Hi, I'm Howie Hawkins. I'm a seeking the Green Party nomination for President and I wanna make a few comments about this Democratic debate that just happened and I apologize for being a few minutes late a little technical difficulty, but I'm getting the hang of this live streaming on Facebook. my general thought about this debate is it sure shows why we need a Green party. these candidates are not dealing with the life and death issues that we're facing the first thing that. Up was who's ready to be commander in chief now was about war in peace and none of them, said. We need to get all our US troops out of the Middle East. I mean we've been there for decades and all we've done is alienate people created more enemies. There's more terrorism than before there is no advance toward democracy when wars go on Democratic movements are pushed to the side by the armed forces So we have endless war and the one that came closest to saying US troops out was a little Elizabeth Warren, but she said combat troops. You know that's what Obama did. He kept advisers and trainers advisers means you have people in their spotting where mortar shells or airstrikes should go using intelligence satellite intelligence you're in the war and then special operations forces. you know some of. A candidate so we need to leave them there. that's war you know, and this in this war has not done any good for the Middle East. It hasn't increased our security. so I think they all flunked in that regard and none of them call for deep cuts in military spending. I'm talking about 70 -, five percent cuts and instead of having a global military empire, we should be the world's Should be putting that military money into a global Green New deal to deal with poverty and the climate crisis and make friends instead of enemies and then they got to talk about the Iran nuclear deal and most of them, said We should you know try to get back into it, but none of them talked about the larger problem. Maybe one of them kinda mentioned it in passing of it was called nuclear proliferation. We're in the Middle of a new nuclear arms race, The Bulletin of Atomic, Scientists says, where two minutes to midnight, that's as high as they've ever put it because we've gotten out of all the. Nuclear arms treaty Somebody mentioned start is coming up. That's the last major one. Besides the early nuclear nonproliferation treaty that's still enforced and we are modernizing our nuclear forces. We're putting tactical nukes more into conventional forces. We are creating strategic news that are hypersonic. That's six times faster than they are now, which means it's not launch on warning you launch. When you think the others might launch, which puts the nukes on more than hair trigger. It's a very dangerous. So what I've been calling for an urgent all Green candidates to advocate is we should pledge no first use of nuclear weapons. We should unilaterally disarm to a minimum credible deterrent. The point of having nukes is to make sure they're not used. That's what the turn is for. We don't need more nukes than we need for a deterrent. We have so many nukes now when you know. Beyond the minimum are launched, although be doing is bouncing the rubble. It's insane and the idea that we can have more tactical nukes and conventional forces and we're not gonna go strategic and blow up the whole world is insane. So these are issues that we need to Green party to be involved in and raising because we're not getting it from the Democratic Party. When they got to trade only Sanders was against this Trump USA MCA US Mexico Canada Agreement The New Nafta, which is terrible for the environment. It keeps the secret of trade tribunals that only corporations and governments can act have access to but not labor in the public. so they they make rulings and we only know what the decision is not what the opinion was rationalizing decision plus we can't testify. Have any influence on those proceedings and you know Santa's as opposed, but then he talked about corporate responsibility using government contracting and he didn't talk about economic democracy or as he calls himself a socialist. we need to own our own jobs. That's how we prevent outsourcing either through cooperatives worker, cooperatives or public enterprises, public utilities. so we're not gonna move to a cheap labor country to pay ourselves less or let or pay half. Else pay less while we're unemployed, so you know that was a very unsatisfying critique of these trade agreements and then some of them when they got talk about this trade agreement, they turned on on China and you know I remember saying we need to get together with our allies to have basically a trade war with China and I'm advocating we bring shine into the tent so we can create mutually beneficial trade relations for everybody in the Pacific Arena now. Try to do with the TPP, which seems to be what clover Shar is going back to and none of the other candidates called her on that. so that's another issue and then the one it got me shouting at the TV was the Medicare for all discussion, and of course, the CNN questionnaire like every debate we've had so far. they asked the question the way the insurance industry would how are you gonna pay for it and the answer is it's a lot cheaper to do Medicare for all that it is to go through the insurance industry and I wish Sanders. Warren, You know what I've been talking about this for a while they need to say the public option that the other Democrats are advocating cost more. We just had a study out last week from the Annals of Internal Medicine. peer reviewed study said that if we go to single payer Medicare for all will save 600 billion dollars a year in paperwork and administrative cost out of the over eight hundred eight hundred 12 billion in their study that we spend now with this multiple. a multi payer system where if you're the hospital or the doctor in the clinic, you gotta like look through see what the insurance is find out if the service is covered, then see if the insurance company will pay for it and if you ask for it and it's covered sometimes they resist. and that's what creates all this overhead and you know the question is will that raise taxes. Of course it will Medicare for all as a public system, but the people will pay less than they are now with their co-pays deductibles Out-of-pocket expense. And their premiums and I just thought you know they could have really nailed the other public option people. It was an opportunity for the Medicare for all advocates, Warren and Sanders the nail these public option Shields for the insurance industry, and they didn't do it. so I was kinda frustrated by that and then when they got the climate action man did they come up short? Clovis Shaw again took the right wing position. She said she was she wouldn't be for. Fracking because we need natural gas as the bridge fuel to the renewable future, I mean that's about 10 years behind the times in terms of where the climate movement is at and I remember we were arguing against that in 2008 when we first started calling for a ban on fracking in New York, which we got in 2014 and so none of the other candidates called her on that Bernie Sanders is getting the deal says he's for a ban on fracking. He should have said that in the debate and I don't know why. Didn't And then the other thing that needs to be said and a little bit of this in Sanders Green New deal, but it's not enough is that we need an ecosystem Green New deal. We gotta do what we did there at World War two when the federal government built or took over a quarter of US manufacturing capacity in order to build what they called the Arsenal democracy to defeat the fascists. We need to do nothing less to defeat climate change. so we need a public energy sector. We need public transportation The rail. From High-speed rails to trolleys or light rails in the cities, electrifying freight rails that we need a National public energy, corporate public transportation or rail Corporation to do that. we need to have like we did during World War two a public sector building the clean machinery we need for the Green New deal because we don't just have to go to solar and win for energy. We have to transform the manufacturing sector the agricultural sector the transportation. In the building sector, and that requires a lot of new equipment that we don't have the capacity to build in this country and if we don't do it through the public sector and plan it through the public sector, we're not gonna do it in a time frame. We need to do it, which is the next decade otherwise were cooked and we're really in trouble. I mean their climate scientists some of the top climate sinus in the world like Kevin Anderson in England and his colleague Shelly Shelly Barker in Germany are saying that if we go to four degrees rise in temperature, four degrees Centigrade rise, which is the path we're on and we're maybe going higher than that. It's gonna reduce the carrying capacity for human beings by 90 percent. I mean that is a catastrophe. that's we don't even want to contemplate and you know. I've been saying you know Trump calls climate change a hoax, The Democrats act like it's a hose and again. that's why we need your Green Party and in the last point I'll make is that you know the poor people's campaign was out there marching in Iowa. They had an event today, saying you know these candidates need to address the problem of poverty and Buddha said a couple of times we should talk about poverty. Yeah great. What are you gonna do about poverty who has an any poverty program? And so you know what? Been calling for is an economic bill of rights where you have a job guarantee. If you can't get a job in the private sector, you go to the employment office or not the unemployment office and say I want my job in their jobs on the shelf Doing community service and public works that the community is defined they need and it's funded 90 percent by the federal government 10 percent by local governments. That's the way the works Progress administration work when they created jobs during a great depression, we know we can do that we need to make. Everybody has an income above poverty. We can build that right into the tax system. If you're income is below poverty, then instead of paying taxes, you get a negative tax check to you every month to bring you up above the poverty line and beyond that we need to support people with affordable housing, massive expansion of public housing sector. We need improved Medicare for all, I'm calling for a National health service that is publicly owned publicly administered publicly delivered with the doctors. Hospitals and clinics on public salary working for boards that we elect so they're accountable to us rather than top-down bureaucracy. Medicare for all is just an insurance program. Still the private sector able to basically feed it the public you know by multiplying services rather than taking time with a patient just building the Medicare system for services and then the drug companies you know, jacking up the prices and getting paid by the by the public we need. A Democratic accountable system to deal with that cost control issue so that's health care. we need free tuition free public education from pre-K and child care through College and adult education and technical school, and we need secure retirement. I mean the baby boomers have lived through a period where wages are stagnant, housing and health care and Congress cost of skyrocketed. They've raised their families. They don't have any savings. A lot of us still paying student debts. Most of them are still pay. Mortgages and they're still working cuz I can't retire so I've been calling for Dublin Social Security and that would you know give people enough money that they could retire if they want to these are things that can be done and by cutting the military budget, increasing taxes on the rich and ending the you know waste of not just the military the Department of Defense, but the Department of Homeland Security, which is another bloated budget where they just throw money at people cuz they gotta spend it so fast to give their big budgets away. So. Those are issues that that's why we need a Green in the debate when it gets to the general election. not that the Commission on presidential debates is gonna let us do that. That's a private Corporation owned by the Democrats and Republicans, and they run it so they exclude everybody else. But we should pressure the legal and voters who has done it and at the state level, they did it in New York Governor's race last year. They just went ahead and have one even though the governor wouldn't come and news organizations they. Not be muscled aside by this private Corporation of the duopoly, so there's a lot more to talk about, but I think the conclusion is this is why we need the Green Party. So anyway, I'm Howie Hawkins and seeking the Green Party nomination. We need volunteers and donations because our biggest task right now is to get the Green Party on all 50 - one ballots we need about eight hundred thousand signatures at. Signature that's a million and a half dollars anyway and you know we're just getting started on raising that money. so everybody can help contribute to that and the way you can do that is to go to our website. It's how we Hawkins dot US and you can find out more about what we're saying and how to get involved If you want and just remember man this debate show once again why we need a Green Party so have a good evening and hopefully we'll talk again. Take care