I'm a Republican. My father is a Republican. My grandfather is a Republican. But for reasons that even I don't understand, I'm going to try to convince liberals to vote for Gore and not for Nader. Maybe I'm writing this column out of some sub-conscious desire to bitch and moan about the Gore administration for the next four years. Also, I realize most college campuses are more liberal than the general population and even my persuasive abilities aren't powerful enough to convince Democrats to vote for Bush. Writing a column endorsing Bush would be a waste of my breath; it has all already been said.
A vote for Nader is indeed a vote for Bush in swing states like Pennsylvania. Although many Republicans are delighted by the Nader candidacy, I feel obligated to inform this campus that the Green Party is quite radical.
I know that all of you idealist liberals out there might fancy yourself a bit radical, but I think there are many things in the Green Party USA's platform that even the very liberal would not support.
The Green Party's platform has a remarkably irrational section on economics. An introductory sentence states, "State-bureaucratic command economies like those which once dominated Eastern Europe are no alternative to capitalism." For some reason the Green Party feels the need to reassure itself that it isn't communist. After reading their idea of sound economic policy, I feel that the Greens would be more accurate in saying, "We support socialist policies, but we would like to disassociate ourselves from all that scary iron curtain stuff."
Some of these policies include a 100 percent tax on all income above 10 times the minimum wage.
By my count this would limit people to a maximum income of somewhere between $100,000 and $110,000.
The Green Party also supports the public ownership of the banking, insurance, health care, oil, auto, and rail industries. They support "worker collectives" and "self-management of work (i.e. no management)."
They also support guaranteed employment for everyone through something they call "job banks." What a job bank is and how it would work escapes me (and the Greens for that matter). And on top of that, we should have a 30-hour workweek. The Greens also say, "We also support the efforts of rank and file unionists to organize internationally to counteract capital's mobility." Sounds a bit like Marx's famous call to action, "Working men of all countries, unite!"
The Greens don't want to be associated with old Soviet style socialism and they stress the local and democratic control of businesses.
Practically though, it's very difficult to have complete local control of businesses that have national scope. A top heavy and oppressive bureaucracy would almost certainly develop out of a system that attempts to completely control national and international corporations.
Interestingly enough, small businesses seem to escape the wrath of the Green Party's economic tyranny, but the Greens seem to forget that many giant multinational corporations started as small businesses. Hewlett Packard was started in some guy's garage. Papa John's Pizza began as an oven in someone's closet. Microsoft was set on the path to world dominance when three young men fooled IBM into giving them a lucrative contract.
Maybe there are some of you out there who actually want this type of oppressive economic system, but at this great state university, this Mecca of the middle class, I seriously doubt that many of you would actually support this type of government. You may rant and rave about the corrupt two-party system and corporations swallowing the Earth, but until you give up your Nikes, your iMacs, your Ford Fiestas, your JanSport backpacks, your late night runs to Taco Bell, and your Phish CDs, I don't think you're really ready to advocate the type of radical reforms proposed by the GPUSA.
Many of you Nader supporters may be thinking, "Well, Nader doesn't support these policies and he's not going to win anyway, so it doesn't matter."
But if Nader gets the 5 percent he so desperately wants, he is going to use the next four years to build the Green Party into a genuine political movement. The federal matching funds, which come along with 5 percent of the popular vote in a presidential election go to the Green Party, not Ralph Nader.
Nader likes to say that politicians are beholden to their corporate sponsors and he may be right, but Nader will owe the environmental communists within the Green Party.
Given this, it's very probable that extreme radicals will have great influence within the Green Party in the next four years.
So if you're thinking of casting a protest vote for Nader in order to build a "progressive" movement in this country, be careful because you might just get what you wished for.
