Syracuse Post-Standard Questionnaire
Biography
Name: Howie Hawkins
Age: 55
Birth date: December 8, 1952
Place of birth: San Francisco
Family background: Midwestern parents, now deceased, moved to California after World War II. A brother in Oakland, a sister in Seattle, four cousins in Hawaii.
Marital status/children: Single, no children
Education: Graduated Burlingame CA High School in 1971; attended Dartmouth College, 1971-1977.
Occupations:
1967 - 1971: newspaper delivery boy, golf caddy, dishwasher/busboy, ranch hand, construction laborer.
1971 - 1991: construction laborer, Marine Corps, carpenter, construction worker co-op co-owner, building contractor, logger, apple picker.
1991 - 1999: director of nonprofit organizing cooperatives.
2000 - present: Upstate New York field coordinator for Nader for President in 2000, 2004, and 2008; Teamster truck unloader at UPS (2001-present).
References:
Ralph Nader
Ron Ehrenreich, Treasurer, Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union
Mark Dunlea, Executive Director, Hunger Action Network of New York State
The Issues
(We are looking for answers of 50 to 100 words)
1. What is your position on a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq?
I support an immediate withdrawal all US military forces and corporate mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has no right to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for oil, gas, military bases, and lucrative corporate military contracts, or to continue covert operations for regime change in Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, and other countries. This colonialism and militarism only makes worse the real threats to US security: nuclear proliferation and Al Qaeda. Nuclear proliferation requires international cooperation to phase out nuclear weapons and power plants and secure nuclear materials. International cooperation by intelligence, police, and special forces will bring Al Qaeda to justice.
2. What specific steps should Congress take to improve the economy?
Change US industrial policy from Military Keynesianism to Solar-Powered Sustainability.
US industrial policy since 1948 has subsidized a permanent war economy for world military domination and preventing another Great Depression. The result, however, is declining manufacturing, obsolete infrastructure, and dependence on foreign financing for our exploding trade and fiscal deficits and foreign wars. Cut military spending ($1.45 trillion in FY 2009) by one-third by withdrawing from the Middle East and cutting unnecessary pork-barrel weapons programs. Invest the $500 billion a year savings in building a solar-powered sustainable infrastructure for energy, transportation, sewer and water systems, and energy-efficient buildings and manufacturing.
3. What federal actions, if any, are needed to lower gas prices and increase the nation's energy security?
Regulate speculation in energy commodity futures, which artificially increased prices by 50 to 100 percent. Enact a carbon tax, with equal per capita rebates to insulate consumers from the tax, to create predictably escalating cost incentives for producers in transportation (67 percent of oil consumption) and industry (24 percent of oil consumption) to transition to carbon-free energy. Switch transportation spending from fossil-fueled roadways to solar-powered railways. Electrified trains use one-twentieth the energy of diesel trucks to move freight and one-tenth the energy of gasoline cars to move people. Use electric vehicles for the final delivery of freight, packages, and people.
4. What steps should Congress take to encourage the development of renewable energy and alternative fuels?
Eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power. Ban new coal and nuclear plants. Eliminate subsidies for food-crop biofuels. Invest at least $300 billion a year from military spending cuts in a Clean Energy Fund for efficiency and renewables in the US and developing countries. Adopt a fossil-fuel efficiency standard that rises 5 percent per year. Enact high efficiency standards for appliances, buildings, and vehicles. Enact a Workers Superfund to provide full income, benefits, and training to workers who are displaced by the clean energy transition and the conversion of military to civilian production until they transition to alternative work.
5. What can you, as a member of Congress, do to improve the long-term health of Central and Upstate New York? What would you do specifically to create jobs that would help retain our young people after college?
By pushing to change US industrial policy from Military Keynesianism to Solar-Powered Sustainability, I can help to create an economic environment in which regional companies and educational institutions are already well positioned to prosper. These green industries will provide good job opportunities for college graduates as well as for non-college graduates in "green-collar jobs" in manufacturing, construction, and building systems maintenance. I will also work to enact an Economic Bill of Rights that includes the right to a job a living wage. Government should be the employer of last resort providing work that improves neglected public works and services.
6. Should Congress eliminate or change the process of earmarks, criticized by many as pork-barrel spending?
I favor full disclosure and transparency of earmarks and lobbyist activities in order to deter and expose illegal influence peddling by lobbyists and special favors for campaign contributors by members of Congress. I also support a more fundamental reform: revenue sharing of progressive federal taxes with states, municipalities and school districts on a per capita basis. Efficient centralized collection of progressive taxes and decentralized local administration of spending meets local needs better than centralized earmarking by members of Congress. Revenue sharing will also reduce the dependence of municipalities and school districts on the excessively high and regressive property tax.
7. What is your position on the federal deficit? What specific steps would you take to control government spending or reduce the deficit?
If we don't deeply cut wasteful, redundant military spending, there will be no money for the people's necessities or resolving the planetary climate crisis, let alone reducing the deficit. The redundant nuclear arsenal, 700 overseas military bases, Star Wars, and other Cold War relics should all be cut deeply. Corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy have also greatly increased the deficit as well as the polarization of wealth and income. Restoring progressive taxation and public investment in solar-powered sustainability instead of the military-industrial complex will help rebalance the budget and promote economic recovery, energy security, and climate stability.
8. Do you support universal health care or other federal health care reforms? How would you pay for any reforms?
I support HR 676, The US National Health Insurance Act (Expanded and Improved Medicare For All), which creates a single public payer for privately delivered health care, comprehensive coverage for all, and free choice of doctors and hospitals by patients. HR 676 is financed by payroll taxes, income tax surcharges on the top 5 percent, and stock and bond transfer taxes. It will cost less for 95 percent of Americans and for the economy as a whole than our current inefficient system of mixed private and public insurance, which channels profits to private companies and shifts costs to the public.
9. What are your positions on social issues such as abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage?
Abortion: I support access to a safe legal abortion for every woman who chooses to have one. National health insurance should cover reproductive health services, including abortion.
Stem-Cell Research: I support federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
Same-Sex Marriage: I support marriage equality. The Empire State Pride Agenda identifies 1,138 rights and responsibilities from the federal government and another 700 rights and responsibilities from New York State government that are bestowed on partners in civil marriage, covering health insurance, inheritance, divorce, child adoption, pensions, and more. All married partners, regardless of sexual orientation, should enjoy these civil rights equally.
10. The first baby boomers are going on Social Security and the federal government predicts the trust fund will be bankrupt if nothing is done to reform the system. What would you do?
Bankruptcy predictions are a Wall Street-inspired canard intended to scare us into privatizing Social Security. In fact, the system is solvent without any changes through 2041. It now has a $2.5 trillion surplus on its books, which the major parties have borrowed to finance wars and tax cuts for the rich. I favor raising the income cap ($102,000 in 2008) for Social Security payroll taxes to cover the same proportion of salaries they covered right after the 1983 reform. That will finance a system surplus for the indefinite future and a restoration of the 65-year-old retirement age for full benefits.
11. What are your top priorities in the field of agriculture?
I support the Food from Family Farms Act developed by the National Family Farm Coalition. End subsidies for corporate "farmers" like Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Tyson Foods. Reform farm price supports to cover the costs of production plus a living income for working farmers. Subsidize farmers' transition to organic agriculture while natural systems of soil fertility and pest control are being restored. Support the creation of more family farms through a homesteading program and land reform based on acreage limitations and residency requirements. Enforce antitrust laws to break up corporate agribusiness oligopolies in farm supplies, processing, and marketing.
12. Which committee assignments would you seek in the House of Representatives and why?
My first preference is Armed Services because it deals with reform and organization of the departments of Defense and Energy and industrial base policy, all of which are important to reprioritizing US industrial policy from the military-industrial complex to solar-powered sustainability. My second preference, Energy Independence and Global Warming, and my third preference, Transportation and Infrastructure, also address policies relevant to promoting solar-powered sustainability. As probably the only member of the Green Party caucus, I will be able to nominate myself and stand for election to these committees in a vote of the House according to House Rules.
13. What is your position on extending the "Bush tax cuts" or letting them expire?
Let them expire. Tax cuts for the rich have led to speculative bubbles in assets, not investment in the real economy of production. Financial profits have grown from under 15 percent of total profits 40 years ago to over 40 percent today. Two-thirds of US corporations paid no corporate income taxes between 1998 and 2005. Restore progressive taxation so the rich and corporations pay their fair share. Replace tax expenditures (tax loopholes) with subsidies in the budget if they serve the public interest. Tax "goods" less (labor income, purchase of necessities). Tax "bads" more (pollution, resource depletion, speculation, extreme luxuries).
14. Would you support construction of more nuclear power plants in Central New York?
No. After 60 years experience, the severe problems of nuclear power remain unsolved: costs so high that Wall Street won't invest without massive subsidies; no solution for long term storage of radioactive waste; radioactive pollution throughout the fuel cycle, from uranium mining and production of uranium fuel to chronic releases from operating plants and the ever present danger of a catastrophic accident; and high vulnerability to terrorist attacks and nuclear weapons proliferation. We can get far more reduction in greenhouse gases, reduction in energy demand, and increase in energy supply from the same investment in energy efficiency and renewables.
Non-issue questions
1. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Thomas Paine: radical democrat, pamphleteer for the American and French revolutions, abolitionist, freethinker, and early advocate of progressive income tax, social security, land value taxation, and other populist economic policies.
2. Which living person do you most admire?
Nelson Mandela: never gave up fighting for nonracial democracy despite 27 years in prison and then led its establishment as South African president in a way that promoted reconciliation after four centuries of conflict
3. What is your greatest extravagance?
Buying books to read.
4. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"What time is it? (at work.).
5. What is your greatest regret?
Going to college to avoid the draft instead of taking up Hank Sauer's offer to sign with the Giants. College deferments were eliminated my freshman year and I got drafted anyway. I will never know what kind of baseball career I might have had.
6. Which talent would you most like to have?
Play piano by ear.
7. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Helping to found and organize the Green Party in America.
8. What is your most treasured possession?
My health.
9. What is your favorite book?
Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life by Paul and Percival Goodman (1947), a book that discusses the moral, political, economic, and technological first principles of city planning in the context of a critique of existing planning paradigms and the presentation of visionary alternatives.
10. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Huckleberry Finn, a freedom seeking rebel who did what his heart told him was right, not what the racism of established society tried to instill in him, in helping his friend, Jim, the runaway slave, also seek his freedom.
11. What is your motto?
Lead by example.
12. What do you do for fun?
Read books. Workout at the gym.
League of Women Voters Election Guide 2008
NAME: Howie Hawkins
ADDRESS: 303 Warner Ave., P.O. Box 562, Syracuse NY 13205
TELEPHONE (HOME): 425-1019
CAMPAIGN OFFICE: 474-7055
E-MAIL: hhawkins@igc.org
WEB SITE: www.howiehawkins.org
OFFICE YOU ARE SEEKING: Representative in Congress, 25th District, New York
POLITICAL PARTY: Green Populist
ADDITIONAL POLITICAL PARTY ENDORSEMENTS: Socialist Party of Central New York
PROFESSION: Teamster truck unloader
EDUCATION: attended Dartmouth College
OTHER ELECTED OFFICES HELD: none
Please answer the following questions in 75 words or less:
1. What polices would you support that would help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil?
The goal should be freedom from oil period, not just foreign oil, in order to address global warming, peak oil, and economic decline exacerbated by oil trade deficits. Instead of the wars for oil funded by both ruling parties in Congress, I support transferring at least $300 billion a year from military spending to public investment in a sustainable green infrastructure: energy efficiency, renewable energy, green building retrofits, and solar-powered railways instead of fossil-fueled roadways.
2. What should the federal government do to improve the quality of education for all American children?
Repeal No Child Left Behind and its standardized testing mandates. Increase federal funding of public education (instead of local property taxes) sufficient to reduce student-teacher ratios to 15 to 1 in all public schools, provide Head Start to all pre-K children starting at age 3 on a voluntary basis, and provide free public university and technical education for everyone who wants it. Fund this educational program by military spending cuts and progressive tax reform.
Howie Hawkins
September 19, 2008
Peace Action Candidate Questionnare
Questionnaire For Congressional Candidates
Candidate Name: Howie Hawkins
1. The Bush Administration and the Department of Energy have proposed a new generation of nuclear weapons and the overhaul of the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure. This project is projected to cost $150 billion and could potentially restart a global nuclear arms race. Do you oppose the two major new administration proposals called the Reliable Replacement Warhead and Complex 2030?
___ I support the Complex Transformation and the Reliable Replacement Warhead programs.
_X__ I oppose the Complex Transformation and the Reliable Replacement Warhead programs.
Please Explain:
Initiating a new generation of US nuclear weaponry and delivery systems will undermine, not enhance, US national security. It will motivate other countries to respond in kind. It will encourage proliferation nuclear weapons to new countries such as Iran and the escalation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems by existing nuclear powers such as Russia and China. The goal should be nuclear disarmament, not nuclear escalation.
2. In a January 2007 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn and William Perry wrote about the tremendous dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The authors call on the U.S. to work towards the elimination of its nuclear arsenals, as it is obligated to do under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Do you believe that the U.S. should abide by our NPT commitment and, if so, how will you use your position in the House of Representatives to ensure that we do so?
_X__ I believe the U.S. should work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons.
___ I believe the U.S. should not work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Please Explain:
We should abide by Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while seeking a Nuclear Abolition Treaty. NNPT contains good provisions for non-proliferation, weak provisions for eventual nuclear disarmament, and misguided provisions for peaceful nuclear energy. Nuclear power plants are sources of nuclear proliferation and weapons materials as well as environmental disasters. The US should support a global nuclear weapons abolition convention leading to a treaty that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons and power plants with timed deadlines and provisions for verification, enforcement, and monitoring of all nuclear materials and facilities. The abolition treaty should also establish an International Renewable Energy Agency to help all countries replace nuclear and fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy.
3. The U.S. currently has 10,000 nuclear weapons, with about 5,000 deployed. Under the Moscow Treaty the U.S. committed to reduce our arsenals to approximately 2,000 deployed weapons by 2012. Will you make it a Congressional priority to dismantle and destroy all existing stocks of non-deployed weapons and other weapons as soon as they are taken off deployment?
_X__ I will commit to destroying non-deployed nuclear weapons when they are taken off deployment.
___ I will not commit to destroying non-deployed nuclear weapons when they are taken off deployment.
Please Explain:
The US should destroy all non-deployed weapons in a transparent process, assist Russia, China, and other nuclear powers to do the same, and seek internationally monitored safeguards of nuclear materials removed in the process. A sufficient strategic deterrent is achieved at well below 1000 nukes in survivable basing modes such as our submarines. The US should also ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, stop the development and deployment of missile defense (Star Wars), pledge no first use of nuclear weapons, destroy all tactical nukes, take all strategic nukes off hair-trigger alert, and recognize the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons as a matter of international law.
4. The Bush Administration has used the framework of the Global War on Terror to promote a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, to sanction extreme military interventionism around the world, and to curtail civil liberties at home.
According to a September 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, rather than lowering the threat of terrorism worldwide, has actually increased it. The intelligence estimate states that Islamic radicalism has metastasized and spread across the globe. Do you support the Bush Administrations approach to the threat of terrorism?
___ I believe that violent extremism should be primarily fought by military means, including use of Guantanamo-style imprisonment.
_X__ I believe that terrorism should be primarily challenged through a combination of diplomacy and law enforcement, coupled with respect for civil liberties at home and abroad.
Please Explain:
The increase in terrorist attacks around the world is a reaction to the massive expansion of US military bases and interventions in many Arab and Muslim countries as well as US unconditional support for Israels aggressive policies toward the Palestinians and Lebanon. Unlike indigenous forces that are fighting US forces in their own countries to get US forces out, Al Qaeda has declared war on the US, attacked the US, and is seeking nuclear materials for further attacks. Al Qaeda can best be brought to justice through international cooperation by intelligence, police, and special forces. US military invasions, occupations, and bases are counterproductive to catching terrorists and removing the conditions that motivate terrorist acts.
5. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote recently that "The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity" and said that "It is undermining America's global legitimacy... tarnishing America's moral credentials (and) intensifying regional instability." ['A Road Map Out Of Iraq' by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2007]. To end this calamity and to begin to restore America's standing in the world, will you call for all U.S. combat and non-combat troops to be removed from Iraq in such a way that minimizes the potential violence, and for the U.S. to commit to financing reconstruction and redevelopment?
__X_ I will commit to ending U.S. military involvement in the war in Iraq.
___ I will not commit to ending U.S. military involvement in the war in Iraq.
Please Explain:
I support the removal of both combat (about 75,000 infantry) and non-combat (about 75,000 for training Iraqis, logistics, air power, recon, etc.) troops from Iraq, as well as US-paid military contractors (estimates range up to 140,000 mercenaries). I support a cut-off of funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, not timelines for withdrawal attached to funding that the President can veto again. The US owes Iraq reparations, not only for the destruction of the military invasion and occupation since 2003, but also for the destruction caused by 12 years of sanctions and bombing from 1991 to 2003, for the bombing of civilian infrastructure in the First Gulf War, 1990-1991, and for encouraging Iraqs 1980 attack on Iran while arming both sides of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.
6. President Bush and a number of the Presidential candidates have said that all options are on the table with respect to Iran. The message they are sending to the rest of the world is this: The U.S. is a nation prepared to launch a first-strike nuclear attack on the population of another country that do not have nuclear weapons. Do you believe the U.S. should take the nuclear option off the table with Iran?
_X__ I will take the nuclear option off the table with Iran.
___ I will not take the nuclear option off the table with Iran.
Please Explain:
If nuclear weapons have any justification, it is as a strategic deterrence against a nuclear first strike against the US. Nuclear weapons should not be used to coerce other countries by threats or actual attack. Such threats undermine diplomatic efforts to discourage nuclear weapons proliferation to Iran as well as destroy any US credibility in pursuing nuclear disarmament with regional nuclear powers (Israel, Pakistan, India) or other nuclear powers (China, Russia, France, UK).
7. Will you use your position in the House of Representatives to attempt to prevent a military attack on or use of force to achieve regime change in Iran?
__X_ I oppose preventative military action against Iran.
___ I support preventative military action against Iran.
Please Explain:
According to reporting by Seymour Hersh, the US is already engaged in a $400 million covert war inside Iran with the foreknowledge of the Congressional Gang of 8 (party and intelligence committee leaders from both parties in both houses). I oppose this covert war and any overt attack on Iran. Iran is not a threat to the US. It is the US that is a threat to Iran. The US overthrew its democratically elected government in 1953 and installed the Shah. The US encouraged Saddams Iraqi attack on Iran in 1980 and attacked the Iranian navy at a crucial juncture in that war in 1988. Today US military forces surround Iran on all sides (Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and US Navy in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf). Talk of preventive war against an alleged Iranian threat to the US is absurd.
8. The United Nations charter says "all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." Do you think the U.S. should abide by this provision of the UN Charter?
_X__ The U.S. should abide by this provision of the UN Charter.
___ The U.S. should not abide by this provision of the UN Charter.
Please Explain:
The US government played a central role in putting this provision into the UN Charter in the aftermath of World War II. US foreign and military policy should get back to upholding this provision against wars, and threats of wars, of aggression. In practical terms, it means the US should withdraw from its over 700 foreign military bases and cease its many covert and overt military operations now seeking to stabilize or overthrow governments in other countries.
9. U.S. spending on defense is now approximately half the total discretionary federal budget and twelve times greater than that of Russia, the second largest spender. As Congress Member, will you commit to voting against increased federal military spending and redirecting spending to meet the human needs of Americans, including education, housing, healthcare, and the environment?
_X__ I support cutting the federal military budget.
___ I oppose cutting the federal military budget.
Please Explain:
I support cutting military spending ($1.45 trillion in FY 2009, including military spending in all departments plus interest on the national debt due to military spending) by at least one-third. We should withdraw from the Middle East and the over 700 US foreign military bases, cut pork-barrel weapons programs, and scale down our force structures from large-scale conventional war (the obsolete Cold War mission) to likely future missions (counterterrorism, peacekeeping, reconstruction, security, and stability operations). This requires two fundamental policy changes: from a military posture of Full Spectrum Dominance to Cooperative Security and from an industrial policy of Military Keynesianism to Solar-Powered Sustainability.
Post-Standard Questionnaire on Jobs Creation and Retention
October 7, 2008
1. Cite the best two specific ideas (regulation changes, tax incentives, tax code changes, earmarks, legislation, etc) you have to create jobs or stimulate job growth in the 25th Congressional District, describe how the idea would work, and explain approximately how much this would cost the government and how it would be paid for.
The first idea is to finally implement the Economic Bill of Rights that Franklin Roosevelt called for in his 1944 State of the Union address. The first right FDR proposed was the right to a job at a living wage. Congress seriously considered this idea in the original versions of the Employment Act of 1946 and the Hawkins-Humphrey Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978. But in both cases, business lobbies were able to water down the legislation to merely requiring the president to report to Congress on his job creation plans. Private jobs are best, but public jobs are necessary for full employment. Federal Jobs for All legislation should require local governments to develop job programs in public works and services that meet community needs. These jobs should be on the shelves, ready to go, with federal funding ready to fund the jobs. Anybody willing and able to work who cannot find a private job should be able to go the local Employment Office – not the Unemployment Office – and say, “I want my job.” This right should be as automatic as the right to Social Security.
The second idea is a Clean Energy Fund for large-scale public investment of at least $300 billion a year to create an essentially carbon-free economy over the next two decades. These investments would fund the transition from fossil and nuclear fuels to the efficient use of renewable solar-based energy, including the many forms of direct solar heating and electricity as well as wind, geothermal heat pumps, and non-food crop biofuels. It would also entail retrofitting all of our homes and businesses for energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as rebuilding our railroads and mass transit systems as solar-powered electrified railways to displace fossil-fueled roadways. Building this green economy is the way to economic recovery, secure and affordable energy, and climate stabilization to head off catastrophic global warming.
The Jobs for All program and the Clean Energy Fund should be financed by savings from deep cuts in military spending and increased revenues from progressive tax reform. Deficit spending should be the last resort if needed in a recession. It is less costly to the government to tax the rich up front than borrow from and pay interest to them by issuing treasury bonds.
2. Estimate how many jobs in the district your plans will help create and and/or how many it will prevent the region from losing?
Building the green economy is a full employment plan. Studies show that labor shortages, not lack of available capital, is what will limit the speed of the transition to clean energy and other green technologies. The 25th district’s per capita share of a $300 billion a year Clean Energy Fund would be about $700 million a year. The counties and municipalities of our region would participate in developing coordinated plans for investing these funds in renewable heat and electricity generation, green buildings, electrified railways for mass transit and freight shipments, and manufacturing to support this new green infrastructure. But we can get an indication of the numbers of jobs these kinds of public investments could create.
The Apollo Alliance of labor and environmental groups and green-tech businesses estimates that 21.5 jobs are created for every $1 million invested in energy efficiency. If spent $100 million of the $700 million each year retrofitting the 25th district’s homes and business buildings for energy efficiency, it would create 2,150 “green-collar” jobs in construction, the maintenance of building systems, and related manufacturing for efficient appliances and building envelope components. That same Apollo Alliance study found that $300 billion investment in the green economy would produce 3.3 million jobs. The 25th district’s per capita share would be 7586 jobs, including about 2100 jobs in renewable energy, 2050 jobs in manufacturing, 1900 jobs in green building retrofits, and 1500 in public infrastructure construction and maintenance.
3. New Venture Gear, one of the region's larger blue collar employers, has laid off hundreds of workers in recent years. The remaining jobs there appear to be at risk. What specific steps, if any, would you take as a congressman to try to prevent additional job losses there?
I would push for public investment in building a green economy that could create new opportunities for New Process Gear in new product lines. The 1990s craze for oversized SUVs, vans, and pick-ups is not coming back to restore New Process Gear as we have known it. Nor should it. Now is the time to finally address the multi-faceted energy crisis of foreign oil dependence, price spikes, peak oil, and climate emergency. Salvaging the auto/truck/roads system that relies on oil and carbon emissions is a dead end from the viewpoint energy security, climate protection, and recovering from the economic crisis we now face.
A real solution must include a shift from fossil-fueled roads to solar-power rails – electrified commuter rails, freight rails, and high-speed intercity passenger rails. Electrified trains use one-twentieth the energy of diesel trucks to move freight and one-tenth the energy of gasoline cars to move people. Solar and wind electricity can provide carbon-free power for the trains as well as the supplementary electric vehicles for the final delivery of freight, packages, and people.
New Process Gear’s management has stated that they are attempting to diversify into products for smaller, electric, and hybrid vehicles. The experienced and technically skilled workforce at New Process Gear could also play a big role in rebuilding our railroads. If management fails or declines to adapt to the green economy and shuts down New Process Gear in Dewitt, there should be a federal program to enable workers to take over ownership of closing plants as worker cooperatives, with debt and/or equity investment by federal, state, and/or local government to help finance the conversion. The federal government almost did this at the beginning of the deindustrialization of America for a steel plant in Youngstown, Ohio through the Community Services Administration during the Carter administration. If this pilot project had been allowed to proceed, workers and communities would have had a way to fight back against the off shoring of America’s manufacturing base by multinational corporations over the last three decades.
4. Do you think a congressman can actually help create jobs? Please explain why.
Federal legislation greatly affects job creation. It can create jobs by public spending on public works and services. It can create more jobs by changing budget priorities from spending that produces few jobs per dollar spent, such as military spending, to jobs that produce many jobs per dollar spent, such as building the green economy and providing public services such as universal Head Start for all children from age 3 on a voluntary basis and universal child care for working mothers and fathers as many European countries do.
5. Have you ever created a private sector job? If so, how did you do it, approximately when did this occur, and what type of job was it? Please provide specifics. If you have not created a job, please explain why not, and tell me if this will affect your abilities as a congressman.
As the co-owner of a construction workers cooperative and as an independent building contractor in the 1970s and 1980s, I created jobs and hired other building trades people in home, apartment, and retail building construction, energy audits, and solar and wind installations. Federal policies adopted under the Carter administration and then repealed early in the Reagan administration greatly affected the types of building we did and the jobs we could create. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, federal tax credits for solar installations and federal subsidies for insulating low-income homes and apartments created a market for the energy efficiency and renewable energy specialties of our 6-member construction workers cooperative. When these federal policies were eliminated, that market contracted to virtually nothing. Our construction workers co-op closed and I spent the rest of the decade mostly in conventional construction as an independent contractor. As a member of Congress, I would push for public investment in building a green economy that will create job opportunities for a new generation of green building trades and business people.
6. What do you think about the job creation ideas and job creation claims that have been advanced by either of your opponents during the campaign?
Both of my opponents put a strong emphasis on tax breaks for business, including Maffei's vague call for reforming the empowerment zone program, which is the what the Clinton administration renamed Jack Kemp's old Republican enterprise zone idea for stimulating economic development in depressed communities. These are the same trickle down approaches that have not worked for the last three decades to create jobs in regions like the 25th district that have been hemorrhaging good-paying manufacturing jobs for three decades. The tax breaks to the businesses and the wealthy were supposed to stimulate new investment in the economy and the benefits would "trickle down" to workers in the form of new jobs. Instead, due to excess plant capacity in most industries, the windfall from tax breaks was invested largely in financial speculation, everything from the leveraged buy-outs and S&L-financed commercial real estate construction on spec in the 1980s to the mortgage-backed securities of the 1996-2006 housing bubble that is now deflating. Instead of the indirect trickle-down approach of tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy, my alternative is to spend public money directly on job creation in developing the green economy. We do have excess plant capacity for the 20th century industrial technologies based on electrification, automobiles, suburbanization, and mass consumer goods. But now we need to build a new sustainable productive capacity for the 21st century based on green technologies. That will get the economy booming again for a generation.
by union labor