Third Party Offers Real Alternative
Syracuse City Eagle
Howie Hawkins
October 23rd, 2008
The basic issue in this election is whether Congress will begin to support average people or continue to look after the interests of the super-rich and the giant corporations.
The leadership of the two ruling parties in Washington is now emptying out the federal treasury before the next President and Congress even take office by committing trillions of dollars to bailing out a small financial elite on Wall Street at the expense of the mass of taxpayers. If the next Congress does not quickly bail out of the bailouts, there will be little public money left to meet the people’s needs in hard times, stimulate economic recovery, or stop catastrophic global warming.
The top 1 percent now receives more income than the bottom 50 percent and owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The only year on record with greater inequality is 1928, the year before the Great Depression hit.
Instead of bailing out Wall Street speculators and reinflating asset bubbles, financiers should eat their losses as asset prices fall back levels the real economy can sustain. When big banks fail as the bubble deflates, the US should take them into receivership and reorganize them as democratically accountable public banks to get credit, investment, and the economy moving again.
We need public direction of investment to the real economy of labor and industry. And we need to re-regulate the paper economy of finance in order to make it serve the real economy of production again.
I am running as a Green Populist. Green means building the green economy is the way to economic recovery, energy security, and climate stability. Populist means fighting for a fairer distribution of income and wealth and power.
I am the only candidate in this race who supports a single-payer national health insurance plan.
I am the only candidate who supports a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am the only candidate who supports deep cuts in military spending and investing the savings to rebuild our communities with sustainable green technologies.
It is time to end these wars for oil. We must dismantle the global US military empire of over 700 military bases in more than 100 countries that is bankrupting our country. Instead, we need the moral equivalent of war in a World War II scale mobilization to build a green economy before it is too late to stop runaway global warming. We must redirect our public resources from the military-industrial complex to building a new green infrastructure of solar-powered sustainability – renewable energy, mass transit, rebuilding our railroads, green buildings, clean manufacturing, organic agriculture.
That is how we can put people back to work and restore economic prosperity. That is how we can secure affordable, domestically produced energy. That is how we can lead the global transition to a carbon-free economy for climate stability.
I stand for a real alternative to the two old parties now entrenched in Congress. That is why I offer my candidacy and ask for your vote.
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