Trump’s 2020 budget proposal reflects another significant increase in military spending along with corresponding cuts in spending by Federal agencies tasked with the responsibility for providing critical services and income support policies for working class and poor people. Trump’s call for budget cuts by Federal agencies is mirrored by the statutorily imposed austerity policies in most states and many municipalities. Those cuts represent the continuing imposition of neoliberal policies in the U.S. even though the “A” word for austerity is almost never used to describe those policies.

HIGH SPRINGS, Fl. – The Green Party of Florida condemns the warmongering being drummed up by the U.S. government against the government and people of Iran, and the insane drive to conflagration in the Middle East.

Donald Trump and his inner circle — which includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton —claim that Iran attacked "Japanese-related" shipping while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was meeting in Tehran with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The incident derailed any attempt to defuse tensions between the U.S. and Iran following the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the escalation of economic sanctions against Iran and anyone doing business with the Islamic Republic.

A funny thing happened to us as Green Party candidates in 2018. Howie Hawkins ran for New York Governor and Madelyn Hoffman for U.S. Senator from New Jersey. We were scolded by many progressives to drop out and unite behind the Democrats against Trump. Then immediately after the election some Democrats in Congress took the central theme of our campaigns — the Green New Deal — and grabbed the national spotlight.

The sad truth of war is the ones who make the most sacrifice are the ones who are the most forgotten. As much as ten times more innocent lives are lost during war than combatants. Almost nobody who is a decision maker considers this when war is proposed or engaged in.

Our nation has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for now over 17 years. Nearly a billion women, children and other non-combatants- innocent lives have been lost as well as over 5,000 American Service members. Libya is a failed state with slave auctions, Assad is still in power in Syria, and the United States military was not designed for illegal and un-Constitutional regime change wars. Our nation has spent trillions of our tax dollars on these wars while our children are malnourished, without healthcare, and at the same time crammed into smaller classrooms that are being threatened by gun violence nearly on a daily basis.
#EndRegimeChangeWars

It is critical to understand how blocking the regime change agenda with respect to Venezuela is integrally connected to confronting the challenge of climate change.

Fighting the Media War

We just returned from nine days in Iran with a 28-person peace delegation organized by CODE PINK. It is clear that people in Iran want two things:

1. To be respected as an independent, sovereign nation
2. To have peace with the United States without threats of war or economic sanctions seeking to dominate them.

One of the lessons from our recent visit to Iran as a Peace Delegation is that Iran is a mature country. It is 2,500 years old, ten times as old as the United States and one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with settlements dating back to 7,000 BC. It was an empire that controlled almost half the Earth for over 1,000 years. It is hard not to see the US-Iran relationship as one between an adolescent bully and a mature nation.

Edwin Starr, in his 1970 hit single asked "War, what is it good for?" His catchy answer was "absolutely nothing!"

On the face of it Mr. Starr's point seems obvious. But if so why has the United States engaged in seemingly endless war in places like Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq, since Mr. Starr's song hit the charts? Why are policy makers in Washington D.C. fomenting for more war in Venezuela and Iran? Apparently, war is good for something as the U.S. continues engaging it.

A rabbi in Youngstown, Ohio, who is running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination, was fired from his part-time job as spiritual leader of a local congregation because, he says, of comments he made criticizing Israel.

Dario Hunter, in an interview published on Feb. 19 on Cleveland.com about his bid for president of the United States, had said that the United States should stop providing any aid to Israel because of its’ “horribly atrocious” treatment of Palestinians.

By now, most of us have noticed a paradigm shift that has made traditional political labels obsolete.

Red versus Blue (Republican conservative right-wing versus Democrat liberal left-wing) seemed to work for the last century, but it’s not working for the mess we’re in now.