Officially an "independent leftist" in Texas as well as nationally

Since the Texas Green Party said vote yes on the hugely antienvironmental, and economic boondoggle, Proposition 4, which sadly passed with more than 70 percent, they've officially lost me for 2026. 

All they did was cite the Texas Water Fund, created by the state in 2023 legislation for water projects, which in turn only cites the Trib (neolibs) and the Texas Water Development Board (state agency). That even further settles that I am an independent leftist. 

The hugely antienvironmental, part 1?

[Charles Perry] is proposing investing in desalinating salty Gulf water, cleaning up the chemical-laden fracking water used to coax oil from the ground in the Permian Basin, and injecting fresh water underground for later use.

Yeah. Beyond that being directly antienvironmental, it also gives oil drillers a semi-free pass on their fracking wastewater.

The hugely antienvironmental part 2?

Meanwhile, he is involved in mysterious dealmaking with other states for their reserves. During debate over his legislation in early April, Perry alluded to talks with “one or two” neighbors—probably Louisiana and Arkansas—to contract for water.

Wilder noted this is a recycled 1960s plan. In fact, Marc Reisner talked about shit like this in "Cadillac Desert." One thing he noted, which also applied in the Southwest to the Central Arizona Project and other such things is that water is heavy, and it takes a lot of energy to push it uphill. Guess Texas Greens haven't heard of that seminal environmental book. 

Sierra and other Gang Greeners, I get. But, has nobody in the Texas Green Party read Cactus Ed Abbey's famous dictum that "Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell"?

At that, at least the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, while  proving itself to still be Gang Green neoliberals in the environmental organization world, in an official support with no real analysis, did admit voters were being offered a pig in a poke:

At least 50% of the annual allocations must go toward the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT). The New Water Supply for Texas Fund supports various projects - some of which are highly controversial - that add to the total volume of water available to Texans, such as reservoir construction, seawater desalination, reuse of oil and gas wastewater (“produced water”), a statewide water conveyance system, acquisition of water from out of state, water and wastewater reuse, and aquifer storage and recovery. 

The focus of the SWIFT is solely on water infrastructure projects identified in the State Water Plan. This is an important accountability measure because it means there must be some level of support for the project locally for it to appear in the State Water Plan. However, there is no requirement for how this part of the funding must be split between the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and SWIFT.

But still said vote yes.

Despite a former leader saying "Wait a minute":

“There are a lot of parallels” between the ’68 plan and today’s water-grid concept, said Ken Kramer, the former head of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and a veteran environmental advocate at the Capitol. The staggering cost. The lack of robust debate. The vague talk of out-of-state water purchases. The impracticality of it all.

Ugh. 

That said? Texas Greens couldn't even offer caveats. 

So, I can't offer support. 

And, I have removed both the Texas GP, and GP national, which I should have done last year, from my links list.

==

Update, Nov. 13: I've gotten a response from one member of the state executive committee, who first briefly explained the process for endorsement or nonendorsement on each of the 17 propositions, then noted that they originally supported Prop 4 but then voted no.

Discovered environmentalism?

No, not exactly.

This person said they voted no because they felt they couldn't trust state regulators and GOP cronies. Still no acknowledgement that the proposition itself, regardless of who oversees its implementation, is antienvironmentalist.

Back to the original.

== 

Sadly, I now say, you broke 2 percent last year and so have party-line ballot access guaranteed for five election cycles again. 

Sidebar: Per this piece, Texas Greens also couldn't talk about how Prop 4 might increase the number of endangered species. 

Of course, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, as well as other Marxist parties, and even the Socialist Party USA, are unlikely to have any write-in candidates next year.

That's OK.

Nearly 25 years ago, the Dallas Morning News had a "where are they now" about local civil rights activists from the 1960s. About half had dropped out of electoral politics. 

Wrong, Sam Husseini, on Vote Pact

First, does anybody besides Husseini write anything for VotePact, which is based on a voter version of old Congressional "twinning" or "pairing" on important votes when one member was absent, and so, a member of the other side would absent themselves.

Seriously. 

There's 10 articles on its homepage, and he wrote all of them.

So, we're going to assume this is some pet project of his.

And, it's wrong.

First, there are other third parties of both left and right besides Greens and Libertarians. (This sets aside that many Greens aren't really "left." This doesn't set aside that Libertarians, contra their protests, ARE "right.")

I mean, as I've said more than once on both here and Substack? I voted for the Commie. 

Second, contra this piece by Husseini? No, the two parties don't have that much in common.

His bullet point five, that Libertarians as well as Greens are "anti corporate rule"? Really? Where did that come from? Ditto on six, "Main Street over Wall Street."

And, on all environmental issues, Libertarians believe that "moar capitalism" is the solution for the climate crisis, pollution, etc. Libertarians oppose regulation in general.

And, beyond that, the LP platform says NOTHING, really, about business in general.

I'm shaking my head so hard I'm at risk of spraining my neck.

And, if he's got teh stupidz on this, I further withdraw my cutting him any slack on COVID and WIV.

Third, this is to misunderstand the tribalism into which duopoly politics has descended. Most of the more rabid duopoly voters are not pairing off their presidential votes. Just ain't happening.

Greens, like Democrats, don't own my vote

I've said this before occasionally on Twitter, but, I'm not sure I've devoted a blog post entirely to it. (I did hint at it in a blog post a couple of weeks before the 2020 election, but didn't get this explicit.)

It's time, especially because a lot of them don't get it.

Green fans and stanners, and party thought leaders, reacting adversely to my post about Jill Stein's Veep selection clusterfuck, or months ago, to my post about her ethical hypocrisy on finances, have made it time. 

This sets aside Greens not wanting to discuss vaccines and public health, science vs pseudoscience on 5G [it was 4G before that] and other things.

Democrats, of course, assume that they "own" all votes left of Republicans, and it's one of the biggest, most irksome, #BlueAnon things they do. As many others, as well as I, have called them out, they don't own any non-duopoly leftist votes at all. Hell, they don't even "own" librul votes. But they sure don't own leftist ones.

Greens of the type I mentioned above, stanners and party thought leaders, act as if the Green Party is the only party of the left, and that therefore they own my vote.

Just as untrue as it is with Democrats.

And also?

Just as off-putting.

So, it's Butch Ware as Jill Stein's Veep? Update: It was Ayoub first, then Noura Erekat

That was the news yesterday, that she had picked Butch Ware, professor at Cal-Santa Barbara, over any of the two Arab-American names she floated two weeks ago via Al Jazeera as three potential Veep picks. The two Arab-Americans were also both from Michigan, the state with the largest Arab-American population and where the "uncommitted" movement in Democratic presidential primaries started.

Per that second link, a previous blog post of mine? Was she afraid of actually costing Kamala is a Zionist Cop the state of Michigan, and in a close presidential race, thus possibly tipping it to Donald Trump? Given that her 2016 recount, based on fake news, started in Michigan, and that Stein is in many ways an AccommoGreen, the Green equivalent of a ConservaDem, none of this would surprise me. Luqman, the third name floated, is from DC and so just wouldn't have been a broader needle-mover. Also, as of 2020, she was affiliated with Sputnik Radio. Given attacks on Stein as a "Russian agent," by #BlueAnon engaging in the worst of #Russiagate's wrongness, that would not have flown. But, was Stein thinking that way? If so, why was Luqman on the list in the first place?

And, why am I assuming Stein actually plays 11-dimensional chess, or thinks that deeply?

==

Big set of updates to the original post, via Green Party candidate Jason Call and people he had retweeted, with a huge amount of backstory to this.

First, Stein had yet other people in mind besides that list from Al Jazeera, apparently. Or she was forced to, rather, after her first choice, from that list, spit the bit. More on that below.

One of them, her first fallback, was Noura Erekat, who, thank doorknob, per this tweet

After thoughtful deliberation,the Green Party & I could not agree on terms of campaign re strategy. This means I will not join their slate as VP. My priority remains our collective liberation,rooted in ending genocide facilitated by US cover & relentless arms transfers 2 Israel.

— Noura Erakat (@4noura) August 16, 2024

Pulled out.

The "terms of campaign"? This:

Before people jump to conclusions, I need to clarify this

The proposal was that if @4noura joins the team as VP it would be under the condition that the Stein campaign withdraw from the election should the Democrats secure a permanent ceasefire and offensive arms embargo.

We rejected it because
1) you cannot trust either the Democrats or Israel to keep their word
2) we would be sabotaging the entire election for the Green Party both now and in 2028, giving up ballot lines we have earned
3) it is not possible to withdraw from most ballots anyway. The best we could do is stop campaigning and tell people not to vote for us.

We could not request the names be removed from ballots We do not believe concessions to the empire advance the cause of justice. Of course the highest priority is for a ceasefire in Palestine, we also seek a full dismantling of the apartheid state and the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist regime

— Jason Call 🇵🇸 CM Stein/Ware24: Unbreakable (@CallForCongress) August 16, 2024

As I noted in quoting

Good! GLAD Noura Erakat withdrew as Jill Stein's Veep. Stein is enough of an AccommoGreen, Green version of a ConservaDem. The GP (tho I'm no longer a Green) didn't need somebody even more that way. Go back to being a Democrat & know that it has MANY other issues besides Gaza. https://t.co/D7qilfNn86

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-VoteLeftOfStein 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) August 17, 2024

And in responding to someone else who quoted:

Interesting, and per your previous tweet that you quoted, re @4noura, even if a permanent ceasefire happened, a Stein pledge to withdraw confirms she is an AccommoGreen, a Green version of a ConservaDem. Plenty of other reasons to stay in the race.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-VoteLeftOfStein 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) August 17, 2024

The GP doesn't need that shit. Stein should have seen that Erekat's history, including being of legal counsel to a House committee, might have been .... iffy.

Serious, that SCREAMS "duopoly" to me. Did nobody vet her?

Nor does it need the shit of Nathan J. Robinson, socialist pretendian, stanning for the left hand of the duopoly

And, stan he does.:

Can you tell me what the theory of how the Green Party can achieve political leverage is? this seems like an obvious way that the Green party could have attempted to use its power to force an important policy change. You reject this idea, so what's your alternative strategy?

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) August 17, 2024

He'd semi-headfaked earlier this summer, but, now we're seeing the mask back off. 

As I told him?

Nathan Robinson, are you:
A. That dumb?
B. Indicating that you're going to vote for the left hand of the duopoly (again, I presume?) in November?
==
Beyond that, there are MANY other reasons to oppose Democrats:
1. Fracking and many other environmental issues
2. Natl health care

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-VoteLeftOfStein 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) August 17, 2024

What else is there to say? Well, other than Robinson wants the Green Party, en masse, to be DSA Roseys.

Per that semi-headfake mentioned above, I had had hopes that he might actually be looking beyond the duopoly this year, mainly over Gaza, but also for other reasons.

Beyond the headfake, the naivete or whatever it is that he's exemplifying?

Nathan, have you been gaslighting the outside world, yourself, or both, about how much you understand about political machinations?

Back to the Erekat pick.

To pick up from near the top of this post? Elsewhere, Jason Call notes that the original call was Abed Ayoub, the top candidate in the Al Jazeera leak (yes, a deliberate leak) but he backed off due to family illness.

Erm, wasn't this known in advance? The family illness? Surely, unless his wife had a near-fatal heart attack less than 24 hours before Stein officially tapped him, this didn't come out of nowhere. In this Aug. 12 story, in which Ayoub is grateful to be under consideration, there's no talk of health issues with himself or family. Per Facebook, his one grandmother died Aug. 15. It's true, that could have been sudden, but given her apparent age and that most her siblings were already dead, it's more likely not that sudden.

And, if he did spit the bit, why not Amer Zahr or Luqman, off that original list of names?

(My original post on this didn't get updated after that Al Jazeera piece, as I was operating off IPR. Still.)

To go back to Luqman? I think Putin would want somebody more organized than Stein as a Russian asset.

And, to offer a new update?

I tweeted this post Saturday night to someone named TurboKitty, who had been retweeted by dyed-in-the-wool Green David Bruce Collins, calling the process a clusterfuck. Turns out said person is co-chair of the Nevada Green Party steering committee.

I'll be here, and was on Twitter, charitable to their first response to me, and assume they were honestly thinking I was talking about the "big reveal," not the process behind it. I told them politely but firmly, no, I meant this process.

I wasn't charitable to their second response:

Tell me you weren't there without telling me you weren't there ...

— 🇵🇸🏴‍☠️🌻TurboKitty🌻🏴‍☠️🇵🇸 (@TurboKitty) August 18, 2024

With my reply:

Tell me you're not reading what I wrote without telling me you're not reading what I wrote. Adding that to my piece.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-VoteLeftOfStein 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) August 18, 2024

And, I'll further fight fire with fire as desired. 

I "get" the tribalism behind the response. I don't accept it.

And, I'm going to keep taking receipts. One Pourz11, who's actually a follower of me, but it's not mutual, jumped in. Their second comment was:

Ideally Jill should hook up with a better investment company, but this is still nothing compared to the work she has done. I'm not a fan of her prior campaigns and GP work and won't be voting for her, but making a big deal out of nothing is nothing. No one cares about your past

— pourz11 (@pourz11) August 18, 2024

To which I said:

At least you admitted facts on the ground. That said, she's had 8 years to fix this.
As for her prior campaigns? And being an "AcccomoGreen" equivalent of a "ConservaDem"? Yeah, it's bad.
But, no, this isn't all "nothing."
Nor is the fact the GP cldn't get more real candidates.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-VoteLeftOfStein 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) August 18, 2024

Then added that, per the end of that comment, no one that mattered to me cared about their present.

And, setting aside her investments hypocrisy, I haven't even talked about things like her antivaxxer footsies, her 5G nuttery and more. That said, I know shit like 5G conspiracy theories and antivaxxerism (even if it was footsies, not full-blown with her) appeals to a fair chunk of Greens, as I said after in the last run-up to the 2020 race at that link. Whether it's a majority or not, I don't know. OTOH, COVID scared enough Greens that Stein doubled down on pandering there, saying she supported the vaccine but opposed vaccine mandates. Or, to put them in the scare quotes they need? "Vaccine mandates." Gee, a Rethuglican could say that. Like Gov. Strangeabbott. On the third hand, I called Stein Just.Another.Politician.™ years ago, and said Greens were Just.Another.Political.Party™. I stand by that. Sadly, and one thing that has me not locked in on Claudia de la Cruz is her Stein-like stance on vaccines.

(Some of this is notes for when I announce my "slate" in a month or so.) Per that last link above, if Joseph Kishore, the candidate of the Trots of the Socialist Equality Party, is available by write-in, that's an option.

More on the Erekat pick and her demands.

First, Noura, they weren't going to be met. If you're that dumb to think that they were, beyond the AccommoGreen in extremis, I question your political judgement as much as Nathan J. Robinson's. You must have hung out with Dem Congresscritters too much. (I also question your political alignment as much as Robinson's.)

More on that, from my perspective, snarkily?

Actually, considering I'd like to finish pushing the Green Party off the cliff, in some ways, it's too bad in some ways that Stein didn't agree to Erekat's demands.

==

Anyway, to summarize:

1. Stein's first choice for Veep spit the bit in a process that invites questions, to put it politely, is head scratching, to put it a bit more skeptically, or is questionable, to put it more skeptically yet.

2. Her theoretical second and third choices, from her original list of names, were apparently simply ignored.

3. Her fourth choice was poorly vetted, if at all. And, it's not like there wasn't time. She's mentioned in that Aug. 12 story linked above, with Zahr endorsing her. Was the Al Jazeera piece not just a deliberate leak, but a smokescreen to cover Stein's chasing of Erekat? If not, why did she pivot to Erekat? Was it knowing her duopoly ties and seeing this as a "get"?

4. That, of course, fell through and it was on to No. 5 or beyond.

At this point, Stein, if not the national Green Party as a whole, is telling Will Rogers "hold my beer" over his bon mot about Democrats and disorganization. This looks like George McGovern's Veep clusterfuck in 1972.

And, summary side notes?

1. I'm going to do something further about Robinson. Don't think you've gotten off the hook yet.

2. What's this say for the Green Party 2028? Even more than in 2020, most candidates, before Stein entered, couldn't cross the bar for party qualifications to officially run. And, after Cornel West spit the bit, nobody else of note jumped in besides Stein. Her running in 2028 would finish killing off the party. So, where's a Margaret Flowers or someone like that? A Matthew Hoh?

Nutters, flakes, vanity candidates and grifters (and there's definitely Venn diagram overlap) won't cut it.

3. Tagging Mark Lause on Facebook, whom I thought was done with the Green Party on personal support as well as activism, I find out I'm wrong there. I can't say more because I don't post as "public."

4. I also still think a la 2016, that Stein deliberately spit the bit on choosing a Veep nominee from Michigan, and an Arab-American rather than an African American, because of lesser evilism.

Third-party and independent candidate roundup

I eventually decded to pull these items from the most recent presidential roundup, as it was getting long. It posted yesterday; here it is. Also yesterday, a roundup of major international recent elections news.

Interestingly, a couple of items center on New York State. Cue Huey Lewis:

First, though?

Chase Oliver is the Libertarian presidential nominee. Not a Mises Mouse, but otherwise, on many issues, full of the Olde Tyme Libertarian gospel. Climate change is the biggest. The free market caused the climate crisis; it's bullshit claiming it will get us out. Gunz would be second. Supporting educational vouchers would be third. 

The batshits of Twitter, whether Mises Mice, or non-LP alt-rightists. started hating on him immediately anyway. And, then there's his own party chairwoman. See below.

==

Second?

#MAGAts like to talk about election fraud. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moves in that direction, more and more, in many ways, will he talk about the moral version of election fraud, on residency, he seems to be committing himself? Showing the fear that full-on MAGAts have of Brainworm Bobby stealing votes from Donald Duck Trump, the Guardian piece notes that the New York Post reported on it first.

Meanwhile, even after being gaslit by him on abortion, Bob Jr.'s Veep, Nicole Shanahan, gave $8 million of her bucks to the campaign.

==

That said, Oliver has, or had, another problem: LP Chair Angela McArdle. As of last week, McAwful, she of the idea of bringing Donald Trump and RFK Jr. to the Libertarian convention, had yet to endorse Oliver as party prez nominee, and in fact was still fellating Trump.

And, since writing that paragraph above June 2, it's gotten worse. McAwful officially has Trump Delightment Syndrome, per Third Party Watch, which reports she will officially, so it seems, fellate Trump in red states, but, poutingly I presume, endorse Oliver in blue states. A 37-minute video of her ramblings for the strong at heart.

TPW also reports that the Montana LP has officially rejected him as a candidate. Will he sue? McAwful will surely do nothing, contra the Green Party, which in 2021 decertified the Alaska GP for pulling that stunt with Jesse the Body in 2020. So, Chase, it's you or nobody.

As for the Montana LP claiming "it's looking out for itself"? The Alaska GP made vague nods that way, too. Know what? Whether true or not, it still turns a national party into Articles of Confederation US instead of Constitution US. And, GP National, unlike McAwful's likely inaction a year from now, decertified Alaska's GP at its 2021 convention.

Sidebar: One IPR commenter is a birther, tho not a MAGAts member, and I can't tell if they're a Mises Mouse or not. I told him on one post I wasn't engaging with him there any more on the birtherism. Said nutter, "Nuña," has gotten worse since then, being a No True Scotsman on L/libertarianism, then claiming (no, really) that neoliberalism is "far-left."

Update: Colorado LP has joined Montana. Let the Libertarian crack-up begin.

==

And continuing on that thread?

"Libertarians for Kennedy" is looking at getting Brainworm Bobby and Cucker Shanahan to run on certain state LP ballot lines. Organizers of this effort say that Oliver would have to cooperate, but put that in such a way that they expect it to be guaranteed. More on the batshit lunacy here, which, given that McAwful refuses to endorse Oliver, has more than 0, even if not a lot more than 0, chance of success.

It has less than zero to the degree that McAwful will back Trump as much as possible. State LPs like Montana will probably look at a Mises Mouse Libertarian first and Trump second. Maybe the other way around. Brainworm Bobby will be a distant third.

==

And, just when I think Brainworm Bobby's campaign can't get worse, it does! Turns out that old Movement for a People's Party grifter Nick Brana is Bob Jr's campaign ballot access director, per an IPR piece about Bob and the Natural Law Party.

== 

Now, New York.

Dear Jill Stein: Answer me this. How could you fall short on New York ballot access signatures when a LaRouchie independent candidate for US Senate crushed it with ease, with the same numbers required? (Yes, Sare also ran in 2022, but she's an independent, not a third-party candidate, and you ran in 2016 and 2012.)

Actually, maybe Libertarian nominee Oliver should answer first. According to Independent Political Report, which says RFK Jr. will be the only non-duopoly candidate on the NY ballot, Oliver was WAY behind Stein. 

Actually, that's been answered in comments at Independent Political Report. LP national apparently refused to pay the freight for signature gathering, apparently pouting, even before the convention, that they couldn't get a Mises Mouse the nomination. See below.

==

Related to other Brainworm Bobby stuff? Shanahan loves her some Tucker Carlson, er Cucker Tarlson.

==

Meanwhile, for the Ye Olde Time Libertarians who have tired of the Oliver-McAwful drama, and who had tired of the Mises Mice long earlier, the YOTLs are officially founding a "Liberty Party."

==

Finally, though not tightly tied to the 2024 elections, via IPR, this year's Freedom Fest promises to be a lollapalooza of nuttery.

• Ev Psych fundamentalists like Steve Pinker (also full of shit on other things) and Matt Ridley (ditto).
• Rob Schneider, not funny in movies and not intelligent as a would-be pundit;
• Javier Milei, who will Make Argentina Garbage Again;
• Michael Schellenberger, fake enviro and climate change denialist;
• Pseudoskeptic Michael Shermer;
• Antivaxxer deluxe Del Bigtree;
• A bunch of other A-list grifters;
• Wayne Allen Root, Libertarian edgelord-grifter, and junior Trump wannabe;
• Multiple Skousens;
• Junior grifters that also appear to include at least one transhumanist and definitely include at least one other antivaxxer;
• A guy who self-presumes to be so well known that he's "Joe from Texas."

Gee, who could not fall in love with an event that once again proves that when "FreeDumb" is part of the name, the Dumb is usually along for the ride. (Oh, and on most the names above, either here or on Twitter, I have the receipts.)

Yeah, Jill Stein is there, but, per the above? She at least plays footsie with antivaxxerism. Anyway, she's not a featured speaker; she's on the B-team.

Also, the event is tawdry in some ways. You can't spell Jacob Sullum's name correctly? There's a couple of others, too.

And, there's a number of investment advice gurus. How much you wanna bet they're all peddling crypto?

==

This July 19 roundup has info on LP National vs Colorado state, St. Bernard of Sanders sheepdogging and more.

This Aug. 9 roundup had info on some of Brainworm Bobby's, aka Wasted Space's, ballot access lies and more.

This Aug. 30 roundup had a Socialist Workers Party cult nutter trying to perform entryism on me in comments.

Green Party notes: Texas Greens convention

First, per the TXGP report on presidential voting, it's sad that there is no Travis precinct nor a Dallas one. See below for more.

Second, gag me with a fucking spoon. Hunter Crow is officially in permacandidate territory with his run for State Board of Education District 11, after his 2022 pseudo-Green run for the RRC and 2020 for Tarrant County Community College District board.

Third, I've said elsewhere, but Eddie Espinoza for the RRC is a good candidate. No idea about Robin Lee Vargas. No website. Apparently no Facebook. She does have a "donorbox" to get money. Even less idea about OC Caldwell 1 for SBOE District 10, for whom I don't even get Google hits. Per the Secretary of State website, that's it. Yep, no Greens for statewide office other than Stein and Espinoza. Not even with the Paxton-led sacking of all three GOP incumbents on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Not even with Democrats running an open ConservaDem for Senate in Colin Allred. "Congrats," pre-emptively and in advance, in missing the 2 percent cutoff in November. Best of luck in 2026. (Compare Libertarians, who, while not as strong as a decade ago, are still far stronger than Greens.) 

I know, I know, there's the filing fees. But for Senate? There's nobody with Green interest, or even a non-Conserva version of a Dem willing to be a scalawag? No GP leaning lawyer willing to pony up for a CCA run? 

Two years ago, there were three statewide candidates with no presidential race. This year, just one "organic" statewide candidate plus the presidential race. The two SBOE candidates are also good, as the party needs more candidates in general, but overall? This is backsliding.

Fourth and related? The state party bragging about chapters starting in Travis and Dallas counties. On the latter, there was one there 15-plus years ago when I lived there. For various reasons, it imploded. I think a restart effort was made a few years ago, but that then imploded. (COVID may have been a factor.) Travis? Why Keep Austin Weird hasn't had a Green Party chapter even as Dems have drifted neoliberal for years is beyond me. Denton Greens seemed OK in size for Denton County when I saw Howie there in 2020.

Fifth? Jill Stein got the state Green Party prez nod easily. Jasmine Sherman, about whom I've written briefly before, was second. Jorge Zavala, the other party-certified (not going there, not going there, on "certified") candidate, discussed with Sherman, was third. Must be kind of embarrassing to alleged Green Party co-founder Randy Toler (that's highly disputed, his claim, also at that link) to finish fourth. Side note: David Bruce Collins was a Sherman delegate there, I presume, since he's a Sherman delegate at the national convention.

Had never before heard of this fucking Daví, complete with accent mark, who, born DeShaun Davis, claims to be the "Ävatar of Earth" (with umlaut) and is already in as much of fucking nutbar territory as Zavala. But wait, per his website bio linked there, it gets better:

During the global shutdown and pandemic of 2020, Daví experienced a spiritual transformation where he began developing the ability to communicate with animals.

Oy. Just oy. And per that claim? Join Kinky Friedman in a race for Dogcatcher of Utopia with a skill like that.

Top blogging of March

These are the most read posts in March. Posts not from last month will be so indicated.

No. 10? Dental care as health care. Important globally, not just in the US.

No. 9? My critical analysis of Genocide Joe's State of the Union.

NO. 8? A blast in the past from 2017, my longform/total takedown, to which I make occasional small new notes and edits, of the late "Actual Flatticus" / "Alan Smithee" / IRL Chris Chopin.

No. 7? No, I don't "revere" the Constitution. A leftist reply to typical librul thought.

No. 6? A blast from WAY in the past, back in 2006, and yes, Tim Treadwell WAS really fricking nuts (and as a result, really fricking dead). Sidebar: Having read Herzog's memoir recently, going beyond what I said in the original about him pulling punches, he may also have been a bit manipulative, or certainly a bit novelistic. That said, Treadwell was really fricking nuts without Herzog's framing.

No. 5? Actually posted April 1, but it's already trending that much. An April Fool's Day, sadly all too real, presidential election news roundup.

No. 4? My thoughts on Guernica magazine's scrub of "From the Edges of a Broken World."

No. 3? Posted even later than April 1, but trending that much that quickly? My schadenfreude about the Libertarian Party going broke and imploding.

No. 2? My mocking of the stupidity of a Green Party candidate on Twitter.

No. 1? It turned out to be dated, but my thought on the first two rumored candidates to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Veep — Aaron Rodgers and Jesse the Body Ventura.

LP going broke and imploding, and other political news

The Libertarian Party is going broke. I guess the Mises Mice are good party-wreckers but not party-builders? Related? Other Libertarians are demanding party chair Angela McArdle resign over this and other clusterfucks. (She's a Mises Mouse.) Her oh-so-snappy response?

When contacted by Independent Political Report to ask if she wanted to comment on the allegations made in the letter, McArdle responded on Thursday evening, declining to address questions and instead replied, "Give my regards to your Luciferian Masters."

About as snappy as a bowl of rice krispies.

(Side note: I don't know why Independent Political Report is one of "those" websites that won't let you copy text. It's a PITA to do a "save as" text files and then open it in Word, but it's doable easily enough, so it's not like they're stopping anything. You also cannot right-click to open individual pieces in new tabs, which is another PITA. If this is being done for the clicks, IPR, well Ghostery has your number.) 

Meanwhile. the LP also may or may not have had its Facebook page hacked by the Russkies or another foreign actor. And, McArdle's reaction is hilarious. Per a commenter at the link, no, Angela, the FBI indeed doesn't even give two shits about the LP.

As I commented there:

Per Jack, it does check out, and the Eff Bee Eye does promise a follow-up response. Assuming the letter is genuine, the feds do not say what, if anything, the hackers did, if it's actual hackers and not just a foreign log-in or whatever.

So, let's all go to the LP's Facebook page and see if it has an posts that might be even more head-scratching than normal in the last six months.

Wait, WAIT!

Did McArdle not talk about Luciferian masters here at the IPR in the request for a party fiscal audit? Would Satan not be a representative of a foreign government? There's your answer, folks; thank me later, Jordan.

Angela is as McAwful as non-relative (I think) Megan McAwful.

I'd said the Green Party was past its best-buy date after the 2020 election season. I held out for four more years than the likes of Brandy Baker and Mark Lause, the latter formally noting the party was dead after 2016 (and Stein's lesser evilism recount, also getting initial mention in that link). I did mention, in a 2016 postmortem, things that needed to be improved. And, they weren't. Add in the various transgender/transsexual issues, which culminated with my saying "a pox on both your houses" (which I say as a non-twosider on this issue in general) and the nuttery of "identity movement Greens" (and don't forget censorship on the GP Facebook group before it was closed) and I am an ex-Green. And kind of hoping for it to implode more.

The Libertarian Party is trying to join it on an accelerated timeline. And, doing a damned good job of it.

For more on that, read this Substack by an ex-Libertarian (who works at Cato, re his bona fides) who escaped when the Mises Mice took over. Part of the value of the piece is documenting HOW the Mises Mice did that takeover. That includes drawing a bright line from Ron Paul's racist Rockwell newsletters.

As for the financial side? This, from that:

More than a fifth of the national party’s dues-paying members have left in the past year. That proportion is probably even greater among those who were active members, participating in campaigns and party business. In short, a party that proclaimed freedom of association as one of its core principles, in the end was destroyed because it was unwilling to exercise that fundamental right.

Yeah, you lose one fifth or more of your donors, you're in trouble.

Update, April 16: MoJo has a long, long form about the history of the LP, which includes noting that the Ron Paul-tards are in many ways the forerunners of the Mises Mice, but that the strains within the LP go even further. In what would make the Mice shit bricks today, the Koch brothers backed a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as presidential nominee in 1984, but when he lost, they moved on from day-to-day interest. Among links to the piece is one from Reason mag, which also says this split is part of a 50-year tension.

Update, May 4: Trump has accepted the Libertarian National Committee's invite to speak at the convention. (But there may be a hitch.) Will that, and the grift the LNC is trying to do off that, be enough to replenish diminished coffers?

==

Denny the Dwarf Kuchinich, after having been fired as Bob Jr's campaign manager several months back for Kennedy nepotism reasons (one of the few in-laws or other relatives of RFK Jr that still tolerates him) is now running for Congress as an independent. In attacking a WHO "global pandemic treaty," he shows why he was willing to work for Bobby in the first place. He compares it to the WTO. What, are we trying to block the importation of cheaper germs?

In reality?

1. It would not "surrender sovereignty." 
2. It's based on already existing WHO-generated agreements.

Or, per the link above:

It would be only the second such health accord after the 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a treaty which aims to reduce smoking via taxation and rules on labelling and advertising. 

However, the proposed pandemic treaty has come under fire on social media, mostly from right-wing critics warning it could lead to countries ceding authority to the WHO. The body strongly refutes this, stressing that governments are leading the negotiations and are free to reject the accord.

If anything, at least if enforced, it would point at China's secretiveness on All Things COVID, if anything.

Denny the Dwarf, as nutters as ever. And, while not quite a Bernie ⇒  Trump guy like that Goodman dude, he is a Bernie (I assume) ⇒  RFK Jr. dude.

As for the Bob Jr. tie otherwise? Denny IS an "antivaxxer under other color." (My phrase.) Or maybe just a straight-up one, being that blatant an enabler of Bob Jr.

Jill Stein: Sane vs other Green Party official candidates

Per the Wikipedia page on 2024 Green Party presidential primaries, we have three GP-certified candidates. As for the non-certified candidates, including Randy Toler, rightly "disputed" in his self-aggrandizing claim to be co-founder of the GP, the hurdles for becoming officially Party-recognized as a presidential candidate are pretty low IF you're active in the Green Party. We all went down this in 2020.

On the certified candidates? We have the seemingly hypocritical Jill Stein as the front-runner.

Then, we move to true whackjob Jorge Zavala, who wants to create a "water vortex implosion system." That's more New Age nutbar than Marianne Williamson's water faucets idea.

Jasmine Sherman seems to be perhaps a vanity candidate, also running/heading the one-candidate (for any office, it seems), Unicorn Party. Three guesses as to who the one candidate is. Her GP platform, largely lifted from previous UP documents, I think, is standard left-like identitarian politics.

With Green Party candidates like this ...

File this under "cluelessness from the field":

If you’ve got duopoly primaries like we do here in WA, this is a good way to fill them out pic.twitter.com/pbSM3Sr4kM

— Jason Call 🇵🇸 Green Party WA02 JillStein2024 CM (@CallForCongress) February 24, 2024

As I responded on Twitter, that's an optical scan ballot. The scanner will most likely file 13 it without a glance. If the scanner does flag a human elections official, THEY will file 13 it without a glance. They won't read it. And, this is a Green congresscritter. Oh, I also told him to look again at Jill Stein. Guy's probably a former Berner, like Pat the Berner, still a step behind in the parade.

Greens half-drink libertarian Kool-Aid on fiat money

The Green Party's version of "abolish the Fed" is better at start than many L/libertarian nutters' babblings about fiat money. Actually, no, that was pretty much a head fake. 

It quickly goes off into the ditch, starting with the fact that it IS in the same neighborhood of a babbling about fiat money, just without using that term, and without taking the "logical" next step into goldbuggery.

There is no such thing as "debt free money." This is to confuse money with the federal budget.

Second, what's to stop the Treasury from "printing like crazy," just as the Fed eventually does? What's to stop the Treasury from doing quantitative easing?

Third, if you believe Congress can step in and directly control the money? Do you want the same wingnuts who hold the government hostage over debt ceiling limits to do that as well? Oy.

Fourth, if you really are rejecting fiat money? Gold has no intrinsic value. Are you going to back the greenback with oil before the fracking runs out? The uranium that has intrinsic nuclear weapons value, but those are really the fiat currency version of weaponry. (We hope.) And a side note for any L/libertarians reading? "Fiat money" is not necessarily by government fiat; and when Andy Jackson killed the Second Bank of the US, his "pet banks" did not have 100 percent specie or bullion backing for their banknotes, contra a nutter claim on this Reddit post. (Shock me.)

The only think that could have made this more whackadoodle was to fuse this "debt free money" with the "print all you want" of Modern Monetary Theory and then try to reconcile the two.

Seriously, I remember in 2009, during the Great Recession, protesting in front of the Dallas Fed. I firmly distanced myself from a couple of L/libertarians; the most vocal was a Paul-tard. (Ron, not Rand, who hadn't gotten that much airplay yet.)

That all said, when you do teh Google (or teh DuckDuck) on "debt-free money," you'll get a variety of definitions of just what it is and how it's supposed to work. This site says it could include non-government currency, which does exist already for trading within certain local networks but has no value outside that community. Given that "this site" is New Agey, that would fit the modern Green Party well.

More charitably, the GP statement may be thinking of "social credit." If so? First, the piece doesn't spell it out. Second, per the link, social credit is no panacea. It has a quasi-idealistic view of how a modern economy should work. Second, at least in the US, it's been pushed to a fair degree by L/libertarians.

Two-time Green Party retread Jill Stein running again

After Cornel West did his Lucy van Pelt and pulled the football away from the Green Party to run for president as an independent instead, 2012 and 2016 GP presidential nominee and her 2016 Veep, Ajamu Baraka, pledged to beat the bushes for new Green Party prez candidates.

And, the "bush-beating" has yielded?

Two-time retread Stein filing to run again.

A commenter at Independent Political Report, where the commenting system, for me, remains broken, speculated that she's running to pay off the $175K she still owes the Federal Elections Committee. As confirmation, her personal website, which did NOT have the campaign announcement as of yesterday, is soliciting funds for an appeal to the Supreme Court to be heard in November, against that appellate court ruling against her on the debt.

Given that Stein and the party both, as well as West, have not said how much lane-clearing West was promised and why that wasn't enough for him, and given that Stein has had bad optics before, last week, I called the GP Just.Another.Political.Party™. This only adds to that.

Green Party 2024: More than ever, Just.Another.Political.Party™

In the wake of Cornel West announcing a month ago that he would abandon his bid for the Green Party nomination and instead run as an independent because Jill Stein and friends wouldn't clear the path for him enough  ....

I wonder just how much "lane-clearing" Stein promised West. I wonder who else she had roped in. I'd love to find all this out, but, like with some of the machinations in the 2020 Green Party nomination battle, which haven't come out despite my (and others, I presume) asking, or like Stein's head-fakes with her 2016 recount fund, I'm not holding my breath.

Don't forget that before Howie Hawkins gained steam to the 2020 finish line, Stein also reportedly entertained pushing Jesse the Body Ventura (his suck-ups hate him being called that) as he was looking at tagging RFK Jr. as his veep. (That's why I refused to cosign bullshit any more and openly called her an antivaxxer.)

Another reason to call the Just.Another.Political.Party™.

Of course, West, with this gambit (like Jesse in 2020) deserves the Just.Another.Politician.™ label.

==

Update, Nov. 9: It's worse. Although Stein and her 2016 Veep, Ajamu Baraka, had pledged to beat the bushes for new Green Party prez candidates after West did his Lucy van Pelt and pulled the football away from the GP, the "bush-beating" has yielded ...

Two-time retread Stein filing to run again.

A few more thoughts on Cornel West

I was planning on posting this a week or two ago, but a variety of other things giving me a full blogging plate made me wait. And West's announcement that he was ditching the Greens to run independent made me glad to have waited. I wound up doing a separate piece on that, questioning his reasoning, and that of Peter Daou if involved. (A follow-up on that piece, on that link, indicates that Daou is involved, or if one will, is enabling, in that sense, West's wilder ideas on political campaigning.)

UPDATE, Oct. 27, 2023: Less than a full month after Peter Daou became West's campaign manager, and only three weeks after signing off on West leaving the Green Party, Daou is OUT, allegedly for health reasons, according to a Tweet from West, as reported by Independent Political Report.

I am reminded of the VERY interesting book, "The Commissar Vanishes."

"We regret that Comrade Kamenev has resigned from the Politburo for health reasons," I picture.

And, as I type this at 10:45 p.m., 10 hours after West's tweet, Daou has no tweet of his own, though he did quote tweet a tweet from earlier in the day, talking about PTSD about growing up in the bombing of Lebanon being triggered by the situation in Gaza.

Possible? Yes. I'm still somewhat skeptical that this is all the story there is, though. And, if that's the full explanation, yes, I know that PTSD is about jumbled emotions and much more, but it's still a snap decision, it seems. That said, as I told Jordan at IPR, she shouldn't expect a formal statement from West, I said, when emailing her Daou's Tweet.

I said, a couple of months ago, when West decided to run as a Green, and not with Nick Brana's sleazy Movement for a People's Party, that he seemed to be head and shoulders above other filed, announced but not yet official, and other would-be Green candidates. 

That was before the allegations about back taxes AND back child support came out. West notably punted to his accountant on the taxes issue, and said accountant was quiet. West also notably has said nothing period about the child support. Actually, on the Daily Beast, he says plenty but it's actual nothing.

While I don't favor non-payment of taxes, whether by businesses or individuals, and whether in the 1 percent or at lower levels on the individual side, in a sense, that's a lesser issue. Per the link above, that's nowhere near a nothingburger amount on child support. That said, the tax issue is not a nothingburger, either, in part because it comes from three different time frames (the Beast had less detailed information).

As for his defenders saying that he was just sharing the wealth of his income? 

• That's not an excuse;
• It sounds like Lady Bird excusing LBJ's womanizing by talking about how much he had to share.
  

Just a bit more on last week's announcement. Jill Stein, with full link to long Tweet here, is NOT following him. Instead, she and Ajamu Baraka, her 2016 Veep candidate, are beating the bushes for more candidates, presumably seeing the lackluster crop otherwise. (Sorry, but it's true, other Green prez candidates.) Other former candidates would include Howie Hawkins, I'm sure. I doubt she will. Maybe Baraka seeks the top spot?

For the man in general? Sactown Magazine has a long (albeit semi-hagiographic if not beyond the semi) bio of him from childhood up, written during the 2019-20 primaries season when he was stumping for Bernie Sanders.

The story reminds us that, per some #BlueAnon calling out the variety of talk shows that Sanders hit up, West has appeared not only with Joe Rogan in 2020, but in years further back, even with Sean Hannity.

It also notes his feud with other Black thought leaders, including former acolyte Michael Eric Dyson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, over West's early, by 2011, and very public, souring on Barack Obama as president.

That said, on something like this?

Last election cycle, Sanders’ loss to Hillary Clinton was hard. This year, West is sanguine. “Sanders has already won in terms of shaping the discourse. Everybody’s got to talk about his issues now, whether you agree or disagree,” he says. His analysis of the hectic Democratic field, with a swirling eddy of candidates vying for attention, is pretty benevolent.

"Naive" is a word I'd use before "sanguine." Or maybe something else. It's like his going to MPP first, not passing it and heading directly to Green-ville. (I'm an independent leftist who won't relabel as Green until after I see the 2024 convention play out, if that does lead me to come back.)

Speaking of? I'm not voting for Warmonger Joe, but I reserve the right to undervote the presidential race. I did it in 2020, and I've touted rational undervoting in newspaper op-eds.

I'm not voting for West, I can say that. Per my piece a week ago about his switch, I question his grasp of the political process. (I also expect, per Texas' ballot access laws, I won't be able to vote for him even if I wanted to.)

He's got other issues. Announcing his original MPP campaign on Rumble? And on Russell Brand's show? 

That said, West's platform is in many ways more radical than the Green Party. One thing in particular I note is that he seems to want a British-style NHS. I totally agree. Whether that's any factor in the split with the GP and two-time presidential candidate DOCTOR Jill Stein and Howie Hawkins 2020 advisor DOCTOR Margaret Flowers or not, I don't know. I DO KNOW that both support Physicians for a National Health Plan's version of Medicare for All, which leaves current fee-for-service medicine in place, albeit while trying to ameliorate it. 

To put it another way? It's a platform that nobody who listens to Russell Brand on Rumble would support across the spectrum.

To put it another way? It's like Kinky Friedman running for guv and supporting both legalized marijuana and prayer in school. We all know how that went.

And, with all this in mind, especially the new news, I am highly unlikely to sign Cornel's petition here in Tex-ass. 

Update: Don't forget (as I did until recently) that West signed that odious Harper's 2020 cancel culture letter.

Update 2, Nov. 25, 2025: Daou continues to be an odd duck in his own way, and perhaps has ditched electoral politics entirely? No posts on his Substack since the start of 2024, not even after the end of the election. He's pretty prolific on Shitter, still, and in terms of politics, if you had a left-wing version of a European Christian Democrat party, I think that would be him right now. (And that will probably change in two years, as he does his own version of Justin Raimondo.)

Green Party post-Cornel West

Now that the man is running as an independent (good-bye, good luck, and you're not getting my vote, in all likelihood), what's up for Greens?

At the time of West's announcement, Jill Stein, with full link to long Tweet here, said she and Ajamu Baraka, her 2016 Veep candidate, are beating the bushes for more candidates, presumably seeing the lackluster crop otherwise. (Sorry, but it's true, other Green prez candidates.) Other former candidates would include Howie Hawkins, I'm sure. I doubt she will. Maybe Baraka seeks the top spot? 

Peter Kalmus, this year's national convention speaker, would be interesting. He's hardcore on climate issues, the GP's original core. But, AFAIK, he's a one-note trumpet. Where's he stand on labor? Russia-Ukraine? Palestine?

Given where she was at in becoming a fuller antivaxxer even before the start of COVID, and other issues at that link, I hope she doesn't dive deeper in that tank in the candidate hunt.

It would be nice not to have an AccommoGreen (she was, based on the targets of her 2016 recount and her non-explainer for why she chose those states, contra her defenders) as his advisor, given that he first considered the MPP, not Greens. Ditto on not having someone who believed the #Russiagate claim of a rigged election. Or her blowing money on insider lawyers for the recount. (Maybe, per that link, Cornel wants her donor list.)  Or the lack of transparency on that. 

Riffing on Mark Lause, I thought the party had pretty much cracked up after 2016. In 2020, with "libertarian Greens" trying to run Jesse Ventura through the back door with their stalking horse, Dario Hunter, playing the race card and more, it probably went the rest of the way there. Here in Tex-ass, if my math is correct on the calendar and David Bruce Collins' is not, the Greens have to get signatures if they don't get 2 percent on a statewide race next year and that ain't happening. And, no, Cornel, don't choose Margaret Flowers to replace Stein; per Greg AtLast, we need to get beyond that GP factionalism.

And, indeed, this piece at Salon notes exactly those problems. And more. As far as lack of local-level elected candidates, yes, per Greens, a prez candidate draws people and money. But, a Green-denominated mayor of a California city says he never hears from Green state- or national-level people. (Other than to put his name on a website, I'm sure.) This does become a circular problem. But, as the piece notes, after Stein 2012, the party had a chance to address some of these issues, with bits of momentum it had. And it didn't.

For that matter, contra Jeff St. Clair's buzziness about St. Ralph of Nader, which in 2004 was partially but not entirely true re the national GP convention, where was Ralph doing more heavy lifting on national party organization that might trickle down better? And, also as noted by me, Ralph pledged to run a "safe states" strategy in 2000 — and of course didn't. Maybe some Greens were gun-shy?

And, unmentioned by the Salon author is the issue of TWO Green Party organizations in the US. 

Tough blow for the party.

Update, Oct. 26: With Daou out as West's campaign manager, citing PTSD over Gaza, some people are asking for him to return to the GP, many insinuating Daou was wrecking his campaign.

First, to that nuttery, I replied:

Actually, Cornel West was, and is, doing a damned good job destroying his own campaign. It was his own idea to leave the GP, after he was dumb enough to start with the Movement for a People's Party.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) October 27, 2023

And, that is it.

As for him coming back, or the GP taking him back?

It would be a sign of desperation for Cornel West to go back to the Green Party with Peter Daou out, if his demands weren't met, and a sign of desperation by the Green Party to agree to meet them.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) October 27, 2023

There you are.

Is Cornel West daft? Peter Daou? Both?

Cornel West's announement today  he was ditching the Greens to run independent has me scratching my head, to say the least.

I said, a couple of months ago, when West decided to run as a Green, and not with Nick Brana's sleazy Movement for a People's Party, that he seemed to be head and shoulders above other filed, announced but not yet official, and other would-be Green candidates. 

Now, more on last week's announcement. 

First, he doesn't have RFK Jr's money to pay for signature gatherers. (All states allow it; I extrapolated from a Ballotpedia piece about paid signature gatherers for initiatives, and that's incorrect.) Second, while he has some name recognition, he doesn't have the same as RFK for where he can't afford signatures. Nor, AFAIK, does he have Bob's degree of experience, from Kennedy as head of Waterkeepers, attorney with NRDC, etc.on initiative-type ballot access petitions. 

(I volunteered to help with a GP petition in the Metromess approximately 20 years ago. Purely on my own, with another person already on a clipboard at a mall. Never asked at the time if Republicans were paying anybody.)

And, even with people eligible to be paid in all 50 states, the principle holds. Cornel West does't have RFK Jr's money. And, per Republicans helping Greens in the past, West is enough of a wild card as an independent, I don't know that that many GOP/conservative checks get written for this.

He DOES, though appear to have cluelessness about the ballot access process. Independent Political Report, at the top link, quotes from an email he sent backers:

West also stated that the Constitution “provides for Independent candidates to gain ballot access in all states” and confirmed that he was pursuing ballot access as an independent candidate unaffiliated with any other organization.

Really? Yea, I along with other commenters at IPR, are laughing about that. The Constitution "provides" nothing here, and other than establishing the Electoral College and how and when its votes are counted, says nothing else about presidential elections beyond age of eligibility and elimination of religious tests.

I expect that West will get on less than half of the 50 states' ballots.

He doubled down on that general idea the time of the announcement, in this tweet:

People are hungry for change. They want good policies over partisan politics. We need to break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people. I'm running as an Independent candidate for President of the United States to end the iron grip of the ruling class and ensure true… pic.twitter.com/34FFQARTEe

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) October 5, 2023

Again, really?

As for his campaign? At the time, IPR asked if Jill Stein is following him. She said that day that she wasn't:

BREAKING - Stein & Baraka wish Dr. West well, affirm support for a strong Green campaign

Boston - Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka, previously advisors to the West campaign, today wished Cornel West well in his upcoming independent presidential campaign, in the following joint…

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) October 5, 2023

Full link to long Tweet here. This is going to implode, and if this was Peter Daou's idea, not just West's, I question his judgment, too.

Per ongoing discussion at the link at top, I think Ryan's on the right trail. I think West wanted to be the GP candidate without being a Green, like St. Ralph of Nader in 2024, and took off when that wasn't going to happen. Since this happened just a week after Daou joined the campaign, and as campaign chair with Stein being kicked upstairs to a senior advisor role, I think this is in part Daou's doing. In any case, he's not talking publicly on Twitter or either of his Substacks. 

UPDATE, Oct. 27, 2023: Less than a full month after Peter Daou became West's campaign manager, and only three weeks after signing off on West leaving the Green Party, Daou is OUT, allegedly for health reasons, according to a Tweet from West, as reported by Independent Political Report.

I am reminded of the VERY interesting book, "The Commissar Vanishes."

"We regret that Comrade Kamenev has resigned from the Politburo for health reasons," I picture.

And, as I type this at 10:45 p.m., 10 hours after West's tweet, Daou has no tweet of his own, though he did quote tweet a tweet from earlier in the day, talking about PTSD about growing up in the bombing of Lebanon being triggered by the situation in Gaza.

Possible? Yes. I'm still somewhat skeptical that this is all the story there is, though.

As for him being head and shoulders above other Greens? Stein and Ajamu Baraka recognize that and are beating the bush for new candidates, per that Tweet.

I'll have more on Cornel in a week. 

That said, West's platform is in many ways more radical than the Green Party. One thing in particular I note is that he seems to want a British-style NHS. I totally agree. Whether that's any factor in the split with the GP and two-time presidential candidate DOCTOR Jill Stein and Howie Hawkins 2020 advisor DOCTOR Margaret Flowers or not, I don't know. I DO KNOW that both support Physicians for a National Health Plan's version of Medicare for All, which leaves current fee-for-service medicine in place, albeit while trying to ameliorate it.

==

I was also curious about what a few people I know on Twitter (and the first two, personally), said. David Bruce Collins laments it. Brains said nothing, and neither did Ryan Knight.

==

Update, Oct. 12: Per the rhetorical questions in the header, this Politico piece, pretty good on GP coverage, even if of a Cleanup on Aisle 6, says "both" on the daftness. West wanted out, and asked Daou to lay out pros and cons, and Daou obviously sealed his mind.

Cons: ballot access headaches; continued questions about his seriousness as a political figure; the destruction of a potentially mutually beneficial coalition. Pros: getting to set your own agenda; removing yourself from some of the intractable and unserious elements of the party; crucially, for West, no more need to kiss any ass.

The next couple of paragraphs after that do note that GP debate appearance requirements might be a PITA, but, at the same time, the party simply wasn't going to crown West. And, the party went down that same road with Saint Ralph of Nader in 2004. (Politico reminds us that he eventually ran on the Reform Party line that year, without saying that it was because he didn't have to fight for it.)

At the same time, Politico implies that he had halfway been led on, in the GP's desire for a "credible" candidate, besides the dog's breath it had before West joined:

West was never the official Green Party nominee; as he mentioned, he bristled at the need to spend the time and effort necessary to secure the nomination at their convention next year. (It should be noted that running on a major party ticket requires jumping through many more hoops than in the Green Party.) But he had essentially already been ordained as such — with Stein as his guru, the party was dedicated to helping him get on ballots and supporting his candidacy across the country. Some state chapters of the Green Party had already set up dedicated teams aimed at specifically helping West’s campaign. With a few phone calls, all that effort was for naught.

So, put that part of the issue halfway, at least, on Stein, even if the burdens along with the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, weren't onerous. It's still, overall, more West's fault.

As for West thinking the GP can't take him where he wants to go? That's rich, given he first went to the MPP, and for him joining it, announced his campaign on Russell Brand's channel.

Speaking of, the Politico piece goes on to call West a political neophyte (he is, on electoral politics), then lays out his confusing arc.

That said, the supposedly seasoned Daou is just as much a neophyte, with this:

Daou has responded publicly, saying on X (formerly known as Twitter), “Cornel West aims to be on the ballot in 50 states. The Green Party has a ballot line in 18 states. The difference between being Independent and Green is 18 states, not 50.”

Really? I'd already offered 25 states as my over/under, at IPR and elsewhere, while saying I'd take the under. In more colorful language, I told Daou that on Twitter.

Oh, as for the number of signatures? Here in Tex-ass, it's 113,000 and change. I think it was a lot lower for Mimi Soltyski in 2016; the high presidential turnout in 2020 plus increased population has jacked the number. It was 90K in 2020.

==

Sidebar to all of the above: I wonder just how much "lane-clearing" Stein promised West. I wonder who else she had roped in. I'd love to find all this out, but, like with some of the machinations in the 2020 Green Party nomination battle, which haven't come out despite my (and others, I presume) asking, or like Stein's head-fakes with her 2016 recount fund, I'm not holding my breath.

Don't forget that before Howie Hawkins gained steam to the 2020 finish line, Stein also reportedly entertained pushing Jesse the Body Ventura (his suck-ups hate him being called that) as he was looking at tagging RFK Jr. as his veep. (That's why I refused to cosign bullshit any more and openly called her an antivaxxer.)

Another reason to call the Just.Another.Political.Party™.

Peter Kalmus, the man speaking to the Greens, and what he really should be talking about

First of all, I have to "love" how the Green Party says its annual convention is going to be virtual this year because the world is still recovering from COVID. Worldometers says that's a lie, whether for the world as a whole or the US. And, if you really believe that shit, have fun as People's CDC and fellow travelers squaring off with the general antivaxxer types in the party, or the "libertarian Green" oxymorons.

Update, Aug. 7: There was a minor surge, end of July and start of August, yes, but the US never (AFAIK, having just gotten back from vacation, broke 100 deaths a day, and certainly not for more than 2 days straight. That is STILL *just* 36,500 a year, no worse than an average "just the flu" six-month season less than a full year.

Admit it's for budget reasons.

Or better, as Greens, say it's for climate reasons, to reduce fossil fuel emissions from jets and cars to travel. But, make sure to push Zoom attendees to be buying renewable electricity. (And, try to figure out why you didn't try Zoom or something similar, in at least odd-numbered years, pre-COVID, on that account.)

Peter Kalmus? Intense on the subject, per Pro Publica. Contra his hope not to be one, he's a doomer. And, why was he raising backyard chickens? Buy free-range commercial chickens, or semi-commercial larger lot backyarders from somebody else. And, eat less of them. He should know the carbon math about meat, even poultry.

Speaking of, per EPA, 7 percent of the 28 percent of the transportation sector's GHG emissions come from commercial aircraft. Kalmus could trim various portions of the pie chart, or get others to do so by, in the transportation sector, pushing for:

• Tighter fuel standards for SUVs;
• For both cars and trucks/SUVs, getting rid of the flex fuel loophole;
• Getting rid of E15 gas;
• Improving mass transit by not only getting funds for hybrid drive buses, but putting MORE but SMALLER buses on the street to run more frequent routes, thereby making mass transit more attractive.

Focus on that, and you'd probably get rid of half as much GHG as from getting rid of air travel entirely. Blindly attacking air travel, as Kalmus also does, along with the author, in a Counterpunch piece (commercial, not executive business and other private jets) has long struck me as a form of virtue signaling, mixed with medieval monastic hair shirts or flagellations.

Also, contra David Yearsley at that link? Johann Jakob Froberger and others 200 years ago left carbon footprints as part of their actual footprints. Horses don't fart or belch as much as cows, but they do. And, 200 years ago, not all their manure was recycled in gardens and fields; there's plenty a story about a late 19th century New York or London's problems with horse shit.

Back to the second main idea, though, on other ways to cut GHGs as good or better than addressing air travel.

On power? New federal legislation that says Fannie / Freddie will not buy up mortgages in states that don't promote rooftop solar on new homes. Game-changer right there.

For US aid for the developing world, with new advances in DC power allowing for longer distribution? Helping places like sub-Saharan African countries build more local DC power plants to distribute wind and solar. HUGE. (Update: Per this Wired piece, Just Energy Transition Partnerships are helping in some degree, but there's little in the way of hard numbers, especially on how much fiscal help is behind these things, and how much of that is loans vs grants and similar.)

Update, Aug. 19: Last night on Twitter, per "gay barista Paul" and others responding, Kalmus said he was "surprised" Biden hadn't declared a climate emergency. Unless that tweet was 110 percent rhetorical, it says a lot more about Kalmus than about Climatemonger Joe.