| Support Green Mass Group! |
|
|
Towards a just & healthy democracy in the Commonwealth... and beyond!
|
| Username: |
seemstome |
| PersonId: |
40 |
| Created: |
Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 19:58:28 PM EST |
seemstome's RSS Feed
 |
|
Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 08:28:45 AM EDT
|
(Far from being neutral facilitators, the consortia that run election debates have their own agenda--one that dovetails nicely with that of the two "major parties." The result: a closed-loop in which ad revenues play no small part in determining who's invited--with the obvious consequences. It's in the best interests of all citizens that these cynical policies be questioned--and that the debates be opened up! - promoted by michael horan)
The phone rang yesterday morning a little before 10. The first thing I heard on picking up the receiver was a low din of voices, so I asked, rhetorically, if this was a personal call. It was "Phyllis" calling to ask if I would renew my $40 membership to WGBY-TV in Springfield.
I asked her if WGBY rebroadcasts the debates of candidates for statewide office that originate on WGBH-TV in Boston.
She said that WGBH and WGBY are sister stations. She may have been calling from the Boston area because she said she didn't know whether "you in Western Massachusetts" or "you in the Springfield area" got to see those debates.
I mentioned that WGBH and WGBY are beneficiaries of the WGBH Educational Foundation, and she seemed to agree. But she was principally concerned with getting me to renew at the $40 level or higher with WGBY.
I told her I didn't think I could renew because the last time Jill Stein ran for governor as the Green-Rainbow Party's nominee, in 2002, she was excluded by the "Consortium," of which WGBH is a part, from participating in the gubernatorial debates. That was the year Republican Mitt Romney was elected governor, garnering 50 percent of the vote to Democrat Shannon O'Brien's 45 percent. Stein finished third in a field of five with 76,530 votes, or about 3.5 percent.
|
|
There's More...
:: (7
Comments, 780 words in story)
|
|
Tue Feb 16, 2010 at 11:26:27 AM EST
|
(well said, "seemstome"! - promoted by eli_beckerman)
A few thoughts on the essay by Jason at Open Media Boston on Jill Stein's and Grace Ross's quite different campaigns for governor:
It's not a question of either going for the gold - quixotically or not - in a statewide race or letting dozens of flowers bloom in local and state legislative races. An exemplary candidate like Jill Stein (I'm biased) running as standard-bearer of the Green-Rainbow Party can inspire people to run for lesser offices throughout the Commonwealth as GRP candidates. For one thing, she can appear at their campaign functions, helping both her own candidacy and theirs. If citizens show up out of mere curiosity or out of concern for the their future, if they catch the bug and act accordingly they expand a constricted field.
|
|
There's More...
:: (1
Comments, 496 words in story)
|
|
Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 23:41:44 PM EST
|
(Krugman would probably lose both his jobs and perhaps even his Nobel prize if he actually started speaking the truth... something's wrong in the land of big-e Economics. - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Monday's (1-25-10) column by New York Times op-ed regular and Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman reminded me of something: He, like many a mainstream commentator, seems to disregard the importance of the idea that finite resources are finite. The economy is down, unemployment is way up and not showing signs of improving, and the stock market has declined yet again, and Krugman cites the danger of "a second Great Depression," yet he writes of that potential event as if it would last only a decade or two.
Krugman: "We have avoided a second Great Depression, but we are facing mass unemployment - unemployment that will blight the lives of millions of Americans - for years to come."
|
|
There's More...
:: (5
Comments, 433 words in story)
|
|
|
|
|
| About |
|
Green Mass Group is an online forum for Green thought and collective action in Massachusetts. It is a community forum for justice, sustainability, democracy and health in the Commonwealth and beyond.
Read more
|
| Quotes |
Only one species on earth does not have full employment and that is Homo sapiens.
--Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest)
|
|
Then and Now
|
Then...
We built what history will record is the broadest and best-organized grassroots organization this Commonwealth has ever seen... We didn't build up this grassroots just to win an election. We built up the grassroots to govern in a whole new way, to make change real, and lasting, and meaningful.
Deval Patrick acceptance speech
Nov. 7, 2006
and Now...
We had this incredibly rich relationship that we built with the grass-roots network the last time. And then we got in, and we let it go. And there are reasons for that. But I think it's a terrible thing. We missed it. I missed it personally. And I think a lot of the folks in the organization missed it.
Governor Deval Patrick, to a room of supporters, trying to reignite the grassroots
February, 2010
|
|
