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http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/07/12/mckinney_green_nomination.html McKinney Wins Green Party Nomination By Jeffry Scott The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 07/12/08 CHICAGO - Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney reassumed the national political stage Saturday, winning the presidential nomination of the Green Party of the United States at the party's national convention here. Amid chants of "Paint The White House Green" and signs proclaiming, "Truth. McKinney 2008," McKinney revved up a crowd of about 350 Green Party delegates from 38 states who elected her on the first ballot. "I am asking you to vote your conscience, vote your dreams, vote your future, vote Green," McKinney told the convention in a 30 minute speech following an address by her running mate, hip hop artist and political activist Rosa Clemente. She was joined by her father, former Georgia representative Billy McKinney; her mother Leola, and her son Coy, on the stage in the elegant Michigan Avenue hall where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs, McKinney, 53, was the odds-on favorite to win the nomination, coming into the convention with a 10-1 delegate lead over her closest rival, Jesse Johnson of West Virginia. Since last fall, McKinney has campaigned in 30 states on the slogan "Power To The People" and a platform that calls for single-payer universal health care, the immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the creation of a Department of Peace, and reparations for African-Americans. In her address, Clemente, 36, vowed that she and McKinney would fight all "-isms and ideologies that divide us." Clemente jokingly threw down a challenge to the nation's sitting vice president: "Dick Cheney, bring it on." In her unlikely re-emergence on the national political stage as the presidential nominee of the Green Party, which she joined in 2007 after leaving the Democratic Party where she had served six terms representing DeKalb County's 4th Congressional district, McKinney faces a stiff - extremely long-shot - run at the presidency. She as much conceded winning the presidency was not her goal in her speech Saturday. She said the thrust of her campaign would be to get 5 percent of the vote in November, effectively establishing the Greens as a third party that would not have to fight state-by-state to get on the ballot every four years. "We are in this to build a movement," said McKinney to roars from the crowd. "A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right- side-up again." In Georgia, because the party failed to qualify under state laws, McKinney and Clemente will not be on the ballot in November. Green Party leaders expect she will be on the ballot in 36 states, where ballot qualification rules vary. David Cobb, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2004 - and pulled in just 0.1 percent of the vote - said Saturday that one of the appeals of McKinney' as a candidate is her name recognition. "Before she has even won the nomination, she has pulled new members into the party," said Cobb, who introduced McKinney at the convention, praising her work in Congress and for having introduced articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice. He estimated Green Party membership is about 500,000. McKinney is the second former member of Congress from Georgia mounting a presidential run this year. Former 7th District Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) is running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket. A lighten-rod political figure, McKinney was defeated in 2006 by the 4th District's present congressman, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), after a much-publicized run- in with a U.S. Capitol police officer and her accusations that the Bush administration covered up information about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That incendiary quality seemed to endear McKinney to Green delegates who, throughout the convention, inveighed against the "crimes" of the Bush administration and the distortions of the news by "corporate media" - which, except for the cable network C-SPAN, have given little coverage to the convention. "Don't expect me to keep a count of the major flip flops of the other candidates between now and November, I'm sure there will be plenty," McKinney told the crowd. "They are in this flip flop because they have to appear to share our values - while they serve somebody else." *** http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20080626 The Cure for High Gas and Food Prices Vital Businesses Need Nationalization by Ted Rall www.rall.com (June 26 2008) The gas station attendant came outside. Wow, I thought, full serve! Ignoring me, she flung a magnetic price decal on top of the price per gallon. Regular unleaded had gone up twenty cents in the time it took me to drive from the curb to the pump. "You're kidding me", I moaned. "It's three o'clock", she shrugged. "Just got the new price". There has to be a better way, I thought. And there is. It isn't drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. It sure isn't John McCain's plan to offer $300 million to the first person to come up with a longer-lasting car battery Gas prices could hit $7 a gallon before long, Wall Street analysts say, but Americans - always optimists! - take a little comfort in the fact that Europeans have paid more than that for years. But a lot of foreigners are laughing at us even harder than we're laughing at the Euros. Did you know that Venezuelans pay a mere nineteen cents per gallon? It's 38 cents in Nigeria. Turkmenistanis might not have electoral democracy, but they only shell out $4.50 to fill a fifteen-gallon tank. Before we replaced Saddam Hussein with ... with whatever they have in Iraq now, Iraqis paid less than a dime for a gallon of gas. One of the things that these countries have in common, of course, is that they're oil-producing states. Countries that export oil and gas have trouble explaining to their citizens why they should pay for their own natural resources - and most are smart enough not to try. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Burma, Malaysia, Kuwait, China and South Korea are just a few of the countries that keep fuel prices low in order to stimulate economic growth. But they also share something else: common sense. Strange it might sound to Americans used to reading about big oil windfalls, they consider cheap gas more of an economic necessity than lining the pockets of energy company CEOs. So they don't consider energy a profit center. To the contrary; government subsidies (Venezuela spends $2 billion a year on fuel subsidies) and nationalized oil companies keep gas prices low. Unlike corporations, governments don't care about turning a profit. They care about remaining in power. Their reliance on political support (or, if you're cynical, pandering) allows them to do things our much-vaunted free market system can't, such as make sure that people can afford to eat and buy enough gas to get to work. Like the rest of the world, Venezuelan consumers have been squeezed by rising prices, and even shortages, of groceries. In 2007 Venezuela's socialist-leaning government decided to do something about it. First they imposed price controls on staple items. When suppliers began to hoard supplies to drive up prices, President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize them. "If they remain committed to violating the interests of the people, the constitution, the laws, I'm going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalize them", he said. Food profiteers grumbled. Then they straightened up. Not even international corporations are immune from Chavez's determination to put the needs of ordinary Venezuelans ahead of the for-profit food industry. Faced with severe shortages of milk earlier this year, Chavez threatened Nestle and Parmalat's Venezuelan operations with nationalization unless they opened the spigot. "This government needs to tighten the screws", he said in February 2008, promising to "intervene and nationalize the plants" belonging to the two transnational corporations. Miraculously, milk is turning up on the shelves. When it works, nothing is better at creating an endless variety of reality TV shows than free market capitalism. But when it doesn't, it isn't just that extra brand of clear dishwashing liquid that goes away. Businesses fold. Banks foreclose. People starve. And no one can stop it. The G8 nations met in Osaka last week to try to address soaring food and energy prices - a double threat that could plunge the global economy into a ruinous depression. But the summit ended in failure. "Any hope that the G8 meeting would result in coordinated monetary action - or concerted intervention in foreign exchange markets - to counter rises, principally in commodity prices, was dispelled by their failure to agree on the phenomenon's underlying causes", reported Forbes. So the G8 ministers punted. "Due to the lack of consensus, they have stated the need for further study", wrote the magazine. The problem isn't the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It's capitalism. A sane government doesn't leave essential goods and services - food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education - to the vicissitudes of "magic" markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by - indeed, owned by - the government. Consider, on the one hand, snail mail and public education. The Postal Service and public schools both have their flaws. But what if they were privatized? It would cost a lot more than 42 cents to mail a letter from Tampa to Maui. And poor children wouldn't get an education. Privatization, particularly of essential services, has always proven disastrous. From California's Enron-driven rotating blackouts to for-profit healthcare that has left 47 million Americans uninsured to predatory lenders pimping the housing bubble to Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq, market-based corporations' fiduciary obligation to maximize profits that is inherently incompatible with a stable economy whose goal is to provide people with a decent quality of life. Postscriipt: If you're reading this in Caracas, please mail me some gas. Ted Rall is the author of the book Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? (2006), an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.) Copyright 2008 Ted Rall TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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