Yikes! A liberal Democrat is running for president. Calls for Medicare for all, a new WPA, massive

[Karmadillo]

23. More on the Consumer Party (a liberal party--thanks for strengthening Richardson's bona fides)

http://thirdpartydaily.blogspot.com/2010/10/exclusive-interview-with-darcy_11.html

Oct 11, 2010
Exclusive: Interview with Darcy Richardson,

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The following year, in 1980, I ran for Pennsylvania Auditor General on the Consumer Party ticket, an affiliate of the newly-formed Citizens Party. The Citizens Party nominated environmentalist Barry Commoner for President that year. I was 24 at the time. Prior to that I had volunteered in Eugene McCarthy's 1976 independent presidential campaign and had managed my father's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania in 1978.

The Consumer Party was founded by Max Weiner and a few other activists in 1967 as the political arm of the non-profit Consumer Education & Protective Association (CEPA), one of the country's first consumer protection organizations. A red-diaper baby and one of the nation's first consumer activists, Weiner founded CEPA a year earlier, shortly after Ralph Nader first burst onto the scene with his book, Unsafe at Any Speed.

For years, the raspy-voiced Weiner could be found shouting into his bullhorn on the east side of Philadelphia’s historic City Hall, railing for lower utility rates and mass transit fares and against shady business practices and political corruption. He was a folk hero to thousands of ordinary Philadelphians concerned with pocketbook issues.

http://www.ourcampaigns.com/PartyDetail.html?PartyID=195

The Citizens Party was formed on May 15, 1979 in Washington DC by Barry Commoner, who wanted to gather under one umbrella political organization all the enivronmentalist and liberal groups which were unsatisfied with President Carter’s moderate administration (Kruschke 45). The Citizens Party registered with the Federal Elections Commission at the end of 1979 (Havel 2:291).

Barry Commoner, a “professor of environmental science at Washington University in St. Louis,”(Kruschke 45) was the head of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems in St. Louis (Schap 96) and editor of Science Illustrated magazine (Kruschke, p. 45).

The first Citizens Party National Convention met in Cleveland in the Cleveland Plaza Hotel on 4/10–13/1980. There were 260 delegates from 30 states present. (Havel 2:291) The “proposals presented at the convention reportedly numbered some 300 items, a list largely irreducible to a manageable platform. . . Units of the party organization on the state level thus became more or less responsible for delineating their own briefer versions of the list of goals” (Kruschke, p. 46). The Party nominated Barry Commoner for President and La Donna Harris (who was the wife of U.S. Senator Fred Harris OK) for Vice President. (Hauss 147) La Donna Harris was “a leading feminist and a Comanche Indian [who] labeled herself as ‘a woman of color.’” (Kruschke, p. 46)

Party Platform

The Citizens Party in 1980 advocated several liberal programs. Among them were: • Creating a new party which was not tied to the capitalist economic system. (Kruschke, p. 45) • Environmental protection (Hauss 147) • Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (Hauss 147) • An increase in social spending (Hauss 147) • Reducing defense spending at least 30% (Schap 96) •Creating a nationalized health insurance (Schap 96) • Providing for government grants to discover energy sources in order to eliminate nuclear power (Schap 96) • Fostering “economic democracy” through nationalizing oil companies and railroads, granting employees greater management responsibilities in corporations, and providing for full employment. (Hauss 147, Schap 96)

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