From timmckee at mail.com Mon Aug 4 12:11:47 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 11:11:47 -0500 Subject: {news} FYI_Tiny Working Families Party a Coalitio Pushing Labor Agneda Message-ID: <20080804161147.EB75632675A@ws1-8.us4.outblaze.com> courant.com/news/politics/hc-workingfamilies0804.artaug04,0,2113560.story Courant.com =========== Tiny Working Families Party A Coalition Pushing Labor Agenda ------------------------------------------------------------ By MARK PAZNIOKAS Courant Staff Writer August 4, 2008 Click here to find out more! Of the 1.9 million voters in Connecticut, only 15 are registered with the Working Families Party. "I don't know who any of them are," said Jon Green, executive director of the party. Is he one? "No," he said, laughing. Confused? What the Working Families Party does have is a progressive economic agenda and a valuable asset: its own line on every ballot in Connecticut. The party practices fusion politics ? cross-endorsing supportive candidates from other parties, typically Democrats ? on a broad scale. A change in state law last year eased the rules for cross-endorsements, setting up the Working Families Party as potential kingmaker in close races, such as Democrat Jim Himes' challenge of U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4th District. Himes and the state's four Democratic congressional incumbents will appear twice on the ballot this fall ? on the Democratic and Working Families lines. So will about 50 state legislative candidates, including two Republicans, Sens. John Kissel of Enfield and Leonard Fasano of North Haven. Two years ago, when Democrat Chris Murphy unseated U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-5th District, he garnered an extra 5,794 votes on the Working Families line. That was more than Shays' 5,747 plurality. Working Families was founded 10 years ago in New York, where fusion voting is common. After a slow start in Connecticut, the party is establishing a reputation as an important ally for Democrats. The increasing role of Working Families in Connecticut, one of the relatively few states that allow fusion voting, provokes concern among Republicans. "They've taken a loophole in the law and, with 15 people, they have managed to establish themselves as a fringe party whose sole purpose is to confuse voters that Democrats have support from a phantom party," said Chris Healy, the Republican state chairman. Composition Of Party -------------------- Working Families is less of a party than a coalition of labor unions and community activists who are trying to convince politicians that support for their causes can translate into measurable votes. Their causes include universal health care, mandatory paid sick days and a livable wage. With its own ballot line, the party is hoping to get credit for electing progressive, pro-labor candidates, just as Ralph Nader's presence on the presidential ballot in Florida earned him blame for Al Gore's narrow loss in 2000. Green said the party's polling shows that many of the votes on their line come from voters who could not bring themselves to vote for a Democrat or a Republican. "It's a protest vote that actually counts," he said. Maura Keaney, the campaign manager for Himes, said Working Families is composed of groups that are mainstream, unlike some other minor parties. "Working Families is about coalitions," Keaney said. "The Green Party is about being on the outside, rather than forming a strong progressive coalition." Working Families is backed by elements of major unions, including the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Art Perry, the political director of an SEIU local that represents janitors, said Working Families is a consistent voice for labor causes of great import to his members, including paid sick days. Causes are more important than party loyalty, he said. And that attitude is the cause of tension between the Working Families and Democrats. Backing A Republican -------------------- Although the party tries to influence most races by cross-endorsing major party candidates, it occasionally backs a Republican. In one race this year, it is trying to be a spoiler, fielding its own candidate in an effort to draw votes away from a Democratic incumbent. The target is Linda Schofield, a Democrat from Simsbury who was cross-endorsed two years ago in her successful challenge of a Republican incumbent, Robert Heagney. Schofield, who won by 180 votes, got 167 votes on the Working Families line. But Schofield, a former director of the state Medicaid program, became a voice of opposition within the Democratic caucus to a health care pooling bill that the Working Families Party favored. She is facing a rematch with Heagney. Green said the party decided that it would be better off with a conservative Republican sitting harmlessly with the GOP minority than an unfriendly Democrat inside the majority. "It is a compliment," Schofield said. "They deem me as intelligent and effective, and they want to take me out." House Majority Leader Christopher G. Donovan, D- Meriden, said the Working Families overlooked Schofield's casting a key vote in support of another labor cause: overriding Gov. M. Jodi Rell's veto of a minimum wage increase. "She's been there when we've needed her," Donovan said. Schofield said the Working Families Party was trying to establish a progressive litmus test, which could limit the ability of Democrats to win in Republican-leaning districts. "I think they are trying to intimidate Democrats into being more in tune with the Working Families' left-leaning policies," Schofield said. "There is an inherent threat here, 'If you don't vote our way, we'll run someone against you.'" Working Families sees one of its roles as forcing the large Democratic majorities in the legislature to deliver on issues. For that, Green makes no apologies. "You have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies," Green said. "It's just about the issues." Contact Mark Pazniokas at mpazniokas at courant.com. For full coverage of the 2008 election season, including photos, video and other multimedia, visit www.courant.com/vote08 Copyright ? 2008, The Hartford Courant [IMAGE] ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Tue Aug 5 16:07:25 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 15:07:25 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Do you Digg Cynthia? Message-ID: <20080805200725.5B25C47808F@ws1-5.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Wilder" To: "natcom gpus" Subject: [usgp-dx] Do you Digg Cynthia? Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:30:07 -0700 (PDT) ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Ian Wilder Subject: [usgp-dx] Do you Digg Cynthia? Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:30:07 -0700 (PDT) Size: 6000 URL: From timmckee at mail.com Tue Aug 5 16:11:27 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 15:11:27 -0500 Subject: {news} GP RELEASE Greens challenge Electoral College manipulation of pres. election outcome Message-ID: <20080805201127.725C3478092@ws1-5.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] GP RELEASE Greens challenge Electoral College manipulation of pres. election outcome Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 17:37:34 +0000 GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES http://www.gp.org For Immediate Release: Tuesday, August 5, 2008 Contacts: Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty at greens.org Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene at gp.org Greens launch effort against Electoral College manipulation of presidential elections ? Malapportionment of Electoral College votes may lead to a Republican victory despite the popular vote, disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters, especially black voters in southern states ? Green civil action seeks to democratize the Electoral College by enforcing 14th Amendment voter protections, names Vice President Cheney as defendent WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders said today that the outcome of the 2008 presidential election may be affected by the antidemocratic apportionment of Electoral College votes, with the popular vote misrepresented by the winner-take-all system of assigning votes to electors. "We're in danger of seeing the 2008 election stolen again, as in 2000 and 2004," said Clyde Shabazz, Green candidate for the US House in Michigan (13th District) (http://www.migreens.org). "In Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, we witnessed the obstruction and manipulation of votes by election officials and possible tampering with computer voting machines. But equally insidious is the malapportionment of Electoral College votes, which disenfranchises whole sections of the voting public." A civil action to protect the voting rights of presidential electors and the voters they represent was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (1:08-cv-01294) on January 28, 2008, by Asa Gordon, chair of the DC Statehood Green Party's Electoral College Task Force and executive director of the Douglass Institute of Government (http://members.aol.com/digasa/dig.htm). The action seeks relief against the defendant, Vice President Cheney, who will preside over the tabulation of "unbound electoral states" on January 6, 2009, challenging the recognition of Electoral College votes that are apportioned by states on a winner-take-all basis. The civil action seeks enforcement of the 'Mal-Apportionment Penalty' provided in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which mandates a reduction of a state's presidential electors and congressional representatives if "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States... is denied... or in any way abridged." The civil action alternatively seeks the issuance of a court order providing proportional apportionment of presidential electors. "If two thirds of the voters in a state vote for a candidate from Party A and one third vote for a candidate from Party B, and the state's winner-take-all rule gives all of the state's electors to Party A, then one third of the voters have been disenfranchised in violation of Amendment 14, Section 2 of the US Constitution," said Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party. "We've witnessed in election after election how some states have used the winner-take-all formula to prevent the votes of political, ethnic, and other minorities from being counted." Mr. Gordon noted that the civil action had the potential to "alter the fate of the 2008 presidential election in a manner different from any presidential election in the nation's history." (http://www.electors.us) "By refusing to challenge Electoral College malapportionment in 2000 and 2004, which blocked Democratic electors from voting in those elections, the Democratic Party's leaders abandoned tens of thousands of their own voters, just as they failed to challenge the election irregularities in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004," said Mr. Gordon. "Will they fail to challenge malapportionment again in 2008, and hand the Republicans another victory? Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee if not for the Democratic Party's proportional assignment of primary delegates. The winner-take-all provisions in the general election present the distinct possibility that Mr. Obama in 2008 will win the popular vote by a considerably larger margin than did Gore in 2000, but will repeat the Democratic loss in the Electoral College." Mr. Gordon said that African American voters in several southern states* that were represented by proportional assignment of delegates in the Democratic primary, and who were critical to Barack Obama's success, will be lost to Mr. Obama under the winner-take-all rules of the general election. "If proportional assignment is considered by Democrats to be vital to democracy in their primary elections, why won't they fight for it in the general election?" asked Mr. Gordon, who led workshops for Green presidential electors during the 2008 Green National Convention (http://www.gp.org/speakers/detail.php?ID=29) (http://www.greenparty2008.org/wiki/index.php/Workshops). As a result of the workshops, several Green electors pledged to presidential candidate (and eventual Green nominee) Cynthia McKinney agreed to institute a program for enforcement of the Reconstruction-Era provision enshrined in the 14th Amendment. "The 'Democratize the Electoral College' program exposes the hypocrisy and fraud behind charges that the McKinney campaign might 'spoil' the Democratic presidential ticket's chances of winning. Democratic leaders should have to explain why they choose to ignore 13 additional electors from southern states that they'd gain through the Green Party's presidential electors project. Why is the Green Party fighting to give voice to Democratic voters that the Democratic Party will not fight for? Let me be clear -- we're not doing this to assist Barack Obama, but to foster real democracy and voter participation, and to offer Cynthia McKinney as the truly democratic choice for all the people," said Mr. Gordon. Green Party leaders noted that after John Kerry quickly conceded the 2004 election, Democratic leaders failed to respond to thousands of complaints about voting irregularities in Ohio and other states. Green presidential nominee David Cobb and Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik launched the Ohio and New Mexico recount efforts and collected the initial evidence that Republican officials had blocked the votes of many African American and young voters (http://www.iwantmyvote.com). Greens raised most of the money for the recounts. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) later held hearings and published evidence of the election theft (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1101). Cynthia McKinney and running mate Rosa Clemente were nominated during the 2008 Green National Convention in Chicago, July 10-13. The Green Party's national platform endorses a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and providing for the direct election of the president by instant runoff voting (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#309649). "Americans don't vote for President. Instead, we vote for an electoral college which was created in the late 1700s to expressly increase the power of the slave states -- and which it is still doing," said Mark Dunlea, an election law attorney with the Green Party of New York State. * Asa Gordon's civil action observes that the Office of the Federal Register of the National Archives and Records Administration explicitly declares that "the electors in these (Southern) States (ARKANSAS -- 6 Electoral Votes, GEORGIA -- 15 Electoral Votes, LOUISIANA -- 9 Electoral Votes, TENNESSEE -- 11 Electoral Votes, TEXAS -- 34 Electoral Votes) are not bound by State Law to cast their vote for a specific candidate" (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html). The civil action was filed on July 28, 2008, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party in partnership with the Douglass Institute of Government has led the way in educating Americans about their constitutional "right to vote" under the provisions of 14th Amendment, Section 2. MORE INFORMATION Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org 202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN Fax 202-319-7193 ? Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml ? Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml ? Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers ? Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org Mal-Apportionment Penalty Civil Actions http://www.electors.us "Greens: Enforce 14th Amendment's 'Right to Vote' Provision" Green Party press release, October 18, 2004 http://www.gp.org/press/pr_10_18_04.html "Greens Push for Real Electoral Reforms at Carter-Baker Hearings, June 30" Green Party press release, June 27, 2005 http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_27.shtml 2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois http://www.greenparty2008.org ~ END ~ _________________________________________________________________ Reveal your inner athlete and share it with friends on Windows Live. http://revealyourinnerathlete.windowslive.com?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WLYIA_whichathlete_us _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Wed Aug 6 16:14:20 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 15:14:20 -0500 Subject: {news} FERRUCCI GOING GREEN Message-ID: <20080806201420.EFC3F11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> Wednesday, August 06, 2008 ? 2:33 PM Post a Comment Ferrucci Going Green ==================== posted by Andy Bromage Ralph Ferrucci worked so hard collecting signatures for Ralph Nader's presidential drive that he came up short for his own campaign. Ferrucci planned to challenge Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-3) on the Independent Party ticket that Nader is running on. But he focused so much on getting signatures for Nader he failed to get the ones he needed for his own petition drive. So Ferrucci says he'll seek the Green Party's nomination, on whose ticket he ran for Congress in 2004. The Greens, and other minor parties, have ballot access and have until September to nominate a candidate to run. Ferrucci was at the Capitol today delivering Nader's petitions to the Secretary of the State's office and told the Daily Advocate he's spoken with Green Party elders who seemed supportive of the idea. Does this mean Ferrucci will abandon his old friend Ralph Nader in favor of Green Party presidential pick Cynthia McKinney? Nope. Ralph says he's sticking with Ralph. Go figure. Stay tuned for updates...... ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From efficacy at msn.com Thu Aug 7 17:34:59 2008 From: efficacy at msn.com (Clifford Thornton) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 17:34:59 -0400 Subject: {news} Nader Holds News Conference on War on Drugs/Corporate Crimes Message-ID: Contact: Toby Heaps, 202-441-6795, > toby at votenader.org; or, Chris Driscoll, 202-360-3273, > chris at votenader.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Nader Holds News Conference on War on Drugs/Corporate Crimes What: Presidential candidate Ralph Nader outlines his plan to empty prisons of non-violent drug offenders and fill em up with corporate criminals. Nader says the non-violent drug offenses are being over prosecuted and corporate crime is being under prosecuted. He calls on the Justice Department to switch its priorities. When: Friday, August 8, 2008. 10 a.m. Where: Nader/Gonzalez Campaign HQ 3050 K Street, N.W. Suite 215 Washington, D.C. 20007 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attachment: http://drugsense.org/temp/IxWTWqtP89BL.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From efficacy at msn.com Fri Aug 8 12:07:18 2008 From: efficacy at msn.com (Clifford Thornton) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 12:07:18 -0400 Subject: {news} Nader's details on drug war views Message-ID: To: 'alliance reform orgs' Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 11:58 AM Subject: ARO: Nader's details on drug war views --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cliff asked yesterday "where's the beef" when Nader said he opposed the drug war -- below is the beef! KZ Nader Calls For Crackdown on Corporate Crime, Reversal of So-Called War on Drugs Friday, August 8, 2008 at 12:00:00 AM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Toby Heaps, 202-471-5833 WASHINGTON, Aug. 8--At a news conference today Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader outlined his plan to empty prisons of non-violent drug offenders and fill them up with corporate criminals. "Non-violent drug offenses are being over prosecuted and corporate crime is being under prosecuted," Nader said. "The Justice Department must begin to reverse course, crank up the crackdown on corporate crime, and end the cruel and inhumane war on non-violent drug possession." "The criminal justice system is broken--so badly that one hardly knows where to begin describing the breakdown," Nader said. "Let's start with the war on drugs, since commentators across the political spectrum recognize its lunacy. We pour almost endless resources--roughly $50 billion every year--into catching, trying, and incarcerating people who primarily harm themselves. This insane war on drugs damages communities and drains crucial resources from the police, courts, and prisons. These resources could be better used to combat serious street and corporate crime that directly violates the public's liberty, health, safety, trust, and financial well-being. As with alcoholics and nicotine addicts, the approach to drug addicts should be rehabilitation, not incarceration." "The current drug policy has consumed tens of billions of dollars and wrecked countless lives," Nader said. "The costs of this policy include the increasing breakdown of families and neighborhoods, endangerment of children, widespread violation of civil liberties, escalating rates of incarceration, political corruption, and the imposition of United States policy abroad. In practice, the drug war disproportionately targets people of color and people who are poverty-stricken. Coercive measures have not reduced drug use, but they have clogged our criminal justice system with non-violent offenders. It is time to explore alternative approaches and to end this costly war." In 2004, Ralph Nader wrote President Bush urging that he grant clemency to 30,000 non-violent drug offenders. Nader's letter highlighted the three-decade-long failed, and unjust, drug war. His call for clemency highlighted a similar request made by 400 clergy members to President Bill Clinton in 2000. Nader's letter recalled President Bush's substance abuse problems and noted that if Bush had been incarcerated for cocaine use he "probably would not have gone on to have the career you have had." The letter also highlighted the rapid expansion of the prison system in the United States which now houses more than 2.1 million people--one-quarter of the world's prison population. Clemency for non-violent drug offenders would save billions of dollars annually. "It is urgent that the U.S. reverse the incarceration binge. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that if incarceration rates remain unchanged an estimated one of every 20 Americans and greater than one in four African Americans can be expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime," Nader said. "It is time to make the failed war on drugs a central issue in the American political dialogue. For too long we have let this injustice continue to grow unhindered. Taking action on clemency at the federal level will set an example for the states and begin the process of reversing this failed policy." The Nader/Gonzalez campaign also calls for an immediate end to the criminal prosecution of patients for medical marijuana. "The current cruel, unjust policy perpetuated and enforced by the Bush Administration prevents Americans who suffer from debilitating illnesses from experiencing the relief of medicinal cannabis," Nader said. "While substantial scientific and anecdotal evidence exists to validate marijuana's usefulness in treating disease, a deluge of rhetoric from Washington claims that marijuana has no medicinal value." At the same time, the Nader/Gonzalez campaign supports industrial hemp as a renewable resource with many important fuel, fiber, food, paper, energy and other uses. Industrial hemp is a commercial crop grown for its seed and fiber and the products made from them. Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest fibers in the plant kingdom, and it has had thousands of uses over the centuries. "In need of alternative crops and aware of the growing market for industrial hemp--particularly for bio-composite products such as automobile parts, farmers in the United States are forced to watch from the sidelines while Canadian, French and Chinese farmers grow the crop and American manufacturers import it from them," Nader said. Federal legislators--except for Congressman Ron Paul and a few others--continue to ignore the issue of removing it from the DEA list. It is time to allow hemp agriculture, production and manufacturing in the United States. Nader would shift the billions saved from the war on drugs to a war on corporate crime. Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred violence. >From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and occupational homicide, corporate crime enforcement is widely ignored by politicians--yet acutely felt by all Americans. The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery--street crimes--costs the nation $3.8 billion a year. The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds--Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron--swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined. Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year. Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice. These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws. Prosecutors, defense attorneys and other criminal justice experts concur that corporate crime is under prosecuted. The decline of criminal prosecution of cartel enforcement is exemplary of the demise of corporate crime enforcement as a whole. A recent report from the American Antitrust Institute found that the number of criminal cartel cases brought by the Division has dropped 49 percent from 1995-99 to 2004-06. And the number of corporations charged annually dropped continuously from 1995 to 2007. "There now is a significant and growing backlog of criminal investigations and unresolved matters," the report found. Part of the problem lies with the fact that the Antitrust Division is underfunded and understaffed. The report calls for a doubling of the Antitrust Division's budget. Nader/Gonzalez would crack down on corporate crime and violence with a 12-point program: 1. Increase Corporate Crime Prosecution Budgets: The Department of Justice's corporate crime division and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been chronically and pitifully underfunded and therefore do not have sufficient resources to combat the massive often reported corporate crime wave in the United States. This results in inadequate investigation, settlement of cases for weak fines and ignoring many corporate crime violators completely. There needs to be a strong corporate law-and-order will in the White House. 2. Ban Corporate Criminals from Government Contracts: The US should enact a tough, serious debarment statute that would deny federal business to serious and/or repeat corporate lawbreakers. The federal government spends $265 billion annually on goods and services. These contracts should not support corporate criminals. These standards should also apply to procurement contracts in Iraq. 3. Crack Down on Corporate Tax Avoidance: The US should punish corporate tax escapees by closing the offshore reincorporation loophole and banning government contracts and subsidies for companies that relocate their headquarters to an offshore tax haven. The IRS should be given more power and more budgetary resources to go after corporate tax avoiders. Publicly-traded corporations should be required to make their tax returns public. 4. Democratize Corporate Governance: Shareholders should be granted the right to democratically nominate and elect the corporate board of directors by opening up proxy access to minority shareholders and introducing cumulative voting and competitive elections. Shareholders should be given the power to approve all major business decisions, including top executive compensation. Shareholders should be treated as the owners of the corporation--since, in fact, that is what they are. 5. Expand Corporate Disclosure: Corporate sunshine laws should be enacted that require corporations to provide better information about their records on the environment, human rights, worker safety, and taxes, as well as their criminal and civil litigation records. 6. Rein in Excessive Executive Pay: Shareholder authorization should be required for top executive compensation packages at each annual shareholder meeting. Stock options, which now account for about half of the executive compensation, should be counted on financial statements as an expense (which they are). Tax deductions for compensation 25 times above the compensation received by the lowest paid worker in a corporation should be eliminated, as recommended by the famous business guru Peter Drucker. Insiders like Warren Buffett say excessive corporate executive pay is associated with inflated profits and other accounting deceptions. 7. Fix the Pension System: Corporations must be held more responsible for the retirement security of their employees. At a minimum we need to give workers a voice on the pension board; not require workers to stuff their 401(k) plans with company stock; and give workers the right to control their 401(k) plans. In addition, an Office of Participant Advocacy should be created in the Department of Labor to monitor pension plans. 8. Restore the Rights of Defrauded Investors: Repeal the self-styled securities reform laws that block defrauded investors from seeking private restitution, such as the private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which allowed the aiders and abettors of massive corporate crime (e.g., accountants, lawyers, and bankers) to escape civil liability. 9. Regulate Derivatives Trading: All over-the-counter financial instruments, including derivatives, should be subjected to the same or equivalent audit and reporting requirements as other financial instruments traded on stock exchanges. Rules should be enacted regarding collateral-margin, reporting and dealer licensing in order to maintain regulatory parity and ensure that markets are transparent and problems can be detected before they become a crisis. 10. End Conflicts of Interest on Wall Street: Enact structural reforms that separate commercial and investment banking services and prevent other costly, documented conflicts of interest among financial entities, such as those that have dominated big banks and security firms in recent years. 11. Track the Extent and Cost of Corporate Crime: The Department of Justice should establish an online corporate crime database. Also, just as the FBI issues an annual street crime report, "Crime in the United States," it should also publish an annual report on corporate and white collar crime with recommendations. 12. Foster a National Discussion on Corporate Power: Establish a Congressional Commission on Corporate Power to explore various legal and economic proposals that would rein in unaccountable giant corporations. The Commission should seek ways to improve upon the current state corporate chartering system in a world of global corporations and propose ways to correct the inequitable legal status of corporations as "persons." The Commission would be led by congressionally-appointed experts on corporate and constitutional law, and should hold citizen hearings in at least ten cities followed by a public report and recommendations. In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a message to Congress calling for a similar inquiry--The Temporary National Economic Commission--said that a government controlled by private economic power "is fascism." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attachment: http://drugsense.org/temp/Fvu6Vpu8BRyW.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Fri Aug 8 20:11:03 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 19:11:03 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Green Party Sues South Carolina Message-ID: <20080809001103.4C4A21CE825@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brent McMillan" To: "national comm affairs" Subject: [usgp-dx] Green Party Sues South Carolina Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:32:52 -0400 Ballot Access News Green Party Sues South Carolina http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/08/08/green-party-sues-south-carolina/ August 8, 2008 On August 7, the South Carolina Green Party filed a lawsuit against the State Election Commission. The Commission refuses to print Eugene Platt on the November ballot as the Green Party candidate for a particular State House seat. This is because, after the Green Party nominated Platt via convention, Platt then also tried to win the Democratic primary for the same office. He barely lost the Democratic primary. Under a somewhat ambiguous South Carolina election law, as interpreted by the state, Platt is now disqualified from being the Green Party nominee because he tried and failed to get the Democratic nomination. The case is South Carolina Green Party v S.C. Election Commission, federal court. This is an ACLU-sponsored lawsuit. South Carolina permits fusion, so if Platt had won the Democratic primary, he would be listed on the November ballot as both a Green and a Democrat. Platt is a local office-holder and one of the strongest Green Party nominees ever nominated in South Carolina. He had also won the Working Families nomination, so if he wins the lawsuit, he will be listed in November as a Green and perhaps also as the WFP nominee. South Carolina does not have registration by party. # # # # _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Fri Aug 8 20:12:23 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 19:12:23 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Rosa Clemente Green Party VP - Hip Hop Journalism Message-ID: <20080809001223.96A2E1CE825@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Seeman" To: "GPUS DX" Subject: [usgp-dx] Rosa Clemente Green Party VP - Hip Hop Journalism Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:29:44 -0400 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxH1F52FaJI Link Please spread to other lists, blogs, websites. Rate it when you view it (high rating of course). Please add positive comment. Please DIGG http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Rosa_Clemente_Green_Party_VP_Hip_Hop_Journalism Rosa Clemente Green Party VP - Hip Hop Journalism. Clemente talks about being a Hip Hop Journalist, the National Hip Hop Convention and the interconnections that brings. She talks about how only in the Green Party so many diverse communities come together. Vice Presidential candidate Clemente is the running mate of Cynthia Mckinney, Green Party candidate for President. http://rosaclemente.com/ http://www.runcynthiarun.org/ Craig Seeman NY _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Sun Aug 10 20:31:35 2008 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:31:35 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: USGP-INT Should Obama supporters send 'no apology' letters toIraqis? (Paul Street, ZSpace) Message-ID: <04ea01c8fb49$9d0f7740$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: ; ; Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2008 5:17 PM Subject: USGP-INT Should Obama supporters send 'no apology' letters toIraqis? (Paul Street, ZSpace) > Letters of No Apology > > By Paul Street > August 01, 2008 > Paul Street's ZSpace Page > http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18325 > > > Those people are dead because we wanted them dead. > - Pentagon spokesman on the killing of 93 people in Chowkar-Karaz, fall of > 2001 > > > Should Barack Obama's volunteers mail "Letters of No Apology" to survivors > of the large number of people killed by U.S. imperial assault in Iraq and > Afghanistan? > > Recently Obama was asked by CNN's Candy Crowley if "there's anything > that's happened in the past 7 1/2 years that the U.S. needs to apologize > for in terms of foreign policy?" Obama responded by saying, "No, I don't > believe in the U.S. apologizing. As I said I think the war in Iraq was a > mistake. We didn't keep our eye on the ball in Afghanistan. But, you > know, hindsight is 20/20, and I'm much more interested in looking forward > rather than looking backwards." The United States, Obama told Crowley, > "remains overwhelmingly a force of good in the world" [1]. > > > "SHOT AS THEY RAN" > > I would like the Afghan "war" [2] enthusiast [3] Barack Obama to write a > Letter of No Apology to Orifa Ahmed. On October 7, 2001, Orifa's house in > the Afghan village of Bibi Mahru was destroyed by a 500-pound bomb dropped > by an American F-16 plane. The explosion killed her husband (a carpet > weaver), six of her children and two children, who lived (and died) next > door. Away visiting relatives when the bombing occurred, Orifa returned > to find pieces of her children's flesh scattered around the killing site. > She received $400 from U.S. authorities to compensate her for her losses > [4]. > > I would also like Obama to write a "Letter of No Apology" to Gulam Rasul, > a school headmaster in the Afghan town of Khair Khana. On the morning of > October 21, 2001, the United States dropped a 500-pound bomb on his house, > killing his wife, three of his sons, his sister and her husband, his > brother, and his sister-in-law [5]. > > Another "Letter of Apology" should go to Sher Kahn, an old man who lost > seven relatives when the United States assaulted the Afghan village of > Niazi Qala on December 29, 2001. Here is how the British author and > filmmaker John Pilger describes the attack: > > "The roar of the planes had started at three in the morning, long after > everybody had retired for the night. Then the bombs began to fall - > 500-pounders leading the way, scooping out the earth and felling a row of > houses. According to neighbors watching from a distance, the planes flew > three sorties over the village and a helicopter hovered close to the > ground, firing flares, then rockets. Women and children were seen running > from the houses towards a dried pond, perhaps in search of protection from > the gunfire, but were shot as they ran" [6]. > > "Letters of No Apology" should also go from the "antiwar" Obama campaign > to survivors of: > > * 35 Afghan refugees who were bombed by the U.S. for riding in a bus in > flight from U.S. assault. > > * 160 Afghanis killed in repeated U.S. bombings of the village of Karam. > > * 93 people killed when U.S. Ac 130 gun-ships strafed the small farming > village Chowkar-Karaz. (The Pentagon said the community was "supporting > terrorists" and therefore deserved its fate: "those people are dead," a > Pentagon spokesman told reporters, "because we wanted them dead.") > > * Rampant U.S. torture of civilians and non-combatants employed as part of > the "war on terror" at the Bagram military base, near Kabul, since the > fall of 2001. > > * 64 civilians killed when the U.S. bombed a wedding party in eastern > Afghanistan in early July of this year (This was the fourth wedding party > blown up by the U.S.-led "coalition" since the fall of 2001). > > * 19 women who died in the gynecology wing of a Kabul hospital bombed by > the U.S. in October of 2001. > > * The countless other U.S. attacks on Afghan villages that have added to a > civilian death toll that certainly goes well into the thousands since the > U.S. initiated its "liberation" of Afghanistan from a Taliban government > the U.S. largely put into place during the 1990s [7]. > > The people of Afghanistan can be forgiven for thinking it might not be all > bad if Uncle Sam has occasionally taken his eye off "the ball in > Afghanistan." > > U.S.-"liberated" Afghanistan remains desperately poor and violence-plagued > under the control of religious extremists, warlords and the deadly U.S. > Empire. Women are less safe there now than under the Taliban [8]. > > > "AS ILLEGAL AS THE INVASON OF IRAQ" > > For what it's worth, prominent legal scholar Marjorie Cohn notes that "the > invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq." As Cohn > explains: > > "The U.N. Charter provides that all member states must settle their > international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military > force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. > After the 9/11 attacks, the Council passed two resolutions, neither of > which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan." > > "The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defense under article > 51 of the Charter because the attacks on September 11 were criminal > attacks, not ?armed attacks' by another country. Afghanistan did not > attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi > Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack > on the United States after September 11, or Bush would not have waited > three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The > necessity for self-defense must be ?instant, overwhelming, leaving no > choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.' This classic principle > of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg > Tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly" [9]. > > Sold as a legitimate defensive response to the jetliner attacks of > September 11, 2001, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was undertaken > without definitive proof or knowledge that that country's largely > U.S.-created Taliban government was responsible in any way for 9/11. It > occurred after the Bush administration rebuffed efforts by that government > to possibly extradite accused 9/11 planners to stand trial in the U.S. The > U.S. sought to destroy the Taliban government with no legal claim to > introduce regime change in another sovereign state. The invasion took > place over the protest of numerous Afghan opposition leaders and in > defiance of aid organizations who expected a U.S. attack to produce a > humanitarian catastrophe. And, as Noam Chomsky noted in 2003, U.S. claims > to possess the right to bomb Afghanistan - an action certain to produce > significant casualties - raised the interesting question of whether Cuba > and Nicaragua were entitled to set off bombs > in the U.S. given the fact that the U.S. provided shelter to well-known > terrorists shown to have conducted murderous attacks on the Cuban and > Nicaraguan people and governments [10]. Under Bush's rationale for > launching his assault on Afghanistan (an attack that Obama wishes to > significantly expand), citizens of Latin American states whose > dictatorships were schooled in torture at the School of the Americas (Ft. > Benning, Georgia) would be free to attack American cities and villages. > > > "IRAQ HAS BEEN KILLED" > > As for the U.S. "mistake" in Iraq, where to begin with the Letters of No > Apology that Obama and his staff need to write? The U.S. has undertaken a > highly criminal occupation of that country against the wishes of the > "liberated" nation's own populace. In a marvelous example of what Obama > called (in Berlin last week) U.S. "sacrifice" for "freedom"[11], the U.S. > has inflicted a bloody Holocaust on Mesopotamia, killing (directly and > indirectly) as many as 1.2 million Iraqis and maiming and displacing many > millions more. According to the respected journalist Nir Rosen last > December, "Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American > occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols who sacked > Baghdad in the thirteenth century. Only fools talk of solutions now. > There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be > contained" [12]. > > I wonder what Rosen would have had to say about the following comment > offered by Barack Obama to autoworkers assembled at the General Motors > plant in Janesville, Wisconsin on February 13, 2008, just before that > state's Democratic primary: "It's time to stop spending billions of > dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the > money putting America back together" [13]. > > "We should support the millions of Iraqis," Obama told 200,000 rapt > listeners in Berlin, "who seek to rebuild their lives even as we pass on > responsibility to the Iraqi government"[14]. > > "Rebuild their lives" from exactly what, pray tell? Senator Obama did not > elaborate on the two U.S. military attacks, the decade plus of murderous > "economic sanctions" (which killed more than half a million children - a > cost that the current Obama advisor and supporter Madeline Albright called > a "price worth paying"), and the ongoing invasion's ever-climbing death > toll. Obama will continue the occupation as president, something known by > those who care to read between the lines of his populace-pleasing campaign > rhetoric. > > Reading Obama's line about "freedom"-loving America's overseas "sacrifice" > in his Berlin Address, I was reminded of something he said in a speech to > The Chicago Council on Global Affairs in the fall of 2006: "The American > people have been extraordinarily resolved [in alleged support of the Iraq > "war" - P.S.]. They have seen their sons and daughters killed or wounded > in the streets of Fallujah [15]. > > This was a spine-chilling selection of locales. Fallujah was the site for > colossal U.S. war atrocity - the crimes included the indiscriminate > slaughter of civilians, the targeting even of ambulances and hospitals, > and the practical leveling of an entire city - by the U.S. military in > April and November of 2004. The town was designated for destruction as an > example of the awesome state terror promised to those who dared to resist > U.S. power. Not surprisingly, Fallujah became a powerful and instant > symbol of American imperialism in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It was a > deeply provocative and insulting place to choose to highlight American > "sacrifice" and "resolve" in the brazenly imperialist occupation - > described as "a colonial war" by the grand U.S. imperial strategist > Zbigniew Brzezinski (an Obama foreign policy advisor) - of Iraq [16]. > > Recycling the imperial discourse of elite Democratic "doves" during and on > the Vietnam War [17], Obama insists that the monumentally illegal and > transparently petro-colonial occupation of Iraq was a "strategic blunder" > resulting from "our" over-zealous "good intentions" (sometimes we just get > a little crazy with our noble passion to spread liberty). > > Not true: Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.) is an imperial CRIME > (aggressive warfare was the top crime for which Nazi leaders were executed > at Nuremburg) obviously dedicated to deepening U.S. control over > hyper-strategic oil resources in the world's energy heartland while > serving the ongoing interests of the American military-industrial complex > [18]. > > Barack No Apology (Because We Are Good) Obama wants badly to expand what > he calls George W. Bush's "good" and "proper" war on Afghanistan while > claiming to want to reduce America's "mistake[n]" presence in Iraq. > > The world should beware. Superpower may be getting ready to take on some > outwardly new faces, but its dangerous national narcissism will live on > along with its empire of bases, bullets, and bombs. > > Veteran radical historian Paul Street (paulstreet99 at yahoo.com) is the > author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 > (Boulder, CO: Paradigm) and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis > (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). His next book is Barack Obama and > the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm: mid-August of > 2008, can be advance ordered at > http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987). > > > NOTES > > 1. "Transcript of Obama Interview on CNN" (July 25, 2008), The Page, read > at http://thepage.time.com/transcript-of-obama-interview-on-cnn/. > Regarding "force for good": never mind that the hyper-consumerist > automobile-addicted U.S. is home to 5 percent of world's population but > generates a quarter of the planet's climate-baking carbon emissions. > Forget the brazenly imperial 720-plus U.S. military bases that are > stationed in nearly country on Earth, the threat and recurrent reality of > U.S. military assault, the U.S.-spread mass culture of commodified > nothingness, and the dedicated U.S. advance of a negative (corporate) > globalization model that consigns billions to extreme poverty while the > ever richer planetary Few enjoy spectacular opulence (and related > political hyper-power) and you begin to get a sense of why many world > citizens might think "America is part of what has gone wrong in the > world." > > 2. It is getting tiresome to hear Obama repeatedly refer to the United > States as living "in a time of war." The U.S. is engaged in one-sided > imperial violence against Iraq and Afghanistan. The "force for good" is > "waging a colonial war" (Zbigniew Bzrezinski) on relatively defenseless > others in distant imperial hinterlands. Ordinary Americans are not living > through "wartime conditions" and are in fact being encouraged to stay > soft, consumerist, spectator-ized, and demobilized, though a relatively > small and disproportionately working-class segment of the U.S. populace is > enlisted into the hard culture of militarism (the U.S. power elite having > learned from Vietnam not to involve the general populace in ugly colonial > campaigns abroad). For some useful reflections, see Sheldon Wolin, > Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted > Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008) and (on > class, Vietnam, and military > recruitment) Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, Imperial Ambitions: > Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (New York: Metropolitan, 2005), pp. > 133-134. > > 3. For some interesting details from the primary campaign trail, see Paul > Street, "Obama's Good and ?Proper' War," ZNet (March 5, 2008), read at > http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16760. > > 4. John Pilger, Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire (New York: Nation > Books, 2007), pp. 284-85. > > 5. Pilger, Freedom Next Time, pp.285-86. > > 6. Pilger, Freedom Next Time, p. 286. > > 7. Pilger, Freedom Next Time, pp. 287-293; John Pilger, "Obama, The Prince > of Bait and Switch," The New Statesman, July 26, 2008. For details on > sources on hundreds of U.S. and related "coalition" and Northern Alliance > attacks leading to many civilian deaths between the fall of 2001 and the > U.S. invasion of Iraq, see University of New Hampshire professor Marc > Herold, "Daily Casualty Account of Afghan Civilians Killed by U.S. Bombing > and Special Forces Attack, October 7 [2001] Until Present Day" (March 15, > 2003), read at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/ > > 8. Pilger, Freedom Next Time, pp. 264-293. > > 9. Marjorie Cohn, "End the Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan," ZNet (July > 30, 2008), read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18303. > > 10. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony Over Survival: America's Quest for Global > Dominance (New York: Metropolitan, 2003), pp. 199-206. See also Rajul > Mahajan, The New Crusade: America's War on Terror (New York: Monthly > Review, 2002), p. 21. > > 11. Remarks of Barack Obama: "A World That Stands As One," Berlin, Germany > (July 24, 2008), read at > http://www.barackobama.com/2008/07/24/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_97.php > > 12. Nir Rosen, "The Death of Iraq," Current History (December 2007), p. > 31. > > 13. WIFR Television, CBS 23, Rockford, Illinois, "Obama Speaks at General > Motors in Janesville," February 13, 2008, read at > http://www.wifr.com/morningshow/headlines/15618592.html. > > 14. Obama, "A World That Stands As One." > > 15. Barack Obama, "A Way Forward in Iraq," Speech to Chicago Council on > Global Affairs, Chicago Illinois (November 20, 2006), available online at > http://obama.senate.gov/speech/061120-a_way_forward _in_iraq/index.html. > > 16. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Five Problems With the President's Plan," > Washington Post (January 12, 2007), read at > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101572_pf.html. > > On Fallujah, see Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire (New York: Verso, 2005, > p. xii; Anthony Arnove, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (New York: New > Press, 2006), pp. 27-28; Paul Street, "Vilsacking Iraq," ZNet Magazine > (December 22, 2006); > > 17. Noam Chomsky, "'Good News': Iraq and Beyond," ZNet (February 16, > 20088), read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16522; > Noam Chomsky, "The Mechanisms and Practices of Indoctrination" (1984), > pp.207-208 in Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on Democracy and Education, ed. C.P. > Otero (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003). > > 18. For details and sources, see Paul Street, "Largely About Oil: > Reflections on Empire, Petroleum, Democracy, and the Occupation of Iraq," > Z Magazine (January 2008): 38-42. > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > usgp-int mailing list > usgp-int at gp-us.org > http://forum.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/usgp-int > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.5.12 - Release Date: 8/3/2008 12:00 AM From efficacy at msn.com Mon Aug 11 12:03:37 2008 From: efficacy at msn.com (Clifford Thornton) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:03:37 -0400 Subject: {news} What Will the Candidates Do to End the Unwinnable War on Drugs? Message-ID: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-will-candidates-do-to-end.html What > Will the Candidates Do to End the Unwinnable War on Drugs? 1600-h/prohibition.jpg> 'The prohibition of drugs is perhaps the most disastrous policy currently pursued by the US government' By Johann Hari / August 10, 2008 On January 20th 2009, either the president of the United States will be a man who used to smoke crack, or the First Lady will be a former drug addict who stole from charity to get her next fix. In this presidential campaign, there are dozens of issues that have failed to flicker into the debate, but the most striking is the failing, flailing 'War on Drugs.' Isn't it a sign of how unwinnable this 'war' is that, if it was actually enforced evenly, either Barack Obama or Cindy McCain would have to skip the inauguration -- because they'd be in jail? At least their time in the slammer would feature some familiar faces: they could share a cell with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and some 46 percent of the US population. The prohibition of drugs is perhaps the most disastrous policy currently pursued by the US government. It hands a vast industry to armed criminal gangs, who proceed to kill at least excess 10,000 citizens a year to protect their patches. It exports this programme of mass slaughter to Mexico, Colombia and beyond. It has been a key factor in reviving the Taliban in Afghanistan. It squanders tens of billions of dollars on prisons at home, ensuring that one in 31 adults in the US now in prison or on supervised release at any one time. And it has destroyed an entire generation of black men, who are now more likely to go to prison for drug offences than to go to university. And for what? Prohibition doesn't stop people using drugs. Between 1972 and 1978, eleven US states decriminalized marijuana possession. So did hundreds of thousands of people rush out to smoke the now-legal weed? The National Research Council found that it had no effect on the number of dope-smokers. None. The people who had always liked it carried on; the people who didn't felt no sudden urge to start. So where's the debate? The candidates have spent more time discussing froth and fancies -- how much air is in your tyres? -- than this $40bn-a-year 'war." They should be forced to listen to Michael Levine, who had a thirty year career as one of America's most distinguished federal narcotics agents. In his time, he infiltrated some of the biggest drugs cartels in the world -- and he now explains, in sad tones, that he wasted his time. In the early 1990s, he was assigned to eradicate drug-dealing from one New York street corner -- an easy enough task, surely? But he quickly learned that even this was physically impossible, given the huge demand for drugs. He calculated that he would need one thousand officers to be working on that corner for six months to make an impact -- and there were only 250 drugs agents in the whole city. One of the residents asked him, "If all these cops and agents couldn't get this one corner clean, what's the point of this whole damned drug war?" When Levine penetrated to the very top of la Mafia Cruenza, one of the biggest drug-dealing gangs in the world, he learned, as he puts it, "that not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they actually counted on it... On one undercover tape-recorded conversation, a top cartel chief, Jorge Roman, expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it 'a sham put on the American tax-payer' that was 'actually good for business'." He was right -- prohibition is the dealer's friend. They depend on it. They thrive on it, just as Al Capone thrived on alcohol prohibition. When Levine recounted these comments to his boss -- the officer in command of the paramilitary operation attacking South America -- he replied, "Yeah, we know [the police and military battles against drug gangs] don't work, but we sold the plan up and down the Potomac." Yet virtually no politicians are exposing this scandal. A rare and heroic exception is Jim Webb, Senator for Virginia. In his brilliant new book Born Fighting, he says "the hugely expensive antidrug campaigns we are waging around the world are basically futile." He even goes further, and exposes how this intersects with racism to create a monstrous injustice. The ACLU found in 2006 that although the races use drugs at the same rate, black Americans -- who comprise 12 percent of the population -- make up 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Webb shows the human cost: "Even as I write these words, it is virtually certain that somewhere on the streets of Washington D.C. an eighteen year-old white kid from the Maryland or North Virginia suburbs is buying a stash of drugs from an eighteen year-old black kid. The white kid is going to take that stash back to the suburbs and make some quick money by selling it to other kids." He will grow up and grow out of it, and one day -- as a wealthy professional -- he will "look back on his drug use just as recreational and joke about it... just one more little rebellion on the way to adulthood." But the black kid "will enter a hell from which he may never recover." He is likely to be arrested, and to go to prison. "Prison life will change the black kid, harden him, mess up his mind, and redefine his self-image. And after he is released from prison, the black kid will be dragging an invisible ball and chain behind him for the rest of his life... By the time the white kid reaches fifty years of age, he may well be a judge. By the time the black kid reaches fifty, he will likely be permanently unemployable, will be ineligible for many government assistance programmes, and will not even be able to vote." Barack Obama only narrowly missed this fate. He would not be the Great Black Hope he deserves to be; he wouldn't even be allowed to cast a ballot in 2008. Of course, ending drug prohibition may seem impossible now. But in 1924, even as vociferous a wet as Clarence Darrow was in despair, writing that it would require "a political revolution" to legalise alcohol in the US. Within a decade, it was done. Before this campaign is out, Obama needs to be asked: do you really think you should be in jail? McCain needs to be asked: do you really think your wife should be in jail? Both need to be asked: do you really think 46 percent of Americans should be criminalized? And if not, what are you going to do to begin ending this mad, unwinnable 'war on drugs'? Johann Hari has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. The youngest person to be nominated for the Orwell Prize for political writing, in 2003 he won the Press Gazette Young Journalist of the Year Award and in 2007 Amnesty International named him Newspaper Journalist of the Year. He is a contributing editor of Attitude magazine and published his first book, God Save the Queen?, in 2003. .html> Source / The Huffington Post Efficacy PO Box 1234 860 657 8438 Hartford, CT 06143 efficacy at msn.com www.Efficacy-online.org "THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON" Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit 501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax deductible -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Mon Aug 11 15:43:19 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:43:19 -0500 Subject: {news} GP RELEASE: US needs Green energy & global warming solutions, not Obama or McCain plans Message-ID: <20080811194319.74C8D47808F@ws1-5.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] GP RELEASE: US needs Green energy & global warming solutions, not Obama or McCain plans Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:06:35 +0000 ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Scott McLarty Subject: [usgp-dx] GP RELEASE: US needs Green energy & global warming solutions, not Obama or McCain plans Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:06:35 +0000 Size: 10495 URL: From timmckee at mail.com Wed Aug 13 08:56:18 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:56:18 -0500 Subject: {news} ATTENTION CANDIDATES- NEWS RELEASE WRITERS Message-ID: <20080813125618.65901104F0@ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com> dear Greens Lets link all the candidates and people writing NEWS RELEASES for the candidates and the party by using the yahoo Elections group. We need to have common themes, joint press conferences and find as many media sources as posssible. I urge candidates to sign up and use it!! ELECTIONS Email: CTGP-elections-subscribe@ yahoogroups.com Web: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CTGP-elections ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Wed Aug 13 09:29:58 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:29:58 -0500 Subject: {news} HartfordAdvocate-"An Unreasonable Mandate" (CT anti-third party laws) Message-ID: <20080813132958.769131CE825@ws1-6.us4.outblaze.com> An Unreasonable Mandate ======================= Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney find common ground: state laws designed to keep third parties off the ballot ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments (1) Thursday, August 14, 2008 By Andy Bromage Andy Bromage photoNader's campaigners: Ralph Ferrucci and Christina Tobin deliver petitions to Hartford, in 169 different sections. Vic Lancia's phone rang. It was Ralph Nader asking for help gathering signatures to get him on the presidential ballot in Connecticut. Lancia, a loyal foot soldier for third party political campaigns, didn't believe it was Nader. He hung up. Nader called back. Lancia still didn't believe him. "Stop fucking with me," Lancia said, and hung up again. So Nader called Ken Krayeske, who's running his state campaign. "What are you doing giving me a guy who hangs up the phone on me?" Nader asked. Krayeske made a quick phone call to explain, and before long Lancia was outside a Middletown supermarket sweet-talking shoppers into signing for Nader. The Nader campaign submitted 17,000 signatures to state election officials in Hartford last week?twice the number needed to secure a line on the ballot this fall?but they didn't do it alone. Nader had help petitioning from Libertarians and the Greens, who in turn got help from Nader. In a rare show of third party unity, the campaigns of Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney, the last two former Congress members, are joining forces across state lines to overcome ballot access rules designed to keep minor party candidates out. The camps are sharing workers, swapping petitions and urging voters to sign up for another third party candidate along with their own. They've joined forces in Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and now Connecticut, where Barr submitted 13,000 signatures and McKinney turned in "close to the necessary number," a Green Party boss says. Libertarian petitioners were instrumental in getting Nader on the ballot in the all-important state of Pennsylvania last month, so Nader's team repaid the favor in Connecticut, dispatching his clipboard-equipped raiders on sidewalks and town greens. Not because the campaign especially loves Bob Barr, though. "I couldn't care less about Libertarians," says Krayeske. "The hurdles to democracy that the two parties put out in front of you are so onerous that third parties are learning to cooperate." Sidewalk petitioning can be thankless work: Campaigns pay workers $1 to $1.50 per signature to stand on baking asphalt, asking irritated grocery shoppers to sign in support of a candidate they've often never heard of, or might consider a "spoiler." Nader's national ballot coordinator, Christina Tobin of Illinois, arrived in Hartford last week to turn in the fruits of their labor. In true Nader fashion, Tobin used the occasion to agitate rather than celebrate, telling reporters that petitioning onto Connecticut's ballot is a "tedious" and "ridiculous" process designed to "make our lives more difficult." For example: State law requires petitions be certified by local officials in Connecticut's 169 towns, even though federal law requires states maintain a centralized list of all registered voters. That means petitioners must carry a form for every town?Andover to Woodstock?which the state then mails to those towns. Another law says petitioners must be state residents, which poses a problem because the most reliable workers are the few paid national staffers who travel from state to state, not local volunteers. Beyond that, requiring 7,500 valid signatures when other New England states require a fraction as many (1,000 in Rhode Island, 3,000 in New Hampshire) disadvantages small-dollar grassroots campaigns, Tobin says. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, the state's top election official, is unsympathetic. She says town officials must validate petition signatures because only they have the original signed voter cards. If something looks suspicious?say, several signatures in the same handwriting?officials need to check the source documents. On requiring circulators to be state residents, Bysiewicz says it's perfectly reasonable. "You ought to be able to have support in the state you're running in if you are going to have a real candidacy," Bysiewicz says. But third party campaigns are modest endeavors, often relying on a few dedicated staffers to do heavy lifting over huge geographic areas. Besides, can't voters just register their support at the polls? Is luring state residents away from their jobs to spend a full day collecting signatures for $1 a pop the only way to demonstrate ballot-worthy support? Bysiewicz is unmoved. "You ought to have people in the state willing to go out and get petition signatures." Mike DeRosa, the state Green Party chair, disagrees. "Not everyone can just go out and petition. Some people are too shy. The two major parties will create all kinds of barriers to full participation in the political process."? Send your comments to editor at hartfordadvocate.com ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Thu Aug 14 07:29:45 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:29:45 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Release: Md. Green candidate for US House speaks out on the Russo-Georgian conflict Message-ID: <20080814112945.5F9C311581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] Release: Md. Green candidate for US House speaks out on the Russo-Georgian conflict Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:20:49 +0000 Distributed by the Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org Gordon Clark for Congress http://www.clarkforcongress.net FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: David Gaines david at clarkforcongress.net (703) 338-3459 GORDON CLARK: RUSSO-GEORGIAN CONFLICT SHOWS BANKRUPTCY OF POST COLD-WAR ORDER Silver Spring, Maryland (August 13th, 2008) - The Clark for Congress campaign issued the following statement today on the Russo-Georgian conflict by 8th District Green Party congressional candidate Gordon Clark: "The brutal Russian invasion of neighboring Georgia exemplifies the worst aspects of nation-state behavior. Yet it also demonstrates the complete failure of our current system of international relations, one still based largely on military alliances, confrontation and conflict. "The beginning of the current crisis can be marked to the end of the Cold War. The NATO military alliance that stood against the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact should have been dismantled when the Soviet Union broke up. Instead, NATO not only continued, it grew - by accepting former members of the Warsaw Pact, a strategy that inevitably antagonized Russia (as does our building of missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact nation Poland). In response, Russia looked to protect its borders. "At the same time, Georgia's U.S.-educated leader, President Mikheil Saakashvili, has been regularly encouraged with words of strong support from President Bush and other Western leaders - words that are easily interpreted, in the current context, to be backed by force. So, rather than attempt to resolve peacefully the confrontation with Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has strong ethnic ties to Russia, Saakashvili launched an ill-advised military operation there last week. A predictable (if extreme) Russian military response followed, leaving the Georgian president waiting for U.S. or western military support that never materialized. "The U.S. is utterly unable to influence Russia's behavior because of our own government's invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, as well as our military involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our threats against Iran. It was painfully disturbing to watch U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and former Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan) Zalmay Khalilzad trying to lecture the Russians that 'the days of overthrowing leaders by military means' are over. He had to add the phrase '?in Europe' -- a transparent rhetorical attempt to excuse our own invasions and regime changes. "In a world filled with national, regional, and ethnic tensions - and now overflowing with armaments, thanks in no small part to U.S. weapons sales - the path to peace and stability will not come from military action. The Russian invasion of Georgia must be strongly condemned, but no differently than the U.S. invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq, and U.S. threats and military action elsewhere in the Middle East. Unless our nation turns away from our own militarized foreign policy and toward diplomacy and peaceful dispute resolution, other regions of the world will continue to explode in violence - and there will be nothing that the U.S. can do about it." Gordon Clark, the Green Party candidate for U. S. Congress from Maryland's 8th District, has for over twenty years been a community activist in the peace, environmental, nonviolence, and social justice arenas. He is a former National Executive Director of Peace Action, the founder of Iraq Pledge of Resistance (now the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance), and a former Field Director for Public Citizen's Congress Watch. For more information on the Clark for Congress campaign, call (301) 589-2355, email info at clarkforcongress.net, or visit http://www.clarkforcongress.net and http://www.myspace.com/clarkforcongress - # # # - _________________________________________________________________ Your PC, mobile phone, and online services work together like never before. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/108587394/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Thu Aug 14 14:58:00 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:58:00 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Libertarians file suit over W.Va. ballot law Message-ID: <20080814185800.706FFBE4078@ws1-9.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Young" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] Libertarians file suit over W.Va. ballot law Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:04:03 -0400 ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Frank Young" Subject: [usgp-dx] Libertarians file suit over W.Va. ballot law Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:04:03 -0400 Size: 6193 URL: From timmckee at mail.com Thu Aug 14 15:06:43 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:06:43 -0500 Subject: {news} PRESS RELEASE- CT GREENS BLAME NEW MEDIA 'BLACKOUT' FOR MCKINNEY NOT BEING ON FALL BALLOT Message-ID: <20080814190643.83C77BE4078@ws1-9.us4.outblaze.com> CT GREENS BLAME NEWS MEDIA ?BLACKOUT? FOR MCKINNEY NOT BEING ON FALL BALLOT NO NEWS COVERAGE AT ALL -DOOMED PETITION DRIVE HARTFORD, CT-Connecticut Green Party officials said they blame the news media?s ?blackout? or TOTAL LACK OF NEWS COVERAGE of Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, even after she won the national party?s nomination, in large part for her not being on the ballot in the fall. They conceded falling short in their drive for 15,000 total signatures for three main reasons. Tim McKee, a Green Party spokesperson explained ?First, it is next to impossible for to run a petition drive in the public WITHOUT even the slightest news coverage to let people know you are petitioning for a candidate. The former Democrat Congresswoman turned Green Party candidate for President IS newsworthy, but shockingly, NOT ONE of the local media did even one story on her running for President. We sent out press releases, she campaigned in the state, and past Green Party candidates for President Ralph Nader and David Cobb have received some news coverage, but McKinney received none this time. We have to ask why--because she and running mate Rosa Clemente are women? Women of color? Cutback of staffs at local news mediaa out lets? McKee added ?Even the most obscure Democrat and Republicans had some coverage in the primaries and links on news websites, and there were articles about Ralph Nader running as an Independent and Bob Barr running as a Libertarian, but none about McKinney running as the candidate of third largest party in the United States, and even though Greens have been elected to local city and town councils in Connecticut. ?Second,31 states have lower petition requirements than CT. and some states like Louisiana and Colorado have NO signatures requirements at all. (Ballot Access News the petitions that were submitted early were getting a very high 65% rejection rate for signatures by partisan Democrat and Republican registrars of voters. The requirement of 7,500 valid signatures means submitting twice or three times that number and on 169 different forms--one for each small town in CT. Even with 30 people working on this drive, we could not collect the high number or challenge why so many signatures were deemed INVALID at each of the 169 town halls,? McKee said McKee added ?Third, because of the quirky CT ballot laws, Greens had to have ?placeholder? candidates listed, and that leads to more confusion with the public. Who OUR candidates were and why other people's names were listed was something only political insiders could explain, which made it harder to collect signatures from ordinary voters.? Greens are considering a ?Registered write-in? campaign which will require local officials to count each write-in vote for McKinney. #END OF RELEASE ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Fri Aug 15 08:17:57 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:17:57 -0500 Subject: {news} Deshefy for congress-Courntey-Sullivan sheduled debates Message-ID: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> ctlocalpolitics.net ------------------- Courtney-Sullivan Debates Scheduled ----------------------------------- by Genghis Conn ? August 14th, 2008 ? 9:11 pm ? 6 Comments The Courtney and Sullivan campaigns have agreed to a series of five debates this fall, in addition to a joint television appearance on WTNH-TV (Channel 8 ). The Sullivan campaign isn?t happy, however, since they had wanted twelve debates and three or four joint television appearances. From a Sullivan release: [Campaign manager Scott] Veley said, ?It?s a start but we?re not where we need to be with the schedule. This is a large district and unless we get 12 debates we?re going to be shortchanging the voters. [ ] Veley concluded, ?My sense is that Mr. Courtney realizes he must participate in the debate process but he wants to keep his appearances to a minimum. I understand his situation. His record is impossible to defend. He wants higher taxes and his response to the energy situation has been to take a vacation. [ ] Sean is ready to debate anytime, anywhere. The Courtney campaign seems interested in holding multi-candidate events, which could include Daniel Reale (Libertarian) and G.Scott Deshefy (Green). The Sullivan campaign, it seems, would rather have one-on-one events. Veley said that voters deserve to ? see the two candidates, side by side, discussing their experiences, their records and their vision for the future.? The debates are scheduled for the following locations: * New London (The Garde Theater) * Lyme (Old Lyme Chamber of Commerce debate) * Norwich (the AARP debate) * Enfield (Enfield High School) * Plainfield (Northeast Chamber of Commerce) Courtney, Sullivan Spar on Energy Sullivan has been hammering Courtney lately about the fact that the House is on vacation (of course, the President has been over in China, taking in the sights, so I don?t think anyone?s been all that committed to finding a solution to the energy crisis this August. At least the House Republicans have been staging their shadow session with the lights off). The Sullivan campaign recently sent out this release: ?It has now been 13 days since Joe Courtney voted to give himself a vacation while the energy issue is left unattended in Washington. While I have advocated for greater alternative energy sources, Joe Courtney has voted against lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas drilling as well even considering more energy production.? What I assume Mr. Sullivan is referring to by ?even considering more energy production,? which he cites as this bill, is a passage that prohibits some new leases for oil and gas exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf. Also voting for that bill: Chris Shays. The second part, also about new drilling, is a hot topic of debate right now. Courtney sent out the following in an email to supporters: So while they scream ?Drill Now? in an empty House chamber, I have to ask why were they quiet when they had chance to act? Perhaps, they?re more concerned with the profits of their most reliable campaign contributor, Big Oil, rather than the wellbeing of the American people. It is inexcusable. With an issue as complex as our energy policy, political theater is inadequate and embarrassing. It?s understandable, however, when you consider the GOP?s sorry record on the issue after 12 years of virtually unchecked control of Congress ? eight of those years alongside the Bush/Cheney White House. [ ] Yesterday, I visited STR Technologies in Enfield, an exciting new solar panel production firm that is hiring 180 new workers with a grant my office secured to make the Pentagon more energy efficient. It is that type of leadership Connecticut needs in Washington, not a rubber stamp for two oil millionaires in the White House. Sullivan, however, is going to benefit from not having been in Washington during those years. There isn?t really any good way to tie him to Bush, although it looks like Courtney certainly is going to try. I have to imagine that energy is going to be a big topic in debates all around the country this fall. I look forward to seeing what solutions the candidates propose. There?s a solar panel company in Enfield? Neat. Share This → 6 CommentsTags: National Elections ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rstuller at snet.net Fri Aug 15 14:41:37 2008 From: rstuller at snet.net (Ronna Stuller) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:41:37 -0400 Subject: {news} Deshefy for congress-Courntey-Sullivan sheduled debates In-Reply-To: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: Here's the story from The Day: http://archive.theday.com/re_print.aspx?re=bcf9fb3e-d40d-4ee0-8b4c-b64e7921b180 close window 2nd District debates announced 2nd District debates announced By Ted Mann Published on 8/15/2008 in Home ?State ?State Main Photo Staff for Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Republican challenger Sean Sullivan announced tentative debating plans for the fall on Thursday, including one event at the Garde Arts Center in New London. Courtney and Sullivan agreed to debate at the Garde, in an event sponsored by The Day, and in at least four other 2nd District towns: Old Lyme, Norwich, Enfield and Plainfield. The campaigns agreed that at least one event would be telecast by WTNH- Channel 8, the Sullivan campaign said in a statement, though it was unclear which one. The campaigns did not agree to the 12 debates Sullivan had called for, but did apparently sign off on a request of the Courtney campaign that every candidate who qualifies for the ballot be included. Three candidates have submitted petitions to be placed on the November ballot, though those have yet to be certified by Secretary of the State Susan L. Bysiewicz. - TED MANN On Aug 15, 2008, at 8:17 AM, Tim McKee wrote: > ctlocalpolitics.net > > Courtney-Sullivan Debates Scheduled > > by Genghis Conn ? August 14th, 2008 ? 9:11 pm ? 6 Comments > > The Courtney and Sullivan campaigns have agreed to a series of five > debates this fall, in addition to a joint television appearance on > WTNH-TV (Channel 8 ). The Sullivan campaign isn?t happy, however, > since they had wanted twelve debates and three or four joint > television appearances. From a Sullivan release: > [Campaign manager Scott] Veley said, ?It?s a start but we?re not > where we need to be with the schedule. This is a large district and > unless we get 12 debates we?re going to be shortchanging the voters. > [?] > Veley concluded, ?My sense is that Mr. Courtney realizes he must > participate in the debate process but he wants to keep his > appearances to a minimum. I understand his situation. His record is > impossible to defend. He wants higher taxes and his response to the > energy situation has been to take a vacation. [?] Sean is ready to > debate anytime, anywhere. > > The Courtney campaign seems interested in holding multi-candidate > events, which could include Daniel Reale (Libertarian) and G.Scott > Deshefy (Green). The Sullivan campaign, it seems, would rather have > one-on-one events. Veley said that voters deserve to ??see the two > candidates, side by side, discussing their experiences, their > records and their vision for the future.? > > The debates are scheduled for the following locations: > > New London (The Garde Theater) > Lyme (Old Lyme Chamber of Commerce debate) > Norwich (the AARP debate) > Enfield (Enfield High School) > Plainfield (Northeast Chamber of Commerce) > Courtney, Sullivan Spar on Energy > > Sullivan has been hammering Courtney lately about the fact that the > House is on vacation (of course, the President has been over in > China, taking in the sights, so I don?t think anyone?s been all that > committed to finding a solution to the energy crisis this August. At > least the House Republicans have been staging their shadow session > with the lights off). The Sullivan campaign recently sent out this > release: > ?It has now been 13 days since Joe Courtney voted to give himself a > vacation while the energy issue is left unattended in Washington. > While I have advocated for greater alternative energy sources, Joe > Courtney has voted against lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas > drilling as well even considering more energy production.? > > What I assume Mr. Sullivan is referring to by ?even considering more > energy production,? which he cites as this bill, is a passage that > prohibits some new leases for oil and gas exploration on the Outer > Continental Shelf. Also voting for that bill: Chris Shays. > > The second part, also about new drilling, is a hot topic of debate > right now. Courtney sent out the following in an email to supporters: > So while they scream ?Drill Now? in an empty House chamber, I have > to ask why were they quiet when they had chance to act? Perhaps, > they?re more concerned with the profits of their most reliable > campaign contributor, Big Oil, rather than the wellbeing of the > American people. It is inexcusable. > > With an issue as complex as our energy policy, political theater is > inadequate and embarrassing. It?s understandable, however, when you > consider the GOP?s sorry record on the issue after 12 years of > virtually unchecked control of Congress ? eight of those years > alongside the Bush/Cheney White House. > [?] > Yesterday, I visited STR Technologies in Enfield, an exciting new > solar panel production firm that is hiring 180 new workers with a > grant my office secured to make the Pentagon more energy efficient. > It is that type of leadership Connecticut needs in Washington, not a > rubber stamp for two oil millionaires in the White House. > > Sullivan, however, is going to benefit from not having been in > Washington during those years. There isn?t really any good way to > tie him to Bush, although it looks like Courtney certainly is going > to try. > > I have to imagine that energy is going to be a big topic in debates > all around the country this fall. I look forward to seeing what > solutions the candidates propose. > > ?There?s a solar panel company in Enfield? Neat. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: daynameplate.gif Type: image/gif Size: 5344 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rstuller at snet.net Fri Aug 15 15:11:22 2008 From: rstuller at snet.net (Ronna Stuller) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:11:22 -0400 Subject: {news} campaigning opportunity In-Reply-To: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <46CF9855-CC6D-413F-8F58-DE40E51E4AC1@snet.net> > 2008 Connecticut Green Expo September 14, 2008 11:00 am - 4:00 pm On The Quad (between the library and the Lyman Center), SCSU http://www.ctfolk.com/nhff/greenexpo.html Is there anyone interested in having a table? Deadline may be passed, but you can't beat the cost ($25) for this kind of crowd. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CTFFGE_Contract.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 90582 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amyvasnunes at hotmail.com Fri Aug 15 18:59:10 2008 From: amyvasnunes at hotmail.com (Amy Vas Nunes) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:59:10 -0400 Subject: {news} Deshefy for congress-Courntey-Sullivan sheduled debates In-Reply-To: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20080815121757.2591E11581F@ws1-7.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: Scott will do great with these Bozos. Courtney is a wimp takes no stands till safe I know him from way back when he was chair of Ct CCD. Will these be on ch8 and cable 14 Charter. Why are there no Willimantic locations might they be added? FYI for Scott my Chinese friend can't translate because he does not have a Chinese character PC. Amy From: timmckee at mail.comTo: ctgp-news at ml.greens.org; Deshefy_For_Congress at yahoo.comDate: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:17:57 -0500CC: Subject: {news} Deshefy for congress-Courntey-Sullivan sheduled debates ctlocalpolitics.net Courtney-Sullivan Debates Scheduled by Genghis Conn ? August 14th, 2008 ? 9:11 pm ? 6 Comments The Courtney and Sullivan campaigns have agreed to a series of five debates this fall, in addition to a joint television appearance on WTNH-TV (Channel 8 ). The Sullivan campaign isn?t happy, however, since they had wanted twelve debates and three or four joint television appearances. From a Sullivan release: [Campaign manager Scott] Veley said, ?It?s a start but we?re not where we need to be with the schedule. This is a large district and unless we get 12 debates we?re going to be shortchanging the voters.[?]Veley concluded, ?My sense is that Mr. Courtney realizes he must participate in the debate process but he wants to keep his appearances to a minimum. I understand his situation. His record is impossible to defend. He wants higher taxes and his response to the energy situation has been to take a vacation. [?] Sean is ready to debate anytime, anywhere. The Courtney campaign seems interested in holding multi-candidate events, which could include Daniel Reale (Libertarian) and G.Scott Deshefy (Green). The Sullivan campaign, it seems, would rather have one-on-one events. Veley said that voters deserve to ??see the two candidates, side by side, discussing their experiences, their records and their vision for the future.? The debates are scheduled for the following locations: New London (The Garde Theater) Lyme (Old Lyme Chamber of Commerce debate) Norwich (the AARP debate) Enfield (Enfield High School) Plainfield (Northeast Chamber of Commerce) Courtney, Sullivan Spar on Energy Sullivan has been hammering Courtney lately about the fact that the House is on vacation (of course, the President has been over in China, taking in the sights, so I don?t think anyone?s been all that committed to finding a solution to the energy crisis this August. At least the House Republicans have been staging their shadow session with the lights off). The Sullivan campaign recently sent out this release: ?It has now been 13 days since Joe Courtney voted to give himself a vacation while the energy issue is left unattended in Washington. While I have advocated for greater alternative energy sources, Joe Courtney has voted against lifting the ban on offshore oil and gas drilling as well even considering more energy production.? What I assume Mr. Sullivan is referring to by ?even considering more energy production,? which he cites as this bill, is a passage that prohibits some new leases for oil and gas exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf. Also voting for that bill: Chris Shays. The second part, also about new drilling, is a hot topic of debate right now. Courtney sent out the following in an email to supporters: So while they scream ?Drill Now? in an empty House chamber, I have to ask why were they quiet when they had chance to act? Perhaps, they?re more concerned with the profits of their most reliable campaign contributor, Big Oil, rather than the wellbeing of the American people. It is inexcusable.With an issue as complex as our energy policy, political theater is inadequate and embarrassing. It?s understandable, however, when you consider the GOP?s sorry record on the issue after 12 years of virtually unchecked control of Congress ? eight of those years alongside the Bush/Cheney White House.[?]Yesterday, I visited STR Technologies in Enfield, an exciting new solar panel production firm that is hiring 180 new workers with a grant my office secured to make the Pentagon more energy efficient. It is that type of leadership Connecticut needs in Washington, not a rubber stamp for two oil millionaires in the White House. Sullivan, however, is going to benefit from not having been in Washington during those years. There isn?t really any good way to tie him to Bush, although it looks like Courtney certainly is going to try. I have to imagine that energy is going to be a big topic in debates all around the country this fall. I look forward to seeing what solutions the candidates propose. ?There?s a solar panel company in Enfield? Neat. Share This ? 6 CommentsTags: National Elections ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com!Choose From 200+ Email AddressesGet a Free Account at www.mail.com! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stepfour at stepfour.com Fri Aug 15 19:28:46 2008 From: stepfour at stepfour.com (Steve Fournier) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:28:46 -0400 Subject: {news} Mmm, peach! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20080815232910.5FA478DC593@gandhi.greens.org> Peach iced tea, peach shortcake and impeachment are on the menu next Thursday in Hartford for a rally to remove Bush and Cheney, sponsored by the local Green Party. Impeachment is always in season, Greens say, but native peaches come around just once a year, starting now. Mmmm, peach. The assembly is August 21 from 7 to 9 pm at 74 Tremont Street, Hartford, where Ruth and Steve Fournier reside. Steve, Green Party candidate for Congress, will make brief remarks. It will be a time for exchanges of rage and frustration over the state of government, controlled by thugs and accountable to no authority whatsoever. Open to all. Drop an email if you're coming to sfournier1945 at yahoo.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From efficacy at msn.com Sat Aug 16 07:40:36 2008 From: efficacy at msn.com (Clifford Thornton) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:40:36 -0400 Subject: {news} Drug policy has failed Message-ID: Drug policy has failed Kingsley Guy | COLUMNIST August 15, 2008 By Kingsley Guy http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/sfl-kgcol15sbaug15,0,7706042.column Is the push to legalize marijuana in Florida for medical use a legitimate attempt to eliminate pain and suffering, or a thinly-veiled effort by unreconstructed hippies to legally get high? I don't know, and frankly, don't care. It's time to shift the debate from side issues like medical marijuana, and instead look at decriminalizing all recreational drugs. The nation must face the fact that the war on drugs has been a dismal failure causing far more damage than it has mitigated, and it just isn't worth the price. Americans came to a similar conclusion in1933 when they voted to end the war on alcohol by repealing Prohibition. That effort at social engineering was called the Noble Experiment, and it failed. Alcohol was, and still is, the most deadly mind-altering drug in the United States. Prohibition didn't stop people from drinking, but it did generate criminal activity that corrupted society. The enormous profits from bootlegging and rum running created underworld organizations that survive today. The money so debased politicians and judges that mob bosses often pulled the strings of government. With alcohol illegal, production standards disappeared, and tainted alcohol killed and injured tens of thousands of people. The failed war on drugs has had a similar impact, but worse. Many inner city neighborhoods are all but inhabitable because of gang wars fueled by profits from the drug trade. Robbery and burglary cause people to live in fear as drug users commit crimes to buy drugs with a street value 50 times that of the pharmaceutical value. The vast sums involved have undermined foreign governments, like Colombia's. Half of America's prison beds are occupied by people convicted of drug related crimes. The tens of billions of dollars spent each year on apprehending, convicting and housing these people would be far better spent on improving schools and medical care. In case you think I'm some left-wing loon smoking a joint as I write this column, I assure you, I'm not. The late William F. Buckley, the godfather of the conservative movement, held the same view. So did the late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, whose ideas stand at the core of conservative economic thinking. George P. Shultz, Ronald Regan's esteemed secretary of state, also has endorsed ending the drug war. "But if drugs are legalized, drug abuse will soar," you say. That's not at all clear. Per capita alcohol consumption has declined sharply in the United States since the 19th century, and so has tobacco use, and alcohol and tobacco are both legal products. Government has a role to play in educating people on the dangers of drug use. It also has an obligation to punish severely those selling drugs to minors. Yes, drug abuse is immoral, but so is continuing a drug policy that causes more harm than good. Kingsley Guy duels the issues with Stephen L. Goldstein on alternate Fridays. E-mail him at harborlite3 at bellsouth.net Efficacy PO Box 1234 860 657 8438 Hartford, CT 06143 efficacy at msn.com www.Efficacy-online.org "THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON" Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit 501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax deductible -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From roseberry3 at cox.net Sat Aug 16 18:00:57 2008 From: roseberry3 at cox.net (B Barry) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:00:57 -0400 Subject: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-19-08 EC meeting in Hartford, CT for the Green Party of CT Message-ID: <20080816220056.YVAW22820.eastrmmtao103.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-19-08 EC meeting in Hartford, CT for the Green Party of CT Location: Lena?s First and Last Pizzeria, 2053 Park Street (near Prospect Street), Hartford, CT 06106-2025 P: 860-232-4481 1. Any business/concerns from last SCC meeting of 7-29-08: petition signatures handed in for each candidate; petition information about each candidate from the Secretary of State; New London chapter; 9-14-08 CT Green Expo at SCSU 2. Any proposed short and long term goals for the CTGP by the executive committee officers? Fundraising/CTGP literature for candidates. 3. Develop the agenda for the 8-26-08 SCC meeting. Template is below. Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center Facilitator: To Be Determined A. Preliminaries: 1. (1 minute): Introductions of voting/non-voting attendees; chapters; if quorum was met; timekeeper; ground rules. 2. (2-4 minutes): Approval of tonight?s proposed agenda, any deletions or additions. 3. (2-4 minutes): Review and approval of minutes of 7-29-08 SCC meeting. 4. (2 minutes): Review and acceptance of the 8-19-08 EC meeting. 5. (2-4 minutes): Treasurer?s report from Christopher Reilly. B. Any proposals/referendums by chapters, committee: 1. (10-15 minutes): PROPOSAL from Fairfield County chapter. CONTACT: David Bedell, 12 Ardsley Rd, Stamford, CT 06906, 203-581-3193, dbedellgreen(at)hotmail.com SUBJECT: Definition of party membership. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: At its February 2008 meeting, the Fairfield chapter adopted a somewhat stricter definition of membership than that in the state bylaws. New Haven has also adopted a stricter definition. The purpose of this proposal is to make party membership contingent on a simple written declaration, just like membership in the major parties, instead of the current definition, which includes vague criteria such as what constitutes a volunteer activity or what is a "coalition partner." This proposal also addresses the contingency of losing minor party status, which happened in some towns during 2004-2006. Further comments can be read at HYPERLINK "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldCountyGreens/message/839"http://grou ps.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldCountyGreens/message/839 PROPOSAL: In the CT Green Party bylaws (HYPERLINK "http://www.ctgreens.org/bylaws.shtml"http://www.ctgreens.org/bylaws.shtml ), the section under "Individual Membership" shall be revised to read: If the Green Party has minor party status in a town, then: A person enrolled on their town voter list as a Green Party member is a member of the Green Party for all purposes. If the Green Party does not have minor party status in a town, then a person may become a member of the Green Party under the following conditions: 1. The person must be an unaffiliated voter and must not have been registered with any other party affiliation during the past ninety (90) days. 2. The person shall fill out and sign a CT Voter Registration Form declaring enrollment in the Green Party and submit this to an officer of the local or state Green Party. 3. Upon submission of such declaration, the person's membership in the Green Party will be effective after ten business days. A person not yet old enough to vote under state law may become a member of the Green Party under the following conditions: 1. The person will turn 18 and be eligible to vote before the next General Election Day. 2. The person has applied to vote by filling out and signing a Voter Registration Form with declaration of enrollment in the Green Party and submitted this to their town hall or to an officer of the local or state Green Party. 3. If the form is submitted to a local or state Green Party officer, membership in the Green Party will be effective after ten business days. Party members shall receive announcements of State Party general meetings, and shall be entitled to vote when attending State Party general meetings. When an active Member of a Chapter, the member shall be entitled to vote at all general meetings of the Chapter. No member, however, shall be entitled to vote in more than one Chapter. Chapters may institute their own requirements for membership different from those for State Party membership. C. Reports: 1. (10-15 minutes): Number of petitions handed into the CT Secretary of State, Ballot Access for GPUS Presidential Candidate: Cynthia McKinney. 2. (10-15 minutes): GPUS reports from: Cliff Thornton, Co-chairperson of GPUS, CTGP representatives: Tim McKee and Charlie Pillsbury and National Committee Members: Steve Fournier, Richard Duffee and S. Michael DeRosa. 3. (5-10 minutes): Steven Fournier, endorsed 1st Congressional District CTGP candidate: number of petition signatures handed in, campaign status. 4. (5-10 minutes): Scott Desefy, endorsed 2nd Congressional District CTGP candidate: number of petition signatures handed in; campaign status. 5. (5-10 minutes): Ralph Ferrucci, candidate for the 3rd Congressional District line. Status of campaign; date/time of nominating convention. 6. (5-10 minutes): Richard Duffee, 4th Congressional District CTGP candidate; number of petition signatures handed in; campaign status. 7. (5-10 minutes): Harold Burbank, l Green Party of CT candidate for 5th Congressional District; number of petition signatures handed in; information about the nominating convention; campaign status. 8. (10-20 minutes): Status of other CTGP candidates for public office: number of signatures handed in for each candidate; has a nominating convention occurred: campaign status. 9. (2-10 minutes): Harold Burbank, potential Green Party of CT candidate for 5th Congressional District; petitioning sheets for the petitioning candidates, campaign issues. 10. (5-15minutes): CTGP literature. 11. (5-10 minutes): Fundraising for CTGP. 12. (5-minutes): Impeachment Peach Party at 6:30PM on Thursday, August 21, 2008. 13. (1 minute): ACLU lawsuit update. 14. (2 minutes): CT Green Times newspaper and website. 15. (2-5 minutes, each): Other Chapter reports. 16. Place for next SCC meeting to be 7pm 9-30-08. Date, place and time of next EC meeting in 9-08: to be determined. 17. Any additions Green Party Key Values: non-violence, respect for diversity, grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, future focus and sustainability, personal and global responsibility, feminism and gender equality No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.6.4/1616 - Release Date: 8/16/2008 5:12 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Mon Aug 18 08:07:37 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:07:37 -0500 Subject: {news} CT's Fournier- NBHerald- Fighting for the "damaged and discouraged" Message-ID: <20080818120737.4535E47808F@ws1-5.us4.outblaze.com> New Britian Herald 08/17/2008 Green Party candidate wants to fight for 'damaged and discouraged' By STEVE COLLINS , Journal Register News Service BRISTOL - Green Party congressional hopeful Steve Fournier, of Hartford, offers a strikingly different agenda than those put forward by major party candidates. Advertisement "I think our country is in the toilet and I'm willing to go in there and pull it out," Fournier said. "Cleaning up Congress is a dirty job ... and somebody has to do it." Fournier, 62, said that volunteers have collected more than 3,000 signatures in the 1st District that "make it all but certain" that he'll be on the November ballot against U.S. Rep. John Larson, an East Hartford Democrat, and Republican challenger Joe Visconti, of West Hartford. To reach the ballot, a petitioning candidate needs 2,050 verified signatures from registered voters, a determination that should be made soon. Fournier's campaign aims "to vindicate us with our grandchildren. They will certainly defile our graves if we don't make big changes now." Fournier, a community activist, said he personally got 900 signatures - and talked with those who signed. "The people I've been talking to are angry, but they're also afraid. Afraid to dissent and afraid to look powerless and foolish," he said. Fournier said that people are looking away from what the nation's leaders have done to the country during the past generation. "The criminals who govern us have injured our earth, damaged our republic, put us in mortal danger and we go on as if everything were fine, seemingly unaware of our dire situation," Fournier said in a pamphlet. "My conversations tell me that we are not unaware and that we are seething with repressed rage. Witnesses to an atrocity, we turn away because we feel unable to act," he said. "We're told that enemies are in our midst," Fournier said, "and our biggest fear is not that any of the million or so terrorists out there will do us any harm but that we will be counted among them." "And so we take off our shoes in the airport and buy newspapers that lie to us and pretend to support the troops and stay away from political gatherings of all kinds," he said. "It's not that people are apathetic or complacent. We're damaged and discouraged," Fournier said. Fournier, a Vietnam veteran, said that "racketeers and their henchmen now govern America." "The two major political parties have been complicit in the racket and have furthered it by trashing the Bill of Rights, undermining the rule of law and effectively repealing all checks on executive power," he said. "Most recently, our leaders have waged two wars to advance their political ends and lost both of them, as all responsible authorities predicted they would," Fournier said. "They have long since quit regulating the big, anti-national corporations that control public policy, resulting in the widespread abuse of workers, poor quality goods, mass export of jobs, declines in public health and happiness, environmental pollution, the concentration of wealth in a few hands and a failing economy," he said. "These problems can't be addressed until Americans undertake the restoration of Constitutional government," Fournier said. "This candidacy - the candidate is a troublemaker and whistleblower - is an expression of urgency." Fournier said he's been active in politics since he left the Air Force in 1970 and got involved in the anti-war movement and left-wing politics. In the years since, he said, he's been a Democrat, a Republican and a Green Party member. With the exception of a brief stint on the Hartford Board of Education a decade ago when he helped convince the state to take over Hartford's troubled public schools, Fournier's been an activist and outsider. Larson has rolled over challengers since winning the 1st District in 1998. ?The Herald 2008 ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zackbeatty at gmail.com Mon Aug 18 15:22:46 2008 From: zackbeatty at gmail.com (Zack Beatty) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:22:46 -0400 Subject: {news} RE: CT's Fournier- NBHerald- Fighting for the "damaged and discouraged" Message-ID: <17b7bcbb0808181222n512742cev218cbfb5470a5f0f@mail.gmail.com> Tim, Nice! Do you have a link to article? -Zack On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 3:00 PM, wrote: > Send CTGP-news mailing list submissions to > ctgp-news at ml.greens.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://ml.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/ctgp-news > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > ctgp-news-request at ml.greens.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > ctgp-news-owner at ml.greens.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of CTGP-news digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. CT's Fournier- NBHerald- Fighting for the "damaged and > discouraged" (Tim McKee) > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: "Tim McKee" > To: "CT Greens News" > Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:07:37 -0500 > Subject: {news} CT's Fournier- NBHerald- Fighting for the "damaged and > discouraged" > > New Britian Herald > 08/17/2008 Green Party candidate wants to fight for 'damaged and > discouraged' By STEVE COLLINS , Journal Register News Service > BRISTOL - Green Party congressional hopeful Steve Fournier, of Hartford, > offers a strikingly different agenda than those put forward by major party > candidates. > > Advertisement > "I think our country is in the toilet and I'm willing to go in there and > pull it out," Fournier said. "Cleaning up Congress is a dirty job ... and > somebody has to do it." > > Fournier, 62, said that volunteers have collected more than 3,000 > signatures in the 1st District that "make it all but certain" that he'll be > on the November ballot against U.S. Rep. John Larson, an East Hartford > Democrat, and Republican challenger Joe Visconti, of West Hartford. > > To reach the ballot, a petitioning candidate needs 2,050 verified > signatures from registered voters, a determination that should be made soon. > > Fournier's campaign aims "to vindicate us with our grandchildren. They will > certainly defile our graves if we don't make big changes now." > > Fournier, a community activist, said he personally got 900 signatures - and > talked with those who signed. > > "The people I've been talking to are angry, but they're also afraid. Afraid > to dissent and afraid to look powerless and foolish," he said. > > Fournier said that people are looking away from what the nation's leaders > have done to the country during the past generation. > > "The criminals who govern us have injured our earth, damaged our republic, > put us in mortal danger and we go on as if everything were fine, seemingly > unaware of our dire situation," Fournier said in a pamphlet. > > "My conversations tell me that we are not unaware and that we are seething > with repressed rage. Witnesses to an atrocity, we turn away because we feel > unable to act," he said. > > "We're told that enemies are in our midst," Fournier said, "and our biggest > fear is not that any of the million or so terrorists out there will do us > any harm but that we will be counted among them." > > "And so we take off our shoes in the airport and buy newspapers that lie to > us and pretend to support the troops and stay away from political gatherings > of all kinds," he said. > > "It's not that people are apathetic or complacent. We're damaged and > discouraged," Fournier said. > > Fournier, a Vietnam veteran, said that "racketeers and their henchmen now > govern America." > > "The two major political parties have been complicit in the racket and have > furthered it by trashing the Bill of Rights, undermining the rule of law and > effectively repealing all checks on executive power," he said. > > "Most recently, our leaders have waged two wars to advance their political > ends and lost both of them, as all responsible authorities predicted they > would," Fournier said. > > "They have long since quit regulating the big, anti-national corporations > that control public policy, resulting in the widespread abuse of workers, > poor quality goods, mass export of jobs, declines in public health and > happiness, environmental pollution, the concentration of wealth in a few > hands and a failing economy," he said. > > "These problems can't be addressed until Americans undertake the > restoration of Constitutional government," Fournier said. "This candidacy - > the candidate is a troublemaker and whistleblower - is an expression of > urgency." > > Fournier said he's been active in politics since he left the Air Force in > 1970 and got involved in the anti-war movement and left-wing politics. In > the years since, he said, he's been a Democrat, a Republican and a Green > Party member. > > With the exception of a brief stint on the Hartford Board of Education a > decade ago when he helped convince the state to take over Hartford's > troubled public schools, Fournier's been an activist and outsider. > > Larson has rolled over challengers since winning the 1st District in 1998. > > > > *(c)The Herald 2008* > > ****************************************** > Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 > National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. > BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com > > > -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! > Choose From 200+ Email Addresses > Get a *Free* Account at www.mail.com ! > > _______________________________________________ > CTGP-news mailing list > CTGP-news at ml.greens.org > http://ml.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/ctgp-news > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Mon Aug 18 17:34:05 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:34:05 -0500 Subject: {news} GP RELEASE Greens blast military-style police measures, drug-war violation of citizens' rights Message-ID: <20080818213405.9590832675A@ws1-8.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] GP RELEASE Greens blast military-style police measures, drug-war violation of citizens' rights Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:51:56 +0000 GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES http://www.gp.org For Immediate Release: Monday, August 18, 2008 Contacts: Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614, mclarty at greens.org Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene at gp.org Greens call military-style police measures and violation of citizens' rights a "breakdown of law" ? Greens condemn curfews, anticonstitutional police harassment of innocent citizens in Arkansas and DC, and the War on Drugs as "self-defeating" in efforts to eliminate crime WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party candidates and leaders called the 24-hour curfew imposed on the city of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, a gross violation of the rights of local citizens and a symptom of the rapid growth of unrestrained police power over the past two decades. Politicians and law enforcement officials have justified such measures as part of the war on drugs. Greens have endorsed an immediate end to the drug war, calling it a catastrophic failure. "A city that hands its police force a license to trash the constitutional rights of its citizens is not a city that is upholding law and order and protecting its citizens. On the contrary, unlimited police power is a complete breakdown of the law," said Joshua Drake, Arkansas Green Party nominee for Congress (4th District) (http://www.drake08.com). The curfew in Helena-West Helena (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26171820/), a response to the crime rate in some neighborhoods, empowers officers armed with military rifles to stop and interrogate citizens without warrent or any semblance of probable cause. A similar curfew has been imposed on Washington, DC's Trinidad neighborhood, where the police have established checkpoints allowing officers to question all drivers entering the area. Citizens must convince the police they have a "legitimate reason" for their presence in the neighborhood. "These interrogations and checkpoints are comparable to police practices in authoritarian regimes and especially apartheid-era South Africa -- which is even more ominous given the fact the residents of these new 'Red Zones' are mostly African American and poor," said Rosa Clemente, the Green Party's nominee for Vice President of the United States (http://www.rosaclemente.com). "Such measures also recall the repression by police and private security firms in post-Katrina New Orleans, which accompanied the obstruction and expulsion of mostly poor and black residents from their homes." "These policies have only empowered criminal gangs involved in the drug trade, just as Prohibition fed the growth of organized crime. The ACLU is right -- two of our most important freedoms, the right of mobility and protection against warrantless search and seizure, are being nullified for the sake of the disastrous war on drugs, in violation of local law and the US Constitution," added Ms. Clemente. (August 8 letter from the ACLU of Arkansas to Helena-West Helena Mayor J.F. Valley: http://www.acluarkansas.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=4) Greens noted that curfews and harassment of citizens reflect the militarization of civilian police departments enacted by the Clinton Administration in the mid 1990s, with officers trained in military tactics to fight the drug war. Along with police militarization and the expanded war on drugs, the Nixon, Bush Sr., Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations also oversaw the rapid growth of the private prison industry, which profits from filling up prison cells with more and more inmates. The outcome has been record incarceration of US citizens, especially of young African American and Latino men locked up on nonviolent offenses and plea-bargaining deals. "Democratic and Republican politicians are equally responsible for the transformation of civilian police into militias," said Abel Tomlinson, Green nominee for Congress in Arkansas' 3rd District (http://www.abelforcongress.com). "The drug war has very little to do with drugs -- it's about control, coercion, and power. It's about money. America won't get sane drug laws and law enforcement until enough Greens get elected to public office to overturn these self-defeating, unconstitutional policies." The Green Party supports the principle that governments can best address crime and drug use by promoting local self-determination and residents' ownership of their own communities, observing citizens' rights, and recognizing that addiction is above all a medical problem. MORE INFORMATION Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org 202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN Fax 202-319-7193 ? Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml ? Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml ? Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers ? Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org 2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois http://www.greenparty2008.org ~ END ~ _________________________________________________________________ See what people are saying about Windows Live. Check out featured posts. http://www.windowslive.com/connect?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_connect2_082008 _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timmckee at mail.com Tue Aug 19 14:53:37 2008 From: timmckee at mail.com (Tim McKee) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:53:37 -0500 Subject: {news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Omar Lopez & the Browning of the Greens (Chicago Reader) Message-ID: <20080819185337.59498104F0@ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott McLarty" To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org Subject: [usgp-dx] Omar Lopez & the Browning of the Greens (Chicago Reader) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:42:59 +0000 The Browning of the Greens Despite conflict between environmentalists and the immigrants' rights movement, congressional candidate Omar Lopez thinks the Greens could supplant the Democrats as Latinos' party of choice. By Kari Lydersen Chicago Reader, August 14, 2008 http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/greenparty/ The most impressive thing about the Green Party's national nominating convention, held at Symphony Center July 10-13, might've been how multiracial it was. In the crowd, black nationalists and young activists of all colors mingled with white hippies. Fiery former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who's African-American, was named the Greens' presidential candidate, and Rosa Clemente, a Latina hip-hop activist and journalist from New York, was slated for vice president. But when keynote speaker Omar Lopez took the podium, it became clear that there's more to the browning of the Green Party than just putting nonwhite candidates up for office. There's a move, especially in Chicago, to incorporate immigration rights as a central issue for progressive Greens, whose focus on environmentalism has sometimes pitted them directly against immigrants. Lopez, a Mexican-American and longtime immigrants' rights organizer, is running for the Fourth District congressional seat against incumbent representative Luis Gutierrez, who has represented the mostly Latino district for almost 16 years and is known for his own advocacy of immigrants' rights. A leader of the March 10 Movement, Lopez was part of the coalition that staged the massive downtown immigrants' rights marches in 2006 and smaller May Day marches in 2007 and 2008. He's run unsuccessfully for political office twice as a Democrat?both times against Gutierrez. Lopez and his supporters say Gutierrez isn't doing enough for the cause, and they're calling on Latinos to make the Green Party their route to change. (It might be easier to do that now than ever before: Since Green gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney got more than 10 percent of the vote in the 2006 election, the party now qualifies as "established" through 2010 under Illinois election law. That means that, like Republican and Democratic candidates, Green candidates need only 5,000 valid signatures on their nominating petitions, as opposed to the 25,000 a candidate from a "new" party has to gather. It also allows the party to slate candidates for office in the general election.) The Greens have been active in Pilsen for the last eight years. A handful of them cofounded the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (PERRO), which spurred city and state agencies to order the H. Kramer smelting plant to clean up its operations and has spearheaded several nonbinding ballot initiatives demanding that the Fisk coal-burning power plant in Pilsen reduce its emissions. But despite long hours of knocking on doors, the party's been slow to gain widespread support in the neighborhood, a longtime power base for the Daley-allied Hispanic Democratic Organization. With Lopez's candidacy, local Green activists?the majority of them still white?hope to build meaningful relationships with immigrants and the immigrants' rights movement. The alliance is equally important to Latino activists. "We knew we had to have a candidate come out of the March 10 Movement," says Lopez. "The slogan of the marches was 'Today we march, tomorrow we vote.' It would be an empty slogan if we didn't have a candidate." On the national level, the environmental movement has been largely divorced from or even hostile to immigrants' rights movements. Advocates of drastically reduced immigration targets, ranging from "zero population growth" to "replacement level" immigration levels, include Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson (a former Wisconsin senator), Earth First! founder Dave Foreman, Sea Shepherds and Greenpeace activist Paul Watson, and Randy Hayes, former leader of the Rainforest Action Network. Since the mid-1980s anti-immigrant forces have repeatedly launched attempts to gain control of the national board of the Sierra Club, and in the early 90s the California Sierra Club joined with explicitly anti-immigrant groups to form the Coalition to Stabilize Population. In 1998 a petition drive by members forced a vote which could have forced the board to adopt a stringent immigration-control position. The measure failed, and the board maintained neutrality on the issue. But in 2004 a slate of five outspokenly anti-immigrant candidates, including former Colorado governor Dick Lamm, launched what was described as a "hostile takeover attempt" of the 15-member national board, which already included five members with anti-immigration views. White power groups even lobbied their members to join the Sierra Club so they could vote in the election?Morris Dees of the watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center called it "the greening of hate." But local Greens say they have long seen a nexus between immigrants' rights issues and the environmental, racial, and economic justice policies of their party. At the nominating convention the Greens adopted a new immigration-related platform that includes permanent border passes for Mexican and Canadian citizens, an end to immigration-related racial profiling and English-only laws, and immigration laws that "promote fairness, nondiscrimination and family reunification." "Immigration hasn't been a central issue in past campaigns, but that's changing this year," said Jerry Mead-Lucero, a Green activist who met his wife, Claudia Mead-Lucero, through the March 10 Movement. "Our platform on immigration is much better than the Democrats'. It's tying in to positions on globalization and free trade. Any free trade pact should have free passage over borders, like in the EU." And with the quickly growing Latino immigrant population nationwide and its widespread disillusionment with the Republican and Democratic parties' failure to pass immigration reform, immigrant communities are fertile ground for new party members. "This will be a reflection of what the Green Party can offer minorities," says Lopez. "The Green Party is not well known by Latinos yet, but this is an opportunity for the party." Lopez, 63, is himself an immigrant: he came to Humboldt Park with his parents from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in 1958. He became politicized in the wake of riots that swept the Puerto Rican community when a police officer shot a youth after the Puerto Rican Parade in June 1966. His first and second wives were Puerto Rican (he's now divorced), and he's been an activist in the Puerto Rican community for years. In the late 60s he served as minister of information for the Young Lords, an organization formed by local Puerto Rican street gang members to address community issues. Based in Lincoln Park, then a rough Puerto Rican neighborhood, it was similar in genesis and philosophy to the better-known Black Panthers, with gang member and activist Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez its highest-profile figure. "The mission was basically self-determination for Puerto Rico and for the neighborhood," Jimenez says. "Community empowerment and the whole question of Puerto Rico being a direct colony of the U.S." In 1969 the Young Lords joined the Black Panthers and the Young Patriots, an Uptown-based group of white working-class young people with Appalachian roots, to form the Rainbow Coalition. "We were all organizations fighting against displacement," Jimenez says. "Prior to that no one had really fought back against the Daley machine." They worked with Mexican, Chicano, Chinese, and other ethnic activists in a larger multiracial organizing movement in Chicago, and chapters in other cities spun off from the Chicago organization. They used a formula similar to the Panthers, "a survival-pending-revolution model of organizing," says James Tracy, author of a forthcoming book on the Rainbow Coalition. Also like the Panthers, the group sometimes invited suspicion because of its gang ties: "A certain element was definitely not interested in dropping the drugs and the violence," he says. But "they had extensive social services, breakfast programs, literacy programs, Puerto Rican history classes. They were communicating and meeting basic needs of their community while agitating against urban renewal plans." Lopez was also a founding member of the mostly Puerto Rican Latin American Defense Organization, which advocated for tenants' rights and other issues in Humboldt Park. In the 70s he taught in the public schools, joining the fight for bilingual education. From there he moved into a post as a bilingual-education specialist for the Board of Education, where he worked from 1977 to 1983. In 1982 he was named assistant general supervisor for the Park District under Daley loyalist Ed Kelly, a position Lopez says he gained through his advocacy for more soccer fields. In this role he helped secure the Pilsen Park District building that now houses the National Museum of Mexican Art. In 1986, after the amnesty immigration law was passed by the Reagan administration, Lopez left the Park District to help undocumented immigrants get their papers and served as president of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce. Since the mid-90s he's been director of CALOR, a nonprofit organization serving Latinos with HIV/AIDS. Lopez first threw his hat in the ring against Gutierrez in 1986, when he challenged him for alderman and committeeman of the 26th Ward, but he withdrew from the race early on. He tried for committeeman again in 1988 but lost by a wide margin. He knows most people probably expect a similar result in November. "People say I'm crazy," he says. "Gutierrez is very powerful. He'll probably harness most of the money, but I'll run a very grassroots campaign with the community groups, soccer leagues, churches." Pilsen Green Party activist and 2006 state senate candidate Dorian Breuer notes that Green Party candidates consider themselves flush if they're outspent by their opponents only by a measure of ten to one. Jorge Mujica, another March 10 Movement organizer, says one of the campaign's resources will be undocumented residents, who can't vote "but can hand out flyers and knock on doors." In some ways the race between Gutierrez and Lopez will epitomize a bitter split in the immigrants' rights movement. Gutierrez is cosponsor of one 2007 immigration reform proposal, the STRIVE Act (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy), which remains stalled in a House committee more than a year after the failure of the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill in the Senate. One immigrants' rights faction, including the powerful local group Centro Sin Fronteras, endorses STRIVE as a needed vehicle for family reunification and a means of securing legal residency for many undocumented immigrants. But another, including the March 10 Movement, has decried the bill, which among other things calls for building new immigration detention centers, increasing border security and surveillance with the help of the Department of Defense, and instituting a guest worker program with stringent requirements including a $500 application fee. "People see [Gutierrez] as a champion of immigrants, but the proposals he's put forth are far from that," said Lopez. "I don't see immigration as a problem of national security where you need to militarize the border. I see it as a labor issue. As long as you criminalize immigrants and ignore their economic contribution, you're shooting yourself in the foot." Gutierrez declined to comment for this story. Mujica thinks the Fourth District race will also pit the Mexican community against the Puerto Rican community. The obviously gerrymandered Fourth District is shaped like a horseshoe, with a largely Puerto Rican north-side chunk encompassing Humboldt Park and Logan Square connected by a thin strip hugging I-294 down to mostly Mexican suburbs and neighborhoods including Stone Park, Cicero, Little Village, Pilsen, and Back of the Yards. But Lopez?who might have more Puerto Rican support than your average Mexican-American candidate?sees it as a split between Latinos who have benefited or hope to benefit from the Latino arm of Daley's Democratic machine and those who want to strike out on their own. At the nominating convention Lopez didn't mince words in describing the former: "We are going to stumble on many Latinos who will reject the Green Party because they joined the Democratic Party in search of privileges, a job, to be elected to a political position, even to get some consulting and patronage contracts," he said. These "mercenary political activists close the door for others who are sincerely wanting to participate in the electoral process." Cha Cha Jimenez sees it in similar terms. "If I was in Chicago I'd probably work 24 hours a day for [Lopez's] campaign," he said. "Not to say I don't like Gutierrez?he's done a lot for our community. But are we here to empower Mayor Daley or empower the people?" _________________________________________________________________ Get thousands of games on your PC, your mobile phone, and the web with Windows?. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/108588800/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Natlcomaffairs mailing list To send a message to the list, write to: Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs You must know your password to do this. If you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, as a last resort only, send a message OFF LIST to steveh at olypen.com If your state delegation changes, please see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html To report violations of listserv protocol, write to forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org For other information about the National Committee, see: http://gp.org/committees/nc/ ****************************************** Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT. BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com -- Be Yourself @ mail.com! Choose From 200+ Email Addresses Get a Free Account at www.mail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From edubrule at sbcglobal.net Thu Aug 21 00:32:02 2008 From: edubrule at sbcglobal.net (edubrule) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:32:02 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw:AFSC-Htfd living wage law;Gaza;Iran;Htfd immigration law Message-ID: <002001c90348$19d6dc90$a4844c0c@edgn2b574u14bi> 6-Story Newsletter Template + Images ----- Original Message ----- From: AFSC Connecticut To: edubrule at sbcglobal.net Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:00 PM Subject: Support Hartford Living Wage Ordinance American Friends Service Committee Connecticut In This Issue: August 19, 2008 . August 20. Support Hartford Living Wage Ordinance . August 23: End the Siege of Gaza and No Attack on Iran March & Rally . Hartford Immigration Ordinance Passes City Council and is signed into law by Mayor August 20. Support Hartford Living Wage Ordinance Please join a coalition of a number of Hartford community, labor, and faith based groups on Wednesday, August 20th at 5:00pm in the City Council Chambers at Hartford City Hall, 550 Main St on the 2nd floor. "Bringing the Living Wage Ordinance into affect at our worksite has made a real difference in my life, and has enabled nearly two hundred working families right here in Hartford to earn a self-supporting income." Stephanie Chisholm School Bus Driver, Hartford Public Schools, First Student, Inc. President, Chapter I96, CSEA/SEIU Local 2001 The Mayor's Living Wage Task Force has started its work to strengthen Hartford's Living Wage Ordinance. On Wednesday, August 20 at 5:00 PM, the task force will host a public hearing. Come out in numbers and speak in favor of this effort to increase livable wage paying jobs in the city of Hartford. Call Connecticut Center for a New Economy Director Renae Reese at (860) 280-7320 or SEIU Organizer Rochelle Palache at (860) 251-6083 if you can attend, wish to speak, or need more information. August 23: End the Siege of Gaza and No Attack on Iran March & Rally End the Siege of Gaza No Attack on Iran Join our March and Public Meeting The Palestinian Gaza Strip has been locked down by Israel for two years. Over 220 patients have died because Israel won't let them leave the Strip for better medical treatment. Trade is almost non-existent. Recently the UN said unemployment in the Strip is 45%, the highest in the world. Two boats, the "Free Gaza" and the "Liberty" are trying to go from Cyprus to Gaza to break the blockade. We say, "Let the Boats In!" We also will protest threats to attack Iran. They are totally unjustified. Iran is no threat to this country. Last fall 16 US government agencies printed a report saying that Iran did not have a nuclear bomb making program and hasn't had one for 5 years . We won't be fooled by another "weapons of mass destruction" hoax. We don't need another war and we can't afford another war. Meet: 1 p.m. Saturday, August 23, 2008 Gather in front of Federal Building, 450 Main St. Hartford, CT. Walk on sidewalks to Bushnell Park Bring signs and banners Sponsors: Middle East Crisis Committee, Palestine American Congress For more information: mail at TheStruggle.org 203-934-2761 www.TheStruggle.org www.thestruggle.org Hartford Immigration Ordinance Passes City Council and is signed into law by Mayor Friends, On August 11 the Hartford City Council voted 8 to 0 to approve a local ordinance whereby Hartford police would nolonger inquire someone's immigration status, report it to the Federal Government and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency officials (ICE), or detain someone solely on the basis of their immigration status. Yesterday, August 18th Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez signed the legislation into law. Hartford now becomes the second city in Connecticut to enact such legislation, as New Haven put similar policies into action by executive order of their mayor in Dec 2006. Here is a write up of the language of the ordinance that was written by Peter Goselin of the National Lawyers Guild and posted on the Hartford Independent Media Center's blog Undercurrents. Last night, August 11, the Hartford City Council voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance effectively removing Connecticut's capitol city from the business of enforcing federal immigration laws. Though the ordinance must still be signed by Mayor Perez, the vote is an enormous step forward for the immigrant rights movement here in Connecticut. The ordinance has several parts. First, it affirms that all city services are available to all city residents, regardless of immigration status. Second, it bars any city employees from inquiring about a person's immigration status and treats immigration status, like some other forms of personal information, as confidential information that city employees are not permitted to disclose - including to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Third, it specifically bars Hartford police officers from asking witnesses or the victims of crimes about their immigration status. Fourth, it affirms that the Hartford police will not detain a person based on either his or her immigration status or the existence of an ICE administrative warrant. The ordinance was developed by the Hartford Immigrant Rights Coalition and introduced by Councilperson Luis Cotto, who was elected last November as a Working Families Party candidate. At a public hearing three weeks ago, nearly one hundred and fifty people turned out to support the ordinance, with no less than forty-eight speakers making comments in support. Not a single person opposed the ordinance. In the final minutes of discussion of the ordinance at the August 11 meeting, Councilperson Pedro Segarra commented on the earlier public hearing. Recognizing the diversity of the people who spoke out in favor of making Hartford an immigrant-friendly city and, referring to the City of Hartford's official slogan, Segarra remarked that if all of the diverse communities of Hartford could come together around other issues the way that they did on the immigrant rights ordinance "Then we really would be on the way to being the rising star of New England." The council meeting itself was a lesson in just that kind of solidarity. A majority of the people packed into the sweltering city council chambers were there to demand that steps be taken to re-open two branches of the Hartford Public Library that had recently been shut down due to funding issues as well as to support the immigration ordinance. Residents and grassroots activists from both HIRC and the North Hartford Coalition applauded each others' speakers, and while the immigrant rights ordinance was being discussed and debated, community activists worked with council members to hammer out a resolution that would re-open the Blue Hills and Mark Twain library branches. Both victories came at the conclusion of a meeting that had lasted for more than four hours. Near the end of the meeting, Councilperson Cotto held up copies of both the library resolution and the immigration ordinance, stating "It's important for people to understand that we got this" - holding up a copy of the library resolution - "in part because we took the time to do this" - holding up the immigration ordinance. Here is a link to the Undercurrents Blog posting: http://hartfordimc.org/blog/2008/08/12/hartford-city-council-votes-unanimously-to-support-immigrant-rights/ American Friends Service Committee Connecticut Area Office 56 Arbor Street, Suite 213 Hartford, CT 06106 Phone: 860.523.1534 Fax: 860.523.1705 Email: connecticut at afsc.org Visit AFSC CT Online Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Confirm | Forward -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From roseberry3 at cox.net Fri Aug 22 10:29:43 2008 From: roseberry3 at cox.net (B Barry) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:29:43 -0400 Subject: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center Message-ID: <20080822142938.NVFO2096.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center Facilitator: To Be Determined A. Preliminaries: 1. (1 minute): Introductions of voting/non-voting attendees; chapters; if quorum was met; timekeeper; ground rules. 2. (2-4 minutes): Approval of tonight?s proposed agenda, any deletions or additions. 3. (2-4 minutes): Review and approval of minutes of 7-29-08 SCC meeting. 4. (2 minutes): Review and acceptance of the 8-19-08 EC meeting. 5. (2-4 minutes): Treasurer?s report from Christopher Reilly. B. Any proposals/referendums by chapters, committee: 1. (10-15 minutes): PROPOSAL from Fairfield County chapter. CONTACT: David Bedell, 12 Ardsley Rd, Stamford, CT 06906, 203-581-3193, dbedellgreen(at)hotmail.com SUBJECT: Definition of party membership. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: At its February 2008 meeting, the Fairfield chapter adopted a somewhat stricter definition of membership than that in the state bylaws. New Haven has also adopted a stricter definition. The purpose of this proposal is to make party membership contingent on a simple written declaration, just like membership in the major parties, instead of the current definition, which includes vague criteria such as what constitutes a volunteer activity or what is a "coalition partner." This proposal also addresses the contingency of losing minor party status, which happened in some towns during 2004-2006. Further comments can be read at HYPERLINK "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldCountyGreens/message/839"http://grou ps.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldCountyGreens/message/839 PROPOSAL: In the CT Green Party bylaws (HYPERLINK "http://www.ctgreens.org/bylaws.shtml"http://www.ctgreens.org/bylaws.shtml ), the section under "Individual Membership" shall be revised to read: If the Green Party has minor party status in a town, then: A person enrolled on their town voter list as a Green Party member is a member of the Green Party for all purposes. If the Green Party does not have minor party status in a town, then a person may become a member of the Green Party under the following conditions: 1. The person must be an unaffiliated voter and must not have been registered with any other party affiliation during the past ninety (90) days. 2. The person shall fill out and sign a CT Voter Registration Form declaring enrollment in the Green Party and submit this to an officer of the local or state Green Party. 3. Upon submission of such declaration, the person's membership in the Green Party will be effective after ten business days. A person not yet old enough to vote under state law may become a member of the Green Party under the following conditions: 1. The person will turn 18 and be eligible to vote before the next General Election Day. 2. The person has applied to vote by filling out and signing a Voter Registration Form with declaration of enrollment in the Green Party and submitted this to their town hall or to an officer of the local or state Green Party. 3. If the form is submitted to a local or state Green Party officer, membership in the Green Party will be effective after ten business days. Party members shall receive announcements of State Party general meetings, and shall be entitled to vote when attending State Party general meetings. When an active Member of a Chapter, the member shall be entitled to vote at all general meetings of the Chapter. No member, however, shall be entitled to vote in more than one Chapter. Chapters may institute their own requirements for membership different from those for State Party membership. C. Reports: 1. (10-15 minutes): Speaker: Ken Esposito from Healthcare4every1 campaign. This includes 5-10 minutes for question/answers. 2. (10-15 minutes): Speaker: Doug Schwartz to talk about the appointment of Judge Zarella, by Governor Rell, to oversee the probate system in CT. This includes 5-10 minutes for question/answers. 3. (10-15 minutes): Number of petitions handed into the CT Secretary of State, Ballot Access for GPUS Presidential Candidate: Cynthia McKinney. 4. (10-15 minutes): GPUS reports from: Cliff Thornton, Co-chairperson of GPUS, CTGP representatives: Tim McKee and Charlie Pillsbury and National Committee Members: Steve Fournier, Richard Duffee and S. Michael DeRosa. 5. (5-10 minutes): Steven Fournier, endorsed 1st Congressional District CTGP candidate: number of petition signatures handed in, campaign status. 6. (5-10 minutes): Scott Desefy, endorsed 2nd Congressional District CTGP candidate: number of petition signatures handed in; campaign status. 7. (5-10 minutes): Ralph Ferrucci, candidate for the 3rd Congressional District line. Status of campaign; date/time of nominating convention. 8. (5-10 minutes): Richard Duffee, 4th Congressional District CTGP candidate; number of petition signatures handed in; campaign status. 9. (5-10 minutes): Harold Burbank, l Green Party of CT candidate for 5th Congressional District; number of petition signatures handed in; information about the nominating convention; campaign status. 10. (10-20 minutes): Status of other CTGP candidates for public office: number of signatures handed in for each candidate; has a nominating convention occurred: campaign status. 11. (2-10 minutes): Harold Burbank, potential Green Party of CT candidate for 5th Congressional District; petitioning sheets for the petitioning candidates, campaign issues. 12. (5-15minutes): CTGP literature. 13. (5-10 minutes): Fundraising for CTGP. 14. (1 minute): ACLU lawsuit update. 15. (2 minutes): CT Green Times newspaper and website. 16. (2-5 minutes, each): Other Chapter reports. 17. Place for next SCC meeting to be 7pm 9-30-08. Date, place and time of next EC meeting in 9-08: to be determined. 18. Any additions Green Party Key Values: non-violence, respect for diversity, grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, future focus and sustainability, personal and global responsibility, feminism and gender equality No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.6.6/1627 - Release Date: 8/22/2008 6:48 AM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rstuller at snet.net Fri Aug 22 21:41:52 2008 From: rstuller at snet.net (Ronna Stuller) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:41:52 -0400 Subject: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center In-Reply-To: <20080822142938.NVFO2096.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> References: <20080822142938.NVFO2096.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> Message-ID: <664482E4-C3BE-45D2-A254-D2886C0E2864@snet.net> Just a small correction on item C2. Doug will speak about the upcoming appointment of Judge Lawlor's replacement as probate chief, with New London's Matt Greene as a likely candidate. Ronna On Aug 22, 2008, at 10:29 AM, B Barry wrote: > C. Reports: > > 2. (10-15 minutes): Speaker: Doug Schwartz to talk about the > appointment of Judge Zarella, by Governor Rell, to oversee the > probate system in CT. > This includes 5-10 minutes for question/answers. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rstuller at snet.net Sat Aug 23 08:42:52 2008 From: rstuller at snet.net (Ronna Stuller) Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:42:52 -0400 Subject: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center In-Reply-To: <664482E4-C3BE-45D2-A254-D2886C0E2864@snet.net> References: <20080822142938.NVFO2096.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> <664482E4-C3BE-45D2-A254-D2886C0E2864@snet.net> Message-ID: <5BE7AA74-6E81-4750-827A-B03D8ACF6242@snet.net> Well, I don't quite have the details right either (Doug informs me), so don't change the agenda wording on my account. See you Tuesday. Ronna On Aug 22, 2008, at 9:41 PM, Ronna Stuller wrote: > Just a small correction on item C2. Doug will speak about the > upcoming appointment of Judge Lawlor's replacement as probate chief, > with New London's Matt Greene as a likely candidate. > > Ronna > > > On Aug 22, 2008, at 10:29 AM, B Barry wrote: > >> C. Reports: >> >> 2. (10-15 minutes): Speaker: Doug Schwartz to talk about the >> appointment of Judge Zarella, by Governor Rell, to oversee the >> probate system in CT. >> This includes 5-10 minutes for question/answers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chapillsbury at igc.org Sat Aug 23 12:15:08 2008 From: chapillsbury at igc.org (Charlie Pillsbury) Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:15:08 -0400 Subject: {news} New Haven chapter/NOMINATING meeting 7:30pm Tues., Sept. 2 In-Reply-To: <006801c820a1$c7ed2490$57c76db0$@org> References: <003101c6eb40$3d5cbd00$6500a8c0@S0031616584> <005101c80a2a$07952c20$6500a8c0@S0031616584> <001701c80c42$8966ce10$9c346a30$@org> <6.1.0.6.2.20071011202253.028005d0@nlb25.mail.yale.edu> <000001c82032$74b12840$6600a8c0@S0031616584> <006801c820a1$c7ed2490$57c76db0$@org> Message-ID: <005f01c9053b$6a8acb20$3fa06160$@org> Subject: Statutory Notice of Meeting to Nominate Minor Party Candidates Pursuant to CT General Statutes Sec. 9-452a (notice of party meetings), as Co-Chair of the New Haven Green Party, I hereby provide statutory notice of a Green Party meeting, as the presiding officer of such meeting, to be held: Date: Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: Never Ending Book Store, 810 State Street, New Haven CT 06511 Purpose: Nominate candidates for public office, including Third Congressional District; State Senate District 33; and New Haven Registrar of Voters. Nominations shall be accepted from the floor. Only registered Greens who are present at the meeting are eligible to vote. The nominees must receive support from a simple majority of those who actually vote. If there is more than one person nominated, instant runoff voting will be used and abstentions will not be counted as votes. Charles A. Pillsbury, Co-Chair, New Haven Green Party 247 Saint Ronan Street New Haven CT 06511 203-865-6575 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amyvasnunes at hotmail.com Sat Aug 23 16:17:22 2008 From: amyvasnunes at hotmail.com (Amy Vas Nunes) Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:17:22 -0400 Subject: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior Center In-Reply-To: <5BE7AA74-6E81-4750-827A-B03D8ACF6242@snet.net> References: <20080822142938.NVFO2096.eastrmmtao104.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> <664482E4-C3BE-45D2-A254-D2886C0E2864@snet.net> <5BE7AA74-6E81-4750-827A-B03D8ACF6242@snet.net> Message-ID: I am unsure I will make meeting, Please add to agenda discussion time for [policy surrounding CTGP and WFP "cross endorsement" Amy From: rstuller at snet.netTo: ctgp-news at ml.greens.orgSubject: Re: {news} Proposed agenda for the 7PM 8-26-08 SCC CTGP meeting at Portland Senior CenterDate: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:42:52 -0400 Well, I don't quite have the details right either (Doug informs me), so don't change the agenda wording on my account. See you Tuesday. Ronna On Aug 22, 2008, at 9:41 PM, Ronna Stuller wrote: Just a small correction on item C2. Doug will speak about the upcoming appointment of Judge Lawlor's replacement as probate chief, with New London's Matt Greene as a likely candidate. Ronna On Aug 22, 2008, at 10:29 AM, B Barry wrote: C. Reports: 2. (10-15 minutes): Speaker: Doug Schwartz to talk about the appointment of Judge Zarella, by Governor Rell, to oversee the probate system in CT. This includes 5-10 minutes for question/answers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Mon Aug 25 15:13:57 2008 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:13:57 -0400 Subject: {news} Fairfield chapter nominating meeting 9/1 in Norwalk Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bedell" To: Cc: ; Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 3:09 PM Subject: notice of party meeting August 25, 2008 Legislation and Elections Administration Division Secretary of the State PO Box 150470 Hartford CT 06115-0470 To Whom It May Concern: Pursuant to CT General Statutes Sec. 9-452a, as Secretary of the Fairfield County chapter of the CT Green Party, I hereby provide statutory notice of a Party nominating meeting to be held: Date: Monday, September 1, 2008 Time: 7:00 PM Location: Green Party Headquarters ("The Aquarium"), 10 Knight St, Stamford, CT Purpose: Nominate candidates for public office, including Stamford Board of Education, State Assembly District 135, and Weston Registrar of Voters. Nominations shall be accepted from the floor. Anyone who meets the requirements of membership as defined by the rules of the Fairfield County Green Party, who resides within Fairfield County and is present at the meeting is eligible to vote. All candidates will be chosen by consensus, or, if consensus fails, by 2/3 majority vote of the membership voting by secret ballot. In the case of no clear majority, Instant Runoff Voting will be used to select a candidate. "None of the Above" will be included as a ballot choice in the candidate selection process. Respectfully submitted, David Bedell, Secretary Fairfield County Chapter, CT Green Party cc: Donna Loglisci, Stamford Town Clerk Donna Anastasia, Weston Town Clerk From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Mon Aug 25 22:24:12 2008 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:24:12 -0400 Subject: {news} CHANGE: Fairfield chapter nominating meeting 9/2 in Norwalk Message-ID: Sorry for my carelessness--I just realized Monday is Labor Day. The meeting will be Tuesday, Sept. 2, in Norwalk (same night as the New Haven chapter meeting). David Bedell ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bedell" To: Cc: ; Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:16 PM Subject: Re: notice of party meeting August 25, 2008 Legislation and Elections Administration Division Secretary of the State PO Box 150470 Hartford CT 06115-0470 To Whom It May Concern: PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE DUE TO LABOR DAY HOLIDAY ON SEPTEMBER 1. Pursuant to CT General Statutes Sec. 9-452a, as Secretary of the Fairfield County chapter of the CT Green Party, I hereby provide statutory notice of a Party nominating meeting to be held: Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008 Time: 7:00 PM Location: Green Party Headquarters ("The Aquarium"), 10 Knight St, Norwalk, CT Purpose: Nominate candidates for public office, including Stamford Board of Education, State Assembly District 135, and Weston Registrar of Voters. Nominations shall be accepted from the floor. Anyone who meets the requirements of membership as defined by the rules of the Fairfield County Green Party, who resides within Fairfield County and is present at the meeting is eligible to vote. All candidates will be chosen by consensus, or, if consensus fails, by 2/3 majority vote of the membership voting by secret ballot. In the case of no clear majority, Instant Runoff Voting will be used to select a candidate. "None of the Above" will be included as a ballot choice in the candidate selection process. Respectfully submitted, David Bedell, Secretary Fairfield County Chapter, CT Green Party cc: Donna Loglisci, Stamford Town Clerk Donna Anastasia, Weston Town Clerk From justinemccabe at earthlink.net Mon Aug 25 23:29:57 2008 From: justinemccabe at earthlink.net (Justine McCabe) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:29:57 -0400 Subject: {news} Fw: USGP-INT Speaking of center-right, or just right-wing Message-ID: <054901c9072c$03c09d00$0402a8c0@JUSTINE> ----- Original Message ----- From: a.gronowicz at att.net To: usgp-int at gp-us.org Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:53 PM Subject: USGP-INT Speaking of center-right, or just right-wing THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW Joschka Fischer's Strange Trip >From street radical to the German foreign ministry--and now to Princeton. by MATTHEW KAMINSKI Saturday, March 31, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT PRINCETON, N.J.--"You have to try this," says the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton, pushing his cup my way with an impish grin. Mexican hot chocolate with anchovy peppers, cinnamon, cayenne and whipped cream; it's not bad. You don't find such curiosities in Europe, admits the charming and relaxed German seated before me. Wearing brown boots, a black turtleneck and black North Face coat, he looks like a faculty regular--gray-haired, 1968 vintage--at Small World Coffee, a hip spot right near campus. But little more than a year ago, Joschka the professor was Joschka the powerful, abrasive two-term foreign minister of Germany, in three-piece suits. Before that came Joschka the Green Party leader, in casual dress. And before that was Joschka the neo-Marxist headbanger, active in 1970s radical circles. (In a famous series of photographs that surfaced a few years ago, a young Fischer, in a black motorcycle helmet, beats up a German police officer.) It all began with Joschka the demonstrator from that epic year of '68 in jeans and a T-shirt. In between, Mr. Fischer lost a few front teeth, drove a taxi at night, and led Germany into its first war since the Nazi days. Five marriages later, this high-school dropout who spent the bulk of his adult life fighting American foreign policy, sometimes with brute force, is a retired politician ("done," yes, "out of politics") in a cozy Ivy League post. Ever imagine that? "No," he responds in a not unpleasant German accent, "but here you can see how funny life is." His life is both unusual and yet representative of his generation's journey, or more precisely that of the European left born right after World War II. Raised amid peace and rapid economic recovery west of the Iron Curtain, Mr. Fischer rebelled before becoming the establishment. Of the '68 leaders, none won higher government office. His most dramatic conversion came with his endorsement of military force--led by once-abhorred America no less--to stop genocide in the Balkans. The intellectual left discovered "good wars" in the 1990s, only to bicker and split in the post-9/11 world. In Iraq in 2003, the New Left historian and fellow '68er Paul Berman wrote in "Power and the Idealists," "the airy concept known as 'our generation' finally ceased to exist." Without sounding defensive, Mr. Fischer tries to make sense of his own contradictions. As for many Europeans over 50, World War II is the defining event. "I grew up with the two lessons which had to be learned based on German history, 20th century history, especially the Nazi period," he says. "No more war--because war means in modern German history that we were attacking our neighbors, committing terrible crimes. And no more holocaust, no more genocide." For some in the '68-era left, the Soviet Gulags, Pol Pot, the boat people from Vietnam all brought home that military means are sometimes needed to stop human suffering. For Mr. Fischer, the turn came two decades later when the nationalist fires spread in the Balkans. "Suddenly these two principles"--an end to war and genocide--"were in confrontation in Sarajevo, in Bosnia . . . this was very painful and started within myself, it was something very serious, and after Srebrenica the decision for me was quite clear." Mr. Fischer's first big decision at the foreign ministry was to sign off on NATO's 1999 war against Serbia over Kosovo. He was in a small minority inside his pacifist Green movement but prevailed, showing "great courage and lucidity," in the words of a fellow traveler and founder of Doctors Without Borders, the Frenchman Bernard Kouchner. Tony Blair may have been the most eloquent champion of Kosovo-style interventionism, but Joschka Fischer took the Continental left to places it never dreamed of going. He plays it down with a (sort of) joke. "You saw the pictures of my past," he says, "I was never a pacifist." After advocating action in Bosnia and leading it in Kosovo, the popular foreign minister helped bring Slavs and Albanians back from the brink of war in Macedonia. The last time I saw him in person, he was barking orders to a half dozen aides over breakfast in Skopje, the Macedonian capital. A small NATO force and international diplomacy secured the peace deal. "We avoided another tragedy," he says. "When that took place, I thought, 'So Joschka, that's it, now relax. All the pain is behind you. You can now prepare for elections.' " He was at his political peak. A few days later, when the second plane hit the World Trade Center, his first thought was: "This will change the world." It did not change his world, certainly, for the better. Though he and his government supported the U.S.-led war against the Taliban--strengthening his newly minted credentials as a pro-American--he says Paul Wolfowitz and other so-called neoconservatives in the administration reminded him of his friends from the '68 barricades, which made him uneasy before Iraq really came up. "They are strongly ideological," he says. "I had my ideological decade." Around the same time, his coalition partner, Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der, used a last-minute appeal to anti-Americanism to swing the close 2002 election to their red-green coalition. Iraq brought more trouble for Mr. Fischer and within his intellectual camp. Saddam Hussein was far more brutal than Slobodan Milosevic and led a totalitarian regime inspired by none other than Nazi Germany. For the idealists, a small but hugely influential minority on the left in Europe (and, though that's now an inconvenient truth, a far bigger one in the U.S.), Iraq was at least as compelling a case for intervention as Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Macedonia. Only the man doing the intervening was the distrusted George W. Bush. Whether hemmed in by Chancellor Schr?der's early, preemptive opposition to the Iraq war or personal conviction, Mr. Fischer turned out to be one of the most prominent European opposition voices. One scene, from February 2003, stands out. "Excuse me, I'm not convinced," a visibly irritated Mr. Fischer told Donald Rumsfeld, who'd presented the U.S. case for war, at the annual Munich security conference. His loss of diplomatic cool was noted by allies as well as enemies--and his break with political and ideological soul mates like Messrs. Blair or Kouchner caused a lot of reflection. "I thought a lot about that," he says. "It seemed to be that they believe in principles." Then he changes topics, before offering a self-justification, one informed by hindsight of the difficulties in Iraq since the invasion. "[Saddam's] was really a terrible regime. But there are some other terrible regimes around. I was never convinced [the U.S.] will control the effects of such intervention." With Iran's nuclear rattling against Israel, where Mr. Fischer has many friends, would military means be justified to stop "another holocaust" now? "The use of force will lead us into hell," he says, before softening his tone. "It makes no sense to have illusions about the Iranians; I've negotiated with them. But on the other hand the final decisions about the nuclear program have not been made." After a pause: "But of course the option of a second holocaust is unacceptable, and this won't take place ever--ever." Some thinkers on the left soured on "humanitarian interventionism" before Iraq, and the notion now seems fully discredited on his side of the political aisle, Bosnia a distant memory. (On the other side, interventionism never caught on as a thing in itself.) "It's not a dogma and it's not dead," responds Mr. Fischer. "If there is a need, if there is a pressure, if there is no other way out, it will come back. But unfortunately people will be much more hesitant, at least in the United States." Mr. Fischer is self-avowedly no longer an idealist like Mr. Kouchner. "I will tell you what changed me into a realist," Mr. Fischer says. "First of all my experience with ideologies and the way it can end." He means, I presume, the fringe left's embrace of terrorism in the 1970s; he was acquainted with members of the Revolutionary Cells and the Red Army Faction (a k a the Baader-Meinhof Gang) that killed dozens, although he denies ever taking part himself. (The Revolutionary Cells helped carry out the 1972 murder of Israeli Olympians in Munich.) "And secondly," Mr. Fischer continues, "I drove five years in the night in Frankfurt in a cab. I had a deep insight into the human character. The Catholic world-view that there is the good and there is the evil is not the reality. Usually in a human being, you have the good and the evil." He doesn't say but implies that experience in government changed him, too. Having taken office proclaiming high ideals in foreign policy, he saw Mr. Schr?der, who led the dominant Social Democrats, elbow his way into foreign affairs, his terrain, in the second term. The chancellor set the tone on Iraq, Europe and Russia--calling Vladimir Putin, famously, a "flawless democrat." "It was never my position," Mr. Fischer retorts, adding (suddenly the diplomat again) that he and Mr. Schr?der had "a very realistic view of each other," though "we were never personal friends." After the 2005 elections produced a split result, both men left politics, Mr. Schr?der for a job at Russia's giant gas company Gazprom and Mr. Fischer to consulting and teaching. The current "grand coalition" between the main right and left parties is like "sex between a hippopotamus and an elephant . . . always very awkward," he says. So, Mr. Fischer adds, he's relieved to be an ocean away. Back in 1986, the former French Maoist philosopher Andr? Glucksmann--who is "the looniness of 1968 repentant" in Paul Berman's phrase--told Mr. Fischer in a German newspaper debate that one of the left's gravest sins is the "refusal to acknowledge the possibility of evil." Mr. Fischer doesn't apologize for his past, and the Glucksmann gibe, coming from a friend, still rankles. "As a good Catholic grown up in a deep Catholic environment, I couldn't understand what he's talking about that I don't believe in evil." In realist mode, he says, "It's not in our hands to defeat the evil; it's in our hands to limit it." Mr. Fischer was born to a Hungarian-German family of butchers in Bavaria, but realized "very early" that he wanted a different life. "Maybe I kept my butcher style in politics," he jokes. "Some of my enemies said that." (As foreign minister, he was criticized for arrogance by the media, and in turn once called reporters "nothing but five-mark whores"; he tells me he only had one specific journalist in mind.) In his most radical days, Mr. Fischer says he was never anti-American "in a cultural sense." "Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin," he eyes light up, "I can't deny that!" For him, 1968 broke up "the old authoritarian Germany" and brought a new whiff of "freedom," with women's lib for example. Asked what the year's true legacy is, he throws up his hands, like many others. "I still try to figure it out," he says. " '68 will never end. Everybody always says blame '68 for this or that. But it's still going on." At a recent Rolling Stones concert in Berlin, he noticed three generations were in the audience enjoying the show. To him, the scene showed how that year changed the world. "It was impossible that I would have gone with my father and grandfather to a concert," he says. After this academic year, Mr. Fischer will go home to Berlin and Europe, which "is in a very messy situation." We talk about the new generation of street protestors on the Continent who proclaim their sympathy for Hezbollah and disgust for America. Sometimes it looks like it's gone full circle, back to simple slogans and a flirtation with terrorism. "To see America as the country of the evil, that's terribly wrong," he says. So is today's left repeating old mistakes? "Every generation has to make its own experience," he says, without wanting to continue down this path. Lunch at the University Club awaits, and Mr. Fischer--'60s rabble-rouser, Green, idealist, foreign minister, realist--walks out the cafe and back toward the Princeton campus. Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.-------------- Original message from a.gronowicz at att.net: -------------- Let him offer his reasons given the facts I have presented. It would also be good to have before us the position of the Colombian Greens on the Middle East, Georgia, etc. We already know that five of the six Green parties in Europe that entered into center-right coalitions that seriously compromised the four pillars. Tony P.S. Are observers on this list supposed to post? -------------- Original message from Mike Feinstein : -------------- > I forwarded this resolution to Juan Carlos Lecompte, who is a Colombian > Green and the husband of Ingrid Betancourt. > > This was his response: > > "Hi Mike,you are right, i think is a good idea.Juan C." > _______________________________________________ > usgp-int mailing list > usgp-int at gp-us.org > http://forum.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/usgp-int -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ usgp-int mailing list usgp-int at gp-us.org http://forum.greens.org/mailman/listinfo/usgp-int -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.6.6 - Release Date: 8/19/2008 12:00 AM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dbedellgreen at hotmail.com Thu Aug 28 18:52:27 2008 From: dbedellgreen at hotmail.com (David Bedell) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:52:27 -0400 Subject: {news} 2nd District Race: Third-party contenders seek spots on ballot Message-ID: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x2045581168/2nd-District-Race-Third-party-contenders-seek-spots-on-ballot 2nd District Race: Third-party contenders seek spots on ballot By JOHN PENNEY Norwich Bulletin Posted Aug 24, 2008 @ 01:59 AM With a few months to go in Connecticut's 2nd District congressional race, two more candidates have made strides to be added to the ballot. Green Party candidate Scott Deshefy and Libertarian Party candidate Dan Reale plan to join incumbent Democrat U.S Rep. Joe Courtney and Republican challenger Sean Sullivan in the race for Congress. Deshefy and Reale submitted petitions to the Secretary of the State's Office with more than the required number of signatures needed to qualify for candidacy. Deshefy, a biologist and state Department of Environmental Protection scientist for 20 years, said he wants to leverage his academic and work credentials to push for ecological protection, climate control and smarter land-use legislation. He also favors reduced military spending, preferring to funnel that money into infrastructure and education reform. "We need a scientific acumen to solve these complex problems," Deshefy, a Lebanon resident, said. "But, I've also inhaled welder's fumes when I worked in a shipfitter yard, so I'd fight for green energy use at the sub base, General Dynamics and at Dow Chemical." He acknowledged his major party competitors had the ability to raise more money in coming months, but dismissed any perceived disadvantages. "I'm an old athlete, and I've prevailed many times as an underdog," Deshefy said. "In terms of change, idealism and knowledge, I'm the front-runner." Reale, of Plainfield, said he's pushing for increased congressional oversight and a restoration of the Bill of Rights. "Giving Congress the sole ability to print money, not the Federal Reserve, would solve a lot of our problems, including inflation, overnight," Reale, 28, said. "The debt-based system we're under now debases the dollar and is one of the reasons fuel prices are so high." Reale said he's focusing on fundraising, and estimates he needs $60,000 to contend with Courtney and Sullivan. "I'm prepared to speak and meet with any organization," he said. "That's a lot more than the two-party system candidates are doing." Copyright ? 2008 GateHouse Media, Inc. Some Rights Reserved.