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Show ?apf Nader has a deal for you I1ADER Ralph Nader keeps popping up like an irresistable rash of acne. No sooner is one of his reports called on the line for inaccuracies, inaccur-acies, than he issues another one. All those old Corvairs running around must get downright embarrassing em-barrassing for old Ralph. Nader has just released a new paperback called "Who Runs Congress? The President, Big Business, or You?" The theme is that the executive branch and business have great influence in Congress, but citizens could control con-trol it if they lobbied effectively. That news is about as fresh as Dewey's defeat. Nader's "breakthrough" comes years after the same thesis has been examined pro and con by dozens of scholars in the nation's leading magazines. Several books have already been published on the topic. But Ralph Nader has a deal you can't resist, see ... He recruits re-cruits thousands of admirers by lecturing at college campus for a fee of several thousand dollars. Then he uses the money to pay the best of his fans to do some half-baked research for him. This he publishs and sells back to the broad mass of fans. Thus Ralph Nader acts as a kind of self-contained zeal and enthusiasm recycling re-cycling corporation. Although the book has only been out for a day, Nader has already been called on the line for errors again. Rep Clarence J. Brown of Ohio says the part about him contains 21 errors, including an allegation of owning a radio station he sold two years ago. Another congressman found 48 errors in the section on him. Rep. William Scherle of Iowa called the book " witch hunt and a red herring." her-ring." Nader's reply is that 200 poli tical scientists, attorneys, economists, eco-nomists, journalists, and students reviewed the material . . . .all experts. ex-perts. Well malarky, Ralph; A former staff writer for this newspaper news-paper handled most of the material mate-rial on Utah's congressmen. The footwork here in Utah was done by anyone who volunteered. And this seems to be characteristic charac-teristic of most of Nader's recent work. Nearly everyone has a Nader volume on his bookshelf which is useless because it is poorly organized, the facts are incorrect, or it is second-rate in its field. That is the inevitable result re-sult of publishing five or six books per year on national problems. prob-lems. So hold off for a while, Ralph. Take a year and research one book. Have compassion for trees and cut off your flood of paper. You are restroying the credulence of serious public affairs writers. And Ralph, right now, you don't look as much like the guardian of government as the pimple of the publishing world. |