MD: Invent, Invest and Include

Morning Sunday Hettleman
Monumental Green Party

Green Party Black Caucus
hettlemansunday@gmail.com

410 946 9958

Labor Day was designed to honor labor and celebrate by relaxing, but some people were very busy. President Barack Obama , accepted the resignation ( he was fired) of Anthony Van Jones a special adviser for Green jobs at the White House Council for Environmental Quality.

Invent , Invest Include, that was Anthony Van Jones, mantra. Invent new ways of doing things, Invest in it and Include those underprivileged African-Americans and other disadvantaged communities that have been shut out of the job market.

Its been accepted practice, that Government big money contracts are awarded based on cronyism. The administrators of the programs get paid top dollar, the workers get minimum wage, little if any training , and a certificate on recycled paper at the end of the program. Van signaled his intention of insuring that would not happen. That Negro had to go.

You don’t believe me ? Look around at some urban neighborhoods and see if there are traces of the billions of dollars that have poured in and then right back up the expressway. No, Van Jones had to go.

Mr. Jones was in charge of 80 Billion dollars, the creation of 6.8 million jobs according to the Council for Economic Advisors, he had signaled his intention of making sure that money was spent on training and jobs for under privileged people, teaching them to retrofit buildings all across America with solar panels, insulation and other weatherizing materials. Is he gone yet ?

Van Jones resignation, was a big loss to the White House, President Obama, had personally picked him. It is a much bigger lost to the hopes of under/unemployed people. Feel sorry for those people.

Don’t feel sorry for Mr. Anthony Van Jones, he is a made-man in the Democrat Party. The lost of his job, wont get him evicted either, he , his wife and daughter will not be at the local shelter for lunch. He isn’t hurting for money, his salary with the Ella Baker Ctr in 2005 was $60K; over $82K in 2007, jumping to more to than $100,000 as the Environmental Czar and add sales of his book "The Green Collar Economy," number 12 to be exact on the New York Times best sellers list in the book's first week.

Yes, Mr. Jones will be just fine.I know there are some good white folk out there who will help Mr. Jones land on his feet.

Van Jones said things in a group of Black people, things Black people talk about amongst ourselves, things he thought he was saying in a safe ( read Black) environment.

He said " Black kids dont do Columbine type killings. " He’s right, so far, when our kids murder, its personal, the numbers are in the single digits.

Yet another time he said " President Bush was a crack head" While , President Bush was arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession and Bush has essentially admitted that he used cocaine. Van had his terms wrong, Blacks do crack, White people cocaine and for that Van should apologize.

We haven’t seen the last of Mr. Jones. But you can wave bye bye to 80 billion dollars of hope, creation of jobs. The trickle down theory will be trotted out once again.

Van in his own words.

"If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will NEVER be built." -Van Jones

Greens launch effort against Electoral College manipulation of presidential elections

Asa Gordon, Chair DC Statehood Green Party Electoral College Task Force
Executive Director Douglass Institute of Government

• Malapportionment of Electoral College votes may lead to a Republican victory despite the popular vote, disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters, especially black voters in southern states

• Green civil action seeks to democratize the Electoral College by enforcing 14th Amendment voter protections, names Vice President Cheney as defendent

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders said today that the outcome of the 2008 presidential election may be affected by the antidemocratic apportionment of Electoral College votes, with the popular vote misrepresented by the winner-take-all system of assigning votes to electors.

"We're in danger of seeing the 2008 election stolen again, as in 2000 and 2004," said Clyde Shabazz, Green candidate for the US House in Michigan (13th District) (http://www.migreens.org). "In Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, we witnessed the obstruction and manipulation of votes by election officials and possible tampering with computer voting machines. But equally insidious is the malapportionment of Electoral College votes, which disenfranchises whole sections of the voting public."

A civil action to protect the voting rights of presidential electors and the voters they represent was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (1:08-cv-01294) on January 28, 2008, by Asa Gordon, chair of the DC Statehood Green Party's Electoral College Task Force and executive director of the Douglass Institute of Government (http://members.aol.com/digasa/dig.htm).

The action seeks relief against the defendant, Vice President Cheney, who will preside over the tabulation of "unbound electoral states" on January 6, 2009, challenging the recognition of Electoral College votes that are apportioned by states on a winner-take-all basis.

The civil action seeks enforcement of the 'Mal-Apportionment Penalty' provided in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which mandates a reduction of a state's presidential electors and congressional representatives if "the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States... is denied... or in any way abridged."

The civil action alternatively seeks the issuance of a court order providing proportional apportionment of presidential electors.

"If two thirds of the voters in a state vote for a candidate from Party A and one third vote for a candidate from Party B, and the state's winner-take-all rule gives all of the state's electors to Party A, then one third of the voters have been disenfranchised in violation of Amendment 14, Section 2 of the US Constitution," said Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party. "We've witnessed in election after election how some states have used the winner-take-all formula to prevent the votes of political, ethnic, and other minorities from being counted."

Mr. Gordon noted that the civil action had the potential to "alter the fate of the 2008 presidential election in a manner different from any presidential election in the nation's history." (http://www.electors.us)

"By refusing to challenge Electoral College malapportionment in 2000 and 2004, which blocked Democratic electors from voting in those elections, the Democratic Party's leaders abandoned tens of thousands of their own voters, just as they failed to challenge the election irregularities in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004," said Mr. Gordon. "Will they fail to challenge malapportionment again in 2008, and hand the Republicans another victory? Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee if not for the Democratic Party's proportional assignment of primary delegates. The winner-take-all provisions in the general election present the distinct possibility that Mr. Obama in 2008 will win the popular vote by a considerably larger margin than did Gore in 2000, but will repeat the Democratic loss in the Electoral College."

Mr. Gordon said that African American voters in several southern states* that were represented by proportional assignment of delegates in the Democratic primary, and who were critical to Barack Obama's success, will be lost to Mr. Obama under the winner-take-all rules of the general election.

"If proportional assignment is considered by Democrats to be vital to democracy in their primary elections, why won't they fight for it in the general election?" asked Mr. Gordon, who led workshops for Green presidential electors during the 2008 Green National Convention (http://www.gp.org/speakers/detail.php?ID=29) (http://www.greenparty2008.org/wiki/index.php/Workshops).

As a result of the workshops, several Green electors pledged to presidential candidate (and eventual Green nominee) Cynthia McKinney agreed to institute a program for enforcement of the Reconstruction-Era provision enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

"The 'Democratize the Electoral College' program exposes the hypocrisy and fraud behind charges that the McKinney campaign might 'spoil' the Democratic presidential ticket's chances of winning. Democratic leaders should have to explain why they choose to ignore 13 additional electors from southern states that they'd gain through the Green Party's presidential electors project. Why is the Green Party fighting to give voice to Democratic voters that the Democratic Party will not fight for? Let me be clear -- we're not doing this to assist Barack Obama, but to foster real democracy and voter participation, and to offer Cynthia McKinney as the truly democratic choice for all the people," said Mr. Gordon.

Green Party leaders noted that after John Kerry quickly conceded the 2004 election, Democratic leaders failed to respond to thousands of complaints about voting irregularities in Ohio and other states. Green presidential nominee David Cobb and Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik launched the Ohio and New Mexico recount efforts and collected the initial evidence that Republican officials had blocked the votes of many African American and young voters (http://www.iwantmyvote.com). Greens raised most of the money for the recounts. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) later held hearings and published evidence of the election theft (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1101).

Cynthia McKinney and running mate Rosa Clemente were nominated during the 2008 Green National Convention in Chicago, July 10-13.

The Green Party's national platform endorses a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and providing for the direct election of the president by instant runoff voting (http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#309649).

"Americans don't vote for President. Instead, we vote for an electoral college which was created in the late 1700s to expressly increase the power of the slave states -- and which it is still doing," said Mark Dunlea, an election law attorney with the Green Party of New York State.

* Asa Gordon's civil action observes that the Office of the Federal Register of the National Archives and Records Administration explicitly declares that "the electors in these (Southern) States (ARKANSAS -- 6 Electoral Votes, GEORGIA -- 15 Electoral Votes, LOUISIANA -- 9 Electoral Votes, TENNESSEE -- 11 Electoral Votes, TEXAS -- 34 Electoral Votes) are not bound by State Law to cast their vote for a specific candidate" (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html).

The civil action was filed on July 28, 2008, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, the Green Party in partnership with the Douglass Institute of Government has led the way in educating Americans about their constitutional "right to vote" under the provisions of 14th Amendment, Section 2.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
• Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org

Mal-Apportionment Penalty Civil Actions http://www.electors.us

"Greens: Enforce 14th Amendment's 'Right to Vote' Provision"
Green Party press release, October 18, 2004
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_10_18_04.html

"Greens Push for Real Electoral Reforms at Carter-Baker Hearings, June 30"
Green Party press release, June 27, 2005
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_06_27.shtml

2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois http://www.greenparty2008.org