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New York’s Anti-War Majority Can Elect an Anti-War Senator
Statement of Howie Hawkins, Green Party nominee for US Senate
Outside the Military Recruiting Center at Times Square, New York City, June 1, 2006
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New York’s Anti-War Majority Can Elect an Anti-War Senator
Statement of Howie Hawkins, Green Party nominee for US Senate
Outside the Military Recruiting Center at Times Square, New York City, June 1, 2006
I support immediate withdrawal from Iraq. So do the majority of New Yorkers. Hillary Clinton does not.
If New Yorkers vote for what they want, I will be the next Senator from New York.
A Zogby poll out yesterday shows already that Clinton has only a lead of 38 percent to 32 percent against an “unnamed antiwar candidate,” with another 31 percent voting for someone else or not sure.
That antiwar candidate has a name. It’s Howie Hawkins and I will be on the Green party line on the ballot in November to give New Yorkers the opportunity to vote against the war. We intend to turn the antiwar majority in New York into an antiwar electoral insurgency that will send an antiwar Senator from New York to Washington.
The majority of New Yorkers are with me on a second issue and that’s national health insurance. I’m for it. The majority of New Yorkers are for it. And Hillary Clinton opposes it.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton is more responsible than any other person in American for derailing national health insurance in 1993 when she was in charge of health care reform in the Clinton presidency. National health insurance had been in the Democratic platform since Truman. In 1993, it had 100 co-sponsors in Congress and two-thirds of popular opinion behind it.
But Clinton, with her eye on campaign contributions from the insurance industry, proposed a compulsory private health insurance plan. She still supports that type of plan as she made clear when declared her support the Republican Governor of Massachusetts’ new compulsory private insurance plan for that state.
The private health insurance system in the US is the most inefficient and irrational system of health care financing in the world. Yet Clinton wants to pour even more money into this black hole, which wastes 30 percent of the health care expenditures on bureaucratic paperwork and profits, compared to the 3 percent overhead for Medicare.
We can have universal health care for all in the US and still spend $200 billion a year less on health care, according the Physicians for a National Health Program. We can do that by adopting a national health insurance system with a single public payer, a Medicare for All system.
I will fight for national health insurance. Hillary Clinton will oppose it. With 2.9 million New Yorkers without health insurance, I believe the majority of New Yorkers are with me on this issue as well.
My third leading issue is a program to deal with the energy crisis, which is a crisis of energy affordability and long-term supply, but also integral to the crises of global warming, trade deficits, and national security.
I am calling for the conversion of $300 billion a year in military spending to a global public works program to rewire the planet for renewable energy over the next 10 years.
The goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 70 percent, which is what the climate scientists are now telling us is needed to stop global warming.
The US military is spending about $660 billion this year, which is more than the rest of world combined. That is a military budget not for fighting terrorism, but for global military occupation to grab oil and other resources and make the world safe for exploitation by global corporations.
Converting about half of US military spending to a Clean Energy Transition would…
… ignite a global engine of job creation and sustainable economic development.
… enhance US national security and world peace by spreading good will toward the United States instead of the resentment towards us created by global military occupation and resource wars for oil.
… reduce US trade deficits by reducing oil imports.
… stabilize energy costs at an affordable level.
… secure sustainable energy supplies for future.
… reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
… and, in New York, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs retrofitting our buildings, industries, and infrastructure for the efficient use of renewable energy.
Mrs. Clinton’s recently announced energy program is too little, too late, and too weak. We need direct public investments in renewable energy, not more “corporate welfare” to induce the corporations who have created the energy crisis in the first place to now invest in renewable energy.
I believe the majority of New Yorkers will prefer my direct public investments to her indirect incentives for big business.
On three of the federal policy issues of most concern to New Yorkers –the war, health care, and energy – the majority of New Yorkers agree with me, not Hillary Clinton. If the New Yorkers vote for what they want, I will be the next Senator from New York.
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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