Platform

Unless amended below, Steve Alesch's platform is the Draft 2008 Platform of the Illinois Green Party (ILGP) and the 2008 Common Platform for Green Party Congressional Candidates.

Here are just some of the issues Steve Alesch is most concerned about:

Local Issues:

Say No to GNEP,  my Opponent, Judy Biggert's Plan to Turn OUR District into the World's Nuclear Waste Dump!

GNEP is a program endorsed by the Bush administration and my opponent, Judy Biggert, to make the 13th Congressional District, and surrounding counties, a dumping ground for nuclear waste. The life threatening nuclear waste will originate from all over the world and be delivered to dump sites within our community.

I am opposed to this program that will make a few CEOs even more rich despite the unspeakable risk to our community. It's yet another example of the incumbent putting the interests of a small group of individuals with big money ahead of the health and safety of our community. This small group of individuals, who stand to profit billions of dollars, do not even live in the district and no dump sites are planned near the town where Ms. Biggert resides. Read more...

Tell Republican DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett to Stop Persecuting 13th Congressional District Residents for exercising their Constitutional Right of Free Speech!

Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Hartfield are DuPage County peace activists who are being persecuted by Republican DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett. If found guilty they are facing up to one year in jail in DuPage County simply for exercising their 1st amendment rights by holding a sign calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and indicating our country is in distress by holding an American flag upside down. Birkett has also thrown in trumped up charges that Jeff and Sarah were throwing objects onto the interstate highway. These charges are baseless and as of today no witness or motorist has come forth claiming they saw anyone throwing any objects onto the interstate.

I'm very troubled by the possibility that trumped up charges may have been raised by local law enforcement to silence a citizen of the 13th district because they were exercising their constitutional right to voice their dissent. It's just another example of ever increasing authoritarian behavior by public officials in the US and unfortunately I'm not surprised that such an incident would occur in today's political climate created by the President and Congress, including my opponent, Judy Biggert, since her voting record is alarmingly supportive of an authoritarian state. Read more...

National/International Issues:

• Ending the illegal occupation and pillaging of Iraq immediately
• Pull all U.S. military personnel and mercenaries out of Iraq immediately.
• Close the 14 permanent military bases built next to Iraqi oil fields immediately.
• Immediately close the newly built US embassy in Iraq, the largest embassy in the world, a walled city larger than Vatican City, which is currently planned to protect over 30,000 so-called U.S. diplomats, which are really a permanent occupying force. This embassy should be replaced with a modest sized US embassy and only a modest number of legitimate diplomats.
• Close the Green zone immediately, which is another walled city that currently protects a permanent occupying force.
• The U.S. must stop attempting to force the Iraqi government to pass a so-called oil law, which would give US and UK oil companies ownership of 70% of the Iraqi oil for the next 30 years. This is unprecedented in the Middle East. No country in the Middle East allows any private ownership of their oil. As the entire world knows, this so-called oil law is the primary reason the US illegally invaded and continues to illegally occupy Iraq. It is an illegal act of war pillaging.
• Restoring the balance of power between the three equal branches of government, as guaranteed by our constitution, by reversing the damage done by supporters of the so-called unitary executive concept which attempts to create an imperial presidency who has unlimited powers during a time of war.
• Universal, single payer healthcare
• Over 47 million US citizens can not afford to have healthcare. This is a national disgrace.
• The US is the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide universal health care for it's citizens.
• The US spends more on healthcare than any other country, but ranks 37th in the world in the quality of the healthcare provided to its citizens, per the World Health Organization.
  
• The current for profit, non universal U.S. health-care program has overhead costs of over 30%. The CEO of my healthcare insurance company, United Healthcare, paid himself 1.7 billion U.S. dollars when he left the company last year.
• The typical healthcare overhead costs in other countries are 1 - 5 %.
• The overhead costs for the US Medicare program is 3%. The Medicare officials are not allowed to pay themselves excessive severance packages of 1.7 billion dollars when they decide to leave their job. If they did, they would be prosecuted and would go to jail or the U.S. people would have the ability to vote out their Congress people and replace them with congress people that would provide proper oversight to insure that government officials who steal from "we the people" are prosecuted and appropriately punished.
• The Green Party and I would solve this crisis by expanding the cost efficient Medicare program to provide healthcare coverage to all U.S. citizens.
• Reversing global climate change
• Converting from dirty, blood soaked oil to clean, renewable energy sources
• Supporting media reform
• Reversing media consolidation - "We the people" have virtually lost the first amendment right of freedom of the press by allowing 80% of our media to be controlled by just five CEOs. I support rolling back the damage done by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, signed into law by a Democratic President, that has allowed this to happen, in conjunction with further telecommunications deregulation by the current Republican President's FCC appointees.
• Supporting Net Neutrality - Net Neutrality guarantees equal access to all Internet websites, which has democratized the Internet we enjoy today. Via the current corporate deathgrip on our government and the Republican and Democratic Parties, corporate interests are lobbying Congress to destroy net neutrality to shut down freedom of speech on the internet.
  
• Congressional oversight and investigations of domestic propaganda
• Election reforms
• Supporting publicly financed elections
• Ending the corporate control of the U.S. government
• Supporting multi-party elections
• Supporting majority voting methods like:
• Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)
• Proportional representation
• Restoring fair elections
• Converting to paper ballots and hand counts
• Congressional oversight and investigations of the widespread election fraud that occurred during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Some areas to investigate would be:
• The use of caging lists to deny blacks and U.S. soldiers the right to vote
• Tampering with electronic voting machines
• Election authorities abusing their power by directing faulty voting machines to minority precincts and creating artificial voting machine shortages in minority precincts
• Restoring the Bill of Rights
• Repealing the 2006 Military Commissions Act
• Ending torture
• Ending show trials
• Restoring habeas corpus
• Repealing the so called 2007 Protect America Act
• Ending domestic spying
• Repealing the USA PATRIOT Act
• Ending so called extraordinary rendition (disappearing)
• Restoring fiscal responsibility
• Restoring the U.S. income tax system back to a fair progressive tax system for all citizens
• Reducing corporate welfare
• Congressional oversight and investigations of government and contractor fraud
• Ending corporate personhood
  
• Protecting women's reproductive rights
• First class citizenship for all U.S. citizens
  
• Supporting gay and lesbian marriage
• Supporting the U.S. worker
• Repealing NAFTA and Fast Track
• Ending US participation in the WTO
• Not passing CAFTA
• Restoring tariffs back to the levels before the war on the U.S. middle class began by Reagan/Bush/Bush. The US is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not seriously protect its workers' wages via significant tariffs.
• Congressional oversight and investigations of the U.S. Justice Department when it refuses to prosecute companies, such as Walmart, who criminally violate workers' right to organize
  
• End tax incentives to corporations that promote sending jobs overseas
• Ending U.S. Imperialism
• End illegal, unprovoked pre-emptive war policy
• End use of illegal weapons such as:
  
• Cluster bombs (which effectively become land mines)
  
• Depleted uranium
• White phosphorous (Napalm)
• Congressional oversight and investigations of war profiteering
• Eliminating no-bid contracts to companies such as the company Dick Cheney formerly was CEO, Halliburton. A company whose profits have soared during the illegal occupation of Iraq and a company that Cheney is still a stockholder.
  
• Ending outsourcing of war to paid mercenary armies such as Blackwater