Asymmetrical Information

TCS wouldn't publish this? Unreal. Brilliant. This one is a keeper.

-Brad

So what's the point of the PennPIRG story? That everyone who works for a liberal cause should work for free or else they're a hypocrite? And of course hopefully landlords, printers, and other suppliers will all contribute for the common good as well? Even if this type of fantasy could scale in the real world it would result in lots of part-time people and trust-fund kids working for them and few others. I don't see what this aspect of practicality has to do with the principles on which Ralph Nader is running.

As far as fact distortion, are you saying that Naderites are LESS fact-respecting than "the industries they are fighting"? Again, this is the real world. I'm sure everybody does their best to represent everything accurately, but sometimes when you have a limited amount of time to build a case for action that is justified for a number of nuanced reasons that can easily be dismissed by simpler arguments like "but we don't know if the global average temperature is really going up" [yes, it is difficult to rule out natural trends but there a large number of converging factors suggesting that more is going on, but who is going to sit still to listen to these], the temptation to stretch or exaggerate, perhaps even unconsciously, can be difficult to resist.

I'm not saying "to hell with the facts in the name of St. Ralph", but just that it is wrong to dismiss the efforts of a noble man standing up for what he and many think are reasonable principles on the basis of expecting everyone and everything associated with him to be perfectly ideal.

I'm not arguing that people should work for free. I'm arguing that Nader groups don't do anything with all the money they take in -- most of it seems merely to fund more fundraising. That the donors do not understand that this is where their money goes, is reprehensible.

And I'm not the one who said that the "research" done by Nader groups is crap, although that has also been my experience. That quote comes from a public policy professor who's as liberal as they come.

On the fundraising point, perhaps I'm just ignorant -- what is the alternative? If an organization does not devote some of its income to bringing in further funds, how does it survive? Political campaigns have paid fundraising arms. Nonprofit organizations and universities have full-time staff devoted to courting donors, maintaining contact with alumni, applying for government grants, etc.. What is the structure that a "PIRG" should have that would allow them to survive without doing this? Are there other organizations you've worked for that do things differently?

As far as research quality, I'm not going to dispute the "public policy professor" here but I would say that: (a) Nader's net result for American society has been positive (see publiccitizen.org for some specifics), (b) as I said before sloppiness sometimes arises naturally when faced with the need to make clear points to people with limited time to spend on issues, especially when those points support making perhaps uncomfortable changes to the status quo, (c) in the current socio-economic environment it can be difficult for an organization without guaranteed funding sources to maintain consistently high quality standards, and (d) this difficulty is exactly one of the major points of Nader's campaign.

ABR,

If the money brought in does not exceed the amount of money that it takes to bring this money in, the alternative is a fold and stop raising money.

People don't donate so that there can be a Nader Money Raising Machine, they donate for some other reason. If the money in fact goes to nothing but raising more money, then there is no sense in having this money raising machine in the first place.

Jane's point, I believe, is that people should be made aware of just how much money of what they donate goes to raising more money, and how much goes to the actual cause they're trying to contribute to. This way they can decide of it's worth it.

Remember, this is not a business, it's a charity. There's greater transparency of the process which should be there in a charity.

ABR - I think Jane's point about the amount spent on fundraising is the same point often raised about other charities' fundraising efforts. While virtually all charity's use some of the funds raised to offset administrative costs (of which fundraising is just a part), the better charities spend most of their money on charitable work -- feeding the poor, treating the sick, housing the homeless, or conducting "real" research. Some charities spend most of their money raising more money. The question is, if your goal (as a donor) is to help the poor, are you going to give to the charity that will spend 90% of your donation raising more money or the one that will spend 90% of your donation directly on the poor?

Jane's point seems to be that many contributors to the Naderite organizations would not have given had they any idea how little of their donations would actually be used in real charitable work. I don't know if she's right about that, but it seems to be a legitimate question.

This whole thing reminds me of a prospective client who, at the height of the cold war, wanted to establish a charity whose purported purpose was to improve relations between the US and the USSR. In actual fact, the purpose of the charity would be to use donated funds to pay for the prospective client's lifestyle -- she wanted to travel to the USSR and thought gathering donations to further her mission of establishing a "citizen to citizen" dialog between the two countries was cheap way of accomplishing her goal. With luck, she hoped the donations would allow her to buy or rent homes in the US and the USSR and cover her travel expenses back and forth. We didn't take the client and I don't know what came of her idea, but anyone who gave her money would have been unlikely to know of her real motivations.

A while ago Christopher Hitchens did a devasting debunking of Mother Teressa in his book 'Missionary Position'. He found that much of the money given to her went not for improved hospitals (one of the things that set him off was visiting her delapidated hospitals and asking himself why they were so run down when millions were being donated to her) but to sit idle in various funds.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone as sanctimonious has Nadar turned out to be filled with hot air. I don't doubt that Nadar did some good by alerting us to car safety and consumer fraud but I wouldn't be surprised if his organization is as backward as Jane depicts.

OK, so the original point then was that Nader's PIRG operations were spending XX% of incoming funds on further fundraising, whereas it should have been YY%. This is indeeed an interesting discussion, but I would like to know are there any economist or financial manager types out there who can say anything about what YY should be? Of course it surely varies depending on many factors such as material costs, fund-raising environment, etc. (it's really a business management question). In any case, given that we would all like charities to spend 100% of everything on their Causes and working for any of them surely involves disillusionment to some extent, is the belief that XX

On the other hand, the point that every fund-raising effort should in effect provide a "pie slice" type diagram to prospective donors showing where the money goes is a good one. If, as Jane believes would have been the case, this would have proven embarassing for PennPIRG canvassers, then maybe this could have been addressed by providing accompanying comparable statistics for other non-profits in a similar stage of development. But I suspect at this point the prospective donor's attention may start to wander...

sorry.. I meant in the last post, "XX > YY really grounds for "hating" Nader? That was the part I was taking issue with."

I think that when an organisation is spending more than 50% of its fundraising dollars on the fundraising process itself -- which PIRG is indisputibly doing -- it's pretty suspect. And when their literature implies falsely that they're doing scientific research and funding environmental cleanup efforst, that's sketchy indeed.

OK. Enough about fund raising. Well almost enough. Does anyone else remember when Saint Ralph snookered various universities to donate a portion of each student's activity fee to his causes? Of course, the student could "opt out" -- the sort of "negative check-off" that would get any for-profit business charged with consumenr fraud. Actually, what I find most objectionable about him is that he is, and has been for twenty years, a wholly owned shill for plaintiffs' lawyers.

I like plaintiffs' lawyers. And I think "Unsafe At Any Speed" was a noble thing. But the last 20-25 years of Naderism? Feh.

I like plaintiffs' lawyers. And I think "Unsafe At Any Speed" was a noble thing. But the last 20-25 years of Naderism? Feh.

OK. Enough about fund raising. Well almost enough. Does anyone else remember when Saint Ralph snookered various universities to donate a portion of each student's activity fee to his causes? Of course, the student could "opt out" -- the sort of "negative check-off" that would get any for-profit business charged with consumer fraud.

I remember that. It was about $2.50 per student per quarter while I was at the U of MN and if you forgot to check “no,” you had to go to their office and actually request a refund. Naturally, of course, many people would forget to check it off or not take the time to physically go to their office and request a refund for such a small amount. Of course if you have tens of thousands of students at three quarters a year, it adds up to a tidy sum.

IIRC at one point in the 1970s or 80s at some colleges, the fees were actually mandatory.

Jane Galt writes, "I think that when an organisation is spending more than 50% of its fundraising dollars on the fundraising process itself -- which PIRG is indisputibly doing -- it's pretty suspect. And when their literature implies falsely that they're doing scientific research and funding environmental cleanup efforst, that's sketchy indeed."

This is exactly the sort of hand-waving argument that GW Bush made famous (or made him famous, depending on how you look at it). Show me some numbers on the fundraising spending. And you can't just leap from "they are spending 45% on the canvasser and more on the field office" to "they are not spending any money whatsoever on the causes and operations they say they spend it on". Come on! This is just just trying to rationalize an opinion held for other reasons. Unfortunately, many of these may themselves have shaky foundations but if time wasn't taken to examine them (or if one was already partially biased) they probably just contributed to reinforce an opinion.

I'm 100% guilty of this sort of thing as well, I'm just on the other side. But we need to realize the cumulative operation of this type of process on both sides is why understanding and agreement between conservatives and liberals is so difficult, and why every thinking person has the duty to try to stamp out fuzzy discourse relating even remotely to policy when it arises.

Anyhow, fine, whatever, Ralph and his organization suck. Show me another candidate standing for the kinds of reform he is suggesting and I'll vote for him. He is envisioning a different, better IMHO, kind of democracy than we have in the U.S. right now. If you want to tear something down, attack that. Too many people are focusing on the wrong aspects of the 2000 election respecting Nader. It wasn't about spoiling something. It was about an obviously wrong result being returned from an election, and people not being willing or able to do anything about it. That more than many things clearly proves Nader's point that the system is broken.

ABR, you can get the numbers yourself by going to one of their sign-up meetings for students in a couple of months and hearing the compensation structure discussed. Last time I checked, it was 45% to the canvasser right off the top . . . and actually, that's really too low. Our quota was $75 a day, of which $40 went to the canvasser, plus 35-45% of everything else you brought in . . . but most canvassers pulled pretty close to quota, so their percentage was over 50%. But call it 45% . . . once you add in incidentals like rent and managers for the field operation, puts the cost well over 50%. Believe what you wish, but I formed the opinion that it was all as slimy as hell when I was working for the organisation, and was very much a creature of the left. I don't have exact numbers, but I don't need them; you can derive a moral certainty that more than fifty percent of the money their street operations raise goes to funding the street operation's fundraising merely by spending a couple of hours observing said operation. Ask anyone who's ever canvassed and they'll tell you the same thing; most of the money goes to the canvasser.

Or you can do the math another way: look at the ads from PennPIRG, Citizen Action, Public Citizen, Greenpeace, and so on. When I was a student, they promised a minimum of $200 a week; now it's generally $250-$350, depending on the region. (Of course, you only got that minimum if you made quota--otherwise you got fired). Dviding those numbers by 5 tells you that the average canvasser making quota is getting $50-70 a day, even though it takes a really outstanding canvasser to bring in an average of $125 a day.

Hell, wait for one to come by your door this summer, offer them a glass of water and a cookie, and after gently explaining that you don't give money to canvassers, ask them what the going quota and compensation structure is. They'll be surprisingly open . . . at least, they are with me, but of course once I've talked to them, they know I know the score and I'm not coughing up.

Unsafe At Any Speedwas filled with misinformation, distortions, lies, and slanders, and has been thorougly debunked. See Thomas Sowell's The Vision Of The Anointed for an extensive discussion of Ralph Nader and his "work."

Jane, we're going to have to hear the full story about that roommate some day.

There are a variety of charity rating and review organizations out there. They place an upper bound of 25-35% as the reasonable total expenses for raising new donations.

TCS has a piece by Radley Balko on the PRIGs and mandatory student fee scam,"Public Shakedown Artist."

The same time that the various PIRGs were financing themselves using student activity fees and an opt-out option, they were decrying opt-out options by businesses as immoral.

100% agree with this. The PIRGs are filthy organizations, and that's got nothing to do with their politics. Frankly, they don't have much of a politics: they're opportunistic from their head down to their toes. They find bills that other groups have already been working for and try to attach themselves to them as if it had been their idea in the first place. A month and a half of canvassing for CalPIRG in college was enough to teach me that the PIRGs could care less about causes--the only point was to keep the money rolling in. Watching them operate on several college campuses trying to get the coveted special budget item was even more eye-opening. When they came rolling into town at Wesleyan when I was an undergraduate, first they basically dangled the bribe of a job for someone on campus, and then they tried bullying and left-baiting, while all the while refusing to even address the question of why they should get an automatic chunk of the tuition bill sent to them while every other student group had to come looking for funds.

There is a universe of non-profits out there, and a great many fundraising strategies, and virtually none of them employ the odorous combination of labor exploitation and extortion that PIRGs favor--and most nonprofits also deliver much more specific missions with much greater integrity.

100% agree with this. The PIRGs are filthy organizations, and that's got nothing to do with their politics. Frankly, they don't have much of a politics: they're opportunistic from their head down to their toes. They find bills that other groups have already been working for and try to attach themselves to them as if it had been their idea in the first place. A month and a half of canvassing for CalPIRG in college was enough to teach me that the PIRGs could care less about causes--the only point was to keep the money rolling in. Watching them operate on several college campuses trying to get the coveted special budget item was even more eye-opening. When they came rolling into town at Wesleyan when I was an undergraduate, first they basically dangled the bribe of a job for someone on campus, and then they tried bullying and left-baiting, while all the while refusing to even address the question of why they should get an automatic chunk of the tuition bill sent to them while every other student group had to come looking for funds.

There is a universe of non-profits out there, and a great many fundraising strategies, and virtually none of them employ the odorous combination of labor exploitation and extortion that PIRGs favor--and most nonprofits also deliver much more specific missions with much greater integrity.

100% agree with this. The PIRGs are filthy organizations, and that's got nothing to do with their politics. Frankly, they don't have much of a politics: they're opportunistic from their head down to their toes. They find bills that other groups have already been working for and try to attach themselves to them as if it had been their idea in the first place. A month and a half of canvassing for CalPIRG in college was enough to teach me that the PIRGs could care less about causes--the only point was to keep the money rolling in. Watching them operate on several college campuses trying to get the coveted special budget item was even more eye-opening. When they came rolling into town at Wesleyan when I was an undergraduate, first they basically dangled the bribe of a job for someone on campus, and then they tried bullying and left-baiting, while all the while refusing to even address the question of why they should get an automatic chunk of the tuition bill sent to them while every other student group had to come looking for funds.

There is a universe of non-profits out there, and a great many fundraising strategies, and virtually none of them employ the odorous combination of labor exploitation and extortion that PIRGs favor--and many nonprofits also attempt to deliver on much more specific missions with much greater discipline. If the student activity fee strategy were just business as usual, lots of nonprofits would use it, but only PIRGs do, by and large--because only PIRGs are unscrupulous enough to try.

The first clue about the PIRGs should be the funding they raise from college tuitions. You had to request a refund when I went to school if you didn't want to contribute, which given its consumer protecting pretensions is pretty high irony.

ABR, for what it's worth, the CFC lists hundreds of "charities", every one including the percentage of overhead. I don't have the latest word or excel. But, if you do, the link should help you pull your noggin out of that dark place where the truely rightious fear to go...

...willful ignorance

http://www.opm.gov/cfc/

When Unsafe at Any Speed came out, I was a kid growing up outside Detroit and my father was in the auto industry. I read it and was immediately sceptical for two reasons:

1) The book described the Corvair rear suspension as uniquely dangerous, yet the Volkswagen Beetle of the day had the same type of rear suspension. Nader never mentioned the Beetle, lending weight to the argument that he was more interested in attacking Detroit than in general "auto safety."

2) The diagrams showing how Corvair rear suspensions behaved when cornering too quickly were vastly exaggerated: they showed the suspension moving something like 30 degrees, while in reality the springs and shocks would prevent them from moving more than about a third of the amount shown. (Figures from memory.)

Later, my first two cars were Corvairs, and it was clear to me that if you avoided taking curves so quickly that you slid sideways into a curb, you weren't going to flip one over. (Throwing fan belts was another story....)

Plus, Nader is a big advocate of corporate transparency, but keeps his own books and those of his organizations as private as he can.

ABR seems reluctant to accept that PIRG's high fund-raising expenses put it beyond the range of acceptable practices.

Here is what the Better Business Bureau has to say. From their standards for charity accountability:

8. Spend at least 65% of its total expenses on program activities.

9. Spend no more than 35% of related contributions on fund raising.

15. Have solicitations and informational materials, distributed by any means, that are accurate, truthful and not misleading, both in whole and in part. Appeals that omit a clear description of program(s) for which contributions are sought will not meet this standard.

20. Respond promptly to and act on complaints brought to its attention by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance and/or local Better Business Bureaus about fund raising practices, privacy policy violations and/or other issues.

Spending over 50% on fund-raising puts PIRG outside the range of acceptable practices. And then there is the question of dishonesty. Perhaps ABR is the one engaging in "hand-waving" in response to clear statements of fact.

I still remember Ralph Nader running around squawking that the sky would fall if the federal government repealed the nationwide 65 mph speed limit. Chicken Little, I mean, Mr. Nader, wailed that it would result in 6,500 additional traffic deaths annually.

Oops...the total number of deaths rose a tiny amount, but the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven (the only true way to measure highway safety), declined. And the decline was greatest in the states that increased their speed limits.

The fatality rate has kept declining. Today our roads are safer than ever. Personally, how anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on automotive safety while being stupid enough to believe that 65 mph is the maximum safe speed on our highways is beyond me.

And, yes, I'd love to have a 1960-64 Corvair...preferably a Monza coupe or convertible with a floor-mounted four-speed.

I still remember Ralph Nader running around squawking that the sky would fall if the federal government repealed the nationwide 65 mph speed limit. Chicken Little, I mean, Mr. Nader, wailed that it would result in 6,500 additional traffic deaths annually.

Oops...the total number of deaths rose a tiny amount, but the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven (the only true way to measure highway safety), declined. And the decline was greatest in the states that increased their speed limits.

The fatality rate has kept declining. Today our roads are safer than ever. Personally, how anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on automotive safety while being stupid enough to believe that 65 mph is the maximum safe speed on our highways is beyond me.

And, yes, I'd love to have a 1960-64 Corvair...preferably a Monza coupe or convertible with a floor-mounted four-speed.

I still remember Ralph Nader running around squawking that the sky would fall if the federal government repealed the nationwide 65 mph speed limit. Chicken Little, I mean, Mr. Nader, wailed that it would result in 6,500 additional traffic deaths annually.

Oops...the total number of deaths rose a tiny amount, but the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven (the only true way to measure highway safety), declined. And the decline was greatest in the states that increased their speed limits.

The fatality rate has kept declining. Today our roads are safer than ever. Personally, how anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on automotive safety while being stupid enough to believe that 65 mph is the maximum safe speed on our highways is beyond me.

And, yes, I'd love to have a 1960-64 Corvair...preferably a Monza coupe or convertible with a floor-mounted four-speed.

I still remember Ralph Nader running around squawking that the sky would fall if the federal government repealed the nationwide 65 mph speed limit. Chicken Little, I mean, Mr. Nader, wailed that it would result in 6,500 additional traffic deaths annually.

Oops...the total number of deaths rose a tiny amount, but the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven (the only true way to measure highway safety), declined. And the decline was greatest in the states that increased their speed limits.

The fatality rate has kept declining. Today our roads are safer than ever. Personally, how anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on automotive safety while being stupid enough to believe that 65 mph is the maximum safe speed on our highways is beyond me.

And, yes, I'd love to have a 1960-64 Corvair...preferably a Monza coupe or convertible with a floor-mounted four-speed.

So ABR is:

"sure everybody does their best to represent everything accurately, but sometimes when you have a limited amount of time to build a case for action that is justified for a number of nuanced reasons that can easily be dismissed by simpler arguments like 'but we don't know if the global average temperature is really going up' [yes, it is difficult to rule out natural trends but there a large number of converging factors suggesting that more is going on, but who is going to sit still to listen to these], the temptation to stretch or exaggerate, perhaps even unconsciously, can be difficult to resist."

Aside from debatability of ABR's opinion on global warming, am I the only one to notice that folks left of center seem to have no problem with waging a preemptive war on global warming, but not on brutal regimes already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? Perhaps if President Bush started calling his doctrine "the precautionary prinicple," there would be more support for it on the left.

So ABR is:

"sure everybody does their best to represent everything accurately, but sometimes when you have a limited amount of time to build a case for action that is justified for a number of nuanced reasons that can easily be dismissed by simpler arguments like 'but we don't know if the global average temperature is really going up' [yes, it is difficult to rule out natural trends but there a large number of converging factors suggesting that more is going on, but who is going to sit still to listen to these], the temptation to stretch or exaggerate, perhaps even unconsciously, can be difficult to resist."

Aside from debatability of ABR's opinion on global warming, am I the only one to notice that folks left of center seem to have no problem with waging a preemptive war on global warming, but not on brutal regimes already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? Perhaps if President Bush started calling his doctrine "the precautionary prinicple," there would be more support for it on the left.

PIRG - don't the get a lot of their money from poor college freshmen under the misc. fees they have to pay?

I remember another aspect to the PIRG/scam/canvassing -- you've got to work X number of days for them before they start paying you, if I remember right. So, for the people who quit after day one, the money raised that day is free, isn't it?

(Yes, I did this for a day.)

Here at UMass there is a $7 per semester fee. I have a waiver listed for both semesters, but I'm pretty sure I was forced to opt-out.

Re: Digression---as many have pointed out in many forums, Nader's candidacy swung the election to Bush in 2000. Period. Mr Nader seems to be in some sort of denial about it.

To be sure he will get fewer votes this time (it seems unlikely he will even be on the ballot in all 50 states)...however...his run is a distraction that serves no good purpose.

Except perhaps to stroke his own ego.

Cheers,

DD

The notion that Poland was still dependent on horse cavalry was German propaganda. In fact they had light tanks (Czech Christies) and armored cars (Polish licensed Panhard copies) and Polish armor made the invasion costlier than the Germans had expected.

More support for the idea that PIRGs are poorly run and that their student fee collection practices are bad has been given. (As a side issue given the collection of these fees I wonder how much closer it gets them to the ideal 25-30% expenditure mentioned (uncited) on fund-raising than just considering the canvassing operation alone?) However my argument was and is that poorly run PIRGs are not a reason to hate Nader. The connection between the man and the distributed organization is just too tenuous. Heck, I don't even hate Bill Gates even though I can't stand hundreds of things that Microsoft does and stands for. Some good points have been made on PIRGs though and I will make my best effort to improve the management of one if I ever join.

The criticisms of Unsafe at Any Speed are more relevant to judging Nader himself. So far the only concrete criticism has been PapayaSF's question of whether or not the book should have also included foreign models in its arguments, and whether the criticism of the Corvair rear suspension was valid. Possibly the book should have mentioned the Beetle but I'm not sure if there weren't other differences in the Beetle that made the suspension problem described less of a factor, and furthermore I suspect that making the focus too broad and including foreign models might have weakened the impact of the book. I can't speak to the suspension issue directly but will try to look into it. I admit that I have not read the book but had the impression that lives have been saved as a result of it. I'm inclined to be favorable towards it because I disagree with the idea that auto industry should be allowed free reign over safety decisions -- that, e.g., customer backlash should be sufficient to ensure that unsafe designs do not last long. A number of reasons for this, an important one being that when human lives are the medium of measurement, such trial-and-error mechanisms are not sufficient. But this is a large topic for another day.

BTW, the argument by Greg that fewer deaths per XX miles driven is good even though driving has gone up due to the speed limit increase is the same as saying that low-tar cigarettes are good if they lead to lower incidence of cancer than regular ones -- maybe fewer deaths result per cigarette smoked, but if more people are encouraged to smoke (by the impression of safety), is that really good? If people are doing more driving because they can get places quicker, and therefore dying in greater numbers, how is that good? Is quality of life really that high sitting inside a metal box that we want to encourage more of it? Is our economy running more efficiently if we can drive places faster?

Finally, back on the Nader subject, I fail to see how making an unpopular run for president, in which you can expect to get at most a few percent of the vote, and certainly a lot of hate mail, is doing something on the basis of ego, as DD and several prominent democrats have suggested. Please take a look at http://votenader.org and judge for yourself what he is doing and why he is doing it. I strongly doubt any of the critics have.

Of course, responding to any truebeliever is pretty pointless, but . . .

ABR: *nothing* is perfectly safe. That standard is useless. The question is always the tradeoff between relative safety and the cost of making (or knowing) something safer. Thus, if you are near death from dehydration and the only source of water is potentially polluted with PCBs you're almost certainly better off to drink the water. (Well, I am almost certainly better off. I'm not certain about you.) Nader's insistence on fairly ridiculous laws (scientifically speaking) dealing with automobiles have almost certainly cost more lives than they have saved, but at any rate, he solutions are arguably as deadly (in a different direction) as the alternatives he dislikes so.

Also, the reason to hate Nader for the PIRG fundraising scam (that's all you can reasonably call it) is that he is callously and with foreknowledge taking advantage of the better impulses of relatively naive college students. (There should be some term for this similar to pedophilia. Any suggestions?) An organization that exists (evidently) for the major, if not sole, purpose of raising money by lying about its causes that it then uses to pay its members is worse than disingenous, it borders on criminal. It is certainly unethical and probably immoral.

Lets do a thought experiment. GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Daimler found an organization to improve safety in automobiles. They then institute a PIRG-like organization that uses (preys on?) young undergraduates by sending them door-to-door with phony brochures to collect money under the pretenses of auto safety and then use 95% of the money to pay themselves and the collectors. Got any problem with that? How about if they are also lying to and abusing the emotions of the undergraduate collectors? How about if the safety research they do is made up in a backroom by an inebriated, illiterate engineering school dropout and published as accurate research? How far do I have to go for you to get the point? (Well, probably further than I am willing.)

Also, one of St. Ralph's devotees spun off his own organization back in the '70s or so. I had a disillusioned friend work for him. Look up Robert Creamer, husband (at least he was) of Jan Schakowsky (sp?), D. of Illinois, US House of Reps. As I remember, he may even have finally done a little time. At least she dropped the Creamer from her name. Creamer was going after the Illinois public utilities until he was exposed. I think he later changed the name and went back to it, as conmen so often do.

Maybe its time all the so-called charities, PIRGs. etc. be required to open their books to maintain their tax status. We decry the influence large lobbies have on the political process, yet do not demand that those same lobbies disclose the sources of their funding.

Nader is but one example of the self-aggrandizing ego-centered self-appointed messiah at the front of one of these organizations. But, maybe this time he will be called to account by those who have supported and defended him in the past.

I used to have a sort of favorable impression of Nader, until I heard him speak.

He is not a "consumer advocate." He's a Marxist who advocates the expropriation of private property for the use of the state.

That's about all he's got to say. And that is pretty stale.

ABS - I don't hate Nader, but I've never had any personal dealings with one of his organizations. I do hate what his organizations have done to this country. Science in the Public Interest is a good example of a Naderite group that, while it crows about its accomplishments, we would have been better off if had it never existed. The group was behind the Alar scare that cost farmers and shippers millions of dollars. They were behind the "popcorn scare" that got all the movie theaters to quit using palm oil in their popcorn poppers. Attending the movies has not been as satisfying since. (It's a small thing, I know. But unless you ate two or three large buckets of popcorn a day, the switch from palm oil provided no health benefit. Even then, it would take several years and tons of popcorn to notice the effect.) They hyped the silicon breast implant "risks" that bankrupted companies based on "science" that the FDA has finally admitted did not warrant removal of silicon from the market.

Need I go on? Naderite organizations have cost our economy billions of dollars, and in large and small ways interfered in our lives, without providing any real benefit. Indeed, by costing the economy billions they have lowered our standard of living and thereby cost us untold numbers of lives. That's the legacy of Ralph Nader. I don't hate him, but I do hate that Congress and our courts have given him and his ilk the ability to cause so much damage.

As a refugee from the non-profit world, I can assure you that the PIRG nonsense is typical of non-profit management.

It is a thoroughly corrupt system, top to bottom. I would vote for anyone who would enact a full investigation of it.

Ideal? 25% to 30% is NOT ideal, 0% is ideal. As anyone who has perused the Combined Federal Campaign listing has noted (CFC is a combined charity listing to prevent federal workers from being deluged by charity requests), 25-30% is not an ideal expenditure, but an upper limit. Numbers above this are gross, and indicate a major problem in financing. Contrast this with Dana Farber Cancer society (The Jimmy Fund) which is at around 6.7%. Having a "charitable" organization be above 35% is disgusting. Worse yet, is the knowledge that this is a out-and-out political advocacy group. I am not against political advocacy groups, but I am against mandatory fees for the same. I am not entirely sure of the connection between Nader and the PIRGs. Is there an official connection?

ABR: Yes, you have "the impression that lives have been saved".

But impressions (the appearance of doing good) are not the same as reality, and as Jorg pointed out, "safe" is an impossible goal.

We can push for "safer", often, but we must remember that there are other factors that do matter. (In fact, I've long defended openly risky activities, so long as the risks are known to the participants. That's why I don't think seatbelt and helmet laws are a good idea - they're deeply illiberal. Requiring cars to have seatbelts strikes me as the golden mean; requiring people to wear them is, frankly, none of the State's business, unless you're a State employee on State business, in which case there's an actual State interest.)

Back to Nader, I find it amusing that the "Advocate for the People" is known for treating his own employees like absolute peons and busting their attempts to unionise.

Ideal? 25% to 30% is NOT ideal, 0% is ideal. As anyone who has perused the Combined Federal Campaign listing has noted (CFC is a combined charity listing to prevent federal workers from being deluged by charity requests), 25-30% is not an ideal expenditure, but an upper limit. Numbers above this are gross, and indicate a major problem in financing. Contrast this with Dana Farber Cancer society (The Jimmy Fund) which is at around 6.7%. Having a "charitable" organization be above 35% is disgusting. Worse yet, is the knowledge that this is a out-and-out political advocacy group. I am not against political advocacy groups, but I am against mandatory fees for the same. I am not entirely sure of the connection between Nader and the PIRGs. Is there an official connection?

As a current university student at a big public uni on the left coast (GO DUCKS! or something), I can tell you first hand that the PIRGs are useless. OSPIRG, the Oregon version, is funded almost entirely by mandatory student fees. Further, the PIRG is in no way held accountable for its use of said fees and is not required to have transparent accounting the way that other student groups must.

The trick they've pulled in Oregon, and I'm sure this is the case in other states, is having two separate organizations, the Oregon State PIRG and the Oregon Student PIRG. The student PIRG collects fees from the universities in Oregon ($115,000 next year, from UO alone) and funnels that money to the state PIRG. It's a handy trick that makes sure they never have to account for where the money goes. It's terribly illegal (See Southworth v. Board of Regents and Rounds v. OSPIRG), but the students in charge of fee administration are either too lazy or too stupid to do anything about it.

And to think, those same kids complain about the "rising cost of higher education" while making sure that the $516 per year incidental fee keeps going up. Typical.

As for the connection between Nader and PIRGs, he founded them back in the late 60s and early 70s. I think OSPIRG was the first one, and it celebrated 30 years of fiscal impropriety just last year.

As a current university student at a big public uni on the left coast (GO DUCKS! or something), I can tell you first hand that the PIRGs are useless. OSPIRG, the Oregon version, is funded almost entirely by mandatory student fees. Further, the PIRG is in no way held accountable for its use of said fees and is not required to have transparent accounting the way that other student groups must.

The trick they've pulled in Oregon, and I'm sure this is the case in other states, is having two separate organizations, the Oregon State PIRG and the Oregon Student PIRG. The student PIRG collects fees from the universities in Oregon ($115,000 next year, from UO alone) and funnels that money to the state PIRG. It's a handy trick that makes sure they never have to account for where the money goes. It's terribly illegal (See Southworth v. Board of Regents and Rounds v. OSPIRG), but the students in charge of fee administration are either too lazy or too stupid to do anything about it.

And to think, those same kids complain about the "rising cost of higher education" while making sure that the $516 per year incidental fee keeps going up. Typical.

As for the connection between Nader and PIRGs, he founded them back in the late 60s and early 70s. I think OSPIRG was the first one, and it celebrated 30 years of fiscal impropriety just last year.
The trick they've pulled in Oregon, and I'm sure this is the case in other states, is having two separate organizations, the Oregon State PIRG and the Oregon Student PIRG. The student PIRG collects fees from the universities in Oregon ($115,000 next year, from UO alone) and funnels that money to the state PIRG. It's a handy trick that makes sure they never have to account for where the money goes. It's terribly illegal (See Southworth v. Board of Regents and Rounds v. OSPIRG), but the students in charge of fee administration are either too lazy or too stupid to do anything about it.

And to think, those same kids complain about the "rising cost of higher education" while making sure that the $516 per year incidental fee keeps going up. Typical.

Sigivald - The argument FOR letting government mandate the use of seatbelts is the fact that government (increasingly) picks up the tab should anyone become injured. If government had stayed out of the role of insurer of last resort (or, now, the primary insurer for many), it would be far eaiser to say an individual was free to assume the risk since the individual bore the burden of the consequences. (Unfortunately) that is no longer the case.

David,

I remember an old anecdote about the Soviet Union that bubble gum was very difficult to come by. Something about the state did not want to incur extra costs of dental care. (Is there truth to this? Sounds reasonable. ;)

Agreed Jorg...nothing is safe. Most people seem to deny any kind of "calculus of life and death" yet acknowledging such a device and optimizing for highest impact would be a sensible policy for all.
A few weeks ago, the Economist had an interesting
article about risk management and briefly discussed certain programs where perhaps $1B USD were spent to mitigate the risk of one fatality. They also point out that the same expenditure could have perhaps saved a thousand or more lives if it were invested wisely.

While we're on the subject of seat belts... the Naderites were some of the biggest advocates of airbags in the 1970s, and also among those who deprecated seatbelts and campaigns to promote seatbelt usage. They (with some others) pushed the idea that there was no point in encouraging people to use seatbelts, because they wouldn't do it. The Naderites were particularly hostile to anything which made the user rather than the manufacturer responsible for safety.

But by the late 1980s, the hazards and limitations of airbags became obvious, as was the relative advantage of seatbelts. (Airbags help, but belts are much better.)

So the great buckle-your-belt campaign started, and the results have been pretty good. Seatbelt usage has increased substantially, saving tens of thousands of lives.

This could have happened much earlier. The delay, and the thousands of lives lost as a result, are in substantial part the responsibility of Nader.

ABR: It may help to read my post more carefully. Nowhere does it say that driving went up because the national 65 mph speed limit was repealed. The limit was repealed at the end of 1995, when the economy was gathering steam; driving went up the next year because of a booming economy.

My initial argument still holds - Ralph Nader said the increase in speed limits would cause more deaths and accidents. He was wrong. He has been proven wrong repeatedly since 1995.

Incidentally, your comparison of driving to smoking is faulty, as smoking is always dangerous, but driving isn't. Driving a motor vehicle is actually a very safe activity, provided it is done properly.

And many of us do find driving pleasurable and like to do it as often as possible. If you don't - or just aren't very good at it - fine. But as I would tell Mr. Nader, then leave the discussion about cars and driving to those who actually know something about the subject matter.

He should go back to doing what he does best, which at this point appears to be running lost-cause presidential campaigns and fooling the gullible into supporting his PIRGs.

The 'problem' with the rear suspension on the first generation Corvair was that it had what is called a "swingarm" independent rear suspension, the same as early VW Beetles and early Triumph Spitfires. That means that each half-shaft coming out of the differential only has a single universal joint, located near the differential. This allows the half-shaft to move up and down, but because it only has a single universal (or constant velocity joint), the wheel's motion is in an arc, not a true vertical up and down motion.
Under extreme cornering when the body rolls to the outside of a turn, this causes a phenomenon known as 'jacking'. The body on the inside of the turn moves up, forcing the half-shaft to arc down. If the motion is extreme enough, the inside tire starts to lose adhesion because it's no longer perpendicular to the road. In the case of the Corvair and Beetle the problem is magnified by the fact that they are rear-engine cars. With all that weight in the back, rear-engine cars have a problem known as "trailing throttle oversteer" (something Porsche drivers have learned about the hard way). When you back off on the throttle, weight is transfered towards the rear of the car. If you do it in the middle of a turn in a rear engine car, the weight transfer may be enough to start the rear end to swing out (oversteeer), putting you into the bushes ass end first.

All of this was known by the late 1950s. As a matter of fact, early Spitfire owners added on "camber compensators" to the rear suspension to prevent jacking. Nader didn't discover anything that wasn't already well known by auto engineers and driving enthusiasts.

What made Ralph Nader was the fact that someone at GM decided to hire a PI to investigate him. I'm not sure if he sued them, but GM ended up giving him and his book way more publicity than he would have gotten otherwise.

BTW, if you want a Corvair, the one that I would recommend would be a '68 or '69 (last year) Monza with the abovementioned 4 speed on the floor. It's an absolutely gorgeous body design, one of the cleanest designs of the 1960s (GM had some very talented people back then - the 1970 Camaro with the split bumpers is damn near perfect, and I'm not a huge fan of Detroit iron, even if I live here). Detroit was actually very adventurous, engineeringwise, in the late 50s and early 60s, particularly GM. There was the Corvair, an overhead cam inline six from Pontiac, and I'm pretty sure that the early Tempest had the transmission in the back of the car. Heck, they even put a turbocharger in the Corvair Monza, long before turbos became popular in the 1980s.

Far better to have Robert Torricelli dip into his slush fund for you like Kerry did, right?

By the way, do you have any idea how stupid you sound with this shit?

I worked with the Ohio Public Interest Campaign--for about a week and a half (note: if you're having nightmares about work after a day or two on the job, you're in the wrong job)--in the early 1980s. A wrong-turn stab at a summer job, basically. I think Ohio PIRG replaced OPIC.

I'm not disputing the experiences Jane (and Tim Burke over at Easily Distracted) recounted--far from it. The Akron office (where I was), though, was more like a cult than a scam. The leadership pushed hard to get people to a great many weekend workshops, etc., and made a great show of repeating at any and every opportunity, "A lot of our students like it so much they don't go back to school in the fall" (nudge nudge wink wink grin grin say-no-more)."

Downright creepy, it was. Only time in my life I've ever been unreservedly happy about being fired.

greg writes, "ABR: It may help to read my post more carefully. Nowhere does it say that driving went up because the national 65 mph speed limit was repealed. The limit was repealed at the end of 1995, when the economy was gathering steam; driving went up the next year because of a booming economy."

Thanks for the clarification on letter of your post -- you are correct. However do you really want to argue that an increase in speed limit did NOT contribute to more driving? Shorter commutes, less need to speed (and stress out about smokies), and greater pleasure (for those who enjoy the rush of MPH) would seem to make people statistically a bit more likely to say "lets drive", or make a myriad of other decisions relating to acceptable distances between where they work, live, and play that tend to increase driving.

Secondly, unless you are going to somehow control for higher safety standards for vehicles, improving engineering, enhanced medical care, improved (perhaps) ambulance response times, and a number of other factors involved in determining highway deaths, simply saying that deaths went down after raising the speed limit is no way to refute Nader's point. And in fact, if you just take a second to think about it using common sense, a higher speed crash is more likely to lead to fatalities, and higher driving speeds leave less time to react to unexpected events (such as an obstacle in the road) -- period. If statistics suggest otherwise, there's something wrong in the assumptions or measurement.

I happen to be as much in favor of getting to my destination quickly as the next man, and enjoy my share of wind-in-the-face sports car driving when I have the chance. And I'm not saying that I want to affect this by bringing everything down to 55 MPH. But it is important to consider the tradeoffs involved with speed limit increases. I suspect Nader "wailed" as you said because it seemed like one side of the tradeoffs was not being given adequate attention when the increase legislation was being considered.

Ironic isn't it, debating car safety and speed limits, starting with Nader's perspectives, a guy who did not know how to drive a car when he launched his attacks against the Corvair?

Arguing the effect of higher speed limits is tenuous due to all the variables. The professionals measure vehicular speeds on roadways and try to adjust the limits to match the average traffic. Studies, and my personal observations, (starting with a 64 Corvair Monza) show the slower driver is a greater threat to other drivers than the speeders. The effect of a crash at higher speeder is of course more dire. But there is an economic cost to slower speeds which must be considered. Time= $$$, and longer travel times is an issue for commerce. Plus the interstate system was designed for 65-70mph back in the 50's, and lower speeds wreaked havoc on the truckers who could not maintain speeds high enough to handle the hills at 55. Contributing to more danger, and less attentiveness.

Seat belts are very effective in front and side collisions. More so than an airbag. And the belt does not rip the ligaments off your thumbs when deployed, nor contain a toxic gas. The belt does not decapitate children. But, we as a society seem prone to protect those who do not care enough to buckle up themselves. Coming up next: mandatory raincoats.

You're all a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears whippersnappers. I demanded a refund of my automatically billed BCPIRG fee at Simon Fraser University in 1979. To get the money back I had to go to the BCPIRG office (a cement box beside the campus radio station) and personally ask for it. A plaid-shirted bearded pony-tailed thirtyish "student" sitting at a desk decorated with Greenpeace posters asked why I wanted the money back. I informed him that I didn't agree with the objectives of his organization, and he dug into a drawer and came up with a worn $2 bill (this was in Canada -- they were orange-colored and in wide circulation). Yes, Jimmy Carter was Prez of the USA, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment were all in double figures, the speed limit was double nickels, and you weren't even a gleam in your mama's eye -- but I was already fighting reds and greens.

That's all for now. Gotta go take my Geritol.

ABR: If deaths went up after raising the speed limit, do you seriously believe that Mr. Nader and his allies would say, "We certainly can't link the increase to higher speeds, as there are too many other variables to consider"? The simple fact is that Mr. Nader predicted 6,500 additional traffic deaths if speed limits were increased after the abolition of the national 65 mph speed limit. The national speed limit was abolished, several states raised their speed limits, the total number of deaths went up by a tiny amount, and the fatality rate as a whole declined. He was wrong, and he has never admitted it.

Incidentally, driving faster does not mean more accidents or fatalities. In the mid-1980s, the federal government conducted a study of accident rates for various drivers. The drivers who drove 10-15 mph faster than the flow of traffic - which would have put them at about 80-85 mph - had the FEWEST accidents. Those who drove the speed limit or slower had the most accidents. Which drives another nail in the "speed kills" nonsense.

As someone who used to drive 30,000 miles annually on interstates in all types of weather, I can vouch for the accuracy of that study. The boneheaded moves were largely performed by the slowpokes, many of whom undoubtedly thought that because they were driving "slow," they were "safe." This somehow gave them the right to change lanes without signalling, block the passing lane for miles on end, and merge into traffic without accelerating. But since they weren't speeding, I guess they were good drivers.

Not only is "speed kills" nonsense, but the system advocated by Mr. Nader punishes our best drivers while letting the lousy drivers trundle on, just because they stay under some arbitrary number set to pacify the Chicken Littles and members of the Lawrence Welk Fan Club.

greg writes, "Incidentally, driving faster does not mean more accidents or fatalities. In the mid-1980s, the federal government conducted a study of accident rates for various drivers. The drivers who drove 10-15 mph faster than the flow of traffic - which would have put them at about 80-85 mph - had the FEWEST accidents. Those who drove the speed limit or slower had the most accidents. Which drives another nail in the "speed kills" nonsense."

This says that drivers going faster than the flow of traffic get into less accidents. Again, using common sense, this is probably because they are younger, paying more attention, etc.. It has nothing to do with speed limits. In fact, if the speed limit is lower, likely a higher proportion of drivers will be faster than the general flow, potentially reducing the accident rate according to this study, if you assume that going faster than the flow leads you to pay a bit more attention.

Back on an earlier point about cigarette smoking, it was said that, "Incidentally, your comparison of driving to smoking is faulty, as smoking is always dangerous, but driving isn't. Driving a motor vehicle is actually a very safe activity, provided it is done properly."

Actually driving would be different as stated -- if you always drove on perfectly maintained roads with no-one else on them -- and had perfect reflexes and risk-assessment capabilities. In reality there are road hazards, drunk drivers, etc., and you are human, so when you get on the roads you take a small but measurable chance with your life, or, put another way, your probability of early death goes up a tiny but real amount -- as it does when smoking a cigarette. You might pay more attention to the road, etc. than other drivers, but so a given cigarette smoker might have better resistance to lung cancer than others. In fact auto accidents and cigarette smoking are even comparable in terms of number of U.S. deaths caused (and time spent doing them is probably same order of magnitude, so the risk numbers might be quite close). So the comparison is apt -- except that I would assume the average age of a cigarette smoker's death is higher than that of a car accident victim's.

ABR: Have not Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook and their followers repeatedly condemned people who exceed the speed limits as menaces to other drivers and safety hazards? Haven't they repeatedly called for crackdowns on "speeders"? This further proves them wrong. The simple fact is that, as speed limits were raised, fatalities decreased. And faster drivers are safer than slower drivers.

Incidentally, I have yet to see any real evidence that driving slower - or lowering speed limits - improves safety.

The comparison of driving to smoking is still flawed. When comparing the total deaths from smoking to the deaths from driving, the number of people engaging in the respective activity must be taken into account. Virtually everyone over the age of 18 drives, whereas less than 1/3 of adults smoke. So even if the total numbers are the same, the risk of harm is much, much lower.

Even more importantly, drivers can take easy steps to lower their risk of injury or death. Smokers, short of kicking the habit, cannot.

Drivers can be more attentive, which will prevent their involvement in an accident in the first place. This will also better protect them from dangerous drivers.

They can also wear safety belts and avoid using alcohol either before or during driving. According to NHTSA, 59 percent of people killed in vehicular accidents in 2002 were not wearing safety belts, while 42 percent of highway deaths were in alcohol-related crashes. So, unlike smokers - who have to completely give up smoking to lower their health risk - drivers can take simple steps to dramatically lower their risk of accident or injury.

Finally, the total number of traffic fatalities includes motorcyclists. Driving a motorcycle is considerably riskier than driving a car or light truck. Subtract motorcycle fatalities from the total, and the risk from driving a car or a light truck is even lower.

In Israel it is common to cry about having one of the highest road fatality rates in the West. It turns out Israel has one of the lowest per capita rates. The rate are high only when compared to the km of roads in the country. However, since Israel has a very high population density, it seems to me it has less km of roads than other countries. This and some experience with campus environmentalists (like the guy explaining how exporting cheap food to Africa leads to starvation), changed my outlook on life quite a bit.

I mock your 1979! I stood in line to get my MassPIRG 'donation' back at Boston College in 1975!

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