "The Wayward Economy" as part of their Second Sunday series. The panel consisted of various economic "experts" (with heavy emphasis on the Chicago School of Economics) at the time; Pierre Renfret, Peter G. Peterson, Ralph Nader (during his relevancy period), Yale Brozen and Tilford Gaines.

This documentary was aired on September 17, 1974.

Refusing to do any of the work to build up third party infrastructure nationally, Ralph Nader has a bit of sour grapes whine, and calls Obama an "Uncle Tom".

It's really bad when Fox News is classier than a national figure like Ralph Nader. Good on Shepard Smith.