Yeh, this one’s for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
What strikes me as most important about this piece isn’t BP’s insanely long history of conscientious neglect. It’s the business about how BP isn’t particularly concerned with the ramifications of cap-and-trade. We can’t do much to save the shrimp–not that any of us have actually tasted wild domestic shrimp lately–but we can … maybe .. do something about cap-and-trade.
BTW, this is off Kos. Which I every now and then take an oath never to visit again. But if you can get past the snarky attitude of Markos and friends when it comes to third parties (and even noble Democratic outliers like Mike Gravel)… there’s much on the site that’s indispensable.
That there are people out there staying up all night doing this kind of research in order post an article gratis makes me more hopeful than does anything else. No, DGW isn’t going to approach Beck’s ratings anytime soon. But he’s reached me, and he’s reached you, and now you’re going to disseminate that link far and wide….
Continue reading What’s a Little Oil in the Gulf of Mexico Got to do with Cap and Trade?Sergio Reyes is a serious person.* This May Day he is marching in support of workers and immigrants.
Reyes brings a gravitas to the day that accompanies few. Neither a college lefty nor foundation-weaned and preened non-profit operative, Reyes comes to the United States from Chile where a US-back military government installed the world’s first regime that would implement everything that neo-liberal Washington demanded: government that cut taxes on corporations, cut programs for working people, cut regulations and, yes, cut people.
Continue reading The Arizona ProvocationFrom GreenChange.org:
Jill Stein is running for Governor of Massachusetts. Green Change is proud to endorse her campaign. Her record of public service and passionate advocacy for healthy communities makes her an exceptional candidate for governor.
As Governor of Massachusetts, Jill will make extraordinary commitments to creating green jobs, pursuing real health care reform, saving public education, enacting fairer taxes, and cleaning up the environment.
In the likely four-way race, Jill Stein potentially could be elected governor with as little as 26% of the vote, which translates to roughly 800,000 votes. This is not beyond reach considering that she won 18% of the vote as a candidate for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2006.
Jill Stein refuses to take lobbyist money, and vows to end the “pay-to-play” politics that dominates the Massachusetts state legislature. Her campaign is eligible for 1-to-1 public matching funds for every dollar raised over $125,000, meaning that as soon as she raises $250,000 from supporters, she’ll be able to mount a half-million-dollar campaign. She plans to mobilize thousands of grassroots volunteers across the state to bring their message of a healthy Green future to the people of Massachusetts.
Help Jill earn public financing for her campaign by making a contribution at http://bit.ly/jillsteindonate.
Continue reading Green Change endorses Jill Stein for Governor of MassachusettsThis exciting array of candidates means the GRP will be taking it to the next level this year. 2010 is the year of the Green-Rainbow Party!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 27, 2010
CONTACT: Daryl Sprague, 617-459-0784
GREEN-RAINBOW CANDIDATES TO CHALLENGE INCUMBENTS IN 2010: FIELD REPORTS SAY VOTERS ARE READY FOR CHANGE
Voters are in the mood for change, according to the Green-Rainbow Party candidates nominated at the weekend meeting of the Party’s State Committee in Northampton. Nominated were: health and environmental advocate Jill Stein for Governor, Holyoke veterans’ activist Rick Purcell for Lieutenant Governor, Nat Fortune, a physicist at Smith College, for State Auditor. Scott Laugenour was nominated as a candidate for state representative in the 4th Berkshire District. The Party also endorsed independent candidate Peter White who is running for Congress in the 10th Congressional District (being vacated by Rep. William Delahunt).
Continue reading GRP Nominates Slate of Candidates; Challenge to Incumbents is OnAn Open Letter to the FireDogLake Community
{Cross posted at FireDogLake}
Dear friends at FDL,
I come to you with open arms, an open mind, and an open heart. I read your analysis and commentary and reporting and informed discussions, and I am grateful for all of it. It is heads and tails more open-minded and thoughtful than other similar progressive blogs, even those on your blogroll. FDL gives me hope. But then I take a look at your blog family, and your affiliation with the Blue America / Act Blue fundraising PAC, and my heart sinks. Ultimately I yearn to know the answer… how open-minded is the FDL community?
I write this as a Green activist, an active member of the Green-Rainbow Party — the Massachusetts affiliate of the Green Party of the U.S. I like to think that my allegiance to the Green Party is not rigid, or dogmatic, or permanent, or tunnel-based – the types of things that made Ralph Nader promise his father on his deathbed (as the story goes) that he wouldn’t ever join a political party. I myself am brimming with criticism of the Green Party. But it’s constructive criticism, because I think we desperately need to make the Green Party viable in the United States and around the world. Any global ecology-based movement will do, so long as it does not shy away from the difficult, frightening, and often-nauseating terrain of modern-day politics.
Continue reading Open the Floodgates to Inspired, Participatory Democracy[A note from the Stein campaign]
Dear friends and supporters,
40 years ago tomorrow, millions of people around the country took part in the first-ever Earth Day. The event was designed “to shake up the political establishment and force the environment onto the national agenda,” according to Gaylord Nelson, a US Senator from Wisconsin who was one of the driving forces behind it.
Despite 40 years of successful Earth days, our environment is at greater risk today than ever before. We face an increasingly threatened climate, unabated oil addiction, expansion of polluting coal and biomass plants, degradation of forests and fisheries, shrinking open space, ongoing toxic threats and senseless wars that are as harmful to the climate as they are to global security. On this Earth Day, let us make a new commitment to the vision of a whole and healthy planet – to a revitalized grassroots democracy, new leadership, and green economic transformation. Each of these are critical if we are to stop the ongoing destruction and achieve the healthy, just, secure green future we deserve.
The 420 holiday–by all appearances a national feast–got off to an early start here in MA with Extravaganja in Amherst over the weekend. Which is only fitting, since a recent headline in the Daily Collegian proclaimed that the “Marijuana Legalization Bill With Origins in the Pioneer Valley has Hearing on Beacon Hill.” Now that may have been easy to miss, what with all the hullaballoo over healthcare and casinos; but if you didn’t come across it, more’s the pity, because it’s high time that the Green-Rainbow Party join the Libertarians and more than a few right-thinking Democrats in advocating total legalization of the kindly herb.
Not namby-pamby “decriminalization,” which is the kind of wishy-washy, mainstream middle-of-the-road-no-we-don’t-have-any-balls approach that illustrates so well the timidity of liberalism in America today. Not “medical marijuana,” which certainly helps a few that freaking need it but doesn’t address the systemic issues at play in any way. Nope. Time for the GRP to take a full-bore, 100% no-bullshit approach to this issue.
Crowd at Hempfest 2009, Boston Common, September 21 2009
Time to Align Ourselves on the Right Side of History
I’d love to see the party go on the record…
Continue reading It’s 4/20, and Time to Take a StandMy election to State Legislature in November of this year as a Green-Rainbow candidate will greatly advance the prospects for single payer health care in Massachusetts and in the United States.
(Update: July 7, a non-binding policy question on single payer health care will be on the Nov 2 ballot in the 4th Berkshire District. Read more…)
There are many groups advocating for single payer, but they often focus their efforts on lobbying incumbents to co-sponsor a bill, or they focus on educating a few candidates seeking the few open seats that arise. They are not making progress. We are further than ever away from the kind of health care security that citizens in most other advanced democracies enjoy.
My election will be a more powerful boost to the cause than would be the garnering of even twenty more co-sponsors to the bill. History has shown that co-sponsorhip is not enough; leaders must be vocal and strong because the opponents are vocal and strong. Most of the so-called “supporters” of single payer health care are silent on the issue, except for when they’re asking for votes.
Continue reading Single Payer Health Care – A Candidate’s Statement