I will expand on the reasons to vote for, work for, stump for, and give money to Jill Stein as the election season unfolds. There are literally trillions of them, as in the trillions of dollars going from your pockets into the military-industrial-complex. But in this first post, I am asking you to ignore the quality of Jill Stein as a candidate for governor, and reach for a higher plane of civic participation — based on principle and a commitment to small-d democratic ideals.
I am asking for you to take a few steps, in the spirit of democracy, toward a healthier democratic process:
1. Sign this petition to WRKO asking them to invite third-party candidate Jill Stein to their debate.
2. Give $10 to Stein on Democracy Day — Thursday June 10th, to help balance the playing field against the corporate interests that are already flooding the campaign coffers of Charlie Baker, Tim Cahill, and Deval Patrick.
3. Chime in here at Blue Mass Group that you’d like BMG editors to reconsider their early endorsement of Patrick. Not because you won’t eventually support him, but because you want to hear out the various candidates before making such a momentous decision and hold Governor Patrick to high standards.
The choice is yours — between practicing small-d democracy or being an instrument for big-D Democratic politics. Choose wisely.
I voted “all viable candidates should be included” before I realized that Jill Stein had apparently been included in that list.
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p>I’m not sure what RKO has to do with anything, BMG endorsements have always been a bit murky, but it’s their blog and I don’t imagine it counts for much of anything, and I’m not going to let the periodic debate question leverage money out of my wallet to Jill Stein’s vanity campaign.
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p>Get 30 GRP running for state house across the Commonwealth, and I’ll take a gubernatorial campaign seriously. Aside from that, it’s a vanity effort.
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p>What about a principled stand that two big-tent parties (well, the GOP is still working on that!) is a pretty good, stable system that regularly reflects the “median” will of the people in election results?
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p>TedF
What one person in the middle thinks about any given issue is meaningless. The more voices we include, the closer we get to reality because we challenge our thinking, challenge our understanding, and let the best ideas and analysis rise to the top. If we limit the political discourse to a narrow range of opinion and policy, then we get stagnation, not stability. The economic and ecological meltdowns that are underway are the product of this stagnation — and quite the opposite of stability.
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p>What we need right now is the political equivalent of innovation… What we need is the political equivalent of biodiversity. Nature shows us that diversity leads to resilience. If we dumb down our thinking to 2 black and white choices, we dumb down our politics, our policies, and our priorities.
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p>We need real leadership right now, and the Democratic Party is simply not providing it. And I don’t see how it ever will, because it’s built on a foundation of narrowly-defined competing self-interests. We need a politics that can embrace the connections between issues and advance cross-cutting solutions to the mounting crises of our time.
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p>The casino bill, which the Governor, the State House and the State Senate all seem to be hawking now, is a case in point. Narrowly going after jobs on the backs of the families, communities, and small-businesses that resort casinos in MA will be destroying is like trying to cure a cold with a handgun. If you sell bullets, or guns, or health insurance, it makes a LOT of sense!
that would be helpful.
obviously it would be helpful, but it’s not the only way to ensure she gets invited. If enough people simply sign the petition or help spread the word, it’ll get her on.
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p>A healthy, functioning democracy is in everyone’s best interest, but it requires both vigilance and a basic belief that it’s possible to get there.
ain’t happening. No signature drive is going to get Jill on RKO on June 16th. They dumped Cahill fast when they could get Patrick to debate Baker. That’s going to be the show. This is certainly not going to decide the election, but after the summer when the debate are on TV Jill Stein, provided that she is on the ballot should included in the debates. I’m with you if that does not happen.
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p>At least to me anyway, this stuff you are posting is a little over the top.
My personal opinion is that all candidates qualified for the ballot should be included.
I’m not totally sure on the dates for independent candidates, but to my knowledge, neither Jill Stein nor Tim Cahill has cqualifed for the ballot.
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p>I would anticipate that Tim will legally qualify. I don’t know enough about Jill to hazard a guess. So they are clearly using a different standard than ballot qualification since Tim Cahill was invited.
Fox 25 link.
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p>That leaves Jill Stein as the only other potential candidate that has not qualified for the ballot.
I was at a couple of town meetings in May at which people were collecting signatures for Tim Cahill. The announcement did not say whether or not they had been certified and turned in to the Election Division.
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p>If he has the signatures but they are not turned in, is he “legally qualified” to be on the ballot?
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p>Does it matter?
Simply pointing out that April announcement, then clarified with the second reply noting that was what Cahill said. Where was it noted that it was certified???? But as Baker and Tiesi recently brought their signatures in and alerted the media, it seems as they have enough. Interesting that he is still collecting signatures though.
while Stein has not yet qualified for the ballot, and has until August to do so.
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p>But this petition is about pressuring them to invite all viable candidates to their only gubernatorial debate. Their use of the public airwaves to pick and choose who they determine to be worthy of coverage is part and parcel of the corporate media establishment playing the role of democracy gatekeepers. Instead of giving voters and listeners all the important information they’ll need to make a fully informed decision, they are cherry-picking that information and marketing it to serve their own vested interests. I think it’s highly suspicious that this corporate-sponsored debate is choosing to exclude the one candidate and one political party that refuses corporate money.
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p>Tom Finneran is one of the most anti-democratic forces this state has ever seen, and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. Stein has gotten her 10,000 signatures both times she ever tried. The likelihood of her being on the ballot is probably 99%, and there is no serious skepticism about whether she’ll make it. The juxtaposition of Stein, who was a fierce champion of the Clean Elections Law and Finneran, the major sleaze ball who scuttled it, is stark. It’s no accident that she’s not being invited.
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p>But in the interests of democracy, a little pressure campaign on WRKO is all that’s necessary for them to extend an invitation to someone who is currently polling higher than she ever did in 2002 — when she was the consensus winner of the one major debate they included her in. Signing the petition and donating $10 are two ways to make it loud and clear that the voters of Massachusetts are sick and tired of being told who they can vote for.
You got a citation for that?
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p>I voted qualified candidate, not viable, as viability is a subjective judgement. I’m not crazy about ‘standing in the polls’ requirements, either.
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p>IMHO, it’s going to be a lot harder to exclude the lady given that Cahill will be included. We had good 4-way debates in 2006, so why not again?
TV and Radio stations are NOT required to give equal coverage or time to all candidates…long ago and far away President reagan did away with the “Fairness Doctrine” that require stations to be evenhanded if they wanted to get their licenses renewed. Stations do have to offer every candidate equal access to advertising slots…BUT NOT FREE…if a candidate buys $100,000 worth of spots, other candidates can ask for an equal amount of spots and equitable placement BUT they musty be able to pay for them. That prevents one candidate from buying up every slot available to lock out an opponent…but if the opponent is broke, to bad for them.
From §315 of the Communications Act of 1934:
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p>From WikiPedia:
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p>And sadly, yes, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.
of voting for a candidate, then that candidate should not be included in the debates. We have a signature threshold for a reason, and that reason suggests that, for better or worse, there is a minimum of community (used loosely) support for a person’s candidacy. If a person did not qualify to get on the ballot, then that person has no substantial or legitimate claim to a voice in any publicly broadcast debate. End of story?
n/t
then included in debates. If the candidate qualifies to be on the ballot, the candidate should be included in every forum that is broadcast to the masses. That’s the decent and right thing to do. But, then again, politics is rarely decent and almost never right.
quality of the last gubernatorial debates, but had no apparent lasting impact on political discourse.
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p>I would support Jill Stein’s participation in the debates if she had the signatures to be on the ballot. Otherwise, a whole can of worms–namely, the Larouchies–would have legitimate claims on participation. Their voice is best left to the loud-speaker on the car they drove around the DCU last Saturday.
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p>The double-standard is clear if Cahill gets to debate without being on the ballot.