GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
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Obama should have the US sign UN statement endorsing universal decriminalization of homosexuality

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Party activists challenged gay voters and advocates of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights to protest President-elect Barack Obama’s invitation to Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.

“Unless we make our anger known now, Mr. Obama will continue to betray gay people,” said Starlene Rankin, co-chair of the party’s Lavender Green Caucus (http://www.lavendergreens.us). “Barack Obama’s claim to be a ‘fierce advocate for equality’ is not credible when he chooses a pastor notorious for his ill-informed and slanderous opinions about homosexuality and vigorous support for Proposition 8.”

“The invitation signals that Mr. Obama may repeat the Clinton approach to gay rights. President Clinton, taking gay votes for granted, signed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act into law and authorized the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy. We’ve had generations of gay rights advocates and other progressives insisting that we need to elect Democrats, then we’ll push them towards pro-gay agenda. Instead, gay people have remained second-class citizens in the Democratic Party and told to hush up when they’re politically inconvenient. For those tired of bipartisan retreats from promises of human rights and justice, the Green Party remains the party of real change in America,” added Ms. Rankin.
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The Green Party of NYS renewed their call today for a carbon tax and the stock transfer tax, which would be sufficient to eliminate the state’s budget deficit.

The Greens support the rest of New York residents in wanting Governor Paterson to stop his opposition to raising taxes on millionaires to help solve the budget deficit.

“If Governor Paterson can stomach taxing soda to stop kids from getting fat, why can’t he also stand up to the fat cat Wall Street speculators by re-instituting the stock transfer tax? He should also support the carbon tax to reduce our unhealthy diet of fossil fuels,” said Peter LaVenia, state party co-chair.

The Greens also called upon the Governor to slash state spending on the prison industrial complex by repealing the Rockefeller Drug Law and granting amnesty to non-violent drug offenders. “It costs too much, in both tax dollars and in human terms, to keep on unnecessarily locking up African-American and Hispanic males. The same money could provide much more fulfilling work for upstate residents than their being prison guards.”

The Greens said that state should save billions of dollars by eliminating the huge waste and bureaucracy associated with for profit health insurance by adopting a single payer, improved Medicare for All program. “With Single-Payer, there would be collateral benefits that aren’t generally perceived. A government good enough to provide Single-Payer would be a government that would more generally have far more concern for its citizens’ welfare, in all matters… womb to grave,” added David Cyr, member of the state executive committee.

The Green Party of NYS today offered a number of alternatives to resolve the state’s fiscal crisis, calling for a state budget that improves the future of all New Yorkers, rather than reacting out of fear of a budget shortfall.

The centerpiece of the Party’s proposal is a carbon tax, which is needed to both reduce greenhouse emissions contributing to climate change while raising funds to support the quick transition to a economy that will end reliance upon fossil fuels.

The Green Party also called for increasing taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to reverse the regressive nature of NY’s tax system; re-instituting the stock transfer tax which would serve to minimize or contain Wall Street speculation; collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed deposits from the bottle bill; reducing health care costs by eliminating the huge payments to for profit insurance companies (e.g., adopting a single payer universal health care system); and elimination of wasteful corporate welfare programs such as the Empire State Program. The Greens called for raising various fees of corporate polluters to pay for the entire cost of the state’s Superfund program to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites; right now taxpayers are required to foot 50% of the cleanup bill.
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