jillstein2016

Edward Snowden should be welcomed home as a hero with a confetti parade.

Sure, then we can take on the zombie political system and get somewhere!

We actually do. You just don’t hear about them because the media circles the wagons around the zombie political parties in order to maintain control. We have had many city councillors like Cameron Gordon in Minneapolis, school committee members, mayors, state representatives and county commissioners. At the same time, we don’t want to give a free pass to the corporate predators that are occupying the presidential races. It’s outrageous that a common-sense community point-of-view is being locked out.

Kshama is doing a great job pushing the envelope in Seattle. It sets an example all around the nation. In my view we have to challenge the system at every level--local and national. Especially where there is a window of opportunity. That window of opportunity is wide-open in the presidential campaign as Hillary and Donald drive people running from the political establishment.

As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. Never has. Never will.” We have to be that demand. Third-party politics is critical for the integrity of the system. Transformational change has always relied on independent third parties. The socialist candidate for president, Eugene Debs, inspired socialist candidates all around the country. They created a threat that moved the agenda for labor rights, for the fourty hour work week, for child labor laws, and Social Security. By challenging at every level of government including the Presidency, they forced the political establishment to move forward. Without independent third-party challenge, we move backwards--not forwards--and corporate hegemony is unchallenged.

So, third parties have to run at the national level in order to be seen because as your question shows, local Green Party candidates are suppressed in the media.

Science is important. And space exploration has many spin-offs for our economy. We should be exploring space instead of destroying planet Earth. If we cut the military budget in half, we'll have plenty of money for human needs on Earth and the advancement of science and space exploration.

Yes, we should increase NASA's funding. And this is something we can easily do by re-directing the dollars being wasted now with a military budget that makes us less safe not more safe while consuming more than half of our discretionary budget.

I am calling for an emergency jobs program that will also solve the emergency of climate change. So we will create jobs, not cut them, in the green energy transition. Specifically we call for a Green New Deal, like the New Deal that got us out of the great depression, but this is also a green program, to create clean renewable energy, sustainable food production, and public transportation - as well as essential social services. In fact we call for the creation of 20 million jobs, ensuring everyone has a good wage job, as part of a wartime scale mobilization to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030. This is the date the science now tells us we must have ended fossil fuel use if we are to prevent runaway climate change. (See for example the recent report by Oil Change International - which says we have 17 years to end fossil fuel use.)

Fortunately, we get so much healthier when we end fossil fuels (which are linked to asthma, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, etc) that the savings in health care alone is enough to repay the costs of the green energy transition. Also, 100% clean energy makes wars for oil obsolete. So we can also save hundreds of billions of dollars cutting our dangerous bloated military budget, which is making us less secure, not more secure.