Quick Index

• A Message from John
  
  
• Personal Information
  
  
• Candidate's Platform
  
  
• Contact Information
  
  

Position Papers:

• Abolish the World Bank
  along with the International Monetary Fund and the WTO, of course! "Free" Trade is Unfair Trade, and global development policies dictated by the transnational corporate elites are killing our neighbors!
  
  
• Corporate Leviathans
  are an evolving species of artificial intelligence, which need to be either tamed or exterminated.
  
  
• The International Criminal Court
  A vital tool against terrorism, at home and abroad, is finding its greatest resistance on Capitol Hill!
  
  
• The Right to Bear Arms
  is fundamental to maintaining our liberty, the price of which is eternal vigilance.
  
  
• No More Prisons
  Abolish the police state. Americans are imprisoned at 5 times the world average, but this has very little to do with crime. It's just business as usual, and it's wrong!
  
  
• Repeal Measure 11
  Many Oregonians, including children, have made mistakes for which they've been given outrageously long prison sentences, doubling our inmate population, and inflicting a cost which cannot be supported by this state's budget, nor by good conscience.
  
  

Positions I share
with Others:

• Why Socialism?
  by Albert Einstein
  One of the world's most celebrated Socialists tells it like it is, in the pages of "Monthly Review."
  
  
• The Abolition of Work
  by Bob Black
  offers insight into why I do not endorse traditional Marxism. The root cause of Capitalism's failure is rampant industrialism, an ailment shared with Marxist Socialism. We need to redefine work, a once and future part of life's great joys, which in present times has been twisted into something to be loathed.
  
  
• Christian Socialism
  by Dennis Wienk
  Rector, St. Thomas' Church
  I've never understood why more Christians aren't Socialists. I suspect Jesus was, but in any case, the last thing he would have ever done was vote Republicrat!
  
  
• I Have a Dream
  by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Politics Isn't Everything

Click Here to see what I do when the long day is done and I kick off my filibusterin' shoes!

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Click here for information about the

• Born: December 28, 1957; Oak Park, Illinois.
• Residency: 19 years in Oregon, mostly the Rogue Valley (since June of 1983)
• Occupation(s): Internet Developer, Entrepreneur, Activist
• Semi-Occupational Interests: Art (Painting), Music (Guitar & Woodwinds), Poetry, Molecular Nanotechnology
• Prior Governmental Experience: Citizen, Taxpayer, Voter
• Formal Education: Associate Degree in Computer Science, Rogue Community College (Grants Pass); Phi Theta Kappa
• Family Status: Single father of three grown children, aged 18 to 23. One baby grandchild.

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Platform:

1. NO MORE WAR. PERIOD. It is not at all difficult for people to live together in peace--no matter what their differences in language, culture, ethnicity and ideology. The U.S. simply needs to be a better neighbor, and to lead the world by example rather than by military might. I would like the U.S. to become the number one humanitarian superpower. Events like 9-11 would never happen if it weren't on account of morally bankrupt people who seize illegitimate power, push one another's buttons, and cause the rest of us to suffer. I call for a full investigation of the possible complicity of George W. Bush and associates in the provocation of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I will fight to cut the military budget by 50% and to repeal so-called "Patriot Act" which illegally restricts our constitutional freedoms.
2. STOP KILLING THE EARTH. We need to preserve every precious acre of wilderness we have left, and take active measures to restore much of the land which has been ravaged by the exploitationists. We need to acknowledge the dangers of global warming and abide by the Kyoto Protocol. Polluters should be required to clean up their own mess without delay, or pay triple the cost of cleanup into the EPA "Superfund."
3. Affordable top-quality HEALTH CARE FOR ALL. "Free" medical school for all academically qualified students who wish to attend in exchange for a period of service to be rendered thereafter. All licensed medical providers should be required to take the Hippocratic Oath.
4. EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES ~ practical, academic & cultural ~ for all persons, limited only by individual desires, abilities and ambition.
5. WORKERS RIGHTS = SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY. As we teeter on the edge of potential economic collapse, we need to remember that a crashed stock market MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the common person. It is a disaster only for the wealthy, and for those of the working class who have invested their savings unwisely in global capitalism's song and dance act. Should the artificial aspects of our national economy crumble into ruin, life can and will go on. Let the fat cats on wall street jump out of their windows, if obscene wealth is all they find worthy in life. For the rest of us, the raw materials for production will still be available; the factories will be standing; the farmlands still fertile; and, most importantly, the workers of our society will be ready and eager to work. To avoid social chaos during the transition, we need to repeal Union-busting laws such as the Taft-Hartley Act, and give control of the workplace back to its rightful owners, the workers themselves! Every 50 years, proclaim Jubilee.
6. PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CORPORATE CRIME. I support legislative remedies for the abomination of "corporate personhood." There are no rights and privileges without accountability, and a corporation simply cannot be held accountable for criminal wrongdoing. Who ever heard of a corporation being senetenced to prison? We all know of corporations which should but it is a logistical impossibility. So why should corporations have the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" They shouldn't. Yet the Supreme Court says they do! Clearer legislation needs to be drafted, and when a corporation commits criminal wrongdoing, its officers and directors need to be punished.
7. DISBAND THE POLICE STATE. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners. Undoubtedly, many of our convicts should remain where they are, and many of our top corporate officers should probably join them (see above), but an overwhelming majority of U.S. prisoners are charged with patently ridiculous offenses, some of which don't even merit fines. The only motive for this is the profit and greed of an out of control prison-industrial complex which threatens to incarcerate us all. States are overcompensated by the federal government for the cost of maintaining their prison populations; private industry is served by forced convict labor contracted to them for sub-minimum wages; and the leviathan of capitalism is elevated to a perverse godhood by its omnipotent power to devastate all who would oppose it--dictating that we bend with the corporate paradigm, or else! Repeal the Omnibus Crime Bill. Cut prison funding by 75 percent. LET MY PEOPLE GO!
8. CITIZEN REVIEW of all legislation. Most of the business which comes before congress to be voted on is carefully prepared by attorneys who deliberately make it hard to understand, all in order to conceal items from unrelated (and often unconscionable) agendas. As a consequence, U.S. Representatives need help understanding the bills they vote on, and rely heavily upon other persons to wade through the details, and to explain the legislation in understandable terms. Sadly, the people who typically "volunteer" to do this are actually employed by special interests--professional lobbyists who cannot be trusted with this responsibility. If elected, I will make all legislation available to the residents of my district, the only special interest I care about, and from whom I shall seek advisory feedback.

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CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions or comments, you may e-mail them to: granacki@ terragon.com or you can send a written letter the old-fashioned way, addressed to: John Granacki, 111 S.E. "G" Street, Grants Pass, Oregon, 97526.

Another option is to fill out the following form, entering your message in the large text box (all fields and checkboxes are optional) Unfortunately, this form requires that you have an e-mail account on the computer which you are using. We'll try to get a more user-friendly form on-line soon--one which can be used from a public library terminal,or even anonymously.

What is going on in the mainstream media? How can an entire nation full of professionally-trained journalists completely miss the point?

Listen to Dan Rather of CBS News commenting April 6 about the Mobilization for Global Justice which is preparing to sweep down on Washington, peacefully calling for an end to the environmentally, socially, and economically destructive practices of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: " ...If they're hoping for a replay of last year's violence in Seattle, those charged with keeping the peace in Washington, D.C., have other ideas."

Where does Dan Rather get off? The only violence committed in Seattle last December, as Mr. Rather well knows, was perpetrated by the police upon less than 200 demonstrators (less than one half of one percent of the total) who got a little bit out of line with vandalism, not violence (incidentally, very few of these alleged anarchists were arrested; mostly they were chased around the block repeatedly so as to keep the news cameras rolling).

ABC News isn't doing any better than CBS. The same night Dan Rather chose to play tough-guy enforcer for the corporate New World Order, ABC World News Tonight reported that people were arriving in Washington for an " unusual demonstration" focusing on trade relations with China. The China thing does, indeed, have the demonstrators, as well as all clear-thinking, politically conscious Americans, rankled--but China's World Trade Organization status is not the issue bringing the demonstrators to Washington.

We are summoned forth to tourney with the World Bank and the IMF. These global agencies have been wreaking havoc upon the Earth since their inception, and lately, with the growing malignancy of the dark principalities of corporate power, have become an unbearable burden upon this world's poorest nations. The suffering people of these nations owe nothing because they have received nothing. These debts have been incurred, for the most part, by corrupt leaders seeking purely personal gain. The loans were made with strings attached, or perhaps I should say ropes, by which the debtor nations have been essentially forced to hang themselves--such as insistence that the monies be spent to develop American style farming practices which all but guarantee crop failure in these distant and very different lands.

The IMF and the World Bank have allowed these atrocities to happen so that the Third World nations would fall deeper into the bondage of crippling debt, making them ripe for the plundering by transnational corporations--such as The Bechtel Corporation, which has recently attempted to privatize and commodify the water supply in Bolivia, having martial law declared (and numerous murders committed) to protect its misconceived corporate interest.

Actually, we are going to Washington to celebrate, for this is a Jubilee year, as ordained to Moses by the Burning Bush Himself - and we are celebrating Jubilee, the fifty year cycle of debt cancellation and restoration of familial and tribal estates.

We The People are proclaiming that the debts to the 41 poorest nations are null and void (Hey! Maybe the Japanese will get the spirit and cut us a little slack?)

Okay, we admit it, we are the same crowd that shut down the WTO in Seattle. We're Republicans & Democrats, Socialists & Libertarians, Anarchists & Independents - We're Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, Moslems & Unitarians, and a few Heathens for diversity's sake - we're children, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great-great grandparents - we're students & teachers, ministers & meatpackers, engineers & environmentalists, steelworkers & homemakers, longshoremen & lawyers! (The only thing we seem to be short on is international bankers ...). Basically, we're your typical Americans who have become wise to the game being played upon our backs by the corporate status quo. We are the sleeping giant who has been awakened, and we are demanding social and economic justice not only for ourselves, but for everyone who calls the Earth "home. "

Yes, Mr. Rather, we are most certainly going to have a repeat performance of last year's showdown in Seattle, but if "those charged with keeping the peace in Washington, D.C.," are anticipating violence, they had better "have other ideas." Love is the answer, and love will show us the way.

Break the bank.

--John Granacki
Ashland, Oregon (2000)

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In the ongoing refinement of my quixotic quest to abolish corporate oligarchy, educate humanity, and save the planet, I regularly find myself returning to a fascinating book by George Dyson entitled "Darwin Among the Machines" which superficially appears to be about a wide range of technical subjects, centering largely upon artificial intelligence and evolution, particularly how AI might evolve spontaneously on the Internet. This interpretation, however, completely ignores what I perceive to be Dyson's larger (if not quite so well-elucidated) issue, and certainly mine: That our social, political and economic institutions are evolving into artificial life-forms, possessed of a crude form of intelligence and, quite probably, a passable analog of that which we call consciousness. Furthermore, that this process has been going on for quite some time, and that in this Internet age it may be accelerating out of control.

Consider that the Internet is only a recent innovation, whereas this spontaneously evolving form of artificial intelligence, as displayed by governmental and corporate institutions, has been growing since long before computers were even dreamed of. A billion neurons? A billion molecules? A billion microprocessors? Humbug! All that is needed is a billion pieces of paper, a charter and bylaws, some policies and procedures, and a few thousand drones/employees-
/bureaucrats to act as switches, shuffling the data about. A crude artificial intelligence may thus be unwittingly spawned, and from this humble beginning evolve into forms ever more ominous and terrible. This is what our governments have been doing for millennia, and corporations for centuries. We don't ordinarily see this because we are extremely anthropocentric in our thinking. We can't even communicate with dolphins, which are practically our cousins. How can we possibly communicate with corporate consciousness, which when operating at its own level, is utterly alien and incomprehensible to even its most competent human expediters? Corporations are not people, but they have indeed become entities in and of themselves, although this may be difficult to see with our jaded eyes.

Almost 400 years ago, the scales were lifted from the eyes of Thomas Hobbes who, in his essay "Leviathan," warned us of his vision--that the British Empire itself had somehow breathed life and become a monster to be reckoned with. Since then, not only has that beast evolved significantly further, but so has its progeny, and the progeny of its progeny, ad infinitum. What Dyson is telling us, among other things, is that the evolutionary processes which guide the development of our organizational structures can work extremely fast, especially these days, now that our institutions are all computerized and online. We're going through what Steven Jay Gould might perceive as an era of "punctuated equilibrium" in which whole new phyla of social, cultural, and corporate organisms are springing into being, then either growing and evolving in proportion to their successes, or being pruned from the tree of survival due to a lack thereof.

As I see it, the major problems plaguing the world today are a result of the contrived and faulty mechanism of the selection process currently employed. Darwinian selection is natural, for whatever that's worth, but in the corporate arena the processes have become hideously unnatural and, furthermore, downright unhealthy, especially in their disregard for the Interdependent Web of Life, of which we "natural entities" are all vital components. I suppose it is only natural that the rules by which corporations are evolving should be unnatural, but these rules need to be declared, maintained and enforced by the people, as opposed to being dictated by the corporations themselves. With the right set of rules in place, this form of meta-evolution could be a tremendous boon to civilization, setting a straight and narrow path for the transnational corporations which, not unlike the proverbial angels, were designed to serve humanity, not to prey upon us.

Put people before profits. Support campaign finance reform. Abolish the WTO, the IMF and The World Bank. Make your voice heard--write to your Congressperson regularly. Vote your informed conscience. Embrace Socialism. Plant a seed.

--John Granacki
  Ashland, Oregon (2000)

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In December of 1999 the United Nations voted overwhelmingly (120-7 with 21 abstentions) in favor of establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) as the appropriate venue for prosecuting individuals who commit war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity--the definitions of which were severely restricted over the course of debate, but certainly not so far as to exclude acts of international terrorism. Although representatives of 115 countries have signed the treaty, at last count only 22 nations had ratified it. 60 ratifications are required before the ICC statute becomes law and can begin to hold these types of criminals accountable for their actions.

Oddly enough, the delay factor appears to be the United States, or more specifically, conservative forces on Capitol Hill--Senators and Representatives who seem to fear (and perhaps not unreasonably) that they themselves, along with many of their military henchmen and corporate masters, might be brought to justice. First, they insisted on language in the statute which maintains the legality of nuclear weapons, acts of aggression, and the withholdong of food and medical aid from civilian populations. Then, just to be sure their backs were fully covered, they refused to support the ICC even in this watered-down form. To aggravate the situation further, the GOP forced passage of House Resolution #2381 to “prohibit United States economic assistance for countries that ratify the treaty” and to “inform allies and adversaries of the United States that ratification...will be considered an unfriendly act directed against the United States.”

It is precisely this sort of bullying and cabalistic protectionism which has been inciting worldwide hostility against the United States and its citizens, even from the closest of our traditional allies. It is a national disgrace.

If we wish to spare the world from the ravages of international terrorism then we must begin at home, by reining in its most subtle practitioners on Capitol Hill who are, fortunately for us, no longer in control of the U.S. Senate. Indeed, it is our Senators who possesses the exclusive power to ratify treaties. In the matter of the International Criminal Court, they should be strongly encouraged to do so, and to encourage leaders of other nations to do likewise. Until then, we remain at the mercies of terrorists at worst and global mob rule at best. Without law and order at the international level there can be no world peace.

--John Granacki
  Umatilla, Oregon (2001)

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Postscript: In June of 2002 the ICC treaty was finally ratified by the member nations of the U.N. The criminals on Capitol Hill, mostly conservatives and so-called "neo" liberals, continue to resist, insisting that as Americans they are somehow above the law. Hopefully, the ICC prosecutor will issue the appropriate indictments and arrest warrants, then send a paddy wagon down to D.C. to round them all up. --JG

This was originally written for The Ashland Daily Tidings, in response to a letter from James A. Farmer, wrongly accusing Socialists and Socialism of plotting restrictions upon his 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms. In brief, I (an avowed Socialist) strongly support the 2nd amendment, and regard as nonsensical the often heard liberal argument that we as citizens are no longer in danger from our own government, as was clearly the case at the time of British occupation. If anything, I see this danger as having increased steadily over the past two centuries.--JG

On February 15, 2000, the combined U.S. jail and prison population topped 2 million-an unprecedented record which casts dark suspicion on the modern American definition of justice. Our country contains only 5 percent of the global population, and yet we incarcerate a full 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. A full half of our inmates are African- Americans, a group comprising merely 13 percent of our citizens-at-large. 70 percent of our prisoners are locked up for non-violent offenses, which may help explain (although certainly not justify!) why the fastest growing segment of our prison population is female.

Perhaps the most sobering statistics of all concern the rapid growth of the privatization of the prison-industrial complex--prisons operated for profit by double-dealing corporations, which bill the state for incarceration services while simultaneously exploiting the inmate population as a cheap source of labor. This “gulag factor” also plays a prominent role in state-operated prisons, almost all of which contract inmate labor to other agencies, as well as to private companies eager to secure cheap and reliable long-term employees. Quid pro quo, these companies support the prison-industrial complex as a matter of fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. California, for instance, supplies a vast inmate workforce to perform clerical services for companies such as Chevron Oil. Chevron was one of the major contributors to the campaign for California to adopt the notorious “three strikes you’re out law,” assuring life sentences without possibility of parole for habitual offenders (many for nothing more serious than shoplifting) and likewise assuring Chevron of a huge reserve pool of long-term sub-minimum wage employees. Chevron denies any such connection, of course...

Also occuring on February 15, 2000, the NASDAQ composite index soared above 4500 to close at a record high. Bearish times have since befallen that market, but the prison industry remains as bullish as ever--a veritable penal Pamplona. Indeed, there is clearly a lot of “bull” running rampant through the streets of this so-called “land of the free,” but there is no evidence which even remotely suggests a crime rate of five times the world average. Rather it is our national attitudes which call for closer scrutiny: our indulgent self-absorption as we recklessly pursue the exalted dollar; our callous disregard for the lives and liberties of our ever more faceless and nameless neighbors; and, above all, our politics of demagoguery which feed upon our all-too-human fear, greed, and prejudice. These combine to produce a system of perverted justice which caters to the leviathanic interests of the status quo.

The obvious goal among the movers and shakers of the privileged class is to label as second-class citizens all persons who are not members of their inner circle, and perhaps even a large percentage of those who are! And what better tactic than having them all branded as convicted felons? Not only is the subject thereby deprived of life, liberty, honor and competitive edge, but many states also require that such persons forfeit their voting rights. Currently there are over 3.9 million Americans who have become politically disenfranchised in this manner, over a third of them black.

A particularly frightening trend is the ever diminishing ages at which this dehumanizing process is being initiated. As they are arrested on petty pretenses and either incarcerated or placed on probation, our impressionable youth are being stripped of their rights in a most subtle and devious manner--led to believe that they never had such rights to begin with. The limitations on the liberties of children are thus routinely extended into adulthood. As further restrictions are imposed on successive generations, each surrendering more constitutionally guaranteed ground than the one which preceded it, the populace is being acclimatized to an ever increasing barometer of tyranny. It has now reached the point that we are expected to endure such atrocities as inflicted by the Seattle police during the WTO protests: martial law enforced under the flimsy guise of “curfew,” a special type of law which is properly applied only to minors. Meanwhile, it has become typical for juvenile detention facilities to quadruple in size with each doubling of the base population they are intended to serve. Our children, often caged like animals for offenses no more serious than swearing or smoking cigarettes, are being taught to view themselves as commodities--destined for subservience to a cold authoritarian master who may be neither seen nor fully comprehended.

This commodification of humankind is a systemic illness of our corporate-dominated society. It is reflected not only in our burgeoning population of inmates, but also in the ranks of the unemployed, the undereducated, the working poor, the homeless, and many other similarly marginalized and disenfranchised classes--all of these roles being mutually interchangeable and by no means exclusive. With wages kept low, housing prices and other costs of living high, options scarce, and overall security tenuous at best, the perpetually implied threat of further dispossession keeps dissent at a minimum. As more people buy into the myth that there is no alternative to a corporate-dominated New World Order, they come to accept their diminished status as chattel, finding a dysfunctional satisfaction with less and less to show for more and more of their time and labor. As a consequence, social unrest has declined over the past few decades and the crime rate has actually plummeted to its lowest levels ever! Faced with a shrinking supply of bona fide criminals to sate the system’s ravenous appetite and fuel the fires of public hysteria, the pundits of the prison-industrial complex have simply broadened the definition of crime, thereby enabling the conscription of record numbers of inmates from the growing surplus of honest citizens. Also, sentencing guidelines have been expanded to assure lengthy mandatory prison terms for perpetrators of some of the most trivial non-violent and victimless offenses.

At present, 30 percent of all American prisoners are being held for victimless "crimes." Of the remainder, a majority are locked up for non-violent offenses, typically involving other people’s property. Of those classified as violent offenders, many are detained in pairs for mutually consensual displays of rowdy playfulness. An uncomfortably high percentage is being held for clearly defined actions of self-defense--not recognized as a valid defense argument in many states. Since the passage of Oregon’s “Measure 11” in 1994 (mandatory minimum sentencing with no judicial consideration of mitigating circumstances) many persons are serving between 6 and 25 years for defending themselves and their families against assaults with murderous intent!

As unconscionable as the present state of affairs may be, indications are that things are growing worse. The State of Oregon was lodging 6,515 inmates at the close of 1995. The figure is now over 11,000, and expected to top 15,000 by 2004. Faced with a major budget shortfall while still having three new prisons under construction--to complete the construction of and to thereafter staff and maintain--Oregon’s Governor has been worrying about where he’ll find the funding. What Oregon’s citizens should be worrying about is where he is going to find the prisoners!

We can solve a lot of the problems by simply stopping construction, perhaps first by withdrawing the federal funding. We have far too many prisons already, and we are holding way too many of our honest and productive neighbors as prisoners. It's time to lighten up and let the harmless ones return to their families and communities.

--John Granacki
  Salem, Oregon (2001)

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Recently, I had the incredibly bad fortune to stand before a jury of my peers and have certain idiosyncrasies of my circumstances and behavior evaluated according to the inflexible letter of the law. I can't complain. I knew what I was doing (working within the system via ballot box access to create a better world for my children...) and was aware of the potential consequences. Furthermore, in that it was my third felonious non-offense of record, I am extremely grateful to be living in the State of Oregon, as opposed to one of the so-called "three strikes, you're out" states. Comparatively speaking, my sentence was fair and just.

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