For immediate release: June 3, 2006 For more information: Howie Hawkins, 315-425-1019, hhawkins@igc.org
Statement by Howie Hawkins
It wasn't even close at the Working Families Party convention today: 93.6% for Hillary Clinton, 6.4% for Jonathon Tasini.
No surprise here. Working Families passed an antiwar resolution, but that was merely posturing for the widespread antiwar sentiment in New York. When it came to real world consequenses, the Working Families Party backed the pro-war candidate, Hillary Clinton.
What else would one expect from a party that instead of supporting a single-payer state health insurance plan is pushing a Clinton-style compulsory private health insurance plan?
WFP's campaigning for the so-called Fair Share for Health Care Act for NY would have the state government subsidizing the rapacious private insurance companies that waste 30% of health care expenditures on bureaucracy, profits, and excessive salaries for top managment. Medicare, our national single-payer system for seniors, runs on 3% overhead.
Of course, private health insurance companies don't want to cover the older Medicare beneficiaries because they get sick more and are not profitable. So we get "socialism" for the unprofitable coverages and capitalism for profitable coverages — and leave 2.9 million New Yorkers and 49 million Americans uncovered.
And WFP — the branch of the Democratic Party designed to co-opt potential independent electoral insurgencies on the left through cross-endorsement or fusion candidacies — is campaigning to patch up the most irrational and inefficient system of health care financing in the world.
Meanwhile, the Independence Party dropped all pretenses of being an independent alternative at its convention today when it backed major party candidates for all statewide offices, including Hillary Clinton for US Senate.
But the good news is in the US Senate race there will be no confusion — the Green candidate will be the clear anti-war choice.
A Zogby poll earlier this week found that 32% of New Yorkers would vote for an "unnamed anti-war candidate" vs. 38% for Clinton and 31% for other and undecided (a percentage that is close to the hard core Republican vote).
The task now for the Green Party and the wider antiwar movement is to attach a name, Howie Hawkins, to the "unnamed anti-war candidate" who already has about one-third support and to inform New Yorkers that the anti-war candidate is within striking distance of winning.
Hawkins for US Senate 