Green Party Watch

GPNYS via On The Wilder Side via IPR:

Green Party Calls for State Lawmakers to Reject Cuomo’s Austerity Budget

A Green New Deal would invest in jobs, education, fair taxes

Image by ucloccupation via Flickr

Green Party of NY State leaders today called Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget an attack on working and middle class New Yorkers that should be rejected by state lawmakers.

“Cuomo’s budget is not about shared sacrifice. The people are forced to sacrifice. The richest 3% get more tax breaks. Cuomo is just recycling failed conservative policies of spending cuts and layoffs and tax cuts for the rich. It’s for Wall Street and it will deepen the economic hardships on Main Street . Cuomo’s budget is another version of the attacks on working families and unions that have given rise to massive protests in Wisconsin . We need similar protests here,” said Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for governor in 2010.

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Cynthia McKinney is scheduled to address the upcoming 2009 Annual National Meeting of the Green Party (US) on Saturday July 25 in Durham, North Carolina. The National Meeting runs from Thursday July 23 through Sunday July 26, and besides McKinney will feature other candidates and current office holders as well as a number of workshops, breakout sessions, and other events.

McKinney is expected to speak about the relief efforts surrounding Gaza as well as her recent imprisonment in Israel. Cynthia McKinney is currently in Egypt with the Viva Palestina Convoy that is being held up from entering Gaza by Egyptian authorities.

WASHINGTON, DC — The Green Party’s 2009 Annual National Meeting in Durham, North Carolina, will feature a visit from former US Representative and 2008 Green presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and a forum on health care reform among several events to which reporters, bloggers, and photographers are invited.
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Green Party Media Coordinator Scott McLarty writes an editorial about single payer healthcare, comparing our modern health insurance based health care system to the way we once approached fire protection.

Imagine that you needed a special insurance policy before calling the fire department in an emergency, or you’d have to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for the firefighters to put out the fire.

So why do we tolerate a health care system that’s run the same way?

McLarty goes on to explain exactly where the savings in single payer healthcare comes from, the profits and overhead of corporate for-profit systems that add cost, but no value.

The overhead for Medicare, based on administrative costs but without the demand for profit, is about 3%. Why not convert to a public system, expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, perhaps saving us a third of the cost by eliminating the insurance and HMO middlemen — a system comparable to our public fire departments?

McLarty goes on to ask why we don’t have single payer healthcare today, and answers

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the amount of such (political) contributions (from HMOs and Insurance interests) was over $46 million in 2008

Do yourself a favor and read the article and Digg it a bit higher if you enjoy the article.

Thanks to Lou Novak for Digging this article first.