'Over
75 percent of Americans are saying they want an open debate. The two
candidates of the establishment parties are the most disliked and
untrusted in our history, so we owe the American people a full
debate.' - Jill Stein
After our
call
to independent media for a 'counter-debate' with the US third
parties, the independent news
network Democracy
Now! made a first
revolutionary step to break the US bipartisan debate monopoly.
Amy Goodman
of Democracy Now! explains the process: “Debate
moderator Lester Holt will ask Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
questions. After their responses, we stop the tape to give Dr. Jill
Stein a chance to answer the same question from her own podium. We
invited Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson to join us, as well, but
he couldn’t make it.”
Below, there
are some key points made by Jill Stein, showing her clear positions
and qualitative difference compared to the establishment candidates
on many serious issues:
- Donald Trump knows what he’s talking about, about the offshoring of jobs, because, in fact, Donald Trump has offshored all of his jobs, aside from his real estate. All of the products that he manufactures and markets, in fact, are produced offshore. And he, in fact, has been an advocate of closing factories, moving them offshore or down south, and then moving them back—in this case, to Michigan—so that workers’ wages could be suppressed. So, indeed, he does exemplify the very problem that he is talking about.
- My campaign is calling for a Green New Deal, which is an emergency jobs program that will create 20 million good-wage, living-wage jobs as part of solving the emergency of climate change. So we—we call for 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2030, in time to actually solve the climate crisis. And in doing so, we would revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change and actually improve our health so much by phasing out fossil fuels, which in fact kill 200,000 people every year and cause lots more illness in addition to that, but we gain so much money by saving on these needless sick care expenditures that that savings alone is enough to pay the costs of the Green New Deal. And in addition, 100 percent renewable energy makes wars for oil obsolete. And we call for cutting the military budget from this bloated, dangerous budget, in fact, which is bankrupting us, and putting our dollars into true security here at home.
- So, clearly more heat than light coming out of much of the discussion in last night’s debate. In addition to establishing an emergency jobs program, we need to do another major initiative, and that is to end the predatory student loan debt, which has basically held an entire generation hostage, unable to actually participate in the economy and create a decent future for themselves. So we call for bailing out the students, as the Democrats and Republicans bailed out Wall Street. After Wall Street had crashed the economy through their waste, fraud, and abuse, we say it’s about time to bail out the victims of that abuse. This would be the stimulus package of our dreams, to unleash an entire generation that is already trained. They have the skills. They have the passion and the vision. They need to be turned loose by canceling that debt.
- We need to ensure that police do not have impunity to wreak havoc in communities of color. And that needs to start with police review boards, or so-called citizen review boards, where the community actually has the ability to control their police rather than having the police control the communities. And those review boards should have the power to hire and fire police chiefs. They should also have the power of subpoena. In addition, communities should have independent investigators who are available to look into every case of death or serious injury at the hands of police, so that every person who dies in—with—due to police actions, their family has a right to know what happened. Each case should be investigated.
- And in addition, we call for a truth and reconciliation commission, because we are a society that is divided by fear, that is divided by suspicion, long-standing hatred. In fact, it’s known that when slavery was ended, it simply transformed into lynchings, which then led to Jim Crow, which then led to redlining and segregation, and then the war on drugs and then this epidemic of police violence. So there’s a long-standing and cumulative legacy of racism and violence that we must come to terms with as a society. So we call for a truth and reconciliation commission in order to truly have a conversation about race, so that we can transcend this history of division and violence and racism.
- Hillary Clinton knows what she’s talking about when she refers to the injustices and the racial biases in our criminal justice system. Indeed, it was Bill Clinton’s omnibus crime bill of the 1990s, which Hillary supported, that opened the floodgates to mass incarceration and to this assault by police and the criminal injustice system on communities of color. So, indeed, that bill, that she herself promoted, saying how we needed to, quote, "bring them to heel," referring to African-American communities and youth, that indeed does need to be put behind us.
- Wall Street does not regulate itself. It needs people on Wall Street watching Wall Street, so we can in fact catch the crooks before they crash the economy again.
- Hillary Clinton point out Donald Trump’s record of flagrant, blatant racism. It’s also important, I think, to point out the record of Hillary Clinton’s actions that have also been hurtful, particularly to the African-American and Latino communities. In addition to the omnibus crime bill that opened the floodgates to mass incarceration and massively disproportionate locking up of African Americans, particularly young men, in addition to that, Secretary Clinton—prior to being secretary, of course—supported the destruction of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and the replacement of this basic social safety net with a new program, so-called TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, that locked out a large proportion of the families that needed assistance, throwing an additional 1 million-plus children and their families into poverty. And that problem persists to this day.
- We need a new kind of offensive in the Middle East, what we call a peace offensive in the Middle East. And it begins with a weapons embargo. Since we, the United States, are supplying the weapons directly or indirectly to all parties, all combatants on all sides, and we are the major supplier of weapons to the region, as well as around the world, it’s clear that we have enormous power here to initiate this weapons embargo and to work, in fact, with the Russians to achieve it also, because they, too, are paying a price that they cannot afford for these failed wars. In addition, we need to put a freeze on the bank accounts of those countries, largely our allies, who are continuing to fund terrorist enterprises. Hillary Clinton’s own leaked emails as secretary of state identified the Saudis as still the major funder, even many years after 9/11, still the major funder of terrorist Sunni jihad enterprises. We got this started. We can put it to a stop.
Watch
part one of the full debate and draw your own conclusions:
Full
transcript:
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