Despite the increased use of the Internet, public perceptions of which political campaigns are considered viable is still all but entirely shaped by the corporate news media. In other words, corporations are freely narrowing voters' range of focus toward those campaigns they consider to be "newsworthy."

In reality, the worthiest of candidates, namely Ralph Nader, is disregarded from the outset because the election of someone such as Mr. Nader would bring about a true day of reckoning for American corporations. These corporations are permitted to, on the one hand, have the same or greater rights than individual citizens and, on the other hand, to never face the death penalty or anything more than self-regulation or slap-on-the-wrist fines while they can continue to wreak havoc everywhere they go and drain average people of every last cent of economic vitality they can muster.

Yes, Ralph Nader supports an end to corporate personhood in contrast to Barack Obama or John McCain, whose campaigns are awash in contributions from corporate America. The differences between Mr. Nader and the candidates that you are permitted to read about or see on television each day are very far reaching and vast. For well over 30 years Mr. Nader has been actively supporting major cuts in military spending while Mr. Obama says that he wants to "strengthen the military" and McCain also supports the extension of the U.S. oil empire.

Incidentally, the United States currently spends over twice as much on the military as the next 10 biggest military spending countries on the planet. That is why we are told that we cannot afford nationalized health care, which is provided in every other advanced industrialized nation. Nader supports nationalized health care while Obama does not. In fact Obama's plan is even weaker than Hillary Clinton's. McCain as well favors continued private profiteering at the expense of the suffering of the legions of uninsured and underinsured Americans.

For 30 years, Nader has supported forcing automakers to meet much higher miles-per-gallon requirements, while Obama favors the false and heavily polluting nonsolution of promoting ethanol use. Now we are on the verge of losing the entire U.S. auto industry. Nader has been way out front in terms of tax credits for the implementation of renewable energy for decades while his opponents fail to sense the urgency of the need for real changes in our housing and transportation infrastructures. Nader favors repeal of the union-busting puppeteers and their lack of conviction on the matter.

It's nowhere near enough for Obama to offer vague assurances of "Change We Can Believe In" while failing to really take the bull by the horns on virtually all of the major issues of our times. We don't have time to waste supporting the "lesser of two evils" approach to voting this year. It is extremely unwise for voters to permit the media to corral us into believing that the changes that so many of us realize are urgently necessary cannot take place because we will merely be wasting our votes on a lost cause candidacy.

In a democracy, we decide what is possible and what will happen in November, and we the people must stop behaving like sheep if we expect to survive much longer on this planet. I am extremely proud to be supporting Ralph Nader for president again this year, and urge you to check in with the Nader campaign at votenader.org.

Bill Coleman lives in Newark.