McKinney Goes Green

Of course, there's the perennial third-party candidate question: What do you make of arguments that you'll pull votes away from the Democrats, thereby ushering into office a Republican who shares even fewer of your views?
That's not grounded in the facts. As the film "American Blackout" points out very well, there were numerous instruments used in the 2000 and 2004 elections to disfranchise voters. Voter caging and voter ID laws exist to disfranchise voters. The question I believe Newsweek ought to be asking is how can we ensure that people who have the right to vote also have the opportunity to vote. And after their vote is cast, how can we ensure their votes are counted. How can an environment that does not ensure election integrity ensure us that the will of the voter is reflected in the announced outcome?

So it doesn't concern you that taking even 1 percent away from a major political party could result in four more years of policies that differ even more drastically from those of the Green Party?
That's your language, not my language. I gave you my take, but you haven't accepted my take. Maybe you would feel differently if your vote wasn't counted. In an environment where people vote their values, we must have election integrity where every vote is counted. We didn't have that in 2000 and 2004 and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans did anything about it. But in 2004, the Green Party did something about it.

The last time you made big headlines was in 2006, with the incident involving the Capitol Police, and that was far from the only controversy that's come up in your political career. Has that been a problem for you during this campaign?
People care first and foremost that their votes are counted, people want the United States out of war and occupation, people want to have access to healthcare, people don't want to have to sleep in their cars because they've lost their homes. I think the fact that former GAO comptroller David Walker is making a comment that our fiscal house is not in order-those are the issues weighing heavily on people's minds and those are the issues that I talk about.

If you were to be elected, what would be item number one on the McKinney agenda?
Is it OK if I do several things simultaneously [laughs]? First of all, we have to instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up an orderly withdrawal process for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We would also begin work immediately on a budget to submit to Congress that satisfies human needs and doesn't reflect corporate greed as the current budget does. I would also remind the members of Congress swept into office with me as the New Broom Coalition that we could initiate impeachment proceedings. Also, I would make public the papers pertaining to certain tragedies in the life of our country, like the JKF assassination, Martin Luther King Jr., and the 9/11 Truth Movement-I would release everything the Bush administration knew about September 11. One more thing I would do is begin the process of putting into place a Department of Peace. It would be wonderful to rename the Department of State as the Department of Peace and have our ambassadors go around the world with a mission…to begin their engagement in the world based on human rights and peace.

You were earning your Ph.D. at Berkeley recently, right?
Let's put it this way; I've deferred one time too many. But I'm hoping to enroll in some institution once again in January.

In January? That's not very optimistic [about the election outcome], is it?
Well, I might have to take another deferral in that case.

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