Mike Gravel
Maurice Robert Gravel (born May 13, 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts), better known as Mike Gravel, was a Democratic U.S. Senator (1969-1981) from Alaska and is primarily known to history as the person who published a large portion of the Pentagon Papers. Gravel also nominated himself for Vice President of the United States at the 1972 Democratic National Convention and is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2008.
During his first term in the Senate he authored a book entitled Citizen Power. In the book he advocated the implementation of numerous social democratic ideas, including a guaranteed annual income (which he termed a "citizen's wage") of $5,000 per person, irrespective of whether the person worked.
After leaving the Senate having lost the Democratic primary in 1980, Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state ballot initiatives, arguing that Americans have the capability to legislate responsibly and the Act and Amendment his organization has authored would allow for American citizens to become "law makers".
According to the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Mike Gravel appeared as a speaker on his National Initiative for Democracy at the June 2003 conference of a Holocaust-deniers' publication, The Barnes Review [1].
On April 13, 2006, Gravel announced that he would, on April 17, become a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election.
External links
 | This article about an Alaska politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |