blog – Page 3 – The Green Party of Santa Clara County

January 25, 2018
Jake Tonkel
-

YOUTH VS. THE “LEFT”

Category : blog , Divestment , Economy , Energy , Politics

Youth Vs. the “Left”

by – Jake Tonkel & Christen Corcoran

Originally published in TheBridgeConvo.org

When it comes to the topic of climate change, nearly everyone on the millennial left (and a lot of the right) seems to be on the same page. Scientific evidence has demonstrated, our teachers have educated, nature itself is giving us the warning signs, and Al Gore has spread the word: climate change is real, it’s happening and it is the greatest challenge the human race has ever seen—infinitely more complex than WWI and WWII combined. This is the starting point that we must have in climate discourse. So why do we not see this reflected in politics? Why isn’t the liberal left doing more to reflect what our generation is demanding?

Climate change has already had devastating consequences, especially for the already-marginalized communities of our country and our world. Big oil, big business, the transnational elite and others have a vested interest in preventing policies directed towards combating climate change: they would lose money or like whitefish, stand to gain during the recovery effort. Furthermore, they will either be dead or as rich as King Midas by the time ultimate disaster strikes. We stand up time and time again (Keystone, DAPL, etc), but the DNC couldn’t even rule out fracking in its official 2016 platform. In fact, according to ClimateHawksVote, an organization that ranks representatives on their action on climate issues, Dems scored an average of just 23.25pts out of 100! With 6 of 44 scoring in the negatives!

That is a really, really tough pill for us to swallow as millennials. With Congress at an average age of 57, we don’t have much, if any representation. It’s ironic really, being told your whole life that with age comes wisdom only to have those that touted the saying literally destroy our world. Politicians empirically care more about the money in their pocket than working towards a solution.

As the world tries to collaborate, our government makes sure the deals are non-binding, cheering “compromise” between business and consumer, developed and developing.

It is devastating that the US is no longer party to the Paris Agreement, but in reality—we were the reason it was weak to begin with. The US follows the money, not policies that will protect humanity. This is a gross corruption of our fundamental values—by the people, for the people—which puts the market above society, and greed above human lives.

This is a somber “Left” because this is not a problem of “getting the word out”; the word is already out. Politicians know the consequences of inaction. Yet they are not following through. Terrorist attack, Congress passes legislation, gun violence, the Blue team gets all frustrated at thoughts and prayers, 3 or 4 natural disasters hit the U.S., exacerbated by a warming planet, and only the Pope seems to give it the time of day.

December 1, 2017
Jake Tonkel
-

National Priorities

Category : blog , Economy , Politics

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” – Eisenhower, Chance for Peace, 1953. Our last US president to have been a career military general.

When it comes to National Priorities, we hear lots of talk, but where are we walking? The way to judge a politician is not their speeches or their website, as Joe Biden said, “don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.”

Budgets are usually met with an understandable anxiety and boredom. Mix in congressional politics and the cocktail for an apathetic un-involved citizen is perfected. The problem is, those un-involved citizens are the ones at the bar, paying the tab.

The US budget is a bit out of control. About 7% of all US spending, both discretionary (think movable) and mandatory (think social security specific taxes), is set aside to pay interest on our debt. That’s $283 billion. Pundits come on TV every year and talk of wasteful spending, welfare abuse and where to trim the fat. But if we cut the Departments of Education, Housing, Energy, Environment, Science, and Transportation entirely, the savings is only $277 billion—less than the interest on our debt. Focusing on any of these programs to solve our debt ignores the big fat armored elephant in the room.

Military spending doubled from 1998 to 2011, as of two weeks ago, the senate approved over $700 billion for 2018. The new National Defense Authorization just passed the senate last week, 89 – 9, approving an extra $80 billion the administration didn’t even ask for. Only 3 Republicans, 4 Dems and an Independent voted No. 41 blue guys, including Warren, Harris and Booker (our “progressive senators”), fell in toe. He must be doing one heck of a job to warrant such a bonus check.

Reducing the military budget is damn hard, and one reason for starters is we can’t even talk about it–not in any rational, civilized, way at least. “ISIS, Russia, Iran, N. Korea!… Support our troops!?” It’s like we have no other choice but to boost defense funding or die.

But budgets are a choice and if the progressives are going to start demanding more accountability for the American taxpayer, they need to start learning how to have the conversation. A tried and true place to start? The ever more powerful, the ever more demanding, D.C. ball ticklers, in the featureless, anemic, D.C. lobby. Lockheed Martin, though an independent corporation, is a staple of the defense industry that also has happened to donate money to 386 of 435 members of the 112th Congress. It’s almost shocking how small the largest committee on the hill is—House Armed Services Committee—with 30 Dems and 34 Republicans. Unlike some stalemates in congress, like the obviously trivial debates on education or healthcare, our country’s national security is not a partisan issue.

Strangely enough, the talking heads that salivate at the thought of quoting a “founding father,” never seem to mention that in the wake of the revolution they refused to enlist a standing army because the general population viewed an army as a threat to democracy and freedom. In 1774, Josiah Quincy, Congressman (MA), called a standing army in a free nation a deformed monster. James Madison said “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” As late as 1939, a North Dakota Republican Congressman, thought the ability to manufacture weapons should be restricted to the government, “The removal of the element of profit from war would materially remove the danger of more war.”

The argument over budget only ever gets as far as cutting waste, but our country doesn’t accumulate massive debt feeding the hungry or healing the sick, or educating their population. If done right, those actions would actually have their own returns. No, our country is bankrupting itself with war. The founders knew it in the 1700s, but pundits are still squabbling about it today. The conversation needs to change. We are having the conversation the industry would like us to have, you either “support our troops,” or you don’t. But we are ignoring, of course, the fact that nothing is that simple, and obviously not the budgetary decisions of the United States Government.

By: Jake Tonkel

November 1, 2017
Cheryl McGovern
-

San Jose Creates New Clean Energy Department for 100% Renewable Clean Energy

Category : blog , Energy , Environment , Politics

San Jose Clean Energy, approved unanimously this May by the City Council, is a new program that offers a choice for more renewable energy at competitive rates with local control and benefits than currently offered by the investor owned utility, PG&E. Many cities in California have created their own Clean Energy alternative and San Jose is one of them! The program, which will offer electricity to residents that is cleaner and/or more affordable while creating more local clean energy jobs, includes a new department, director, 20 staff, and a Citizens Advisory Committee.

These programs are enabled by a 2002 state law (Assembly Bill 117) that allows cities or counties to choose their electric provider and the source of their electricity.

Communities can purchase and generate electricity according to their own community priorities – greener than PG&E offers, at a competitive cost. PG&E still maintains the power lines (and manages delivery and billing), but the power purchase contracts are set by the city’s CCE program. Proven successful programs in Marin, Sonoma, and Lancaster (see below) are delivering electrical power with a much higher portion of renewables than PG&E currently provides, at lower costs than PG&E.

The benefits to San Jose are:

Clean Energy: San Jose will, with this one action, enable the community to make a major transition to clean energy faster than any other way. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a major goal for the State, and a focus area of San Jose’s Green Vision.

Choice: Each customer personally chooses the energy plan that best fits them. Whether to potentially pay less than they pay now for a cleaner energy mix, pay a bit more for 100% renewable energy, or pay the same price they pay now for the same mix (stay with PG&E) there are no risks to individual rate payers.

Community Control and Economic Benefit: San Jose has made buying locally produced clean energy a priority so local energy companies and producers will have an increased market which stimulated localrenewable energy development projects, helps create local jobs and attract businesses, and puts competition in the energy utility market. San Jose can capture some of the approximately $400 million per year that San Jose pays PG&E for electricity generation, and have the decision-making control to save customers money, and invest revenues locally to produce jobs and benefit the local economy.

As an example: Since the launch of Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) in 2014, they have increased the percentage of overall spending in Sonoma County from an estimated 3% of dollars by PG&E prior to SCP launch, to over 25% today by SCP, and this percentage is expected to increase over time. SCP has already achieved $50 million in direct customer savings plus over $35 million in shifted spending back into the county.

Marin Clean Energy and Other Leaders

Three community choice districts are already successfully operating in California, and CCE’s operate in at least 5 other states as well. Originally termed Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), the terms CCE and CCA are interchangeable.

- Marin Clean Energy (MCE) was the first CCE/CCA in northern California: it first came online in 2010, and by year end 2014 had grown to serve over 125,000 customers in Marin County, unincorporated Napa County and the cities of Benicia, El Cerrito, Richmond and San Pablo. It serves residential, commercial, and municipal customers, and is expected to increase the number of communities it serves in 2016.

- Sonoma Clean Power is a CCA serving most cities (and all unincorporated areas) in Sonoma County, and came online in 2013.

The southern California city of Lancasterlaunched their CCA in early 2015. Lancaster represents a single-city CCA model.

More locally, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties have created Community Choice Energy programs in 2016!

- In San Mateo County all 20 cities plus the County Unincorporated area have voted to join the local CCE program, Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE).. Program launch in August, 2016.

- In Santa Clara County all but one of the 11 cities in consideration have voted to join the Silicon Valley Community Clean Energy Partnership (SVCCEP), started in late 2016.

San Francisco has established a CCA (CleanPowerSF), offering service in May of 2016.

Other California communities are investigating CCEs as of June 2015, by formal action of elected bodies (list possibly incomplete):

- Los Angeles County, including the cities of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Carson, Torrance, Inglewood, Culver City and Santa Monica.

- Santa Cruz/Monterey/San Benito Counties (and all cities therein)

- Lake County

- Mendocino County

- Humbolt County

- San Luis Obispo County

- Santa Barbara County

- City of Morro Bay

- City of Davis

City of Solana Beach

Links to Marin’s, Sonoma’s, and Lancaster’s CCAs, and other resources, are here at our Resources page.

San Jose′ Community Energy (SJCE) is a group of residents committed to bringing affordable renewable energy to our community. We advocated for the formation of a CCE program in San Jose′.

San Jose plans to roll out the new program incrementally over the next year. To learn more visit the City’s website: sanjoseca.gov

By: Cheryl McGovern

August 11, 2017
Matthew Sahagian
-

Injustice for All

Category : blog , Politics

The United States incarcerates ~25% of the world’s prison population despite only having ~5% of the world’s population. In the 35 years between 1972 and 2007, the rate of incarceration has ballooned from 161 to 767 per 100,000.

The historical circumstances which have led to these frightening figures are wide and varied. From increases in the number of for-profit prisons, to the excesses of our military-industrial complex fueling local police departments, we have seen how the profit motive, just as in healthcare, has eroded institutional barriers previously aimed at securing the public interest. Compounding this further is the simple fact that the United States still reserves the right to enslave those convicted of a crime under the 13th amendment to our constitution. The result is not merely an increase in the number of incarcerated individuals, but an increase in the brutality employed by the system that aims to incarcerate them.

As prison populations increase, the physical constraints both in terms of living conditions and protocols increase alongside it. Solitary confinement, though always a means of punishment and torture becomes mere economics. The shackling of pregnant women while giving birth becomes a savings in the cost of labor for a system with fewer guards dispersed across larger inmate populations. And the use of violence as a means to suppress any behavior which does not exactly correspond to the daily regiments of transport, feeding, and labor is little more than an application of the age-old techniques of the assembly line.

All of these facts, whether admitted to or not, attest not merely to the social crises which are endemic to capitalist systems, but also the economic ones. In a system which requires some portion of the population to constitute a reserve army of the unemployed, lest the worker demand for even the most meager wages were to disappear, some number of that population is forced to turn towards different forms of employment. Enter the war on drugs, the continuing criminalization of sex workers, and, of course, undocumented immigrant labor.

In periods of prolonged economic stagnation, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to rely on the past divides in our social fabric to justify such a system. The correlation between poverty and crime is well known. With stagnating wages, more frequent attacks on social services, and growing wealth inequality, it’s not enough that black and brown people face disproportionate numbers of arrests or such wide disparities in sentencing. Instead, society must also assure a larger and larger percentage of the population that they are not like “the other.”

We must dehumanize.

Whether it’s a first lady referring to black youths as “super predators” or the commander-in-chief telling a nation that it’s “OK to take away the hand,” the need to portray those most heavily targeted by our legal system as something not human or not deserving of fundamental human rights is essential to the maintenance of a prison system at the scale and scope of the United States’. Only by continuing to remind those outside of the system that those inside the system “deserve it,” can it continue to go unchecked. As soon as we recognize our common humanity, it becomes possible to see “the other” as us. It becomes possible to demand change.

For this reason as well as for all the detailed criminal justice reforms supported in the Green Party platform, members of the Santa Clara County Green Party will be joining California Prison Focus and Rise Up for Justice on Saturday, August 19th to join in the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March. For more information, see: https://www.facebook.com/events/441574739560568/

July 4, 2017
Tahiya Marome
-

The Big Fat Fake Division

Category : blog , Energy , Environment , Politics

It’s the most familiar tactic in the history of manipulation-divide and conquer. The corporatized political parties that have been trading the football of the US Government back and forth for decades have successfully engaged the entire republic in a non-debate about something that has no divisive features. Their strategy of pitting sides against one another is about as sophisticated as a teenager angling for the car by getting Mom and Dad to fight about who caused the scratch on the door. Embarrassingly, far too many of us keep falling for it.

The Environment is Not An “ISM”

Our planet, the water, the air, the animal and plant life, is not an institution, a theory, a political invention, or any other “ism.” It is a very concrete, finite location and resources. It is the context in which all human activity, good, bad, and neutral, must take place. Living consumes and makes waste. Modern, human life has added a layer of consumption and waste production that can’t be automatically re-incorporated into Earth’s natural cycles. We continually convert a certain amount of the Earth’s matter, into permanently unusable, sometimes even dangerous, waste. That waste is accurately called pollution, a now-old-fashioned word, too clear and useful to be in favor today.

We all know what pollution is and why we don’t want it. It makes living on Earth a bad experience. When it builds up in the air or water or soil we get sick. Everybody knows it’s bad. No one is confused or undecided. No one would rather live in pollution. No one prefers a river with raw sewage spilling into it to one without. But guess what! By changing the language to “climate change” and framing the debate around whether or not it’s caused by human activity, the corporate interests that would pollute freely for profit, distracted us all. Worse, we’re not even debating climate change, or even its causes any more. We’ve devolved into a useless non‑dialogue about climate change DENIAL! Denial is not an issue. It’s a pretense that something doesn’t exist. Talk about talking about nothing!

Sincere Language

But what happens when we call things by reasonably accurate terms, instead of manipulative spin yammer? Replace “climate change” with “planet-wide heating.” Now, instead of a vague, meaningless phrase, we have a fair description of what is actually happening. Instead of arguing about whether society should manage and restrain things that may be turning up the heat, let’s focus on the fact that those same activities simply pollute. Heating up or not, we’ve spent four decades proving that we can choose whether or not to make our planet a filthy, dirty one, or try and clean up after ourselves. Why would we turn back and choose pollution now? We wouldn’t. That’s why the profiteering exploiters prefer we never pose the question that way.

Their argument was, ‘People don’t cause global warming, so forget about protecting the environment and let’s exploit without limits, because money.’ By this logic, if you are making breakfast and you drop the two eggs you were going to scramble, you should throw the other ten eggs on the floor too. Rational adults rejected this idiotic argument so the profiteers now respond with denial, like a three-year-old having a pout.

Planet-wide heating is not good news, but whether our actions can avert it or not, we still have to live here for the foreseeable future. And since we do, why would any sincere, rational person agree to end the limits on pollution, or abandon recycling? We wouldn’t and we don’t.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Category Archives: blog

-