| Statement by Charlie Pillsbury, Green
Party Candidate for Congress, CT-3rd District.
Delivered on June 8, 2001, at the Energy Fair on the
New Haven Green.
The Green Party is built upon the foundation of Ten
Key Values, which present a framework from which we
continue to build an evolving Green Platform that
expresses our commitment to creating fundamental and
enduring change in our current political, social and
economic lives. I would like to highlight three of
these key values, as we consider today how to reorder
our political, social and economic lives for our
future, and the future of our children and their
children's children.
The first is ECOLOGICAL WISDOM. Human societies
must operate with the understanding that we are part
of nature, not separate from nature. We must maintain
an ecological balance and live within the ecological
and resource limits of our communities and our planet.
We support a sustainable society which utilizes
resources in such a way that future generations will
benefit and not suffer from the practices of our
generation.
The second is PERSONAL AND GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY.
We encourage individuals to act to improve their
personal well-being and, at the same time, to enhance
ecological balance and social harmony. We seek to join
with people and organizations around the world to
foster peace, economic justice, and the health of the
planet.
The third is FUTURE FOCUS. Our actions and policies
should be motivated by long-term goals. We seek to
protect valuable natural resources, safely disposing
of all waste we create, while developing a sustainable
economics that does not depend on continual expansion
for survival. We must counter-balance the drive for
short term profits by assuring that economic
development, new technologies, and fiscal policies are
responsible to future generations who will inherit the
results of our actions.
How do the Republicans and Democrats deal with
these issues and what are their values? The Enron
scandal offers a number of good examples of how our
two major parties contribute to the very serious
problems that we Greens are trying to solve for future
generations.
Today, I want to shine some light on a relatively
unknown part of this story: the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act sponsored by Connecticut’s
liberal Democratic Senator Chris Dodd. While this law
was supposed to protect society from those greedy
trial lawyers, what it really did was limit the
liability of auditing firms like Arthur Andersen who
sign off on the balance sheets of crooked corporations
like Enron. The New Haven Register described the
legislation this way: it “stripped stockholders of
their rights and gave extraordinary protection to
executives who lied and accountants who fudged.” (N.H.
Reg., 2/16/02, p.A10).
President Clinton actually vetoed this awful law,
but his veto was overridden by both the Senate and the
House, including the entire Connecticut Congressional
delegation, both Republicans and Democrats.
What’s the story? The Enron scandal is not just
about President Bush’s ties to Enron executives; it’s
about the ability of special interests to buy
politicians from both major parties. The Democrats are
trying to pin “Enrongate” on the Republicans and
the White House, but the Democrats’ hands are just
as dirty. Senator Joe Lieberman, who’s supposed to
be leading the investigation into Enrongate, took
money from Enron. Both Senator Dodd and Rep. Rosa
DeLauro received campaign contributions from Enron’s
auditing firm Arthur Andersen, coincidentally at the
same time that the so-called Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act was being considered and voted
for by Dodd, Lieberman and DeLauro.
I started by talking about energy and the
environment and Green Party values, and I am ending by
talking about money and greed and Green Party values.
When it comes to the issues of greed, money and
politics, the only political party with any integrity
both locally and nationally is the Green Party,
because we don‘t accept money from corporate PACs.
The Enron story is a great argument for voting Green
in the next election.
Vote Pillsbury for Congress in November!
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