OntheWilderSide

The Hawkins for Governor jobs plan is much simpler – and more effective – than Mr. Cuomo’s

Green Party of NY Governor candidate Howie Hawkins said the Cuomo work plan would be ineffective, just more tax breaks and handouts for businesses:

We are in the greatest recession in 70 years. You have to spend to get out of a recession. You have to put more money into the hands of the low and moderate income households, not the rich, in order to provide a fiscal stimulus. Giving out a $3,000 tax break to a business for a new job won’t create new jobs if you haven’t stimulated demand. There’s nothing new in Cuomo’s  plan. Even Herbert Hoover had a better plan than Cuomo. It’s the same old trickle-down economics that has been failing to create jobs in the real economy of producing goods and services for three decades. Tax cuts for business don’t trickle down to middle and working class folks.”

A Green New Deal

1. A WPA-style jobs program for full employment. If you can’t find a job in the private sector, you go to the employment office and get a public job in public works or services. The local community democratically decides what jobs need doing to improve the local quality of life. As more people work, more people will be spending their paychecks and bringing consumers back to support local businesses.

2. A public bank like North Dakota has to make that socially useful
investments in new and expanding businesses, particularly in the green jobs in clean energy, green buildings, and mass transit. Private banks and other pools of private capital are speculating short-term, rearranging paper entitlements to income from existing means of production, not investing long term in the green sustainable means of production we need for a full-employment sustainable green prosperity.

3. Progressive Tax Reform. Turn a $9 billion state budget deficit to a $25 billion surplus through various tax the rich proposals (e.g., halt the
rebate of the stock transfer tax; bankers bonus tax; raise $8 billion while give 95% of us a tax cut by going back to the progressive income tax during the Rockefeller years).

4. Take the $25 billion and fund the Green New Deal of fully funded
schools, transit, and other public services and public investment in the
transition to a carbon free energy system. Create green jobs. Promote organic, local agriculture.

More details at http://howiehawkins.com/2010/media-releases/189-hawkins-calls-for-wpa-style-jobs-program-to-put-new-yorkers-back-to-work.html

Related Articles

• Hawkins calls for guranteed jobs, higher mininum wage, single payer health care, stronger labor rights (www.onthewilderside.com)
• Green Party New York ” Howie Hawkins: Voters Want Something Other than Just Tea Partiers (www.onthewilderside.com)
• NY Guv cand Hawkins (G) To Paladino(R): Debate the Real Progressive (www.onthewilderside.com)
• Green Party New York: NY Gubernatorial Howie Hawkins Opposes Layoff of 2,000 State Workers (www.onthewilderside.com)
• Guv cand Hawkins (G-NY) Blasts Cuomo and Duffy for Attacks on Unions, Schools (www.onthewilderside.com)
• Green Party Candidate Says Gov’s Race Is Like “Jersey Shore” (observer.com)
• Alan Singer: In New York Gubernatorial Campaign, It’s Getting Easier to Be Green (huffingtonpost.com)
• New York’s Green Party Candidate: ‘Cuomo And Paladino Remind Me Of Jersey Shore’ (mediaite.com)
• Rebels with causes use ideas to fuel bids (timesunion.com)

Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, economy, election, Election 2010, elections, new york, New York State Politics, News, politics, progressive politics, third party, US Politics Tagged: | Deficit, Economic, Green New Deal, Herbert Hoover, Income tax, Progressive tax, Public transport, Sustainable energy