{news} Duffee profiled in Fairfield Citizen-News

[David Bedell]

This appeared alongside a profile of Libertarian candidate Phil Maymin in 
the Brooks newspapers, including the Darien News-Review, New Canaan 
News-Review, etc.

http://www.fairfieldcitizen-news.com/local/ci_4510280

Richard Z. Duffee
By Erin Lynch
Fairfield Citizen-News
Article Launched:10/18/2006 10:03:55 AM EDT

Richard Z. Duffee, the Green Party candidate for the 4th Congressional 
District, said he decided to run for office because he didn't see anyone 
representing his views on the state of the world today.

Duffee is challenging incumbent Republican Christopher Shays, Democratic 
candidate Diane Farrell and Libertarian candidate Phil Maymin.

"I knew if I didn't [run], nobody was going to take the position of those 
that I believe in. I've been listening for a long time and they all seem to 
be speaking on behalf of American citizens but I haven't heard them express 
what I believe," Duffee said during a meeting with the editorial board of 
Brooks Community Newspapers.

"Fundamentally, I think the world as a whole is more important that any 
particular country, and I am very disturbed about our role in the world 
since 1941; we basically use the occasion of World War II to fill the power 
vacuum that was left after the collapse of French and British empires."

He added, "Basically I think we took the bait of imperial power and we now 
have 725 military bases in about 120 counties and the world is terrified of 
us."

It is "shocking" that so many United States military servicemen and -women 
are stationed throughout the world, Duffee said. "The fact that the United 
States believes that in order to keep our place in the world and to serve 
American interests it is necessary to have that amount of military, when we 
only have about 4.7 percent of the population that there is on Earth, is 
truly shocking."

Instead of placing servicemen and -women throughout the world, Duffee 
believes the United States should focus on multinational disarmament 
conferences discussing all weapons with all countries and not just solely on 
the issue of nuclear weapons.

Because he objects to the amount of U.S. military presence throughout the 
world, Duffee obviously is against the war in Iraq. If elected, Duffee said 
he will work toward impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President 
Dick Cheney for lying about the reason for entering into a war with Iraq, a 
war he believes is unjustified. When asked what his position is on the 
hundreds of thousands of troops fighting in the war, Duffee said, "I think 
we should get out immediately."

"We have no business being there, we never should have gone there, this is 
illegal. We were lying, we were violating the Constitution, we are violating 
article 2.4 of the charter of the [United Nations], we're violating the 
entire tradition of the U.N., we're lying in the [United Nations] Security 
Council, the Bush administration was lying to Congress [and] they were lying 
to the public."

"We should leave and we should pay reparations; we have injured that country 
enormously for no fault of their own," Duffee said. "The Bush administration 
is fooling us, they're fooling themselves but they are not fooling the rest 
of the world."

Duffee's platform on domestic policies are to put the Federal Reserve Bank 
under congressional control, to forbid the FBI from political spying and 
repression, to begin paying reparations to descendants of slaves by a tax on 
inheritors of estates of slave owners, traders and those who profited from 
slave labor, according to his Web site, www.duffee.politicalgateway.com .

His site also states that if elected, he will put a 20 percent tax on fossil 
fuels and use the proceeds for research into reducing costs of renewable 
energy and conservation and mass transit.

If elected, he also plans to "create a national program to redesign suburbia 
to lower the cost of transportation, heating, and construction [and to] 
model this on [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt-era programs," his site 
states.

He would also support setting up "a National Institute of Land Use to 
experiment with permaculture, with ways of returning land to its original 
condition, or to farmland or garden, while people live below ground, or in 
housing on stilts, or in housing in which the roof is productive 
agricultural space," according to his site.

He also believes the "most serious problem facing Connecticut" is the fact 
that the state has the third highest Gini coefficient in the country. The 
Gini coefficient, he said, is the equation measured by economists to study 
the difference between rich and poor financial distribution. The fact that 
the state is putting more money into the federal government than it 
receives, he said, is the root of the lack of equality found between rich 
and poor districts.

"Statewide, it's pretty clear there should be more done in the poorer 
districts and I think that it's most dramatic in education," he said. Duffee 
said he would support educational funding to come from income taxes and not 
through property taxes to offer better support to school districts.

In an e-mail, Duffee wrote that "education as a whole is not under-funded in 
the U.S. But it is not funded as a genuinely public system; instead it is 
funded as though it were partially private. Using property tax as a basis 
for funding allows wealthy districts with high property values to raise more 
money using low mill rates than poor districts can raise using high mill 
rates. Consequently, landowners in prosperous areas get their children a 
bargain in education while people in areas of low property value get poor 
education even when paying taxes at higher rates."

"I see a strong connection between the fact that the U.S. scores far below 
other developed countries on educational tests and the fact that most of 
those countries, like France and Germany, fund education nationally and 
equally for all students," he wrote.

Duffee said he believed the reason why U.S. education "is so poor" is 
because the money goes to where "it does the least good," which is on 
wealthier districts instead of spending it where it is most needed.

Duffee, who taught chemistry and environmental science to juniors and 
seniors at the Stamford Academy, said, " I have never been in a suburban 
high school where it was not evident that more resources were offered to the 
students with wealthier parents than were offered to those with poorer 
parents. The wealthy always have more social pressure on their side in any 
public institution. It should be the duty of school administrators to resist 
the continuous temptation to treat wealthier students better and poorer 
students worse."

As for other issues, Duffee said there should be a universal single-payer 
health care system, similar to the Canadian single-payer model, and the 
pharmaceutical industry should become nationalized.

While Duffee said he ran on the Green Party ticket because it is "more 
meaningful to my views that anyone else that I knew," he was very much 
involved with the Democratic Party up until 1995.

His Web site states that he "went to law school to become a Legal Services 
lawyer but in 1995 [former President Bill] Clinton reduced the Legal 
Services Corporation to a telephone referral service." When his profession 
was eliminated he decided to move to India where he taught law and poverty 
courses before returning to the United States in 2004.

Although he has virtually no political experience, Duffee said, "I certainly 
have been thinking about it for a long time." Even though he hasn't held a 
seat in a local, state or national office, Duffee did work on Lawrence 
Grunberger's senatorial campaign in Hudson Valley in New York in 1984 and 
1986. He also helped Grunberger, for seven years, on the National Committee 
Against Repressive Legislation newsletter.

Duffee also admitted that he doesn't expect to win the congressional seat. 
"I don't expect to win. Am I qualified? No, but by 19th-century standards, I 
am. Presently most of the politicians in Washington are lifelong 
politicians; they simply don't leave office. Once they're in, they're in, 
that's it."

If elected, Duffee acknowledged that his first term would be a learning 
experience. "In the first couple of years I would not be very effective. I 
would try to figure what on Earth you have to know and who you have to talk 
to for what. However, every beginning congressman has that problem and I 
don't think it's that critical."

Duffee also said he isn't encouraging any of his would-be constituents to 
vote for him either; in fact, he's very candid on his intentions for this 
race. "I won't encourage people to vote for me. I'd like to have 1 percent 
of the vote so my [Green Party] successor's job will be a lot easier. If I 
think that 1 percent would threaten Farrell's chances because I think it is 
so essential to get Bush out of office, to impeach him then I would give up 
the 1 percent."

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