Jill Stein Wrong On Marijuana Dangers

October 24th, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Greens | Science - (6 Comments)

Green Party candidate Jill Stein has a great number of courageous stands on different issues. I’ve written in support of her here at Irregular Times quite often over the last year.

Tonight, however, I’m not going to praise Dr. Stein. I’m going to point out where she’s wrong.

It has to do with marijuana.

marijuana health claimsTonight, during the four-candidate presidential debate moderated by Larry King, Jill Stein spoke at length about the benefits that would come from legalizing marijuana. There are reasonable arguments to be made for legalization, and Stein made some of them.

Jill Stein also made a quite unreasonable argument in favor of marijuana legalization. She declared that concerns about the health effects of marijuana are completely unfounded, saying of the practice of smoking marijuana, “It’s not dangerous at all!”

Stein staked her professional reputation on this argument, saying that she knew, because she is a methere is dical doctor, that there are no health dangers that result from smoking marijuana.

It’s true that some of the claims of health risks associated with marijuana smoking are overblown. However, it’s also true that there is evidence that people put their health at risk when they smoke marijuana, increasing their risk for testicular cancer and lasting cognitive impairment.

As a physician, Dr. Stein ought to know better than to proclaim that marijuana is not dangerous at all. The data on the health risks of marijuana is easy to find. As a political leader, she has the responsibility to base her policies on scientific research. Unfortunately, on the issue of marijuana legalization, Jill Stein seems more interested in whipping up enthusiasm among marijuana enthusiasts as a niche vote in this year’s election.

Life is full of dangers. Most of them we can manage intelligently. There are dangers associated with walking down the sidewalk, or drinking a cup of coffee, or getting in a car.

It’s unwise for political leaders to exaggerate dangers, but it’s also unwise to minimize dangers, or pretend that they don’t exist. Acknowledging the real dangers of marijuana use is a necessary part of incorporating the reality that people smoke marijuana into our society. Last night, Jill Stein showed that she isn’t ready to work with this aspect of reality.

She still has my vote, but she’s lost some of my respect.

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Secular Coalition Gets Namby Pamby About Obama and Jill Stein

October 23rd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | Election 2012 | Greens | Mitt Romney | Politics | Religion - (2 Comments)

One subject that hasn’t come up in any of the presidential debates orchestrated by the Republican and Democratic parties: Upholding separation of church and state. The candidates have been pushed by moderators to justify their public policies using private religious beliefs, but in no debate has anyone asked what the candidates plan to do (or not to do) to protect Americans’ First Amendment right to be free of government establishment of religion.

One organization that has pledged to speak up for separation of church and state when others fail to do so: The Secular Coalition for America. The Secular Coalition lobbies Congress for policies that respect the American tradition of leaving government out of matters of religion.

As lobbyists, rather than grassroots activists, the people at the Secular Coalition have a delicate line to walk. They have to stay true to the secular Americans who fund their organization, but they also have to maintain a friendly relationship with elected officials, so that they can keep up an effective line of communication on relevant issues.

The danger of cultivating friendly relationships with elected officials for issue-oriented lobbyists is that these relationships of power can come to overshadow the issues that motivate the lobbying in the first place. In order to keep access to elected officials, lobbyists can compromise the ideals that they are supposed to represent.

The Secular Coalition for America appears to have taken a step in that direction with its 2012 General Election Presidential Candidate Scorecard, which, as its name implies, scores the presidential candidates on their policy positions – in this case, on the candidates’ positions on issues related to the separation of church and state.

The grade earned by Mitt Romney on this scorecard is easy to predict. He got an F. Mitt Romney proposes all sorts of ways of giving the federal government more power to control American citizens’ relationships with religious organizations.

Barack Obama doesn’t offer a stark contrast to Mitt Romney’s failure to uphold the ideals of the First Amendment, however. Barack Obama has used churches as campaign tools. He’s worked with a string of bigoted preachers who promote government establishment of restrictive Christian social engineering. Obama has expanded the corrupt White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives and refused to reform that program’s allocation of government money to projects that engage in employment discrimination on the basis of religion. So, Obama gets a low grade from the Secular Coalition, too: A C.

So, what can secular American voters do? Where can we look for a leader to support the separation of church and state?

We happen to know that there is another choice: Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate. The Secular Coalition scorecard acknowledges Stein’s existence. Sadly, the Secular Coalition found a way to brush her off, giving her a grade of incomplete.

What we know about Jill Stein is extremely positive, when it comes to the separation of church and state. In fact, the Secular Coalition finds that for every category in its survey that Stein has addressed, she receives a grade of A – a perfect grade.

So, why did the Secular Coalition give Dr. Stein the incomplete grade? Its explanation is that Stein has not addressed every single aspect of separation of church and state that the scorecard addresses.

Is it really a disqualifying problem that there are some particular church and state issues that Jill Stein hasn’t spoken to? It’s hard to understand why it would be, given that Stein has clearly given strong, categorical support to the idea of separation of church and state, and has never, like Mitt Romney and Obama have, supported policies that undermine separation of church and state.

Every position Jill Stein has taken on the separation of church and state reflects a perfect, passing position. Stein has represented herself well on these issues. Yet, the Secular Coalition’s incomplete grade makes her seem absent.

I don’t know the internal politics of the decision to grade Stein in this way, but to my eye, this “incomplete” grade looks like a move calculated to forestall anger at the Secular Coalition from Democratic politicians and voters.

That’s a crass maneuver, and one that doesn’t represent the secular voters of the USA well.

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Who Says Who is Wiping the Floor With Whom in the 3rd Presidential Debate?

October 23rd, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Barack Obama | Election 2012 | Greens | Mitt Romney | Politics - (6 Comments)

Time for a social media mop-up after the third presidential debate.

On Twitter last night, the following was the breakdown of people declaring that one candidate for president was “wiping the floor” with another candidate:

Third presidential debate of 2012: 88.1% on Twitter say Barack Obama was wiping the floor with Mitt Romney. 11.9% say Mitt Romney was wiping the floor with Barack Obama. 0% say Jill Stein was wiping the floor with anyone. 0% say Rocky Anderson was wiping the floor with anyone.

A full 88.1% of Twitter users posting with the phrase “wiping the floor with” said Barack Obama was wiping the floor with Mitt Romney. Only 11.9% said Mitt Romney was wiping the floor with Barack Obama.

There were two other participants in presidential debate proceedings last night. In a video series sponsored by Democracy Now! (see the proceedings here), Green presidential candidate Jill Stein and Independent presidential candidate Rocky Anderson were invited to answer on air the same questions Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were asked. Apparently few were watching and even fewer were reacting. 0% — none at all — said Jill Stein was wiping the floor with anyone. 0% said Rocky Anderson was wiping the floor with anyone.

I don’t like to say it, because Jill Stein‘s candidacy is the one I most agree with, but the candidates outside the Democratic and Republican parties are not attracting significant attention. What’s on the air when people turn on their cable television is what people pay attention to — and that’s just two candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Within those two, Barack Obama appears to be dominating the “debate,” but as J. Clifford has pointed out, the range of opinion in that debate is far narrower than the range of opinion of the American people.

If you’d like to expand the attention given to third-party candidates, spread the word about an event happening tonight. On October 23 at 9 pm Eastern Time, the Free and Equal Elections Foundation is holding a presidential debate to which it has invited the top 6 presidential contenders: Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode, Gary Johnson, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Jill Stein. Larry King will moderate. Will Barack Obama and Mitt Romney accept the invitation? That remains to be seen. But you are invited as well — day by day more media outlets are committing to broadcast the debate. You can watch it streaming live for free at Ora TV.

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Green Party and Justice Party Candidates Pirate The Presidential Debate. Here’s What They Had To Say.

October 22nd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Alternative Parties | Election 2012 | Greens | Politics - (0 Comments)

Can you imagine hearing the following ideas from the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates? Would Barack Obama or Mitt Romney ever dare to speak these words?

From Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein:

“The numbers just don’t add up. We cannot continue spending one trillion dollars a year on this bloated military industrial security complex… Let’s look at where that money is going. We’re spending millions of dollars not just on the bloated military budget, but also on the wars for oil… and bailouts for Wall Street.”

“By moving to a single payer, Medicare for all system, we’ll get a system that people will love and want to defend… to cover everyone comprehensively.”

“They’re both saber rattling about Iran. They’re both avowing their obedience to the right wing government in Israel… once again we’re seeing shades of grey between the Republican and Democratic candidates.”

“This slavelike mentality toward Israel is unjustified. We need to raise the bar for Israel.”

“There is every reason to proceed with talks and to proceed in good faith… When Romney talks about the centrifuges speaking, this is actually allowed under the… treaty. There is nothing to distinguish Iran’s current program from legitimate development of nuclear energy.”

From Justice Party presidential candidate Rocky Anderson:

“President Obama is bragging about increasing the military spending these last four years.”

“Mitt Romney is one of the greatest flim flam mans of all time.”

“We are the only nation in the entire developed world that doesn’t provide insurance for everyone… More than 70 percent of the doctors and people in the health care debate said they wanted a single payer health care system.”

“Would Mitt Romney say that we should go over and attack North Korea because they have a nuclear bomb?”

“Not one of these candidates have mentioned Palestine tonight, or the rights of the Palestinian people.”

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Jill Stein And Rocky Anderson On Liberty And War In The Middle East

October 22nd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Alternative Parties | Election 2012 | Greens - (0 Comments)

On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman is bringing us the responses of presidential candidates Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson, of the Green Party and Justice Party, in tonight’s presidential debate, on foreign policy.

From Jill Stein’s response:

“We need to say that we will no longer permit the violation of our constitutional rights as well.”

“The President claims the indefinite right of detention to put us at his pleasure in prison without trial.”

“It is time for us to say no to these unconstitutional wars.”

“The biggest source of greenhouse gases is also coming from the U.S. military.”

“…to move from this fight and wars for oil to a fight to stop the truly greatest fight that we are faced with, and that is the fight against climate change.”

From Rocky Anderson’s response:

“What they are talking about today, in the most bloodless terms, is to call for absolute bloodbath in Syria.”

“No two people could be more obsequious to Israel and AIPAC.”

“We need to take to the streets. We need to rise up in every way, and say that we will not allow our nation to engage in these outrages.”

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Presidential Debate On Syria, From Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson

October 22nd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Alternative Parties | Election 2012 | Greens | War and Peace - (1 Comments)

Barack Obama just called violent anti-American radicals in Syria “folks”. Is there another perspective?

NPR news show Democracy Now is facilitating a remote inclusion of Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson in tonight’s foreign policy presidential debate.

From Rocky Anderson’s response:

“We have no business doing anything other than working with Russia and helping to bring about a peaceful resolution.”

From Jill Stein’s response:

“It’s as if there’s collective amnesia here, as if we didn’t just go through a decade of trillions of dollars and… soldiers whose lives have been sacrificed.”

“We have not with all the power of that force, been able to solve these conflicts on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan… How in the world are they thinking that a lesser degree of intervention is going to solve the problem?”

“The American role here has actually been to throw gasoline on the fires of virtually every… conflict in the Middle East, through the exporting of arms.”

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Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson On America’s Militant Foreign Policy

October 22nd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Alternative Parties | Election 2012 | Greens | War and Peace - (0 Comments)

Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson are, thanks to Democracy Now, joining the final presidential debate of 2012.

Stein and Anderson were just been asked a second question about foreign policy to accompany Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s comments.

From Jill Stein’s response:

“I just want to point out and clarify that President Obama worked very hard to extend the immunity of soldiers in Iraq to prolong the war in Iraq.”

“The vast bulk of nuclear weapons now are in the hands of the United States and Russia, and while much is made of the nuclear threat from Iran… it’s important to have an inclusive solution here that actually brings a nuclear free Middle East to the table… We already have nuclear weapons to worry about… We must re-engage nuclear disarmarment… To get rid of all nuclear weapons as the basis of other countries not having them.”

From Rocky Anderson’s response:

“Do you ever hear either of these candidates talk about how the Iraq war was absolutely in controvention of our own laws?”

“This president decided on his own we would join with NATO forces to bomb Libya.”

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Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson on Libya

October 22nd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Alternative Parties | Election 2012 | Greens - (0 Comments)

Democracy Now has expanded the debate tonight to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson.

From Jill Stein’s response to the debate’s first question on Libya:

“Instead of fighting wars for oil, we will be, America, leading the fight against climate change.”

“We need to cut that military budget, right size it to year 2000 levels.”

From Rocky Anderson’s response:

“We’re like the bully that never got counseling, and we wonder why they don’t like us.”

“We aggravate the situation by keeping bases in so many nations, including Saudi Arabia.”

“That is the policy failure: Our belligerence.”

“I think that the American people have finally got it that we need to start building friendly relationships with these nations.”

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