Based on a Green Party of the United States press release, with commentary and photos added by Ian Wilder at onthewilderside:
Green tea leaves steeping in an uncovered zhong by Wikimol
IW: Green Tea: It’s Good for You.
Some Tea Partiers are in the wrong party, say Green Party members
Green Party leaders and candidates said that many Tea Party activists might be in the wrong party and urged them to consider going Green.
Carl Romanelli
Carl Romanelli, former Green candidate for the US Senate and a member of Health Care for All Pennsylvania (http://healthcare4allpa.org) said:
Not all Tea Party members are befuddled rightwingers screeching that President Obama is a socialist, fascist, pro-terrorist, or all of the above. Many Tea Partiers have legitimate concerns about how the Democratic Party’s health care reform plans will reduce Medicare and about trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded giveaways to Wall Street firms. They are as outraged as Greens are about how both Democrats and Republicans are coddling CEOs, major stockholders, and other wealthy elites while preaching sacrifice for the rest of us.
Greens said corporate royalists like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin who pose as populist leaders have hijacked the Tea Party movement.
Rodger Jennings (l) with GP Prez Cynthia McKinney (r)
Rodger Jennings, Green candidate for Congress in Illinois, District 12 (http://www.rodgerjennings.org) said:
Republicans and rightwing ideologues in the media are thrilled with a Tea Party movement that will channel votes and money towards extremist GOP politicians. Their idea of the Tea Party has nothing to do with the 1773 Boston Tea Party. They prefer a movement full of people who would have denounced the original Boston Tea Party as leftist terrorism against the British East India Company. They would have criticized Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine for wanting to rein in what Jefferson called ‘the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations.‘* To these Tea Partiers, and to most Republican and Democratic politicians, restraints on corporate power are a symptom of ‘big government.’ Many of the Tea Partiers who vented their rage against health care reform at town hall meetings in 2009 were in effect defending the power of health insurance companies — the modern equivalents of British tea companies — to drive people who need medical care into financial ruin.
Green Party leaders noted that media coverage of health care reform gave a megaphone to the anti-reform Tea Partiers at town hall meetings, while mostly ignoring advocates of Medicare For All (Single-Payer national health care), including many Green Party members, who protested vociferously against the plans offered by President Obama and Democrats in Congress. Examples of such protests include Medicare For All activists disrupting Congressional hearings and burning insurance forms outside meetings of insurance company lobbyists.
Greens, like true fiscal conservatives, oppose subsidies for health insurance companies in the Democratic plans, including proposed ‘mandates’ that would require enrollment. The Green Party has warned that, whether Obamacare is enacted or Republicans succeed in blocking reform, the real winners will be the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and other industry lobbies.
Greens also compared the invasive homeland security measures favored by Republicans and Democrats to the bullying tactics of the British Army and requirement that colonists house British troops on demand.
“We need a Tea Party movement that opposes warrantless surveillance of American citizens, torture, invasion of other countries, and other violations of the US Constitution. We need a Tea Party that calls the ‘general welfare of the people,’ including the right to medical care, more important than the right of insurance and pharmaceutical companies to shake down patients and deny treatment. We need a Tea Party against predatory private prisons, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration of Americans. We need a Tea Party that defends future generations of Americans rather than corporate polluters,” said Lynne Williams, Green-Independent candidate for Governor of Maine (http://www.lynnewilliams2010.org).
“We need a Tea Party that recognizes corporations as artificial entities created by government fiat, and that corporations must not enjoy the same free speech and other constitutional rights as humans. A real Tea Party movement would look like the Green Party,” said Ms. Williams.
* “I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan, November 12, 1816
You couldn’t make stuff like this up! I can’t decide who’s has the more tenuous grip on reality, the tea-baggers who drink the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin kool-aid and think everything is a conspiracy hatched by “big government” or “socialists”, or the Greens who think they might make common cause with the tea-baggers and still can’t acknowledge the ongoing damage their candidate inflicted on this country ten years ago.
What “damage” did keeping Bush from winning with a bigger margin do?
Alan @1, if we’re talking about the same thing, it seems to me that the damage was done by Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court.
And, in any case, why is this so silly? Some Greens may well favor top-down solutions to social problems; if so, they’re not natural allies for the Tea Partiers. And some TPers may be social conservatives who like Big Guvmint when it makes war and tortures; if so, they’re not natural allies for the Greens. But there are lots of anti-authoritarians in both movements who really do want to see power devolved to the grass roots; and those folks are natural allies of each other, as also of libertarians (and Libertarians).
It’s hard to believe there are still Democrats (I’m assuming, with my “tenuous grip on reality,” that Mr. Silverblatt is a Democrat) whining and hand-wringing over what happened three election cycles ago – following which Democrats have had ample time and opportunity to make up for losing that election
Speaking of an inability to acknowledge things……why not acknowledge: your candidate’s inability even to carry his own congressional district, let alone his own state? To carry his predecessor’s state? That 250,000 Democrats in Florida voted for George Bush (100,ooo of them self-labeled LIBERALS, for God’s sake)? That Mr. Gore couldn’t manage to peel off less than 1,000 of those folks? That Mr. Nader’s candidacy put Maria Cantwell into the Senate in Washington (look it up)? This is an obsession with victimhood that borders on the irrational. WE didn’t do anything wrong – WE couldn’t have POSSIBLY done anything wrong – there was only ONE variable involved here and it’s all YOUR fault.
While you’re at it, blame John Kerry’s losing campaign on Ralph Nader, too, and please, by all means, blame Barack Obama’s failure to do anything to move the country in a progressive direction on Ralph Nader as well. Because everything the Democratic Party and its candidates have been unable to do over the last ten years, as well as their endless rolling over when any issue becomes difficult or threatens their corporate contributors, is completely the fault of Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign. We know this. We get it. We’re so sorry.
And, as usual, the whiny complainant posts with no link attached via which someone could actually contact him directly. I will give him credit, though, for not posting anonymously as the vast majority of his peers do in these cases.
P.S. – Yes, by all means, absolve Katherine Harris from all responsibility for Gore losing Florida…..and please do continue to think that it’s OK for there to be other partisan Secretaries of State who are in charge of state election procedures (e.g. Oregon), as long as they’re Democratic partisans.
While I do admire Mr. Nader, his candidacy was ill timed and did make a difference in giving this country the worst President in history. The teabaggers were sleeping through those years and only started to pay attention coincidentally when a black Democrat was elected. I am happy that these people have supposedly woken up but I wish they could balance their outrage with a little reason. The people they trust the most are those who most crassly take advantage of their naivete. Somehow I don’t think the greens would benefit from anyone who considers Beck or any of those millionaire BS artists remotely credible. Greens have always been to smart for their own good and Teabaggers have the opposite problem.
The worst President in History? Hardly. FDR and Wilson rank far above.
I don’t think Mr. Nader’s 2008 run had much to do with Mr. Obama’s election. And as for the previous worst president, Mr. Nader primarily took votes which would otherwise have gone to Mr. Bush, especially among Arab-Americans.
Depends on which ones. Libertarians started the tea parties, and we didn’t like Mr. Bush; in fact, some of us pushed to have them impeached, and some of us still want him tried for war crimes.
War crimes, which, incidentally, are continuing under Mr. Obama, along with the “patriot act” which the Democrats in congress just reauthorized.
“The teabaggers were sleeping through those years and only started to pay attention coincidentally when a black Democrat was elected.”
Actually, some who have attended Tea Party events are Libertarians who DID protest against Bush, Bush’s War, Bush’s Patriot Act etc.
That of course does not excuse the many conservatives who should have opposed Bush’s statism but kept silent because of party loyalty.
“And as for the previous worst president, Mr. Nader primarily took votes which would otherwise have gone to Mr. Bush, especially among Arab-Americans.”
* in Florida
Speaking as someone who was an Official Green Party Election Re-Count Official in Ohio 2004 and now activist in the election integrity movement and so very well versed in what REALLY happened in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Let us not forget the 90,000 mainly poor and blacks that were illegally denied their right to vote in Florida by being purged in the voting roles. That were ABANDONED by the Democratic Party. Not to mention the simple fact that Al Gore was, is and remains a corporate prostitute, as shown by his ACTIONS while VP, which are too numerous to mention.
The REAL cause in Florida 2000, yet the Democrats still blame ralph nader. After all it is the ONLY way to shift attention away from what really happened.
Then we again have the issue of massive voter supression and the use of electronic voting fraud in Ohio by Diebold, Triad and ES&S voting machines, not to mention elsewhere.
In Ohio, the Democrats do not have ralph nader to kick around and blame because Ralph Nader was not allowed to be on the ballot there.
In fact, if it were not for the Green party candidate David Cobb and the Libertarian candidate Michael Badnerick both providing the legal challenge for a vote Re-Count in Ohio, none of this would even be known.
Because John Kerry and John Edwards, along with the rest of the Democratic party again ABANDONED the poor and blacks who were disenfranchised in Ohio and elsewhere.
Kerry even had a $56 MILLION war chest, set up to fight voter fraud and supression. Instead they chose to stand down.
however, rest assured our Democratic party hack or apologist will not answer these issues.
Because they can’t.
RALPH NADER IS A HERO.
The worst President in History? Hardly. FDR and Wilson rank far above.
‘There are many ways to determine this.
Any of the Democrats in the US Senate, including Gore as president of the state as the then-sitting VP, could have thrown the election into the House.
I never voted for Nader, but this continuing bellyaching from Democrats is ludicrous.
If they lose elections, it’s because they fail to convince the voters to choose them. Same for Republicans. What kind of American supports winning by keeping other parties off the ballot and out of debates? Sounds like the tactics of a tin horn dictator.
PAM ELLISON AT :
PAMELLISON@ISP.COM
OR
MICHAEL CAVLAN AT: OLLMHFAERY@EARTHLING.NET
I am a Perot, Perot, Nader, Nader, Nader
voter. I have met both these guys on
various occasions. Neither is perfect and
both have faults.
[Nader’s own P2004 crew of vacationing
East Coast law students blew it big time
in California. After they screwed up the
ballot access process via ignoring the real
world advice of SUCCESSFUL Recall Gray
Davis activists, they blithely assumed that
the Federal Elector signatures would go
over [Automatically] to the write in effort.
Only because of the independent, unofficial
effort of Citizens For A Better Veterans Home
did Nader’s write in votes count!
Given this and other short comings of Boss
Ross and Uncle Ralph, what is the alternative?
[earthlink ????????]
Dunno what the German text says, but the image is a good one for a couple of the Democrats who have commented here 🙂
The German text means “Cheater in the Euro-Family” and probably refers to the dishonest financial methods the Greek government used to hide the size of its deficit.
Goldman Sachs was advising the Greek government on how to hide the deficit, using currency swaps and derivatives.
This whole tea party obsession is getting ridiculous. It’s like the “Red Scare” of the 1920s and 1950s. They’re nothing more than a disgruntled mob of frustrated wingnuts who can’t get over the fact we have an African-American president who, in their paranoid delusions, they fear is going to turn the United States into some North American version of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia.
The fact is their political impact has been at best marginal. The election of a moderate Republican governor in New Jersey(who, btw, decisively defeated a well-known and well-financed teabag candidate in the GOP primary), a conservative Republican governor in Virginia, and a moderate Republican Senator from Mass. (who voted for cap-and-trade as well as universal healthcare as a State Senator), is hardly the stuff that political revolutions are made of. Not to mention the fact, conveniently ignored by the media, that the NY-23 congressional district elected a democrat for the first time in a hundred years.
Most of these teabag activists don’t know what they want. They only know what they hate.
Solomon Drek // Feb 26, 2010 at 6:37 pm
This whole tea party obsession is getting ridiculous ……… activists don’t know what they want. They only know what they hate.
———- Don Lake: well since 1960 I have hated half assed stupidity.
Since LBJ (“I will not send American boys to fight in an Asian war ………..”) have hated lies!
Obama, my Yokohama Momma, talked and talked and talked ’bout ‘change’ and the jerks at DoD and Treasury are still there. He and Establishment Stooge Joey Bieden are merely the defacto elements of W’s third term.
I hate that!
This really is a GREAT post!
Thank you for this Green Party post!
And that Green Party members are reaching out is wonder news!
I just emailed the Washington Post reporter Dan Zak. On the front page of today’s style section Dan Zak has a story about the “Coffee Party” and “Tea Party”.
My respectful email thanked him for his story.
In the next sentence I urged Dan Zak, and “your editor” to do stories about real candidates for the Green Party or Independent Green Parties.
I sent him links to Green Party candidates Jill Stein, Rich Whitney, — Indy Greens Ron Fisher, Gail “for Rail” Parker, Floyd Bayne, and Indy Green endorsed Indy Jerimiah Heaton
The Washington Post’s
Dan Zak sent a polite and brief thanks – within minutes late on a Friday night.
So that’s the good Green Party news…
…the days of rich, big time reporters lounging on Miami’s South Beach on Friday night sipping good French red wine….appear gone…like the 14,000 stock market….
And my own ability to drink good Kentucky Whiskey for hours on end…
Ah…but the Green Party grows and fights on…
Oh my…
hahahah
Thank you for the cover of Focus magazine above…
Laughed til I cried….so funny..
Focus magazine by the way gives the Green Party the best and fairest coverage of any of the glossy German weekly magazines…The Germany Green Party is at record highs in opinion polls nearing 20%
Soloman Drek
is RIGHT!
It’s just the old bait and switch. Ignore the Green Party.
REBRAND the Oil Party aka Repubs…
Their Bush brand was dirt or worse…now it’s about distraction…that’s all it is…
Michael Cavlan RN
is right.
The Green Party’s Ralph Nader’s a hero.
The Green Party, and third party politics is full of brave, hard headed hero…honorable citizens..
Carl Romanelli,
While we’re mentioning Green Party heros, let’s mention the gentle, kind, brave Carl Romanelli.
Carl Romanelli had the good sense to get this post/story going with other Greens.
Carl Romanelli’s courage in the face of law suits, evil political, unfair, illegal in any just society, Carl Romanelli’s courage humbles me.
Carl’s courage to keep fighting gives me courage, and it should us all in the Green Party and across this world.
Thank you Carl.
Bless you!
David Gaines does not seem to remember that the previous elections were won by rigged voting and tabulating machines manufactured by Companies such as Diebold and ES&S, and by a vote of the [corrupt] Supremem Court. Do we really want to be identified with the mindless, anaesthetized Tea Party. Do they really have anything to offer besides predigested sound bites regurgitated from right wing blowhard talking heads? They do not seem capable of independent critical thinking and would contribute nothing of substance.
Angela,
I’m sure David remembers.
Lord help us. We all know the damn computer voter machines without paper trails are hacked and run by computer program. That’s not the point.
The point is to fight like hell with Green Party candidates on the ballot, continuing to be part of the debate, growing skills, and giving lightning an opportunity to strike for good. Just as it did in 2009 when a Green Party fellow as elected to state legislature in Arkansas.
Here’s another great Green Party article over at counter punch from Don Santina
Don’t Mourn, Go Green
By DON SANTINA
http://www.counterpunch.org/santina02262010.html
The German Green Party is hitting record highs in the opinion polls nearing 20%.
as reported tonight in the conservative newspaper roughly translated as “The Common Market”
http://www.maerkischeallgemeine.de/cms/beitrag/11741166/5934832/Politbarometer-Regierung-in-der-Kritik-Gruene-auf-Rekordniveau.html
And showing the growing appeal to conservatives…
Green Party leaders are attempting to recruit the recently resigned woman Bishop Margot Käßmann (51)
Wednesday Käßmann resigned as Chairperson of the Evangelischen Kirche Deutschland und der evangelisch-lutherischen Landeskirche Hannover.
Her photo and story here
http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2010/02/27/margot-kaessmann-zweite-chance/gruene-wollen-sie-in-die-politik-holen.html
The Tea Partiers have no unified ideology. Which is why it makes sense for the LP, GOP, GP, CP, and anyone else, to recruit among them.
No one owns the Tea Party. All are welcome to recruit from their ranks.
I’m sure some Tea Parties might like the GP, others the LP or CP, others the GOP.
No One Owns the Tea Parties // Feb 26, 2010:
………. from the middle of the Nile! — Lake
I did a new post and quoted some of the new Don Santina article at Counterpunch telling progressive Democrats to go to the Green Party.
But, I thought I should quote an important section relative to the Nader conversation here:
-And for those Democrats who resentfully cling to the fiction that Green Party presidential candidate Ralp Nader somehow cost Al Gore the 2000 election in Florida, they should ask the man who invented the Internet why he conceded so quickly in the face of an orchestrated voter fraud of massive proportion which involved the systematic disenfranchisement of the black vote in that state. They should also revisit that historic post-election moment in the Senate when not one Democratic senator–including the revered Paul Wellstone–was willing to provide the single necessary cosponsoring vote in support of the House members’ objection to Florida’s tainted electoral votes. Not one.- quote by Don Santina
In regards to the 2000 election, the short answer is this:
the reality [and you can know this for yourself if you see http://www.anunreasonableman.com is that
gore threw the race in ‘00 at least 3 times:
1.] when, at the beginning of his campaign, he and lieberman stopped trying to say things that the people wanted to hear because their corporate paymasters yanked their leash [see “crashing the party” by ralph nader]
2.] gore now ADMITS that he didn’t try hard enough to contest the voting irregularities
3.] if you see michael moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11, you can see with your own eyes Al Gore shouting down the congressional black caucus’ attempt to question the voting irregularities on a ‘point of order’ which is like saying that, if i mug you, you can’t yell for help if we are in a ‘quiet hospital zone’.
Besides, there were a total of six third party candidates, all of whom got more than the # of votes that gore ‘lost’ by, so why blame nader?
the dems [or the car companies for that matter] blaming nader for their losses is like a hooker blaming their v.d. on mother theresa…!
I mean, the democrats wanted the biggest job in the world and blamed their mistakes and losses on the man who gave us the EPA, OSHA, the freedom of information act, and so much more? it’s just baloney…
Who is Brock Merck?
I’m the guy running for the Cook County Board – 9TH District who is disgusted with the present system and has decided to change it by running for political office.
I’m the guy who is not running as a Democrat or Republican because there is not a dimes bit of difference between either party in this race and chose to go in a different direction.
I’m the guy that does not have $279,602.00 in a campaign war chest from political action committees (PAC’s). You know, these same PAC’s that have imaginative names that disguise their intentions. Some of these PAC’s may have provided you with a red light camera ticket, or might have been detrimental in awarding a casino to Rosemont because of background.
I’m the guy that does not have the backing of a Committeeman Daddy in order to get a library contract or a politically appointed job as the Chairman of Homeland Security with the Illinois International Port Authority. Oh, by the way, the port spends half of its multi-million dollar annual budget on the operation of a golf course.
I’m the guy with the character and background needed in order to pull Cook County off of the edge. I’m the Eagle Scout, graduate of Loyola Academy and Loyola University Chicago (Business Administration), owner / operator of a family business (Starvin’ Artist Supply), Army Infantry Officer – Afghanistan, Chicago Police Officer, and Catholic (St. Mary of The Woods). I am married to my wife Bridget, and we have three children.
I’m also the guy that the Chicago Reader says, “if you want to end four decades of bipartisan nepotism and logrolling, Brock’s your guy in November.”
I want to be your guy.
Brock Merck
Candidate for Cook County Commissioner – 9TH District (Green Party)
brockmerck@gmail.com
Please copy and distribute to like minded voters for the 2010 general election.
Nader is mastermind criminal conspiracy. Nader controls Bush and new world banking establishment; his progressive campaigns are a facade. Know the truth, speak the truth. Nader’s 2000 election campaign was a direct attack on the Democratic Party, in hopes of getting his protege Bush into office.
Wasn’t a huge fan of this post, and honestly i have trouble even believing a green party representative wrote it. But from my understanding the Tea Party doesn’t support any party, we support candidates.
Show me someone who supports fiscal discipline, a smaller federal government , Free Markets, and an America that can globally compete with other nations, and I’m sure that candidate will have a good amount of support from tea party members. So if the green party has a candidate that supports those 4 basic principals I will have no problem voting for them.
But if to big government, defending the middle class means… half the nation receives more money from the IRS than they pay, Public union leaders shakes down state and federal governments, the massively rich receive huge bailouts, than I Say big government has helped me enough already. In fact I am begging big government to stop trying to help me because they are clearly just making things worse.
Oh and btw before we have Medicare for all, why don’t we make sure it is already not 60 trillion dollars in the red?
I can’t believe no one made a joke abt green tea,
Let’s say Ralph did take votes away from Gore. Good! I think we would be better off if Ralph had won! I wish Nader had taken many more. Gore in all likelihood would be another Obama, so I am ashamed to admit I fell for the lesser evil argument and voted for him. Since I wanted to vote for Nader, Gore was in fact the undeserving candidate! Now go back to dkos where you belong! Waste a stupid democrats time, they like to waste time on fruitless people!
Here is a healthy fusion idea… the Green Tea Party! It can’t miss (except among coffee drinkers)!
Besides, there were a total of six third party candidates, all of whom got more than the # of votes that gore ‘lost’ by, so why blame nader?
Because democrats lack the intelligence, and/or are forgetful of history.
FWIW, I do recall Warren Christopher proclaiming that both Harry Browne and Pat Buchanon got too many votes (??!!), and therefore their votes should be counted for Gore!
He also said something to the effect that the Browne/Nader/Buchanon voters were clearly against bush, therefore rationalized that they “really” wanted Gore, but were confused.
PEACE
The astute Carl Romanelli said:
Not all Tea Party members are befuddled rightwingers screeching that President Obama is a socialist, fascist, pro-terrorist, or all of the above.
Mr. Romanelli is correct. I have been to many TEA Party rallies and gun shows, and I can assure anyone that while the folks at these events may be worried about gun rights and/or the burgeoning government debt, they’re far from rabid right wingers or just paranoid.
While many may be Libertarian (I wish many more), most are just worried about their future. And these people are far more open-minded than the run of the mill republican or democrat.
Kudo’s to the Greens for reaching out beyond their presumed audience.
PEACE
I can’t believe no one made a joke abt green tea,
In the post, near the top.
Here is a healthy fusion idea… the Green Tea Party! It can’t miss (except among coffee drinkers)!
I like coffee and green tea 🙂
Let’s say Ralph did take votes away from Gore. Good!
It matters little which big government-big business collusion shill gets elected by dispensing graft, misinformation and miscounting the vote, business as usual goes on.
The only difference any election really makes is to what extent the regular people get up on their hind legs and assert their independence from the establishment.
looks at crooked Dem VP candidates!
Insider Benson [Dukaus (sp) ]
Bore Gore
Joe Motion Lieberman
John [Fidelity] Edwards
Joe [Insider] B eiden
and Dean and others dare to
blame others for their lackluster
tickets of mediocrity ????????
Lmao! As if we aren’t aware that the regressive, punitive taxes and oppressive laws the corrupt dems are demanding be imposed, like the job killing cap and trade are green party ideology. Greens are fascists, as a tea party member we reject the corrupt, elitist green party. BTW, I’m a former dem, and I have tons of files on my hard drive from back during the 2000 presidential election cycle, where the green’s rhapsodized their hopes of imposing their own totalitarian regime, and forcing all the people to be little more than slaves to be sacrificed to their scorched earth theory. Guess what I’ll be printing out and distributing tomorrow to all my tea party friends, online and off.
Hopefully, this:
http://aaeblog.com/2006/11/24/greensleeves-was-all-my-joy/
This ass holes so called tea party should get a life and stop hating, and join the world and move on and stop living in 40s and50s. Life is too short for people to keep hating, look at chenney he need parts in junk yard to fix his heart, cos he has too much hate in his heart.
from the Dysfunctional Medical Center:
Cheney has a heart ???????????? Lake
Party-schmarty.
We’re going to be holding a fucking wake for this country if we don’t get our shit together and quit squabbling over bullshit.
Jenn @44: there are authoritarian Greens, and Dems, and Reps; there are also libertarian Greens, and Dems, and Reps. Some Greens like top-down solutions; some Greens like bottom-up solutions. People who oppose war, support civil liberties, and reject corporatism have every reason to find and celebrate common ground, rather than viewing each other with suspicion. That doesn’t mean libertarians should endorse Green proposals that are statist; it does mean libertarians shouldn’t expect all Greens to be statist.
Exactly!
All Greens are different, just as all Democrats and Republicans have different views within their own parties. Judge the person, not the party.
Brock Merck
Green Party Candidate in Cook County, Illinois
brock merck // Feb 28, 2010:
‘all Democrats and Republicans have different views within their own parties. Judge the person, not the party.’
Then why do folks join other groups ?????? If you love tanks and large guns you probably do not join the Coast Guard! Duh! —– Lake
Brock Merck
Green Party Candidate in Cook County, Illinois
is absolutely and completely correct!
Thanks for running Brock!
The more Tea Party folks who runs as Green Party candidates the better!!
Truly new Tea Party folks need to get on the ballot, and where the Green Party has ballot status in most of the states of America…their way on the ballot is the Green Party.
Dems are babies. The idiots who popped up in this thread are full of nothing but tears and vitriol. I don’t particularly care for Nader, but it is amazing to see them go on and on like this for ten years. Did the Republicans piss and moan for multiple elections over Perot spoiling Bush I and Dole? Did they go after Pat Buchanan’s throat in 2000 the same way Dems went after Nader’s? I don’t remember that at all. Yet, the Dem never really has been man enough to pick on opponents his own size. They’re the ill-liked little twerp at the High School ball who gossips about everyone behind their back.
All because Nader might have had a tiny impact in keeping an old pus bag who should be in jail out of office. Gore, who has spent the last ten years setting up schemes to make money off of fairy tales about polar bears drowning and sea levels washing away major cities. This is a hoax nearly on par with Bush’s WMDs. It may end up killing more people someday too, if the third world has to give up more agricultural land to grow bio-fuel crops instead of food. This is their noble hero.
Or was, until 2008. If their cherished black President (zOMG!!! HE’S BLACK! HE’S BLACK!) is any indication, nothing of value was lost with Gore going down in flames. You get the same result, give or take a few varying schemes and crony advisers.
Go ahead though, Demwits, blame those mean “teabaggers” and that bad Mr. Nader for all your woes. You won’t accept a shred of responsibility again when you’re back in the cancerous minority. You will cry and scream and shake over how unfair it was that teabags and third wheels cheated you out of another term of corruption. Shake, you assholes, shake ’til you break!
WOW, what a fun thread! Not too often we get to talk directly to leftists and liberals. HI LEFTISTS AND LIBERALS! How you guys doing?
Right now we’re in a massive internal dispute. We’re separating the pro-militant elements from the non-militant libertarian purists. Hopefully this means people see that freedom is NOT monolithic and it does come in all colors. So some of the stuff you guys are talking about can actually happen.
I don’t think a lot of you understand what we are about, so you’ll mistake our agenda. As far as government goes, if it’s not SPECIFICALLY ENUMERATED in the Constitution, we’re generally against it no matter how “friendly” or “sensible” it might seem.
You’ll also notice that we denounce democracy and understand that the Constitution provides for a REPUBLICAN form of government. But don’t confuse this with the modern political parties. They both suck.
LET ME GIVE YOU SOME INSIDER INFO: a war is commencing to retake the LPUS and restore it to it’s purist values. This creates an open door for you leftists to come in and see if it’s comfy for you. This is where we can all potentially meet up. There’s 0% chance any of us will come over to the Green flag, it’s ideologically incompatible.
R3VOlUTION!
Imagine it would ge GREAT to have 435 Tea Party folks as Green Party candidates on the ballot for U.S. House in 2010.
AND 33 Tea Party/Green Party candidates for U.S. Senate in 2010!..
and Governor, and state legislature…
Remember Tea Party folks the Green Party has ballot status in over 30 states… Come join the Green Party, and get on the ballot as a candidate without all those burdensome signatures.
It’ll be great!!
PS…the truth is this is already happening in various congressional races across the country..
see Jill Stein’s invite in Massacusetts, Rich Whitney in Illinois…etc..
If you’re a Democrat, and you truly believe that the only thing keeping Gore from his rightful victory in 2000 was Ralph Nader’s campaign, the solution could not be more simple: pick up the phone and call your Democratic president, congressional majority, and state legislators, and tell them to pass instant runoff voting this year.
Instant runoff voting allows voters to rank the candidates, which eliminates any so-called “spoiler effect”. If no candidate receives a majority in the first round, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and the ballots cast for her transfer to the voters’ second choice. This continues until one candidate has a majority.
Instant runoff voting has been adopted in numerous American cities, including Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland, St. Paul, Memphis, and Burlington. Fairvote.org has more details on IRV and other improvements we should make to our broken electoral system.
The point of this press release is that if the tea partiers took their name from the Boston Tea Party, they should respect what those early American radicals stood for. Were they not rebelling against a state that put corporate profits before the interests of its people?
“I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our
government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of
our country.” –Thomas Jefferson
Something tells me those early American radicals would not approve of the future USA fighting resource wars in the Middle East.
“He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. ” -Thomas Paine
Or of the bipartisan evisceration of the Bill of Rights.
“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” -Ben Franklin
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
-Thomas Paine
If there is anyone among the tea partiers who thinks corporate money in politics is wrong, and who is committed to principles of grassroots democracy, social justice, nonviolence and ecology, then I would welcome them to the Green Party.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. ”
-Thomas Paine
I agree.
Perot did no such thing (neither did Nader, for that matter).
And yes, some Republicans do refuse to sign Libertarian and Constitution Party ballot access petitions for this alleged reason.
I’ll grant that the Democrats have been worse about it.
Not exactly.
According to Ballot Access News:
Libertarian Party: 29 states
Green Party: 17 states
Constitution Party: 16 states
The next highest after that is the Working Families Party, with 4 states.
Excellent point. The original BTP was rebelling against the unfairness of an exemption from the tea tax for the British East Indies Company, a government-connected corporation.
This put independent importers on an uneven playing field when trying to compete against the quasi-monopoly.
Similar corporate welfare scams are rife today.
I can’t find it at the moment, but Ernie Hancock of FreedomsPhoenix.com has an updated declaration of independence making the case for Arizona (or potentially, any state) to withdraw from the union. The vast majority of the language is directly from the original Declaration of Independence of 1776; very little had to be changed, and it is once again all true.
I fully agree with all that.
My vision for getting there, which is fully compatible with both the key green values and the libertarian non-initiation of force principle (and differing somewhat from both the current Green Party platform and from many who call themselves libertarians), is spelled out by Dr. Roderick Long at
http://aaeblog.com/2006/11/24/greensleeves-was-all-my-joy/
I highly suggest everyone interested in these ideas read it!
@62 “The original BTP was rebelling against the unfairness of an exemption from the tea tax for the British East Indies Company, a government-connected corporation.”
Didn’t the Tea Act repeal the tea tax and only leave in place the Townshend duty? That duty was used to pay colonial officials and make them dependent on Parliament rather than the receiving their pay from the colonial legislatures.
The other big factor was that the Act gave a monopoly on tea trade in the colonies to the British East India Company. It is this special privilege that stuck in the throats of many of the founders.
Are Democratic Party apologists still using the craven ‘spoiler’ accusation to try to suppress the Green Party’s legitimate participation in elections? I imagine there’s a secret document somewhere in the Democratic National Committee headquarters that reads as follows:
Democratic Party Agenda circa 2000 and beyond
(1) Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore will run a lousy campaign, agreeing with George W Bush on major issues, especially during the debates, and allowing Bush to take even Tennessee, Gore’s home state.
(2) Show minimal outrage when Republican operatives in Florida obstruct voters, hack computer voting machines, and manipulate the vote count.
(3) Demand vote recounts in only three counties in Florida instead of the whole state.
(4) Acquiesce to the Supreme Court’s biased decision declaring Bush the next president and denying the right of every voter to have his or her vote counted, even though it’s evident that Gore won the popular vote.
(5) When Congress convenes to confirm the 2000 presidential election, no Democratic Senator will stand up in support of black Representatives who object to the outcome on the basis of election theft.
(6) Democrats in Congress will approve major Bush-Cheney agenda, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, and confirmations of extremist rightwing Supreme Court justices.
(7) In 2004, remain silent in the face of evidence that Republicans manipulated the election in Ohio and possibly other states. Allow Greens, with help from some Libertarians, to investigate and demand recounts. Ignore Rep. John Conyers’ report on the election theft. Ignore convictions of Republican operatives for vote tampering.
(8) Ignore Greens & others who urge an election system based on Instand Runoff Voting and other reforms that allow voters to rank their choices, accommodating third parties and ensuring that the winner in an election has majority support.
(9) Blame Ralph Nader and the Green Party for spoiling the 2000 election and for the Bush presidency.
By the way, please note that the Green Party release does not invite the entire Tea Party Movement to go Green. The headline reads “Some Tea Partiers are in the wrong party, say Greens”, the first word of which is SOME.
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=301
I say again. Judge the candidate, not the party. The Green party represents a viable third party in many states. The candidates that run under it’s banner are diverse and are commonly discouraged by both Democrat and Republican antics. Green candidates will pull America out of this recession.
Yes, that’s what I meant to say. Thanks!
Scott McLarty is completely correct in his comments above.
Proof positive that Libertarians like me and Greens like Mr. McLarty can agree on many issues.
This is a joke isn’t it? We wouldn’t touch the green party with a ten foot pole.
No, it’s not a joke. Judge the candidates views, not the parties views. Every candidate represents different values. Many Green candidates have conservative values and are disgusted with shared Republican and Democrat antics. Check it out for yourself. Compare the statements and endorsements of the Republican Candidate to that of the Green Party candidate (me) in my race. I guarantee mine are more compatible with Tea Party Members. I am a Tea Party Member.
I know it’s been months since this post and this thread started.
Now it is even more interesting in retrospect.
We are seeing across the country some Tea Party groups that are obviously bought and paid for reprbanding in the Oil Party.
Quite a few Tea Party people have become Green Party or Independent Green Party members, and are running as Green candidates.
John D. Kelly in Virginia’s 3rd, Jeff Clark in Virginia’s 5th, Floyd Bayne in Virginia’s 7th, Jeremiah Heaton in Virginia’s 9th.
Other examples are in Florida, Illinois, Arkansas..
An interesting Green Party Tea Party story…
Exactly, Green Party Conservative! It comes down to which candidate does not take money and is legit with a sound moral compass. The outsider running as an Independent Green is the go to guy in this election.
Brock Merck
Independent Green Candidate for Cook County Board -9TH District (Cook County, Illinois)