Green-Rainbow Party candidate for State Auditor Nat Fortune hit Roxbury yesterday explain his positions on school funding, transparency, health care finance, and the very long list of sweetheart deals gone bad. Nat joined five of the six candidates for this position at a “Get Out the Vote Coalition State Auditor and Treasurer Candidates Forum” at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury that was well-attended by Boston-area supporters. Noting the importance of electing an auditor who is not beholden to parties that accept corporate funding, Fortune explained that

You need to be able to follow the money. And to follow the money you need to be able to not have to worry about where that money trail leads you. That means you have to be independent of the parties, the interests, the insiders and the lobbyists that are running Beacon Hill and not have to worry about who you are going to embarrass or what contribution you are going to imperil. I’m the only candidate who refuses contributions from lobbyists, corporations, and companies that pay for those lobbyists. I can follow the money no matter where it leads.

Boston Globe, August 18 2010.

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE Tim Cahill began his closing statement in Monday’s first gubernatorial debate with a plea to be included – along with Green-Rainbow party candidate Jill Stein – in subsequent debates. Then he and Stein went on to show, with their contributions to the debate on Cape Wind, that they bring thoughtful, distinct perspectives the voters deserve to hear.

Continue reading Boston Globe: “Cahill, Stein Earn Their Places”

Laugenour would legalize marijuana

By David Scribner

LENOX – Scott Laugenour, the Green-Rainbow Party candidate running for state representative against Democratic incumbent William F. Pignatelli in the fourth Berkshire district that includes all of South County, has called for the legalization of marijuana, both as a way of undermining covert drug trafficking and as a way of providing a taxable income stream for the area’s farmers.

‘It’s time for marijuana to be legalized and removed from the black market,” he declared. “Let’s allow our communities’ entrepreneurs to apply for licenses so that they may expand their business and profit from the sale of marijuana and related paraphernalia. And let’s collect fair and reasonable excise taxes on it.”

Welll … ya do.

Fascinating times in that we’re witnessing, in both the GOP and the Democratic Party, ominous fissures that go more than skin deep. There are already signs of potential mass defection by folks who identify themselves now as “Tea Partiers” first and “Republicans” second. And now, Robert Gibbs makes it clear that the WH officially acknowledges an equally ominous fracturing taking place within the ranks of Democrats in damning “the professional left” (pretty sure he’s talking about you there, kiddo).

It’s possible that we’re living on a cusp of a power vacuum.

Next Democracy Day is TUESDAY, AUGUST 10. Please spead the word far and wide! Visit Democracy Days and post YOUR reasons for supporting this campaign!

When’s the last time someone asked you,”yo–wanna make history?”

Been a while? Well, I’m inviting you to do just that right now.

You can whine about all politicians being corrupt. You can pretend nothing outside your front door matters. You can accept impotence as a fundamental condition of your being. You can compromise to no end, selling your soul piece by piece on the obscene premise that life is all about settling for the lesser of two evils.

I dunno. Sounds like a pretty crappy deal to me. If that’s the best we can do, hell, I’d just as soon not have been born.

But I’m damn glad I was, and I’m not settling, and I’m not taking a blade to my whatsits, and neither are you. Because we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves, to redeem our commonwealth, to redeem our future. And all you gotta do is contribute ten bucks. Between now and August 10. That–and spread the word.

Go here and check it out:

(READ EXCERPTS FROM DR. STEIN’S ANNOUNCEMENT):

Dazzled by the efforts of the truly invincible cadre of folks who braved this summer’s scorched sidewalks to collect the signatures needed to place GRP candidates on the ballot, impressed all over again with our gubernatorial candidate’s eloquent grasp of pressing issues and ability to weave them together with both sense and grace, pleased to meet my comrades once again on the same Statehouse steps we did when Jill Stein announced her candidacy on a chill March morning, I for one am feeling downright re-invigorated. No, all’s not well with the world. Far from it. But we’re ready to go to war to make it well, and all of us–in the party, in the movement, and, in fact,  all of us across the commonwealth, who’ve been delivered a choice we didn’t have yesterday–owe a real debt to those who labored indefatigably to ensure our candidates would be on the ballot–and in the freaking debates–and to the slate of candidates–Jill Stein & Rick Purcell, Nat Fortune, and Scott Lagenour–who are looking simply to give a real voice, not to party partisans, not to big-time donors, but to citizens like themselves  (we’ll shortly be adding the tireless Mark Miller to that list).

From the heart: thank you.

Of course … that was the easy part. To get involved with stage two, please visit Democracy Days.

This won’t work for everyone, but it still does it for me. Some Shakespeare for you.

(Not addressed  to GRP loyalists, but to my lovesick Demecratic friends)

Help me out. Some of you have been in situations like these.

This isn’t about me. It’s about … a friend’s situation. Of course.

So: imagine you’re in love. The kind that only comes once in a life time: stars in your eyes, clouds at your feet; rainbow and unicorns on the dreariest of Monday mornings, the scent of musk, cognac, and opium in the bedroom every night.

The guy–make it a woman if you’re so inclined–is in so many ways everything you wished for. He’s good looking, a snappy dresser, has a great smile, your friends can’t believe you landed him, and you’re not ashamed to bring him home to dinner. He’s wicked smart, but he doesn’t put on any airs about it–just not his style. He has a great job, knows his way around limos and private jets, hobnobs with the occasional celebrity. Does it possiby get any better than this?

There’s a somewhat lengthy piece by Euegene Goodheart in the summer issue of Dissent–“Obama On and Off Base”–that’s well worth reading. Goodheart makes the case that far from selling out his liberal base, the President is operating as efficiently as he can within the the constraints (from constitutional to political) his administration faces, and has some genuine accomplishments to boast of–not, actually, a bad record for a president in his third year. I think it’s well worth reading for those who don’t understand why we don’t have single-payer, why Copenhagen went so terribly wrong, why enough isn’t being done in terms of economic stimulus. In any case, the historical comparisons to (and contrasts with) Lincoln and Roosevelt are insightful and rewarding.

There’s a disingenuous element here, too, however, in that the author, focusing pretty much entirely on domestc policy issues, doesn’t touch on military spending or the wars–two items that, to my mind, threaten the well-being being of the republic more than most anything else. The president doesn’t require supermajorities to drastically alter US involvement in Iraq and Af-Pak; when it comes to his status as Commander-in-Chief, he need accede to no powerful Senator nor fear a filibuster. In fact, a growing number of congresspeople and senators are pushing de-involvement, and there does exist a VERY broad colaition, which includes paleo-cons, who would vociferously support withdrawal. Unfortunately, standard-issue Dems are reluctant to criticize the President on this most critical of issues–the election of Obama was the single worst thing that could have hapened to what there was of an antiwar movement, as we got, not “Bush Lite,” but but Bush squared–and a movement that decided to castrate itself in obesiance.

I have no idea how to rescuscitate that movement, but I’m open to suggestions.