What I learned at the world economic crisis.The Insider By JOSEPH STIGLITZ

Martin Schiller mart555 at t-three.com
Tue Apr 11 14:21:21 PDT 2000


Michael Hoover said on 4/11/00 10:52 AM


>fwiw: I recall reading that Gaskin was seeking Green Party presidential
>nomination this year... Michael Hoover (who spent short time at The
>Farm *many, many, many* years ago)

One of the URLs that I posted was from an interview with Gaskin in which he presented his proposal to announce his candidacy thusly...

http://www.bestweb.net/~kali93/oct98/gaskin.htm

By the way, did I tell you that I am going to run for president on decriminalizing pot? I will put my platform here...

Plank 1: Universal Health Care. Everyone gets taken care of while we argue about the money. Plank 2: Campaign Finance Reform. The Airwaves belong to the people. The networks will get off of enough of them for the people to run their elections, free. Plank 3: Decriminalize Marijuana and Amnesty for all simple pot prisoners who are not involved with guns or hard drugs. Plank 4: Let's Educate the Kids and quit fighting about it. Plank 5: A Corporation is Not a Person.

My idea is to put the subject of reefer law on the table and to make the debate public. I thought I could be as much of a pain in the ass as Ross Perot, but for a good cause.

I think Perot's 18 million or whatever it was is about half as many as there are pot smokers in the United States. I want to show them that our constituency is large and intelligent and worthy of consideration. People from several states who were at the 4:20, said that they would work for me in their states.

PHF: How do you hope to finance the campaign and get on the ballots?

Stephen Gaskin: In the first place, my presidential candidacy will not even try to compete financially. That would be the first trap. I am going to rely on my good hippy karma. I am quite well known among hippies and the youth. I am also going to rely on the truth and sanity of my positions. I have been crisscrossing this continent for 28 years. My books have sold about half a million, and books related to my work have sold several millions. Rather than purchasing time on the air, I will try to be a good enough story to be carried as news. I will be using the Internet and web pages and I hope to have the help of people like you, Phil, who inhabit the underground media. We have been building a system for years. On my road trips, I usually talk on the local public access station and I have friends from coast to coast on that circuit.

I intend to put the pot question on the table. I want all candidates for all offices to be asked what have they done for reefer sanity in the USA.

Al Gore was the young reporter who did the first big local story on us. We have known him for 25 years. I sometimes have a column in the paper that he used to work for. I will announce in that column. I think the wire services will think that situation is cute enough to carry the story.

This is a literal and metaphorical grass roots effort. My e-mail address is Stephen7 at usit.net and I welcome comments, offers of help and being forwarded to your lists. I know that I am a regular on all the best hippy gossip circuits. I ask their permission for my presidential candidacy to be carried on that net as well.

And remember, A CORPORATION IS NOT A PERSON.



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