By John Stark
This afternoon I expect to interview Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, before her appearance at Western Washington University.
Stein’s public address is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19 in Academic Instructional Center West, Room 219. It is sponsored by the campus group Socialist Alternative.
The campaign website has extensive information about Stein and the Green Party platform.
In 2008, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney got 210 votes in Whatcom County. Stein’s showing in November might be an interesting gauge of how many local environmental activists and liberals have become disenchanted with Barack Obama.
Here is the press release announcing Stein’s Bellingham appearance:
“Jill Stein will outline the Green New Deal for America, which would expand on the most successful aspects of the New Deal crafted by FDR that pulled our country out of the last great depression, in order to create sustainable green jobs and stronger communities in America instead of costly overseas military entanglements. She will also talk about why she thinks voting for either of the corporate-sponsored parties is a wasted vote and her proposals for reducing medical costs by her version of Health Care instead of Sick Care from the aspect of a trained physician who has worked extensively on public health issues.
Also speaking will be Green Party candidate Howard Pellet, running for Representative of the 40th district. Jill Stein’s and Howard Pellett’s opponents have been invited to this forum, but have either declined or not responded to invitations.”
(End press release)
Thank you for putting this announcement in the paper.
I support Jill Stein and will be there. I support the New Green Deal also.
Many Democrats have blinders on and believe that they have to vote for the lesser of two bad candidates. Many of the Democrats that we have to represent us are not better than Republicans. Obama is in my opinion the worst president in my lifetime. Besides being a failure he is a great disappointment. The Republicans are not better. We need to think outside the box. It may take time but we can have a president and congress that will put the peoples’ needs above greed that will say no to the war mongers and oil barons and restore our lost freedoms.
Im excited Jill Stein will be interview by you. Thanks
I’m supporting and voting for Jill Stein. I agree with the other poster. Dems are the same as Rep… bought out by big corporation and do nothing for the people of this country. Obama was a marketing campaign not a real president of change. Let’s bring someone new – I’m voting for Jill Stein (I’ve voted for two other 3rd parties for President before and NEVER regretted it).
Thank you for doing the unusual in the corporate-owned media world and giving a third party candidate some coverage.
I have heard Jill Stein speak in person once and via live streaming a few times. She has some great ideas for getting this country back on track – ideas that will be useful to either one of the traditional two parties.
“Larry King will moderate a debate among the third-party presidential candidates on Oct. 23, the Free and Equal Elections Foundation announced on Tuesday.
The debate, which will be held in Chicago, will feature Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode, and Rocky Anderson of the newly formed Justice Party. The event will be broadcast live on Ora TV, the digital programming service where King launched his online talk show, “Larry King Now,” earlier this year. The Free and Equal Elections Foundation and, for unclear reasons, Russia Today will also stream the debate online……
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-larry-king-third-party-debate-moderator-20121017,0,5390151.story
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Thank You!!! I was expecting you would cover Jill Stein, but picked up no hint of it during the week. Since many of us don’t get to the blog until our day away from home is done and the appearance is at 6pm, I suggest that you post such events the afternoon before in the future.
Jill’s vote count will indeed be a gauge of progressive disenchantment/distaste/disgust with Obama. The electoral votes in Washington seem safe for Obama, which spares us of the need to hold our noses and vote for him. The lesser of two Corporate-controlled evils is still a Corporate-controlled evil.
For those interested in hearing what other candidates would be saying in the debates, Democracy Now! has been running an expanded version of the debates. The last one included Stein, Anderson and Goode (Larry Johnson chose not to join them.) Host Amy Goodman pauses the debate, then these candidates are given the chance to respond. Not as good as having them all on the same stage to really scrap it out, but a better alternative to the Obama-Romney duopoly debate.
I wasted my vote on 3′rd party choices in the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s, knowing that the worst of the two main choices would probably win. I thought that if things got bad enough, people would wake up. They didn’t. They just got more stupid. I voted for Obama in 08, hoping he might become a modern day FDR. He didn’t. I’ll vote for Obama (moderate republican) this time, hoping to keep that knuckle-dragging plutocrat from having the chance to appoint more right-wing nut jobs to Supreme Court. If that happens this country may be beyond repair!
I agree with JasonM. The Ds and Rs are separate branches of the same oligarchy party.
Wouldn’t it be great if politics were like NASCAR? Each candidate’s suit could reflect the corporation’s who paid the most:
Goldman Sachs could have Romney’s left front panel of his suit jacket, and Bank of America could have the right front panel. JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley could split the back, while Credit Suisse and Citigroup each had an arm. Wells Fargo and Barclays could split the legs of his suit pants, and Bain Capital could have the seat (a$$).
Obama’s suit jacket would also be decorated by top contributors Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Chase, Citigroup (sound familiar?), while his suit pants would advertise for University of California, Harvard University, Microsoft and Google.
(For more top contributors, visit OpenSecrets dot org.
Hey Rik Dalvit, when you have a moment, perhaps you can draw this up…
Bill O:
When you say you will vote for Obama to keep Romney from winning the election, it makes me curious? Which swing state is it that you live in?
If Washington State were seriously in play, the game would be over for Obama anyway.
Now if Jill Stein had been permitted to participate in the Presidential debates, you would have something to fear indeed. She absolutely wowed the overflow crowd at Western tonight. What a dynamic, charming, intelligent and totally on-target candidate!
Jill Stein I am sure has some thought provoking ideas, but she needs to get her historical facts straight.
WWII ended the Great Depression, not a bunch WPA jobs. While some WPA jobs did produce infrastructure of value, one hardly hears a whisper of the long list of WPA failures. (it is hard to base ones programs on historical failure, but facts are facts)
Ms. Stein with all due respect thank you for running, but you really need to read “The Forgotten Man”.
Making up facts, is not a method that works for persuading many people, and followers who deny facts, are zealots. The vast majority of voters ate not zealots.
Turning off coal and nuclear power is easy to say, if you get most of your electricity from Hydro, because you will not be turning off your own power.
Maybe the fair way to turn off over half the electricity in the nation, is that we all truly share the pain, so if the coal plants are shut down, we would have to send some of our electricity to those people whose refrigerators no longer run. What about the food industry that needs power to feed us.
Turning off most of the nation’s electricity is not a mature suggestion, and it suggests that Jill does not understand our system.
Same goes for banks and retirement plans. She wants the workers in charge of their own retirement plans. I am okay with that, but I will guarantee that at the first worker meeting, they go looking for a return on their investment funds which in its most fundamental form, is what banks and Wall Street is all about.
If we deposit money in the bank or buy a stock through our retirement plans we also want interest on our money. We are capable of greed too.
Last, the firing of a lazy employee or teacher, will ensure that our educational institutions and corporations will become the laughing stock of the world.
Can you imagine an Olympic team that could not cut under-performing athletes.
Ms. Stein if she had her way would produce an American Olympic team that came in dead last, in every event.
Capitalism and democracy is not without faults, but Ms. Stein heavy handed government coordinated system of fairness was tried by the Soviet Union and others. At the end of the Soviet Empire, the government was managing 24,000,000 prices of goods and services to make sure they were “fair”.
No government could manage that many prices, and it collapsed. There are really only two basic economic systems. Government controlled pricing and free market pricing where in collective individual purchases control prices. Where ever government intervenes in prices, bad things happen.
For example, even though Russia had plenty of food, starvation and mal-nutrition was common, because politicians instead of individuals controlled prices, so false pricing signals were sent to farmers and food processors.
Ms. Stein should read the brilliant economics text written by Americas preeminent economist; Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. This book was written for to average person, and you cannot read it without gaining understanding of how economics work (and doesn’t work). This text should be required reading for every high school student, and Ms. Stein.
Most of Steins positions are not practical, uninformed, or sadly missing the facts she bases them on.
I do like her ideas on promoting Cooperatives and workers managing their own retirement plans. both of these ideas will turn granola crunching idealists into capitalists over night, as they will have toe learn that a return on invested money and balancing a checkbook, are not sins. All employers outside of the Federal government, have to do these things everyday, or they have to lay off workers if they do not.
All corporations have to compete, by picking their best performing employees and letting the under-performers go onto to jobs that suit them better, or they bankrupt, and all their employees are let go.
Grown ups understand these things.
Bob Burr, Yes, I live in Wash. The gov.race is within margin of error. I don’t trust the polls on Obama margin, especially since the Romney family controls a good percentage of the vote counting machines. Do you remember what happened in 2004 with the Diebold(sic) machines? Same thing could happen. I might feel OK if Obama lead in every state was at least 10 points. It’s not. Have you noticed how they are doing away with exit polls? They don’t want the ignorant masses to have a clue when they flip the vote counting machines. Don’t get me wrong. I have been disappointed in Obama, but the other guy is perhaps even more dangerous than “Mad Dog McCain”.
thanks to the herald for reporting on jill stein!
watch the documentary “casino jack” if you have any belief that our current system of government can work. it clearly demonstrates how we have lost our democracy via corruption, deregulation and $ in politics.
jill may not have all the answers but it is clear to me that the current 2-party system is severely broken; we have to start somewhere.
if romney gets in we are f*#k*d. he is clearly a liar w/ no ethics. if he believes in America why doesn’t he keep OUR jobs or HIS money here?
he uses vulture tactics and outsources jobs to China. google Bailout Bonanza to learn how he hugely profited from the auto bailout.
i expect the romney campaign will buy, cheat or steal this election so at least i can vote my heart and not play this losing game.
To bad Dr. Stein does not realize a party is built from the grass roots up. Her unsucessfull race for governor back in 2002 helped Romney get elected in Mass. check out her ecectoral herstory. .
Greens should try for a county council seat , mayor or city councils.
I’ve heard this argument a zillion times. I still reject it. It’s a fear-based emotional argument premised on the false narrative that there really is a _significant_ difference between the 2 parties. There isn’t. Either Obama or Romney is going to continue to dismantle our civil liberties and murder innocents overseas, serve Wall Street and the elite, and destroy social programs. Obama will make it seem nicer, but there isn’t enough of a difference for the fear card to work on me again. I don’t vote for Democrats just because they aren’t Republicans.
Let’s face it, we’re a country of morons. The fact that these 2 jerks are the best we can come up with is pretty sick. The fact that even one regular person wants to vote for Romney is like a surreal macabre joke, like being stick in a Twilight Zone episode forever. The fact that well-meaning people have to settle for the “lesser of 2 very evil evils” because of all the morons out there who are going to vote for one of these 2 clowns is pathetic. I’m not going to be a part of it. I’m voting for Jill Stein.
Obama will win.
In the slim chance Obama loses, well at least I’ll start to hear liberals/progressives complain when our civil liberties are being destroyed. The silence right now is deafening. Maybe some people will wake up.
The people have already lost this election. We have lost our ability to think for ourselves. We have lost our ability to think at all.
Well, the corporate overlords quit early on Fridays so I was able to sneak this one in
Obama has turned out to be Bu$h’s Third Term in too many ways, but the radical rightwing Romney/Ryan gang is a horrible alternative. It’s time to start building a strong, viable third party.
JILL STEIN 2012!!!
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