The year was 1991. My wife and I were elected delegates for Jerry Brown in his bid for the presidency. I was waiting in the hotel lobby for a bus to take me to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. An interesting gentleman sat down, and we began a conversation as if we had known each other our entire lives. We spoke of the need for single payer health insurance, the need to rebuild the infrastructure, the need to stop shipping jobs overseas, "and the need to get big corporate money out of politics. Along with all the needs being discussed, their was the unified opinion that Jerry Brown was the right man at the right time, but the public just didn't see what was good for them; neither in the present moment, nor twenty years down the road.
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As the bus pulled up, I said goodbye to my new friend. I realized that we hadn't exchanged names. I introduced myself, and he extended his hand with the matter of fact expression," I'm Paul Wellstone."
Later on, I would be requesting his Single Payer Health Bill, which is still the best bill ever written on securing the health of the American Public.
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Paul Wellstone was there to support Jerry Brown, but there was absolutely no difference between Jerry Brown and the needs of the American People. Brown is still the public servant that he always was, and he still remains a Beltway Outsider who has warned us for years about the full nelson then, which has led to a stranglehold today.
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While fame and fortune rode the American Political System, and the World Economy into the ground, Jerry Brown took up residence as the Mayor of Oakland, and served a tough city. While Hollywood and Corporate Elites went into politics with no experience, a veteran politician proved himself a Humble Public Servant, by serving in a High Noon Setting.
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How many Governors of the world are content to serve as mayors? While the scandals of Hollywood were sequentially outdone by the scandals of Washington, Brown steered the same course he was on his entire life: the course of service. One might bring up the reason he dropped out of the presidential race after winning three states. One might have alluded to it as a scandal at the time. A few aides doing lines in the Governor's Mansion while the Governor was out of the country. That was the best they could do? It sounds too much like adolescents having a keg party while the parents are running with the bulls in Pablona. It in no way implicated Jerry Brown, yet the Democratic Central Committee pushed it over the air waves to make joe citizen feel guilty that he did not understand how it implicated Governor Brown, and Joe citizen has been eating dust ever since.
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The Centrist, Blue Dog, Corporate Mercenary of a Democrat was born, paving the way for large corporations to become persons, while systematically enslaving any citizen who didn't have a business address on Wall Street, or a lobbyist's address in Washington. Every campaign issue that Jerry Brown ran on, has come back to haunt the American people, and the American people must now wake up, look at the sun, once again, and send those nightmares back to the three branches of government, that have forgotten why they were there.
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Meg Whitman can, in no way, be considered a Washington Outsider. She has spent well over a hundred million dollars on her next business enterprise. Consider Washington what it is now, and what it has been for some time, an investment. Meg is just closing a business deal, the same way she did at Goldman Sachs and E-Bay. A business deal that will protect Wall Street, and inflict additional pain on the American Citizenry.
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Have the majority of the Citizenry of California said that the Governorship is for sale? Have the Middle Class of California thrown in the towel for the unearned income tax credit just around the corner? Have the property owners of California decided that they would rather pay low property taxes than keep their deeds from eventually falling into the hands of the bankers on Wall Street? Does the health insurance industry of California need whatever inheritance money is left after the inheritance tax is repealed?
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These are the business decisions being made for the people of California, but not by the people of California.
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The election of Jerry Brown, as Two Time Governor of California, will give all of the American people the chance to get it right. It will be a signal to the corporate elite that America is not for sale anymore. It will serve as a model for the rest of the world that democracy of and by the people will not perish from this earth.
