[GPSCC-chat] Ongoing Issues Campaigns

Wed Feb 27 21:40:57 PST 2013

Hopefully, by including Peace Movies in your laundry list of "complaints" at the end you didn't mean to imply that I'm a crony capitalist making money at public expense.  I make more money if the status quo changes to where there is a bigger demand for my information. As for running for office, I would rather focus my energies on writing movie reviews and if that takes off maybe expand into renting and/or selling nonviolent DVDs. Thanks.

Sincerely,

John Thielking

--- On Wed, 2/27/13, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:

From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Ongoing Issues Campaigns
To: "GPSCC" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Date: Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 7:45 PM

Hello, All:

      At last month's meeting, Sandy made a call for a special session to discuss trying to select a few primary foci for Green party activities going forward.  We expect everyone to continue working on their primary concerns.  However, if most of us can spend some time on the selected primary foci, it could raise the profile of the Green party and make us all more effective in our joint and individual efforts. Last night, Jim Doyle, Valerie, Caroline, Sandy, Andrea, Gerry, Dana, Brian, and I met and Warner joined us by phone.

      We all agreed to post a summary of this discussion to the general list, to discuss it further at the monthly meeting Thursday evening, and to carry over the discussion until the March 28 meeting.  My summary appears below.  Others, whether they attended or not, are hereby invited to contribute to this discussion.  The issue on this list could serve as a focus for recruiting outside speakers and providing a focus for discussion in our  our monthly meetings, in addition to other things we could do with this list.

            1.  CANDIDATES FOR LOCAL OFFICE:  Someone suggested we weren't really a political party if we didn't field local candidates. There will be elections this November 5 for various offices in Santa Clara County marked UDEL on the "Local Jurisdiction Election Schedule" published by the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters (www.sccgov.org/sites/rov/Candidate%20-%20Measure%20Information/Documents/Local-Jurisdiction-Election-Schedule.pdf). There are a number of school boards, plus water, sanitation and other districts with elections this year.  More will have elections in 2014. You are encouraged to review this list and volunteer to run for one of these offices if you are so eligible. Doing so would give the group a focus for fund raising and campaigning.  I'm thinking of running for something like the Santa Clara County Unified School district in 2014. If I'm going to do that, I should select the office soon, start attending official
 meetings relating to that office, writing news stories and blogging about the issues they discuss and the ones I think they should discuss.  Sandy suggested we should avoid running for school boards unless we "have children in the schools and have not been involved in local school issues. ... [W]e should still ask that any prospective Green candidate be knowlegeable and credible on the issues involved" for whatever office they choose to run.  I agree.  I don't have children in this district, but I've long been concerned about education.  I've long wanted to prepare a budget combining education and criminal justice, because much of the prison population are school dropouts, and recidivism is lower among those with more education. That's why I think I should select the office, start attending the appropriate public meetings, and writing news stories and blogging about them very soon if I'm going to run.

            2.  VOTER REGISTRATION:  I suggest we all consider starting carrying voter registration forms more or less everywhere we go and invite people who aren't registered to do so and invite people registered under other parties to reregister Green.

            3.  GLOBAL WARMING:  A majority of the attendees last night identified this as a major issue deserving of attention by all sentient beings.  I personally believe that one thing we can do that could have a very large impact on this issue (and others) is to identify the big money interests blocking progress on this issue following the format being developed under the "Documenting crony capitalism" initiative (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Documenting_crony_capitalism;  I'm biased:  I'm the originator of this project).

            4.  UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE:  Many other issues were mentioned, but there seemed to be more energy and concern about health care for all than other issues.  As with global warming, it would help to prepare persuasive summaries of the vested interests that make huge amounts of money at public expense sustaining the current dysfunctions with something like the "Documenting crony capitalism" initiative mentioned above.

            5.  OTHERS:  the distribution of wealth in the US (including cooperatives, foreclosures and homelessness), our corrupt political system (including the California
Disclose act, the need for full public funding of political campaigns and a constitution amendment to overturn "Citizens United", Move to Amend,
), defense (including the global arms trade), education (from prenatal through college at affordable rates), our criminal injustice system, the death penalty, immigration reform, marriage equality, native rights, GMO foods, gun violence, peace movies, wildlife conservation, transportation (incl bicycle & pedestrian, water quality and other traditional Green environmental issues, and outreach to local colleges and universities and the Peace and Freedom party.  Each issue (other than outreach) involves a set of vested interests who make substantial amounts of money from the current dysfunctions.  The money made by each of these groups at public expense should be documented along with their campaign contributions and lobbying expenses as part of the "Documenting crony capitalism" initiative, as mentioned above.

      Please respond here or at the meeting Thursday evening to these comments.

      Spencer

-- Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:  www.structuremonitoring.com

_______________________________________________
sosfbay-discuss mailing list
sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
http://lists.cagreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20130227/b7d6da23/attachment.html>