Northern Virginia Green Party

Issues Survey
Your views are important to us as we update our Policy Agenda in 2007. Although you may not be a member of the Northern Virginia Green Party, you have taken the time to visit our website which means you probably share many of our core beliefs and values as our members. Our party leadership welcomes your views along with those of our members as we seek solutions to the many policy issues confronting all of us. Thank you for taking the time to share your views.
This survey consists of four issues sections: local, state, nation, and international. You may complete some or all of the sections. Time to complete all sections is about 15 minutes.

Local Issues
1. Do you support concentrating residential and commercial development in proximity to stations and stops along existing and future Metro rail, light rail, and bus routes (e.g., Smart Growth)?
2. Do you support greater use of synchronized traffic lights and transportation demand management to relieve traffic congestion?
3. Do you support a dedicated tax source to pay for operating expenses and capital costs for Metro rail, light rail, and bus services?
4. Do you support requiring local governments to ensure that they and their contractors pay a living wage to all their employees?
5. Do you support having our public schools become “commercial free zones” during regular school hours?
6. Do you support local governments requiring new commercial and residential buildings to be as “green” as possible?
7. Do you support greater use of renewable energy (e.g., solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, etc.) by local governments?
8. Do you support emphasis on energy efficiency by public agencies, businesses, and private citizens as a way to save money, reduce over dependence on foreign oil, and to save energy?
9. Do you support saving nearby family farms and encouraging the availability of more naturally grown and organic food?
10. Do you support making more affordable housing available to families and individuals having low or moderate incomes (e.g., police officers, firemen, teachers, etc.)?
11. Do you support employment centers, English as a second language (ESL) classes, and citizen education courses for recent immigrants to enable them to be assimilated more readily into our society?

State Issues
1. Do you support using Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as a way to avoid election of candidates with less than a majority of the votes, saving the costs of a recount or runoff election, and ensuring that every voter can “vote their conscience”?
2. Do you support requiring local governments to have paper validation for electronic voting machines?
3. Do you support reducing the number of registered voters required on petitions of candidates from parties other than the Democratic and Republican parties?
4. Do you support reasserting natural citizen control over bad corporate “citizens”?
5. Do you support life sentences without parole as an alternative to the death penalty to avoid the potential of putting to death an innocent person?
6. Do you support allowing patients and senior citizens the opportunity to obtain safe, effective, and less costly pharmaceuticals from Canada?
7. Do you support a woman’s right to make an early decision to discontinue her pregnancy if it might jeopardize her health or she is incapable of caring for her child?
8. Do you support public financing of local and state candidates who exceed a threshold of citizen funding and agree not to accept financial contributions from corporations?
9. Do you support the elimination of corporate subsidies, incentives, etc., except where there is a direct and measurable public benefit?
10. Do you support the right of employees to form unions and to allow the union to negotiate with management on behalf of all employees when it has been voted by a majority of workers to represent them?

National Issues
1. Do you agree that all citizens should enjoy the same medical insurance benefits as members of Congress, their families, and federal employees enjoy today?
2. Do you support the need for military spending levels that exceed the combined budgets of all other federal programs?
3. Do you support the right of high schools and colleges to refuse to allow military recruiters on their campuses without fear of jeopardizing their federal for educational and research programs?
4. Do you support boycotts of Exxon-Mobil and Wal-Mart until, respectively, Exxon-Mobil pays full damages for the Valdez tanker oil spill and Wal-Mart allows workers to organize unions at their stores?
5. Do you support cloning of animals or human body parts for any purpose?
6. Do you support a fair approach to providing all immigrants a meaningful path to citizenship, rather than labeling 12 million as criminals, threatening them with deportation, and tearing apart families trying to survive on near-poverty incomes?

International Issues
1. Do you support a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by December 31, 2007?
2. Do you support “Fair Trade” versus “free trade” with developing countries (e.g., elimination of (a) agribusiness subsidies that “dump” US government subsidized agricultural products into developing country markets, (b) purchasing products from developing countries manufactured in “sweat shops”, and (c) purchase of products that are made without the same environmental protections as we require in the US?
3. Do you favor having unelected international trade organizations overrule federal, state, and local government decisions on such matters as taxes levied on imported goods, boycotting goods produced in countries employing “sweat shop” and prison labor, etc.?
4. Do you support strengthening the political, social, health care, and peacekeeping capabilities of the United Nations?
5. Do you support non-interference by the US government in the internal political and economic affairs of Venezuela even though the legitimately elected government of that country does not share the US government’s point of view on paths to democracy and environmentally sustainable economic development?