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(Each of the four candidates had a chance to introduce themselves to Globe Readers. Both Patrick and Cahill included the phrase “change politics as usual” in their lead sentences, which must have had readers scratching their heads… – promoted by michael horan)

Here is the text of Jill Stein’s op-ed in The Boston Globe today.  As usual, she cuts straight to the point and tells it like it is.  Let’s head on over there and show our support for her courage in leading the charge for better communities and a better life for all of us.

Ending politics as usual

By Jill Stein

October 17, 2010

You don’t need me to tell you that things are not going well in Massachusetts. We’re struggling with record unemployment, crushing underemployment, struggling schools, an unraveling environment, unfair taxes, and unaffordable health care. And we have a state government that can’t seem to fix anything.

With politicians failing to get the job done, you’d think voters would rise up and vote them out. But with lobbyists and big money controlling elections, people are rarely given a choice to vote for real change. Voters have been pummeled with the idea that they can’t break with the two-party system no matter how badly it treats them.

The result? Despite all the noisy rhetoric in the governor’s race, Beacon Hill lobbyists and insiders aren’t worried about the outcome. The fix is in. They know that both frontrunners will defend big money interests. I got into this race so voters could have real change with a clean money candidate who has never been a Beacon Hill insider. The defenders of the status quo have responded with the shopworn “spoiler” argument. They’re telling voters who want to vote for me that Charlie Baker is so bad that they have to vote for Deval Patrick instead to keep Baker from winning. They drive this home with negative campaigning that demonizes Baker as the enemy of all things good. If you buy their spoiler argument, political free speech has been taken from you. You’ll have to just shut up and vote your approval for four more years of business-as-usual.

If they were sincerely concerned about preventing any “spoiling” of elections, the Massachusetts Democrats could simply pass Ranked Choice Voting. But that’s been sitting in the Legislature untouched for 10 years.

When you think about it, the spoiler argument is really phony. Disaster doesn’t strike when a Republican governor takes office in Massachusetts. The Democratic Party holds over 90 percent of the seats in the Legislature. It can pass any law and override any veto it wishes – whatever the party of the governor.

Furthermore, both Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker support job-killing casinos, profiteering health insurance, privatization of our schools, cuts to education and social services, more corporate tax breaks, big money politics, and disempowerment of local government. They’re leading us toward the same disastrous destination.

Here’s how to recapture the power of your vote: Don’t let anyone silence you with the spoiler argument. Don’t vote for four more years of a government that’s abusing you. (That’s like putting a “Kick Me” sign on your back, saying you’re not going to break with the system no matter how badly it treats you.) If you want a government that works for you, vote for me, the only candidate that isn’t a part of the Beacon Hill political machine. Your vote for real change will shake up the system, and put us on the road to getting our government back.

From: Boston.com

1 Comment

  1. rossl

    I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.

    You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

    ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

    OK, so maybe she doesn’t continue like Howard Beale.  But that first sentence (and maybe the first paragraph) made me think of how he started his speech.

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