gnd letter

7/28/2019 GND Letter

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THE GREEN NEW DEAL: SUMMARY

Te Green New Deal is a our part program or moving America quickly out o crisis into a secure, sustainable uture. In-spired by the New Deal programs that helped us out o the Great Depression o the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide

similar relie and create an economy that makes our communities sustainable, healthy and just.

THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL

I - THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

Our country cannot truly move orward until the roots o inequality are pulled up, and the seeds o a new, healthier econo-my are planted. Tus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill o Rights that ensures all citizens:

1. Te right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a na-tionally unded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment oces with local employ-ment oces oering public sector jobs which are stored in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sectoremployment.

Local communities will use a process o broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to airly imple-ment these programs.

Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying avors do not impact decision-making. We will end unemployment in America once and or all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage or every American

willing and able to work.2. Workers rights including the right to a living wage, to a sae workplace, to air trade, and to organize a union at work

without ear o ring or reprisal.3. Te right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-or-All program.

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4. Te right to a tuition-ree, quality, ederally unded, local controlled public education system rom pre-school throughcollege. We will also orgive student loan debt rom the current era o unaordable college education.

5. Te right to decent aordable housing, including an immediate halt to all oreclosures and evictions. We will: create a ederal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the

mortgages to aordable levels, or i the occupants cannot aord a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants; expand rental and home ownership assistance; create ample public housing; and, oer capital grants to non-prot developers o aordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no

more than 25% o their income.6. Te right to accessible and aordable utilities heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation through

democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not or prot.7. Te right to air taxation thats distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be

made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.

II - A GREEN TRANSITION

Te second priority o the Green New Deal is a Green ransition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into anew, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:

1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with anemphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the communityrather than being drained o to enrich absentee investors.

2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research unds rom ossil uels and other dead-end industries toward researchin wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles thateliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable orestry.

3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainableenergy and energy eciency retrotting, mass transit and complete streets that promote sae bike and pedestrian tra-c, regional ood systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manuacturing.

III - REAL FINANCIAL REFORM

Te takeover o our economy by big banks and well-connected nanciers has destabilized both our democracy and oureconomy. Its time to take Wall Street out o the drivers seat and to ree the truly productive segments o working Americato make this economy work or all o us. Real Financial Reorm will:

1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control o the money supply and credit creation. Tis means well

nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within thereasury Department.

3. Break up the oversized banks that are too big to ail.4. End taxpayer-unded bailouts or banks, insurers, and other nancial companies. Well use the FDIC resolution process

or ailed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible aer ailed loans and underlying assets are auctionedo.

5. Regulate all nancial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation o depository commercial banks rom speculative investment banks.7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses or bailed out bankers.8. Support the ormation o ederal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that unction as non-prot utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a nancial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real econo-my rather than the phony economy o high nance.


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IV - A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We wont get these vital reorms without a ourth and nal set o reorms to give us a real, unctioning democracy. Just aswe are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise o American democracy.Te New Green Deal will:

1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons andmoney is not speech. Tose rights belong to living, breathing human beings - not to business entities controlled by thewealthy.

2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.s proposed Right to Vote Amendment, to clariy to theSupreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

3. Enact the Voter Bill o Rights that will: guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot or all voting; require that all votes are counted beore election results are released; replace partisan oversight o elections with non-partisan election commissions; celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday; bring simplied, sae same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualied voter is barred rom the polls; do away with so-called winner take all elections in which the winner does not have the support o most o the

voters, and replace that system with instant runo voting and proportional representation, systems most advancedcountries now use to good eect;

replace big money control o election campaigns with ull public nancing and ree and equal access to the airwaves guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualied candidates; abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election o the President; restore the vote to ex-oenders whove paid their debt to society ; and, enact Statehood or the District o Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and ull

rights to sel rule like the rest o us.4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review o ederal preemption law and

its impact on the practice o local democracy in the United States. Tis review will put at its center the democracyquestion that is, what level o government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protectingdemocratic rights.

5. Create a Corporation or Economic Democracy, a new ederal corporation (like the Corporation or Public Broadcast-ing) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct nancing or cooperative development and or democraticreorms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding ederal support or locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.7. Protect our personal liberty and reedoms by:

repealing the Patriot Act and those parts o the National Deense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties; prohibiting the Department o Homeland Security and the FBI rom conspiring with local police orces to suppress

our reedoms o assembly and o speech; and, ending the war on immigrants including the cruel, so-called secure communities program. Rein in the military-industrial complex by reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world; restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece o our system o national deense; and, creating a new round o nuclear disarmament initiatives.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back rom the brink, and until we have secured the peaceul, just, greenuture we all deserve.


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FULL TEXT OF DR. JILL STEINS

2012 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS:

A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR AMERICA

Good evening and thank you or this opportunity to talk with you tonight. Were here to talk about the actual state o our

nation, and how we can reclaim the promise o our democracy and the peaceul, just green uture we deserve. We haveheard President Obama deliver his State o the Union Address. And we heard the Republican response. Each claims tohave the answer, and that the other was an obstacle to progress.

But the truth is both sides despite the rhetoric are responsible or the harsh policies driving our economy and our de-mocracy into deep crisis. Simply put, they place the interests o Wall Street ahead o the needs o everyday people and thelong term welare o our nation.

So tonight, we are going to talk about the major problems that are not being solved by the political establishment. And wewill ocus on key game-changing solutions that have been kept o the table or too long.

As we speak tonight, our economy is not working or the vast majority o Americans.

One hundred and orty-six million people thats nearly one in every two Americans is now living below or near thepoverty level. Te stress alls hardest on our most vulnerable and disadvantaged, with the majority o children, hal oour elders, three quarters o Latinos, and two thirds o Arican Americans living in or near poverty.

Last year, one million Americans lost their health insurance, raising the numbers o the uninsured to almost 50 million oour people. Over 6 million Americans have lost their homes to oreclosure.

Tirty million college students and recent graduates are trapped in the nancial prison o student loan debt. Most studentsmust take out costly loans to meet the skyrocketing cost o tuition. Yet paying o those loans is almost impossible as youngpeople ace double-digit unemployment and much lower pay 40% less than their parents generation received or the

same work.Overall, nearly 25 million Americans are unemployed or unable to nd ull time work. And even those who have jobs arestruggling, because wages have been declining or American workers, and are now lower on average than in 1996. House-hold income has allen aster since the ocial end o the recession than during the recession itsel, because the so-calledrecovery is made up o mostly low paying jobs.

Over seven million are under correctional supervision, 10 times greater than in 1965, as incarcerating poor people disproportionately o color - has become big business with the ailed war on drugs. And more Arican American males arenow locked up in US prisons than were slaves in 1850.

Americas creed is With Liberty and Justice or All. Tat is a creed o Equality. But right now we are experiencing theworst economic inequality in our nations history. Te gap between the very rich and the many poor has never been so

great. Te wealthiest 1% in America now own as much wealth as 90% o all Americans. Tose over 65 hold, on average, 47times as much wealth as heads o households who are under 35. White amilies own, on average, twenty times as much asBlack amilies. Such inequality is unacceptable, unconscionable* and un-American.

While the economy does not work or the vast majority, it does work or a ew; at least or now.

Te owners o the big corporations are enjoying historic prots, with a record $2 trillion in cash reserves at home and $1.4trillion overseas. Tough the corporate elite are richer than ever, they are contributing less than ever to the tax base thatkeeps the inrastructure going that their prots rely on schools, transportation, clean air and water, sae ood, the legalsystem, the police, and the military. In act, 30 major corporations paid no corporate income tax at all over the last threeyears, despite making $160 billion in prots. And the big banks whose raud and greed crashed the economy to start


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with are bigger than ever, with the six biggest banks now controlling capital equivalent* to 60% o all economic activity inthis country.

o be clear: the greed or record prots is what got us into this mess in the rst place. O course it wasnt greed alone. Itwas the capture o both political parties by Wall Street and other powerul corporations that buy infuence with campaigncontributions and lobbyists. Using this routine currency o American policy making, Democrats and Republicans alikedismantled protections against waste, raud and abuse by Wall Street.* Tis bipartisan cooperation enabled greed to crashthe economy. Tat not only killed jobs, it also depressed tax revenues which has been one o the biggest drivers o the ed-eral decit. Tat decit has also been made worse by unconscionable spending choices: notably the 4 trillion dollars spenton the illegal wars in Iraq and Aghanistan, and trillions more spent on the bloated Pentagon budget, tax giveaways or thewealthy, and bailouts or Wall Street.

And now, the political establishment in the White House, Congress, and state governments are making matters ar worse,doing the opposite o what we need, by inficting needless, harsh austerity policies on the country.

Tis is bad or people, bad or the economy, and completely unnecessary. When they say theres not enough money, theymean theres not enough money or YOU. Instead o austerity, we can end the Wall Street bailouts, cut the bloated militaryand tax the bloated rich.

Tese austerity cuts mean that Americans are losing jobs. From Scott Walker to Andrew Cuomo, and yes, Barack Obama,

the result o these austerity cuts is layos or teachers, nurses, child and eldercare workers, reghters, janitors, bus driversand all the people who keep our communities educated, healthy, and moving orward.

Worse, these austerity cuts are hurting the people who receive those services. Students, the disabled, the elderly, the ill, theunemployed, the hungry these are the Americans who are suering because o austerity cuts to education, nancial aid,health care, uel assistance, homeless shelters, prevention, ood support, and more.

All o this adds up to the ongoing crisis we ace the cumulative result o many years decades o policies under bothDemocratic and Republican presidents that enrich the ew while exploiting the many.

Te political establishment is telling us theres little we can do to change our direction. I dont believe it and I suspect youdont either.

It is time to break ree rom the old economy, and the old politics.Its time or a Green New Deal or America.

A GREEN NEW DEAL

Te Green New Deal is an emergency our part program o specic solutions or moving America quickly out o crisis intothe secure green uture.

We call these solutions a Green New Deal because they are inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out o the

Great Depression o the 1930s. And these solutions are Green because they create an economy that makes our communi-ties sustainable and healthy.

First, we will guarantee the economic rights o all Americans, beginning with the right to a job at a living wage or everyAmerican willing and able to work.

Second, we will transition to a sustainable, green economy or the 21st century, by adopting green technologies and sus-tainable production.

Tird, we will reboot and reprogram the nancial sector so that it serves everyday people and our communities, and notthe other way around.


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Fourth, we will protect these gains by expanding and strengthening our democracy so that our government and oureconomy nally serve We the People.

ake courage. Because o the urgency o these times, I am asking you personally to take courage and to be willing to believethat these major changes to our economy and politics are within our reach.

THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

For this reason, Te Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill o Rights that recognizes our rights to an economy thatserves people. Tis means that everyone willing and able to work has the right to a job at a living wage. All o us have theright to quality education, health care, utilities, and housing. Each o us has the right to unionize, to air taxation, and toair trade.

Te promise o an Economic Bill o Rights came out o the last period o widespread, extreme economic hardship, theGreat Depression. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1944 State o the Union address said that true individualreedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.

FDRs promise lives on through the United Nations that Eleanor Roosevelt was central to ounding. And twenty years later,

the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. raised up the call or an Economic Bill o Rights once again, insisting that itwas needed to ree America o the continuing misery o racism and poverty.Te Roosevelts, the Kings, and the tens o millions o Americans who have struggled or these rights o reedom rom eco-nomic slavery their cause is our urgent cause today. Our country cannot truly move orward until the roots o inequalityare pulled up, and the seeds o a new, healthier economy are planted. Te Green New Deal does that by ullling the prom-ise o the Economic Bill o Rights.

We will end unemployment in America once and or all by ensuring a job at a living wage or every American willing andable to work. Tis includes jobs that improve our environment, like clean manuacturing, organic agriculture, public trans-portation and clean renewable energy. It also includes jobs that provide urgently needed social inrastructure or publiceducation, health care, child care, elder care, youth programs, and arts and culture.

Our Full Employment Program will directly create 16 million jobs through a community-based direct employment initia-tive that will be nationally unded, locally controlled, and democratically protected against conficts o interest and pay-to-play infuence peddling. Te program will directly create jobs in the public and the private sector. Instead o going to anunemployment oce when you cant nd work, you can simply go to the local employment oce to nd a public sectorjob.

Tese 16 million jobs in the Full Employment Program is eight times the number sought in Obamas recent jobs proposal.In addition, our program indirectly creates another eight to nine million jobs in the private sector, as paychecks are spentin our local economies, consumer demand surges, and businesses hire new employees to meet that demand.

Tis program will not be run rom Washington D.C.. Our job in Washington will be limited to insuring that you have a

say in how this program runs. Local communities will be responsible or putting this jobs program into practice through aprocess o broad community input and democratic decision-making involving you, your neighbors and local government -not corrupting monied interests. Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that anyone participating in decisionmaking has notreceived campaign contributions or lobbying avors rom proponents or applicants.

Using this process, counties and municipalities can plan projects and jobs in public works and public services. Tese will bestored in local job banks where they will stand ready to take up any slack in private sector employment.

Te Green New Deals Full Employment Program will change what it means to be a working person in America. It endsthe agonizing wait or a business recovery thats not in the cards. It creates jobs that can never be produced by trickle-downgiveaways to the rich. And it will move our economy decisively because it will put paychecks back in peoples pockets and


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put customers back in stores. And all by meeting needs o our communities and making them healthy, just and sustainable.

Full Employment is the rst, and central part o the Green New Deals Economic Bill o Rights. But lie is more than workand paychecks. We must ulll the ull promise o the Economic Bill o Rights.

Tereore, my administration will honor the right to quality health care through an improved Medicare or All program.Tis will provide comprehensive care or all. It will be ree to consumers at the point o delivery, but will save money overalby reducing the massive wasteul health insurance bureaucracy and by stabilizing medical infation. And it restores ree-

dom o choice so you pick your health care provider, and your care is decided by you and your provider not by a proteer-ing insurance executive. Tis will be ederally nanced and democratically controlled.

We will honor the right to a tuition-ree, quality public education rom pre-school through college at public institutions.And we will orgive student loan debt le over rom the current era o unaordable college education.

We will honor the right to decent aordable housing, including an immediate halt to all oreclosures and evictions. We willcreate a ederal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mort-gages to aordable levels, or i the occupants cannot aord a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants. We will expand rentaland home ownership assistance, create ample public housing, and capital grants to non-prot developers o aordablehousing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% o their income.

We will honor workers rights, including the right to a living wage, a sae workplace, to air trade, and to organize a union atwork without ear o ring or reprisal. Te idea that the Bill o Rights does not apply to you when you enter your workplaceis an idea that says that you are only ree when you are not working. Tats not acceptable in America.

We will honor the right to accessible and aordable utilities heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation which will be made available to all through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not or prot.

We will honor that oldest o American rights, the right to air taxation thats distributed in proportion to ability to pay. Andwe will make any corporate tax subsidies transparent by putting these subsidies in public budgets where they can be scruti-nized, not hidden as tax breaks in complicated tax codes.

In honoring these rights we will create the basis or a new economy an economy that is stable and not vulnerable tospeculation an economy that is prosperous and that pays or itsel through the creation o real wealth that is distributedthroughout America an economy that is no longer dragged down by big corporations preying on the elderly, the poor, thedisabled, the unemployed, and the young, but which instead supports small business, individual liberty, and local, thrivingcommunities.

A GREEN TRANSITION

Te second priority o the Green New Deal is a Green ransition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into thenew green economy. We will do this by shiing to green technologies and sustainable ways o making things. We must dothis right now because the environment is the oundation or our economy and or lie itsel. And that environment is

deeply imperiled.

Te benets we get rom the environment dwar those that come to us rom human economic activity even when mea-sured strictly in dollar terms. What we usually call the environment is really another word or Mother Natures economy.A business model that destroys our orests, our sheries, our topsoil, our water supplies, our health, and our climate is abusiness model that will inevitably collapse upon itsel. And an economy that is addicted to ever-increasing supplies o oilis not only doomed, it is a national security disaster just waiting to happen.

At the recent UN climate conerence in South Arica, the Obama administration worked to delay international agreementson carbon emissions until 2020. Tis delay will allow critical climate tipping points to be passed that will accelerate warm-ing to the point it cannot be controlled. As renowned NASA scientist James Hanson puts it, delaying action to aggressively


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Te nancial reorms o the original New Deal in the 1930s turned a ailing unregulated system into a stable regulatedsystem that did not experience a nancial crisis or hal a century. Ten in the 1990s, as the establishment parties cozied upto this deep-pocketed industry, the New Deal protections were tossed aside in a new era o deregulation. Tis misguidedderegulation resulted in ever bigger and more requent nancial crises, including the nancial collapse o 2008.

Currently U.S. banks and corporations have huge cash assets that are badly needed or business expansion. Yet lending andinvestment or business expansion is stagnant. Meanwhile, nancial institutions are proting rom speculative trading instocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, and derivatives. Tey are rearranging who owns existing productive assets insteado investing to create new productive assets. Te rich get richer while the economy stagnates, unemployment persists, andneeded investments in inrastructure and production are not being made. Te greed, speculation and raud that crashedthe economy continues unabated as we suer through a recovery or the 1% alone. And it continues to threaten urtherrecovery with backdoor bailouts, and the very real potential to tank the economy again.

Tere is currently a bipartisan ailure in Washington to pursue the vitally needed reorms that this will require. Te wa-tered down DoddFrank Wall Street Reorm did not x the massive problems with the deregulated nancial status quo.Wall Street and the big banking interests continue to steer the economy just as they did beore the Great Financial Crasho 2008. Bank assets are actually more concentrated than beore the crash. Depository commercial banking, speculativeinvestment banking, and insurance remain intermingled under giant bank holding companies. Te nancial system is asover-leveraged and vulnerable as ever. Many big banks survive only by hiding their liabilities and avoiding honest book-keeping. Yet the ocers o these bailed-out rms continue to pay themselves record level bonuses and to devise new

schemes or skimming prots rom Main Street in order to enrich Wall Street.Its time to really reorm Wall Street so that working America has a chance. Here is what the nancial reorms o the GreenNew Deal will do.

First, the debt overhang holding back the economy must be deleveraged by reducing homeowner and student debt bur-dens. An immediate halt to all oreclosures and evictions - as called or in the Economic Bill o Rights will be coupled tothe creation o a ederal bank with local branches to take over distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages toaordable levels, or i the occupants cannot aord a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants. Forgiving student debt will becoupled to tuition-ree higher education on the model o the post World War II GI Bill, which has paid or itsel more thanseven times over in increased government revenues rom higher productivity, according to a study by the congressionalJoint Economic Committee in the 1980s.

We will democratize monetary policy to bring about public control o the money supply and credit creation. Tis meanswell nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority withinthe reasury Department, along the lines proposed in the National Emergency Employment Deense or NEED - Act o2011 (HR 2990), sponsored by Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. Trough the Green New Deals nan-cial reorms, the ederal government will retake its powers to create money, as granted by the Constitution in Article I,Section 8.

Tats just a beginning. Trough the nancial reorms o the Green New Deal:

We will break up the oversized banks that are too big to ail. We will end taxpayer-unded bailouts or banks, insurers, and other nancial companies. Well use the FDIC resolu-

tion process or ailed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible aer ailed loans and underlying assets areauctioned o.

We will adequately regulate all nancial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges. We will restore the Glass-Steagall separation o depository commercial banks rom speculative investment banks. We will establish a 90% tax on bonuses or bailed out bankers. We will support the ormation o ederal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that unction as non-prot utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a nancial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real econo-my rather than the phony economy o high nance.


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A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We have addressed the rst three elements o the Green New Deal:

First, an Economic Bill o Rights, beginning with a Full Employment Program.

Second, a Green ransition Program to create a sustainable economy with green technologies and sustainable ways o mak-ing things.

Tird, real nancial reorm that reboots the nancial sector.

We wont get those vital reorms without a ourth and nal set o reorms to give us a real, unctioning democracy. We donthave that in America today. And so, just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics torestore the promise o American democracy.

When corporations and big money dominate our elections, government o, or, and by the people cannot take root. Forthis reason, we urgently need to Amend our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is notspeech. Tose rights belong to living, breathing human beings like you and me - not to business entities controlled by thewealthy.

Te executive branch does not have much o an ocial role in constitutional reorm. But a president certainly can, andshould, use the bully pulpit to overturn the Un-American idea that the 1% have rights as a class that the rest o us are de-nied. And a president can, and should, support Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.s proposed Right to Vote Amendment, to clariy tothe Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

Te Green New Deal also requires the enactment o the Voter Bill o Rights. Tis 10-point platorm is the calling card othe modern day voting rights movement, and became a consensus agenda in the years ollowing the stolen presidentialelection o 2000. Enactment o the Voter Bill o Rights will guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot or all voting, andrequire that all votes are counted beore election results are released. It will also:

Replace partisan oversight o elections with non-partisan election commissions. Celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday. Bring simplied, sae same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualied voter is barred rom the polls. Do away with so-called winner take all elections in which the winner does not have the support o most o the

voters, and replace that system with instant runo voting and proportional representation, systems most advancedcountries now use to good eect.

Replace big money control o elections with ull public nancing and ree and equal access to the airwaves. Guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualied candidates. Abolish the Electoral College directly elect the the President. Restore the vote to ex-oenders whove paid their debt to society. Enact Statehood or the District o Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and ull rights

to sel rule like the rest o us.

O course, as the great Progressive Wisconsinite, Fighting Bob La Follette taught us, Democracy is a lie, and not merelylimited to elections. For this reason, the Green New Deal goes beyond the Voter Bill o Rights to strengthen our countrysmovement toward democracy in all areas o public lie.

Te Green New Deal will strengthen democracy at the local and state level. Just last week, a ederal court told the peopleo Vermont that they could not prevent a dangerous nuclear power plant rom operating in their state. Te court did thison the basis o a doctrine known as eld preemption. Basically, the State o Vermont is barred or preempted romregulating the nuclear power industry because a ederal judge says that the industry is the concern o the ederal govern-ment only.


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Over the past thirty years, we have seen public saety, ood labeling, human rights, immigrant rights, drug policy, and otherreorms preempted in the same way.Te Green New Deal establishes ederal environmental and human rights protections as a foor, and not a ceiling, to actionby our state and local governments. o do this, we will commission a thorough review o ederal preemption law and itsimpact on the practice o local democracy in the United States. Tis review will put at its center the democracy question that is, what level o government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.Implementation o the Green New Deal will put this question at its center, and always works to bring government closest to

the people.

Democracy doesnt just happen in our political system. It happens in our economy, every day. oday, more than 500,000American workers are employed by cooperatives, over 120,000,000 people are member-owners o consumer cooperatives,nearly 40,000 businesses are organized as cooperatives, and another 11,000 which are not coops are employee-stock-ownedcompanies known as ESOPs. Coops have been shown to be very eective producers o jobs and wealth. Yet the ederal gov-ernment does not reward cooperative development in the same way it supports private business corporations; the corpora-tions have their U.S. Department o the reasury, while coops have no such entity.

Te Green New Deal creates a Corporation or Economic Democracy, a new ederal corporation (like the Corporation orPublic Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct nancing or cooperative development and ordemocratic reorms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

And speaking o the public broadcasting, the Green New Deal strengthens media democracy by expanding ederal supportor locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

Finally, we must protect our liberty rom those who would righten us into surrendering our reedoms in the name osecurity. Te Green New Deal will repeal the Patriot Act and those parts o the National Deense Authorization Act thatviolate our civil liberties. It will prohibit the Department o Homeland Security and the FBI rom conspiring with localpolice orces to suppress our reedoms o assembly and o speech. And it will end the war on immigrants including thecruel, so-called secure communities program - which is terrorizing millions o Americans, both citizens and non-citizenimmigrants, on no basis other than their perceived immigration status.

Protecting our liberty requires one additional, important step. Washington and Eisenhower, both generals who becamepresident, warned us about the military industrial complex. Tey warned us about the dangers o empire.

Te Green New Deal includes a 50% reduction in military spending and the withdrawal o U.S. military bases rom theover 140 countries in which our military is now located. It calls or restoration o the National Guard as the centerpiece oour system o national deense. It creates a new round o nuclear disarmament initiatives. Overall, it requires shiing roman economy in which the majority the majority o our discretionary budget is spent on war and the occupation o othercountries, to an economy that provides the secure, just, peaceul uture we all deserve.

COURAGE FOR THE URGENT TASKS OF THESE TIMES

onight Ive laid out an agenda or a Green New Deal or America. Tis agenda would revitalize our democracy and startsolving the serious problems that are not being solved by the business-as-usual approach coming out o Washington.

Te Green New Deal will end unemployment.It will honor and enrich the lives o every member o our society.It will convert our economy rom gray to green.It will end the cycle o nancial boom and collapse.It will allow real democracy to take root.


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Securing the Green New Deal depends not on me or the Green Party or some proessional politician we see on television.It depends on all o us standing up and declaring that weve had enough o the insider-run big money politics that rulesWashington. And it depends on each o us using our concern, our energy, our intelligence to nd ways to improve the liveo our community.

Tis change will never come rom the top. It never ever comes rom the career politicians or the powerul Washingtonlobbyists. Real change has to come rom the grassroots - rom people who work hard every day pounding nails, drivingtrucks, changing sheets, teaching children, plowing elds, and making the real economy work.

In the traditional State o the Union address, the President o the United States thanks the people he or she respects.onight, I do so too.

Tank you to the people who struggle against steep odds to keep a roo over their heads, to eed their amilies and to ndjobs when there are ew to be ound. Tank you to mothers and athers who work so hard to raise the next generation inchallenging times, to the senior citizens who built this country and deserve Social Security and Medicare support in theirretirement. Tanks to the public employees who teach our children, keep us sae, care or the needy, and keep the trainsrunning. And thanks to the thousands o you who have already joined me and my campaign team at Jill Stein or Presidentas we all work to take back the promise o our democracy.

Tank you to the young women and men in the democracy movements in Europe and the middle East, especially those

who are braving the guns and the tanks on behal o liberation.

Tank you to the people o Wisconsin, who rose up in the tens, hundreds, and now thousands o thousands to deend andexpand their democracy.

Tank you to the occupiers o Wall Street in Manhattan and across the country who continue to prove in these cold monththat Tomas Paines Winter Soldier lives on in America.

Tank you all or giving us the courage to take on the urgent tasks o these times knowing that the uture o people, peaceand the planet depends on us all.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back rom the brink, and have secured the peaceul, just, green uture we all

deserve.

AUHORIZED AND PAID FOR BY JILL SEIN FOR PRESIDENPO Box 260217 Madison, Wisconsin 53726-0217www.JillStein.org

Please print on 100% recycled paper.

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