By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansans’ ballots will have four independent presidential candidates who are still in the race. Today, let’s meet the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein, the one Democrats don’t want to be there.

They fear Stein, the most liberal candidate on Arkansans’ ballots, will siphon votes from Vice President Kamala Harris. Some people believe her 1.4 million votes in 2016 cost Hillary Clinton the election.

Stein doesn’t see it that way. 

“That’s the nature of democracy,” she told me by phone from her home outside Boston. “I’m sorry. Do we say that Republicans are stealing votes from Democrats? No, they have different agendas and different points of view.”

Indeed, Stein’s agenda is very different than those of Democrats and Republicans, both of which she described as beholden to corporations.

Stein would make many aspects of the economy be managed by government entities, which she said are more transparent and accountable than the corporations running them now. She would replace private insurance, which she described as inefficient and profit driven, with a “Medicare for all” system leading to a national health system like Great Britain’s. She likewise wants the energy industry, railroads and the four largest “too big to fail” banks to be publicly operated.

Other solutions also would entail government involvement. She would mandate a $25 minimum wage. She’d mandate three weeks of annual paid sick leave and eight weeks of annual paid vacation for all employees, and one year of parental leave for new parents. Election campaigns would be publicly financed. 

She would enact an “ecosocialist Real Green New Deal” by declaring a climate state of emergency, allowing billions of government dollars to be spent on transportation, food and housing. She said the Green New Deal would return manufacturing to the United States and create a “productive economy,” as opposed to the current “financialized” economy that extracts profits for the wealthiest Americans.

Not all problems would be addressed by the federal government. Needs could be met through local governments, publicly owned and managed entities, and small businesses. Those would replace big corporations, which she said “are not the answer to big government.”

“There is a diversity of solutions,” she said. “They’re not all public, and they’re not big government either. Many of them are just the same kinds of programs that we have, but taking the profiteering out of them so that we can actually meet public needs.”

Stein said the wealthiest Americans are hoarding wealth, which eventually will lead to an economic collapse. The tax system, created by Democrats and Republicans, favors billionaires and corporations. She wants them to pay more taxes while the middle class and lower-income Americans pay less. The tax increases on the wealthy, along with the efficiencies she said would result from government-run health care and other public services, would pay for her policies. 

She also would pay for her programs by cutting military spending by at least 50% and ending a foreign policy based on what she called “militarism and endless war.” Her first act as president-elect would be to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end what she called the “genocide” of the Palestinian people. She also would seek a negotiated end to the Russia-Ukraine war. She said both conflicts are risking nuclear war. 

Stein said she came to her views working as a physician and seeing expanding rates of asthma, cancer and developmental disabilities – conditions that were rare when she was growing up. She said the United States needs not only health care but also healthy communities and healthy economies, rather than the current high-stress society off which corporations are profiting. 

“As I kind of grew into the working world as a medical doctor, I just saw how things are failing us,” she said.

I asked if she would consider herself a “socialist.”

“I generally avoid terms that are not clear and that different people have different definitions of,” she said. “But I would say, do I believe generally in the Golden Rule? ‘Do unto others.’ I generally believe in the Golden Rule. I generally believe that we must have personal responsibility, and we must have community responsibility as well. So some people would call that socialism. Others would say that’s just kind of basic human values.”

That’s Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate. For an opposite perspective, read about Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver here.  You can also meet American Solidarity Party candidate Peter Sonski here and Prohibition Party candidate Michael Wood here.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 17 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.