Not sure what you thought about the first U.S. Presidential debate this week, but I personally thought Jill Stein was the clear winner. My second place vote would probably go to Rocky Anderson. Both Stein and Anderson are untainted by the billions of dollars influencing the Republican and Democrat Presidential Candidates in this year’s election and are able to speak truthfully – without resorting to misinformation, distortion or blatant lying – quite refreshing for political candidates.
You’re saying, “So what planet do I live on?”
Actually it’s our planet Earth. I just tuned into Link TV (Channel 9410 on DishNetwork satellite) for the debate rather than one of the commercial channels. Link TV, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is one of the not-for-profit media networks – not owned by the 6 media giants that typically filter the information we Americans receive so as not to offend their billionaire owners or generous advertisers.
So I was watching the same debate as everyone else except that Amy Goodman and the production crew for DemocracyNow used a slightly different format – it was referred to as Expanding the Debate. On the version of the debate I watched, two additional candidates, the Justice Party Presidential Candidate Rocky Anderson (former mayor of Salt Lake City) and the Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein also had an opportunity to respond to Jim Lehrer’s questions right after President Obama and Mr. Romney gave their response. The candidate from the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson, chose not to attend the “extended debate.”
The DemocracyNow production crew continued to tape the ongoing debate, but for the Link TV audience, they “paused” the two-party debate and allowed the alternative candidates to insert additional perspectives – just like a real democracy. Then the DemocracyNow crew would restart the two-party debate where it had been paused and continued to the next series of Lehrer questions. Instead of a 90 minute debate, the entire “Expanded Debate – Complete Version” was three hours in length – more information than most people would probably sit still for even though the other two candidates (who were excluded from the debate by the Commission on Presidential Debates) pointed out serious issues with both the Republican and Democrat plans for the next 4 years – important issues that we should be debating in a democratic society. Unfortunately the two party system’s agenda does not include these topics.
Expanding the Debate Speakers (Romney, Obama, Anderson, Stein)
Background – Commission on Presidential Debate (CPD)
I’m old enough to remember when the League of Women Voters sponsored the Presidential Debates. So what/who is this Commission on Presidential Debate that now controls the debates? During the half hour prior to the event, Ms. Goodman interviewed George Farah, founder and Executive Director of Open Debates, and the author of “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.”
Ms. Goodman: George, how did it come to be that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) came into being? What is this commission?
Mr. Farah: The Commission on Presidential Debates sounds like a government agency, it sounds like a nonpartisan entity, which is by design, is intended to deceive the American people. But, in reality, it is a private corporation financed by Anheuser-Busch and other major companies, that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties to seize control of the presidential debates from The League of Women Voters in 1987.
Precisely as you said, Amy, every four years, this commission allows the major party campaigns to meet behind closed doors and draft a secret contract, a memorandum of understanding that dictates many of the terms.
The reason for the commission’s creation is that the previous sponsor, The League of Women voters, was a genuine non-partisan entity, our voice, the voice of the American people in the negotiation room, and time and time again, The League had the courage to stand up to the Republican and Democratic campaigns to insist on challenging creative formats, to insist on the inclusion of independent candidates that the vast majority of American people wanted to see, and most importantly, to insist on transparency, so that any attempts by the Republican and Democratic parties to manipulate the presidential debates would result in and of enormous political price.
Ms. Goodman: George… explain the moment when [the debate] was taken out of the hands of The League of Women Voters and this commission was formed. How was this justified?
Mr. Farah: The best part of the history starts in 1980. In 1980, John B. Anderson, an independent candidate for president, runs against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President Jimmy Carter absolutely opposed independent candidate John Anderson’s participation in the presidential debates, and The League had a choice; do they support the independent candidate’s participation and defy the wishes of the President of the United States or do they capitulate to the demands of President Jimmy Carter? The league did the right thing; it stood up to the President of the United States, invited John B. Anderson. The President refused to show up. The League went forward anyway and had a presidential debate that was watched by 55 million Americans.
You fast forward four years later, Amy, and the Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan campaigns vetoed 80 of the moderators that The League of Women Voters had proposed for the debates. They were simply trying to get rid of difficult questions….
The League didn’t just say, OK that’s fine we’ll allow you to select a moderator that’s going to ask softball questions, The League held a press conference and lambasted the campaigns for trying to get rid of the difficult questions. Of course there was a public outcry. So The League marshaled public support to criticize when they attempted to defy our democratic process and the result was fantastic. For the next debate, the campaigns were required to accept The League’s proposed moderators for fear of an additional public outcry.
And you fast forward four more years later and you have the Michael Dukakis and the George Bush campaign’s drafting the first ever 12-page secret debate contract. They gave it to The League of Women Voters and said please implement this. The League said, are you kidding me? We are not going to implement a secret contract that dictates the terms of the format [of the debate]. Instead, they release the contract to the public and they held a press conference accusing the candidates of “perpetrating a fraud on the American people” and refusing to be “an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American people.”
Well, Amy, conveniently, just a year earlier, the Republican and Democratic parties had ratified an agreement “to take over the presidential debates, and they created this artifice, this commission, and the commission was waiting in the wings and stepped right in and implemented the very same 12-page contract that The League had so effectively denounced, and ever since we’ve had a contract.
As a U.S. citizen who is registered as an independent – unaffiliated with either the Republican or Democrat political because neither party truly represents my worldview, I find it quite disturbing to learn how these two parties have now corrupted our current political system – our democracy – by limiting what we hear (and presumably think) to only their two viewpoints. To learn that a third or fourth party candidate can no longer participate in the so called Presidential Debates that air on commercial TV because the Republicans and Democrats have a secret contract that excludes all other viewpoints is like another small cut. Death of our democracy by a thousand cuts. And I realize I am grieving for the loss of yet another small portion of our democracy. First denial, then anger – that’s where I am at the moment. Hopefully, in this case, I will never progress to the stage of acceptance because I cannot accept the loss of our democracy and the opportunities it guarantees for something of utmost importance – the continued evolution of human consciousness.
Background – the Green Party and Justice Party Presidential Candidates
Green Party: Dr. Jill Stein. Ms. Stein’s Green Party campaign proposes “A Green New Deal for America”) that is seemingly patterned after President Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s. FDR’s decisive action to initiate government sponsored Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects provided jobs for the unemployed to bring our country out of the Great Depression.
The Green New Deal is an emergency four part program of specific solutions for moving America quickly out of crisis into the secure green future… these solutions are “Green” because they create an economy that makes our communities sustainable and healthy.
( Ref: http://www.jillstein.org/green_new_deal)
Ms. Stein may be the most intelligent of the four candidates who spoke at the “Extended Debate” and comes from a medical background but has the least experience as an elected official. The other three candidates have law degrees and were previously elected to positions of responsibility. Within this time constrained debate format, Dr. Stein articulately conveyed a comprehensive perspective not only of our own country but what is going on in the world around us. Unlike her medical colleague turned politician, Ron Paul, who continues to dog paddle in Ayn Rand’s cool aid, Ms. Stein is realistic, pragmatic and yet optimistic that our country can identify and make corrections to our financial and political systems – including health care, education, national security, energy policy, as well as the runaway corporate power that is chiefly responsible for the ongoing destruction of our common air, water, soil, etc.
A resident of MA, Ms. Stein is not a proponent of either RomneyCare currently in practice in Massachusetts, or its second reincarnation as ObamaCare as defined in the federal Affordable Care Act. She prefers a universal health care system – a Medicare for All.
Here are a few comments from her closing remarks at the Expanded Debate:
Ms. Stein: We clearly are in a crisis now. People are losing their jobs, their homes, decent wages, affordable health care and higher education. Our civil liberties are under attack. Our climate is in meltdown. Yet, the wealthy few are making out better than ever, making out like bandits. Richer than ever. While the political establishment that got us into this mess to start with actually is making it worse.
Both Democrats and Republicans are making it worse and posing austerity on the everyday people of this country while they continue to squander trillions on wars for oil, Wall Street bailouts and tax breaks for the wealthy.
Justice Party: Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson. As its name implies, the Justice Party invites voters to join this community of concerned Americans demanding social, economic, and environmental justice for all – not just for the wealthiest Americans and their corporations.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. —Frederick Douglass
Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson served as the Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah for eight years and is currently the Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights. Prior to serving as Mayor, he practiced law for 21 years in Salt Lake City. As Mayor, Mr. Anderson rose to nationwide prominence as a champion of progressive causes such as climate protection, immigration reform, restorative criminal justice, minority and LGBT rights, and an end to the “war on drugs”. Mr. Anderson was also an early opponent of the occupation of Iraq and related human rights abuses. Mr. Anderson’s work and advocacy earned him local, national, and international recognition: Business Week named him one of the top 20 activists in the world on climate change.
Mr. Anderson reminds us that our history knows of one other critical period involving high unemployment – and how FDR brought us out of that financial collapse by taxing the rich and large corporations and creating value added jobs for America building new schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, dams, National Parks, etc. – infrastructure that is still with us today.
Here are a few comments from his closing remarks at the Expanded Debate:
Mr. Anderson: This race is about our most fundamental values, about who the American people are and who we are becoming. It is about whether we will work together for equality of opportunity, equality under the law, liberty and justice — economic justice, social justice, environmental justice for all. Or whether we will, in the face of gross inequalities of opportunity, simply leave everybody to fend for themselves as in a bad Ayn Rand novel or Mitt Romney speech.
This race is also about whether our nation will continue down the road toward totalitarianism with an imperial presidency that has been made so much worse under both the Bush and the Obama administrations, which have shown utter contempt for the rule of law, due process, and the restrictions under the War Powers Clause of the United State Constitution.
We must say no to any more assassinations of U.S. citizens. We must say no to indefinite detention without any semblance of due process, and to the continued drone killings that have made our nation so much less secure. So, let your voices be heard loudly from the voting booth as you are guided by your most deeply held values.
Both alternative presidential candidates, Ms. Stein and Mr. Anderson, believe that the moment has come for us Americans to come together for our mutual benefit to solve the many problems that lie before our nation. Neither of these two candidates has a chance to become president with our present election process. Voting for them and what they stand for would only be a waste of one’s vote in our current system. When the voice of these two alternative candidates, white people of priviledge, cannot be heard in our current form of democracy, think how our system has also silenced the voices of the less priviledged, the minorities, the marginalized, the indigenous people and all of the non-human live on our common planet.
Ironically, voting for the candidate from the Republican or Democrat party is no guarantee that the nation’s (and the world’s) problems will be addressed effectively either.
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