While Patrick fights it out with Republican Charlie Baker about who can make Massachusetts friendlier to business, Stein is the only one more concerned with making the Commonwealth friendlier to We the People. That means putting people back to work as we transition to a healthier, greener economy, to resilient regional and local enterprises, and to a renewed vision of prosperity for all.
On issues of critical interest to progressives, Patrick’s record as governor is strewn with either outright betrayal or with ineffective reforms wrapped in self-promoting rhetoric. On healthcare, ethics reform, transportation reform, education reform, corporate tax loopholes, tax incentive clawback rules, climate and energy legislation, funding human services, property taxes, and local aid to cities and towns, Governor Patrick has taken us baby steps forward in the best cases, and significant steps backward in the worst, while the treadmill we’re on has been zooming backwards all the while.
Patrick has had little impact on the powerful Democratic leaders in the Legislature. The one clear issue where he made a decisive difference is in expediting schemes to bring gambling casinos to Massachusetts as a false jobs and revenue solution.
Patrick’s four years so far are characterized by an almost unbroken continuation of the policies of his Republican predecessor Mitt Romney. Romney’s health care plan is being enthusiastically implemented by Patrick. Patrick speaks proudly of his work advancing the Romney concept of “expedited permitting.” And he is doing more to privatize public education than any charter school-promoting Republican ever dreamed of doing. When asked recently to name the politician he most admired, Patrick picked New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a pro-business free trader who was elected to office as a Republican (although he has since become an independent). If you want someone who you can trust to advance the traditional values of the Democratic Party, Patrick is definitely not your choice.
If any doubt remains about the Governor’s lack of progressive credentials it should be settled by the Governor’s words himself, as he admitted just one week after being elected that the greatest misconception about him was the whole “liberal thing.” The carefully constructed image of Patrick as a progressive savior throughout his entire 2006 campaign appears to have been a calculated fraud perpetrated upon the voters. And the same campaign tactic is evident in 2010.
So what about Jill Stein? Stein is clearly standing up for the core values of Massachusetts progressives. Unlike Patrick, she continuously advocates for public campaign financing (Clean Elections), universal single-payer health care, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, ending our dependence on fossil fuels, a progressive income tax, instant runoff voting, protecting public schools from privatization, legalizing marijuana and cutting corporate giveaways rather than social programs. A vote for Stein sends a clear message of support for progressive principles. A vote for Patrick says that you acquiesce to rule by corporate apologists who will continue the rightward slide.
So what could possibly lead a progressive to choose Patrick over Stein? Other than blind party loyalty, the most common reason seems to be fear – fear that the devil Republican could win if they don’t remain loyal to Patrick. The phoniness of this premise has seldom been discussed – which is probably why it is successful in silencing many progressives. The idea that Charlie Baker will begin to dictate policy to a Legislature that is 90% Democratic doesn’t pass the laugh test with any one who understands political power in Massachusetts. And when you have a Democrat who is speedily implementing Mitt Romney’s agenda, the threat of Governor Charlie Baker doesn’t seem nearly so disturbing. In fact, there would almost certainly be more Legislative resistance to bad ideas if they were coming from a Republican.
So will progressive voters, who have been increasingly marginalized by the convergence of Democratic and Republican parties, further ratify their insignificance by endorsing Patrick? Or will they send a message that they’ve had enough by voting for Stein? If enough progressives bring their vision and their values into the voting booth November 2nd, then the vote for Jill Stein will send a real message to the Beacon Hill leadership of both parties. It would signify the reemergence of progressives as a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly the Tea Party and corporate rule would not seem like the inevitable future of politics in Massachusetts and beyond.
Note: For a head-to-head comparison of Patrick and Stein, download this flyer.
Eli Beckerman
Social media coordinator, Jill Stein for Governor
I am a little confused by the lack of support for Jill Stein among progressives. It’s not as if we should take someone like Jill Stein for granted. How often are there candidates who run on the progressive issues that we all care about and actually mean it? How often is there someone who is willing to put themselves out there, stand proudly for the things that mean the most the most to us, the things that we know will create a better place for us, our children and our future? If Deval Patrick were the only choice, the most progressive leader available to vote for, I would support him without question. But this election season we are fortunate to have another choice, a choice that is so clear and so real that it is inconceivable to let it slip by.
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p>I understand the fear of pulling votes from Deval Patrick. I understand the fear of Baker winning because of it. But that doesn’t have to happen. It will only happen if people vote fear instead of values. So, while everyone here may not want to publicly support Jill Stein because you have decided that you will remain loyal to a Governor who is sort of progressive and sort of this and sort of that, when you enter the privacy of that voting booth, I want you to vote your values. Please vote for the beauty of progressiveness. Show the country that our values are worth taking the chance on. Show the world that we have the courage to make it happen. Vote Jill Stein on November 2nd.
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p>Disclosure: I am supporting Jill Stein for Governor and Nat Fortune for State Auditor. I am not paid by either campaign.
I am supporting each candidate voluntarily.
I agree that as long as progressives acquiesce to “leaders” like Deval Patrick, they’re on the road to extinction. Voting for Stein at least shows that they have a little backbone, which is the only thing that power politics respects. Politicians are taught to focus on the “swing voter” and if you always vote Democratic, you’re not a swing voter.
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p>If Stein comes out of this election with even 10 per cent of the vote, it would have real repercussions. It would mean that Democrats would have to start running some real progressives or else see their iron grip on power begin to loosen. It might even lead to passage of instant runoff voting, since Democrats would want to recapture the second-place votes they were losing to Green candidates.
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p>I also think Stein is going to pick up some anti-incumbent voters that might otherwise vote for Baker or Cahill. It’s good to see a progressive offering a way for the really disgruntled voters to send a message to the establishment. The Tea Party wouldn’t be winning over so many people if there were a true progressive party addressing the economic distress that people are feeling.
If the polls show Deval with a comfortable lead I would be more than happy to cast my lot with Dr. Stein. She is the visionary in the race promising to revisit Romneycare and make it a truly public option system, the only one who cares about the environment and green energy, the only one who wants to preserve rather than dismantle and privatize public education, the only one opposed to the regressive tax on the poor that is casino gambling. Deval used to be a visionary, but now he is coasting on the old stale Democratic mantle “im better than the other guys”. So is Obama, two progressives that were supposed to be light years away from Clintonian centrism. I favor a big tent, I favor centrism on some crucial issues, and it is well known I tend to the center on some fiscal and social issues. My realist foreign policy is a lot closer to Pat Buchannan and Ron Paul neo-isolationism than it is to Obama’s Wilsonian interventionism. Im a civil libertarian, particularly on the drug war and free speech. That said the Greens are sensible on a lot of issues. Consistently in favor of a restrained foreign policy, in favor of government regulation to protect our natural resources and stop the power of big business (classically conservative goals in my view). They favor localism, grassroots democracy, and clean government. If the polls are no longer close Stein is my woman.
So, you like Jill Stein best, but you’ll only vote for her if you’re sure she will not win and a guy without vision “coasting on the old stale Democratic mantle” of being the lesser of two evils will win.
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p>That’s why this country is on the verge of collapse, hijacked by the RepubliCrat duopoly brought to you by the same corporate sponsors.
There was a $2 billion budget gap last year. There’s a similar size one expected next year (which will be still larger if the sales tax gets cut). Cities, towns, schools and essential state services got the ax, but we kept over $1 billion in unaccountabe tax expenditure giveaways for insider industries and their lobbyists on Beacon Hill. http://www.massbudget.org/docu…
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p>Through something called the single-sales factor tax break — http://www.itepnet.org/pdf/pb1… — we literally give multi-state corporations like Raytheon and Fidelity Investments $300 million a year, every year, solely for the pleasure of their company. No requirement to add jobs or keep them. They threaten to cut jobs if we don’t keep paying but in fact, they’re cutting jobs anyway. Hard to know if we’re paying for prostitution or extortion, but we’re sure not getting anything for our money but poorer cities, towns, schools and state services.
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p>Case in point: Fidelity has cut more than 25% of its Massachusetts workforce since Deval took office in 2006, but they still get the tax break. http://www.boston.com/business…
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p>Fully funding public schools, reopening parks and libraries, making our neighborhoods safe to live and play in: these are our priorities, but they aren’t Beacon Hill’s. Words say one thing, but budgets say another. Imagine if our governor had declared that public dollars should be spent for public purposes, and instead of cutting $2 billion out of what we need most from government, we had (1) cut a $1 billion from private, falsely described ‘job creation’ and ‘economic development’ giveaways, then (2) raised the other $1 billion by rebalancing* the income tax in a way that lowered taxes for most of us and still raised more revenue. It would be the right thing to do, but we’ll never get it voting for Deval!
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p>*One way: first, raise the exemption for each individual and dependent to 200 to 300% of the federal poverty line for MA, a common threshold for state support for housing, food, and health insurance (and deductions tied to the federal poverty level would also be defensible in court). Next raise the income tax rate once you’ve excluded the real cost of essentials and those earning less than a living wage For example, raise deductions from a current $4400 to a more realistic $24,000 (and to $48,000 for couples filling jointly), and from the $1000 to $7000 or so. I calculate you could set the tax rate at a level that would raise $1 billion to $1.5 billion in new revenue about that pulled in now and still lower the total state income tax on individuals earning about $70K or less. Call it the 24/7 tax plan. There are many other options depending on the level you want to set for deductions. Want a more precise and comprehensive calculation? Elect Jill Stein as Governor, and she’ll put the Department of Revenue to work on it. Think any of the other candidates will?
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p>by the way: I’ve proposed one such plan in my own campaign for state auditor: http://www.greenmassgroup.com/…
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that will flood the working middle class with a ton of discretionary dollars that we can use to help stimulate the economy. $24,000/$48,000 is a more reasonable deduction and should already be there anyway.
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p>This is the most specific proposal I’ve heard so far to make our state income tax a more progressive one. Thank you for making it a part of your platform and for having the guts, as a candidate, to say it out loud. It’s amazing to know that there is someone out there who understands that sometimes it’s better to just directly address the problems the working middle class face instead of doing all sorts of costly and bizarre twists and turns to try to get trickle down economics to work.
everyone needs a proofreader! ‘about that,’ should have read ‘above that.’ Corrected sentence:
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person. We share a lot of the same beliefs. But she has about as much chance of getting elected as Donald Duck.
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p>So why vote for her? If we had IRV, I might consider voting for her. But as it stands, the Green Party is, at most, a spoiler in state and national elections (though most of us learned that after Ralph Nader 2000).
If it were a Senate seat or President I might be more cautious at this point in time. But it’s a state seat and our state is already such a mess. Any one of the other candidates is really not representing my interests or the interests of the working middle class, or the interests of Western MA. I have found in Jill Stein, and in Nat Fortune, exactly what I’m looking for without compromise and I am going to throw my support behind them because if they win it will be totally awesome and if they lose it really won’t make that much difference which one of the others win. So in other words, now is the time to give the Green Party some strength. They are a good party with great values. I want them to succeed. We will only be a better country for it.
The fact that this is a local race gives my vote much more impact on my day-to-day life and the life of my community. Holyoke is better off under the governance of Deval Patrick than it has been under sixteen years of Republican rule. It makes me crazy when I see people who care about politics give so much more weight to the national arena or a Senate or Presidential election. After the irresponsible budget choices of Romney, Swift, Celucci, and Weld, the state economy was a mess that Patrick has started to clean up. That mess led to difficult choices about local aid and cuts to services, and I know the Governor made the best choices he could. I don’t want those choices in the hands of Charlie Baker.
because it’s where we can have the most influence.
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p>But I really think it’s too easy to blame the bogeyman Republicans for all the problems. What about the 90% Democratic legislature? What about all the uncontested elections? What about our Secretary of State who oversees our elections yet refuses to even debate his opponents? The system is corrupt, and Governor Patrick was all too happy to pass some inch-deep ethics reforms and pretend like that did something to change the game. And Patrick has done his part to slash important services and essential programs, and even campaign bragging about it, while preserving the tax incentives for the wealthy. It’s about priorities, and he’s not doing anything to reshape our public sector priorities so that they’re benefiting the public interest.
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p>The Democrats nationally and here in Massachusetts have failed to stand up for our interests, and we keep voting them back into office and hoping that maybe this time will be different. But there’s only so many times people are willing to be hoodwinked and I think we’ve seen the start of a more apathetic mood among left-of-center voters. Lots of people who were fed up with the Dems stayed home in January, but a lot also voted for Scott Brown (something like 18% of his vote came from disaffected voters who said the Democrats didn’t go far enough on health care reform). At least Stein on the ballot gives people something to vote FOR.
And the Democratic Party, for the most part, has been doing just that. Not the grassroots forces within the party and not the elected officials who are going out there working their butts off trying to do their part to keep the Commonwealth together. But for the most part, the institution is set up to protect the vested interests who are doing quite well, even as our economy disintegrates. And they’re spoiling it for the rest of us.
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p>No, it’s not just the Democratic Party, though they have full control over what happens in Massachusetts and would retain a pretty powerful grip even if Charlie Baker took over the corner office. Both corporate parties are on the take. And while the crazy undisclosed funding is piling up on the Republican side, the best way to stand firmly against the buying off of our democracy would be to support a party that will not itself sell out. I wrote about Robert Reich’s “perfect storm” over at Green Mass Group and it’s clear to me that the only way to stand against plutocracy is to support candidates and political parties that stand against plutocracy. And it’s also clear that the Democratic Party does not, and I think that has a hell of a lot to do with why voters stayed home in January, or got excited about Scott Brown as a populist answer to the Kennedy and Kerry millionaires.
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p>Frank Phillips skewers Patrick for the hypocrisy of going after Baker’s millions:
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p>And that’s all it is. Sheer hypocrisy. He won’t even release his tax returns, which might provide insight into potential conflicts of interest. And it’s not like his record there is clean, picking up the phone on behalf of Ameriquest, and claiming again and again that while he’s taking lobbyist and industry-insider money, he doesn’t let that influence his policy. He must be super-human!
vote for Jill Stein?!