Leaders of the Green Party of Pennsylvania invited me to stand as their candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. I agreed, in order to promote green solutions. The first published announcement of candidacy appeared in Philadelphia Weekly. And here follow my answers to questions posed by Philadelphia's Neighborhood Networks. For further information about the campaign: paulglover.org/governor
What would be your three highest priorities as Governor?
1. Aggressively fund energy efficiencies and expand tax credits for solar/wind/cogeneration, to reduce demand for fossil fuels and end fracking. Shift budget from prisons to jobs and schools, and from roadbuilding to transit.
2. Fully employ all Pennsylvanians to rebuild cities, suburbs and farms toward balance with nature, partly with regional credits and regional stock exchanges, as described in my book Green Jobs Philly.
3. Permit formation of grassroots health cooperatives to provide a genuinely nonprofit medical base for statewide universal health coverage.
GOOD GOVERNMENT and CLEAN ELECTIONS
Where do you stand on the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling? Would you support a Constitutional amendment that establishes that money is not speech, and that corporations are not persons entitled to constitutional rights? Why or why not?
Support efforts to repeal Citizens United. Favor Constitutional amendment to revoke "corporate personhood," and to break the link between corporate money and "free speech." I was a speaker at the 2011 "Move to Amend" conference in D.C.
What is your view of limits on campaign contributions by individuals? By PACs? By corporations? By unions? Should names and amounts of contributors be published online?
Access to broadcast media should be provided free to all ballot candidates, by reviving the fairness doctrine, since airwaves are public. This would decrease prices of print advertising, through competition.
Campaign finance reform should be enacted that strictly caps contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations. Campaign playing field should be leveled so that ideas and policies are broadly available.
Contributions should be published online.
Voting Rights
Would you support a repeal of the Voter ID law in Pennsylvania? How would you ensure that all qualified voters are able to cast their votes in a timely and valid manner?
Support repeal of such vote suppression laws.
Would you support early voting or vote by mail up to two weeks before Election Day?
Support enaction of such vote facilitation.
Would you require a voter verified paper audit trail on voting machines?
Yes. Lack of paper verification has already corrupted elections.
EMPLOYMENT & JOBS
What is your major proposal for creating more jobs in Pennsylvania, and how many of those jobs will be lower wage vs. higher wage jobs?
Full employment is possible, since there are billions more hours of labor needed to rebuild our cities, suburbs and farms so that they are maximally energy efficient and regionally reliant for provision of food and fuel.
My book "Green Jobs Philly" details a dozen such innovations. Among these are urban permaculture, greenhousing and aquaculture; insulation factories; and regional stock exchanges that gather capital of all kinds (including land) for regional eco-development. Import replacement programs and industrial retention are key as well. I would promote the Green Labor Administration (GLAD) as a nonprofit WPA, to coordinate these activities.
Lower costs of living are de facto higher wages, so will promote regional economies that reduce prices of food, fuel, housing and health care.
How, if at all, would you improve the bargaining rights of public employees? Would you support legislation to prohibit employee firings without due cause?
Public employees need to emphasize solidarity with fellow workers so that all advance together. Otherwise there is resentment and right-wing push back. Unions need to emphasize greater worker control, rather than merely bigger paychecks. Otherwise industries merely leave town. Local authorities may exercise eminent domain to prevent industrial job flight (Pittsburgh-Nabisco 1982).
Please comment on the following policy issues and whether you would support legislation that would:
Raise the minimum wage?
Yes. Spending power of the minimum wage has lagged during the past 40 years. The current minimum wage is so low that, to keep employees alive, taxpayers must subsidize businesses. Higher minimum wage benefits small businesses by expanding discretionary income.
Assure that women receive equal pay for equal work?
Yes. Support the ERA as passed in Pennsylvania 1972.
Mandate earned sick leave?
Yes, though details will need to accommodate small businesses.
Establish paid family leave?
Yes. Scandinavian countries have proven the financial, social and public health benefits of this policy.
EDUCATION
How do you propose to ensure that schools in our state are adequately funded? Would you support a funding formula for school districts to ensure that they are adequately funded? If so, what would be the key factors in such a formula?
Public schools should be well funded so that all students are respected. This require teachers who deeply care, modern libraries in each school, extracurricular activities, bathrooms that work, and meals.
While candidate Schwartz would fund our schools partly with fracking revenue, I believe our children need healthy water as well as good schools and jobs. The far greater funding for schools will be redirected from prisons and by progressive income tax. The wealthy will prosper when surrounded by educated people rather than a vast restive underclass. It costs less to send youngsters to college than to jail.
Curriculum reform is likewise essential, to reward creativity by both students and teachers, to provide knowledge relevant to varied social conditions, and to maintain enthusiasm for learning. Key elements of a well-rounded education include community management, entrepreneurship, public advocacy, and conflict resolution, The arts are quite as important as sciences, since they teach constructive expression of both anger and enthusiasm.
I have drafted plans for Neighborhood Enterprise SchoolTeachers (NESTS), to provide immediate reward for learning where this would prevent dropouts.
Green jobs can also employ least formally-educated youth, and ex-offenders, to prepare Pennsylvania for its next century.
What additional regulation, if any, do you believe should be applied to the public funding and operation of charter schools?
My motto is No School Left Behind, No funding for charters and their facilities should outstrip funding for general public schools in class size, special needs, employment counseling.
Would you support more funding for higher education or should institutions raise their own funds by increasing tuition?
Many universities are pricing themselves out of the market. Their high tuitions are caused by high overhead-- by excess bureaucracies, overbuilding, and wasteful utility loads.
State government can facilitate transition to affordable education by rewarding those colleges and universities that use staff efficiently, reduce energy loads, reduce student costs of housing and textbooks.
Likewise, state funding for education should emphasize those business and technical fields that most directly contribute to making the state more energy efficient, and which stimulate regional economies.
It is the obligation of elder generations to transfer knowledge to the next generations painlessly, so that society can progress. Student loan usury betrays this obligation. The State of Pennsylvania should support the student loan buy-back campaign which retires student loans for pennies on the dollar.
TAXES
Assuming the need for more revenue, what statewide taxes would you increase? What, if any, new taxes would you propose?
We need a progressive income tax. This state offers a good quality of life to those who are wealthy, and their expanded tax contribution, to an efficiently-run government, will make their lives here even more enjoyable.
Do you favor eliminating the Delaware loophole? Why or why not?
Sure, it would capture about $50 million additional for Pennsylvania. I believe that this legislation has been enacted.
Do you support the proposed Constitutional Amendment that would take away local discretion in taxing non-profit institutions?
Enabling localities to define and tax "purely public charities" risks inequitable taxation. These taxes could divert resources from community health centers and related essential programs.
At the same time, some large "nonprofit" institutions serve as tax shelters for their extensive for-profit enterprises. Such tax-free businesses can burden localities with uncompensated costs of fire and police. State standards for taxing these should be explicit and might be available to localities when the State neglects to collect.
Would you favor an amendment to allow for graduated tax rates?
Yes.
ECONOMY
Would you do anything to foster the development of worker, consumer or producer co-ops, and what would that be?
Am deeply committed to co-ops, which I regard as the foundation for the viability of the middle class and traditionally poor hereafter. I've been involved in the co-op movement for over 40 years, beginning as an employee of Southern Consumers' Co-op in Louisiana. I've been an active member and/or employee of several food co-ops, and am founder of the Ithaca Health co-op. I started a revolving loan fund that makes interest-free loans to Community Supported Agriculture.
Therefore, state loans and grants for start up and expansion of co-ops, particularly worker-owned co-ops, should be generously available to co-ops that make specific and measurable commitments to Rochdale principles.
Do you favor legislation creating a public bank along the lines of the Bank of North Dakota, or fostering the development of county or municipal public banks?
Yes. This will stimulate business and job development by retaining capital, providing low-interest loans, and set public pensions upon a secure foundation. I appeared on a panel with Ellen Brown, author of "The Public Bank Solution," and have attended several of the organizing meetings for a state bank, in Philadelphia. Moreover, I have drafted plans for the Philadelphia Regional and Independent Stock Exchange (PRAISE).
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE & RESOURCES
Transportation
How would you fund increased road and bridge repair?
Favor user fees for road repair, with higher fees required for state routes whose bridges are most urgently needing repair.
How high would you prioritize mass transit in the overall transportation funding picture?
Transit is the pivot of our future, economically and environmentally. It should receive highest budget priority.
Would you support or oppose funding for bike lanes?
Support bike lanes and bike paths. Bicycle lanes reduce traffic congestion. Bicycles reduce damage to roadways, thus reducing costs of road repair. Bicycles reduce pollution of air and water; they reduce urban respiratory illness.
I have relied on a bicycle for 60 years and do not own an automobile.
Energy
Would you direct your representative to the Delaware River Basin Commission to vote for or against allowing fracking in the Delaware River watershed basin?
Yes. Emphatically oppose fracking because it has proven to pollute groundwater and cause earth tremors, because the toxic chemicals used are proprietary secrets, and because most of the gas extracted is intended for export rather than to lower our costs.
Would you support a moratorium on new gas drilling permits and new shale gas infrastructure until and unless scientists and policy makers come up with a waste solution and find a way to avoid drinking water contamination, surface water contamination, air pollution, and massive methane leaks into our climate from all phases of this extraction process?
Support this moratorium. Caution is essential when dealing with water quality. For example, experts assured us for decades that cigarettes, nuclear fission and food additives were safe.
Would you support Act 13 (impact fee, zoning for gas drilling, physician "gag" clause, etc.) as is or would you make any changes?
Act 13 is an intolerable intrusion on the obligations of townships to regulate for public safety, and upon physicians to communicate public health concerns.
How would you speed the transition from an economy reliant on carbon-based fossil fuels to one based on renewables?
I'd shift the state budget to stimulate energy efficiencies, since the best fuel is least need for fuel. Favor both incentives and requirements for efficiencies. Germany mandates R90 for new construction. Favor tax incentives for solar, wind, cogeneration and microhydro.
--- I received a grant 1989 from the Fund for Investigative Journalism for my study of the Tompkins County fuel system, and was appointed to the Ithaca Energy Commission in 1995.
State Parks and Forests
Do you support or oppose clear cutting on state forest lands? How about fracking in state forests or parks?
Oppose clearcutting and fracking everywhere.
What would you do as Governor to ensure our parks and forests remain available for our grandchildren?
Population pressure undermines the future of every good thing.
State Liquor Laws
Do you believe the PA Wine and Spirits shops should be privatized, and if so, in whole or in part?
Favor retaining public ownership. Restrained and orderly distribution of wine and liquor outweighs greater projected tax revenue from thousands of corner stores.
HEALTHCARE
What is your view of a woman's right to make health decisions concerning her own body? Do you support or oppose the current restrictions on abortion in PA? Would you seek further restrictions on abortions after 20 weeks or require new standards for abortion facilities?
Pro-life means more than merely pro-fetus. Oppose the state's intrusion on a woman's right to decide whether to have a child.
Would you support or oppose increased state funding for family planning?
Expanded family planning leads to greater public health and fewer abortions.
Would you support an expansion in Medicaid and if so, how will you deal with the 10% state contribution in 2017?
The expansion of Medicaid in Pennsylvania will benefit our economy and our taxpayers when a progressive income tax is enacted. I support SB400, which projects a $17 billion saving statewide.
Do you support a state based health insurance exchange or is it better to let the federal government run the exchange on behalf of the state?
Absent a universal coverage plan, I would prefer a state-based ACA exchange that is at least as inclusive as the federal plan. However, I am author of the book "A Crime Not a Crisis," which details collusion between Pennsylvania legislators, insurance regulators and insurers to maintain corporate monopolies. Therefore I am not assured that current Pennsylvania administrators would enforce ACA for maximum public benefit.
Would you support or oppose a state single payer plan for Pennsylvania? Please explain.
I support state single payer legislation, and have done so for years. This will benefit both public health and our economy, enabling people to start businesses doing what they enjoy doing, and shifting wages from insurance premiums to the new economy.
Again, we need a genuinely nonprofit medical infrastructure in order to lower medical costs. Grassroots co-ops are able to provide coverage for a fraction of corporate insurance.
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
Do you believe the current welfare grant should be increased? Are there any other changes you would make to our welfare laws for families with dependent children?
Green job development and urban rebuilding need all hands on deck. Therefore, full housing, food, child care and community college tuition should provided in exchange for sweat equity. Everyone who wakes up in the morning has something to offer.
Their contribution, for public benefit rather than corporate exploitation, should be compensated with respect and dignity. Part payment may be made in the form of community credits.
Do you believe that General Assistance should be restored? Why or why not?
Yes. GA and GA Medical Assistance provides 68,000 Pennsylvanians without children with health care access, safety from domestic abuse, assistance with crippling disability, and alcohol/drug rehab. Am likewise opposed to the projected food stamp cuts. I organized a "Making Hunger Visible" demonstration in November 2013.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Would you legalize and regulate the sale and production of marijuana, or otherwise change our drug laws?
Yes would legalize. Criminalization of marijuana damages lives far more than inhalation does. Taxpayers pay police, court and prison costs to restrain this relatively harmless euphoriant. Criminalization is moreover hypocritical since sale of deadly tobacco is permitted. Pharmaceuticals are far more harmful than marijuana, which has proven an effective palliative for many ills.
What would you do to stop the proliferation of guns and gun crimes in urban areas?
Jobs fight crime. As Pennsylvania's industrial jobs were exported, desperation and drug sales moved in. Would establish the Green Labor Administration (GLAD).
Responsible gun ownership should not be infringed. Their legitimate use is to provide food, to protect the home and the United States Constitution.
Within Pennsylvania's first- and second-class cities I favor limits on semiautomatic weapons, and 7-bullet clip maximum. Toughen anti-straw purchase enforcement.
Add nonviolent conflict resolution to curriculums.
What are your views on "stop and frisk" and how it should be implemented, if at all?
This is a racist strategy that decreases respect for police and impedes community policing. It would be more effective to stop and frisk bankers, to ensure they are not carrying junk bonds; and to stop and frisk elected officials, to ensure they are not carrying cash bribes.
What is your view of the death penalty and the fact that some states have adopted a moratorium on it?
Favor ending the death penalty. It does not deter homicide, it executes many innocent persons, its costs to taxpayers are greater even than life sentences, it is rarely imposed by civilized nations.
Do you believe our prisons should be privately owned or managed?
Private ownership of prisons is itself a crime. They are schools for criminality, releasing inmates often more bitter and more desperate than when they entered. The prison industry feeds on social tragedy, lobbies for money that should go instead for rebuilding cities and towns.
The PA Department of Corrections (DOC) budget was once $200 million and now approaches $2 billion. Do you think we should continue on this path of increases; if so, why, and if not, how would you reallocate some of these funds to counter incarceration and recidivism and what amount of funds would you reallocate?
Decriminalization of victimless crimes will reduce the public burden of prison building and maintenance. Favor repeal of the 1995 three-strikes law. Favor alternatives to incarceration, peer-managed youth courts and restorative justice programs.
Money saved should shift to green job development in cities and towns currently depending on prison employment. Any prison labor should be compensated at above minimum wage rather than slave wages.
LGBTQ
Do you support legislation enabling gay people to marry?
Yes. People in love should be entitled to marry.
What is your view on employment non-discrimination for LGBT individuals? Do you support HB 300?
Favor passage of HB 300, which provides protections regarding employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Would you support anti-bullying legislation, such as the PASS Act?
Yes, favor the PASS Act. Would review the specific legal definitions of bullying that follow enaction, and the remedies within and beyond school.
IMMIGRATION
In addition to recognizing the role the Federal government has, what should a PA Plan look like to deal with employers and the issues around illegal or undocumented immigrants?
Cease collaboration with ICE.
Should undocumented immigrants be granted a path to citizenship? If yes, please provide an overview of your plan. If not, what do you propose as an alternative? Should the state provide public benefits such as medical, social services, employment and/or educational services to them and their families?
Yes.
As long as Pennsylvania and the United States offer comparatively greater shelter from dire poverty, famine and war, people will arrive here illegally. Keeping these people outside the law will merely keep them in the shadows of society. They should be welcome to contribute constructively and to pay taxes. They will not compete for jobs if we expand job programs as introduced above.
People without easy access to health care become a likely source of contagion.
An ultimate solution to illegal immigration is therefore to foster labor rights, human rights and dignified economic opportunity for all people in the countries from which people escape. Therefore, Pennsylvania-based manufacturers and retailers should be rewarded for maintaining sweatshop-free standards.
Note: I speak Spanish and read Al Dia weekly. I have lived in Nicaragua.
Should undocumented students who otherwise qualify be entitled to pay in-state tuition at state-related and community colleges?
Yes. The alternative is to maintain a permanent ignorant and alienated class that will drag us all down. Their talent should be welcome.
