The Green Party Fails To Qualify For The Texas Ballot

In the state of Texas, a political party qualifies for a place on the statewide ballot if they got 5% of the vote in any statewide race in the previous election. In 2016, only three political parties accomplished that -- the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party. The libertarians squeaked by getting 5.3% of the vote in a race for Railroad Commissioner.

For the first time in several elections, the Green Party failed to get 5% in any statewide race. That meant they had to get 50,000 valid signatures on a petition to get on the ballot -- and those signatures had to be from people who did not vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries. They failed to do that, and that means they will not be on the Texas ballot in November.

The Green Party's candidate for governor, Jan Richards, has said she will be running as a write-in candidate -- and possibly some other Green Party candidates will do the same. But write-in candidates get notoriously few votes, and that means it is extremely unlikely they will qualify for the 2020 ballot. They will again have to go the petition route, and that might be very difficult in a year where most voters will be concerned with either re-electing or ousting Donald Trump (and will therefore be supporting one of the two major parties).

Will the Green Party ever get back on the Texas ballot? I think they will, but it will probably have to wait until Trump is gone and the political process returns to more normality.

The Green Party May Not Be On The 2018 Texas Ballot

To automatically qualify for a position on the ballot in a statewide Texas election, a political party must get 5% of the vote in at least one statewide race.

The Green Party of Texas failed to do that in 2016. Their leading statewide vote-getter was Martina Salinas, who ran for Railroad Commissioner. She got about 287,000 votes, or about 3.2% of the votes cast in that race. That means the party does not automatically qualify for the 2018 ballot.

In the past, the Green Party has qualified by running candidates in the few statewide races that no Democrat was in (thus getting some votes from progressive Democrats). But in 2016, Democrats ran a lot more statewide candidates, and the Greens were not able to take advantage of races without a Democrat.

That means the party must get 47,183 signatures on a petition to put them on the ballot by May 29th, and those signatures must be from people who did NOT vote in any other party's primary election.

That could be tough. The petition drive would cost at least $200,000, and the party has very little money. It could also be tough because both Democrats and Republicans had very large turnouts in the March primary (making those people ineligible to sign a petition).

The last time this happened was 2010, and the Greens were saved by an out-of-state Republican group who funded the petition drive with a $532,000 donation. It's possible that some rich Republican might do the same this year, thinking that in an election as close as some are predicting a Green Party candidate getting 2% to 3% of the vote could save a Republican seat in a competitive district.

Right now, it's a long shot that the Green Party will be on the Texas ballot in November -- but they still have a little over a month to make it happen.

The Green Party Is Not An Option - It's A Dysfunctional Joke

(This cartoon image was found at the website jjmccullough.com.)

A few of Bernie Sanders supporters are saying they will vote for the Green Party's presidential candidate this year. To me, that's a combination of sour grapes and a wasted vote. It may make them feel superior, but it'll just help Donald Trump (who is the opposite of everything Danders stands for) when the Democratic Party (and its candidate) is more progressive than it has been in decades.

The following article was written by Joshua Holland for The Nation. As someone who has voted for Green Party candidates in the past, I can't argue with a thing he has written. He writes:

If the last three presidential elections are any guide, 75 to 90 percent of those who say that they’re planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in November won’t follow through. Yes, there are some dedicated Green voters, but much of the party’s support is an expression of contempt for the Democrats that evaporates in the voting booth. I’m a registered independent and a supporter of the Working Families Party, and my disdain for the Greens springs from my own experience with the party. I agree with much of the Greens’ platform, but when I went to Green Party meetings, I found a wildly disorganized, mostly white group that was riven with infighting, strategically inept, and organized around a factually flawed analysis of American politics. There are effective Green parties in Europe, but ours is a hot mess. And while the Greens’ bold ideas are attractive, what’s the point of wasting one’s time and energy on such a dysfunctional enterprise? . . .

The Green Party’s primary pitch to voters on the left is that there still isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties. When Ralph Nader made that claim in 2000, there was a kernel of truth to it. Today, that claim requires a great deal of dishonesty to make. By every measure, Democrats and Republicans have moved toward their respective ideological poles since the 1990s. According to Pew Research, since 2011, the most conservative Democrat on Capitol Hill has still been more liberal than the most liberal Republican, based on their aggregate voting records. It’s also true of the Democratic base—according to Pew, the share of Democrats who hold “mostly or consistently liberal” views almost doubled between 1994 and 2014. And it’s true of the 2016 party platform, which Bernie Sanders, among others, hailed as the most progressive in the party’s history. Today’s low-information voter is as likely to be aware of the major-party candidates’ differences as a highly engaged voter was in the mid-1970s.

You might notice that Greens tend to steer the conversation away from the myriad issues—health care, education, abortion, gun control, climate change, and on and on—where the Democrats and Republicans are diametrically opposed, and toward foreign policy and national security, where there really is significant overlap between the major parties’ policies. I agree with the Greens on many of those issues. But they’re not sufficient to substantiate the claim that there’s no difference between the Democrats and Republicans at all.

And the Greens’ critique of the Democrats is often unmoored from reality. Stein goes beyond (rightly) criticizing the Obama administration’s strategy in the aftermath of the 2009 coup in Honduras by charging that then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave it “a thumbs-up.” (Not only did the US oppose the coup, American embassy personnel tried to talk Honduran military officials out of it.) During her 2012 campaign, Stein consistently claimed that the 2009 stimulus plan “was mostly tax breaks for the wealthy.” The truth is that tax breaks accounted for 38 percent of the plan, a majority of them targeted toward low- and middle-income households. That’s not criticism from the left; it’s a dishonest, scorched-earth campaign against the only party that can keep Republicans out of the White House. (And if you think that Stein wouldn’t have attacked Bernie Sanders with the same vigor if he were the nominee, then it’s a safe bet you’ve never attended a Green Party meeting. Remember that the Greens ran candidates against Ralph Nader in both 2004 and ’08.)

Two disastrous wars and a few Wall Street–precipitated recessions have helped push the Democratic Party leftward. Demographic changes in the electorate have made it less reliant on courting white swing voters. But the shift in the party was in large part a result of tireless work by the Democrats’ own base, passionate progressives who pushed the party to change.

Many Greens think that their vote isn’t wasted because it sends a powerful “message” to Washington. But why would anyone in power pay attention to the 0.36 percent of the popular vote that Jill Stein won in 2012, when 42 percent of eligible voters just stayed home? Political parties are merely vessels. The Green Party provides a forum to demonstrate ideological purity and contempt for “the system.” But the Democratic Party is a center of real power in this country. For all its flaws, and for all the work still to be done, it offers a viable means of advancing progressive goals. One can’t say the same of the perpetually dysfunctional and often self-marginalizing Greens.

Libertarian And Green Parties Are Not On All 50 State Ballots

There a sizable chunk of Republicans that don't like Donald Trump, and some Sanders supporters that don't want to support Hillary Clinton. Some of these people, who voted in the Republican or Democratic primaries, are now saying they might vote for a third party candidate -- either Jill Stein of the Green Party, or Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.

But they might be disappointed when they see their ballot. That's because those two parties, while the largest of the third parties, are not on the ballot in all 50 states. They are still trying to get on all state ballots, but it is unlikely they'll be able to do so (and neither party was on all 50 state ballots back in 2012 either).

Currently Jill Stein of the Green Party is on the ballot in only 35 states plus the District of Columbia (representing about 425 electoral votes). Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party is doing a little better, being on the ballot in 43 states plus the District of Columbia. That means voters in 15 states would not be able to vote for Stein, while voters in 7 states would not be able to vote for Johnson.

There's only about 10 weeks left until the election, and states are starting to close ballot access and finalize those ballots. I doubt that either the Greens or the Libertarians will be able to improve their current positions very much.

6 Reasons To Not Vote For Stein (From a Bernie Supporter)

(This cartoon image is by Clay Jones at claytoonz.com.)

When it became evident that Bernie Sanders could not win the Democratic nomination there were a lot of very disappointed Bernie supporters. Most of them have followed the lead of their candidate and switched their support to Hillary Clinton -- if for no other reason, to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. But there are still a few hold-outs, and Jill Stein (the Green Party candidate) is doing her best to corral those unhappy voters.

However, the polls don't show Stein doing very well. She is having trouble hanging on to 4% of the vote. Samuel Warde, a Bernie supporter, tells us at Liberals Unite why he cannot support the Jill Stein / Ajamu Baraka ticket. He writes:

As a Bernie Sanders supporter, I cannot vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Here’s why.

To be honest, I never really cared for Stein, but that lack of regard turned into concern when she came out in July and proclaimed that she didn’t mind helping Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

Here are the reasons why i cannot and will not vote for Jill Stein for president.

1. As noted above, Stein does not mind handing the election to Trump despite the kind of damage he could cause to the country if elected. Bernie Sanders formally endorsed Hillary Clinton back in July, telling the world: “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.” Stein’s message: “I will have trouble sleeping at night if Donald Trump is elected. I will also have trouble sleeping at night if Hillary Clinton is elected. And as despicable as Donald Trump’s words are, I find Hillary Clinton’s actions and track record is very troubling”

2. Sanders offered an optimistic vision for the country with his “America” campaign ad and a slogan promising “A Future to Believe in.” On the other hand, Stein’s message this week was: “We don’t really have a future right now to offer our younger generation.”

3. As NBC News reported: “Where Sanders tempered his disappointment with President Obama to avoid needlessly alienating people who feel warmly about the country’s first black president, Baraka defended calling Obama ‘your uncle tom president’ in a blog post. Baraka said he used the slur that describes a black person too eager to please whites in order ‘to shock people’ into thinking more critically about Obama. ‘I stand by that, even though it sounds very inflammatory, and provocative, and probably very strange to this massive audience here tonight,’ he told CNN host Chris Cuomo.

4. Sanders vowed to fight ISIS on his own terms, acknowledging voters’ concerns regarding terrorism, detailing a plan to rally our Mideast allies to destroy the militant group. Stein dismissed the issues stating”ISIS is not about to launch a major attack against our country.”

5. Sanders defended Clinton’s use of a private email server during the first Democratic primary debate, exclaiming: “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” He went on to state: “enough of the emails. Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.” Stein’s response to the controversy was “with Hillary’s abuse of the rules, she was sort of too big to jail.”

6. As NBC News reports: “Most perplexing, Stein and Baraka said little about economic inequality and campaign finance, the two pillars of Sanders’ message. In a 90-minute town hall, she also did not make more than passing references to financial reform, labor rights, LGBT rights, abortion rights, health care, or immigration reform.”

Twelve Reasons To NOT Vote For Jill Stein In November

Since Bernie Sanders lost his bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee, a few of his supporters are now claiming they will vote for the Green Party's Jill Stein instead of the Democratic nominee.

Daily Kos contributor, ocoandasoc, gives us twelve reasons why it would be a bad idea to vote for Stein -- and I agree with him. Here are those reasons:

1) Jill Stein is a fraud. Check out her list of campaign contributors per the FEC. The top five donations  are from corporate interests -- AON, Xoom Global Money Transfer, IBM, Thoughtworks, and UPS. Would Bernie take money from any of these?  http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/35775/jill-stein

2) Check out Stein’s hand picked choice for VP, Ajamu Baraka. He's a radical agitator who has publicly referred to Bernie Sanders as a "white supremacist" and labelled Sanders supporters as naive shills.  americablog.com/…    http://fusion.net/story/332652/jill-stein-ajamu-baraka   http://www.jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/green-vp-baraka-slams-bernie-and-sandernistas/

3. Stein is an opportunist looking to cash in with disgruntled Sanders supporters. She is building a war chest for her 2018 run against Elizabeth Warren's in her home state of MA. Her running might siphon enough votes from Warren to give the Senate seat to the Repubs.

4. Stein has virtually NO political experience. She is an ex-musician and medical professional. She has won just one election in her life -- a town meeting seat where 7 of a larger group of candidates were elected -- in which she got a whopping 539 votes. In her 2012 Presidential bid she received one-third of one percent of the votes. That means that only one out of every 300 voters chose her. Hell, Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian would have got more votes than that if their names had been on the ballot. Ralph Nader got more than six times that many votes the last time he ran. She is the classic definition of a “spoiler.”

5. Check out her foreign policy positions -- she's more like Trump than Sanders. Pro-Russian. Anti-Israel. Overly simplistic. And she changes her positions from months to month — check out how she was for Brexit before she was against it, etc. She hasn’t got a clue.  countervortex.org/...

6. Check out her domestic views -- she calls President Obama a "tool of the capitalists" and a war criminal and says that passage of the Affordable Care Act was a huge mistake.

7. She has some questionable beliefs about vaccinations and wi-fi that make her look as anti-science as those who deny evolution or global warming.

8. Jill Stein runs for office. It's what she does. She runs for something every two years (except for 2014 when she started ramping up for this run). No fuss. No muss. The money rolls in. It's a lot easier than having a real job.

9. Stein is not qualified to serve, nor does she want to. If she won the election her first act would be to demand a recount.

10. Since 2011, Jill has refused to release her tax returns. Apparently she's making good money running for President and has some perks and investments that might not jibe with the act she puts on.

11. If you think Bernie knows what he is doing, why wouldn't you do what he is telling you -- heck, begging you -- to do now? www.latimes.com/…   Any so-called Sanders supporters who vote for Stein aren't really Sanders supporters or supporters of the revolution at all, and never were. They are just Hillary-haters and were merely tagging along with Bernie because the thought that he might beat her delighted them.

12. If Trump wins and gets to pick two or three Supreme Court judges it will set progressive causes back a couple of decades. How could any real progressive consider acting in a way that might help make that more likely? There’s no false narrative here, so don’t be confused by the “vote your conscience” folks. (Though I don’t see how anyone WITH a conscience could vote for a fraud like Stein!) Any rationalization of a Green Party vote this year is bogus. If you don’t vote for Clinton you’re helping Donald Trump and undermining the progressive movement. Period.

Texas Green Party Announces Convention Dates

For you progressives who just don't feel comfortable in the Democratic Party, the Green Party is always an alternative -- and they have just announced their convention dates for those who wish to participate. Here's the announcement:

As we begin the 2016 election cycle, GPTX candidates are now filed and we look ahead to the convention nominating process. Texas Election Code sets the date of our precinct conventions on March 8^th, county conventions as March 12^th, district as March 19^th , and state as April 9^th. As core GPTX volunteers, it is our role to help our membership and Green voters become familiar with our candidates so they can optimally participate in the convention process. Most of our races are uncontested, but the party still has an important duty to approve each candidate as a GPTX representative by conferring its nomination. Five candidates recognized by GPUS contest the presidential nomination.

Ideally, we would hope to see each GPTX region meet or host a forum with their applicable candidates before the precinct conventions, even if this needs to be accomplished via video chat. GPTX SEC must ask co-chairs & key volunteers for your assistance in arranging the particulars that are right for your area. A complete list of candidates is provided here.

County parties should plan now where to hold their precinct & county conventions. GPTX will provide ballots & convention procedures to support you in this effort, but local volunteers will be needed to operate each convention, where delegates are nominated to subsequent conventions. District conventions will be held via teleconference. We are also continuing to plan for the state convention & meeting in San Antonio on April 9^th & 10^th.  Please inform the state co-chairs of precinct & county convention locations as soon as they are determined so that they may be posted on txgreens.org.

If your county party has not fully developed, now is an excellent time for volunteer organizers to call supporters together for the conventions & to give voters in your area an opportunity to vote Green.

Several positions on GPTX State Executive Committee are open and coming up for election at April’s state meeting in San Antonio. At-Large, Secretary, Treasurer, and Co-Chair slots will all be determined by the delegates to the state meeting on April 10^th, after we have concluded the candidate nomination activities of the convention on April 9^th. Nominations for officer elections should be sent to the state co-chairs for listing in meeting agenda materials. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor.

Sincerely,
Laura Palmer
co-chair GPTX SEC

We Already Have A Third (And Fourth) Political Party

Every so often, the Gallup Poll does a survey in which they ask the public whether a third political party is needed. They have just released the latest poll on this matter. And just like in the preceding two years, a significant majority (about 60%) say a third party is needed in this country.

It would be an understatement to say this result frustrates me. Why? Because we already have four political parties that are on enough state ballots to theoretically have a chance to elect a president (acquire 270 electoral votes). And those four parties span the political spectrum -- Green Party (left), Democratic Party (center-left), Republican Party (right), and Libertarian Party (far-right).

Maybe those responding to this survey have been living in a cave somewhere. I have to ask -- what more could you want? If you really believe more than Republicans or Democrats should get votes, then vote for the Green Party (if your preference is for a leftist) or the Libertarian Party (if your preference is for someone on the far right). Those parties are on your ballot, and if you truly believe a "third party" is needed, then all you have to do is vote for one of them.

I understand why this belief persists. It is because the media, beholden to the two biggest parties, refuse to cover the Greens and Libertarians. The Democrats are afraid they will lose votes if the Greens become popular, and the Republicans are afraid they will lose votes if the Libertarians become popular -- and they are both probably right.

But that is not a sufficient reason for the media to refuse to cover the Greens and Libertarians. In doing so, they are failing the American people -- and failing to fulfill their obligation, which is to fairly cover the political process. We don't need the media to be the "gatekeeper" of electoral politics. We need them to fairly report on ALL of the choices available to American voters.

And while I'm on this subject, the presidential debates should include the candidates of all political parties that theoretically have a chance to get 270 electoral votes. That means it should include candidates of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party. Anything less is simply not fair to the American people.

Do Americans Really Want A Third Major Political Party ?

This chart reflects the results of a new Rasmussen Poll -- done between June 4th and 7th of a random national sample of 952 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Note that the survey says 38% (nearly 4 out of 10) of Americans think the country needs a new political party. The problem is they didn't ask that 38% what kind of new party would it be -- a party of the right or a party of the left? I suspect the answers would be all over the political spectrum, which means that 38% would be unable to agree on supporting a new party.

If they all could agree on what the new party should be, it would be competitive -- because that party would be slightly larger than the current Democratic and Republican parties. But it's easy to say a new party is needed, and quite another to follow through on those words.

The fact is that there are already other political parties. The Green Party is to the left of the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party is to the right of the Republican Party -- and then you have ultra-right parties like the American Constitution Party. But most of that 38% won't vote for these "third" parties. The Greens and Libertarians get about 15% of the vote combined -- barely enough to keep them on the ballot from election to election, and other "third" parties do far worse (having to earn their way onto the ballot with each new election).

In other words, there are "third" party options available that span the political landscape -- and if that 38% was serious, they would vote for them. But they don't, and that makes me think they are just trying to show their disgust with Democrats and Republicans. They don't really want a third major political party.

Green Party Says TPP Is Another Dirty Government Secret

A little truth about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Jim Goodman:

“The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is not a secret”, according to President Obama. “Any member of Congress can look at it”. True, but no notes, no pictures, no copies, no discussion. So, of course TPP is not a secret, most everyone with access to any form of media has heard of it, but what's in the text of TPP, that's the secret.

And recently, TPP is getting lots of press. The Administration touts it as really the greatest thing since sliced bread. Labor unions, environmentalists and left leaning economists describe it as more of the same, or worse, than previous free trade agreements.

I fully agree with the opponents, it may benefit corporations and the wealthy, but most people are not wealthy, most people work hard to make ends meet and free trade deals, it seems, have always made our lives worse. The Administration can dispute it, but the details, the dirty inner-workings, are secret.

Stan Sorscher notes that if someone like, say Senator Elizabeth Warren, were to tell her constituents about the provisions of TPP, she would be in violation of national security secrecy laws and could be accused of treason.

Interesting how sharing corporate trade policy could be deemed treasonous but David Petraeus can share classified information about the military with no charge of treason. Clearly, corporate profit is the top priority of national security.

The TPP is a “trade agreement” between 12 Asia Pacific region nations and its counterpart TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) between the US and the European Union, are billed as “free trade” agreements, but they have little to do with trade.

At this point it seems we have no shortage of goods imported from the TTP and TTIP countries, electronics from Korea, Nike shoes from Vietnam, there seems to be plenty of trade going on.

We seem to be trading pretty regularly with the EU as well, plenty of US grain goes to European terminals, there are plenty of BMW's and Volvo's on US highways, I see plenty of French, Italian and Spanish wine in the stores.

The US exports plenty of transportation equipment, chemicals and machinery to TPP countries in Asia and we have also exported plenty of our manufacturing jobs to Vietnam and other countries.

From a practical point of view it would make more sense if we made our own shoes and computers. We should grow less grain for European (and American) livestock and more food for ourselves. We could actually pay workers here a fair wage and US workers could afford to buy US goods and perhaps own a home and send their kids to college.

Trade is good, but but “free trade” doesn't work for farmers or workers or most everyone else. Free trade does, however, work spectacularly well for corporations who have over 600 advisers to the TPP negotiations--- we have no access to the negotiations, corporations have plenty.

In farm country we are told these trade deals will allow us to export more goods and in so doing, increase our profits. I have farmed for a good many years and I have, over the course of that time, known many farmers, most of them who farm on a much larger scale than I do. I have yet to meet a farmer who directly exports abroad, or even one who has the volume of product or operational infrastructure to do so.

Farmers products ultimately end up in the hands of some corporate entity, a Multi-national Corporation who does the exporting/importing and generally takes most of the profit. Granted there are probably some farmers who do their own exporting and do well financially, as there could be some blue-collar workers who have a summer home in the Hamptons.

TPP has 29 chapters, only 5 of which deal with trade issues, so what do the other chapters deal with and why the secrecy? Former Obama trade advisor Ron Kirk opposed making the text of TPP public because doing so would raise such public opposition that getting it signed would be impossible--- so much for living in a democracy.

Remember the “toxic assets” the risky derivatives produced by Wall Street bankers that nearly sank the world economy in 2008? And remember that regulations (albeit weak at best) were put in place to prevent Wall Street from playing fast and loose with financial markets in the future? Well, TPP would make it almost impossible to ban those activities, after all, former Wall St. bankerMichael Froman is President Obama’s principal advisor, negotiator and spokesperson on international trade and investment issues.

Remember the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) described by Ross Perot as “the giant sucking sound” of US jobs being outsourced to Mexico? Well, TTP will do nothing to reduce the incentives for corporations to outsource even more jobs.

Most Americans support country of origin food labels (COOL), but that right was taken away by a recent ruling of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and pending trade deals will not restore it.

Then there is the 800 pound gorilla of TPP and TTIP, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision.

Under ISDS the right of an investor to make a profit could not be restricted. If countries involved in the trade deal were to enact environmental protection laws, food labeling laws, laws guaranteeing access to lower cost generic drugs, they can be sued by corporations who feel these laws have restricted their potential profits.

In effect, a US corporation could, through a foreign subsidiary, sue the US government, but it would not have to do so in domestic courts. The merit of the lawsuit would be judged by a panel of arbitrators, lawyers, who could be representatives of the plaintiff! Again, so much for democracy.

As a farmer, who, as President Obama says, will be one of the prime beneficiaries of these new free trade deals, I say, no I will not benefit, nor will anyone else save those corporate entities who have already benefited too much from the income disparity, the environmental destruction and the idea that economic growth is all that matters.

Green Party On How Progressives Can Organize For Victory

The following post was written by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Jack Rasmus. He discusses how progressives can organize.

Fast food workers fighting for a living wage. The new civil rights movement fighting police brutality and for “black lives matter.” Immigrant workers and their families fighting for citizens rights they have earned but are continually denied. Teachers fighting against union busting charter schools and defending their pensions and the right to bargain from constant right wing attacks. Public workers resisting Koch brothers funded ‘open shop’ initiatives in a dozen States, designed to destroy their unions and collective bargaining rights. Minorities and allies defending against conservative legislators in North Carolina and elsewhere attempting to deny them their right to vote. Environmentalists confronting the escalating poisoning of US water and air from shale fracking. Seniors and retirees opposing efforts to deny social security disability benefits and legislation in Congress to raise Medicare doctor costs. Independent truck drivers fighting federal laws that prohibit them from unionizing.

Contingent, part time faculty everywhere in colleges across the USA organizing to secure a decent wage that finally pays above poverty levels and provides a semblance of job security beyond semester to semester employment. Union workers in manufacturing, locked in a desperate last ditch effort to prevent a new Asia-U.S. free trade agreement that will mean millions more lost jobs. Citizens from all groups and classes working to pass a constitutional amendment to reverse the US Supreme Court’s blank check to billionaires to buy politics. The list goes on, and on… and on. Resistance is everywhere in the U.S. at the grassroots. But the gains are few. It’s like 1932—i.e. after the crash but before the storm. So why so little to show for so much effort?

In 2008 many placed their hope in the faux-progressive presidential candidate named Obama. He certainly talked the talked. His advisers ran one of the slickest PR campaigns in modern US history. After eight years of ‘fist in your face’ corporate rule under George W. Bush, many were desperately ready to believe whatever Obama and his ad-men advisors told them. They listened. They believed. But they did not understand that in the US politicians have made an art form out of telling people whatever they want to hear in election campaigns, and then go and do what their corporate campaign paymasters tell them they must do.

If anyone had bothered to investigate Obama’s financial and business connections before 2008, they would have discovered the big Chicago corporate benefactors who handpicked him out of a south Chicago political ‘no man’s land’ and pushed him to the top on an accelerated fast track. They would have discovered his hedge fund roommates and buddies from his Harvard years. And his close connections to Wall St. interests. But they didn’t. They believed because they wanted to believe that Obama and the Democrats were different and would save them from the Bushes, Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the bankers, and the rest of the US political elite. They believed because there was no alternative—i.e. because there was no other organization on the US political horizon they could turn to that raised the potential of something different, something real, something outside the two wings of the single corporate party of US America.

Fast forward to 2015 today. Rewind the old 2008 tape and the show is about to begin again. Like a bad TV comedy rerun, only the names of the players have changed. Substitute gender for race, and we have Hillary Clinton instead of African-American Barack Obama. If we only pick the right race—scratch that—the right gender, that will surely ensure a progressive candidate and solution. Identity politics is the name of the game in US politics. And single issue politics the bane of the American liberal left.

Déjà vu All Over Again

So now the cycle has begun again. As the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra, once said: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Among union leaders, leaders of various ethnic organizations, church leaders, liberal academics, and all the rest that consider themselves “progressives,” one today hears the same refrain: Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, is our preferred candidate. If Hillary implodes before November 2016 national elections, we have Elizabeth Warren in the wings. Hillary may be the only one who can win against a Republican. But Elizabeth will keep Hillary honest and ensure she, Hillary, adopts appropriate progressive positions during the 18 month campaign that lies ahead. Push the Democratic Party to the left and Hillary will have to follow.

And this year we are especially fortunate, progressives add. Now we have an even more progressive candidate, left of Warren, waiting to step up as well—the Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, who also announced his candidacy for president in recent weeks. If Warren pushes the party left, then Sanders, just outside the party (actually always with one foot in it) can pull her still further left. And who knows, if Hillary falters, Sanders might actually push Warren to finally enter the race, providing her ‘left cover’ for her candidacy, as they say.

And Bernie’s not Ralph Nader, progressives happily further declare. He won’t disrupt either Hillary or Warren from winning, since he’s already publicly made it clear, in announcing his candidacy to run for president on the Democrat party ticket, that he’ll vote for whoever becomes the Democrat party candidate in 2016. Sanders may be an “independent,” but he’s running for the Democrat party nomination and he’ll support the Democrat candidate if he doesn’t win it. As Sanders himself put it in a recent CBS News interview, “If you want to mobilize people it is hard to do it outside the two-party systems.” As if popular mobilization could only occur within the two wings of the single (not two) party system that is U.S. politics.

So it’s “back to the future” once again. But nothing has changed organizationally from 2008, whether it’s Hillary, or Warren, or even Sanders. Progressives and leftists can maneuver on the ever-shrinking left margins of the Democrat party all they want, to little avail. In fact, corporate interests who today really run the Democrat party like and encourage that. Keeps potential discontented rank and filers oriented to the party during the campaign period, to be called upon to vote again for the ‘lesser evil’, to hold their noses and vote Democrat again, in order to prevent an even worse alternative. Like the Koch brothers “bought boy,” governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Or that remaining “royal,” the preferred choice of the big corporate blue bloods, Jeb Bush. Or that Tea party “enfant terrible,” Rand Paul.

Whoever rides in on the white horse — Hillary, Warren or even Sanders (or perhaps Biden, O’Malley of Maryland, or someone else) — it’s still the horse that chooses the direction it wants to take the rider. And that horse is the Democratic Party’s corporate leadership.

In the late 1980s, led by the corporate faction within it at the time, then called the ‘Democratic Leadership Conference’ (DLC), the influence and role of anything resembling progressive forces within the Democratic party began a long decline. Bill Clinton was the first DLC candidate. Once in office, he delivered on free trade, tax cuts for investors, purged welfare programs, gave a green light to the health insurance lobby to merge and acquire competitors at will, accelerated the destruction of defined benefit pension plans, let big banks like Citigroup run the U.S. Treasury Dept., opened up China imports to the U.S., embarked on military adventures in Europe and Somalia, deregulated financial institutions and commodity trading, and even suggested the partial privatization of social security trust fund investing. When George W. Bush replaced Clinton, he merely drove a bigger hole through the various openings that Clinton provided. The Democratic Party transformed during the Bill Clinton years, to an even more strongly dominated corporate-financed and corporate run party by 1990s end. There was no need for the DLC by the end of the decade; the DLC had become the Party leadership elite.

Formerly a coalition of interests — union, urban activists, ethnic and minorities, unions, progressive intellectuals, and business interests — the Democrat party today is not the Democrat party of one’s fathers. It is not the party of Franklin Roosevelt. It is an entirely different political animal. And those within it, or support it, who think it can be reformed and again become a party of FDR are seriously deluding themselves. Nevertheless, progressives still talk in terms of push this or pull that candidate. (Push too hard, and they get “Kuciniched,” as in the case of party progressive maverick, Dennis Kucinich, who pushed too far left. He then had his U.S. House of Representatives district conveniently restructured out from under him by a committee of Republican and Democrat party leaders, leaving him with no seat in Congress).

“Inside” vs. “Outside” Strategies

Despite the Democratic Party having been transformed in all but name over the course of the last quarter century, the old debates are again being resurrected among trade unionists, liberal intellectuals, and progressives in the U.S. — i.e. debates about whether the best strategy in 2016 is an “inside” or an “outside” strategy in relation to the Democratic Party.

What is meant by “inside-outside” strategy is whether it is best to work “inside” the Democratic party or ‘outside’ it to bring about changes in programs and policies that the party nominee for president will carry into the next presidential election campaign and, by assumption, translate into action after winning the election.

“Inside” means working within the party to convince the Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, to run for the Democrat party presidential nomination and to support her should she do so; “Inside” also means, at minimum, to assist Warren to raise issues in caucuses and local levels to force Hillary Clinton to adopt more progressive positions during the upcoming campaign.

“Outside” strategy means trying to achieve more or less the same by supporting the Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Sanders would raise real issues in the Democratic party debates before and during the primaries, to move the party itself left. That would, according to political logic, force Hillary Clinton to propose ideas during the debates and primaries period that she could not later back away from during the general election after the primaries. Within the party itself, albeit on its left wing, Warren could not be as aggressive with new ideas or as critical of Hillary, as could Sanders located outside the party.

But all this has been tried before, and failed to result in any change. “Inside” strategies have been employed by Democrats, from Jesse Jackson in the 1980s to Dennis Kucinich and now Elizabeth Warren. “Outside” strategies have been undertaken by the most recent experience with a Labor Party, from the 1990s through mid-2000s; the so-called Working Families Party’ launched by the AFL-CIO; and now the Sanders’ candidacy.

What Will It Take?

The past 35 years in U.S. politics shows conclusively that neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’ strategies targeting the Democratic Party have any effect on the leadership elite of that party, a strongly pro-corporate interests elite, or have any effect on the policy directions that leadership elite wants to take. So are Warren and Sanders wasting their time?

No. They introduce ideas into the public discussion. But that’s basically all. Their discussion of ideas won’t lead to any fundamental change. And change is what is needed. Workers, students, immigrants, minorities, union members, don’t need to be informed about income inequality, or anything else. They know. What’s needed is organization. And by organization is meant a new, grassroots, bottoms-up movement that is united in new ways organizationally as well as in terms of strategy and objectives. A movement that is unified across single issues and is oriented toward a struggle for institutional power, and not just improving the rights of this or that identity group.

Does that mean a Labor Party? Not if the strategy for creating such a party depends on getting the endorsement or support of top level union presidents in the AFL-CIO or Change to Win labor federations. They will never break from the Democratic Party. As the organized union movement grows weaker, it will depend even more on the Democratic Party. Union leaders pulled the plug after 2000 on the 1990s initiative and movement to form a labor party, fearful of a repeat of the Nader-Green party experience of 2000 where the Greens and Nader were blamed for George W. Bush’s victory in Florida and thus the presidency. But it was Democrat candidate, Al Gore, who refused to have the ballots in Florida properly re-counted, not the Greens. And it was the U.S. Supreme Court that gave Bush the election, based on the weakest of legal arguments — not the Greens or Nader.

The tragic collapse of the U.S. labor movement since 1980 can be traced in large part to its growing adherence and dependency on the Democratic Party. Even as union membership has fallen in the private sector to less than 6.7 percent of the workforce today, and as public sector workers are under increasing attack, national union leaders will never break from the Democrats and support a new independent party. In fact, they will exert all necessary pressure on local unions to prevent them from doing so as well.

What about the Occupy movement of 2011? Will it resurrect and move toward some form of party organization? The answer is not likely on either account. Occupy was a movement that mistook a tactic (occupy government or public spaces) for a strategy. And because tactics flow from strategy and there was no strategy, it was unable to adjust tactics quickly when attacked by a nationally organized and coordinated police offensive. And organization was of even less concern to the movement than was strategy.

How about left intellectuals? Can they call a conference for the purpose of forming an independent progressive party in the U.S.? Actually they have. Repeatedly. But like all such efforts in the past, no ‘top down’ party creation called by intellectuals has ever taken root and grew. They fundamentally lack any base on which to build a movement and organization.

That leads to the only possible solution. An alternative, progressive, independent party is desperately needed in the U.S. But progressive politics cannot continue down the dead end path of single issue politics. Party must come ‘from below’, from real social movements, led by real leaders of those social movements—i.e. leaders of immigrant rights groups, of local trade unions unafraid of national union opposition or pressure, of leaders of the new civil rights movements now in formation, of leaders of movements to protect and defend democratic rights, of leaders of environmental movements with a broader vision of strategic alliances, leaders of movements to fight for a living wage, and so on. These are the only real forces upon which independent political action can be built.

The first step toward forming such a unified movement is for leaders and representatives of grassroots movements to realize they cannot succeed long term pursuing their single issues on their own any longer. They must come together to create unified regional and national movements. Appropriate, pre-party forms of organization will be required, as may some kind of fundamental founding principles and a shared, basic strategic view. Creating a movement of movements is the first requisite, in other words. Perhaps a founding convention might be called as a preliminary first step, attended by a critical mass of grassroots leaders and activists by invitation—i.e. a founding convention followed by further subsequent follow up regional conventions. A united movement first, composed of real grassroots movements, leaders, and activists. Perhaps a party later, only after a unified front of movements is first firmly established.

Can such an approach work? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But its chances of success would be no less likely than trying to reform the Democratic Party by means of either an ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ strategy. Or by running around the country talking about things the majority of the American people already know by now, in this the 7th year of the fake recovery from the crisis of 2008.

Green Party Says There Are No Good Wars

The following was posted on May 11th by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member David Swanson:

This week I read an article by someone I have a lot of respect for and who I know to mean well, and who wrote about being a part of something called "the Less War Movement."

Now, in my analysis, war murders, it injures, it traumatizes, and it harms huge numbers of people, fuels hostility, makes the aggressor less safe, drains away wealth for both victim and aggressor, wastes resources that could have saved many more lives than war kills, devastates the natural environment, erodes civil liberties, turns police officers into occupying armies, destroys the rule of law, and corrupts morality beyond recognition. So I consider myself part of something I call the No More War Movement.

If I wanted only less war but still some war, that would mean that I believed some wars were good. But, then, wouldn't I want to make sure to keep the good wars and get rid of the bad ones? I mean, if I just demanded less war, and the wars were reduced or eliminated at random, we might get stuck with all the bad ones and none of the good ones. Wouldn't it make more sense to start an Only The Good Wars Movement?

But then you'd have to find some good ones, a crusade that carries most of its participants back 70 years in search of their most recent example -- an example that transforms into a nightmare monster once examined. An Only the Good Wars Movement ends up making as much sense as an Only the Good Rapes Movement or an Only the Good Child Abuse Movement. There are no good wars.

I suspect the reasoning behind proposing a so-called Less War Movement is actually that all wars are bad but it's more strategic to pretend otherwise. Of course if this were so and it could get us fewer wars, who would complain? But, in reality, once you've proposed that some wars are good, you're trapped inside the logic of the war machine. If even a single potential war is going to be good, why not make 110% sure -- indeed, why not make 1,000% sure -- of winning it? And that means weapons, and troops, and mercenaries, and flying killer robots, and personnel in 175 countries, and surveillance of the planet, and emergency authoritarian secrecy and power that generates more wars -- all of which, incidentally, are lost, not won.

On this Mother's Day weekend, recall Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 which said, "From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession."

There's logic. There's passion. There's something to build a movement around. You can't build a movement around less war. You can't create a coherent agenda around "Hey Hey LBJ Please kill somewhat less kids today." Nobody's moved by "No justice, no peace. U.S. partially out of the Middle East."

It isn't the bad wars, whichever ones they may be, that do the major damage. It's the routine preparation in case of a future good war. The routine so-called non-war military spending is 10 times the war spending. It kills more by how it's not spent than by how it's spent. It's not spent on food, water, medicine, agriculture, and clean energy.

Baltimore City Schools spends $5,336 per student, while Maryland spends $38,383 per prisoner, and every man, woman, and child in Maryland and in the rest of the United States on average each, EACH spends $4,063 per year on the U.S. military — except those who refuse to pay. That the prisons and military do harm, rather than good, compounds the damage.

The routine weapons business, buying by the U.S. government, and marketing to dictatorships abroad is what ends up providing local police with the equipment, training, conditioning, and attitude of war. You can't sell all the weapons to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, with the latter blowing up the former's. You have to unload some of them on police ($12 million worth to Maryland), who then figure out what to do with them when you explain that protesters are low-level terrorists, and terrorists are by definition protesters. Many of the police who rioted in Baltimore were trained in Israel, and as Medea just noted in U.S. wars.

This weekend in 1944, in El Salvador, a nonviolent movement overthrew a dictator. The victory did not last, but on average such nonviolent victories last far longer than violent ones, and nonviolent action is more likely to result in a victory to begin with. Notice that I said nonviolent ACTION, not nonviolent inaction, which we have way more than enough of.

Nonviolent action is the answer to the question "What do you replace war with?" You replace it with tools that work better: economic, legal, and political structures that facilitate peace and disarmament, actions of resistance and constructive replacement that disrupt business as usual.

You know, I have to confess that I feel bad for the Baltimore Police. The Pentagon would have immediately announced that it broke its victim's spine for women's rights and the spread of democracy. The Baltimore Police had to get the Washington Post to claim that Freddie Gray broke his own spine. It's hard to have to claim something you yourself cannot believe. Like a drone pilot driving home for dinner, the Baltimore Police have been thrust from participation in a war on poor black people into trying to defend murder in a civilian world. In war you don't have to defend murder.

What yanked those killers out of a war and into a society under the rule of law? People in Baltimore standing up and acting.

Young people in Baltimore are as trapped in poverty as almost anywhere on earth. Yet we're told to look for the causes of anger in skin color or culture. In a parallel manner we're told that Western Asia, the so-called Middle East, is violent because of a religion. Yet it is as heavily armed as anywhere on earth, and armed principally by the United States weapons industry.

We're told to debate which type of violence to add to the mix, when the answer right in front of us is Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Stop arming people and beating people and denouncing them as violent.

When we push for disarmament with the logic of reality, that armaments bring wars, and wars bring enemies, and enemies bring the propaganda that brings more armaments, we break a vicious cycle. And perhaps we begin to get somewhere. Of course we won't achieve an instant result of zero armaments. The government will at best give us less armaments. But that is no reason to pre-compromise. Our job is to speak truth to power, not because it makes us feel better, but because it is believable.

Don't put your time, energy, or money into a less war movement, much less a less war candidate for president and for kill list decider in chief. Put it into disarmament, disarmament of Israel, disarmament of Egypt, disarmament of Saudi Arabia, of Bahrain, of Washington D.C., of police departments across this country, of secret agencies, of immigration patrols, disarmament of our households, disarmament of our minds.

We have more powerful tools. We just need to stand up and use them.

Green Party - Reject The Racist Framework Of Oppression

Here is another thought-provoking missive from the Green Party. It was written by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Ajamu Baraka:

Anti-Black racism, always just beneath the surface of polite racial discourse in the U.S., has exploded in reaction to the resistance of black youth to another brutal murder by the agents of this racist, settler-colonialist state. With the resistance, the focus shifted from the brutal murder of Freddie Gray and the systematic state violence that historically has been deployed to control and contain the black population in the colonized urban zones of North America, to the forms of resistance by African Americans to the trauma of ongoing state violence.

The narrative being advanced by corporate media spokespeople gives the impression that the resistance has no rational basis. The impression being established is that this is just another manifestation of the irrationality of non-European people—in particular, Black people—and how they are prone to violence. This is the classic colonial projection employed by all white supremacist settler states, from the U.S., to South Africa and Israel.

The accompanying narrative is that any kind of resistance that does not fit the narrow definition of “non-violent” resistance is illegitimate violence and, therefore, counter-productive because—“violence doesn’t accomplish anything.”  Not only does this position falsely equates resistance to oppression as being morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor, it also attempts to erase the role of violence as being fundamental to the U.S. colonial project.

The history of colonial conquest saw the U.S. settler state shoot and murdered its way across the land mass of what became the U.S. in the process of stealing indigenous land to expand the racist White republic from “sea to shining sea.”  And the marginalization of the role of violence certainly does not reflect the values of the Obama administration that dutifully implements the bi-partisan dictates of the U.S. strategy of full spectrum dominance that privileges military power and oppressive violence to protect and advance U.S. global supremacy. The destruction of Libya; the reinvasion of Iraq; the civil war in Syria; Obama’s continued war in Afghanistan; the pathological assault by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S. supported attack on Yemen by the Saudi dictatorship, are just a few of the horrific consequences of this criminal doctrine.

Race and oppressive violence has always been at the center of the racist colonial project that is the U.S. It is only when the oppressed resist—when we decide, like Malcolm X said, that we must fight for our human rights—that we are counseled  to be like Dr. King, including by war mongers like Barack Obama. However, resistance to oppression is a right that the oppressed claim for themselves. It does not matter if it is sanctioned by the oppressor state, because that state has no legitimacy.  

No rational person exalts violence and the loss of life. But violence is structured into the everyday institutional practices of all oppressive societies. It is the deliberate de-humanization of the person in order to turn them into a ‘thing’— a process Dr. King called “thing-afication.” It is a necessary process for the oppressor in order to more effectively control and exploit. Resistance, informed by the conscious understanding of the equal humanity of all people, reverses this process of de-humanization. Struggle and resistance are the highest expressions of the collective demand for people-centered human rights—human rights defined and in the service of the people and not governments and middle-class lawyers.

That resistance may look chaotic at this point—spontaneous resistance almost always looks like that. But since the internal logic of neoliberal capital is incapable of resolving the contradiction that it created, expect more repression and more resistance that will eventually take a higher form of organization and permanence. In the meantime, we are watching to see who aligns with us or the racist state.

The contradictions of the colonial/capitalist system in its current expression of neoliberalism have obstructed the creation of decent, humane societies in which all people are valued and have democratic and human rights. What we are witnessing in the U.S. is a confirmation that neoliberal capitalism has created what Chris Hedges called “sacrificial zones” in which large numbers of black and Latino people have been confined and written off as disposable by the system. It is in those zones that we find the escalation of repressive violence by the militarized police forces. And it is in those zones where the people are deciding to fight back and take control of their communities and lives.

These are defining times for all those who give verbal support to anti-racist struggles and transformative politics. For many of our young white comrades, people of color and even some black ones who were too young to have lived through the last period of intensified struggle in the 1960s and ‘70s and have not understood the centrality of African American resistance to the historical social struggles in the U.S., it may be a little disconcerting to see the emergence of resistance that is not dependent on and validated by white folks or anyone else.

The repression will continue, and so will the resistance. The fact that the resistance emerged in a so-called black city provides some complications, but those are rich and welcoming because they provide an opportunity to highlight one of the defining elements that will serve as a line of demarcation in the African American community—the issue of class.  We are going to see a vicious ideological assault by the black middle class, probably led by their champion—Barack Obama—over the next few days. Yet the events over the last year are making it more difficult for these middle-class forces to distort and confuse the issue of their class collaboration with the white supremacist capitalist/colonialist patriarchy. The battle lines are being drawn; the only question that people must ask themselves is which side they’ll be on.