Rob: Let
me ask you something. Last year I started calling for and this year Thom Hartmann
called for basically de-billionairizing the U.S. in one way or another. I call
for laws that make it illegal to be a billionaire and Thom calls for 100%
taxation of income or assets or something like that over a billion dollars.
What do you think about that?
Jill: I
think that's a really important thing to think about. Now, we haven't taken a
position on that, but I think that's definitely something we would consider. I
think we need to get there one way or the other and whether it's by asking the
very extremely wealthy to start paying their fair share by taxing. We've
proposed, for example, a 90% tax on the bonuses of bailed out Wall Street
executives. They're taxing capital gains as income, taxing Wall Street
transactions, which are currently exempted from sales tax. There are so many
ways we can begin to make--just to restore basic fairness to the tax system
which it does not have that will begin to reign in these obscene extremes of
wealth that require that there be widespread poverty in order to support them.
Rob: Okay,
now this is the Rob Kall Bottom up Radio
Show WNJC 1360 AM, out of Washington Township, reaching metro Philly and
south Jersey, sponsored by OpEdNews.com. You can get the podcasts at iTunes
looking for my name Rob Kall, K-a-l-l or come to OpEdNews.com/podcasts with an
"s" on the end.
I'm speaking with Jill Stein. She's the Green Party Presidential
candidate and we've been talking about a whole lost of stuff and you've managed
to--in between my questions--to give a pretty thorough job of flushing out your
platform. Great job.
By the way, I wanted to ask you a couple questions. Now when you were
arrested, wasn't there a question to Occupy Wall Street people with that?
What's your take on Occupy Wall Street and its role in the future of America?
Jill: Yes.
So. I believe Occupy Wall Street--if I'm remembering correctly--I think they were
also present and supporting the demonstration. And in fact, we have been very
connected with Occupy and all of its manifestations, from even before I was
running in this race. And I think our agenda is pretty hard to distinguish from
the Occupy agenda. Now, granted Occupy is very diverse and different sites have
different focuses, but nonetheless the emphasis on economic equality, on
reigning in the excesses of Wall Street, on breaking up the big banks, on
restoring democracy and getting money out of politics. I mean, when I heard the
Occupy agenda, it was like, "Thank God. Finally, it's broken through." And
myself and many other Green's have basically been working on this agenda for a
long time and there's just a natural synergy here, which I think is very
effective.
Occupy is a social movement and the Green Party, I think has very much
has been the voice for that movement and that agenda for the long hall and this
is a--I think it's a marriage made in heaven. This is how social movements
throughout history have made progress, by being the engine on the ground, which
is fundamentally that social movement that Occupy represents. When that works
together with an independent political party, that's when we see things really
change, transformative change happen.
So, for example, in the abolition movement, you had an abolition movement
on the ground and you had the Liberty Party as an expression of that movement
in the political sphere. The Liberty Party drove into the Republican Party,
which was also a small political party and the President Lincoln actually got
elected on that agenda at a really critical time.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
5
3
