According to the Green Party’s 2016 Presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, the Democratic Party cannot be trusted to defend the “interests of regular people.”
Stein declares:
“We need our own party, organized by, led by, and founded by, WE the people NOT the corporations!”
“My Power to the People Plan is for deep system change, from greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered economy: PEOPLE, PLANET, PEACE OVER PROFIT!”
The bottleneck for healthy change in America Stein identifies as our current political “representatives” who no longer represent the citizenry but the corporations. Stein stresses that “corporate personhood” must be abolished and serious electoral reform must be implemented to “end the stranglehold of money on our government.”
Since the Green Party does not accept corporate funding it stays committed to the needs of ordinary citizens.
Stein recognizes that the corporate elite and its media are in league against the needs of everyday people as well as her own campaign. She continues to battle a ferocious corporate media blackout as she attempts to promote her Green New Deal campaign for environmental, economic and social justice.
The media and its corporate overlords do not want American citizens to realize they have an option to vote for the GREATER GOOD, not simply to choose and settle for the so-called “lesser evil”. They do not want Dr. Stein’s wholesome and humane solutions for our economic and social systems to be explored and implemented. Stein puts PEOPLE OVER PROFIT. She’s a humanist who embraces empathy, cooperation, partnership, not part of a patriarchy that glorifies win/lose competitiveness, might makes right, profits uber alles, etc. anti-values.
Dr. Stein’s grave diagnosis of our current struggling and sick America, that is, the America of the lower 99% of Americans:
One in two Americans live near or below the poverty level. Hardest hit are children, the elderly and students.
49 million Americans have no health insurance. Additional millions are profoundly under-served by corporate-profits friendly Obamacare. The US spends more than any other industrial democracy for health care and ranks a shameful 37th according to the World Health Organization.
Over six million Americans have lost their homes to bank foreclosures.
Over seven million Americans are under “correctional supervision” as the prison industrial complex grows. This number is ten times greater than in 1965.
40 million college students/graduates are in debt.
Over 25 million Americans are unemployed. 50% of young people are unemployed.
Our infrastructure is grotesquely underfunded.
Our tax dollars are obscenely squandered on weaponry and wars for sociopathic advancement of corporations, spreading poverty, misery and death to hundreds of thousands, including our own trusting military-volunteering youth.
Obama’s deportations of immigrants are draconian in terms of conditions, dangers of transfer and arrival.
Obama’s drone usage defies constitutional as well as international law.
Stein stresses how the big banks that crashed our economy are BIGGER than ever under the Obama administration. The 1% “establishment” has become obscenely rich while the 99% continue to sink financially.
“The President is very much part of this establishment. Having campaigned on a populist platform of taxing the rich, saving Social Security, and making the economy fair, the President has once again morphed into an invaluable ally of the economic elite, willing to throw you under the bus.”
“In his … fiscal cliff deal, he did not tax the rich. He largely gave them the store. And he’s now once again looking to cut Social Security – and Medicare and Medicaid.”
The tax breaks of the oft-quoted trickle down economics plan have proven “indirect, ineffective and expensive” observes Stein. Instead of generating jobs, bank and corporate executives have used taxpayer and Fed money for obscene bonuses for themselves and have further betrayed Americans by shipping jobs overseas for bottom line wages to generate even more short-term high-return income.
After eight agonizing years of the Bush regime, 70 million American voters put their trust in Obama who heartbreakingly proved to be, in Stein’s words, a “facilitator for the elites,” rather than a reformer for the 99%.
Also, in terms of the environment, Obama has failed us profoundly and dangerously. According to Stein, continuing on with his “all of the above” energy policy (the hydrofracking, offshore drilling, sabotaging of climate accords, raging militarism in quest for fossil fuels, etc.) means “It’s game over for the climate!”
THE GOOD NEWS?
Dr. Jill Stein not only has made a thorough and thoughtful diagnosis of our sick America but has a treatment plan FOR ROBUST NATIONAL RECOVERY. She compares her “Green New Deal” to the New Deal platform implemented by a politically courageous FDR that set this country right after the Great Depression.
The Green New Deal Objectives:
1) jobs, healthcare and education as a human right;
2) a livable climate;
3) end to immoral and endless wars;
4) bailing out students in debt;
5) restoring civil liberties; and
6) ending immigrant deportations/providing humane path to citizenship.
How would the Green New Deal be funded and implemented?
1) by cutting the bloated military to year 2000 levels (50% budget cut);
2) by taxing the rich (including 0.5% sales tax on Wall Street transactions);
3) eliminating health insurance waste through Medicare for All;
4) jumpstarting a green economy: a) carbon fee on fossil fuel companies, b) phase out/shut down dirty energy production, c) say no to new sources of dirty, climate-changing energy, like fracking, and d) assume democratic control over our energy to save the planet and our children;
5) by ending student debt (“Instead of bailing out the banksters who caused this crisis let’s redirect that money to students who are victims of waste, fraud and abuse.”);
6) by making public higher education free (“GI bill returned $7 dollars in economic benefits for every $1 dollar invested in higher education”);
7) by respecting “immigrant rights as human rights” and creating fair trade agreements (“humane and welcoming” path to citizenship now – not 15 years from now; renegotiations of trade agreements to be FAIR which would end the flow of economic refugees into this country to start with”);
8) by ending the war on drugs;
9) by ending “the wars for oil and other resources that have created a state of permanent, immoral and unaffordable war”;
10) by restoring our civil liberties by repealing the NDAA and the Patriot Act and calling for an end to the growing surveillance state, including the use of domestic drones to spy on citizens;
11) by working toward eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons; and
12) by generating 20 million new living wage jobs to jump start the green economy a) to empower communities to decide what jobs they need to become sustainable, b) to create public sector jobs, and establish a modern Conservation Corp and Public Works Administration, and c) to jump start community-based small businesses as well as worker owned-cooperatives.
A pronouncement about Jill Stein’s candidacy from the internet I read in 2012:
Desperate times require desperate measures. The hour has come to break with the dying two-party system and begin building the new political parties that over half of Americans now say are needed.
The Green Party presidential campaign of Jill Stein is the best opportunity we have today to make that move.
How nice not to have to hold my nose and vote for a supposedly “lesser evil” candidate.
How empowering to embrace the politics of courage, not fear.
Dr. Jill Stein is no spoiler in this 2016 election. She is a savior!
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate