BOSTON – Jill Stein sparkled in the first televised gubernatorial debate of the 2010 elections, according to her supporters.

“It is now absolutely clear that Jill has the only truly progressive vision in this race.” said Daryl Sprague, Stein’s campaign manager.  “All the others promised deep cuts next year to education, the state workforce, and health care.  Jill was the only candidate to propose cutting the big giveaways tucked into the state’s economic development portfolio.  It was amazing to hear Deval Patrick threaten education and health care and then act as if he didn’t hear Jill when she said it would be better to put the $1b in questionable corporate giveaways on the table.”

While Baker and Cahill advocated general tax cuts as an all-purpose solution to economic woes,  Stein was the only candidate to insist that tax cuts be part of a balanced package making the tax system more progressive.

 

On health care, Stein noted that “None of the Beacon Hill candidates had a long term solution to the problem of rising health care costs.  “None of them were willing to take on the big insurance companies and go after insurance waste, which is consuming one-third of our health care dollars.”

Patrick and Baker clashed over whether Baker was responsible for the Big Dig debt.  Baker claimed he was involved with only 10% of the project cost.  Stein dismissed this entire argument with the observation that “It’s time to admit that failure to control costs at the Big Dig was very much a bipartisan problem.  The initial Big Dig contract may have been signed under a Republican Administration, but the Democratic Party controlled the state legislature and refused to insist on tight oversight.  Both parties were focused on pocketing campaign donations from Big Dig contractors.  The solution to problems like this will have to come from outside the Democratic or Republican Parties, with their money-driven political machines.   I’m the only candidate calling for the fundamental reforms in campaign finance that can really solve this type of problem.”

Stein observed that “The low point for me was when Tim Cahill claimed that undocumented immigrants were taking jobs and resources away from ‘our people’.  And neither Baker or the Governor offered any clear challenge to this dangerous and divisive assertion.  The Governor said only that we already had laws in place to deny services to immigrants, and that crackdowns were a Federal responsibility.  I think that anyone who aspires to be the Governor of this Commonwealth should be quick to stand up and stop attempts to turn people against each other – and especially attempts to get struggling people to blame the poorest and least powerful among us for our problems.  Our current economic crisis has everything to do with the greed and abuse coming from Wall Street and we need to stop the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants.”