On health care, Stein noted that “None of the Beacon Hill candidates had a long term solution to the problem of rising health care costs. “None of them were willing to take on the big insurance companies and go after insurance waste, which is consuming one-third of our health care dollars.”
Patrick and Baker clashed over whether Baker was responsible for the Big Dig debt. Baker claimed he was involved with only 10% of the project cost. Stein dismissed this entire argument with the observation that “It’s time to admit that failure to control costs at the Big Dig was very much a bipartisan problem. The initial Big Dig contract may have been signed under a Republican Administration, but the Democratic Party controlled the state legislature and refused to insist on tight oversight. Both parties were focused on pocketing campaign donations from Big Dig contractors. The solution to problems like this will have to come from outside the Democratic or Republican Parties, with their money-driven political machines. I’m the only candidate calling for the fundamental reforms in campaign finance that can really solve this type of problem.”
Stein observed that “The low point for me was when Tim Cahill claimed that undocumented immigrants were taking jobs and resources away from ‘our people’. And neither Baker or the Governor offered any clear challenge to this dangerous and divisive assertion. The Governor said only that we already had laws in place to deny services to immigrants, and that crackdowns were a Federal responsibility. I think that anyone who aspires to be the Governor of this Commonwealth should be quick to stand up and stop attempts to turn people against each other – and especially attempts to get struggling people to blame the poorest and least powerful among us for our problems. Our current economic crisis has everything to do with the greed and abuse coming from Wall Street and we need to stop the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants.”
We know that when they talk about cuts, they are talking about the library, the food pantry and actual things we need, whereas the biotech and banking white elephants and Billy Bulger’s pension will never get touched.
and it can all be summed up by the political muscle behind the short-sighted casino push.
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p>But no matter what issue you’re looking at, it’s the same pattern:
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p>For ethics reform, climate/energy action, healthcare reform, corporate tax loopholes, tax relief, program cuts, etc:
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p>1) Slick rhetoric
2) Marginal/questionable action
3) Slick rhetoric
4) ?
5) Profit
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p>Baker, Cahill, and Patrick all protect a system where vested interests buy government action or inaction. And we the voters are getting reamed by this government of, by, and for the special interests.
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p>It’s past time we do something about it, and voting for and working for Jill Stein are two clear-as-heck actions to take back government so it works for the people.
I don’t see a major contradiction between her positions and a general move towards smaller, more local government.
Perhaps if he realizes how PO’d we are he’ll start taking on some of the real issues.
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p>He’s been rolling over to get re-elected, we got him where he is & now he’s backed away from our agenda!
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p>If Jill get’s anything over 7 % of the vote he’ll know he has to get serious about our issues.
Sorry you didn’t get a second term, but I wanted to run a vanity campaign under the mistaken assumption that my candicacy could somehow change political discourse in the Commonwealth?
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p>Or something like that?
Not as long as he has Cahill on the wing.
Stein should serve to get him back on the right path.
Anyway, “‘l’enfer, c’est les autres” as Sartre said in French. Good signature.
What message? That his campaign for a third term is in danger. Haha.
We have to change the game, not the individual players. Patrick protects the game and its rules, which are rigged to protect wealth, to grow wealth, to pit people against each other, to extract natural resources and pollute the planet, all at accelerating rates. He offers fake, half-inch-deep reforms, like ethics reform, then goes around applauding himself as if it actually solved anything. On those rare occasions where he actually put some political weight behind a good reform, like CORI reform, he’s more than happy to take all the credit, when the reality is that it was passed because of years of hard work from Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, the Boston Workers Alliance, and the Commonwealth CORI Coalition.
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p>If you want to vote for Stein to send a message, you have to be willing to live with the consequences of your actions. You very well could help to elect Charlie Baker. I think you’re right that voting for Stein sends a loud-and-clear message. It says that we’re done voting for the lesser of evils, and that we’re going to vote for the candidates we believe in, that speak for us, that stand up for our values. Yes, the higher she’s polling, the more Patrick will have to rev up the progressive populist rhetoric, and show some campaign fire. And maybe that will help him win. But honestly, why would you want to reelect a politician with this fake progressive narrative?
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p>Patrick is awash in campaign cash from big-money corporate donors. And so is Baker. And so is Cahill (of course, now Cahill also wants to take $750,000 in public matching funds too, which is simply nauseating). If any of these 3 are our next governor, they will have favors to repay. And just because Jill Stein is being written off as having zero chance, I think there’s a non-zero chance she can win this thing. She’s the only “people’s candidate” in the race, and the people are pissed off right now and sick of the garbage we’ve been forcefed for so many years. Her participation in the first televised debate started to change the political conversation, implanting ideas that don’t fit the convenient narrative of politics-as-usual. As the debates go on, I think she’ll continue to give the masses of pissed off voters something much more meaningful than Scott Brown’s slick campaigning to vote FOR. Remember that 18% of Brown’s voters chose him because the Democrats didn’t go far enough on healthcare. Remember all those Democrats and independents who stayed home for that election because Martha Coakley didn’t inspire their support. Stein is the kind of candidate that can energize the masses, including the hoards who normally don’t vote at all.
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p>But at the end of the day, it’s not about Stein or Patrick or Baker or Cahill. It’s about a system that’s rotten to its core, and the open question of whether or not We The People are going to do something about changing it. Things like Voter Choice / Instant Runoff Voting would let us rank our favorite candidate to remove all the spoiler nonsense. Clean Elections (which the voters approved by a 2-to-1 margin before the unaccountable legislature threw it out on an unrecorded voice vote) would dramatically change the equation of money’s influence over our political system, and prevent the type of disgusting abuse that Cahill is aiming for… combining corporate cash and taxpayer cash to fund his racist and divisive campaign.
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p>We need to change the game, and voting for Stein, donating to her campaign, organizing for her, etc. is the clearest way to help change it, as she’s the only candidate who’s trying to do that.