{news} Duffee Nominated in 4th CD

[David Bedell]

NEWS

For immediate release
Date: January 14, 2008
Contact:
David Bedell, Fairfield County Green Party Secretary, (203)581-3193,
dbedell at greens.org
Richard Duffee, Congressional candidate, (203)588-0161,
richard.duffee at gmail.com
Mike DeRosa, CT Green Party Co-Chair, (860)919-4042, smderosa at cox.net


GREEN PARTY NOMINATES RICHARD DUFFEE IN 4TH DISTRICT
Candidate Will Challenge Shays and Himes


NORWALK, CT—On Sunday afternoon, members of the Green Party met at the
Norwalk Library to select a candidate for Congress from the 4th District.
They nominated Richard Duffee of Stamford, a retired lawyer and impeachment
activist.

He will run for the seat currently occupied by Republican Christopher Shays,
which is also being contested by Democrat Jim Himes.

Another candidate, solar energy engineer/designer Gerald Falbel of Stamford,
sought the Green nomination but failed to garner sufficient support.
Several caucus participants voted for the option “None of the Above” in lieu
of a candidate, but the majority supported Duffee’s nomination.

When asked his reasons for running, Duffee cited the need to reverse the
current Iraq war policies, to prevent war against Iran, and to counter the
Bush administration's environmental legacy and failure to address global
warming or public safety threats such as the nearby Indian Point nuclear
power plant.

Congress Has Failed to Impeach

Above all, however, Duffee decided to run because Congress has not used its
power of impeachment to end what he describes as the criminal activities of
George Bush and Dick Cheney. “I believe the current Congress has not taken
seriously the oath of office to defend the Constitution. We are in a
constitutional crisis that cannot end until we repudiate empire and imperial
presidencies and return to our Republic.

“We need a government based on trust, openness, honesty, and disinterested
public action.  It is clear that Bush and Cheney regard us not as citizens,
but as subjects, using all the techniques of ruling an empire—secrecy,
deceit, betrayal, fraud, mystification, and violence. These are inherently
incompatible with the moral prerequisites for maintaining a Republic based
on the rule of law.

“Christopher Shays is guilty of breaching his oath of office by supporting a
criminal president and vice president.  He may be guilty of crimes against
peace in his pursuit of the Iraq War.”

Duffee has started a campaign blog at http://richardduffee.blogspot.com.

Minor parties such as the Green Party have to petition their way onto the
ballot, and if they do not run a candidate in any given year, then they lose
their ballot line for that office.

For the Congressional seat, Duffee’s supporters will have until early August
to collect at least 2100 signatures of voters in the 4th District.

*       *       *

Richard Duffee on the issues:

•       Health care: “There's nothing wrong with the Canadian single-payer
plan—the vast majority of Canadian citizens are happy with it—including the
doctors.”

•       Jobs: “We can make jobs the way FDR did in 1932, this time by hiring
people to do insulation, solar power, wind power, geothermal, retrofitting,
and so on, and making it available to everyone at cost the way the GI bill
made housing available to veterans after World War II.”

•       Foreign policy:  “We should comply strictly with all the provisions
of international law we created but now disavow. We should comply with the
United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg rules, the Geneva Accords, the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1996 International Court of Justice opinion
that nuclear weapons are illegal, and fully fund the UN, help it reform so
it can function, and behave as a normal law-abiding nation—which Article 6
of our Constitution says we are supposed to be.”

•       Global warming:  “Global warming is lethal. Several factors—loss of
rainforests, collapse of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, exacerbation
of El Niño—may make exponential heat spikes that will cause drought so
severe that no one can survive it, flooding great enough to wipe out vast
coastal areas and whole nations, horrific storms, sudden freezes, and such
chaotically unpredictable weather that no agriculture can succeed.”