Senate Green Party Candidate in Uphill Fight
by Peter Shelton – Sep 20, 2010
Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Kinsey showed off his hybrid diesel/vegetable oil VW in Ridgway Wednesday as part of a western slope campaign swing that also included stops in Durango and Telluride.
Retired Denver-Area History Teacher and Clergyman Bob Kinsey on Western Slope Swing
RIDGWAY – Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Kinsey pulled into Ridgway Wednesday and promptly popped the trunk on his VW Jetta to show off the tank of recycled vegetable oil in the back.
“The needle hardly dropped at all on the drive over from Denver yesterday,” he said of the hybrid diesel/veggie vehicle.
A tall and youthful 73, former history teacher Kinsey talks the talk and drives the drive of his Green Party platform.
That message has primarily to do with what Kinsey calls the “corporate duopoly” and the stranglehold it has on American politics. And, inevitably, its dire consequences for the planet.
“Our fossil-fuel economy is doing violence to the planet,” he said. And both Republicans and Democrats are perpetuating the old model. “You’ve got to give the American people a vote for some other narrative,” he told The Watch. “We’re told to keep it a two-party game. That you need money in order to compete, to buy ads in the media. The media love that. If a person has to have corporate money in order to run, you don’t have a democracy. Democracy should be about telling the truth.”
War and imperialism play a big role in what Kinsey calls “the old way.” The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kinsey believes, have been used to create “a major drumbeat for perpetual war. War is not the answer. We are constantly told that our military actions are about ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights.’ When, in fact, other people are collateral damage as far as we’re concerned.” Kinsey advocates cutting the military budget by 70 percent.
American military force, Kinsey believes, has been used throughout our history to support corporate interests. “You can’t separate the corporate, free-trade model from environmental concerns,” he said. “Labor issues, pollution issues, military costs, the real costs of a global economy.”
He told the story of one jar of apricot jam on sale at his neighborhood supermarket. “The apricots were grown in South Africa. They were canned in Thailand. Then I find them for sale at King Soopers in Denver. The journey of that jar of jam! The labor costs, the subsidies, the oil burned! Short-term profit, short-term thinking will destroy the planet. The planet is the only thing that is truly ‘too big to fail.’ Somebody’s got to tell the truth about the corporate duopoly.”
On issues of immediacy to Coloradans, Kinsey was equally forceful. “I spoke in Montrose last year on the Paradox uranium mill,” he said. He spoke against permitting the mill, not because of the health risks involved, which are debatable, he thought. (Not like the clear risks of natural gas development – “lighting the water out of your faucet on fire!”) Rather, he opposes the project because “nuclear energy is not the answer to global warming. Solar, wind, and other renewables are approaching the cost of nuclear power per kilowatt-hour. And those numbers don’t include the costs of nuclear subsidies, of construction, and of decommissioning nuclear plants.”
On marijuana, Kinsey is very clear: “If I am elected, I will immediately introduce a bill in the Senate to remove marijuana and the hemp plant as Schedule 1 controlled substances. Hemp could be an economic boon. The Constitution is written on hemp paper. I could burn hemp oil in my car.
“Second, I would let everyone out of prison who was incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. The prison-industrial complex, which has only been around really since Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’, has been an incredibly destructive and expensive aspect of the war on drugs. Let’s admit that drug abuse is a medical problem and treat it as such. Let’s admit that alcohol is far more dangerous health-wise. And that marijuana has important medical benefits. In treating post-traumatic stress disorder, for example.”
Kinsey is well aware of third-party perceptions, particularly the perception that Ralph Nader’s Green Party run for the presidency in 2000 caused, or helped bring about, the election of George W. Bush. (A charge that both Nader and Kinsey deny; Kinsey believes that election was “stolen” by Florida’s secretary of state Kathleen Harris and the inability of Democrats to stand up to the fraud.)
Nor does Kinsey realistically expect to win Michael Bennett’s Senate seat in November. But he is adamant that Coloradans have a choice other than the big two parties. And that disillusioned voters have their voices heard. To that end, his website ( HYPERLINK “http://www.kinseyforsenate.org/” www.kinseyforsenate.org/) suggests supporters take an on-line pledge. “Pledge,” Kinsey said, “that if 600,000 other Coloradans also sign the pledge, that they then cast their ballots for me. If that were to happen, in a three-way race, 600,000 votes could be a win.”
That’s a big if. As of Sept. 15, there were 129 signatures on the list.
