Meet The Candidate: Greenfield For Congress District 19

NEW PALTZ, NY —The races for which voters will cast ballots in the general election in November have been set. One of the heavily contested races is Congressional District 19. Patch asked candidates in the race to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles as election day nears.

Green Party candidate Steven Greenfield, 59, is running to represent Congressional District 19. His opponents are incumbent Democrat Rep. Antonio Delgado, Libertarian Victoria Alexander and Republican Kyle Van De Water.

Greenfield, who lives in New Paltz, is a musician. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Columbia College/Columbia University, as well as numerous training certificates in firefighting and public education administration.

He serves two terms on the New Paltz school board and has been appointed to several local and town committees.

Greenfield is married and has three daughters.

The 19th Congressional District is comprised of Columbia, Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Sullivan and Ulster counties and parts of Broome, Dutchess, Montgomery and Rensselaer counties.

Why are you seeking elective office?

Mainstream candidates are not telling the public the truth about the issues we're facing, and are legislating on behalf of institutional donors, not ordinary people. Incredibly, in the midst of COVID-19 and the economic collapse, neither the Democrat nor the Republican are promoting platforms and different from the standard party fare in ordinary years. We are in a state of emergency on multiple, inter-related fronts, and mainstream politics is refusing to address it. We must unite behind effective solutions, and get back to quarreling only if we succeed.

The single most pressing issue facing our community, and what I intend to do about it.

Recovering from COVID-19 and the economic ruin into which it has brought us.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

The Democrat, Republican and Libertarian are proposing nothing. I know that's hard to believe, but their platforms are public, and they are proposing nothing. I am proposing direct public support for full health care, employment in environmentally sensible fields, economic and residential sustenance where employment is not possible, and breaking up monopolies — in other words, tangible, targeted programs, to run as long as necessary until we have fully emerged from the crisis.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current officeholder failed the community?

Every possible way. He has legislated entirely to the benefit of large corporations outside the district, and nothing substantial for the lifestyles, income levels, education and small farms and businesses in the district.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Greenfield's motto is simple: cut the crap and solve the problem. The prescription is simple and effective.
THE TEN POINT PLAN:
1. Full public health insurance. There is no excuse for continuing the high-risk, now devastating practice of attaching health insurance to unemployment. It's bad enough having job uncertainty without families losing health care and their life savings during economic downturns. We should all be fed up with the coordination between private insurance companies and Democrats and Republicans that kills 68,000 Americans per year, and produces health outcomes at the bottom of the industrialized world at two to three times the cost per capita. A country with A $20 trillion dollar GDP that's spending $4 trillion per year on health care should be ashamed of the results we're producing. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
2. Full direct public employment and local contracting in the creation of clean energy infrastructure, and remediating toxic waste, for as long as necessary. We can, and must, solve unemployment, pollution, climate change, and having our national security tied to finite resources in foreign countries, all at the same time. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
3. End all our wars. 19 years is 19 years too many for wars that were not defensive, and intended only to secure fossil fuels we should no longer be burning. Follow the Constitution and restrict all wars to defensive ones declared by Congress, reduce military spending to levels appropriate for a defensive policy, and apply the research budget and technical expertise to medical and energy solutions. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
4. Break up the monopolies. Markets cannot function when all principal sectors are monopolized. That's basic capitalist economics. Entrepreneurs cannot start up — before COVID-19, we already had a 90% failure rate for new businesses. Small business and agriculture cannot survive as long as prices are being set on terms set by vast monopolies in the boardrooms of commodities exchanges in New York and Chicago, subsidized with our taxes and armed forces by the servants they've purchased in Washington. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
5. A New Green Revolution. The reason 19th District family agriculture is near extinction is because industrial agriculture monopolies are destroying the Earth with petrochemical insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, causing dead zones, algae blooms, diseased livestock and finished products, and cancer — along with prices too low for small, environmentally friendly agriculture to compete. Stimulate permaculture farming and regional distribution. Allow immigrant labor to permanently reside where their work is needed. Abolish ICE. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
6. Improve public education and expand it to include technical employment training, college and graduate and professional schooling. Relieve existing student debt. We rank lowest in the industrialized world in social mobility, meaning where we're born is where we stay, and barriers to education are the prime cause — as well as the prime cause of so many of our successful industries hiring from overseas. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
7. Legalize marijuana, end the war on drugs and provide safe housing and treatment to addicts. This is no trivial matter. Our existing approach costs us hundreds of billions of dollars a year in unnecessary policing, prosecution, and incarceration, which is an endless cycle of recidivism of crimes in support of addiction, unemployability, attractiveness of street gangs over schools for children, and the financing of domestic and worldwide criminal institutions, and their corrupting influence on law enforcement and government at home and abroad. Most drug laws had racist motives at their start, particularly marijuana, and are racistly enforced. We very sensibly ended alcohol prohibition after only 13 years, at the peak of the Great Depression. Not having acted for 80 years now, and surely no longer in a position to pay for its continuance, end marijuana prohibition immediately, and release all people incarcerated for it, and expunge their records so they can go back to full employability. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
8. To whatever degree it remains after doing all this, which won't be much, end poverty. Assign the resources needed to end it. It's much less money, far more humane, and far less racist, than what we do now to confine and police it. Every area in which we run at the bottom of high-wealth nations would go straight to the top just by eliminating poverty. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
9. Tax billionaires and giant corporations. Most of them pay little to nothing, many get rebates, and none of them pay a quarter as much as a percentage of their income as you pay on yours. How are you doing right now? How optimistic are you about your and your children's future? Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife have made around $100 billion dollars since the shut-down began. You're not regaining your income or your future until you get it back from them. This isn't a left-right thing. We all know this in our bones. We can't get blood from a stone, and we have to stop electing people who refuse to get it anywhere but from us. We've been drained. TAX THE RICH. Cut the crap and solve the problem.
10. End all barriers to small parties and independent candidates entering elections. The most devastating monopolized industry in this country is government. It may appear to be a duopoly, which would be bad enough, but if you look at campaign finance records, you can see that we do not have left and right parties, but one rampaging Wall Street bull, with the Democrats and Republicans as the left and right cheeks of its butt. When minor party and independent candidates manage to get on the ballot, VOTE FOR US. We're not on anyone's payroll. We don't get told how we're voting by Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer — who in turn are told by their donors and lobbyists. OUR ONLY PARTY BOSS IS YOU. Cut the crap and solve the problem.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I'm an Eagle Scout and a firefighter, and had two successful terms on the Board of Education of a highly reputed school district. I'm a non-partisan problem solver.

The best advice ever shared with me was …

Help other people at all times (from The Scout Oath).

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I owe nothing to donors or party institutions, tell the unvarnished truth, consider "not politically feasible" to be not an obstacle, but an opportunity, and will call out every failure, fraud and hypocrisy being perpetrated in Congress by both major parties.

Are you running for office? Contact Michael Woyton for information on being featured in a candidate's profile and submitting campaign announcements to Patch.

This article originally appeared on the Mid Hudson Valley Patch