Jill Stein keeps promise broken by Barack Obama

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were arrested in protest of foreclosure giant Fannie Mae; the bankers and many other well connected businessmen that have been rigging the system for decades were not. She wasn’t arrested for anything that should have been considered a crime under the circumstances. Apparently the charges were “defiant trespass and conspiracy.” I guess they included the word “defiant” so that it might seem like a more serious crime but I can’t imagine how they could have come up with the conspiracy charges since there was nothing secret about what they were doing while the activities of the banks are shrouded in an enormous amount of secrecy which they often call “proprietary information;” which means that the government passed laws that essentially gives business the right to hide all their activities so that the consumers, workers and many other people interested in social justice can’t expose the activities that are highly unethical.

(First posted on Open Salon August 6 2012)

The activities of the banks clearly should have been considered a much bigger crime; since they have been caught up in an enormous amount of scandals that I can’t completely keep track of including falsely signing names many unethical lending practices and an enormous amount of other activities that have been in the news over the past several years. Yet they face little or no accountability.

In many of Barack Obama’s campaign speeches during the 2008 campaign this is of course the kind of things that he promised to stand up to. His promises weren’t limited to protecting people from eviction of course but for the most part he hasn’t kept many if any of them including his famous promise to walk the picket lines in the following excerpt from a speech on November 3 2007.

One year from now, we have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race - and I've won. I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am President, they won't find a job in my White House. Because real change isn't another four years of defending lobbyists who don't represent real Americans - it's standing with working Americans who have seen their jobs disappear and their wages decline and their hope for the future slip further and further away. That's the change we can offer in 2008.

When I am President, I will end the tax giveaways to companies that ship our jobs overseas, and I will put the money in the pockets of working Americans, and seniors, and homeowners who deserve a break. I won't wait ten years to raise the minimum wage - I'll raise it to keep pace every single year. And if American workers are being denied their right to organize when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States. Complete Speech “A Change We Can Believe In”
Additional Barack Obama Speeches - 2002-2009

Not only did he decline to “put on a comfortable pair of shoes and …. walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States” when the Wisconsin teachers and other public workers were protesting but he declined to speak up on the subject much at all except for a few token comments. Nor did he do much to protest when many other things that have been happening including the foreclosure scandal; for all practical purposes he virtually abandoned the vast majority of the people when it comes to setting policy. However at times he has come up with plenty of rhetoric that sounds good especially compared to what Mitt Romney has to offer; and these new promises are starting to increase now that he is running for election again.
We’ve already seen how he keeps his promises!!

Does anyone wonder how he kept his promise to “tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over?” Apparently according to a list of 218 reasons NOT to vote for Obama (many sources included) he appointed them to government jobs where they could continue setting the agenda!! This list even includes several of the lobbyists that Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were protesting against that worked for Fannie Mae. On top of that he also gave many appointments to major fundraisers that presumably continue to collect an enormous amount of money form corporate interests.

These corporations don’t donate enormous amounts of money like this unless they expect to get a return on it.

That isn’t the way business is done.

If they did that their stock holders would throw them out.

The typical behavior of politicians including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney clearly indicates that these contributors routinely get their moneys worth at the expense of the vast majority of the public including those that Jilll Stein and Cheri Honkala were standing up for.

The corporate media routinely puts out an enormous amount of propaganda indicating that Jilll Stein and Cheri Honkala aren’t what they call “viable candidates.” Clearly what makes a candidate “viable” according to the corporate media is their ability to collect an enormous amount of money and buy an enormous amount of propaganda combined with the willingness of the corporate media to give them reasonable coverage.
A “viable” candidate by corporate media standards is essentially someone that does the will of the corporations or at least keeps their agenda within certain bounds. Then the corporate media along with political operatives do their part to either convince the public that their side is doing the will of the public even when it isn’t; or to convince the public that the other side is worse and everything is their fault. To put it bluntly the corporate media is doing everything they can to rig the system so that the only people that can get reasonable coverage and relay their views to the public are those that sell out to the corporations!

Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama are considered “viable” because the public has reason to believe that they will keep their promises but because of the propaganda that the corporate media provides for their benefit. The most important things about Jill Stein shouldn’t be the fact that she protested to stand up for those that were paying the price for the enormous amount of corruption in the government and the corporate world; although it is worthy of them. It should be her positions on the issues which she has done more to make clear than either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, both of who have refused to fill out their Project Vote Smart questionnaires. there has been an enormous amount of coverage of the positions of both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in the corporate media but it hasn’t been presented in an easy way for people to understand and it has often been full of contradictions and broken promises; which might explain why they don’t want to fill out their questionnaire. It would make it easier for the voters to keep track of some of the most important issues and if they’re keeping their promises without an enormous amount of research.
For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to review her position on many of the issues I attempted to make it a little easier when I took a closer look at Jill Stein by including a lot of information from several different independent sources as well as Jill Steins web site. I also followed up with Jill Stein wins nomination without corporate control and Jill Stein supports Constitution unlike Romney and Obama!! 
 
Even though her positions on the issues should be considered more important and newsworthy than the fact that she was arrested for participating in the democratic process it shows that she has more integrity than the traditional candidates that do little or nothing to carry out the will of the majority unless there is an enormous uproar like when they tried to toughen the copyright laws that drive up the cost of gaining access to educational material and interfere with the rights of free speech for the majority. When ever the public isn’t paying attention the traditional candidates do as much as they can to advance the corporate agenda. The following is how the Jill Stein campaign responded to the recent arrest.

Stein and Honkala arrested in protest of foreclosure giant Fannie Mae

(PHILADELPHIA) Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested today during a protest at the offices of mortgage company Fannie Mae on Banker's Row in Philadelphia.

Among those arrested along with Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala were labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters. An attorney who supports civil disobedience cases is providing legal assistance. All of those arrested are expected to come before a judge on Thursday afternoon. At that time bail will either be set or they will be released on their own recognizance.

The protest was originally called for by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign to demand that the giant mortgage company halt foreclosure proceedings against two Philadelphia residents in danger of losing their homes. Stein joined the protest after Cheri Honkala joined her as Stein's vice presidential running mate. Honkala, a former homeless single mother, has been confronting banks and mortgage companies for decades demanding that they adopt policies that will, "keep families in their homes." …. Full article

As usual there has been minimum coverage of this in the mainstream media but if you look for it there is plenty of it on the internet and there is also plenty of evidence to indicate that she has much more support than the corporate media would have us believe. That doesn’t mean that it will be easy for her to get elected but she shouldn’t be ruled out. This is why they try to down play her and decline to include her in the polls. However at times they have to give her a minimum amount of coverage due to the fact that they would look foolish when her supporters make it clear that they’re much greater than the corporate media implied.
John Nichols isn’t the only exception in somewhat higher profile news to cover this in a rational manner but he is an indicator that they can’t completely ignore her. He said the following about the situation.

A Presidential Candidate Willing to Get Arrested to Fight Foreclosure Abuse

It is not quite true that a third-party presidential candidate has to get arrested to get attention from the media. Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for the presidency this year, has gotten her share of attention—in part because she is a genuinely impressive contender, in part because her campaign has been strikingly focused and professional in its approach.

But Stein got a good deal of attention Wednesday for a good reason. She was busted with fellow Greens and activists from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign outside the Philadelphia office of Fannie Mae, the government-backed mortgage lender that is foreclosing on precisely the people it is supposed to help.

Most politicians avoid saying—let alone doing—anything of consequence regarding the foreclosure crisis. But Stein, her vice presidential running-mate (Cheri Honkala, who last year mounted a campaign for sheriff in Philadelphia as part of an anti-foreclosure fight), labor lawyer James Moran and Sister Margaret McKenna of the Medical Mission Sisters were arrested after attempting to gain access to the Fannie Mae office through an adjacent financial institution on Philadelphia’s “Bankers Row.” ….. Complete article

Jill Stein has made it clear that she is trying to run at the grass roots level and she has been supporting the protest movements that have been going on including the Occupy Wall Street movement. The protest movements are a diverse movement of people with different issues they’re concerned about and positions on them so it would be inappropriate for any one to claim that they speak for them although traditional candidates often use this tactic. Fortunately it is clear that a significant portion of the protest movements do support her and most of the rest would almost certainly want an alternative to the duopoly whether it is her or not. A user submitted post about her on the Occupy Wall Street web page presents her interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now clearly indicating some support. The irregular Times also covered how Jill Stein Refuses To Co-Opt Occupy Wall Street To Her Advantage.

Barack Obama’s own law professor, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, has produced a video calling for his defeat; he claims that Barack “has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States." This is putting it mildly; Barack Obama has done the will of the corporations, at the expense of most people, whenever the public hasn’t put an enormous amount of pressure on him not to. Professor Unger acknowledges that we may risk judicial and administrative appointments that may be even worse if Mitt Romney is elected however it will do no good to continue reelecting democrats when they’re little if any better than Republicans.

Frankly I don’t see how Mitt Romney could win in a remotely fair election; which is why they seem to be relying so heavily on voter suppression laws in many states. However they clearly aren’t keeping it quit so it is hard to imagine that they can get away with it and be perceived a a legitimate administration. Frankly I doubt if even this could be good enough especially since Gary Johnson is also running a stronger than expected campaign and a large percentage of the public is fed up with the horrendous methods they’ve been using to run their campaigns and the government. If they spend all their campaign money telling the public how bad the other candidate is then the public might come to the accurate conclusion that neither one of them is any good and if they realize that there are alternatives that didn’t take enormous amounts of money from the corporations then many of them can and should vote for alternative candidates.

Another major issue that should be getting much more attention is of course the primary issue that the Green Party was established to address, the environment. The corporate press isn’t covering this nearly as well as they could and should be and the enormous amount of damage continues to escalate without adequate coverage. This means many people that are suffering from environmental damage may not realize how big the problem is and those that haven’t encountered it on a large scale yet may be taken by surprise when it becomes impossible to ignore.

The corporate press is selling an enormous amount of air time to the energy companies that have been causing this problem without allowing much if any time to the sincere environmentalists. They’re using this as an opportunity to provide enormous amount of propaganda for their agenda which involves dramatically increasing the amount of damage they’ve been doing while they imply that their technology is much better and it can protect the environment. Many people are being given the impression that they’re the sincere environmentalists and the real environmentalists are the radical fanatics. This has also affected the political coverage which often down plays or denies the problem exists.

The oil companies have been making an enormous profit; but this is largely because they don’t pay for the damage that they do to provide the energy and that damage won’t go away and eventually if they get their way the public will be stuck with the tab to repair it or worse it won’t be repaired and it will lead to the slow destruction of our society; assuming it doesn’t lead to a massive war over water or some other related problem that causes a quicker destruction of our society.

Mitt Romney has indicated that Climate Change or environmental damage isn’t high on his agenda at all and that he may not even consider it a legitimate issue. Barack Obama has done a better job coming up with rhetoric but when it comes to the policies he’s promoted their not much better. He has increased off shore drilling even while they were still cleaning up after the recent disaster; he has said that he will expedite approval of half the keystone pipeline despite the fact that he stopped it for environmental reasons clearly implying his intentions since that half would be useless without the other half; when he has supported solar it was in favor of firms that paid a lot of money to lobby and donated to campaigns clearly indicating that the political connections and profits of the firms are more important than the most effective manner of repairing the damage; this has been further indicated when he used tariffs and threats with the World Intellectual Property Organization to prevent China from increasing production of clean energy technology without paying more to the owners of the patents who gained them with help from government grants and aren’t obligated to make them available in the public domain to cut expenses for the majority.

Clearly Barack Obama”s rhetoric is much bigger than his actual plans and even on this subject providing a return for his campaign contributors is more important than protecting the environment!

This isn’t going to be like some holly wood movie where the hero comes in a and saves the day at the last minute; Hollywood doesn’t provide real solutions or accurate descriptions of this problem any more than it does of any other; and it is already happening.

This isn’t going to be solved by continuing to accept the lie from the corporate media that we have to choose between the candidates that the corporations have approved for us.

Unlike Barack Obama and Mitt Romney she didn’t get her support by using political machines and propaganda to gain positive press and support based on limited knowledge of the candidate. She gained her support at the grass roots level by addressing the issues that traditional candidates beholden to the corporations refuse to do.

This is why the corporate media considers it so important to suppress the coverage for her and it is why a growing number of the public is no longer dumb enough to fall for it anymore!

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)