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Occupy the White House

20.05.12

“I would not [say I’m an Live Wall Street candidate], because I think they have to decide who their candidate is,” Stein says in a phone check out from Boston, her hometown.

But in the same breath, she highlights the seamlessness between her candidacy and the Occupy Derange Street movement, describing the warm reception she received when she stopped by the Fill in Chicago base during a recent campaign trip through Illinois.

“I would say, when I went and showed up in Chicago, there were people who came up to me who said, ‘Oh, you’re Jill Stein — I’m so ready you’re here. I’m so grateful for what you’re doing,’ ” she says.

Occupy Wall Street prospect or not, Stein is embracing the movement — and also taking the nation’s college students under her wing — in launching a fancy-shot bid for the White House as another in a long line of third-party candidates who have qualified various levels of success in shaking up presidential campaigns of the recent gone.

Synergy

Stein started considering a run for the presidency when the debt-ceiling climax took shape in Washington last spring. 

“This [was] really a crisis of the president’s the world, so that was pretty problematic to start with,” she says. “Then when he put Medicare, Medicaid and Common Security on the chopping block … it seemed to me absolutely unconscionable for the president’s policies not to be challenged.”

Stein announced her presidential bid in most recent October. Her main policy platform is what she calls the “Green New Deal,” which she claims will end unemployment through sway investments in energy efficiency, among other tools. She promises to protect citizens from the peculiar interests of Wall Street and corporate America and sees her campaign as “stuffing the void of a national voice for the 99 percent.”

Sound familiar?

That the Amuse Wall Street movement emerged as Stein was plotting her presidential run is fundamentally a coincidence, she says, but a great one at that.

“It was so exciting to hear the same agenda reflected back at us, particularly from a younger generation,” she says. “It felt almost miraculous that this was taking place.”

But she’s careful not to appear opportunistic. 

“We are not looking to hijack them or force them to be electoral or push them in any way to shift from what they’re doing,” Stein says. “I think the chemistry between the two entities is heavy and synergistic, and we’ll see where it goes.”

It remains unclear how willing the Occupy Wall Suiting someone to a T activists are to embrace Stein. An Occupy Boston spokesman said the set doesn’t endorse politicians and was unsure whether Stein had made any lasting impression on his comrades.

“I do take it I have heard that name around camp, but I am pretty sure she has kept a low profile,” spokesman Ryan Cahill wrote in an email.

Students

Stein sees a more believable base on college campuses, and her first campaign stop reflected that priority.

The seeker traveled to Macomb, Ill., after being invited to Western Illinois University’s mock presidential selection, a two-week event that includes conventions, campaigns and nominations. Stein won 27 percent of the opt, coming in third behind President Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

“I was, of course, the only office-seeker interested enough to show up at this thing,” she says, conceding that WIU is “hardly a breeding ground of activism for Green politics.” 

“We are very excited at the resonance we’ve had with students in particular, and that will be a dominating priority for us,” Stein says. “The student group, Campus Greens in Western Illinois, is growing and portion other colleges start up groups.”

It’s not hard to understand why any college student facing an extraordinarily well-built job market and student-loan repayments would take a second look at Stein’s candidacy. She proposes exoneration of student-loan debt and a tuition-free option at public colleges and universities.

“Students are currently an indentured year — they graduate with loans, which they cannot pay without loans,” she says. “It’s very harsh for them to be contributors to the economy.”

She’s hoping to grow her student support from the Midwest outward. Other than a 10-day trek through California in late November, her campaign hasn’t yet planned other stops — “We are at the outset of developing our plans,” she says — but ideally, she’d like to have students chaperone her along the campaign trail.

Political awakening

Stein is a 61-year-old physician who was recruited by the Country-like Party in 2002 to run for Massachusetts governor after having made a name for herself in advocacy. She was working on community-sincere solutions to obesity, cancer, learning disabilities and other public health issues when the Grassy Party asked her to consider politics.

“I was not a political animal, but I was approached by the Rural Party at a time when I was waking up,” she says.

After losing the 2002 contest, she mounted losing campaigns in 2004, for the Massachusetts House of Representatives; in 2006, for Massachusetts Commonwealth secretary; and in 2010, again for the governorship. She won races for Lexington Municipality Meeting representative in 2005 and 2008.

“To my mind, low vote counts are not a reflection of a failed compete,” she says.

What’s come out of her serial candidacy, Stein says, is an form that will help her attack the monumental task that third-party candidates confront every presidential circle: obtaining enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

Former Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader says signature collection alone can consume a third-party throw’s resources.

“By the time you finish, it’s Labor Day, and you’re exhausted, and you don’t have any money,” says Nader, adding that he sees be in store for in Stein. “She’s an M.D., which is a good advantage, since healthcare is a big issue … She has a righteous head on her shoulders.”

But if Nader faced an uphill battle in his two third-party presidential runs, Stein is looking at reaching for the absurd, one expert says.

While Nader had name recognition before entering electoral politics, “when you pick Jill Stein, you’re starting from zero,” says Southern Methodist University administrative science Professor Cal Jillson, noting that the only third-party presidential candidate to win was Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

What’s more, Jillson says, “the supreme parties write the rules for the participation of third-party candidates, and they write them in a way as to hand over it as difficult for them as possible to participate.” 

No matter how long her odds of winning, Stein is brimming with pastime after her first campaign stop. She plans to build her strength and conserve resources on upcoming trips by staying with neighbourhood pub Green Party supporters, many of whom “tend to have really healthy foods … or elementary gardens in their backyards.”

“The trip to Illinois was … the first road test,” Stein says, “and it felt major.

Source: The Hill

American's Comfortably Numb on the Highway to Economic Collapse

20.05.12

I was baffled at the rage directed towards mostly young people who haven’t even begun their working careers and have played no part in the ruining of our economic system underway for the last 30 years. The people making these statements are bull's-eye aged, middle class suburbanites. They seem to be just as livid as the OWS protestors, but their ire is being directed towards the only people who have bewitched a stand against Wall Street greed and Washington D.C. malfeasance. I’m liberal scratching my head trying to understand their animosity towards people drawing distinction to the enormous debt based ponzi scheme that is our country, versus their mute acquiescence to the transfer of trillions in taxpayer dollars to the criminal bankers that have destroyed the worldwide fiscal system. I can only come to the conclusion the average American has become so apathetic, willfully ignorant of facts and genuineness, distracted by the techno-gadgets that run their lives, uninterested in anything beyond next week’s adventure of Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore, and willing to let the corporate media moguls genre their opinions for them through relentless propaganda, the only thing that will get their attention is an absolute collapse of our trade scheme. Uninformed, unconcerned, intellectually vacant Americans will get exactly that in the not too far-off future. The anger and vitriol directed at OWS protestors by middle class Americans is a misdirected repulsion to a quandary they can’t quite comprehend. They know their lives are getting more demanding but aren’t sure why. They are paying more for energy, food, tuition, and legitimate estate taxes, while the price of their houses decline and their wages stagnate. More than a ninety days of all homeowners are underwater on their mortgage and many are drowning in credit card and student loan debt. At the same period, government drones tell them the economy is in its second year of recovery and corporate profits are at all-while highs. Government statistics, false storylines, and entitlement programs are designed to snarl up the public and obscure the fact we are in the midst of another Depression. Everyone has seen the pictures of the Basic Depression breadlines, farmers forced off their land during the dustbowl, and downtrodden Americans in soup kitchens. The pecuniary conditions today are as bad as or worse than the Great Depression. This Depression is hidden from bare view because there are no unemployment lines, bread lines, or soup lines. We are experiencing an electronic Well-known Depression, as food stamps, unemployment compensation, Social security payments and welfare benefits are electronically delivered to millions of recipients. The artifice in government reported figures is borne out by the most successful government program of the Obama oversight, which has been adding participants at an astounding rate. The Food Stamp program has been a smashing triumph as we’ve added 13.8 million Americans to this fine program since Obama’s inauguration, a undiluted 43% increase in less than three years. There are now 45.8 million Americans dependent upon nourishment stamps for survival, 14.7% of the U.S. population. This program began in 1969 and enrollment always surges during recessions and declines during recoveries. But a puzzling thing happened during our current “recovery”. The government reported our economic downturn over in December 2009. It was certainly over for the Wall Street psychopaths as they rewarded themselves with $43 billion of bonuses in 2009/2010. The add up of Americans on food stamps has risen by 6.8 million during this government sponsored “salvage”. You’ll be happy to know that Obama’s good buddy – Jamie Dimon – and his well run car at JP Morgan earns hundreds of millions administering the SNAP program. The oligarchy of moneyed interests have done a spectacular job convincing the working stomach class they should be angry at 20 year old OWS protestors, illegal immigrants and the inner New Zealand urban area welfare class, rather than the true culprits – the Federal Reserve, Infuriate Street banks and mega-corporations. This is a testament to the power of propaganda and the bookish slothfulness of the average American. U.S. based mega-corporations fired 864,000 higher wage American workers between 2000 and 2010, while hiring almost 3 million workers in low wage non-native countries, using their billions in cash to buy back their own stocks, and paying corporate executives shamefully unwarranted compensation. The corporate mainstream media treats corporate CEO’s like indigent stars as if they deserve to be compensated at a level 185 times the average woman. The S&P 500 consists of the 500 biggest companies in America and while the executives of these companies have reaped millions in compensation, the clich index for these companies is at the exact level it was on July 9, 1998. Over the last thirteen years workers were fired by the thousands, shareholders earned 0% (cold 39% on an inflation adjusted basis), and executives got fabulously rich.         Americans have been snookered into renouncing their citizenship and converting to being fatuous consumers. Citizenship requires a person to be actively engaged in the community with obligations to complement citizens and future generations. Consumerism requires people to love things, avail oneself of debt, worry about what others have, and become driven by the accumulation of possessions and the appearance of wealth. The vile exhibition that Madison Avenue maggots have coined Black Friday is the terminating display of consumerism. In a nauseating display of senseless spending driven by retail conglomerates, Americans act like Pavlov’s salivating dogs by lining up for hours to scatter over and pepper spray other consumers to get the ultimate deal on that Chinese made toaster oven, Vietnamese made laptop, Korean made HDTV, or Mexican made tortilla maker. They don’t seem to seize the irony of going deeper into debt buying cheap crap made in transpacific countries by the workers who took their jobs. The mainstream media proclaims a hugely eminent Black Friday as millions bought crap they didn’t desideratum with money they don’t have, while millions more ate their Thanksgiving meals in food shelters – unreported by the media.This off-putting manifestation of consumerism is applauded and encouraged by our government, as described by George Monbiot: Edward Bernays, the cur of propaganda to control the masses, would be so proud of his disciples running our country today. He apparently believed only an elite few were intellectually capable of running the show. Essentially, he hit upon the concept of the 1% too revealing the 99% what they should think and believe over eighty years ago. The mechanisms for controlling the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the populace are so much more efficient today. The conditioning begins when we are children, as every child will be bombarded with at least 30,000 hours of Newspeak broadcast by media corporations by the time they reach adulthood. Their minds are molded and they are instructed what to be convinced of and what to value. Those in control of society want to keep the masses entertained at an infantile even, with instant gratification and satisfying desires as their only considerations. The elite have achieved their Alpha rank through intellectual superiority, control of the money system, and control of the political process. Their power emanates from eliminating choices, while giving the will-o'-the-wisp of choice to the masses. People think they are free, when in reality they are slaves to a two social gathering political system, a few Wall Street banks, and whatever our TVs tell us to buy. Our entire system is designed to handle the thoughts and actions of the masses. In many ways it is done subtly, while recently it has become more bold and obtrusive. It is essential for the ruling elite to keep control of our minds through media messages and the revelatory system. It is not a surprise that our public education system has methodically deteriorated over the last four decades. The government gained rule over education and purposely teaches our children selected historical myths, collective engineering gibberish and only the bare essentials of math and science. The government creates the standardized tests and approves the textbooks. We are Nautical port with millions of functionally illiterate children that grow into non-critical thinking adults. This is the enforce result desired by the 1%. If too many of the 99% were able to ignore the media hoop-la and think for themselves, revolution would result. This is why the moneyed interests have circled the wagons, invoked administer state thug tactics, and used all the powers of their media machine to squash the OWS machinery. It threatens their power and control. A highly educated engaged citizenry would be a hazard to the existing social order. The 1%, educated at our finest universities, does not lack average Americans to obtain a great education for a reasonable price. They inadequacy them to get a worthless diploma at an excessively high price tag and become debt slaves to the Block Street 1%. They want uneducated, indebted consumers, not educated prolific citizens. Our republic has been slowly perverted since the time of its inception. The insidious change had been slow and methodical until 1913. The establishment of the Federal Reserve by an elite troop of bankers and their politician friends and the establishment of a personal income tax created the conditions that have allowed a diminutive cabal of powerful men to dictate the course of our economic, political, social, and military policies for the last 98 years. Anyone that chooses to start the ball rolling

Source: The Market Oracle