Green Party Watch

Did anyone notice that the 16 month “draw down” of troops in Iraq proposed by Obama includes a similar increase in troop strength in Afghanistan?

Code Pink did. Medea Benjamin as re-published by Common Dreams:

Now we have the two major presidential contenders — Barack Obama and John McCain — advocating the exact same “solution”: Send more troops. But more troops will only mean more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban. This war will drag on and on, for there is no way to conquer tribal forces in a vast, rugged, thinly populated country like Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Just ask the Russians. With nearly twice as many troops as the U.S./NATO forces and with three times the number of Afghan soldiers, they left defeated after 9 years of fighting and 15,000 dead.

Waiting for the punchline… here it comes… Oh! McKinney the peace candidate, the former Congresswoman who voted against EVERY War Appropriation bill she saw and opposed both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while in Congress, failed to come up this time. Next one I’m sure. After all, I don’t think there is a more seasoned opponent to these wars on the ballot in any state than Cynthia McKinney, running on the Green Party ticket….

[Ed. Taken in its entirety from "On the Wilder Side" (with permission), this post by Ian Wilder is worth reading...-rkh]

If NBC keeps this up they might actually stop asking the stupid “spoiler ” question of every non-corporate candidate they meet. They finally got that voter choices are complex, especially in a winner take all system. Voter’s issue both positive and negative votes, i.e. they make preference decision not only among the candidates they like, but also among the candidates they don’t dislike. NBC recognizes this possibility below by lumping the results of the 2nd through 4th place candidates together as an anti-front-runner (Obama) vote. Though this is still a simplification of voter preferences, it is closer to reality than the simple left or right “spoiler” dichotomy most of the corporate media mindlessly repeats.

from NBC/WSJ Poll: Obama keeps lead over McCain

But Obama’s lead over McCain expands to 13 points when third-party candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are added into the mix — with Obama at 48 percent, McCain at 35 percent, Nader at 5 percent and Barr at 2 percent. However, it’s important to note that the pro-Obama vote (48 percent) and anti-Obama vote (adding up to 42 percent) is consistent with the result from the two-way match up. (emphasis added)

Of course this poll ignores Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party Presidential candidate as much of the corporate media and political establishment has. It is interesting how much more coverage the corporate media to gave McKinney’s former Georgia congressional colleague, and now Libertarian Presidential candidate, Bob Barr. Congressman Conyers seems to be following the lead of the corporate media by inviting former Congressman Barr to speak at impeachment hearings. Conyers did not invite McKinney who introduced the first Articles of Impeachment as her last act in Congress in 2005, which was 3 years before Kucinich introduced his.
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While most (of any) attention often is placed on the Presidential race, Greens on the ground is where the action often is found. The Green Party (US) is made up of State Green Parties, many of which are themselves made up of Local Green Party chapters. It is at this Local level where the Four Pillars (Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, Peace & Non-violence) are put into action.

In Oregon, local Greens are fighting a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal, the Jordan Cove Energy Project.

Perhaps the most significant setback is the state’s finding that the county hadn’t adequately addressed safety issues at the 170-acre project site; namely, that the terminal would sit atop a sand dune prone to liquefaction in the event of a major earthquake — a phenomenon similar to the ground turning into instant quicksand — and that it’s squarely in the middle of a tsunami hazard zone, which the state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries has expressly advised against, said James Nicita, co-chairman of the Pacific Green Party, which contributed arguments in the LUBA appeal.

LUBA rejected several portions of the hazards argument, but sustained at least part of the case, which will force the county to consider the risk, Nicita said.

“In the 1990s, (the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries) actually recommended to Coos County to zone hazardous facilities away from areas of high earthquake risk,” Nicita said. “Jordan Cove will say there’s an engineering solution to everything. We’ll see how this all plays out.”

In New York, the Chenango (County) Greens are all over a proposed natural gas drilling plan that involves “Hydrofracking”, a process that involves blasting vertically into the rock where the natural gas is trapped, releasing both the gas and at the same time toxic-laden water, which is brought to the surface to merge its carcinogenic properties into both running water and ground water.

From the Times Union, “Toxic Gas-Drilling Technique”

Most drilling states inject the tainted water back into the ground in areas where solid rock layers keep it isolated from drinking water, but the geology in New York and Pennsylvania makes that impossible.

Ensuring the water gets treated isn’t part of DEC’s permit review, so long as the end result complies with state laws that say it meets discharge standards.

Read the entire article, it is a classic case of deregulation gone wild in the energy sector with no care given to the health risks posed by such ventures. Also browse through the posts on the Chenango Greens website for more thoughts on this dangerous issue.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote this piece a few days ago on the Huffington Post:

Can McKinney Really Hurt Obama?

I’ll excerpt some but I encourage you to go there to read the entire piece, and seriously consider joining in on the comments. (McKinney-Clemente are going to need an Army of Web-Watchers that will be in position to defend her in the comments section of both “big media” and “little media”. Don’t assume someone else will defend our candidates, because that someone else is you.)

At first glance there’s no reason to think that she can hurt him. She’s not one-time Green Party top candidate Ralph Nader. His credentials in 2000 as a fierce environmental and consumer crusader were impeccable. This earned him the respect and admiration of thousands of impassioned supporters, the ability to tap liberal and progressive money tills, and the grudging respect from some corporate and government officials. He was rarely out of the media eye for years.
[...]
But this doesn’t mean that McKinney can’t toss a curve at Obama. She’s got energy, charisma, has name recognition and is on the ballot in thirty six states, a handful of them are crucial swing states that Obama and McCain will wage war to win. She is the first black Green Party presidential candidate, and she and her VP pick Rosa Clemente are the first two black women to ever head a political ticket (Clemente is Afro-Puerto Rican). She trudged the campaign highway through thirty states building an organization, drumming up financial support, and lambasting Bush’s policies.
[...]
The tantalizing possibility that McKinney might pull two to three percent of the vote nationally is more than a wild stretch. In a close to the wire contest between Obama and McCain this could be just enough to cause the Obama camp jitters as Nader did with Democrats in 2000.

Read the entire piece here.

At the Green Party National Convention there was a panel discussion on the foundation strategy and politics of the Green Party. Panelists focused on democracy, ecology and social justice as the major underlying issues that the Green Party has actively worked around. I don’t want to try and characterize the discussion but would present my own case here for a greener Green Party. There is a distinction here for me that distinguishes my own position from that of environmentalism that comes from my political background. Unlike many others who are focused on ecological issues, I did not come to the Green Party from environmentalist work or an advocacy group. The first time I worked with a Green campaign was in Las Cruces, NM in support of Roberto Mondragon’s campaign for Governor.

I have often advocated within the EcoAction Committee and on the Nat Com Affairs list for ecological restoration and ecological democracy as a distinct and more focused Key Value that defines the political direction of the Green Party as a political party. Environmentalism has a bad reputation among those who it should have support from. One reason is it abstracts human interaction with the ecology and seeks solutions that do not represent people as a variable in living in the US. Another thing is that it relies on litigation that all too often is based on Federal regulations and does not include local issues and concerns or representation into an input process in which these matters can be incorporated.

Ecological restoration is by definition establishing a baseline for legislation that seeks to fix what has been broken through past practice. Ecological democracy seeks to affirm that people do have a right to come to the decisions that affect them as long as there is a pluralistic model of governance that establishes the bioregion as the fundamental political and economic unit. There is in that context a unique alliance of forces that can be unified through political action.

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https://secure.democracyinaction.com/dia/organizations/Greens/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1969

In Kentucky, we only need 5,000 verified signatures by sometime in September to gain ballot access. However there is no active affiliated Green Party in Kentucky. If you know of any Kentucky Greens, or are one yourself, please email me at eclecticvibe@indy.rr.com so I can help send Hoosiers down to petition. The Ballot Access Committee could use any donations to help get us on the ballot in Kentucky as well, so please give if you can!

Richard Carroll has agreed to be my guest this Sunday on Green Party Watch Radio. Carroll is running for the 39th State House seat in Arkansas. It is possible that he will be the only candidate on the ballot since the Democratic Party in that state has changed party rules in an attempt to keep their nominee off the ballot.

Carroll is a 30 year veteran Union Organizer and has served in office at two different locals of the Boilermaker’s Union He is a self described “green Green”, as in new Green, but said in a brief interview today that he believes in the Green Party’s values and is looking forward to learning more about the Green Party and our members.

The program will air live Sunday at 3 PM East Coast time and will be archived at Blog Talk Radio for those who prefer to listen later.

Amy Goodman’s article, Who’s Paying for the Conventions?, on Truthdig yesterday, describes huge corporate payments the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions are receiving. These payments are in addition to the taxpayer funding these conventions receive, as I described in a previous post. Amy’s article highlights a June 2008 report by the Campaign Finance Institute analyzing donors to the major party conventions.

The CFI report states that both Democrats and Republicans are using local “host committees” in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul as vehicles for unlimited soft money contributions to their respective 2008 party conventions. CFI’s analysis is based on documents received from freedom of information requests to Governors and Mayors in Colorado and Minnesota which are excerpted in the report and its appendices.

According to the CFI report, the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service have permitted a vast expansion of host committee fundraising on the grounds that since these organizations are nonpartisan “charities” or “business leagues,” contributing to them does not present an issue of potential political corruption or appearance of corruption. But CFI’s investigation established that Republican federal and other elected officials, their financiers and party operatives, are asking for largely corporate money to fund the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. And their Democratic equivalents are doing the same for their convention in Denver.

The CFI report shows that the 107 organizational donors to the convention host committees are drawing directly upon their corporate treasuries to help provide $55 million in private financing to the Democratic convention in Denver and $57 million for the Republican conclave in Minneapolis-St. Paul. CFI reports that among the largest pledges or contributions to host committees are: Qwest Communications ($6 million for each convention), Comcast ($5 million for Democrats), Xcel Energy ($2.25 million for Democrats and $1.2 million for Republicans), United Health Group ($1.5 million for Republicans but undefined for Democrats), Union Pacific ($1 million for Democrats), Molson Coors Brewing ($1 million for Democrats), and St. Jude Medical ($1 million for Republicans).

Voters should watch these numbers and vote Green. Our Green Party convention in Chicago two weeks ago was paid for entirely by individual contributors to our party and by the delegates themselves.

Decent article about Albany Alum (and GP VP) Rosa Clemente by Mark Perry in the Times Union:

Rosa Clemente came to the University at Albany at a heady time for minority student activism.

There were demands for more students of color. Organizing. Opposition groups. Marches. Rodney King. Amadou Diallo.

Clemente, who later worked briefly in the Legislature, was arrested twice at protests here.

“I think it was twice,” Clemente said Wednesday. “It could have been one more, I don’t remember.”

Now 36, the 1995 UAlbany graduate and self-described black Puerto Rican hip hop activist and journalist is still involved in politics — national politics.

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A collection of McKinney pieces found around the dubya-dubya-dubya:

Workers World is all over Cynthia McKinney.

Ever sit around wondering if Cynthia McKinney is anything like Ron Paul? Liberty Maven’s Ron Paul Paul-O-Meter gives McKinney a paltry 20 out of 99 in “on how closely they are in agreement with [...the perfection of...] Ron Paul…” This is not a bad thing if you look at the criteria in the article. (For the record, Obama scored 17, McCain 25, Ralph Nader 26, and Bob Barr & Chuck Baldwin 88 each.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece slamming McKinney over the “security guard” incident, focusing on the redacted claim of racial profiling. Don’t read it unless you have a strong stomach.
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It was reported a few weeks back about five Green Party candidates for State Legislature in Florida, each of whom filed to run at the last minute, each of whom had changed their party registration to Green very recently, each of whom is running in a close race, and each of whom paid the $1,915.92 filing fee rather than collect signatures.

The Florida Dems suspect Republican hijinks. The Florida Republicans claim to have no idea who they are. The Florida Greens have never heard of them, and have gone so far as to knock on their doors and send certified mail to make contact with them.

I will say one thing: No Green would pay almost $2,000 to appear on the ballot when they could collect a reasonable number of signatures instead. Greens are chintzy, and petitioning is a great way to promote your campaign as well as qualify for the ballot. So who are these people?
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Press release issued July 23, 2008:

Greens urge quick action on Ohio, Pennsylvania election crimes, seek assurance of 2008 ballot access fairness and election integrity

• Pennsylvania: 12 indicted after Statehouse Democrats staffers were given taxpayer-funded bonuses to keep 2004 presidential candidate Ralph Nader (Ind.) and 2006 US Senate candidate Carl Romanelli (Green) off the state ballot

• Ohio: Evidence of massive fraud by GOP operatives in the 2004 election, with possible Karl Rove involvement; Greens were the first to probe the 2004 vote theft

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Party leaders urged swift and aggressive court action to ensure fair elections and enforcement of legal campaign practices in the wake of election scandals in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
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In the last two weeks, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia have passed the 5K threshold. In Wisconsin volunteers raised over $3,000 in 3 days.

In order to qualify for Federal Matching Funds, a candidate must raise over $5,000 in each of 20 states, in contributions of no more than $250 per individual.

McKinney now has 10 states in the bag:California, District of Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Illinois, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

Phone banking is underway to get 10 more states past the 5K mark. The target states are: New Jersey ($4.7K), Maine ($4.3K), Florida ($3.9K), Arizona ($3.4K), Maryland ($2.2K), Massachusetts ($2.1K), Colorado (1.3K), Iowa ($1.2K), Pennsylvania ($1.1K), Connecticut ($1K), Oklahoma ($1K).

If you live in any of the above 11 states, please donate $250 to the McKinney Power to the People campaign here.

Listen to, watch, or read the transcript from Democracy Now! with Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente here.

Here’s a teaser for you:

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think, Rosa Clemente, are the most important issues right now? What are you going to be campaigning on around the country?

ROSA CLEMENTE: For young people right now, the most important issues is a dismantling of the prison-industrial complex; a livable wage; dealing with the AIDS pandemic that is affecting disproportionately African American and Latina young women; a real gender equity movement; a real movement where women, particularly women of color, are not marginalized in the media or at work; and really dealing with no healthcare and a lack of good public education, but also a lack of now higher education. No young person in America who can go to college should be in $100,000 debt. We are supposed to be competing with the best of the best, and we have over a 60 percent, in some cities, dropout rate of African American and Latina/Latino youth. So those are, I think, the most important pressing issues. And, of course, an immediate withdrawal from Iran. And we must not be duped that a troop withdrawal in Iran could also mean a troop transfer in Afghanistan and more young people, particularly white working-class youth, being used as cannon fodder.

An online petition is up and just getting started calling on the Major Media outlets to practice what they preach and provide coverage of ALL the candidates running for President (and especially Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente).

http://www.petitiononline.com/mck79cle/petition.html

Cynthia McKinney was just in North Carolina yesterday, where they filed papers to have McKinney-Clemente listed as official “write in” candidates in November.

Independent Political Report, a site which covers third parties and independents, was started about a week before Green Party Watch, and for similar reasons. In an email to writers at the site, the publisher explained that the site was down for unexplained reasons.

The site uses Wordpress. Any readers of Green Party Watch who speak fluent wordpress are asked to contact the site administrators at Independent-political-report@googlegroups.com