Green Party Watch

The Arizona Green Party (AZGP) is inviting all registered Greens (and guests) to their September 12 General Membership Meeting in Prescott, AZ:

Saturday, September 12th, 2009—1:00pm to 5:00pm
Prescott Public Library—Founders Suite A&B (lower level)
215 E. Goodwin Street; Prescott, AZ 86303

AGENDA

9:15am to 11:30am—AZGP State Committee meeting: Elsea Conference Room (main floor)
11:30am to 12:45pm—Lunch Break
1:00pm to 5:00pm—AZGP General Membership meeting: Founders Suite A&B (lower level)

• Update on AZGP ballot status petition drive for the 2010 elections; recruitment of volunteers
• Campus Greens, county chapter & Green Local reports
• Fundraising: Sale of Green Party merchandise & recruiting of “card-carrying” Greens!
• Strategic planning/goals for 2009-10

To RSVP: call the AZGP voicemail (602-417-0213), the Green Party of Yavapai County (928-441-1276) or e-mail info@azgp.org
For current info, visit http://azgp.org/rss.xml, and click Subscribe!

Charlie Wilson and the Blue Dog Democrats: Supporting the Health Care Industry, Not

REFORM!

Congressman Charlie Wilson (OH-6) and his Blue Dog Democrats are supporting the health care industry and lobbyists in the fight over reforming health care!

If you read their Blue Dog Position Paper on Health Care, They conclude:

Available Only as a Fallback: The availability of a public option would occur only as a fallback and in the absence of adequate competition and cost containment. Fundamental insurance market reforms and increased choice through the Exchange should improve access and contribute to lower costs. However, should the private plans fail to meet specific availability and cost targets, a public option would be triggered and be allowed to compete on a level playing field subject to the conditions outlined above.

Charlie Wilson and company, in the back pockets of Big Black Dirty Coal, and now in the pockets of Big Insurance Companies and Lobbyists. Charlie Wilson needs to be removed from office in 2010!

Dennis S. Spisak

 Mahoning Valley Green Party

Ohio Green Party

Www.ohiogreens.org

www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/

The article is at Herald Sun. You must register to access the full report. I registered using the user login GreenPartyWatch and was assigned the password QS7DSX48

My last “Live from Durham” radio show begins in ten minutes. Unless I have callers, it will be brief indeed as I am bushed.

I did also want to say that meeting fellow writers Roger Snyder of Greens for Greens and News for Greens and Lou Novak of Detroit Greens was a real pleasure. Both these fellows do an outstanding job and were gracious with their time.

I will have more to report, including a wonderful conversation with Farheen Hakeem of Minneapolis.

I have returned from the Annual National Meeting in Durham, NC. I am very tired and will be unable to post more for tonight. I did want to make two observations.

First, the people I liked before attending this meeting I still liked. Those who turned me off in the past still turn me off. That is my problem and not an indictment of them. Instead it is an affirmation for those of you who have faith in the Green Party that your faith is not misplaced. The Greens you trust and respect are as deserving of your trust and appreciation as you have believed in the past.

Secondly, the Green Party is not on the decline. We are struggling with serious financial problem, but we seem to have learned from past mistakes. No one was laying blame on others. Instead, everyone was taking personal responsibility, not for getting us in this situation but fior moving on to bigger and better things. I am as proud and hopeful to be in the Green Party as I have ever been.

Finally, GPW has rounded the first 100,000 hits. I want to thank personally and pubically all the writers, commenters, and you, our readers, for making GPW a bigger success than any of us had expected. We are going to do great things and I am so glad to be able to play a small role in our success.

In my radio show I mentioned Matt Saldana, a reporter for the Independent, a weekly publication covering the Raleigh and Durham areas. He is, as far as I can tell, the only professional media here, and he seems to be doing a good job. His report on the health care forum is here

He’s also written a report here titled Greens take a hard look at themselves in Durham, something I don’t think you can say about the forced love-fests the Democrats and Republicans engage in.

Saldana’s first piece of coverage for the Independent is here and covers the first day in Durham.

I highly recomend reading his reports.

Also, I will host my last morning Green Party Watch Radio show tomorrow morning at 6:30, so listen in. I’ll try harde to make it clear and on point.

I have found the Free Conference Call system difficult to use at this time, so I am abandoning it. My report via Blog Talk Radio is a better choice in my opinion.

As I have mentioned before, my surgery has rendered me ineffective at the typewriter. My reporting has suffered as a result. In addition to reporting here by Ron Hardy, I would encourage you to check out Lou Novak’s reporting at Detroit Greens. As an aside, Detroit would seem to be ahead in the early running for the 2010 national meeting.

I have a good deal more to report and will try to do so later tonight, but the motel computer is painfully slow as is my typing.

Anyone wanting to know more can feel free to call participate in an actual conference call tonight from 9:30 to 10:00 PM, or tomorrow between 1:00 and 2:00 PM by calling 1-218-339-3600 and entering the user code 261386# at the prompt.

This will be the first year that the Green Party (US) National Committee elects its Steering Committee via Online Voting rather than at the Annual National Meeting itself. However, nominations had to be made and accepted by noon today at the Annual National Meeting.

Four of the seven co-chair positions are being elected, as well as the Secretary position. The following National Committee Delegates are running for Steering Committee:
read more »

Our Gregg Jocoy is in Durham North Carolina at the Green Party’s Annual National Meeting. He will be sending updates here, and also at Green Party Watch Radio:

Reports are also over On the Wilderside.

Saturday should be a great day to watch live via the GPUS Livefeed. Go here for interactive live chatting with others during the live feed, or watch it here below.
read more »

Last night at his prime time health care news conference, President Obama finally admitted what we have known all along.

“I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody’s automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.”

There it is folks. Only single payer can fix the ills with our health care system. He also talked about the critical importance of “eliminating waste”. Only single payer effectively does that, by cutting out the massive overhead waste (31%) by paper churning insurance industry bureaucrats, who line their own pockets to provide LESS health care with the available resources.

Single Payer Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum998.php

This is the single payer moment. We have enough Democrats alone to pass it. So why hasn’t it been signed into law yet?

Why not a single payer system? Because the big insurance and drug companies don’t want that? Oh, really?? What about what we the people want? What about what would be best for America? We need to tell our members of Congress what we want, keep telling them, and remind them that we told them.
read more »

Taken from Independent Political Report. Thanks for the report guys!

Ballot Access News

The California special election to fill the vacant 10th district U.S. House seat on November 3 will be a race between members of five political parties. The Green, American Independent, and Peace & Freedom Parties all will be represented. An earlier blog post was incorrect to say that the only parties represented would be Peace & Freedom, Democratic and Republican. The Green Party member running is Jeremy Cloward; the American Independent Party member running is Jerome Denham.

Posted at Independent Political Report which was taken from Richard Winger at Ballot Access News

The Arkansas Green Party held a statewide meeting July 18-19 and decided to sue the state over its definition of “political party”. The party was removed from the ballot in November 2008 because it polled under 3% for president. However, it polled over 20% for U.S. Senate, and its three U.S. House candidates averaged over 19%.

The Green Party of Arkansas is the first party, in any state, since the beginning of ballot access laws in 1889, to have ever elected a state legislator while the state was simultaneously removing it from the ballot.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the purpose of ballot access laws is to keep candidates and parties off the ballot if those candidate or parties lack a modicum of support. “Modicum” is defined to be “a small amount.” It is absurd for Arkansas, or any state, to say that a party that just elected a state legislator, and polled over 20% of the statewide vote, lacks a modicum of support.

There have been very few federal precedents over any state’s definition of “political party.”

The first press conference was with elected Greens from across the nation. Included were David Doonan, Mayor of Grenwich Village in New York, Dave Bosserman, member of the Washington DC Neighborhood Advisory Committee, and Eugene Platt, Vice-Chair of the James Island Public Service District Commission in South Carolina. They ofered a wide array of experiences in elections and public service.

Some details can be read by clicking this article’s headline, but a full report will be difficult because of my rotator cuff repair surgery.

read more »

I have some old news for you from our Canadian neighbors to the north. First, some bad news from Alberta. The Alberta Greens have official deregistered as a political party and have filed as a non-profit organization. Now the Alberta Greens cannot run candidates. It looks like the breakup was due to a leadership struggle between Leader Joe Anglin and former Leader George Read at a membership meeting in September 2008.

Stories about the Alberta Greens deregistering can be found here and here.

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The Nova Scotia Green Party is another provincial Green Party under threat of being deregistered after party officials failed to report financial paperwork. Story:

The fate of the Nova Scotia Greens will be determined at a meeting with the province’s chief electoral officer.

Dana Philip Doiron, spokesman for Elections Nova Scotia, said chief electoral officer Christine McCulloch plans to sit down with the party’s official agent and leaders. A date for that meeting has not yet been set.

“This meeting is very important for the final resolution of their status,” he said Tuesday. “Whenever that meeting will take place, that will be the end of this process, one way or the other.”

Elections Nova Scotia has warned the Greens could lose party status because they missed a deadline to file financial paperwork. Ms. McCulloch gave the party notice on June 26 that it had 30 days to formally assure her that it would fix the problem.

Green Leader Ryan Watson, who plans to resign in the fall, has since said the party provided the information on July 7. On Tuesday, he said the Greens certainly hope to keep party status.

It’s my personal opinion that the Nova Scotia Greens just fell down on the job here. I don’t know who’s fault it was but there’s something wrong in that organization when you miss a crucial deadline as that! Maybe I’m being too harsh and maybe there’s a circumstance that I’m not aware of, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with the Nova Scotia Greens during their last provincial election campaign which I read was disorganized and lackluster. With Watson’s resignation, hopefully some new energy can be injected into the local party there.

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Lastly, I have a bit of good news regarding Federal Leader Elizabeth May. Many people were puzzled in the last Canadian federal election when May chose to run in Nova Centra riding against a deeply entrenched Conservative MP. I can understand May’s reasons to do so (displace a Conservative MP, run close to home), but the main priority for May is to get a Green MP into Parliament and that means running your Leader in the riding with the best chances of winning.

It looks like the Green leadership has come around and now are stating that their #1 priority is to get Elizabeth May into the House of Commons. May will announce where she will run sometime around Labor Day.

Source: The Star

The Green Party of England and Wales was looking to make some progress in yesterday’s by-elections. There was a high profile race in the federal constituency of Norwich North which saw Green Party candidate Rupert Read garnering 5th place. The Conservatives prevailed and took the seat from Labour whose previous MP was caught up in the MP expenses scandal. The Greens are currently the official opposition on the Norwich city council. They were hopeful for 2nd or 3rd place so this result might have been disappointing. On the upside, the Greens did manage to triple their vote total.

Here is the final result in Norwich North:

1 – Chloe Smith, Conservative – 13,591
2 – Chris Ostrowski, Labour – 6,243
3 – April Pond, Liberal Democrat – 4,803
4 – Glenn Tingle, Ukip – 4,068
5 – Rupert Read, Greens – 3,350
6 – Craig Murray, Put an Honest Man Into Parliament – 953
7 – Robert West, BNP – 941
8 – Alan Hope, Monster Raving Looney party – 144
9 – Bill Holden, Independent – 166
10 – Anne Fryatt, None of the Above – 59
11 – Thomas Burridge, Libertarian party – 36
12 – Peter Baggs, Independent – 23

Source: politics.co.uk

There was a bright spot from yesterday’s by-elections though. Green Party candidate Alexandra Phillips won a city council seat in Brighton from the Tories. Phillips got 38.5%. This broke the Conservative majority on the city council putting the Greens there as the 2nd largest party tied with Labour. This may be a sign of better things to come. UK Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas will be standing in the Brighton-Hove constituency when the next federal election is up. The Greens got 31% of the vote in Brighton and Hove in the June 2009 European Election where Lucas won a seat as a Green European Member of Parliament.

Source: The Guardian

I always think of this Monty Python election coverage skit whenever I hear about British elections!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31FFTx6AKmU

I have just checked in to my motel here in Durham. I missed the first press conference today as I had an appointment with my surgeon. I had rotator cuff surgery on the 7th and therefore have been pretty much unable to keep up with my GPW responsibilities.

Beginning tomorrow at 6:30 AM and 10:30 PM I will webcast my reflections on the Durham meeting via Blog Talk Radio. I will be unable to take calls. To listen simply click the banner below.

In addition I will post on-the-spot observations to a number at Free Conference Call. They will be sporatic so, to listen simply call 218-339-3699 and enter access code 261386#

Free Conference Call is working, but you have to wait for close to a minite for it to play. There are two reports on the tape at this time.