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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=usgp-media@gp-us.org
href="mailto:usgp-media@gp-us.org">usgp-media@gp-us.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, August 04, 2010 1:26 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> A Progressive Alternative in Illinois </DIV></DIV>
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<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_2_76bb1074-8277-4d0a-9b10-10edbd8e6698><FONT face=arial
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<DIV style="CLEAR: both">
<DIV class=style23 align=right><FONT color=#990000 size=-1>August 4,
2010</FONT></DIV><FONT color=#990000><A
href="http://counterpunch.com/turl08042010.html">http://counterpunch.com/turl08042010.html</A></FONT>
<H1 class=style37 align=left><FONT size=+1></FONT> </H1>
<H1 class=style37 align=left><FONT size=+1>Talking With Rich Whitney
</FONT></H1>
<H1 class=style27><FONT color=#990000 size=+2>A Progressive Alternative in
Illinois </FONT></H1>
<DIV class=style27><FONT size=+1>By ADAM TURL </FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=style2><SPAN class=style34><FONT color=#990000
size=5>H</FONT></SPAN>ard times are getting harder in Illinois.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The recession's wake has caused double-digit
unemployment--10.4 percent statewide. According to the <EM>New York Times</EM>,
Illinois is in the top 10 in the nation in home foreclosures. As ordinary people
have been squeezed, the state government--which relies on a regressive tax
system--has seen its finances thrown into chaos, causing yet more misery.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The state has over $5 billion in unpaid bills, which it owes
to community and health centers, schools, universities and countless social
services. Local school districts have laid off thousands of teachers. The
<EM>Times</EM> even reports that Illinois has fallen behind on burial subsidies
for the poor.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>But the worst is yet to come--with a projected budget deficit
of some $12 billion to come.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>This is also an election year in Illinois. Among other
offices, the governor's mansion--currently occupied by Democrat Pat Quinn--is up
for grabs. One might think that there would be at least some realistic or
concrete proposals from Democrats and Republicans about confronting the state's
growing crisis. Instead, the Illinois campaigns are little more than a microcosm
of all that is wrong with official U.S. politics nationally.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The Democrats--who are in control of the state house as well
as governor's mansion--seem utterly paralyzed by the scope and scale of the
budget crisis. They are trapped between their fidelity to big business and their
need for election-year votes from working-class Illinoisans.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>In theory, Quinn favors budget cuts combined with some kind of
tax increase (a regressive tax increase, that is). But Democrats are terrified
of raising taxes in an election year. We've seen plenty of cuts--up to 25
percent in desperately needed social services in last year's budget. And we've
seen schools and social services turned upside down as much of the money that
was allocated was simply not sent. But we haven't seen any serious plan to
increase revenue.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The Republicans and their gubernatorial candidate, state Sen.
Bill Brady, claim to be opposed to any tax increases and want draconian cuts to
education and social services.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Brady--a real estate developer-turned-politician--combines his
pro-corporate policies with faux Tea Party populism and other right-wing
positions. He favors an amendment to the Illinois constitution banning equal
marriage rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. He
proposed at a Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) meeting that Illinois should get
rid of its minimum wage law.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>In July, he told one group of Tea Party activists, "It's time
to return Illinois and America to John Wayne's America." In other words, to the
"good old days" before the civil rights movement, before McCarthyism was
discredited, before the student movement against the Vietnam War, before the
birth of the gay rights movement, etc.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2 align=center>* * * </DIV>
<DIV class=style2>LUCKILY, THERE is an alternative to Tweedledee and Tweedledum
in Illinois' 2010 election: Rich Whitney and the Green Party.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Instead of regressive taxes on working people or draconian
cuts in education and social services, Whitney and the state Green Party call
for taxing corporations and the rich. Instead of scapegoating LGBT people and
undocumented immigrants, they favor equal rights and legalization. Instead of
attacking public-sector unions, Whitney opposes cuts and favors increasing union
rights in the private sector as well.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Whitney took the political stage in the 2006 election, riding
a wave of disgust with both the "mainstream" parties in the state. With
then-Republican Gov. George Ryan, who wasn't running, clearly headed for jail,
and the Democratic frontrunner to replace him, Rod Blagojevich, already
seen--even before the Obama Senate seat scandal--as incompetent and corrupt,
Whitney was able to get a much bigger hearing than is typical for a third-party
candidate. Several mainstream newspapers even endorsed his campaign.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>In the end, Whitney got more than 10 percent of the vote,
making the Green Party an "official party" in terms of Illinois ballot access
laws.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>While Whitney isn't running against the universally despised
Blagojevich this time around, his progressive and pro-labor positions could be
even more popular this year.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"While it's true that Quinn and Brady are not as disliked
personally as Blagojevich and [Judy Topinka, the Republican candidate in 2006],"
Whitney conceded at the recent opening of his downstate campaign office, "the
Democratic and Republican Parties as institutions are being looked at in far
more unfavorable terms today than they were four years ago."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Whitney is already equaling the support he got in the last
election. A survey by Public Policy Polling showed him polling 9 percent in the
current race, compared to 34 percent for Brady and 30 percent for Quinn. Only 51
percent of registered Democrats said they planned to vote for Quinn in November.
Nor are many of these self-described Democrats in "Blue State Illinois" likely
to vote for right-wing Brady.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Part of Brady and Quinn's unpopularity may be that many voters
are tired of mainstream politicians shilling for the rich and powerful.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"The fundamental problem in American politics today is that it
is so thoroughly dominated by corporate money and bank money," Whitney says.
"The Center for Responsive Politics did a study a few years ago which found
about 80 percent of all campaign contributions come from about 1 percent of the
population. It's no mystery who that 1 percent is. It's the owners of the big
corporations and banks, and it's foolish to assume that [politicians] don't owe
them some favors."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The idea of progressive taxation is anathema to the leadership
of both parties. For example, outside a downstate campaign stop last spring,
students who asked Quinn about a progressive income tax were told to "get
real."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"The corporate media frames this in terms of: you're either
for a tax increase or you're not," Whitney said. "That's not the issue. It's
<EM>how</EM> we tax. We have one of the most regressive tax systems in the
United States right here in Illinois. We're taxing the bottom 20 percent of
income earners at triple the rate of the top 1 percent--and then we act baffled
about why we are going broke."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Unfortunately, the Illinois constitution actually requires a
flat income tax that hits workers and poor people harder than rich people and
corporations.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>To get around that, Whitney and the Greens--and a handful of
progressive Democrats in the state house--have proposed legislation that would
act as a back door to a progressive tax system by raising the overall tax rate
and then creating a substantial "earned income tax credit" for "low- and
middle-income earners" so that the increase would only fall on the top
earners.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>According to Whitney, such a progressive income tax would
solve about two-thirds of the state's $12 billion budget shortfall. To make up
the final third, Whitney proposes a tax on financial speculation--on the very
people who caused the financial crisis in 2008. As Whitney says:</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>“In 2008, the Board of Options Exchange in Chicago and the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange in one year traded over $1 quadrillion in notional
value. That's more than the gross domestic product of the entire planet.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>“A miniscule tax--they wouldn't even feel it, it wouldn't even
be a pinprick--of a thousandth of 1 percent--would raise millions of dollars for
our state. Tax these obscenely rich people, paying something they won't even
feel, and that gets us another third out of our budget hole.”</DIV>
<DIV class=style2 align=center>* * * </DIV>
<DIV class=style2>AS THE state budget crisis has metastasized nationally, a
common Republican talking point (too often echoed by Democrats) has been the
"need" to take on "greedy" public-sector workers and their unions. Such talk has
been used to justify thousands upon thousands of layoffs and deep cuts to social
services desperately needed to help those who lost jobs in the recession.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>But the politicians have their facts wrong. Take the Illinois
state pension system. "By and large, our public-sector pensions are at the
bottom 40 percent nationally," Whitney argued. "The General Assembly for 15 or
20 years has deliberately underfunded the pension system, and then they turned
around in recent years and say we have the biggest unfunded pension liability in
the United States because workers are getting too much. That's not it at all.
It's the politicians' own irresponsibility that's the cause of the
problem."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Instead of pitting private-sector workers against public
workers, Whitney thinks they should make common cause. "The message to private
sector workers is: don't be jealous of what public sector workers have, we need
to build strong unions in this country to fight back" in order to regain what
private sector workers have lost," Whitney says.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>While the budget crisis is clearly taking center stage in this
year's election, Whitney has a number of other important positions that should
be a rallying point for progressives, organized labor, workers and the
left.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>He favors a well-funded Green Jobs Capital Bill (unlike the
weakly funded and ill conceived Obama Green Jobs plan) to put people to work.
"Modernizing our infrastructure," Whitney argued, "doesn't mean widening more
roads...We need a capital bill that represents a major shift in our
infrastructure priorities, transportation and energy production."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Whitney also opposes the scapegoating of immigrants. "As
governor, I will not go along with an Arizona-type law," he said. "I think it's
wrong philosophically, it's wrong from a social justice point of view, a civil
liberties point of view, and, frankly, from a purely pragmatic point of view.
Our state workers have plenty to do without being turned into police
agents."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"On immigration, it's a sensitive issue because we are in hard
economic times," Whitney argued. "But you have to look at the big picture. Our
national policy is screwed up. We support and subsidize U.S. agribusiness to go
into countries like Mexico and basically drive farmers off their land, and then
we complain about the results when they can't find work."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"The way you fight back is with solidarity, better labor
organization," he continued, "to fight the substandard wages, to put pressure on
the employers to do the right thing, and a unified fight for a living
wage."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Whitney also opposes attacks on LGBT people and supports full
equality. "My philosophy is very simple," he argued, "equal protection under the
law, equal rights in society and we need to embrace diversity...That includes
the right to marry. It means if somebody wants to take another boy to the senior
prom, we don't give them a hard time about it."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>On criminal justice issues, Whitney supports the legalization
of marijuana and the decriminalization of most recreational drugs. He also calls
for an independent statewide program to monitor the police and stop racial
profiling. He opposes the death penalty.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2 align=center>* * * </DIV>
<DIV class=style2>THIS YEAR, working-class Illinoisans have a real choice.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>One the Republican side, we have Bill Brady, an unabashedly
pro-corporate, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-labor, pro-Tea Party, real estate
developer.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Brady actually voted against unpaid family and medical leave.
He sponsored legislation that would cut benefits for workers who are injured on
the job and legislation to allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency
contraception to women. He wants to teach "intelligent design" in schools and
not only opposes gay marriage, but civil unions as well.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>On the Democrat side, we have Pat Quinn, the former lieutenant
governor who took his place as Illinois' chief executive when former Rod
Blagojevich was impeached. Since coming to office, his biggest achievement has
been slashing social services and education to the bone, and fiddling while the
state entered a full-blown budget catastrophe.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Rich Whitney, on the other hand, has been an activist as well
as a labor and civil rights lawyer for three decades. At one time, Whitney was
even a socialist--although he no longer claims to be, favoring instead a "mixed
economy."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Nevertheless, Whitney believes higher education should be
free, he is pro-choice, pro-equal marriage, pro-immigrant and pro-labor, and he
calls for taxing corporations and the rich.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>"In the Green Party, we formed a political party based on core
principles, including grassroots democracy, that includes the idea that we the
people need to become the government," he said. "That's what this is all about
in a nutshell. That's why I'm running."</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Socialists and other radicals might not agree with Rich
Whitney on every single thing. However, in the 2010 Illinois elections, Rich
Whitney's campaign is a big step forward--both in terms of the urgent political
and economic issues facing working-class Illinoisans and the need for political
independence from the twin-parties of corporate control.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2><SPAN class=style23><STRONG>Adam Turl</STRONG> writes for the
<A href="http://www.socialistworker.org/">Socialist Worker</A>, where this
article originally appeared. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=style2> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV class=style2 align=center><A href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/">WORDS
THAT STICK<BR></A><A href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/">?<IMG height=120
src="http://counterpunch.com/CleanCoal.jpg" width=500></A><BR></DIV>
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