We'll soon see how much traction the idea has...
<link>
At 73 years old, Peter Diamondstone may well be the most prolific candidate for public office the state has ever known.
Since
1970, when he launched his inaugural bid for attorney general, the
socialist stalwart has run for various offices under different party
banners every two years.
"I think this is the second time I've been a candidate for governor," Diamondstone said Friday.
This
year, he bears the Liberty Union tag, a party around which true-blue
Vermont socialists have coalesced since it earned major-party status in
recent years. He unabashedly calls himself the "Castro" of the Vermont
Liberty Union Party, and he revels in discourse on socialist polemics.
"Socialism
is the only way — it's not even an option anymore," Diamondstone says.
"Capitalism requires violence as a tool of policy. It requires the
exploitation of resources on the planet. It requires the exploitation
of people.
"Socialism has its problems," he says, "but at least
we can stop exploiting the planet and people and stop using violence as
a policy."
God help the reporter that asks Diamondstone why he's
"running" for office. Over the years the Brattleboro grandfather has
developed a sensitivity to media verbiage. "Running," he says, is for
athletes, horses and warriors. He prefers to view his candidacy as part
of a statewide hiring process.
"When you use the language of
sports and war, words like 'run,' people in journalism need to do that
to sell papers and get people to listen," he says.
Diamondstone
has his own way of getting people to listen. As a "fringe" candidate —
another term the former lawyer abhors — he is often treated as a black
sheep, ushered from the pack to ensure speaking time for the more
"serious" contenders. He has been arrested more than a half-dozen times
— most recently in Waitsfield at a candidates forum in July — for
trying to insinuate himself in debates to which he wasn't invited. He
notes that he has never been brought to trial or convicted for any of
the alleged transgressions.
"Silencing opinions robs the whole
human race," says Diamondstone, paraphrasing John Stuart Mill. (During
a 90-minute interview, he also cited Noam Chomsky and Albert Einstein,
whom he described as one of the "most perceptive people in the science
industry.")
"Most people interpret the First Amendment to
protect the right of the Fourth Estate, to protect speakers,
politicians," Diamondstone says. "I don't really interpret it that way
at all, and I don't think the people who wrote it interpreted it that
way."
The purpose of the First Amendment, Diamondstone says, is to ensure the public's right to hear what people like him have to say.
"That's
the point of the First Amendment — that the people are entitled to hear
and read the opinions of everyone," Diamondstone says. "Not that I have
the right to speak them, but that they have the right to hear them."
Diamondstone
has plenty to say, and he's carried his message to audiences of varying
sizes around the state. He differentiates between his long-term goals
and short-term policy initiatives. The former includes, most notably,
Vermont's secession from the United States of America. Following the
$700 billion Wall Street "bailout" approved by Congress on Friday,
Diamondstone says, the issue of secession ought not to seem
controversial.
"There's just no benefit anymore," Diamondstone
says of Vermont's membership in the United States. "If we force
secession, we're going to work less, get paid the same and have more
jobs for people."
As for his gubernatorial agenda, Diamondstone leads off with a plan for rehabilitating Vermont watersheds.
"What
we need to do is require all new parking lots to be unpaved and
grassed," he says. "It means they occasionally won't be useful and
businesses will have to close. When it comes to those parking lots
already in existence, when those pavements disintegrate, you can't
repave them. That's how we stop runoff into brooks and streams."
He also promises to disband the Vermont National Guard.
"We
set up a civilian militia, and not a state militia, so the national
government can't shanghai people from Vermont to go fight in
imperialist wars," he says.
The Diamondstone economic agenda
relies in large part on secession, and includes the formation of a new
"state bank" that issues Vermont currency and a radical compression of
income strata.
Under Diamondstone's plan, no one can make more than $75,000 per year, and no one can make less than $15,000.
"The
wealthiest in Vermont will have to sell their yachts, that's all," he
says of a 100 percent tax on income over the proscribed limit.
He
promises an accompanying increase in quality of life. Workers will be
guaranteed 30-hour weeks, four weeks of paid vacation and 10 paid
holidays.
"Part of the economy is based on people buying stuff
they don't need," he says. "Vermont's going to change. We're not going
to buy stuff we don't need."
Diamondstone wants to pay
youngsters a wage for going to school, shutter Vermont Yankee, and set
up a Vermont Drug Administration to replace the FDA that presently
regulates medicines.
He points to high levels of wood alcohol in
aspartame as evidence of the FDA's malfeasance, and says
recommendations for yearly mammograms ensure that women eventually
contract breast cancer.
"Mammograms cause cancer. Everybody
knows it, because radiation causes cancer," Diamondstone says. "The
people who are building these machines have to make money, the people
in the pharmacy business have to make money, and the hospitals have to
make money. … It's all about making money."
Diamondstone is
earnest in his vision for a more beneficent government. He says he
hopes to bring Vermont closer to that vision by winning the November
election, but doesn't necessarily "expect" that voters are ready to
make the leap.
Still, he retains irrepressible optimism for a
future, however distant, in which the populace embraces the ideals he's
spent much of his life espousing.
"Socialism says no production
for profit. Profit is how we destroy people, how we kill people. It's
all about markets," Diamondstone says. "No more production for profit.
Only production for need. That's my kind of socialism."
