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VIDEO: Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Explains Her Green New Deal To Thom Hartmann

by on Friday, February 24, 2012 at 7:01 pm EDT in Election 2012, Politics

The following is last night’s Thom Hartmann interview with 2012 Green Party candidate for President, Dr. Jill Stein.

In it, Stein breaks down her FDR-style Green New Deal, her reasons for transitioning from medical doctor to politics, and why America is now ripe for a third party, like the Green Party, whose policy positions, unlike the two major parties, offer real solutions to fix America’s problems.

For those who prefer to read (rather than watch), or for whom English is a second language, I transcribed the first part of the interview. The video interview, in its entirety, follows:

Stein:

As you know, we’ve got about 25 million people now who need a full-time job. And of them, about five-and-a-half million, or so, have been unemployed for well over a year, or a year-and-a-half. So we have really got this ingrained, entrenched problem. We need a solution to actually rise to the magnitude and the seriousness — the emergency — of this jobs problem.  

So the Green New Deal is exactly that. It is modeled after the New Deal that helped get us out of the Great Depression. So it would be basically 25 million jobs that would be created to put people back to work, to end unemployment, and thereby eliminate, put an end to, the recession — at the same time that we transition quickly to a secure green economy for the 21st Century; at the same time we create a secure energy supply.

What’s not to love about this? It’s sort of motherhood and apple pie.

Hartmann: 

Well, but that’s kind of broad brush strokes. What are the specifics?

Stein:

Technically, there are four pieces to the Green New Deal. There is a full-employment program that also comes with an economic bill of rights, that also ensures that everyone has a right to, and will have, health care as a human right, education through college, etc, affordable housing … 

Hartmann:

Sounds like Franklin Roosevelt’s second bill of rights.

Stein:

Exactly. The name ‘New Deal’ is not a coincidence. It is very much inspired by what FDR did. It had a dramatic impact on the economy, and we need that every bit as much now. The President’s plans have aimed for 2 million jobs, or 3 million jobs. And they’ve sort of come and gone, and those jobs packages have relied a lot on tax breaks which are non-specific. They don’t really get the job done.

So, this specifically would provide the funding to ensure that everyone is back to work. It is estimated to cost about what the stimulus package cost the first time around in 2008. About $700 billion, or thereabouts. But the impact would not be 2 million jobs, or 3 million jobs, but rather 25 million jobs. It would also include financial reform as well as a series of democracy reforms, which clearly we need, if we are going to be able to implement these economic reforms.

But getting to the jobs piece, because that is really what is, I think, front and center in most peoples’ minds. That’s really where the urgent need is. So focusing  on that, what the Green New Deal would do would be able to basically create jobs in the areas of the new green economy; to create sustainable communities and thriving local economies.

So what does that mean? That means jobs in typically green areas, like in green renewable energy, in public transportation, in clean manufacturing, and also in local and sustainable agriculture. 

So these are sort of the pillars of it. In addition, it would include also jobs that would make our communities socially sustainable. That ensures that we have teachers, and that we have child care, and senior care workers, and after school workers, and so on. It would begin to fill the critical needs. We have people who are willing and able to do the work. 

We can redirect funds instead of to wars, Wall Street, and tax breaks for the wealthy. We can redirect that money. There is enough to put, basically invest in our economy to be able to solve the economic problem at the same time that we solve our environmental emergencies.

Hartmann:

… Who is Jill Stein?

Stein:

I am a Medical Doctor by training, that discovered that there were a lot of problems with our health care system, and actually with our health. But that we were neglecting the very simple cost-effective solutions up front. As well as neglecting a win-win Medicare-for-all, single-payer-type health care system that could actually provide the care that people need. 

So, as a Medical Doctor, early in my practice, I saw the health care system really failing us. I thought, “Gee, I’m a doctor, I’ll be a public advocate, I will talk to my Legislators.”  And, you know, you start doing that, and you learn pretty quickly that if we want to fix the things that are broken — the health care we need, the jobs we need, the healthy communities we need, the schools, you name it — if we want to fix those problems, we have to first fix the political system, which is terribly broken, and unfortunately is being run by the foxes in charge of the chicken coup, here.

And I’d say that over two decades, really, of advocacy, I’d only seen us backslide and backslide to where I began to feel that instead of being a doctor of health care, in the clinic, I needed to move up and be a doctor of politics, which is what I talk about now. Talking about political medicine, because it is sort of the mother of all illnesses at this point. You’ve got to fix that one in order to fix the other ones.

WATCH:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asqKKrXLxhY[/youtube]

You can learn more about Jill Stein and her positions on a whole host of issues at her website, or by following her on Twitter.

WATCH: The Origins Of #OccupyWallStreet: An Interview With Adbusters’ Micah White

by on Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 1:35 am EDT in Occupy Wall Street, Politics

For those wondering how the revolutionary #OccupyWallStreet movement — which now spans the entire globe — came into being, look no further than Vancouver’s activist magazine & website, Adbusters, and its Senior Editor, Micah White.

In this interview, White discusses the movement’s origins, its leaderless (general assembly) decision-making model — vital to ensuring it doesn’t get co-opted, and its underlying goal: economic justice.

WATCH: 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdvRvJxDYWs#![/youtube]

 

The original concept behind the #OccupyWallStreet movement, was outlined in a July 13, 2011 Adbusters post entitled: #OCCUPYWALLSTREET: A shift in revolutionary tactics.

This post was followed by a succession of Tweets (the first few shown here) which would go on to “launch a thousand ships:”

WATCH: Max Blumenthal Discusses Role Of US Media In Normalizing Israel’s Occupation

by on Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 12:41 pm EDT in Middle East, World

Sternchen Productions recently recorded a must-watch series of interviews with Max Blumenthal, where he discusses a wide gamut of Israel/Palestine-related topics. 

In the video entitled “The role of the media in the Israel/Palestine conflict” (the video follows) Blumenthal describes instances of the US media insidiously crafting pro-Israel narratives to overshadow if not to flat-out whitewash Israel’s brutal policies:

On Fox News:

I had a friend who was working in Fox News, and she got a memo from management during the Israeli assault on Gaza — Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 — that told them to essentially not report what was happening, and gave them a list of talking points to highlight about Hamas being a terror organization.

I was on a Fox News program at that time and that all came out. They actually brought in a special guest to talk about the terrorist roots of Hamas. And they cut me off when I attempted to question any of the prevailing narrative that was coming out on Fox News and they told me that I wasn’t being collegial. 

On The New York Times:

It’s more revealing to look at what’s happening at the New York Times — which is the newspaper of record in the US. […]

There was better reporting when Steven Erlanger was the Middle East Bureau Chief, and even when John Burns was covering the second intifada, although his reporting was incredibly flawed. 

Now, the Middle East Bureau Chief is Ethan Bronner, who appears to be a committed Zionist; whose son served in the Israeli army; who lives and works out of a home in Jerusalem that was confiscated from the [Palestinian] Karmi family, which now lives here in London — Ghada Karmi. It was bought by Thomas Friedman when he was the Middle East Bureau Chief, without a second thought.

I would be deeply uncomfortable working in that building.

And if you look at who [Bronner] quotes — these are his friends — and how he quotes them: “the head of the Jewish National Fund was walking through Sderot yesterday when a rocket fell.” What does the Jewish National Fund have to with that, and who are they anyway? It’s just, he’s quoting his friends.

He referred to the Israeli assault on Gaza as “Israel’s anti-rocket invasion”, and he uses this kind of language constantly. You don’t even see that from Mark Regev. It’s much more dangerous than Mark Regev, because it’s insidious.

And Bronner recently did a story about a — what he claimed — was a bold, new, grassroots initiative of Israelis and Palestinians communicating online on Facebook and reaching out to one another. You know, because he’s constantly trying to normalize occupation. He didn’t mention that this initiative was AstroTurffed by the Peres Center For Peace, run by Shimon Peres — the architect of the Qana massacre in Lebanon. It didn’t have very many members at all, and that the Israelis who were writing in on the Facebook page — to say how great it was to talk to their Palestinian brothers — were employees of the Peres Center For Peace and the Palestinian administrators were as well. So, it’s completely insidious. And I think it plays a role — not turning people anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian — but really in normalizing occupation.

[…]

In the interview, Blumenthal goes on to describe the western press corps who often do their reporting from within the confines of Israel-proper, and the Israel Lobby’s bullying tactics back in America, where they relentlessly work to intimidate individuals in both the media and academia.

WATCH:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap8cIsb5hgY[/youtube]

You can watch the rest of Sternchen’s Max Blumenthal interviews, by following the links below:

1. Israel’s ‘response’ to the Eilat bus shootings >> watch HERE

2. His experiences as a facts-based citizen journalist, including: online Hasbara trolls, the main stream media (when covering right-wing politics versus Israel/Palestine), Israel’s racial-profiling screening process when entering the country >> watch HERE

3. The power and the impact of the Christian Zionist lobby in the US >> watch HERE

Julian Assange: Western Newspapers Hesitant To Publish Israel-Related Leaks

by on Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:28 pm EDT in Middle East, Politics, WikiLeaks, World

In a new, largely unreported Al Jazeera interview (with Julian Assange’s responses overdubbed in Arabic), the WikiLeaks founder reveals that he intends to release 3,700 documents pertaining to Israel. 2,700 of these documents, he said, originate from within Israel, and include “Sensitive and classified documents” on the 2006 military excursion into Lebanon (which resulted in […]

WATCH: Cenk Uygur Interviews WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange On Dylan Ratigan Show

by on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 9:09 pm EDT in Politics, WikiLeaks, World

The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur conducted a terrific interview today with Julian Assange on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show. They covered a wide range of topics including: Assange’s role as a publisher/member of the press, 1st Amendment Rights, the main stream media’s gradual shift from demonizing WikiLeaks to now somewhat defending the whistleblower group; and […]

Watch: First Interview With Mastermind Of ‘Anonymous’ Hacker Group

by on Friday, December 10, 2010 at 12:24 pm EDT in Politics, WikiLeaks, World

RT just released an exclusive interview with the mastermind of the ‘Anonymous’ hacker group.  The group has for some time been conducting something of a cyber war using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against anti-piracy groups — including Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).  They refer to their […]