South Coast Today - Governor Bears Brunt of Stein's Liberal Ire

News Article

By Jack Spillane

This is the fourth in a series of profiles on the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in Massachusetts.

If Jill Stein were working to change the American system from the conservative side of the political spectrum, she would probably be a tea partier trying hard from within to pull the Republican Party to the right.

But Stein, 60, is a dedicated progressive candidate who has already given up on the Democratic Party ever being anything but a shill for corporate America.

So Stein is making her second run for governor as the Green-Rainbow Party's nominee. (She polled 3.5 percent of the vote in the 2002 race in which Republican Mitt Romney defeated Democrat Shannon O'Brien by 5 percent.)

A former medical doctor, Stein is a graduate of both Harvard and Harvard Medical School.

Though Stein describes Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, Republican candidate Charlie Baker and Democrat-turned-independent Tim Cahill as corporate-owned politicians, she reserves most of her fire for Patrick.

In fact, she has designed several campaign fliers around her differences with him alone.

"Your Vote is Your Vote," they proclaim. "Don't be silenced by the spoiler myth."

In the fliers, Stein works hard to debunk "the myth" that her candidacy could "spoil" the re-election prospects of a Democratic progressive (Patrick) in favor of a conservative Republican (Baker).

Patrick, according to Stein, is not as liberal as he's thought to be and Baker is not as conservative as he's thought to be.

"What Beacon Hill is doing for us is just not working," she said at the Sept. 30 SouthCoast Alliance debate at UMass Dartmouth.

"We may see a little glimmer of hope here and there, but I think fundamental change is needed," she said.

At the UMass debate, Stein told the story of her student escort for the event.

The student had to take out a $2,000 loan on top of his $50,000 college loan, she said, in order to pay for his health care under the mandated health-care system enacted under Gov. Mitt Romney and continued by Patrick and the current Legislature.

"The system is just not working," she said.

Stein's fliers compare her positions to Patrick's on everything from health care to public education, and she clearly comes out the purer liberal.

The fliers detail steep cuts to higher education enacted by Patrick since the 2008 recession began. And they talk about the governor's support for a "stripped down" state health-care plan that has shifted costs from the taxes of the affluent to the premium of working people.

Stein also blasted Patrick's economic development initiatives. She says they have provided some $1.7 billion in state funds for corporations in the form of tax write-offs, grants and government infrastructure support.

"Governor Patrick has slashed important programs and services across the board, while protecting corporate entitlement programs and business-friendly tax giveaways," one of her fliers says.

Stein is calling for nothing more than the reform of the state's entire tax structure.

Though she opposes the rollback of the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 5 percent, she calls the sales tax "regressive," contending it takes twice the percentage of the income of working families as affluent ones.

"We've got to talk about making taxes fair and then making revenue adequate," she said.

Stein separates herself from her three better-known opponents in the governor's race by pointing out that she does not accept campaign contributions from big business.

"Both political parties are funded by the same corporate funders that make it very hard to really reform health care, that make it very hard to turn around our economy of giveaways," she said.

When the public reads about one Beacon Hill scandal after another, it's not a wonder they lose faith in the Democratic system, Stein said. Especially in the wake of their skyrocketing health-care costs and bankruptcies or foreclosures caused by the recession and collapse of the housing market.

"Workers now don't have the salary and the security to purchase the products of their own labor," she said.

Stein actually sounds like a tea partier sometimes when she talks about corporate interests co-opting reform because of special-interest money.

"When they say there's not enough money, they mean there's not enough money for you," she said.

"My understanding is that there's plenty of money. It's just going to the wrong places. We need to get it to the people who are our future."

Source