Dr. Jill Stein treats politics like her patients: She looks to cure the problem, not its symptoms.
Her prognosis for America? Not good.
In her view, money and influence undermine regulatory agencies meant to protect the people and lawmakers elected to serve them. The energy cartels and Big Pharma hold sway over public policy.
As a frustrated mother and doctor, the Massachusetts woman grew tired of giving pills to comfort asthma and cancer sufferers. So, she took on the trash incinerators that pumped pollution into the air and the working conditions that left her patients ill.
The Harvard-educated doctor became an environmental activist and has since turned her stethoscope on American politics, “the mother of all diseases.”
Between campaign stops in Los Angeles, where she walked with Black Lives Matter members who’ve occupied City Hall for nearly two months to protest police brutality, and Detroit, where she spotlighted poor residents losing their city water, the Green Party presidential candidate spoke Friday at the Natatorium in Cuyahoga Falls.
She drew a crowd like her. Socialists. Revolutionists. Activists. “We’re the change we’ve been waiting for,” she said.
Outside, women circulated petitions to block gas pipeline construction and fracking, each of which Stein says she would put an end to as president.
Stein envisions a country that embraces diversity and radical economic change. She believes America, out of pressing need, can transform into a green economy where 20 million “emergency-basis” jobs would set the country on a 15-year plan to produce every last drop of electricity from renewable sources.
Impractical? She doesn’t think so. In a little over a decade, she figures America would reap the untold dividends of a healthier society, workers less prone to accidents and carcinogens. The country needs to cut its $3 trillion “sick care” bill, the doctor said.
An option for voters in 40 states and counting, Stein continues to fight for ballot access in Nevada, Oklahoma, Arizona and, maybe next, Georgia — the Green Party heading to court to take on onerous campaign rules written and carried out by Democrats and Republicans.
Bernin’ for Stein
The restless spirit of the Bernie Sanders’ revolution burns in Stein’s progressive uprising.
Ideologically, Steiners and Berners are cut from the same cloth. The ideas they espouse are radical, labor-oriented, environmentally conscious and, as they see it, critical to America’s survival.
Stein, now enjoying a surge of Sanders supporters, shares a bitter resentment toward the two parties that control American politics.
Stein fans shake their heads at what happened to Sanders, their hero cut short. They believe the media ignored Sanders from the start. Stein will likely get the same treatment in the last two months before Election Day.
During the Democratic National Convention when the nation was sure to notice, leaked party emails revealed that the Democratic National Committee secretly favored Clinton.
“Like 95 percent of the people here, I’m a recovering Democrat. Bernie proved that there cannot be reform from within the party,” said Matt Courtman, a Green Party coordinator for Stark County who drove to Cuyahoga Falls to hear his new favorite candidate speak.
Stein learned that lesson decades ago. As a community activist, she pushed for the Clean Election Law of Massachusetts. Voters in every county in the state had approved the law resoundingly in 1998. Four years later in a budget bill, a Democratic majority quickly and quietly nullified the law with little discussion.
“We got together and passed campaign finance reform,” Stein told the Beacon Journal. “We actually passed public financing for candidates in order to get the big money out and let the people back in. We passed it as a referendum, and the Democrats repealed it on a voice vote in the Legislature, which said to me that the change we need is never going to happen inside the Democratic Party.”
Since then, she joined the Green Party “to grow a different kind of politics that isn’t driven by the big money of fossil fuel giants and war profiteers.”
Media problems
Stein made headlines during the DNC as Democrats fumed over the leaked emails.
Sanders fans vented their frustration on Twitter with #JillNotHill.
Stein has since received ample coverage over controversial comments, not her policies. Recently, it’s been concerns she’s raised about the long-term effects of Wi-Fi exposure on children and whether autism is linked to vaccines.
“There are a whole lot of countries in Europe that protect their children from Wi-Fi,” Stein said. “Now, I’m not saying we should, but I’m saying we should look into this.”
The National Institutes of Health released a report in May on whether electronic and magnetic fields emitted by cellular devices cause cancer in animal subjects. The study (http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/23/055699) found “low incidences of tumors in the brains and hearts of male rats,” which Stein said raises “some very serious questions.”
Older comments also have surfaced suggesting that the medical doctor believes, against a mountain of science, that vaccines cause autism.
“That’s purely a swift boat assault,” she said, meaning an unfair or untrue political attack. She emphasized that she’s “never thought vaccines cause autism.”
“Years ago, when there was mercury in vaccines, I was part of a public health movement to improve our vaccines. And it’s great to say that we were successful ... [But] someone was resurrecting something from way back when and trying to distract from our real call to rid politics of money and government regulators of undue influence by the food and pharmaceutical industries.”
On the issues
Stein’s progressivism toes the Green Party line. Her proposals include:
• Reinstating the right to vote for convicts before they’re released from jail.
• Decriminalizing marijuana, which she says is only a public health threat because wars are waged to smuggle and sell it.
• Supporting public schools by paying teachers well, protecting unions and eliminating high-stakes testing.
• Renegotiating NAFTA, a North American free trade deal that Stein says turned 3 million Mexican farmers into “economic refugees” seeking work up north.
• Opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, another trade deal with countries that rim the Pacific.
• Cutting the military budget in half, shifting from international offense to domestic defense.
• Making college free and erasing student loan debt, in a plan similar to the Wall Street bank bailout.
• Implementing a federal $15 an hour minimum wage.
• Providing free health care for all.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.