(When our server crashed, we lost two weeks of blog entries. This is a summation of posts concerning the collapse of the Green Party and the $250,000 post-2004 election grants to foundations staffed with Cobb loyalists.)
If anyone has more on this, please let me know. Let’s all do some digging.
First, a lead-in
The 2004 elections and the collapse of the Left
By Thomas Harrison. Read the whole thing. My only quibble with it is that only some, and certainly not all, of the left collapsed. The hard left, like the ANSWER Coalition never had illusions about the 2004 elections and Kerry and thus could not be disappointed – and kept right on organizing instead.
What appeared to much of the left as a dire political emergency, requiring at least a temporary united front of all progressive forces, constituted a golden opportunity for the pro-corporate politicians, centrist ideologues and professional operatives who run the Democratic Party — an opportunity to eliminate permanently any possibility that a serious political alternative might emerge to the party’s left.
The logic of Anyone But Bush was essentially nihilistic: eliminating almost everything that might sharply distinguish the Democratic from the Republican candidate.
With all its weaknesses, the Green Party has kept the flame of independent political action burning, and even shown significant potential for growth. All the more tragic, therefore, that it too lost its nerve and joined the panicky stampede into the Kerry camp.
Greens get big donations
The Green Party has found its own George Soros and this week raised more money for the party and its think tanks than in any week in the party’s history. . . A midwest couple donated $250,000 to the Green Institute this week. That is the Green think tank started by the party’s former political director Dean Myerson. The three members of the board of directors are longtime Greens who were instrumental to the founding of the party: David Cobb, Linda Martin and Thomas Linzey.
The same mid west couple also donated another $250,000 to something called Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. . . founded by former national Green Party steering committee co-chair Ben Manski and claims as its mission to be radical in its support of democracy in the United States.
That’s a half-million dollars in one week for two Green Party think tanks. What about the national party itself? My source tells me they are not doing as well. The party spend $4,000 more than it took in during January.
The national GP is indeed broke. Plus, the last I heard, they were all-consumed with yet another endless and pointless argument over process.
The open letter to Green activists
Via a Green listserv from Lorna Salzman, a highly reliable source.
Thanks to Ken Sain, Les Evenchick, Steve Greenfield and Howie Hawkins for re-distributing some information about the emerging financial scandal within the US Green Party leadership:
— $250,000 grant to the Green Institute headed by Dean Myerson and on whose board the 2004 Green Party presidential nominee, David Cobb, serves;
— $250,000 to the “Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution”, founded by former GP co-chair Ben Manski. (FYI: Manski was among the small behind-the-scenes group that manipulated the 2004 GP nominating convention voting process to enable Cobb to secure the nomination).
Both of these came from some as yet unidentified midwestern couple. Since these are both non-profit recipients, their donor names will eventually be discovered.
In addition, the same source for this information said that this same couple gave “tens of thousands of dollars to a number of individual state parties”.
Those of you who have reps on the GP Coordinating Committee (CC) or on the Steering Committee (SC) are therefore urged to request the names of the state green parties receiving the money and the amounts of money. Since political parties are not non-profits, they must report such donations. It is urgent that we find out which states got this money.
You need not be a conspiracy theorist fanatic to recognize the connection between these events and these people, and the direct connection to the fiasco that called itself the US GP nominating convention. Despite the fact that official state primaries clearly gave the numerical victory to Peter Camejo, enough arms were twisted and enough palms greased (literally and figuratively) by people such as Medea Benjamin (funded by George Soros) as well as Manski and Cobb and the US GP Steering Committee, so that Cobb ended up stealing the nomination.
We also know that there was a meeting in 2001 in Texas, presumably organized by David Cobb who formerly lived there, wherein a decision was made to repress any effort by Ralph Nader in 2004 so as to clear the way for the Democratic Party presidential nominee.
In addition, Dems in Green Clothing formed a listserv during the presidential campaign from which they circulated vile mendacious gossip about Ralph Nader, lifted directly from right-wing and neo-con rumors.
The US Green Party has been neutered by the efforts of the Cobb-Manski-Benjamin team and their cohorts in those states favored by weighted voting. This overrode the one person-one vote process, overrode legally sanctioned state primaries such as the one in California, and insured that the US Green Party thorn in the side of the Democratic Party would be removed and left to decay.This outrage needs to be fully exposed for starters. Next, radical changes in the US GP bylaws and convention rules need to be implemented to insure a one person-one vote process in all state and national decision-making of the state parties and the national party. After that, enforceable rules need to be made to insure oversight of the national CC, SC, and the national caucuses, of which at least one received accreditation while being in demonstrable, flagrant violation of the conditions for accreditation (the women’s caucus).
Please distribute widely.Lorna Salzman
State Committee member, New York State Green Party
former candidate for US GP presidential nomination;
co-founder of the NY Greens (1985);
Green activist since 1984;
718-522-0253(“I am not a crook” —David Cobb acceptance speech at US GP nominating convention, June 28, 2004, Milwaukee, WI).