Jack of Spades: An Interview with Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
April 13th, 2008
By Joey Peters
U.S. Senate candidate Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
While most Minnesotans have stuck comedian Al Franken in their minds as the next Minnesota DFL Senate candidate, St. Thomas peace studies professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still vying for the party’s upcoming June nomination. Despite barely being mentioned in the local media, Nelson-Pallmeyer surpassed Mike Ceresi in the race and is slowly but surely winning over the most liberal sectors of the DFL. After looking into his campaign, I found out that Nelson-Pallmeyer is a more progressive, less elite alternative to Franken. Although Franken often mentions the late Sen. Paul Wellstone as his role model, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s grassroots campaign, stances on the issues, and intellectual demeanor (he’s an educator) resemble Wellstone much more than a comedian running for office does.
I stopped by Jack’s campaign office and briefly chatted with him about what he’d like to get done as Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator.
Most people describe you as the activist candidate. Let’s say you get the endorsement and you’re elected in November. Are you afraid that Washington bureaucracy will limit what you want to get accomplished as an activist?
It’s certainly difficult arena to work in on many levels, but I think the approach I’m taking to the race really helps – and that is that I see my role as helping to build the citizen movement that we need. The stronger that movement is, the stronger my voice is in Washington. I also think that by electing Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, an activist, we’re going to shake up politics in this state and country in ways that are really important. I recognize [Washington’s] a difficult arena, but I think having an activist and candidate that gets there in the context of building a citizen movement will really help.
Sometimes it’s tough to find your name and campaign mentioned in the media. Realistically, how are you doing on delegate support?
We’re doing very well on delegate support. It’s still an open race. I think for a long time the media was focused in exactly the wrong spot, which is money. They assumed that because Al Franken and Mike Ceresi had millions of dollars, they were the two candidates they needed to watch. And that’s really unfortunate, because what they need to be watching is which candidates are resonating with people. Now that Mike Ceresi dropped out – and he dropped out because he was behind in the delegate count – that at least opened up some space for people to look much more seriously at my campaign.
Some of my friends have stated that a lot of your stances synch up more with, say, the Green Party rather than the mainstream Democrats. So why, specifically, are you seeking the DFL endorsement?
Well I think the issues that are resonating with people that I promote are held in a really wide spot in Minnesota. Everywhere I go, people are worried about health care. People want a national solution to the health care crisis. Now is absolutely the time to work for a single-payer health care system. It’s a similar with Iraq. People want to end this war. Now, they may share a concern that we have some ethical responsibility for helping a country we’ve destroyed, but people want to end the war. That’s an issue that’s very broadly held. I see my campaign as opening up the possibility of unifying a lot of Democrats, hopefully bringing in some Greens, some independents, and even some alienated Republicans around the agenda we need to do.
You’ve stated that you’ll support whoever gets the DFL endorsement. Why is that?
Both Al Franken and I, and Mike Ceresi when he was in the race, stated that we wouldn’t buck the DFL endorsement process. The reason that’s so important is because I believe Norm Coleman has been a cheerleader for the worst administration in U.S. history, and that that administration has led us to the edge of a cliff. So it’s very important that we beat Norm Coleman. If the Democratic Party had a fight that extended into a primary in September, we’d just be taking away time and money away from the core task, which is to beat Norm Coleman.
Ceresi’s out, and it’s down to you and Franken. What makes you the better choice?
I’m a candidate that’s had a lot of experience. I’ve lived overseas working in Central America for a number of years. I’ve engaged in hunger and poverty and economic issues. I’ve tracked environmental concerns for 30 years. I know the climate change issues – I understand what the science is going to require in terms of solutions. My history of being a critic of the militarized foreign policy of this country is extensive, and I think even people who may have disagreed with me at times would probably look back now and say, “He was right.” And that’s true with the Iraq War as well. I was an advisor to Paul Wellstone. I also debated Congressman Jim Ramstad before the Iraq War vote. I warned him that this was a disaster, that we were being manipulated by politics of fear. I think all those things make me a very good candidate to address those problems.
Hypothetically, again, say you get the nomination and you’re elected in November. Which Senate committees would you like to serve?
I think I would be happy on almost any committee that they put me on. Let’s say they put me on Human Services. There we could address issues of hunger and poverty and inequality and health care issues. If they want to put me on foreign policy issues, I have a lot of ideas about how we get this country transitioned from a dominant military superpower to a global partner that will help solve pressing problems. Put me on transportation and I’ll work to build the rail lines we need to connect our cities and the windmills we need to power them. Put me on an energy committee and I’ll resist nuclear power and stand up to oil companies and promote alternative energy. All these issues in my view are connected and I would be making those connections.
You’re running with a very strong message to get the U.S. out of Iraq immediately. You’ve called it the worst foreign policy disaster. What do you want to see done with the War in Afghanistan?
I think Afghanistan has also been an enormous blunder and I was opposed to the very metaphor of the War on Terror. As soon as I heard that metaphor I knew we were in deep, deep trouble, because you don’t defeat terrorism in a war. We have to address the roots of [terrorism], the anger that leads to it. In my view, the attacks of 9/11 should’ve been treated as crimes against humanity. War is a very, very dangerous instrument. By militarizing [Afghanistan], by having spilling casualties, we are creating a disaster. I know the common terminology is “Iraq is bad, Afghanistan is good, and Iraq took attention away from Afghanistan.” I think our approach in Afghanistan was wrong.
So you’d like to see troop withdrawal from that area?
Yeah, and I would like to see a fundamentally different approach. If you look at the history, any country that has tried to occupy Afghanistan has been bankrupted or defeated. You don’t occupy other countries and win. [Afghanistan has] issues, for sure, but they’re not going to be resolved by bombings that kill civilians, they’re not going to be resolved without a willingness to actually sit down and listen to people who don’t want us there. This notion that there are military solutions to this problem needs to be fundamentally challenged.
You have lots of international experience. You and your wife once lived in Nicaragua running an Augsburg study abroad program. Given all this international experience, what would you do domestically for the state of Minnesota if you’re elected?
Here’s where some of my priorities are: We need a national health care system. No other industrialized country allows the insurance industry to determine their health care system; we do. It’s ridiculous. So I would really work hard towards a national single-payer health care system, which has profound implications for back here. I would cut the U.S. military budget and use 10 percent of that cut to have a universal preschool program for 3-5 year olds, which we desperately need to help give kids a good start. I would take away tax breaks for the richest one percent and make college and university education affordable for any student who wants to attend and is qualified. I would work on establishing a progressive tax system instead of our regressive one, because we have the highest degree of inequality in any industrialized country and we’re probably at the highest level of inequality in the history of our country. It’s one of the reasons why our economy isn’t working. We have allowed the richest one to five percent to garner almost all the income and wealth in this country for the last 25 years. So, these all have domestic implications.
As a professor of peace studies, I’m assuming the student vote is important to you.
Absolutely.
A lot of my peers still haven’t heard of you. What are you doing to reach out to students in this campaign?
I will be, over the next number of months, trying to get to each college and university in this state at least once. I also have a lot of young people involved in my campaign that know a lot more than I do about things like YouTube, so I hope there’s a lot of outreach taking place at that level. This is very much a grassroots campaign that spreads word of mouth from person to person and through a lot of these networks.
In a recent Minnesota Monitor interview, you talked about your spiritual mentors. Who are some of your political mentors?
I had a lot of respect for Paul Wellstone. I knew him, I really liked his first campaign. In it, not many people gave him a chance, he was an outsider, he didn’t get a lot of institutional support, but he kept working and took a very grassroots approach. Outside of this country there are lots people I’d call mentors, including Gandhi, Oscar Romero in El Salvador, some of the Jesuit priests I met in El Salvador who had this incredibly progressive vision of what a university should be, that it should be about training people to transform their society. But my mentors have also tended to be common people who do extraordinary things. Those are the people I get my energy from.
Tags: Al Franken, DFL endorsement, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Paul Wellstone, U.S. Senate race
Comments & Discussion
Really nice interview. right on!
Don’t believe one optimistic word from any public figure about the economy or humanity in general. They are all part of the problem. Its like a game of Monopoly. In America, the richest 1% now hold 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. Unlike ‘lesser’ estimates, this includes all stocks, bonds, cash, and material assets held by America’s richest 1%. Even that filthy pig Oprah acknowledged that it was at about 50% in 2006. Naturally, she put her own ‘humanitarian’ spin on it. Calling attention to her own ‘good will’. WHAT A DISGUSTING HYPOCRITE SLOB. THE RICHEST 1% HAVE LITERALLY MADE WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. Don’t fall for any of their ‘humanitarian’ CRAP. ITS A SHAM. THESE PEOPLE ARE CAUSING THE SAME PROBLEMS THEY PRETEND TO CARE ABOUT. Ask any professor of economics. Money does not grow on trees. The government can’t just print up more on a whim. At any given time, there is a relative limit to the wealth within ANY economy of ANY size. So when too much wealth accumulates at the top, the middle class slip further into debt and the lower class further into poverty. A similar rule applies worldwide. The world’s richest 1% now own over 40% of ALL WORLD WEALTH. This is EVEN AFTER you account for all of this ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS from celebrities and executives. ITS A SHAM. As they get richer and richer, less wealth is left circulating beneath them. This is the single greatest underlying cause for the current US recession. The middle class can no longer afford to sustain their share of the economy. Their wealth has been gradually transfered to the richest 1%. One way or another, we suffer because of their incredible greed. We are talking about TRILLIONS of dollars which have been transfered FROM US TO THEM. All over a period of about 27 years. Thats Reaganomics for you. The wealth does not ‘trickle down’ as we were told it would. It just accumulates at the top. Shrinking the middle class and expanding the lower class. Causing a domino effect of socio-economic problems. But the rich will never stop. They just keep getting richer. Leaving even less of the pie for the other 99% of us to share. At the same time, they throw back a few tax deductible crumbs and call themselves ‘humanitarians’. Cashing in on the PR and getting even richer the following year. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. Their bogus efforts to make the world a better place can not possibly succeed. Any ‘humanitarian’ progress made in one area will be lost in another. EVERY SINGLE TIME. IT ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. This is going to end just like a game of Monopoly. The current US recession will drag on for years and lead into the worst US depression of all time. The richest 1% will live like royalty while the rest of us fight over jobs, food, and gasoline. So don’t fall for any of this PR CRAP from Hollywood, Pro Sports, and Wall Street PIGS. ITS A SHAM. Remember: They are filthy rich EVEN AFTER their tax deductible contributions. Greedy pigs. Now, we are headed for the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. Crime, poverty, and suicide will skyrocket. SEND A “THANK YOU” NOTE TO YOUR FAVORITE MILLIONAIRE. ITS THEIR FAULT. I’m not discounting other factors like China, sub-prime, or gas prices. But all of those factors combined still pale in comparison to that HUGE transfer of wealth to the rich. Anyway, those other factors are all related and further aggrivated because of GREED. If it weren’t for the OBSCENE distribution of wealth within our country, there never would have been such a market for sub-prime to begin with. Which by the way, was another trick whipped up by greedy bankers and executives. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. The credit industry has been ENDORSED by people like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGenerous, Dr Phil, and many other celebrities. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. Now, there are commercial ties between nearly every industry and every public figure. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for their ‘good will’ BS. ITS A LIE. If you fall for it, then you’re a fool. If you see any real difference between the moral character of a celebrity, politician, attorney, or executive, then you’re a fool. No offense fellow citizens. But we have been mislead by nearly every public figure. WAKE UP PEOPLE. THEIR GOAL IS TO WIN THE GAME. The 1% club will always say or do whatever it takes to get as rich as possible. Without the slightest regard for anything or anyone but themselves. Reaganomics. Their idea. Loans from China. Their idea. NAFTA. Their idea. Outsourcing. Their idea. Sub-prime. Their idea. High energy prices. Their idea. Obscene health care charges. Their idea. The commercial lobbyist. Their idea. The multi-million dollar lawsuit. Their idea. The multi-million dollar endorsement deal. Their idea. $200 cell phone bills. Their idea. $200 basketball shoes. Their idea. $30 late fees. Their idea. $30 NSF fees. Their idea. $20 DVDs. Their idea. Subliminal advertising. Their idea. Brainwash plots on TV. Their idea. Vioxx, and Celebrex. Their idea. The MASSIVE campaign to turn every American into a brainwashed, credit card, pharmaceutical, love-sick, celebrity junkie. Their idea. All of the above shrink the middle class, concentrate the world’s wealth and resources, create a dominoe effect of socio-economic problems, and wreak havok on society. All of which have been CREATED AND ENDORSED by celebrities, athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for any of their ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTIBLE PR CRAP. In many cases, the ‘charitable’ contribution is almost entirely offset. Not to mention the opportunity to plug their name, image, product, and ‘good will’ all at once. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. These filthy pigs even have the nerve to throw a fit and spin up a misleading defense with regard to ‘federal tax revenue’. ITS A SHAM. THEY SCREWED UP THE EQUATION TO BEGIN WITH. If the middle and lower classes had a greater share of the pie, they could easily cover a greater share of the federal tax revenue. They are held down in many ways because of greed. Wages remain stagnant for millions because the executives, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, and entrepreneurs, are paid millions. They over-sell, over-charge, under-pay, outsource, cut jobs, and benefits to increase their bottom line. As their profits rise, so do the stock values. Which are owned primarily by the richest 5%. As more United States wealth rises to the top, the middle and lower classes inevitably suffer. This reduces the potential tax reveue drawn from those brackets. At the same time, it wreaks havok on middle and lower class communities and increases the need for financial aid. Not to mention the spike in crime because of it. There is a dominoe effect to consider. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. But our leaders refuse to acknowledge this. Instead they come up with one trick after another to milk the system and screw the majority. These decisions are heavily influensed by the 1% club. Every year, billions of federal tax dollars are diverted behind the scenes back to the rich and their respective industries. Loans from China have been necessary to compensate in part, for the red ink and multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the rich. At the same time, the feds have been pushing more financial burden onto the states who push them lower onto the cities. Again, the hardship is felt more by the majority and less by the 1% club. The rich prefer to live in exclusive areas or upper class communities. They get the best of everything. Reliable city services, new schools, freshly paved roads, upscale parks, ect. The middle and lower class communities get little or nothing without a local tax increase. Which, they usually can’t afford. So the red ink flows followed by service cuts and lay-offs. All because of the OBSCENE distribution of bottom line wealth in this country. So when people forgive the rich for their incredible greed and then praise them for paying a greater share of the FEDERAL income taxes, its like nails on a chalk board. I can not accept any theory that our economy would suffer in any way with a more reasonable distribution of wealth. Afterall, it was more reasonable 30 years ago. Before Reaganomics came along. Before GREED became such an epidemic. Before we had an army of over-paid executives, bankers, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, doctors, investors, entrepreneurs, developers, and sold-out politicians to kiss their asses. As a nation, we were in much better shape. Strong middle class, free and clear assets, lower crime rate, more widespread prosperity, stable job market, lower deficit, ect. Our economy as a whole was much more stable and prosperous for the majority. WITHOUT LOANS FROM CHINA. Now, we have a more obscene distribution of bottom line wealth than ever before. We have a sold-out government, crumbling infrastructure, energy crisis, home forclosure epidemic, 13 figure national deficit, and 12 figure annual shortfall. The cost of living is higher than ever before. Most people can’t even afford basic health care. ALL BECAUSE OF GREED. I really don’t blame the 2nd -5th percentiles in general. No economy could ever function without some reasonable scale of personal wealth and income. But it can’t be allowed to run wild like a mad dog. ALBERT EINSTEIN TRIED TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. UNBRIDLED CAPITALISM ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK. TOP HEAVY ECONOMIES ALWAYS COLLAPSE. Bottom line: The richest 1% will soon tank the largest economy in the world. It will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. The American dream will be shattered. and thats just the beginning. Greed will eventually tank every major economy in the world. Causing millions to suffer and die. Oprah, Angelina, Brad, Bono, and Bill are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE HUMANITARIAN. EXTREME WEALTH MAKES WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. WITHOUT WORLD PROSPERITY, THERE WILL NEVER BE WORLD PEACE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL. Of course, the rich will throw a fit and call me a madman.. Of course, they will jump to small minded conclusions about ‘jealousy’, ‘envy’, or ’socialism’. Of course, their ignorant fans will do the same. You have to expect that. But I speak the truth. If you don’t believe me, then copy this entry and run it by any professor of economics or socio-economics. Then tell a friend. Call the local radio station. Re-post this entry or put it in your own words. Be one of the first to predict the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time and explain its cause. WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.