Mike Miles, a Green
running for Congress
healthy, happy and strong...Miles is running
 |
Mike Miles is running for Congress in the Seventh District, as a Green Party candidate, because Miles thinks he’s more in tune with our declining fossil fuel energy future than long term Democrat Congressman Dave Obey. Having garnered almost ten percent the vote in the last election, Miles was able to leverage his entrance into this year’s Wisconsin Public radio debates with republican challenger Nick Reid and Congressman Obey. Miles is a fifty-three year old Catholic Worker, who opposes the war in the Middle East and has built an off the grid eco-village in western Wisconsin. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network reports. |
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Mikes Miles is running for Congress as a Green Party candidate because he thinks he’s more in tune with our declining fossil fuel energy future than Congressman Dave Obey.
Last June Mike Miles ran Grandma’s marathon between Twin Harbors, Minnesota and Duluth-Superior. One reason he ran this grueling race his daughter had done it last year.
About a two weeks before the race Mile’s hamstring got really sore.
“I mean it’s so bad when I’m trying to run I can’t pick up my left leg off the ground. My foot is scuffing the ground”
So Mike Miles stretched and went to the chiropractor, used some ice, and castor oil, and took some saunas. And he went to the race that morning in late June. He had no idea whether he’d get a mile down the road or not. But he got down the road alright. He finished the race in about four hours.
“So it was a good thing. It made me think, you know, if you get ready for the race you can do the race.”
Mike Miles has been getting ready for this congressional race since he lived in Baltimore during the early nineteen eighties at Jonah House. Miles is a protégé to the radical Catholic anti-war activists Liz Mc Allister, and Daniel and Phillip Berrigan. Miles has spent time in jail opposing the Iraq War and nuclear weapons.
Miles doesn’t excuse Congressman Obey and other democrats, during the nineteen ninties, for their complicity in supporting siege warfare against Iraq. The UN says five thousand Iraqi children died every month from the sanctions.
“So if you look at the Iraq War in it’s totality Clinton and the democrats killed more innocent people in Iraq than senior Bush and Junior Bush have done in their hot wars.
So Obey loves to bash the President and bask the republicans on war, but what he does consistently is keep funding the war. He keeps giving the President all the money he requests to keep fighting this war.”
A few weeks ago some professors at Nicolet College in Rhinelander attempted to set up a public debate between Miles, republican challenger Nick Reid, and Congressman Obey, raising questions about American militarism and energy wars in the middle east.
Congressman Obey reviewed the questions.
“So I don’t know what happened then, but the next thing we know Obey refuses to participate and the professors say, well, we’ll do it without him, will you come if he’s not there, and then the professors get back to me again, the administration has told us if you have these debates and Obey is not there you can’t advertise them, except by word of mouth to the students, and no media.”
On the environment Congressman Obey points out he follows the conservation tradition the father of Earth Day, former US Senator Gaylord Nelson. But Miles challenges this connection.
“Is that if I hear him one time invoke the spirit of Gaylord Nelson I’m going to gag myself with a spoon. I’m tired of it. Because he’s resting on past laurels.”
Miles says Congressman Obey hasn’t done enough against the wasteful Arrowhead Weston electric line and the Enbridge gas line coming down from Canada.
“Where is Dave when it comes to things like the Arrowhead Weston line which is the past. Where would Gaylord be if he was in the Senate and he knew that cultures in Canada were being destroyed by hydro electric dams. Where would Gaylord be if he were looking at the potential of bringing heavy oil made from tar sands through our area, without stopping in our area, taking three times as much energy to make as we get from it.”
Miles acknowledges that Congressman Obey has gotten some federal funds for building a by pass around Rhinelander and other projects, but when the oil and natural get more expensive the heavy equipment operators will need to know how to survive.
“This guy that’s running our bulldozer up in Rhinelander he wants to live in the house we just built. Because the house we just built, a straw bale house with solar radiant heat floor, with photovoltaics, you know, this house we just built for less than fifteen thousand dollars, doesn’t even use energy it creates energy, our bulldozer operator want’s to live in this house, I’m telling you, he wants to save some money, and nobody going to be able to turn the spigot off on him.”
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