The Empire Page

Background:  Continuing with our series of interviews of candidates for statewide offices in 2010, we interviewed the Green Party gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins.

Empire Page: Gov. Paterson was forced to cut spending and raise about $1 billion in new taxes to balance the 2010-11 NYS budget.  The Comptroller reports that NYS is facing even larger deficits in 2011-12 and 2012-13.   How would you balance the budget if you were elected governor?

Hawkins: I would enact progressive tax reforms that make the rich pay their fair and proper share again. The concentration of income and wealth in the top 5% and especially the top 1% is higher than it's ever been since 1928 and a big part of why we have depressed consumer demand,  a stagnant economy, and persistent high unemployment.

Specifically, I would:

1. Stop rebating the Stock Transfer Tax. Enacted in 1905, but fully rebated since 1981, this tax generated $16 billion in revenues in 2009. It would have more than erased the projected $9 billion deficit. The state had the money, but gave it back to Wall Street...and then told us we had a fiscal crisis!  That was politics, not economics; money-drenched politicians, not impersonal market forces. The corporate rich who fund both major parties don't want to pay higher taxes themselves to cover the deficit. They want working and middle class New Yorkers to pay for it with their taxes and with cuts to schools, transit, parks, and other public services.

2. Enact a Banker's Bonus Tax of 50% of cash bonuses. This tax would have generated $10 billion on the $20 billion Wall Street paid itself in 2009 after we bailed them out with trillions from the US Treasury and the Fed.

3. Restore the 1972 Progressive Income Tax structure. This would generate about $8 billion more a year while reducing income taxes for 95% of New York taxpayers. The progressive graduation of income tax rates has been flattened after about the 40th income percentile. The janitor at Trump Towers now pays a higher rate for state and local taxes than Trump himself.

Put these three tax reforms together and we would have about $34 billion more in revenues. Subtract the projected $9 billion deficit we had to close this year and again next year, and we have about a $25 billion annual budget surplus.

I would spend that surplus on a Green New Deal of direct public jobs and public spending with private contractors to build a sustainable green economic recovery based on renewable energy, mass transit, green retrofitting of buildings, and clean manufacturing to supply these green industries. With consumer demand and business investment now depressed, government spending is needed to get the economy moving again.

The austerity plans of Cuomo (spending freeze) and the Republicans (spending cuts) are recipes for a vicious circle of debt and depression. Without increased public spending, the economy will decline, tax revenues will shrink, and public spending will be cut again to balance the budget, sending the economy down further.

The progressive tax reforms that I propose would take some of the money with which the rich are speculating on paper financial assets instead of long-term investments in new productive assets and put it to better use though public spending on what the people need and economic recovery demands. And the rich would still be very rich.

Empire Page: Are you unconcerned about driving high income and high net worth people and corporations out of NYS? 

Hawkins: No. Not from a fair, progressive state tax structure.

New York's competitive advantages stem from its relatively educated, high-productivity workforce and the quality of its infrastructure, natural resources, and public services. This tax-supported common wealth enhances the avenues of private commerce.

Fortunes can be made doing business in New York's giant market. New York's $1.1 trillion GDP ranks it 13th among the world's nations, right behind Russia.

Most of the big New York fortunes are in real estate and finance. The real estate barons can't move their properties. The Wall Street financial services aren't moving either. The New York Stock Exchange threatened to move to New Jersey when the Stock Transfer Tax was enacted in 1905, but didn't. The NYSE didn't lose business to several European exchanges that joined forces to lure in trading by dropping financial transaction taxes in 1999. The NYSE threatened to but didn't leave for New Jersey after the $1.1 billion subsidy to the New York Stock Exchange to build a new trading floor across the street fell through in 2002. The Wall Street financial district has earned its brand as "the world's financial capital," an unrivaled industry cluster of competing yet complementary firms that do business with each other and have common needs for talent, technology, and infrastructure. That synergy is priceless. They aren't moving.

I am worried that US trade policies are driving NY manufacturers overseas despite billions in state and local tax breaks, energy subsides (Power for Jobs), and other corporate welfare. It's not taxes, but pro-corporate trade policies that make it more profitable for many manufacturers to move to repressive cheap labor regimes like China and import goods back to the US.

Tax avoidance and evasion by the super-rich and giant banks and corporations is already massive. The Tax Justice Network estimates that the US capital already stashed in foreign tax havens by the super-rich and giant banks and corporations amounts to $11.5 trillion, costing the US $255 billion a year in tax revenues.

The solutions to outsourced manufacturing, capital flight, and tax avoidance and evasion are fair trade polices and international agreements to end bank secrecy and exchange tax information between governments. Those reforms are for the federal government. At the state level, we need a fair tax structure to finance the public assets and services that make a prosperous private sector possible.

Empire Page: The stated goal of your campaign is to win 50,000 votes, which according to your May 3 letter to your constituents, will enable you to “contest elections at every level as we continue to build our movement.”   But the Green Party has been around for a couple of decades and has not been able to make any headway electorally.  Why hasn’t the Green Party caught on and why do you believe it will be able to do better in the future?

Hawkins: We have made some headway. We've elected six village, town, and city councilors, three school board members, and four village mayors in New York State. Nationally, 141 Greens hold elected office at the moment. My votes for city council in Syracuse have grown from 3% in 1993 to 41% in 2009. Greens can win in New York.

Ballot access has been a major impediment for Greens to even contesting races. For example, to run for Congress without a ballot line, I would need to get 3500 valid signatures, which means 7000 signatures to be safe from challenge, on an independent nominating petition. With a Green ballot line, I would need 5% of the enrolled Greens in the district, or about 50 signatures. Instead of committing everything the campaign has for six weeks during the independent petitioning period in July and August to collect 7000 signatures, with a ballot line we could call a Green Party meeting in early June at the beginning of the party petitioning period and have enrolled Greens complete the petition right there.

Most of the Greens' environmental, social, and economic policies have majority support in public opinion polls. Election results don't conform to the opinion polls because the single-member-district, winner-take-all electoral system entrenches the two-party system. Many voters who support the Green platform feel compelled to vote defensively for the lesser-evil Democrats against the Republicans they fear more. That is why the Greens call for proportional representation in legislative bodies and instant runoff voting for executive offices.

But pending such electoral reforms, recent breakthroughs by the Greens in the UK and Australia give us reason to expect similar breakthoughs here. The UK and Australia also have winner-take-all electoral systems (except for the semi-proportional Australian Senate where Greens have long had seats). Like the so-called New Democrats in the US who have abandoned their New Deal legacy for pro-corporate austerity policies, New Labor in the UK and Australia has made similar moves to the Right. The Greens have won over many Labor Party voters because the Greens have taken up the traditional labor demands for economic justice as well as the environmental demands for which the Greens are known. Many traditional Labor voters in these countries voted Green this year to put the first Greens into their parliamentary houses. We are beginning to see a similar trend here. The refusal of NYSUT and CSEA to endorse Cuomo due his conservative fiscal policies and scapegoating of public employees for fiscal problems opens doors for my campaign, which is getting more organized support from rank-and-file union members than any statewide campaign the Greens have run.

Empire Page: One might expect that the country's economic woes would result in a big swing to the left, but the opposite has been the case -- witness the Glen Beck rally in DC and the emergence of the tea party movement.  How do you explain the fact that more people seem to want to "restore" America than "change" it?

Hawkins: Things are not what they appear. We're not there yet. The Tea Party movement is new branding for the most conservative section of the electorate that was already there. The apparently spontaneous Tea Party movement is financed and promoted by some very big business and media interests, notably, Charles and David Koch, the principal owners of the oil and chemical conglomerate, Koch Industries; Ruport Murdoch's News Corp., particularly its Fox News Network; and Clear Channel's 1300 station radio empire, the world's largest by far, featuring right-wing talk radio. There's lots of money and media mobilizing the far right base and giving it high visibility.

The right-wing media machine has been able to spread false rumors and unfounded fears by innuendo and outright lies among distressingly high proportions of the population.  President Obama's birth and religion are under question. By falsely equating Islam with the criminal terrorists of Al Qaeda, majorities have been scared into opposing the Park 51 Islamic Community Center at the cost of First Amendment's freedom of religion. The scientific consensus on global warming caused by fossil fuel burning has been put into doubt in the minds of growing numbers. On the economic policy front, however, the Right's railing against the deficits and the unconstitutionality of government regulation of the economy has so far failed to move public opinion against Social Security, Medicare, progressive taxation, unemployment insurance, or government spending to create jobs. So the impact is mixed.

The tea party doesn't represent a broad, popular swing to the Right, at least not yet. The latest Gallup poll on ideological self-identification from June shows a 1% decline of liberals and moderates and a 2% increase in conservatives this year, all within the margin of error. Even though only 20% identified as liberals in the Gallup poll, 36% viewed socialism positively in a Gallup poll last February. Even though 42% identified themselves as conservative (42%) or moderate (35%) in the Gallup poll,  just 53% said capitalism was better than socialism in a Rasmussen poll last April.

"Restore" and "change" are abstractions. Who's against restoring the good and changing the bad? Glenn Beck said as much in his "non-political" speech in DC. Like abstract political labels - liberal, moderate, conservative, socialist - they don't tell us much. We can get a better sense of public opinion from polls that ask voters about specific policies. If we get beyond abstract labels, the majority is progressive.

To start with a leading issue from the "culture wars," support for same-sex marriage has grown steadily from 30% in the mid 1990s to near majorities in recent polls and a 52% majority in an August 11 CNN who agreed with the statement that "gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid."

During the health care debate over 2007-2009, polling repeatedly showed strong majorities of from 54% to 65% supporting a single payer system. But the Democratic in the White House and Congress took it "off the table," moving the whole debate inside the beltway to the Right of public opinion

On the wars, 65% oppose the Iraq war and 58% oppose Afghanistan war, according to an August 16 AP poll. Again, the Democrats in power continue the wars and pursue a policy to the Right of public opinion.

The polls show that the jobs and the economy are the top issue this year. An August 12 survey on Deficits and the Economy of probable voters by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner showed strong progressive majorities on economic policies. Probable voters were...
...68%-28% opposed cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit.
...65%-33% opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security to 70.
...60%-36% opposed to raising the age to receive Medicare to age 67.
...74%-14% for "massive public investment deficit....in roads, sewers, schools, trains, renewable energy, and other basic parts of our communities [to] create jobs, help business compete, improve our communities and generate revenues that can help pay down the budget deficit."
...64%-25% for "government investment in jobs, education, and infrastructure in the short-term while being mindful of reducing the deficit over the long-term."
...66%-25% for "build an economy on a new foundation by investing in education and training, in 21st century infrastructure, capturing a lead role in the new green industrial revolution, and balancing our trade so we make products and create jobs in America."
...62%-31% for"a tax on excessive profits made by Wall Street banks."
...67%-21% for "Restore the higher tax rates for those earning over 250 thousand dollars a year and for excessive CEO bonuses, institute a small transaction tax on stock trades, and wipe out the lobbyist-created special corporate subsidies."

Another recent Gallup poll shows New York to be the fourth most liberal state in the nation, so the progressive majorities are probably stronger in New York State.

But in defiance of these polling numbers and in deference to their Wall Street campaign funders, the Democrats move the debate to the Right of public opinion. They echo the Republican/Tea Party demands for spending cuts to reduce deficits. Cuomo calls for a state spending freeze, not a public spending stimulus, and rules out higher taxes on the rich. President Obama calls for a freeze on federal discretionary spending except military and created a Deficit Reduction Commission packed with members who want to cut Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficits. While Obama wants to let the Bush tax cuts for the top 2-3% of income earners expire, clawbacks of Wall Street's bailout-funded windfall profits and bonuses, a financial transactions tax, and cuts in corporate subsidies are not on his agenda, nor is a signficant fiscal stimulus even as the economic recovery sputters. Reduced spending for deficit reduction is his priority going forward.

The progressive majority is to the Left of the Democrats on the economy. It shows in this same poll of probable voters, who disapprove of President Obama's performance as president by a 51% to 45% majority. It is clear that Obama's deference to the drug and health insurance monopolies and Wall Street on health care reform, financial regulation, and government spending to create jobs has disappointed many progressive voters.

I do see a danger of a popular swing to the Right. If the Democrats' conservative economic policies continue to reinforce the Republican/Tea Party message, that could well become a conservative conventional wisdom that a growing public accepts. More ominously, the combination of economic hard times, alienation from a government that can't solve problems, a powerful right-wing media mobilizing resentments to scapegoat immigrants, Muslims, and racial minorities, and a Democratic Party that cowers and accommodates the Right could lead to a racially divisive swing to the Right that pits a larger segment of fearful whites against the rest.

Our Green New Deal program can be an antidote to those outcomes if it gets a fair hearing. It can move New York politics and the policy debate into the mainstream of public opinion and win the enthusiastic support of what is still a progressive majority.