After Obama’s SOTU message on February 12, 2013, Jill Stein, Green Party 2012 presidential candidate, addressed a national video audience with "Our Green State of the Union" assessment -- what Jill Stein herself called the “REAL state of our nation.”
Stein:
We need a real discussion of where we are, so we can set our priorities right and secure the future for our imperiled families, communities, country and planet.
Stein used the word “IMPERILED” and we know she is right.
But here’s the thing. Stein added that though the state of the union is “troubled and in critical ways getting worse” she maintained “it is eminently fixable.”
Fixable? Stein assured us there is a way to bring about “a just and sustainable prosperity, rescue the climate and make wars for oil obsolete.”
The good news said Stein is that the vast majority of these solutions are supported and recognized by the majority of the American people.
So where is the bottleneck?
The political "establishment" -- the corporate Republican and Democratic parties -- that is seriously not committed to the REAL needs of the people.
Jill Stein and the Green Party are advocating for people, peace and planet!
Dr. Stein gave a sobering assessment of the REAL state of the union:
Before talking about those solutions, I want to first acknowledge that the vast majority of Americans are struggling. Nearly one in two is now living below or near the poverty level – with children, students, elders and people of color hardest hit. Nearly 49 million Americans have no health insurance. Over 6 million had their homes taken through foreclosure. Average households lost an astounding 40% of their wealth in the recent downturn, and in low income communities this loss amounted to a staggering 90% of household wealth. Thanks in large measure to this poverty and hopelessness – and the failed war on drugs – over seven million people, largely poor African American and Latino men, are under “correctional supervision”, 10 times greater than in 1965.
37 million college students and recent graduates are trapped in student loan debt, facing double-digit unemployment and the new low wage economy, with half of graduates in jobs that do not require a college education. Roughly 25 million Americans are unemployed or unable to find full time work. Household income has fallen faster since the official end of the recession than during the recession itself, because the so-called “recovery” – as well as the vast majority of predicted future employment growth – is low paying jobs.
While record numbers of people are in poverty, the 1% – large corporations and the wealthy – have never been richer. The big corporations enjoy historic profits –as they contribute less than anytime since before the second World War to the tax base that keeps the infrastructure going that their profits rely on. And the big banks – who crashed the economy to start with – are bigger than ever, thanks to the continuing bipartisan failure to rein them in.
With the present crisis, Stein explained, the political establishment of Democrats and Republicans is making matters worse with its obsesssion with AUSTERITY. She called out the colossal nerve of both parties to impose austerity on us “everyday people” while, according to Stein, “they continue squandering trillions on endless wars, Wall Street bailouts, and tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Stein has little patience for the hypocritical rhetoric of Obama:
The President is very much part of that establishment. Having campaigned on a populist platform of taxing the rich, saving Social Security, and making the economy fair, the President has once again morphed into an invaluable ally of the economic elite, willing to throw you under the bus.
In his recent fiscal cliff deal, he did not tax the rich. He largely gave them the store. And he’s now once again looking to cut Social Security – and Medicare and Medicaid.
The policies of the first Obama administration clearly did not make the economy fairer. And these policies are still driving the crisis: trillions in Wall Street bailouts, corporate trade agreements that continue to send jobs overseas and depress wages at home, health care reform that locked single payer and the public option out of the debate, drill-baby-drill energy policies, the sabotage of international climate accords, millions of avoidable home foreclosures, the dramatic escalation of immigrant deportations, expanding wars for oil and drone wars, assaults on basic civil liberties and more. (All of these policies were substantially promoted or controlled by the White House and can not be blamed on Republicans.)
snip
Let’s be clear that this deficit resulted largely from the economic downturn, brought on by Wall Street waste, fraud and abuse.
That downturn not only destroyed jobs, it also depressed tax revenues – causing the federal deficit to skyrocket. This was worsened, of course, by the endless immoral wars, giveaways to the rich, and private health insurance waste.
Stein asserted that it is dangerous for the President to agree to lower the deficit by cutting social programs. She declared:
Social Security is not in crisis and does not need to be cut to be saved. The best thing for the long term stability of Social Security is to simply lift the payroll tax cap – and include capital gains and dividend income in the Social Security payroll tax pool.
We can lower the deficit in the long run by creating jobs that generate revenue, and in the short run, by taxing the rich, cutting the bloated military, and ending private health insurance waste through Medicare for All insurance system.
Jill Stein seriously addressed the climate issue.
As you know, we’re facing not only an economic crisis, but a climate crisis as well. In the past year we’ve seen record heat, fires, storms, floods, sea level rise, drought and rising food prices. Antarctica and Greenland are melting five times faster than just 20 years ago, leading to an estimated six feet of sea level rise – and possibly much more - by the end of the Century. Already 400,000 lives per year– including 1000 children per day – are being lost due to climate change. The global economic cost is well over a trillion dollars a year, the equivalent of 1.6% of global GDP. Superstorm Sandy illustrates the devastating costs here in the United States as well.
All this has happened with a temperature rise of less than 1 degree Celsius so far. Yet we’re already on track for six times as much temperature rise by 2100, that is a rise of 6 degrees Celsius. As an example of what that means, consider this. When we have a heat wave in Boston or New York, we’re now seeing 95 to 100 degree weather for days at a time. With the warming that’s now in the pipeline, a heat wave won’t bring 100 degree temperatures, it will bring 125 degree temperatures. People will go down like flies. Livestock will also be wiped out, causing additional stress to U.S. and world food supplies which would be drastically reduced (40%) to start with in markedly warmed climate.
Our planet is rapidly approaching a geophysical tipping point at which the certain key consequences of climate change trigger an unstoppable acceleration of warming. Once that happens, it will render our climate incompatible with civilization as we know it, and potentially incompatible with human life as well. The worrisome thing is that some of these tipping points - such as the disappearance of polar ice caps and the melting of frozen methane deposits – are already happening.
That’s why we simply cannot allow the climate to continue warming. To allow climate change to proceed is to engineer the demise of not just our distant descendants, but quite possibly our grandchildren and children and perhaps ourselves as well.
Stein maintained that our climate and our economic crisis must be solved at the same time. In fact, she stated simply, “They are ultimately one and the same. We can’t solve one without also solving the other.”
Jill Stein explained the Green New Deal:
1) to create 25 million jobs to jump start the green economy2) to put a halt to climate change3) to make wars for oil obsolete4) "to empower communities to decide what jobs they need to become sustainable, to prioritize jobs in clean renewable energy and conservation, sustainable agriculture, public transportation, and infrastructure improvements, as well as jobs that meet social needs – teachers, nurses, child care, after school, home care, drug abuse and violence prevention and rehabilitation"5) to create public sector jobs, and establish a modern Conservation Corp and Public Works Administration6) to jump start community-based small businesses as well as worker owned-cooperatives
Stein asserted that the political establishment's agenda of providing tax breaks for corporations to generate jobs is an indirect, expensive and INEFFECTIVE tool.
How would the Green New Deal be funded? Stein explained:
1) by cutting the bloated military to year 2000 levels, saving hundreds of billions of dollars per year
2) by taxing the rich (This includes a 0.5% sales tax on Wall Street transactions. ... “It would generate $350 billion annually while reining in speculation. Capital gains would be taxed as income, and income would be taxed more progressively, with multi-millionaires and billionaires paying in the 50-80 percent range, just as they did before the tax giveaways of recent decades.”)
3) through savings we get by eliminating health insurance waste through Medicare for All (“This would provide healthcare to everyone, while ending the massive, wasteful, private health insurance bureaucracy and reducing the medical inflation that's overwhelming federal, state, and household budgets alike. Medicare for All would save trillions of dollars over the next decade.”)
4) by jumpstarting the green economy:
a) We must enact a carbon fee, to make fossil fuel companies pay for the costs of their carbon emissions and speed the transition to clean, renewable energy, efficiency and conservation.b) We must rapidly shut down dirty energy by phasing out coal, nuclear, oil, and natural gas.c) We must say no to new sources of dirty, climate-changing energy: No to the Keystone XL Pipeline, Tar Sands oil, fracked oil and gas, mountaintop removal, coal, deep water drilling and Arctic drilling.d) We need democratic control over our energy to ensure we will leave the lethal fossil fuels in the ground, and achieve a zero carbon economy that is essential to save the planet and our children.
5) by ending student debt (“Instead of bailing out yet again the banksters who caused this crisis - to the tune of $85 billion dollars a month - let’s redirect that money to the students who are victims of that waste, fraud and abuse. At the rate of $85 billion a month, we can retire student debt in a little over a year.”)
6) by making public higher education free (“We know that from the GI bill, which returned $7 dollars in economic benefits for every $1 dollar we invested in higher education for returning soldiers following World War II.”)
7) by respecting “immigrant rights as human rights” (“This means providing a humane and welcoming path to citizenship now – not 15 years from now, as in the Obama plan. And that citizenship should not depend on border control. We also call for an immediate halt to the cruel, massive deportations that have skyrocketed under the Obama administration and which continue to this day. So called “free trade” agreements should be renegotiated in order to create fair trade agreements. This would end the flow of economic refugees into this country to start with.”)
8) by creating fair trade agreements
9) by ending the war on drugs
10) by ending "the wars for oil and other resources that have created a state of permanent, immoral and unaffordable war.” (“That means not only withdrawing troops. We must also put an end to the draconian drone wars which create a threat to civil liberties and human rights everywhere. Their terrible toll in civilian casualties – including large numbers of women and children – has made them a powerful recruiting tool for the very organizations they are intended to destroy. Instead of leading the world in the proliferation of this dangerous, inhumane technology, we should be leading an international treaty to put an end to the use of drones as an instrument of war.”)
11) by restoring our civil liberties by repealing the NDAA and the Patriot Act (“ We must challenge the President’s claim to tyrannical powers of assassination and indefinite detention without due process. We decry the Obama administration’s cruel and unusual pursuit and punishment of whistleblowers, whose only crime is to reveal government wrongdoing that citizens deserve to know about. And we call for end to the growing surveillance state, including the use of domestic drones to spy on citizens. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin’s wise admonition, if we sacrifice liberty for the sake of security, we will wind up losing them both.”)
12) by working toward eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons (“But the President, at the same time, is actually escalating the nuclear arms race. He has committed $600 billion dollars to creating an entire new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons with renovated production and delivery – including new nuclear missiles, nuclear submarines, and nuclear bombers. This does not represent progress towards ending the danger of nuclear weapons.” Stein emphasized that we need to include nuclear powers who possess nuclear weapons in defiance of the existing Non Proliferation treaty -- which include India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea.)
Dr. Stein summarized the Green New Deal solutions:
1) jobs, healthcare and education as a human right
2) a livable climate
3) an end to immoral and endless wars
4) bailing students in debt
5) restoring our civil liberties
6) ending immigrant deportations and providing a welcoming path to citizenship
Stein:
The political establishment that got us into this crisis, and keeps pushing us in deeper, will not get us out of it. We the people must reclaim our future.
We the people are doing that through the vibrant social movements rising up around us, and through the growing momentum of the Green Party to give those movements the political voice they deserve. Together, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for to take our future back, and make it healthy, just, peaceful and green.
This is what the politics of courage sounds like! This is a SOTU message worth endorsing and heeding.
[cross-posted at open salon]
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