I'm trying to turn a hard wire chandeleir into a swag. What do I do with the ground wire? Do I need it? If not, what's the best way to remove it? Can I just cut it?

If you are hard wiring the swag to the old lighting, the connections must be in a box. The wire needs a propler strain relief where it comes out. If you are installing an outlet, it must be in a box. In that case, connect the ground wire to the green screw on the outlet. Otherwise, just coil it up in the box.

The ground wire is the most important wire in an electrical system. You need to splice the bare wire of the swag kit onto the ground wire in the outlet box or connect to the metal outlet box.

Lace the bare wire through the swag kit chain and connect to the light fixture.

If the ground is not installed, and one of the lamp sockets short out to the metl frame of the light fixture, the frame will become energized, and stay that way until someone comes along and touches the light fixture.

If they are grounded, they will feel the electrical shock, and if they manage to get more than 5 Milliamps of current flow across the heart, the heart may go into ,oh hell , never mind the actual medical words, it will stop beating or begin beating irregularly, and the person may die.

Sorry for the blunt words, but that is the real world.

oh hell , nevermind the actual medical words,

For the record, I believe the correct term is "ventricular fibrillation". No?