Week in review

There is a lot going on this week that hits right at what should be the major targets of GP efforts.

Ongoing protest of Iraq War: I got this in my email yesterday. While it talks of a media event with Ciny Sheehan this morning, the protest at Representative Matsui's office is onling and has been for a couple of weeks. BTW. Matsui is another of those "not really against the war Democrats... rather like Howard Berman, whose LA County district is so close to Leftywood that I wonder how he continues to win re-election. I guess that the thought of electing a Green was too scary.

Please join Cindy Sheehan tomorrow, Monday, January 22, 2007, 9:30 am at the Federal Building, 501 I St, Sacramento. Cindy will support those asking Rep. Doris Matsui to publicly commit to voting against any more funding for the occupation of Iraq.

With $70 billion already approved, there is ample to bring the troops and bases home now! The peace-in will continue inside Doris Matsui's office from 8:30 am - 5 pm every day this week and until Matsui agrees to make a serious commitment to bringing our troops home by stopping further funding for the occupation. Bring ID to go through security check, no cameras. Stay a few minutes, few hours, or all day!

For more information, contact: sacendthewar@yahoo.com; 916-448-7157

Washington decides on Global Warming: Bush is dumb (pun intended) on the subject.

It appears that American Industry will support anything that gives them another way to manipulate the system to make more money. When it comes to fighting global warming, an op-ed in today's Washington Post indicates that Congress has already defined the solution to be a cap-and-trade policy. Just consider that the authorization bill is co-sponsored by Barack Obama and John McCain. It is also the same policy that Ahnuld wants for California. I wonder what inventive way Bush will find to ignore this issue in his SOTU speech tomorrow night.

Meanwhile in California, we continue to build more highways to empower more suburban developers. There was a time when Greens railed against sprawl. Now, in the latest version of our platform, the word hardly appears, though the concept of "ecological footprint" implies the opposite. Still, it is not a subject that appears with any frequency on GP email lists that I track.

It appears that in both Washington and Sacramento, cap-and-trade is in and greens are out. The national Green Party had a good response to this issue, aimed at DiFi too.

So, it is a time for action, on more issues than we can possibly have tiem for. Still, as I heard one teen volunteer say during an interview recently, "If not now, when? If now me, who?"