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G. Scott Deshefy  US House of Representatives
Welcome to my official web site. I ran as a Green for US House of Representatives.
District: 2nd Congressional District
State: Connecticut
Election Day: Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election Results: Not Elected
My Latest Blog
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Blind Allegiance To Political Parties Prevents And Subverts Democracy
Just
as societal failures can maintain appearances of republics whose
realities are lost, George Washington long ago called blind allegiance
to political parties the greatest threat to America and to the
democracy we have long sought but have yet to achieve, saddled instead
with a succession of disfunctional oligarchies (corporate and
otherwise) to which the so-called major parties (or "uniparty") remain
indentured...bearing in mind that some people profit from America's
disfunction. As a Green Party candidate for U.S House of
Representatives in the 2nd CT Congressional District, volunteers and I
have completed the Herculean task of gathering thousands of ballot
petition signatures to assure my appearance on the ballot in November,
a very onerous and unfair process, designed to maintain two-party
monopolization of the electoral process. Nonetheless, while ...
...Read More |
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About G. Scott Deshefy
| Job History: |
| From
1982 through April 2007 (retirement), Scott Deshefy served the citizens
of Connecticut as a supervisory environmental analyst in the CT Dept.
of Environmental Protection. In that capacity as state official, Scott
developed and supervised enforcement and environmental clean-up
programs involving underground storage of petroleum and other hazardous
chemicals as well as the monitoring and regulation of polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxic chemicals, including asbestos. Deshefy
additionally served as scientific support coordinator during
environmental emergencies, including chemical releases to Long Island
Sound and estuarine environments.
On December 27, 2007, Scott became the first Green Party candidate
in history to declare his candidacy for the U.S. House of
Representatives in the 2nd Connecticut Congressional District. In
Norwich, Connecticut, on April 12, 2008, by unanimous decision of the
first 2nd CD Green Party nominating convention in history, G. Scott
Deshefy became the Green Party's first nominee to run for the
congressional seat of the 2nd Connecticut congressional district.
A lifelong resident of eastern Connecticut and native son of
Uncasville, Scott Deshefy graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in biology
and minoring in literature while a recipient of state and collegiate
academic scholarships and student loans. Also conducting graduate
studies in biological sciences at the University of Montana, UCONN and
Southern CT State University, Scott completed his MS in zoology at
Clemson University in 1978 as well as four years of doctoral work with
emphasis in behavioral-ecology. Under a Clemson University graduate
teaching assistantship and as part-time lecturer at Middlesex Community
College (Middletown, CT), Scott Deshefy has taught general biology,
vertebrate zoology, human anatomy and physiology, environmental
science, astronomy and geology. He was a nominee for a Dansforth
Fellowship in 1982.
During breaks in collegiate studies, Scott has worked at the U.S.
Submarine Base in Groton, CT and as a cutter-packer for the Dow
Chemical Corporation, Allyn's Point, Gales Ferry, CT. He worked at
General Dynamic Electric Boat (Groton, CT) from 1973-75 as a shipfitter
and radiation control monitor, receiving high security clearances for
his work with reactors on nuclear submarines as part of RADCON.
Scott also has worked his way through college as a landscaper,
cemetery maintainer/gravedigger, and restaurant cook. He is a champion
of the working class laborer and knows what it's like to earn wages in
conditions so hazardous that welding fumes prevent seeing your hand in
front of your face.
Scott Deshefy has drafted environmental regulations and general
statutes, worked closely with the CT Office of Attorneys General on
dozens of environmental civil cases (including Connecticut's first type
A ecological damage assessment claims) and worked with the CT State's
Attorneys on major criminal cases. He has gained national reputation
with the EPA for innovative, no-nonsense approaches to environmental
enforcement, even when handicapped by limited allocatioon of state
resources. He has prepared dozens of federal grant requests to support
the state environmental programs he has supervised and devloped and,
over twenty-five years, never failed to meet program goals for which
those EPA grants were approved. During his tenure as head of the
Underground Storage Tank (UST) Enforcement program, Deshefy's stringent
enforcement of UST codes and regulations helped effect the removal of
over 27,000 leaking and antiquated gasoline, heating fuel and chemical
USTs, thereby preventing incalculable harm to the groundwaters of
Connecticut.
From 1982-1987, Scott served on the Montville Board of Education,
including chairman from 1985-87. While chairman, teacher salaries were
raised as an incentive to improve both the quality and frequency of
individuals pursuing teaching degrees and to make starting teacher
salaries in eastern CT a truly living wage.
Scott received the Briarwood College environmental educator award
in 2002 and, as a state official, was named by Governor Lowell Weicker
as Connecticut's natural resources trustee for environmental damage
assessment claims pursuant to the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act (R.C.R.A.).
Deshefy has written and edited three books of poetry. He has been a
poetry award recipient from the "Hartford Advocate," a nominee for CT
poet laureate, and he has published articles in various scientific
journals, including "Animal Behaviour." Scott also can be heard on
Tuesday Evening Classics "Heroic Overtures" every first and third
Tuesday of the month (4pm-8pm) at 91.3 FM (WWUH, West Hartford),
wwuh.org, and 89.9 FM (WAPJ, Torrington). Scott has been part of the
voluntary UH (University of Hartford) radio team for ten years, helping
to provide some of the best in community service/public alternative
radio programming on your FM or real audio internet dials.
In October 2005, Scott was awarded the medallion of the Eastern
Connecticut Chamber of Commerce in recognition of his role in helping
prepare DEP's environmental impact statement, instrumental in deferring
the proposed BRAC closure of the U.S. Submarine Base in Groton,CT.
Scott and his wife, Nancy, have been married for 31 years and take great pride in their teenage daughter, Alea. |
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| Important Issues: |
| The
environment (more accurately described as the ecology) is the single
most important issue facing this state, this nation and the world.
Global warming, pollution, depleted ozone, the politics of starvation,
diminishing water resources, destruction of habitat leading to loss of
species diversity, the colossal exploitation and the incomprehensible
scale of killing of both indigenous and domesticated nonhuman animals
all persist because of human population growth, mythological suspension
of scientific reason, and a general lack of adherence to moral tenets
in favor of consumerism and a society based on corporate profits
without concern for harm or sustainability. Unlike my opponents, I
understand and I am willing to discuss the paradigm shifts needed to
reverse these destructive trends. We of the 2nd congressional district
of Connecticut can lead the nation in promoting lifestyle changes,
which will not only add value and quality to our lives and the lives of
our loved ones, but will provide sustainable economic stability and
economic justice to the region. In the interest of brevity, I can only
list some of these interrelated issues on this website. Here they are:
1. We must bring an immediate end to the war in Iraq to
preserve the lives and well-being of U.S. men and women in uniform as
well as the Iraqi people and to redirect military spending to improving
our educational system, infrastructure and health care system. Without
the current ballooning scale of military spending, we can make
reductions in the national budget deficit and more rapidly develop mass
transit and alternative energy sources critical to our future.
2. I will support and sign House Resolution 333 to
impeach President Bush and VP Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors.
If someone steals a loaf of bread to feed their family, they are held
accountable. Elected officials who lie to the American public to
manufacture consent for war, thereby violating their oaths of office
and their obligations to uphold the U.S. constitution, need to be held
accountable, as well. I commend Congressman Kucinich for his
initiatives in this regard, and accuse Democrats and Republicans, who
have not supported H.R.333, of failing to fulfill their constitutional
obligations
3. We must enact a region-based "living" wage so all
working people stay above both the poverty line and the "lost class"
category, where people fall below the poverty line after taxes. In this
regard, we need to focus on major reduction of property taxes in the
2nd district of Connecticut. I will fight adamantly for those changes.
4. Perhaps 45 million Americans lack basic health care.
I will work to insure publicly guaranteed, accessible, universal health
care for all Americans and cap prices on prescription drugs developed
with tax-payer money.
5. To reverse corporate control of family farms and the
monoculture of petroleum-based, genetically-modified corn destroying
our heartland AND to mitigate the epidemics of diabetes, obesity and
other diseases ravaging our country, I will vote against and try to
eliminate government subsidies to factory farms and the "junk" and
processed food industries, which are at the core of our nation's
dietary ills. Prevention is the key to good health, and a good diet,
sustained by organically and locally grown fruits, vegetables and a
diversity of grains, is the key to prevention. Furthermore, the
well-documented meat-eating excesses of America cause enormous
pollution and (by nearly an order of magnitude) highly inefficient use
of energy, water resources and land mass to produce sources of protein,
which can be more directly and healthfully obtained from plant foods. I
will promote a return to crop rotation and crop diversity, and a return
to a more vegetarian lifestyle for the 2nd District and the nation. I
will do so by example and by promoting financial incentives, which are
NOT inversely proportional to dietary benefit and good health.
6. I will support full public financing of public
elections to return this country to a democratic process rather than a
corporate oligarchy and "uniparty" election designed to benefit and to
be controlled by the wealthy and powerful. I will work to "unstack" the
deck for independent and third party candidates.
7. I will work to end public subsidies and tax breaks
for the wealthy and for industries that pollute or destroy habitat.
Furthermore, I will vote and work for a frugal but compassionate
government, putting an end to predatory lending practices and providing
reasonable impasses and restrictions on public and private deficit
spending, which have made America a debtor nation, driven prices
through the roof and caused more bankruptcies than college graduations
among our young. We are living in a toppling house of cards, credit
cards, because American capitalism has been telling us what we need to
match its products, rather than making products to meet our actual
needs. Our trade deficit with China alone increases by roughly $1
billion per day because we have become the world's consumer rather than
a producer, a consequence of corporate greed and the IMF/World
Bank/global economy (devised in Breton Woods, NH @1948) which has
methodically moved U. S. jobs overseas. I will promote the purchase of
local goods and support a capitalism, which does not unnecessarily
multiply our wants, but engages us intellectually to develop products
that are critical to our needs, including inexpensive, pollution-free
automobiles, storm and flood proof housing, mass transportation, and
low-energy appliances, which are cheaper to repair than replace. That
is how capitalism should work when it is not solely designed for
exploitative profit margins. Adam Smith can indeed embrace Rachel
Carson.
We must also rethink the so-called "drug war," its
misguided foreign policies, the criminality of possession, and why race
and class are disproportionately reflected in convictions and prison
sentences. At first glance, such issues seem remote from economic
considerations, but the economy is at the very heart of these cultural
problems. As your congressman, I will be an agent for positive change.
8. I will work to develop and promote education, which
is broadly humanist and designed for the acquisition of the most
knowledge, not to solely funnel young men and women into a world of
work as technocrats devoid of the quality of life nurtured by multiple
scholarly interests. Furthermore, I will introduce congressional
legislation to provide free tuition to college students, who wish to
engage in community service, similar to the VISTA program of the 60s,
following graduation. I will fight to stop the "dumbing down of
America" and help promote the kind of interest and eagerness to learn,
which energized America in the early 1960s.
9. I will promote programs emphasizing local community
in which individuals discover their own good through discovery of the
common good. I will encourage civil discourse, the purchase of local
goods and a society, where our wants are not multiplied unnecessarily
by Wall Street, Madison Avenue and commercialism.
10. I will encourage spiritualism and leadership
without suspension of reason and the destruction of life caused by
anthropocentrism.
11. I will work for the development and expansion of
mass transit in eastern Connecticut and resurrect interest in
developing a passenger rail/trolley system along the Thames River
corridor and between Hartford and eastern Connecticut.
12. I will begin to develop nonmilitary uses of the
U.S. Submarine Base in Groton with an eye to the inevitability of BRAC
closure so SUBASE employees can begin a gradual retraining now and so
the region's economics will benefit from a diversity of jobs and
nonmilitary uses of the facility.
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| Why Vote For Me: |
| For
nearly thirty (30) years, I have been active nationally and throughout
Connecticut as an advocate for ecological ethics, nonviolence, economic
justice and reverence for all life. As a private citizen and state
official, I have fought suppression of information and made powerful
corporations accountable for pollution and violations of state and
federal environmental law. I am a scientist at a time when national,
state and global issues/crises demand scientific acumen from our
governments and leaders, not the status quo discernment of lawyers and
career politicians, which has so poorly served us in the past. My
candidacy provides a new and rational vision, which my opponents in the
2nd District cannot or will not provide. I pledge to bring an immediate
end to the war in Iraq and, in the interests of America and our brave
soldiers abroad, to vote against further funding of the war in Iraq to
accomplish that end. I believe that President Bush and Vice President
Cheney should be held accountable for their deceptions of the American
public, which ultimately led to our military involvement in Iraq.
Moreover, I pledge to the people of the 2nd District of Connecticut
that, as your congressman, I will not build the present on the status
quo blueprints of the past, thereby causing our futures and the futures
of our children to fall asunder. I am the only candidate, who will make
such a pledge, bringing science and reason to the fore, and shifting
our priorities to economic justice, living wages, respect for and
preservation of all life, mitigation of global warming, and an end to
factory farming and the corporate grip that has strangled family farms
and American agriculture, sending us into a global spiral of
petroleum-based destruction of our soils, our water resources and our
dietary health. Unlike my opponents, I am not afraid to aspire to the
ancient ideal of philosopher statesman. Together, with your vote in
November, we can achieve great things in the 2nd District. As Walter
Brennan's character said in Frank Capra's movie, "Meet John Doe,"
......"Everyone knows the world's been shaved by a drunken barber." The
Republicans and Democrats have been strapping that razor for much too
long. Please Vote Green....Vote Deshefy for Democracy.
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| http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DeshefyforCongress/
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Contact G. Scott Deshefy
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