Howie Hawkins has got a lot of strong things to say about the smokescreen kabuki going on between Cuomo and Palidino. As quoted by Celeste Katz of Daily News:
[Hawkins] "Both want to cut public spending and services in order to keep tax breaks for the wealthy. All that's left to argue about is 'who's the bigger man?' -- and the media's falling for it. Given the chance to debate, I can provide New Yorkers with a competing vision, my prosperity plan vs. their austerity plan."
Hawkins is calling for a "Green New Deal" with a WPA-style green jobs program to put the state's 800,000 unemployed back to work. The plan, according to Hawkins, could be financed with the yearly $16 billion in Stock Transfer Tax funds that are currently rebated right back to Wall Street.
"Cuomo and Paladino whine about the so-called 'budget crisis' but won't even mention the Stock Transfer Tax. Andy and Carl's hot tub reconciliation will come after Election Day, when they're toasting champagne glasses with Wall Street banksters."
I like what Hawkins is asserting these days. Like when he floats the question as to whether the janitor of Trump Towers is paying a higher rate of taxes than Trump himself. Hawkins is the political hero I have been holding out for! THE ALTERNATIVE now that I have pledged to vote "none of the above" (NOTA) to Legacy Democratic Party candidates!
Of course, the media and political machines won't give him air time. But isn't it time to stop holding our noses while voting? Time to stop voting for a hopped-up media/ad-created faux-personality and endorse and enable a real candidate of the people, grounded in principle and integrity?
Alan Singer at Huffpo writes:
The Green Party is running Howie Hawkins, a teamster from the Rochester area who works for UPS for governor and Gloria Mattera, a health professional and community organizer from Brooklyn for lieutenant governor. I think the Green Party campaign is different from the campaigns of the other minor candidates and from the major parties and bears close attention ...
Jon Stewart has accused minority parties on the left and right of promoting extremism and of irrationality. In the case of the New York Greens, Stewart is definitely wrong! Hawkins and Mattera are two of the most rational and thoughtful people I have met in the political arena. They make the Democratic and Republican Party candidates look like the irrational extremists.
Howie Hawkins told me "Paladino thinks he is mad, but he's not as mad as me!" He thinks, "The basic issue in this campaign is: Will our state government be for the people, or continue to serve the super-rich and the giant corporations?"
Hawkins is wrong in one respect. This is probably the basic issue facing the entire country.
Hawkins told the assembled group that New York State and the nation need a new "New Deal," a "Green New Deal." It would include the promise of full employment with government as employer of last resort; a single-payer health plan; and full funding for education. He also called for an end to tuition in the city and state universities, a state bank to invest government funds and pension dollars, and a more progressive tax structure.
Gloria Mattera used her allotted speaking time to explain the four pillars of the Green Party: Non-violence and the demilitarization of the United States; social and economic justice; ecological wisdom; and grassroots participatory democracy.
How refreshing is all of this after the corporate puppet cronies spin their spin, and our mid-term choice we are told is idiot-easy! No it is not. I don't want to enable the lesser of two evils. That promotes evil, don'tchaknow? Weren't Cuomo, Schumer, et al. attending Rangel's recent birthday party? Stand by your allegedly criminal activities man! A united front, even when the center is rotten? I guess they decided that loyalty was more important to the electorate (and cronies everywhere) than showing ANY criticism of a crony who is being called out on illegal and unethical behaviors, of which undoubtedly many have their own political closets full.
Alas, Rangle won his primary. The majority of those voters were sadly not mature enough to vote principle above personality. But there are mature voters looking for integrity over cronyism. We have to deliver tough love loud and clear with our voices and votes because God know's the legacy parties aren't capable of it. Cronyism all the way. (As Rahm heads for Chicago and his cronyism-earned mayoral "crowning"). Even in New York, The Working Family Party wouldn't endorse a profound "working family candidate" if I ever saw one, Jonathan Tasini, on the Dem ticket, mind you, against Rangel. It was a telling moment. These cats can't drain the swamp. We need alternative candidates of integrity and the alternative candidates, in this case, the Greens, are ready to roll!
Like Hawkins for Governor in New York State (and our Corrente friend Julia Williams running for Green Congressperson in Detroit), they are willing to blast through the corporate and military crony firewalls to the TRUTH! They stand on refreshing and renewing truth to power platforms!
Here are Hawkins' own pronouncements on the Working Family Party choice to endorse Legacy Dems at the expense of real reform alternative candidates: (The days of me googling the WFP to see which Dems to vote for are SO OVER!!!!!)
“WFP should learn from this [Cuomo] rejection that power for working people comes from their independent political action, not acting as a faction of the Democratic coalition and handing over their votes to the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, which then takes their votes for granted and reduces their leverage and power to nothing. The WFP, along with much of the media, promotes the party as a progressive alternative, despite their failure to actually pass hardly any legislation. But every time I and other Greens have faced WFP-endorsed democratic nominees for office, they supported more war, more money for the military, and more corporate welfare, while opposing things such as single payer health care or strong action on climate change,” noted Hawkins. “Now they have rolled over for Andrew Cuomo, the latest son seeking to inherit his father’s former office, who refuses to make Wall Street and the rich pay their fair share of taxes, who intends to make war with the public employees union, supports expanding the financial waste of charter schools and wants to impose caps on public spending. The WFP leadership has become just another self-serving political faction more interested in their personal power and patronage, just use the name working families as a advertising slogan to mislead the voters,” added Hawkins, a teamster who is the only union member running for Governor.
Hawkins said he would welcome the opportunity to debate the WFP nominee but so far their candidate is just a charade playing inside political games while the WFP leadership treats their own members and the voters with disdain.
“The WFP suffers from unrequited love. They did all this work for the Dems and the Dems kick them out when they feel they no longer need them. Greens would welcome a coalition with the WFP if they embraced independent politics. On the surface, we share a lot of values and policy demands. We just see WFP’s electoral strategy as politically suicidal. Those chickens are coming home to roost with Cuomo’s rejection,” added Hawkins.
Unrequited love, huh? Remind you of any Dem president you know selling out America to unimpressed and rapacious heartless Republicans? You get down with Blue Dogs, the whole damn country gets up with quality of life eroding fleas!
Hawkins is equally outspoken and articulate about the horror and moral travesty of the military industrial security complex:
Hawkins joined local peace activists outside the Hancock National Guard Airbase in opposing it as a site to remotely control reaper killer drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The NY Times today reported that the CIA has greatly increased the use of the drones in Pakistan in recent weeks. The unmanned drones fly at 50,000ft, are virtually invisible and carry a deadly payload of missiles and bombs. Costing about $13 million each, and up to $100,000 for each of its four Hellfire missiles, drones are an extraordinary amount of cash that is routinely being spent to try to kill a single individual.
Hawkins condemned the FBI raids on antiwar groups conducted in six states last Friday. “The FBI is criminalizing antiwar activism while failing to address the corporate crime wave at the root of the banking crisis that has caused the worst crisis of unemployment and home foreclosures since the Great Depression,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said that as Governor he push to bring all National Guards troops home to New York. Hawkins also called for ending the wars, bringing all American troops home, and cutting the federal military budget 50 to 75% to create a peace dividend to rebuild America, pay for a WPA style jobs programs for the unemployed, and finance a rapid transition to a carbon free economy.
“The two major parties are always so willing to send our young men and women to die in foreign lands to protect the oil and gas companies under the guise of creating democracy, but they fight as hard at the can to prevent a real multi-party democracy here in America,” asked Hawkins, a former Marine who organized opposition to the Vietnam War.
Hawkins said that as Governor he will rally other states to demand large cuts in the military budget to provide fiscal relief to state and local governments, support the conversion to a green energy system, and to create jobs through increased investments in housing, child care, anti-hunger programs, mass transit, schools and environmental initiatives. Hawkins supports direct government employment in public works and services on the model of the 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Finally, a candidate willing to stop ignoring that un-ignorable (un-ignorable ... except to 99% of our elected representatives and the entire corporate media) elephant in the corner of the room. MASSIVE MILITARY SPENDING. More from Hawkins:
“Candidates for Governor usually argue they have no role in foreign policy. But the war in Afghanistan / Pakistan is being fought right from Sy racuse. Statewide, our local National Guard was ordered into wars abroad. These soldiers signed up to help with domestic emergencies, not to fight foreign wars for oil, gas, and global military empire of over 800 foreign bases. The massive amount of tax dollars we spend on the military and its corporate contractors hurts our economy, promotes global warming and undercuts job creation here in America,” said Hawkins. US spending on the military has increased by two-thirds since 9/11 and now exceeds the rest of the world combined.
“The mission of the US military should be defending our republic, not policing an empire on behalf of global corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and the private contractors that feed off of it,” stated Hawkins. Hawkins added that “Just as President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country a half century ago, the two major parties are now completely controlled by a military industrial complex that demands an ever growing share of our nation’s wealth while subverting the critical civil liberties upon which our country was founded.”
I am sorry. I can't stop quoting this guy!!! Mr. Hawkins:
Hawkins said that he supports a reduction in military spending in the 50 to 70% range. “The mission of the US military should be defending our republic, not policing an empire on behalf of global corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and the private contractors that feed off of it,” stated Hawkins.
New York taxpayers have spent $93.9 billion for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan since 2001. New York taxpayers will have to shell $67 billion for Total Defense Spending just for FY2011 – more than 7 times the size of the state’s projected budget deficit.
Hawkins said the bipartisan war on terrorism has been a disaster for America, undermining our national security while bankrupting the economy and curtailing civil rights.
"Under President Obama, we have escalated the futile war in Afghanistan, continuing the destruction of that country that we started under President Carter. We have expanded that war into Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Torture continues, as does illegal spying on Americans. Under Obama we remain the bullies of the planet, using our enormous military might to promote the agenda of multinational corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and legions of private military contractors, not defend the American people. If we leave people in the Middle East alone, they will leave us alone. If we occupy and wage war on their countries, the blowback will include desperate acts of terrorist revenge. We spend enormous amounts of tax dollars to maintain military bases in more than a hundred countries whose people resent foreign occupation. We continue to fight wars in the Middle East in a futile attempt to prop up an unsustainable petroleum-based economy,” stated Hawkins.
Hawkins reminded us that a half century ago, President Eisenhower, who successfully led the allied forces in World War II, warned the American people about the social and budget dangers posed by the military industrial complex. The American people had to be careful that they did not allow special interests to absorb an ever-increasing share of national wealth.Eisenhower proclaimed that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired” was “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
More recently, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” King called for “a campaign for jobs and income, because…the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting.”
Still more of Hawkins from wikipedia.
[Hawkins] "... he [Cuomo] wants to solve the state budget crisis by cutting spending such as for state workers and schools. He ignores that the root cause of the problem is not spending but the huge tax cuts for the wealthy that began when he was helping his father as Governor. Instead of spending caps, we need the wealthy and Wall Street to pay their fair share."
Hawkins supports single-payer, community-based health care and would work to end the "drug war". He also supports marriage equality and reproductive freedom, including abortion. Renewable energy and public power are central to his campaign platform, which describes a Statewide Sustainability Plan for renewable energy for New York. Hawkins has also stated that he would shut down New York’s aging nuclear power plants as soon as replacement power in renewable energy comes on line.
So, what is it going to be New York State? America? The kool-aid coma style voting for legacy Dems one more time? Fool me once, blame them. Fool us again and again and again???? Think of the definition of insanity one more time!
I also am reminded of Robert Frost's lines that so beautifully encourage moral adventure and risk:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I'm going down the GREEN road! Please join me. Let's ramp up its traffic! Let's walk the walk!
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