{news} "Pot" shots at G.P. & Thornton-GOGOLA STRIKES AGAIN!

[Green Party-CT]

   I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER -THIS SOMETIMES COMIC WRITER DID QUITES A JOB ON US. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THIS WEIRD ARTICLE? WE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR,,RIGHT?
   
   I URGE YOU TO ALL WRITE TO THE PAPER,,WITH YOUR VIEWS.
  letters at newhavenadvocate.com
   
  Tim McKee
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  A Green Machine
The Green Party is poised to name a slate of candidates for statewide office. Tree-huggers of the Nutmeg, unite!
   
  by Tom Gogola - April 20, 2006 
   
                  CHRIS FASANELLA ILLUSTRATION     Imagine yourself living in a Green state. Imagine that by this time next year, a full slate of Green Party candidates has been elected to statewide office. Imagine a world of Green, where naught but Earth-friendly policies are foisted upon Connecticut voters. . .   Imagine what an interesting and off-beat government we'd have if the handful of candidates on the Green ticket were actually to win the higher offices they're seeking. . .   Ladies and gentlemen, we're here with drug-policy reformer and governor Clifford Thornton, who is just now meeting in the governor's mansion with a quarter pound of marijuana and a coalition of pot-puffing cancer patients. They're gathering to test the state's first bumper crop of the kind medical bud. One is heard to say, "That's good stuff, guv'nor!" to which Thornton responds, "Don't Rowland that joint!"       Down the hallway, Attorney General Nancy Burton is explaining to a reporter how
 her being disbarred by a vengeful judge from practicing law in Connecticut for five years was actually a good thing for Connecticut residents. "It's my badge of honor," she had previously told the reporter. Burton's ban on practicing law in the state ended just a few days before the election, and she's now applying to be readmitted to the Connecticut bar. It's a peculiar scenario, to be sure: an AG who can't even argue a case in state court. (She's good to go in federal court and in New York, however.) For now, the longtime anti-nuclear activist is poised to chain herself to the Millstone power plant, she says. Proudly litigious lawyer that she is, Burton declares that she'll sue you if you don't report that she'll sue you if you don't say nice things about her suing you. The reporter decides it's a good thing to have an attorney general who likes to sue, disbarment be damned, so long as he doesn't get sued by her for having some harmless fun with her rich and litigious
 history. Plus, Burton once successfully sued to save millionsand maybe billionsof winter-flounder larvae from getting sucked into the Millstone intake pipes. A friend of the flounder is a friend to all, the reporter concludes.       Senator Ralph Ferrucci, meanwhile, is hosting the first annual senatorial grammar class at his Hartford office. The senator is using as a teaching tool one of the mangled-syntax press releases he unloosed on the public during his campaignthat's very Mao of Ralph, in the "speaking bitterness" sense of the expression. He's reading from the gibberish sheet he released in opposition to the notorious Dubai ports deal:   We must make it our own responsibility to keep the terrorists out without the friends of our allies , he reads, adding, "though even I have no idea what the hell that means and I wrote the thing! Discuss! "   Even though he's now a United States senator, Ferrucci hasn't quit his day job as a deliveryman for Pepperidge Farm products.
 His reasons are as strategic as they are savory: He's got some baked goodies from the truck for Thornton's stoned cancer pals. For his part, Ferrucci needs the governor's support if he's to declare Rudy's a national historic landmark, his signature legislative initiative to date, besides his call to, you know, end the war.       Secretary of the State Mike DeRosa, meanwhile, has not stopped talking for 317 straight days. The logorrheic voting-reform specialist and Connecticut Green Party founder ignores Gov. Thornton's entreaties to "have a couple of puffs and shut up already," and DeRosa has just repeated himself for the 17th time in 16 minutes to an Advocate reporter about the evils of the two-party system. He's just getting warmed up to tell a story about the campaign-finance-reform miracle currently unfolding in Moodus. Dude, you won , the reporter cries, but to no avail. DeRosa just keeps on reforming, and reforming, and reforming. He's the Energizer Bunny of reform. 
      Finally, State Treasurer David Bue, pitched to voters as a "socially responsible investment adviser," is meeting with a cabal of unrepentant Socialists. "How does one square social responsibility with sound investment strategies?" he is asked. "All I can tell you" responds Bue, with a cryptic glimmer in his eye, "is that the only color that matters is green ."   Heads bob. Bue's made the case. Whether it's cash, pot or politics, green is good.       It would be thrilling were the above scenario to play out. Sign me right up: Executive bongs, maverick AGs, workingman bloopers, et al. But the purpose of this year's big statewide Green Party push isn't actually to get these people electedit's to grow the state party into a viable alternative in future elections. It's to ramp up the debate on controversial issues like decriminalizing marijuana (Thornton) and mothballing Millstone (Burton). And for that the party must be cheered; this is the first time it has fielded a
 full slate of candidates for statewide office. You can grouse over what might be perceived as a preference for quantity over quality, but the heck with thatfor good or ill, the Green Party isn't a top-down organization, at least not yet. Migosh, it's downright democratic! And this Saturday, the party convenes at the AFL-CIO Labor Hall in New Haven to formally announce its platform and nominate its slate of candidates. (See 7 Days, page 22, for details.)       Tim McKee, the state's Green Party national committee member and Thornton's campaign manager, is blunt about the upcoming election. There is no spoiler role for the Greens to play, he says, because "Rell is going to win very strongly." Since 1992, McKee says, he has been almost continuously asking people to run on the Green Party ticket; he says about 500 people have been approached during that time, including the Ralphs, Nader and Ferrucci. "A lot of people have only known us as the Nader party, and vice versa," he
 says. "Some people have only seen us at the local but not the statewide level."       McKee is quick to point out as well that "each candidacy is still an independent entity, and what we are doing now is not going to be the finished product."       The Green Party must now collect 7,500 signatures so that its candidates can be on the ballot come November. So far, says McKee, they've got about 1,000, and he's angling to collect 12,000, just to be on the safe side. The deadline for submitting the signatures is Aug. 5. That leaves plenty of time to hire a copy editor for Ralph Ferrucci. A couple boxes of Mint Milano cookies ought to do the trick.       Use our contact form to write to Tom Gogola. 























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