BIOGRAPHY OF JILL STEIN ,4TH MOST POWERFUL
POLITICIAN IN AMERICA TODAY AS SEEN VIA WIKIPEDIA
MADAM JILL STEIN IS A KEY OPPOSITION LEADER IN U.S. POLITICS
Jill Ellen Stein (born May 14, 1950) is an American physician, activist, and politician.
She was the Green Party's nominee for President of the United States in
the 2012 and 2016 elections.[1][2][3][4][5]
She ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010 but lost.[6][7][8]
Early
life, family, and religion
Stein was born in Chicago, the
daughter of Gladys (née Wool) and Joseph Stein, and raised in Highland Park, Illinois. Her parents were
from Russian Jewish families,
and Stein was raised in a Reform Jewish household, attending Chicago's North Shore Congregation Israel, a Reform
synagogue.[9]
She now considers herself agnostic.[10]
Stein is married to Richard Rohrer, who is also a physician. They live in Lexington, Massachusetts, and have two
adult sons.[11][12][13]
Education,
and medical career summary
In 1973, Stein graduated magna
cum laude from Harvard College, where she studied psychology,
sociology, and anthropology. She then attended Harvard Medical School and graduated in
1979.
After graduating from Harvard
Medical School, Stein practiced internal
medicine for 25 years[11]
at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center, Simmons College Health Center, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which are
all located in the Boston area. She also served as an instructor of medicine at
Harvard Medical School.
She retired from practicing and
teaching medicine in 2005 and 2006, respectively.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]
Early
activism and political career
As a medical doctor, Stein became
increasingly concerned about the connection between people's health and the
quality of their local environment, and decided to turn to activism in 1998,
when she began protesting the "Filthy Five" coal plants in Massachusetts.[23][24]
Stein's testimony on the effects
of mercury and dioxin contamination from the
burning of waste helped preserve the Massachusetts moratorium on new trash incinerator
construction in the state, and she later testified in support of updating the
Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children from mercury
contamination.[25]
Since 1998, she has served on the board of the Greater Boston chapter of Physicians for Social
Responsibility.[11]
Under Stein, the chapter partnered with Boston
University's Superfund Research Program as part of BUSRP’s Community
Outreach Core and became a key member of the Environmental Health Nursing
Education Collaborative.[26] In
2003, Stein co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts
Coalition for Healthy Communities, a nonprofit organization that addressed a
variety of issues important to the health and well-being of Massachusetts
communities, including health care, local green economies, and grassroots democracy.[27][28][29]
Stein also founded and served as co-chair of the Lexington Solid Waste Action
Team, a recycling committee in her hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts. The committee
was approved by Lexington's Board of Selectmen and later featured in the
textbook Approaches to Sustainable Development: The Public University in the
Regional Economy.[30][31]
In 2008, Stein helped formulate a successful "Secure Green Future"
ballot initiative that called upon legislators to accelerate efforts to move
the Massachusetts economy to renewable energy and make development of green
jobs a priority.[32]
Other organizations Stein has worked with include Clean Water Action, Toxic Action Center, Global
Climate Convergence, Physicians for a National
Health Program, and Massachusetts Medical Society.[31][33][34][35][36][37][38] She
received Clean Water Action's "Not in Anyone's Backyard Award" in
1998 and its "Children's Health Hero Award" in 2000, Toxic Action
Center's "Citizen Award" in 1999, and Salem State College's "Friend of the Earth
Award" in 2004.[33][39][40]
Publications
and presentations
As a medical doctor and researcher,
Stein has published various materials and teaching plans, and has testified
before legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies.[41] She
coauthored two reports by the Greater Boston Physicians for Social
Responsibility, In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development
(2000), and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging (2009).[42][43]
Stein's official biography states that the reports have been widely cited and
translated into four languages,[44][45]
and the Physicians for Social Responsibility website lists endorsements from
six experts on public health.[46] The
In Harm's Way report was republished in the peer-reviewed Journal of
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics in 2002.[47]
Stein also coauthored articles about health in publications such as The Huffington Post.[48] In
2009, Stein developed a three-part lecture series, "Healthy People,
Healthy Planet," supported by the Boston
University Superfund Research Project, for a course
at the University of Delaware Nursing School.[49][50] She
also lectured and gave presentations at other institutions.[51]
Campaign
finance reform
Stein is an advocate for campaign finance reform. In 1998, she
helped campaign for the Clean Elections Law in Massachusetts.[34]
The law was later repealed by a Democratic-majority legislature,[52][53]
leading Stein to leave the Democratic party and join the Green Party.[23][54] She
was one of several activists involved with the Clean Elections Law to file a
complaint in the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County in 2002 against William
F. Galvin, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, over the
state's failure to successfully implement the law.[55]
Stein has also served on the board of MassVoters for Fair Elections[11][56] and
has campaigned for implementing instant
runoff voting in Massachusetts.[28]
Musical
activities
Alongside her political career,
Stein also recorded musical albums with collaborator Ken Selcer in the folk-rock
band Somebody's Sister.[57]
She plays the conga
and djembe
drums[58]
and the guitar.[59]
During the 1990s and 2000s, the duo released four studio albums: Flashpoint,
Somebody's Sister, Green Sky, and Circuits To The Sun.[60]
The pair also often performed at live events, such as the 2008 Green-Rainbow
Convention in Leominster, Massachusetts.[61]
The band was a semifinalist in Musician's best unsigned bands contest in
1996 and 1998.[33]
Financial
disclosure
Stein's financial disclosure, filed
in March 2016, indicated that she maintained investments of as much as $8.5
million, including mutual or index funds
that included holdings in industries that she had previously criticized, such
as energy, financial, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and defense contractors.[62]
In response to questions about her finances, Stein said in part: "Sadly,
most of these broad investments are as compromised as the American
economy—degraded as it is by the fossil fuel, defense and finance
industries",[62]
and later characterized the article as a "smear attack" against her.[63]
Campaigns
for elected office
Stein is a former elected member of
the Lexington Town Meeting, the local legislative body in Lexington,
Massachusetts. She was elected to two three-year terms, but resigned during her
second term to run for governor.[64]
Massachusetts
gubernatorial candidate, 2002
Stein was the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in
2002 and finished third in a field of five candidates, with 76,530 votes
(3.5%).[65]
After her debate performances received good reviews, supporters of the
Democratic nominee purchased the rights to jillstein.org.[66][67]
Massachusetts
House of Representatives candidate, 2004
Following her third-place results in
the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election, Stein ran for state
representative in 2004 for the 9th Middlesex District, which included portions
of Waltham and Lexington.[68] She
received 3,911 votes (21.3%) in a three-way race, ahead of the Republican
candidate but far behind Democratic incumbent Thomas
M. Stanley.[69]
Massachusetts
Secretary of the Commonwealth candidate, 2006
At the Green-Rainbow Party state convention on March 4, 2006, Stein was
nominated for Secretary of the Commonwealth.
In a two-way race with the three-term incumbent, Democrat Bill
Galvin, she received 353,551 votes (18%).[70]
Town
of Lexington Town Meeting Representative, 2005 and 2008
Lexington, Massachusetts has a town meeting-style government. Stein
was elected to the Town Meeting Seat, Precinct 2 (Lexington, Massachusetts) in
March 2005 local elections.[71] She
finished first of 16 candidates running for seven seats, receiving 539 votes
(20.6%).[72]
Stein was reelected in 2008, finishing second of 13 vying for eight seats.[73]
Massachusetts
gubernatorial candidate, 2010
Main article: Massachusetts gubernatorial
election, 2010
On February 8, 2010, Stein announced
her candidacy for governor
on the steps of the Massachusetts State House in Boston.[74] Her
running mate was Richard P. Purcell, a surgery clerk and ergonomics
assessor from Holyoke.[75] In
May, Stein opened her campaign office in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, near the Fields Corner MBTA station.[76] In
the November 2 general election, Stein finished last, receiving 32,816 votes
out of 2,287,407 cast (1.4%).[77]
Presidential
campaigns
2012
In August 2011, Stein indicated that
she was considering running for President of the United States with
the Green Party in the 2012 national election.
In a published questionnaire she said that a number of Green activists had
asked her to run and called the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis
"the President’s astounding attack on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—a
betrayal of the public interest...". She said she would announce her
intentions by the end of September 2011.[78]
Stein later said she would announce her decision on October 24.[79]
On October 24, 2011, Stein launched
her campaign at a press conference in Massachusetts, saying,
We are all realizing that we, the
people, have to take charge because the political parties that are serving the
top 1 percent are not going to solve the problems that the rest of us face, we
need people in Washington who will refuse to be bought by
lobbyists and for whom change is not just a slogan.[80]
In December 2011, Ben Manski,
a Wisconsin Green Party leader, was announced as Stein's campaign manager.[81]
Her major primary opponents were Kent P. Mesplay and Roseanne
Barr.[82]
Stein's signature issue during the primary was a "Green
New Deal", a government spending plan intended to put 25 million
people to work.[82]
Mesplay called that unrealistic, saying, "This will take time to
implement, and lacks legislative support."[82]
Stein became the presumptive Green
Party nominee after winning two-thirds of California's
delegates in June 2012.[83] In
a statement following the California Green Party delegate election, Stein said,
"Voters will not be forced to choose between two servants of Wall
Street in the upcoming election. Now we know there will be a third
candidate on the ballot who is a genuine champion of working people."[84]
Stein was endorsed for president in 2012 by the Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist and war
correspondent Chris Hedges,[85]
among others. Linguist Noam Chomsky said he would vote for her but urged
those in swing states to vote for Barack
Obama.[86]
Stein with Jon Wiener,
The
Nation writer and host of the political
podcast Start Making Sense in 2016
On July 1, 2012, the Stein campaign
reported it had received enough contributions to qualify for primary season
federal matching funds, pending confirmation from the FEC. If funded, Stein would be the
second Green Party presidential candidate ever to have qualified, with Ralph
Nader having been the first in 2000.[87] On
July 11, Stein selected Cheri Honkala, an anti-poverty activist, as her
running mate for the Green vice-presidential nomination.[88][89] On
July 14, she officially received the Green Party's nomination at its convention in Baltimore.[1][90]
On August 1, Stein, Honkala and
three others were arrested during a sit-in at a Philadelphia
bank to protest housing foreclosures on behalf of several city residents
struggling to keep their homes.[91]
Stein explained her willingness to be arrested:
The developers and financiers made
trillions of dollars through the housing bubble and the imposition of crushing
debt on homeowners. And when homeowners could no longer pay them what they
demanded, they went to government and got trillions of dollars of bailouts.
Every effort of the Obama Administration has been to prop this system up and
keep it going at taxpayer expense. It's time for this game to end. It's time
for the laws be written to protect the victims and not the perpetrators.[92]
On October 16, Stein and Honkala
were arrested after they tried to enter the site of the presidential debate at Hofstra University while protesting the
exclusion of smaller political parties, such as the Green Party, from the
debates.[93]
Stein likened her arrest to the persecution of dissident Sergei
Udaltsov in Russia.[94] On
October 31, Stein was arrested in Texas for criminal trespass, after trying to
deliver food and supplies to environmental activists camped out in trees protesting
the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.[95][96]
The Free and Equal Election
Foundation hosted a third-party debate with four candidates on October 19 and
a debate between Stein and Gary Johnson on November 5.[97]
Al
Jazeera, C-SPAN,
and RT
America were the three major networks carrying the first debate.[98][99]
During the campaign, Stein
repeatedly said that there were no significant differences between Mitt
Romney and Barack Obama.[100][101][102]
She said, "Romney is a wolf in a wolf’s clothing, Obama is a wolf in a
sheep’s clothing, but they both essentially have the same agenda."[101]
She called both of them "Wall Street candidates" asking for "a
mandate for four more years of corporate rule".[100]
Stein received 469,015 votes
(0.36%).[2]
She received 1% or more of the vote in three states: Maine (1.1%), Oregon (1.1%),
and Alaska (1.0%).
2016
Main article: Jill Stein presidential
campaign, 2016
Jill Stein's presidential campaign
logo, 2016
On February 6, 2015, Stein announced
the formation of an exploratory committee in preparation for a
potential campaign for the Green Party's presidential nomination in 2016.[103]
On June 22, she formally announced her candidacy in a live interview with Amy
Goodman on Democracy Now![104]
After former Ohio state senator Nina
Turner reportedly declined to be her running mate,[105]
Stein chose human rights activist Ajamu
Baraka on 1 August 2016.[106]
Stein has stated that the Democratic
and Republican parties are "two corporate parties" that have
converged into one.[107]
Concerned by the rise of fascism internationally and the rise of neoliberalism
within the Democratic Party, she has said, "The answer to neofascism
is stopping neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan
the flames of this right-wing extremism. We have known that for a long time,
ever since Nazi Germany."[108][109] Stein was
endorsed by Union Theological
Seminary Professor Cornel West,[110]
author Chris
Hedges,[111]
and Seattle City Council member Kshama
Sawant.[112]
In August 2016, Stein released the first two pages of her 2015 tax return on
her website.[113][114]
On September 7, 2016, a North
Dakota judge issued a warrant for Stein's arrest for spray-painting a
bulldozer during a protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Stein was charged in
Morton County with misdemeanor counts
of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Her running mate, Ajamu Baraka,
received the same charges.[115]
After the warrant was issued, Stein said that she would cooperate with the
North Dakota authorities and arrange a court date. She defended her actions,
saying that it would have been "inappropriate for me not to have done my
small part" to support the Standing Rock Sioux.[116][117]
Stein's highest polling average in
four candidate polls was in late June 2016, when she polled at 4.8% nationally.[118]
Her polling numbers gradually slipped throughout the campaign, consistent with
historical trends for minor party candidates;[119][120]
on the eve of Election Day, Stein was at 1.8% in a polling average.[118]
Stein ultimately received 1% of the national popular vote in the election.[121]
Presidential
election recount fundraising and filing
Main article: 2016 United States
presidential election recounts
In November 2016, a group of
computer scientists and election lawyers including J.
Alex Halderman and John Bonifaz (founder of the National Voting Rights Institute)
claimed about the integrity of the presidential election results. They wanted a
full audit or recount of the presidential election votes in three states key to
Trump's electoral college win—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—but needed
a candidate on the presidential ballot to file the petition to state
authorities. After unsuccessfully lobbying Hillary
Clinton and her team, the group approached Stein and she agreed to
spearhead the recount effort.[122]
A crowdfunding
campaign launched on November 24, 2016, to support the costs of the recount
raised more than $2.5 million in under 24 hours.[123]
By November 30, the campaign had raised $6.7 million.[124]
On November 25, 2016, with 90
minutes remaining on the deadline to petition for a recount to Wisconsin's
electoral body, Stein filed for a recount of its presidential election results.
She signaled she intended to file for similar recounts in the subsequent days
in Michigan
and Pennsylvania.[125]
The next day, Hillary
Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias
stated that their campaign would join Stein's recount efforts in Wisconsin and
possibly others "in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that
is fair to all sides."[126][127]
Stein had by that date raised nearly $6 million in donations to petition for
the recounts.[128]
President-elect Donald
Trump issued a statement denouncing the recount request saying, “The people
have spoken and the election is over.” Trump further commented that the recount
“is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded.”[129]
On December 2, 2016, Michigan Attorney General Bill
Schuette filed a lawsuit to stop Stein's recount.[130]
On the same day in Wisconsin a U.S. District Judge denied an emergency halt to
the recount allowing it to continue until a December 9, 2016 hearing.[131]
On December 3, 2016, Stein dropped
the state recount case in Pennsylvania citing "the barriers to verifying the
vote in Pennsylvania are so pervasive and that the state court
system is so ill-equipped to address this problem that we must seek federal
court intervention."[132]
Shortly after midnight, December 5,
2016, a U.S. District Judge appointed by President Barack
Obama in 2010, Mark A. Goldsmith; ordered Michigan
election officials to hand-recount 4.8 million ballots, rejecting all concerns
for the cost of the recount, Goldsmith wrote in his order "As emphasized
earlier, budgetary concerns are not sufficiently significant to risk the
disenfranchisement of Michigan’s nearly 5 million voters".[133]
On December 6, 2016, U.S. District Judge Mark
A. Goldsmith set a hearing for December 7, 2016, to determine whether the
recount should proceed after the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Stein who
placed fourth, has no chance of winning and is not an "aggrieved
candidate", ordering the Michigan election board to reject her petition for a
recount.[134]
The following day U.S. District Judge Mark
A. Goldsmith halted the Michigan recount.[135]
Stein filed an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court, losing her appeal in
a 3-2 decision on December 9, 2016.[136]
Political
positions
Preference
for Donald Trump as President over Democrats
On numerous occasions, Stein
expressed the belief that Donald Trump would be better for the nation as
president than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. She told Politico, "Donald
Trump, I think, will have a lot of trouble moving things through Congress.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, won't… Hillary has the potential to do a
whole lot more damage, get us into more wars, faster to pass her fracking
disastrous climate program, much more easily than Donald Trump could do
his."[137]
In reply to the question "How
would you feel if your role in this election helped put Donald Trump in the
White House?" Stein answered that a Clinton defeat would do more to stop
neofascism than a Trump defeat: "The answer to neofascism is stopping
neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames
of this right-wing extremism. We have known that for a long time, ever since
Nazi Germany."[138]
A frequent claim by Stein was that
Obama and Clinton had done worse things than what Trump had only vocalized:
"What we're worried Trump will do, Obama has done..."[139]
"What we fear from Trump we've gotten from Clinton."[140]
"Donald Trump has said he wants to bans Muslims, but Hillary Clinton has
already bombed Muslims."[141]
Stein's escalating rhetoric against
Clinton culminated in the last few weeks of the election with citing Russians'
claims that Clinton was more dangerous than Trump, stoking fear that Clinton
was "a mushroom cloud waiting to happen.” [142]
tweeting "Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is much scarier than Donald
Trump's, who does not want to go to war with Russia. #PeaceOffensive."[143]
When asked "Why do you think a
nuclear war is more likely under a President Clinton than a President
Trump?" Stein replied that Trump would collaborate with Putin, outweighing
Trump's potential exacerbation of climate change, which Stein claimed
(incorrectly) is not an immediate threat: "If you watched the debate the
other night, you would have heard Trump saying that he’s looking for
collaboration with Putin… I consider the threat of nuclear war not trivial at
all, and this is one of the most clear and present dangers to our surroundings.
Yeah, climate change is horrific, but it’s not happening tomorrow."[144]
In a third-party candidate forum, she said: "On the issue of war and
nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear war, it's actually Hillary's
policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump's. He does not want to go to
war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the route
we need to follow, not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with
Russia."[145]
Stein also suggested that Trump's
domestic policies were preferable to Clinton's, posting on her Facebook page an
article titled: "What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton’s plans
to gut Social Security."[146]
On October 15 and 16 Stein retweeted
two statements from her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, on why Trump was better
than Clinton. One was an article called "Why Hillary Clinton Is More
Dangerous Than Donald Trump."[147]
The other was a tweet downplaying concerns about Trump's racism and appeal to
white nationalists: "Expecting people of color to fear Donald Trump after
all we’ve been through the last 200 years, is absurd."[148]
On Oct. 31, Stein posted a letter
from Jillian Thomas, her campaign social media director, explaining why Trump
would be better for the country than Clinton: "A Clinton presidency is
DANGEROUS… So yes: If a Trump presidency would mean that we have to fight
ignorants in the streets—I'm ready for that… I feel empowered to do the things
I know we have to do to truly fix our system, even if that means taking a left
turn to get on the right path."[149]
Economy
Referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
approach to the Great Depression, Stein advocated a Green
New Deal in her 2012 and 2016 campaigns, in which renewable energy jobs
would be created to address climate change and environmental issues; the
objective would be to employ "every American willing and able to
work".[150]
Stein said she would fund the start-up costs of the plan with a 30% reduction
in the U.S. military budget, returning U.S. troops home, and increasing taxes
on speculation
in stock markets, offshore tax havens, and multi-million-dollar real estate,
among other things. In 2012 and 2016 she cited a 2012 study in the Review of Black Political Economy
by Rutgers professor Phillip Harvey[151]
showing that the multiplier economic effects of this "Green New Deal"
would recoup most of the start-up costs of her plan.[150]
Stein further argued that her plan "will end unemployment and
poverty".[152]
Asked how the funds of the Green New Deal would be distributed, Stein said that
it would be "through a community decision-making process" but
"exactly how that would be configured, you know, remains to be
established."[153]
During her 2012 and 2016
presidential runs, Stein called for "nationalizing" and "democratiz[ing]"
the Federal Reserve, placing it under a Federal
Monetary Authority in the Treasury Department and ending its independence.[152][154][155][156]
In 2016, Stein said that she
supported a new 0.5% financial transactions tax on the sale
of stocks, bonds,
and derivatives, and an increase in the estate tax to "at least"
55% on inheritances over $3 million.[157]
Stein has argued that the Wall Street bailout
was unconscionable[158]
and a "waste".[159]
In 2012, Stein opposed the raising of the debt ceiling, arguing that the U.S.
should instead raise taxes on the wealthy and make military spending cuts to
offset the debt.[160]
Stein supports the creation of
sustainable infrastructure based on clean renewable-energy generation and
sustainable-community principles to stop what her party sees as a growing
convergence of environmental crises in water, soil, fisheries, and forests. Her
vision includes increasing intra-city mass
transit and inter-city railroads, creating complete
streets that safely encourage bike and pedestrian traffic, and regional
food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture.[150]
Stein has been skeptical of official
employment numbers, saying in her 2015 State of the Union Green Party response
that unemployment figures at the time were "designed to essentially cover
up unemployment," and arguing that the real unemployment rate for that
year was around 12–13%.[161][162]
In February 2016, she said that "real unemployment is nearly 10%, 2x as
high as the official rate."[163]
She supports the creation of
nonprofit publicly-owned banks, pledging to create such entities at the federal
and state levels.[157]
Stein has said she believes in
having "the government as the employer of last resort".[164]
When asked in an August 2016 interview what this entailed, she said that the
idea was a "very broad brushstroke" but that a position paper was
forthcoming.[164]
Stein's platform pledges to
guarantee housing.[152][164]
When asked how this would be done, Stein answered, "that is an
aspirational goal at this point. We do not have a specific program."[164]
When asked in September 2016 if she
would consider using quantitative easing to establish a universal
basic income or a Medicare for all package, Stein answered that it
"should be looked into... Definitely."[165]
Education
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Stein has argued for "free
higher public education going forward."[164]
Stein favors canceling all student loan debt, saying that it could be done
using quantitative easing and without raising taxes.[166]
She has described quantitative easing as a "digital hat-trick" or
"magic trick that basically people don't need to understand any more about
than that it is a magic trick".[167]
According to Stein, the Federal Reserve could buy up student loans
and agree not to collect the debt, thereby effectively canceling it.[168]
Because the Federal Reserve is an independent government agency, the president
lacks the authority to implement such a plan.[168]
Stein has drawn parallels between her student loan proposal and the Wall Street bailout,
saying that the US government bought up Wall Street debt and then canceled it.[162]
Jordan Weissmann of Slate argues that Stein's Wall Street
comparison is "flat wrong": the Federal Reserve did not buy and
cancel debt owed by the banks but bought and held onto debt owned by the banks.[162]
When asked why her plan includes canceling upper-income individuals' debt,
Stein responded that higher education "pays for itself" and that
education is not a "gift," but a "right," and a
"necessity."[164]
Stein feels that the move towards
computerized education in kindergarten was bad for young children's cognitive
and social development, saying, "We should be moving away from screens at
all levels of education."[169]
She argues that increasing computerization benefits only device manufacturers,
not teachers, children, or communities.[169]
Stein opposes charter schools and has been critical of the Common Core, saying
that teachers rather than "corporate contractors" should be
responsible for education.[170]
Electoral
reform
Stein is critical of the two-party
system, and argues for ranked-choice voting as a favorable
alternative to "lesser evilism".[171][172]
Calling for "more voices and more choices", the Stein campaign
launched a petition demanding that all candidates appearing on a sufficient
number of state ballots to be theoretically electable should be invited to
participate in the presidential debates.[173][174]
In September 2016, Stein announced support for lowering the voting age to 16,[175]
in line with many other Green parties worldwide.
Energy
and environment
Stein proposes that the United
States transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030.[152]
She supports a national ban on fracking on the grounds that
"cutting-edge science now suggests fracking is every bit as bad as
coal".[152][153][176]
She has spoken against nuclear energy, saying it "is dirty, dangerous
and expensive, and should be precluded on all of those counts."[176]
In March 2016, she tweeted, "Nuclear power plants = weapons of mass destruction
waiting to be detonated."[177]
In 2012, Stein said, "three times more jobs are created per dollar
invested in conservation and renewables. Nuclear is currently the most expensive
per unit of energy created."[178]
Stein says that she will "ensure that any worker displaced by the shift
away from fossil fuels will receive full income and benefits as they transition
to alternative work."[179]
She has further argued that moving away from fossil fuels will produce
substantial savings in healthcare costs.[180]
She wants to "treat energy as a human right".[179]
Stein says that climate change is a
"national emergency"[164]
and calling it "a threat greater than World War II."[181]
Stein has written: "We need climate mobilization comparable to what the US
did after WWII."[182]
She has described the Paris Climate Agreement as inadequate, saying it
will not stop climate change.[164]
She has said that she would "basically override" the agreement and
create a more effective one.[164]
Stein also contends that we are in a major extinction event, the sixth great extinction, and that we could see
half of the world's life forms disappear in this century.[183]
Stein has argued that the cost of
transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2030 would in part be recouped by
healthcare savings, citing studies that predict 200,000 fewer premature deaths
as well as less illness. She has noted that when Cuba lost Soviet oil subsidies
it experienced plummeting diabetes (down 50%), CVD (down 30%) and all-cause (down 18%)
death rates.[153][164]
Stein supports the Great Sioux Nation's opposition to the Dakota
Access Pipeline, and in September 2016 joined protesters in North Dakota. Both
Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, are facing misdemeanor criminal charges
for spray-painting bulldozers at the construction site of the pipeline with
"I approve this message" and "decolonization" respectively.[184][185]
Foreign
and defense policy
Stein wants to cut U.S. military
spending by at least 50%.[152][186]
She would close US overseas military bases and has said that they "are
turning our republic into a bankrupt empire".[152]
She wants to replace the lost military jobs "with jobs in renewable
energy, transportation and green infrastructure development"[179]
and to "restore the National Guard as the
centerpiece of our defense".[179]
According to Stein, the United
States should use force only when there is "good
evidence that we are under imminent threat of actual attack".[153]
When asked by the Los Angeles Times editorial board whether that
standard would have prevented US involvement in World War II, Stein answered,
"I don’t want to revisit history or try to reinterpret it, you know, but
starting from where we are now, given the experience that we’ve had in the
last, you know, since 2001, which has been an utter disaster, I don’t think
it’s benefited us."[153]
Asked whether such a standard would force the US to withdraw from all of its
mutual defense treaties, Stein answered that the treaties need to "be
looked at one by one", mentioning NATO in particular.[153]
On the subject of NATO, Stein has said
that NATO has violated international law in Libya, and that it is part of
"of a foreign policy that has been based on economic and military
domination".[164]
When asked whether she agreed with Ajamu Baraka's description of NATO as
"gangster states", Stein answered that she would not use Baraka's
language but that "he means the same thing I'm saying".[164]
Stein has said that NATO "pursued a policy of basically encircling Russia — including
the threat of nukes and drones and so on."[187]
When asked by the Washington Post about NATO's role in protecting the
Baltic states against Russia, Stein responded, "At this point, I’m not
prepared to speak to that in detail" but noted that NATO has not followed
its stated policy after the fall of the Berlin Wall not to move "one inch
to the East." She further argued that there has been provocation on both
sides and that a diplomatic approach is necessary.[164]
Stein has said that NATO fights invented enemies in order to provide work for the
weapons industry.[188]
When asked in a Vox interview
about Russian military policy in Crimea and Ukraine, Stein answered,
"These are highly questionable situations. Why are we — Russia used to own
Ukraine. Ukraine was historically a part of Russia for quite some period of
time, and we all know there was this conversation with Victoria Nuland about
planning the coup and who was going to take over... Let’s just stop pretending
there are good guys here and bad guys here. These are complicated situations.
Yeah, Russia is doing lots of human rights abuse, but you know what? So are
we."[165]
When asked by Politico if she thought that Putin was an "incipient
despot", Stein answered, "To some extent, yes, but there could be a
whole lot worse... when we needlessly provoke him and endanger him and surround
him with war games--you know, this is sort of the Cuban Missile Crisis on
steroids, what we are doing to Russia right now, and I don't think this is a
good idea."[189]
Stein has argued that the United
States "helped foment" a coup in Ukraine, maintaining that Ukraine
should be neutral and that the United States should not arm it.[187]
She was critical of the Ukrainian government formed after the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014, saying that
"ultra-nationalists and ex-Nazis came to power."[190]
She met with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in December 2015 at a
banquet celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Russian state television
network RT. While in Russia, Stein criticized U.S. foreign policy (saying that
the U.S. had a "policy of domination" instead of "international
law, human rights and diplomacy") and human rights in the U.S, but did
not criticize Russian foreign policy or human rights abuses, a decision that
prompted criticism from commentator John
Aravosis.[191]
After U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces captured Manbij from ISIL in August, Stein tweeted,
"To Syrians who escaped Manbij because of U.S.-led forces, I'm sorry our
weapons terrorized you for two years."[192]
She has said that her approach to the Syrian
Civil War would be to put in place a weapons embargo, freeze funds going to
ISIL and other terrorist groups, and push for a peace process leading to a
ceasefire.[164]
Stein is also in favor of taking "far more" than the 10,000 Syrian
refugees Obama has pledged to take in.[164]
Stein has been sharply critical of
the use of drones, calling them a human rights violation and an "illegal
assassination program" saying that they are "off target nine times
out of ten."[193]
She has also been critical of America's "expanding wars" and accused
the United States of currently "bombing seven countries," which Politifact
rated as a true statement.[194]
Stein has accused the Israeli
government of "apartheid, assassination, illegal settlements, blockades,
building of nuclear bombs, indefinite detention, collective punishment, and
defiance of international law."[195]
She supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
campaign against Israel[196]
and regards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "war
criminal".[197]
Upon the death of Nobel Peace Laureate Elie
Wiesel, Stein praised him in a tribute on her Facebook page, but deleted
the post when commenters criticized Wiesel's Zionism.[198]
When asked in September 2016 whether she had a "position on whether a
two-state solution is a better solution than a one-state solution", Stein
answered, "I feel like I am not as informed as I need to be to really
weigh in on that".[153]
Stein does not think the U.S should
become involved in territorial disputes in the
South China Sea.[187]
Immediately after the UK voted to
leave the European Union, Stein posted a celebratory statement on her website,
saying the vote was "a victory for those who believe in the right of
self-determination and who reject the pro-corporate, austerity policies of the
political elites in the EU ... [and] a rejection of the European political
elite and their contempt for ordinary people."[199][200]
She later changed the statement (without indicating so), removing words like
"victory" and adding the line, "Before the Brexit vote
I agreed with Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline
Lucas and the UK Greens who supported staying in
the EU but working to fix it."[199][200][201][202]
In 2012, Stein favored maintaining
current levels of international aid spending.[203]
On the eve of the 15-year
anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Stein called for "a
comprehensive and independent inquiry into the attacks," saying that the 9/11 Commission report contained many
"omissions and distortions."[204]
The next day, she said: "I think I would not have assassinated Osama bin Laden but would
have captured him and brought him to trial."[205]
After the death of Cuban former
communist leader Fidel Castro, Stein tweeted that "Fidel Castro
was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire."[206]
Health
insurance
Stein is in favor of replacing the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare) with a "Medicare-for-All" healthcare system[203]
and has said that it is an "illusion" that Obamacare is a
"step in the right direction" toward single-payer healthcare.[207]
When asked in August 2016 whether she supported a ballot measure in Colorado to
create the first universal healthcare system in the nation (ColoradoCare),
Stein said she was not ready to endorse the plan, citing concerns about gaps
and loopholes in the ballot measure.[208]
Stein has been critical of
subsidizing unhealthy food products and of "agri-business" for its
advertisements encouraging unhealthy eating. She has said that due to
agri-business, Greeks no longer have the healthy diets they once did.[159]
Race
relations
Stein has deplored what she and
others identify as the structural racism of the U.S. judicial and
prison system. She has promised that "the Green New Deal prioritizes job
creation in the areas of greatest need: communities of color" and argues
that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected communities of color.[209]
On Juneteenth
in 2016, Stein called for reparations for slavery.[210]
In accepting the nomination of the Green party, she reiterated this support,
calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission "to provide reparations
to acknowledge the enormous debt owed to the African American community."[180]
Asked by The Washington Post whether she agreed with
Baraka's characterization of President Obama as an "Uncle Tom", Stein
replied that it would be better to address questions about his choice of words
to him, but added that she thought he "was speaking to a demographic that
feels pretty locked out of the American power structure."[164]
Immigration
Jill Stein advocates "a
welcoming path to citizenship for immigrants."[152]
GMOs
and pesticides
Stein supports GMO labeling, a moratorium on new
GMOs, and the phasing out of existing GMO foods, unless independent research
"shows decisively that GMOs are not harmful to human health or
ecosystems".[211][212]
Speaking of the health effects of foods derived from GM crops, she has said:
"And I can tell you as a physician with special interest and long history
in environmental health, the quality of studies that we have are not what you
need. We should have a moratorium until they are proven safe, and they have not
been proven safe in the way that they are used."[211]
Commentators have criticized Stein's
statements about GMOs, writing that they contradict the scientific consensus, which is that existing
GM foods are no less safe than foods made from conventional crops.[213][214][215][216][217][218][219][220]
Among the critics was Jordan Weissmann, Slate's business and economics
editor, who wrote in July 2016: "Never mind that scientists have studied
GMOs extensively and found no signs of danger to human health—Stein would like
medical researchers to prove a negative."[162]
In Environmental Threats to Healthy
Aging (2008), Stein concludes her section on pesticides by saying: "[M]any
but not all studies find that acute high-dose and chronic lower-dose
occupational exposures to some neurotoxic pesticides are linked to an increased
risk of cognitive decline, dementia or Alzheimer's disease."[221]
In 2000, Stein and her coauthors
wrote, "Twenty million American children five and under eat an average of
eight pesticides every day through food consumption. Thirty-seven pesticides
registered for use on foods are neurotoxic organophosphate insecticides, chemically
related to more toxic nerve warfare agent developed earlier this century."
They further noted the ubiquity of these pesticides in the home and at schools,
citing Schettler et al.[222]
for the claim that "The trend is toward increasingly common exposures to
organophosphates. For example, chlorpyrifos
detections in urine increased more than tenfold from 1980 to 1990."[223]
Environmentalists have criticized
Stein's anti-GMO stance[224]
citing research[225]
showing that eliminating GMOs would seriously harm the environment by
converting thousands more square miles of land to agriculture, thereby reducing
already-shrinking biodiversity, producing more waterway-killing fertilizer,
requiring pesticides in larger quantities and higher toxicity, and generating
more greenhouse gases. This criticism also included her call for imprisoning
GMO crop producers[226]
and making the discredited claim that GMOs caused "over 200,000 farmers in
India to commit suicide."[226][227]
Spending
on scientific research
In 2012, Vote Smart reported that
Stein wanted to "slightly decrease" spending on space exploration.
She favored maintaining current levels of spending on scientific and medical
research.[203]
In 2016, Stein said NASA funding should be increased, arguing that by halving
the military budget, more money could be directed towards "exploring space
instead of destroying planet Earth."[228]
Vaccines
and homeopathy
See also: Vaccine controversies and MMR vaccine controversy
In an interview with the Washington
Post, Stein stated that "vaccines have
been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases,"
and said that "[t]here were concerns among physicians about what the
vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury
which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to
be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know
if all of them have been addressed."[229][230]
The
Guardian says that "research has shown schedule-related concerns
about vaccines to be unfounded, and that delays to vaccines actually put
children at greater risk. Anti-vaxx campaigners often claim that there are
dangerous compounds in vaccines, though decades of safe vaccinations contradict
the claim and no evidence shows that trace amounts that remain in some approved
vaccines cause any harm to the body."[230]
In the Washington Post
interview, Stein said that vaccines should be approved by a board that people
can trust, and "people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration,"
or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "where corporate influence
and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence."[229][231]
According to The Guardian, eleven members of the Vaccines and Related
Biological Products Advisory Committee are medical doctors who work at
hospitals and universities, and two work at pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline
and Sanofi Pasteur US.[230]
In response, Stein said that "Monsanto lobbyists help run the day in those
agencies and are in charge of approving what food isn’t safe".[229]Emily
Willingham, scientist and contributor at Forbes,
described Stein's statements on vaccines as "using dog whistle terms and
equivocations bound to appeal to the 'antivaccine' constituency".[232] Dan Kahan,
a professor at Yale who has studied public perception of science, says that it
is dangerous for candidates to equivocate on vaccines, "Because the
attitudes about vaccines are pretty much uniform across the political spectrum,
it doesn’t seem like a great idea for any candidate to be anti-vaccine. The modal
view is leave the freaking system alone."[233]
In response to a Twitter question about whether vaccines cause autism, Stein
first answered, "there is no evidence that autism is caused by
vaccines," then revised her tweet to "I'm not aware of evidence
linking autism with vaccines."[234]
In a later interview at the Green party convention, Stein
answered "no" to the question "do you think vaccines cause
autism?"[235]
She called this a "nonsense issue, meant to distract people" and
likened it to smear campaigns used in previous presidential
elections, citing the "Swiftboat issue" or the "birther issue,"[235]
pointing out that in her previous published work on autism and other child
development issues,[223]
no mention was made of vaccines.[235]
When asked about vaccines by Jacobin
editor Bhaskar Sunkara, Stein responded: "One of the
issues I used to work on was reducing mercury exposure. That was an issue at
one point in vaccines. That’s been rectified," adding, "there are
issues about mercury in the fish supply that many low-income people and
immigrant communities rely on, and in indigenous communities especially. This
is a huge issue and the FDA has refused for decades to regulate and to warn people."[236]
In the context, Stein was also asked
about her stance on homeopathy. Stein said in May 2016 that "just because
something is untested doesn't mean it's safe", but argued that it is
problematic that "agencies tied to big pharma and the chemical
industry" test medicines.[231]
When asked in 2012 about the Green Party's health care platform (which
supported homeopathy at that time), Stein said that the platform took "an
admittedly simple position on a complex issue, and should be improved".[237]
On Oct. 13, 2016, Stein said "I
was part of a movement to remove mercury from vaccines," describing it as
a "public health win."[238]
This refers to the Thiomersal controversy, which has caused
harm due to parents attempting to treat their autistic children with unproven
and possibly dangerous treatments, discouraging parents from vaccinating their
children due to fears about thiomersal toxicity[239]
and diverting resources away from research into more promising areas for the cause
of autism.[240]
A 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the
most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".[241]
In an October 21, 2016 interview,
producer Bec Gill with the ScIQ YouTube channel asked Stein: "You talk
extensively on your concern about corporate influence over U.S. vaccine
regulations. My question is, what evidence do you have that corporate influence
has caused either the FDA or the CDC to make decisions that endanger American
children’s health?" Stein offered as evidence Vioxx and Monsanto, rather
than reject the premise that vaccines do not endanger children's health.[242]
Health
effects of Wi-Fi
In a question-and-answer session,
Stein voiced concern about wireless internet (Wi-Fi) in schools, saying, "We should
not be subjecting kids' brains especially to that... and we don’t follow this
issue in our country, but in Europe where they do, you know, they have good
precautions about wireless. Maybe not good enough, you know. It’s very hard to
study this stuff. You know, we make guinea pigs out of whole populations and
then we discover how many die."[243][244][245][246][247]
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "no
adverse health effects are expected from exposure to [Wi-Fi]".[243]
Stein later said, "take precautions about how much we expose young
children to WiFi and cellphones until we know more about the long-term health
effects of this type of low-level radiation."[248][249]
In an interview with the L.A. Times editorial board, Stein clarified that her
statements on Wi-Fi were "not a policy statement" and that attention
to her statement on Wi-Fi was "a sign of a gotcha political system".[250]
Whistleblowers
In her acceptance speech for the
Green Party nomination, she called for "end[ing] the war on
whistleblowers, and free[ing] the political prisoners [...] Leonard
Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, Chelsea
Manning, Julian Assange, Edward
Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, and Edward Pinkney
[.]"[180]
She said that she would have Snowden in her Cabinet if elected.[251]
In an op-ed on the subject of Wikileaks, Stein argued that Assange was doing what other
journalists should be doing but are not, and added that whistle-blowers have
been increasingly subject to "character assassination" and
prosecution during the Obama administration. In her view, it is heroic to
resist the media and political elite's control of information.[252]
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