Mike Gravel

Maurice Robert "Mike" Gravel (pronounced "Gravelle," not Gra-vel") (1930–) is a former Democratic senator from Alaska, who briefly ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008 (doing so again in 2020), then switched his affiliation in March 2008 to unsuccessfully seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. He is otherwise best known for his career in the U.S. Senate during the 1970s. His current activities include campaigning for a national initiative and referendum to be implemented at the federal level in the U.S.

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Senatorial career

Gravel served as the Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981. His most notable achievements during this time were filibustering the Vietnam draft twice, appealing a case to the Supreme Court to have the Pentagon Papers read into the record, and opposing nuclear testing in Alaska.

He lost his seat in the 1980 election due largely to an anti-incumbent backlash in Alaska over anger over the Alaska Lands Conservation Act, which passed in 1980. That Gravel had opposed the Act and even tried to filibuster it didn't matter; Gravel had earlier opposed and successfully blocked a weaker "compromise" lands bill, and because of this he got the blame for the stronger bill passing. Alaskans were pissed off enough that he lost the Democratic primary, and the victorious Democrat then lost the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski.

2008 US Presidential Election positions

The Good

He was pro-choice on everything, ranging from abortion to gay marriage and pot. While he supports the FairTax initiative, just like Jesus's homeboy, Gravel calls his version the "Progressive FairTax," which includes a full rebate for necessities like food. Sweet! He is in favor of a carbon tax and international action on climate change, as well as a new guest worker program. He also is highly against the war in Iraq, as many Libertarians are.

Gravel is officially a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, though he is suspected of being a deep-cover atheist, or at least some kind of non-believer. He communicated support for the Rational Response Squad during his 2008 campaign, supports more funding and rigor in science education, and opposes creationism. Gravel also released a video on YouTube called "The Oppressive Nature of Religion" and dodged questions on his belief in religion at debates, saying that our society should be guided by love and not religion.[1]

The Really Good

Gravel supported a constitutional amendment that would allow voter initiatives and referendums on a federal level, similar to the system in Switzerland...but bigger. He supported the impeachment of Curious George, and the United State's second amendment. Finally, his campaign ads were superb works of Bill Viola-esque video art.

He also supports Universal Healthcare[2] and for college tuition to be paid by government.[3]

2020 Presidential Election positions

Gravel formed an exploratory committee on March 19, 2019,[4] and made his FEC filing the next month.[5] Unlike the other candidates, Gravel clarified he was not running to actually win the nomination, but to bring left-wing ideas to the Democratic primary debate stage.[6] In such a crowded field including other progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elisabeth Warren, he never distinguished himself and dropped out early on.

His official platform includes the following positions:

  • Enacting Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All and eliminating private health insurance.[7]
  • Enacting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal.[7]
  • Creating a free public tax preparation and tax filing program.[7]
  • Abolishing the NSA, ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.[7]
  • Abolishing the Electoral College, instilling a ranked choice voting system, and establishing automatic voter registration.[7]
  • Banning the death penalty, cash bail, solitary confinement, mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons.[7]
  • Repealing the USA PATRIOT Act.[7]
  • Closing all offshore military bases, cutting military aid to Saudi Arabia and Israel, sending all abroad soldiers back to the United States, ending the use of drones, and renaming the Department of Defense to the "Department of War".[7]
  • Investing $1.5 trillion in infrastructure.[7]

The Bad

Gravel is a 9/11 "truther" and supports a new investigation into the attacks.[8] In 2016, he said "there's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job":[9]

Kevin Barrett: You've been involved with the 9/11 truth movement I believe in part because you recognise that this kind of issue has such profound psychological consequences in terms of possibly undermining people's attachment to the current form of government. In the event that we learn, for example, that our own leaders were complicit in the events of 9/11...
Mike Gravel: They were. I think there's no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job. And why is it so unusual? My God, they kill millions and millions of people. Is it a big deal for them to kill three thousand? Here, we killed 58 thousand American servicemen in the Vietnam War and all they did was die in vain. So what's so unusual about killing three thousand more in order to develop the grist for the mill to empower into infinity the funding of the military–industrial complex?[10]

Gravel: What happened on 9/11 is not what the government told us in their report. It's a lot more complex than that. I personally think that it was an inside job.[11]

In April 2019, Gravel said "there had to be somebody that was planting the explosives in these buildings which came down by controlled demolition":

Evan McMorris-Santoro: There has been some question about your feelings about 9/11. Can you just help to clarify what your position is on that?
Gravel: I'm very clear. I think that there's elements it was an inside job. Now there had to be somebody that was planting the explosives in these buildings which came down by controlled demolition. We know from science and physics that it wasn't the airplanes that brought it down.[12]

Later in April, he discussed 9/11 with David Pakman:[13]

Gravel: So now we get to what did the committee produce, the commission. Well, first off, and this is what makes you suspicious, they said no mention was mentioned in the commission about Building 7. Building 7 came down at 5:30 on the same day as the others came down in the morning, the Twin Towers, and Building 7 had never been hit by an airplane. You have modest fires but the person who owned the lease on the Twin Towers also owned Building 7 and he then gave the order to bring the building down. If you look at the way the building came down you'll see that it was a controlled demolition, no question about that. And so now you see architects and engineers,File:Wikipedia's W.svg thousands, coming out and saying that, hey, this element of physics didn't fit, this element didn't fit and then the testimony you have of people hearing "bop bop bop" as the floors came down in the Twin Towers, indicating that hereto this was an interior controlled demolition.
[...]
Gravel: I think it's very important because I've not had a chance to defend myself that when I say it's an inside job, I don't know who the insiders are.
[...]
Pakman: What would convince you that the government was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. What would you need to see?
Gravel: I don't know if the government was involved or not involved. I think, from my point of view in reading this very carefully and studying a lot of the reports that came out including the official government report and the article in Popular Mechanics, that right now there's a consensus in the American public nurtured by the military–industrial complex and mainstream media that there's no need to have another commission study.
[...]
Pakman: Your position is not that you believe the government was involved in 9/11, it's that so far you're not satisfied that any investigation has disproven it. Senator?
Gravel: Accurate, yes. You're quite right but my position hasn't changed. I still use the terminology "inside job". Who is on the inside I don't know but a commission could help probably discover what that is. Right now all we do is say these were a group of Saudis, young Saudis, that were out there doing their thing to damage America. Well, this group of Saudis, interestingly enough, had a lot of help from somebody. From somebody, I don't know, I don't say it's the Vice President.

In addition to being a 9/11 truther, Gravel believes that the government covered up the existence of UFOs. In 2013, he attended a "citizens hearing" on the subject.[14]

The Ugly

Um... he’s very, very old.

Why the Switch?

Gravel switched to the Libertarian Party because of his opposition to war, not because he was a right-winger. He felt that the DNC was being unfair to him and too friendly to Obama and Clinton (sound familiar?). Gravel also decided that he owed his libertarian friends a favor, and seemed really enthusiastic about the Libertarians — until he found out what freedom the Libertarians were really for: the "free" market. Gravel went back to the Democrats with his tail between his legs after the Convention — a reminder to everyone to steer away from peer pressure.

The Gravel Institute

In 2020, he used some of the leftover money from his presidential candidacy to found the Gravel Institute, which aims to counter right wing misinformation. The videos use a similar format to PragerU, which the institute intends to counter, by featuring well known speakers (such as Richard D. WolffFile:Wikipedia's W.svg and Brianna Joy GreyFile:Wikipedia's W.svg, with planned appearances from Bernie Sanders and Chelsea Manning) and five to ten minute videos. Unlike PragerU, they actually list sources and label the axes of their graphs. The day to day operation of the channel is handled mostly by the same two teenagers who ran his 2020 campaign.[15] They have over 309K followers on Twitter[16] and over 158K subscribers on YouTube.[17]

gollark: It's better than Java.
gollark: So I guess... Kotlin?
gollark: Well, your style is evil OOP.
gollark: There're concurrent hashmaps and stuff presumably implemented with `unsafe`.
gollark: (thread-safe reference-counting pointer to a mutex to a T)

References
  1. RRS on Gravel, Gravel: "Oppressive Nature of Religion, Gravel debate
  2. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/28278-mike-gravel-wants-universal-health-care
  3. http://www.pewforum.org/2008/11/04/religion-and-politics-08-mike-gravel/
  4. Mike Gravel for President Exploratory Committee Federal Election Commission. 03/19/2019.
  5. STATEMENT OF CANDIDACY Federal Election Commission. 04/02/19.
  6. Mike Gravel announces run for president to get into debates, not to win The Hill. 04/04/19.
  7. Gravel 2020 Platform
  8. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/09/senator-engineers-911-controlled-demolitions/
  9. Cheadle, Harry. "Mike Gravel, the Online Left-Wing Sensation, Is Also a 9/11 Truther". Vice. March 22, 2019.
  10. "Senator Mike Gravel: 9/11 was an inside job, US is not a democracy_ on Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad Radio". June 22, 2016. (quote begins at 31:30)
  11. Network Radio: "Senator Mike Gravel Says 9/11 Inside Job". YouTube. September 11, 2016.
  12. VICE News: "The Teens Running Former Sen. Mike Gravel's Presidential Campaign (HBO)". YouTube. April 18, 2019.
  13. David Pakman Show: "David & Senator Mike Gravel Debate 9/11 Conspiracies". YouTube. April 25, 2019. https://www.adn.com/commentary/article/former-senators-crazy-ideas-turn-out-be-mainstream/2016/04/26/
  14. Some of this former Alaska Senators ideas weren't so crazy after all April 2019/.
  15. https://www.mic.com/p/can-the-gravel-institute-compete-with-the-right-wing-youtube-machine-48130839
  16. https://twitter.com/GravelInstitute?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
  17. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC95fKRwnEvd8RTX74Iz3TcA
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