MuddPi’s Recent Comments

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  Thank you for McKinney attention- finally!

  Please keep it up!  I've been a longtime Grist fan, and a registered Green for longer than that, but extremely disappointed in your total lack of coverage for Green Party candidates, rather ironic for an e-rag that dotes on environmental as well as political issues.  You're practically giving McCain the greater benefit of the doubt and free publicity too boot.

  Meanwhile, without a third party to apply pressure to the candidates, esp. the Dems, they're free to court the center stripe and back away from ambitious and much-needed change vis a vis everything from energy policy to endangered species.
  Case in point . . . offshore drilling.  Obama first opposed it, now is capitulating.  If he had the fear that voters would vote Green instead he might actually stand firm and walk his talk.  McCain is certainly not holding his line, esp in regards to climate change- is it too much to expect of these guys?

  Every midterm I hear people bemoaning their own party's ineffectiveness and discussing the need for a new party.  Well here it is folks, but you have to have the fortitude to leave the nest first, or at least make it clear that you expect more from your own candidates, and a system that allows third parties to compete fairly and squarely.

  But please Grist-  more Green Party coverage!

  NM GreenOn Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney talks to Grist posted 1 year, 2 months ago 19 Responses

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  Like selling fashion, BLUE is the new Green?

  While it's an impressive piece and the sentiments generally in the right place, I can't help but react with cynicism to Werbach's ideas.
  The lofty idea of such a movement is wonderful but for much of what he's espousing has already been organized.  It's called the Green Movement and the Green Party that grew out of that.

  "I ask you to consider joining me in building a movement that goes beyond the political to the personal, that views the existential threat of global warming as a chance to change the way we treat ourselves and the planet, that aspires to have one billion active participants across the earth."

  Those were our exact ideas nearly 20 years ago and including a bit more than just global warming.

  "A movement we can call BLUE. This movement will have many faces, but at its heart it's a lifestyle movement, a way to live a successful life. Many of us already have a regular practice that can reinforce our values. While political activism is at best a bi-annual pursuit, shopping is a regular activity for most people on the planet, and if trends continue, it will be for virtually everyone."

  What I'm suspecting here is the attempt to plant in the public mind the idea that the Democrats (Blue States) are synonymous with an ardent environmentalism that still allows you to be "green" but doesn't ask that you curtail your shopping bug.

  A fear on the part of corporations and the Democratic party that people are past just seeing through their smoke-machine and are going to actively seek drastic changes in their consumerism and their levels of consumption that would threaten profits and campaign contributions alike.

  Political activism a bi-annual pursuit? at best?
  oookay.  Maybe I've just gotten used to the extrapolitical activity necessary to get, keep, wrangle with,and work for reform for a political party that is always being denied ballot access in our model democracy- but even many of my non-Green friends are fairly political year round, esp in these times.

  I never did like Descartes when I studied philosophy either so I'm not sure what to think about a philosophy that puts people at the center.  I can agree though that we need an approach I liken to Muir's ideas of everything being attached to everything else, but again, that has been covered, not publicized well under this media system, but certainly one need only view the 10 Key Values to see this.  We are the only party that has bothered to put down a definitely set of values.  Having the Walmart logo stamped on them is a bit disconcerting though.
  

  If multiparty democracy is good enough for our troops to die for in Iraq, it's good enough for the U.S. to enact! Register, vote, respect third parties!

  On Adam Werbach calls for a new movement of a billion consumers posted 1 year, 7 months ago 73 Responses

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  Potemkin villages?

  LegumeSam-

  Our Chicago Potemkin village convention will hold forth in July of this year-
  at the Palmer House Potemkin Hilton.  If Nader doesn't give the keynote we may try for Paris.

  I don't understand what you mean by gatekeepers, other than the ones I'm familiar with who try to keep the "wrong" candidates from running by preventing their participation in debates.  In that case, the Democrats have them in excess and exercised them well in the cases of  Kucinich and Gravel, and the media has their own set when you look at the coverage of some of the other candidates, and indeed, the Green Party's primary participation on Super Tuesday.  Considering we've been criticized for having included amongst our nominees one scientist, one dreadlocked woman, and one rap musician, I don't think that our own gates are kept too tightly and still admit an admirable diversity.

  and there are Green parties in the other 46 states already, I assure you.  Organization and attendance may have faltered in a few, but we are alive, well and kicking overall.  

  You know, Ralph Nader traveled extensively during each of the previous elections helping to grow the party, appearing at events and fundraisers in and out of election years (Howie Hawkins sent out a very descriptive list to those of us naysayers who felt Nader did little for party building and remain chagrined he didn't change his party affiliation officially like McKinney has done at least).  But even if I were the chair of the DNC, knowing how many Greens change their's back and forth from G to D to G again wouldn't make me feel any better than having to face the idea that 30,000 registered Dems in Florida voted for Bush in '04).  We can't be built upon a cult of personality, something the Dems will realize too the first time Clinton or Obama trip up and disappoint some group of party loyalists, which will happen if it hasn't already.

  If multiparty democracy is good enough for our troops to die for in Iraq, it's good enough for the U.S. to enact! Register, vote, respect third parties!

  On Ralph Nader might jump into the presidential race posted 1 year, 8 months ago 129 Responses

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  Democrats complain, but do they change the system?

  Yes, we all get into this heated discussion every four year, and maybe someday, we'll all get together and do something about the fact that our system is broken.
  
  
  
  Ranked Choice Voting would go a long way to cure the ills we're all beeyatching over.  
  
   We who believe democracy means that we deserve to get a honest to real choice of candidates, get to see our candidates on the ballot and actually vote for them.
  
  It works for Dems and Repubs too . . .
  
  (for instance Did you want to vote for Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards or Fred Thompson?  
  Was he even on the ballot when you got your chance or when your state finally is allowed to have a primary?)
  
  
  
  And Democrat's & Republican's fears that votes they actually "own" are going to some third party candidate could be assuaged knowing that once the dark horse was eliminated, all the second choices they deserve would come to them.
  
  
  
  Unfortunately, what that takes entirely out of the picture, is the Electoral College, the Supremes, and the scapegoat.  
  
  
  And what would folks do without a Nader to beeyatch about?
  

  If multiparty democracy is good enough for our troops to die for in Iraq, it's good enough for the U.S. to enact! Register, vote, respect third parties!

  On Ralph Nader might jump into the presidential race posted 1 year, 8 months ago 129 Responses

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  Hey GreenMom

  For your information, the Green Party did start at the grassroots level and continues to run candidates  at this level - we have over 225 office holders to date and this level is growing.  However, after being in existence for 20+ years, don't you think we have the right to expand that notion?
  Do you even understand how politics in this nation has come to work, not how it's supposed to work, but how it has actually "evolved" to require huge sums of money, influence peddling, and tomfoolery- the stuff you complain about when Republicans do it, but look the other way when done by Democrats??

  We do not have a two-party system carved in stone tablets.  That is not the way our nation was initially designed and until late in the last century, third parties flourished and were responsible for many of the breakthroughs in civil rights and suffrage, and other progressive movement in our society.  With that kind of success, politicians wanted more control of the masses and hence worked to solidify two parties in control- much easier for them to pay off and control themselves.
  You write as if you actually like the "money, entrenched power, and entrenched organization" and won't lift a finger to change these.  Too bad.
  You'll never succeed at anything if you don't even try.  I'm sure you never tell your children this either.

  I don't understand why it is so hard for you and others like you to understand.  
  You can go along and try to rebuild the progressive wing of the Democratic party, go ahead.  But just take a good hard look at what your party did to Denis Kucinich.  They locked a dedicated Democratic Congressman, a man elected to office, not some hack, OUT OF THE DEBATES!!!
  Now tell me you understand something?

  That they locked a bonafide candidate like Ralph Nader, out of the presidential debates is one thing, Kim Jung Il and Fidel Castro could not have engineered a better lock out of debate in a free society there-  but to effectively silence one of their own???

  Ain't no rebuilding of the democratic wing of the Democratic party happenin there honey!!

  Keep on dreaming- but don't limit the good work of third parties trying to keep the American dream alive for all of us and the entrenched back in their trenches.

  If multiparty democracy is good enough for our troops to die for in Iraq, it's good enough for the U.S. to enact! Register, vote, respect third parties!

  On Ralph Nader might jump into the presidential race posted 1 year, 8 months ago 129 Responses