In a September IPR comment, Lou Novak (detroitgreens.org) wrote to a
Libertarian: "If you're for the freedom to be unemployed, poor, sick
and subject to corporate rule, then you're not willing to think
outside the fascist box."
I would never call anybody a "commie", but I think the Green Party
platform is arguably socialist -- although Novak apparently disagrees.
But as I understand it, the Green Party calls for social control or
provision of land, education, retirement savings, health insurance,
disability insurance, unemployment insurance, deposit insurance,
housing finance, and business finance. The GP also advocates "a fair
distribution of income", "a living wage", "the social ownership and
use of land at the community, local, and regional level", "allowing
municipalities to approve or disapprove large economic projects", and
"a reduced-hour (30-35 hours) work week". I can't quite tell if the
GP would socialize housing, but it advocates "consolidating housing
into such structures as ecolonies, to free open space, and to move
about by bicycle, train, bus and on foot so that roadways may be
converted to parkland and agriculture." It also says cryptically:
"The concept of a 'job' is only a few hundred years old; and the
artificial dichotomy between 'employment' and 'unemployment' has
become a tool of social leverage for corporate exploiters."
That's what you're voting for when you vote Green.
I don't see how Libertarian Presidential candidate Tom Knapp can say
that in 2008 in most states, the candidate running on this platform
"was the closest thing to a libertarian presidential candidate on the
ballot" -- when the LP candidate in those states was explicitly
running on the LP platform.
