Long time consumer advocate Ralph Nader is upset with Congress and the Bush administration for their handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He claims the government is bowing to the evil corporate world by helping particular corporations in financial need.

When the government stepped in to bail out the troubled airline industry, it did not serve at their request; it used common sense to get the nation out of a poor situation. Normally, government intervention should be frowned upon in terms of private business, but this is a special case.

Nader has teamed up with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, among others, to form Citizens Agenda Against Corporate Raids on the Treasury and an Outburst of Wartime Opportunism, to fight threats to civil liberties and what they consider poor government spending.

The watchdog organization is criticizing Congress for feeding “sympathetic campaign contributors at taxpayer expense.”

Sure, it is true that many of these corporations, if not all, donated to the campaigns of many politicians, but when a person uses logic to figure out the reasoning behind allocating funds to the corporations, the campaign finance reform rhetoric does not work.

Take the airlines for instance. They are huge corporations with thousands of employees. The government did not allow them to operate at full capacity for close to a week.

And the government made a wise decision based on national security when doing that.

But if the government is not allowing a legal company to operate, it should pay for the loss of revenue, no matter how large the business is.

The government is not supposed to put legal corporations out of business for any reason.

The group accused Congress of leaving “the unemployed, the disenfranchised and American families to suffer” as a result of funding these corporations, which is far from the truth.

Think what would’ve happened if these airlines weren’t reimbursed by the federal government.

American families would have been the largest group of people hurt by government intervening in one aspect and not another.

If the airlines stayed in business, they wouldn’t have been able to keep their current number of employees. Layoffs would have been massive. Thousands upon thousands would have lost their jobs, and it would be their families who suffered.

It is the simple fact that it was corporations who were bailed out. Nader and his comrades can not live with the idea of some having more money than others, so they despise corporations.

Nader’s way of fixing our so-called “problems” with corporate domination is revolt.

“The ground and soil are ripe for a revolt by the American people,” he said, according to a Reuters story.

We are in a poor economic situation. Revolt is the last thing this nation needs right now. What Americans need to do is work hard and spend money. That is what will help American families, the disenfranchised and the unemployed.

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that the group is accusing Congress, the Bush administration and big business of taking advantage of the attacks on America.

In reality, it is Nader himself who is taking advantage of this situation.

He is using the attacks to forward his political agenda. Nader is a huge supporter of campaign finance reform. He can’t live with corporations and their executives being able to exercise their constitutional right of free speech.

He will do anything he can to see that those with money have less power in every aspect of life, even exploiting a national tragedy, which is exactly what he has done.

Zach Calef is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids. He is an assistant news editor of the Daily.