{news} Ralph Nader Campaigns For Conn. Greens

[clifford thornton]

http://www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2006/11/02/News/Ralph.Nader.Campaigns.For.Conn.Greens-2435113-page3.shtml?norewrite200611020949&sourcedomain=www.dailycampus.com<http://www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2006/11/02/News/Ralph.Nader.Campaigns.For.Conn.Greens-2435113-page3.shtml?norewrite200611020949&sourcedomain=www.dailycampus.com>


Ralph Nader Campaigns For Conn. Greens

With less than a week remaining before next Tuesday's election, former presidential candidate Ralph Nader toured the state yesterday in hopes of sparking larger support for local Green Party nominees. Arriving at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford shortly after 11:30 a.m., Nader conducted a press conference in which he complimented many of the Connecticut Greens who are running for office and discussed other topics.

Nader began the press conference by defending his Democratic rival in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry, a man who has recently come under fire from Republicans for telling a group of students that they had to succeed in school in order not to "get stuck in Iraq."

"Consider his words, the fact that he is a veteran, the fact that he was in the Vietnam War, with his critics' deeds," Nader said. "Nine hundred American soldiers, the latest estimate, who've been killed in Iraq could have been saved by body armor and with armored vehicles, armor around the Humvees. This was going on for over three-and-a-half years. This is the starkest case of presidential criminal negligence in recent warfare."

"So who is respecting the troops in this little dustup between Kerry and the White House hordes, and their media acolytes like Limbaugh?" asked Nader. "Until voters begin in great numbers, not just in small numbers, distinguishing the words of politicians from the deeds, they will forever be the prisoners of rhetoric instead of informed citizens, based on the record of the politicians. And Joe Lieberman is another example of this."

Incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman is currently running in a tight Senate race against anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont, the man who beat him in the Democratic primary last August. Also running for this office are Alan Schlesinger of the Republican Party, Ralph Ferrucci of the Green Party and Timothy Knibbs of the Concerned Citizens Party.

Many observers have attributed Lieberman's primary loss to a perceived closeness on his part with Republican leadership, as exemplified by the moment when Pres. Bush kissed him at the most recent State of the Union address. Lieberman contends that his Senate votes are based on personal convictions and dismisses this criticism as partisan spitefulness. 

"Mind you, in supporting the war, [Lieberman] supported the Military Commissions Act, which is a destructive law against due process and our Constitutional protections," Nader said. "He supported it, voted for it a few weeks ago in the Senate. It dangerously gives dictatorial powers to the President. It allows the President to arrest without charges, to imprison without lawyers, to define who is an enemy combatant, to define what is assisting terrorism. In other words, a total assignment of power to the executive branch, stripping the judges of their review role and stripping a willing Congress of its Constitutional authority."

Nader also took issue with Lieberman's economic ties.

"Joe Lieberman goes around the state saying, 'You may disagree with me about the war, but I'm okay on labor, environment, consumer and other issues that liberals like to see supported,'" Nader said. "Those are his words, now look at the deeds. He has contradicted his words to such a degree that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful, vicious and most energetic big business lobby, has endorsed him and said that he has received their highest rating of any Democratic senator east of the Mississippi."

Nader released a statement on Aug. 2, only six days before the Democratic primary, asking Lieberman to publicly denounce the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"The Chamber demands that the federal government subsidize corporations, take the federal cop off of corporate crime, fraud and abuse beat, weaken its laws protecting the environment, workers, consumers and small taxpayers, keep enlarging the bloated, wasteful military contracting budget and generally accede to the Chamber's ideology of becoming a corporate government," the statement read.

Nader spent much time during the press conference speaking well of the Green Party and its local nominees.

"The Green Party provides the progressive agenda, the majority of which is supported by a majority of the American people," Nader said. "Not all of it, but if you look at their economic agenda, their consumer agenda, their environmental agenda, their clean government agenda, their access to justice agenda, it will come in very high on the public opinion polls. And their agenda is not replicated by the Democratic-and-Republican Party." 

Nader praised Green Party candidates Cliff Thornton, Ralph Ferrucci and Secretary of State nominee Mike DeRosa, all of who were present at the time. He eventually invited Thornton to speak at the podium.

"As governor, I would bring the troops home from Iraq, because our National Guard needs to be here to service the people of Connecticut just in case there is an emergency," Thornton said. "And with climate changes, there will be an emergency."

Thornton also mentioned his plan to provide free college tuition as a means of fighting poverty.

When asked by a reporter why Green candidates do not simply join up with the Democratic Party in order to make the electoral process easier on them, Thornton got visibly upset.

"They are afraid to touch this thing called the War on Drugs. They are afraid to address the issue of universal healthcare in its entirety," Thornton said. "The Democrats and Republicans are not about education. They have been promising for the last 20 years to clean up the education and they have not, it's gotten exceedingly worse. This is why we don't want anything to do with the Democratic Party."

Nader called Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell a "public relations genius" and denounced Democratic mayor John DeStefano for helping to keep minor party candidates out of the state's two televised gubernatorial debates.

Nader also took some time yesterday to visit schools in Hartford, Enfield, North Branford and New Haven before finally attending a Thornton fundraiser at the Willimantic Country Club last evening.



Thornton for Governor
PO Box 1971
Manchester, CT 06045
votethornton at yahoogroups.com<mailto:votethornton at yahoogroups.com>
www.votethornton.com<http://www.votethornton.com/>
860 657 8438-H
860 268 1294-C
860 778 1304-Tim Mckee-Campaign Manager
860 293 0222-Ken Krayeske-field Manager
Paid for by Thornton For Governor
Max H. Wentworth, Treasurer
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20061102/fc67711e/attachment.html>