What the NY Communist Party says now

Friends and comrades,

The report below was delivered to the New York State Communist Party's 29th Convention, which took place today. Its general direction was adopted. Edits for style, grammar and typographical errors need to be made, but we present the report to you here, in a rough, unedited version, so that you may see our general politics as soon as possible.

Report to the 29th Convention of the NY State Communist Party

Welcome, everyone.

This report will not go into too much detail on some of the most important issues—but for good reason. You’ll be hearing a number of extended remarks in the discussion—on labor and the jobs struggle, on housing, education, peace, on the fight against racism.

Co-equal to all this is the job of building the Communist Party. We see this task as so important that we’ve devoted a portion of the Convention to it, a more interactive portion. We’ve asked Danny Rubin, who’s studied Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism, whichever term you want to use for it, and has put decades into the study of the theory of the role of Party, to give a presentation on building the Party, the YCL and our press. Then the Convention will divide into workshops where people can throw out ideas and come to a greater and better understanding of how we can work to build the Party. These will be working meetings; the ideas developed, the best of them, will be put into practice. It’s up to everyone here to make sure that the Communist Party is stronger and better in New York.

Some points on the overall scene:

We’re in a period coming on the heels of a huge victory, the successful culmination in the fight for health care reform. I want to emphasize that I’m using the word “successful” without reservation or hesitation. I won’t go too much into the specifics; there’s a good PW article on that. But it does limit the profits of insurance companies. In less than a decade, more than 30 million new people will be insured.

That means tens of thousands of people each year will live longer, lives saved. What kind of progressive, not to mention Communist, could pooh-pooh this? Fighting against this bill, as some had urged, out of a dogmatic fidelity to the idea of single payer-or-nothing would have sentenced these people to death. We can’t be part of any such thing.

Reform, for the first time in decades, put Congress and the President on record as saying, “Yes, it is the job of the government to protect people and deliver them services.”

It’s not worth it to spend too much time arguing against reform’s left detractors; there is a much larger group of people against reform, attacking it from the right. In fact, the same dynamic can be seen on virtually all issues. We’ve seen two poles emerge in U.S. politics. On the one side, there is the progressive, democratic people’s movement. It includes the labor movement and the racially and nationally oppressed, young people and the women’s movement, the Obama administration as well as the GLBT community and others, including everyone from the peace movement to sections of the Democratic Party and even a section of monopoly capital itself. It goes without saying that, around this pole, going out in concentric circles of support, is the working class. But on the other side there is a scary, fascistic pole. It is the side that is dominated by the extreme sections of monopoly capital, the tea partiers, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and the Republican Party. This is the side of racist terror, the side that hates immigrants, that wants to escalate wars and terror around the world, and that is chasing immigrants out of the country.

We said that the working class is around the democratic pole, in concentric circles. Each circle that is closer to the center is more advanced. The same is true of the tea parties’ side, though with far less workers. It has to be said that there is some working class support there. But polls show that the tea party movement is mainly made up of middle strata people. The concentric circles on this side stretch out and meet and overlap with the circles from the other side. There are a huge number of working-class people somewhere in the middle who have contradictory ideas: big government is bad, but we should do something about health care; we’re union members and hate the bosses but why do we let in all these immigrants? Etc.

What to do about this? Obviously, we want to fight to get the best, most progressive, positions forward in our coalition. In practice, this means fighting for the dominance of labor and the other core forces, to set the stage at some point more than the monopoly forces, or the Democratic Party centrist forces in this coalition. At the same time, this can’t come at the expense of pushing that pole away from the working class people in the center. More people who are in the center have to be brought over to the side of the labor-led people’s coalition, that left pole, and we can do that.

We’re in a transitional period between a fight against the ultra right, just that most awful section of monopoly capital, and a period of an all out fight against monopoly capital. Currently, monopoly capital is sometimes an ally, sometimes not, based on any given issue. Even its most moderate section floats between the two poles. The question, then, is: how do we fully defeat the extremist ultra-right section of capital, and bring much of mass base over to the side of progress? How do we move to a new situation of working people and their allies versus all of monopoly capital? The answer given, and the answer with which I believe we would agree, is to fight to push forward the leading role of labor and its allies in the progressive camp and to, without yet pushing them away, marginalize the monopoly capital forces. That means helping to build the power of the AFL-CIO and the NAACP and NOW, NCLR and other Latino organizations, and the youth and student organizations, etc. At the same time, the alliance has to be maintained (even though this section of monopoly capital either doesn’t realize or openly resents being in alliance with such people’s forces), and strengthened, to ensure that the far right doesn’t pick up seats and power in the November elections.

The main issue going forward is going to be the question of jobs; we’ve already seen that this is the case. The biggest thing on the minds of the American people is the economy, and how it affects us. Can we win government intervention that will help to alleviate people’s economic suffering? If so, we can actually strengthen our coalition’s hand in November; if not, we can expect to see a setback, a defeat at the polls that would strengthen the hand of reaction.

I’m restraining myself from getting into the jobs’ fight; we have extended comments on that.

The stakes are high, and this election has to be seen as just as important as 2008. Will we move forward into an era of reforms, or will our efforts be stymied?

Concretely this means picking up Democratic seats in the House and Senate, with the best possible candidates. Here in New York, that means making sure that the NY senator maintains her seat. She represents what we can do in New York State right now, the balance of forces, and she has the backing of the key players, including labor and women’s organizations. As in all things, this isn’t about personalities, individual candidates, but about the victory or failure of the coalition/movement around them. We want to see a victory of this labor-led coalition around her.

We’ll also have to take a look at the House, and compare notes with our allies in labor and the broader movement: There are Democratic seats around the state that face challenges and need to be defended.

Also, there is the question of the governor: How do we make sure that some Republican doesn’t take the governor’s mansion? Or that the State Senate stays Democratic, or picks up some seats to make sure that no right wing coup d’etat can happen again. This will be State Senate that will be in power for the redistricting based on the census results, and the Democrats need to be in power to avoid Republican gerrymandering. These are going to be important parts of the elections, and, given that we are a small party, we have to decide what to prioritize, based on the actual situation as it develops.

We should talk about these elections here, and ask the incoming State Committee to make concrete decisions about what to do, and where.

We talked about the coalition necessary to win, and we saw the New York City version of such a coalition, very beautifully and fully on display, in the election campaign of John Liu. He had powerful opponents: he was one of four candidates vying for the seat, and Wall Street and the big developers supported anyone but Liu, and they had billions of dollars to spend. But he was able to win 40 percent of the vote in a four way race, and then, in the runoff, crush his opponent with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Why was Liu able to do this? The coalition: With the exception of a single union, Liu had the support of the entire city labor movement. He had the support of the African American community, the Latino communities, the Asian communities, the GLBT community, and many white liberals. This powerful, undivided coalition was able to crush the Wall Street candidates. We saw the same thing in the mayoral fight—almost. The coalition nearly came together around Bill Thompson, who was trying to defeat Mayor Bloomberg, who doesn’t just take the side of the bosses, but who is one of the bosses. Bloomberg, who you’ll hear much more about in the sub reports (if I were to really get into him, and how awful he’s been, I’d speak for twice as long!) He spent more money than any other candidate in the history of municipal elections, in any country, about $200 million, and had years of incumbency. Nonetheless, he was only able to beat Thompson by less than five points. And the coalition around Thompson included a divided labor movement. Of the biggest unions in the city, the most powerful, two or three sat out the elections or endorsed Bloomberg—out of fear of what he’d do to them if he won. If a single one of these unions had jumped in and mobilized, we would probably be in a city whose chief executive was Bill Thompson.

This coalition is the only way forward. In everything we do, every election, every fight on an issue, we have to keep in our thoughts the question of how we help this coalition come together and stay united, and how to further empower it. That is the way forward in every instance.

We should take pride that we were able to predict a number of things. We were saying “tax the rich” to fix the budget crisis all along. Now, we saw that the Working Families Party took up that idea, and pushed to tax up to 50 percent of Wall Street bonuses, and Paterson and Bloomberg are backpedaling, since they’ve likely been scared by the popular support for that demand.

We were, aside from Bill Thompson, perhaps the only people in New York City who actually thought that there was a chance for Bloomberg to be defeated, if the correct balance of forces were assembled. We were proven correct. The fact that we’re too small and weren’t able to put forward the case to enough of the key players in the movement hindered the city. If others had been persuaded to follow our line, the city would not have a fat cat billionaire mayor, the mayor who wants to take away kids educations, privatize the schools, etc. After the elections, we said that the time was right for some kind of progressive caucus in the City Council, already close to half the members of the council itself. No one said that, except us. We put the idea forward in the public forum. Did they take the idea and run with it? We don’t know, but we did accurately assess the situation. We can take this as proof that we’re on the right track, in touch with what’s going on, and, more importantly, that the Marxist outlook, the Communist outlook, is correct and works.

Turning to the Party organization, I’ve already mentioned our politics, our Marxist analysis, and how all that led us to the right conclusions. Our analysis has proven sound.

Within the past year, we’ve replaced an outdated New York City club structure with something new and better. What we had in place before was the relic of a different era. We had neighborhood clubs that had too few people for there to be any critical mass, an arts club that, while full of good people, couldn’t have any direction because it was multi-borough and most of the people who were artists—some historical figures in the Party—had passed. When we studied the situation, we saw that we needed to take a step back and regroup in order to move forward. We dissolved all these clubs and created a new Manhattan-wide club, chaired by Bill Davis, and assigned the members of all of the former neighborhood clubs, as well as people in Manhattan who had been clubless, into the new club. The AEM club’s members were sent into other clubs, where they can participate in local struggles. Manhattan held a club pride event, and it was pretty exciting. Meeting attendance is good, and they are connected to their communities. If it keeps going in this direction, we won’t have to wait that long to see new community clubs emerge out of it, clubs that will have strong roots in Harlem, in Washington Heights, in Inwood—just to name some places uptown.

We’ve established a Queens club, and Gabe Falsetta is helping to get it off the ground. It is small, but the first club in Queens in years. We’ve established an education workers club, out of the old, structurally non-workable trade unionists club. Mike and Bobby are leading that club’s work. We’re also on the verge of establishing a new Staten Island club; Gabe and I just met with the people who will become the founders of that club, by phone. Arts committee; TU committee

We’ve done other good things as well, but let’s look at some problems. Now, we only have a single person on staff, instead of the two people a few years ago, and three people before that. This is a result of objective conditions—the Party budget. The Party is, for the first time in decades, stable in its finances, and poised to do better (there will be a pre-Convention document on that), but that meant cutbacks in staff.

We have too small of a base of readers of the PW, something Danny is planning to address, and too few members, also something Danny is planning to address.

Because of all this, we haven’t been able to participate and influence the people we want to influence. We haven’t had nearly enough participation in the mass arenas of struggle, in the coalitions: Organizing for America, the labor movement, etc. We haven’t been able to have sufficient presence at big rallies, to either have Party contingents or hand out material.

We need better financial support. We’ve got only 26 sustainers in the district! How can this be? You all have a sustainer form in your folders. Can you either start a sustainer—taken out of your account each month automatically—or raise it?

I want everyone here to think about how you can help in this respect. The Party isn’t some amorphous, phantasmagorical organism that exists outside of our membership; it is its membership. We are the Party, and we all have to think of what we can do better.

I wanted to list all of these problems so that we could think about them, how to fix them. I’m not trying to be depressing or gloomy; there would be no point in listing these problems if they were not things we could overcome—and I think we will do so. As I said, we’ve increased our standing. We have politicians coming to us now looking for help in their campaigns, giving us openings in grassroots struggles and, more than five years ago, we’re known as a positive force in many arenas.

We have a lot of reasons to be optimistic; let’s work to ensure that the Party grows stronger—we’re finally moving forward past the anti-ultra right stage of struggle, but we’ve still got a long way to go between now and the construction of socialism!

From the Communist Party: Solutions to the MTA crisis

Below is the text of a flier, produced by the People's World, that is being distributed at the MTA hearings:

Solutions to the MTA crisis: United we can win!

The MTA cuts are completely and totally avoidable. They hurt the people of our city, and they also an assault on transit workers, and their jobs: at least 400 station agents are being cut, and the authority is pushing now to reopen the contract with TWU Local 100.


City Council Plan – The right direction!

Our city council has put forward a realistic plan to stop the most egregious of the cuts, the ending of free Metrocards for students:

• Reallocate 10 percent of direct stimulus aid to MTA operating expenses (this should generate about $91.5 million)
• Use budgeted PAYGO capital funds for operating ($50 million)
• Reallocate 10 percent of additional stimulus transit aid via state to operating expenses ($30 million).

This plan is, of course, not perfect. Firstly, it doesn’t solve the problem of stopping all the transit cuts. Secondly, allocating money away from the capital fund, which is used for new projects, such as the Second Avenue subway line, is harmful. It holds up important projects, and would stop the creation of jobs that such projects bring about. This is important, and can't be overlooked. Nonetheless, the situation is extreme.


We can go further: Reverse sweetheart deals with big developers

If the City Council plan is the best we can win for now, it has to be supported. But we should, while supporting that, be fighting for something more as well. Reversing and stopping future giveaways to the big developers (who, unfortunately, control the MTA’s Board of Directors and count Mayor Bloomberg among their friends/partners) would be a huge start.

Forest City Ratner, a multi-billion dollar developer that has found hundreds of millions of dollars in public money to finance a private for-profit project called Atlantic Yards has benefited greatly from the MTA: they are selling the Vanderbilt Yards in Brooklyn to Ratner for $100 million, but accepting a down payment of only $20 million and allowing the developer to pay the rest over more than two decades.

Further, in a shady (the most polite term possible) deal, when it decided to sell the property, worked exclusively with Ratner and sold the property well under value. In fact, another company, Extell, actually offered the MTA a full $50 million per year more than Ratner, and offered to pay up front. (We shouldn’t trust the MTA in general: everyone remembers the scandal in which they were found to be keeping two sets of books: one for the public, one that reflected reality! Also, the recent scandal around services never rendered is surely not atypical.)

The MTA should scrap the deal with Ratner and do one of the following (in worst to best order)

• At the very least, demand $100 million upfront from Ratner, or
• Sell the land to Extell for $150 million upfront, or
• Put the property back on the market for what it is currently valued: $271.5 million (by MTA estimates; according to an independent estimates: $900 million)

There are deals like this across the city. Why should we suffer cutbacks while rich developers take millions of dollars of our money?

Tax the rich

First, we have to keep the Fair Share Tax that was won in a recent struggle. Paterson, who may or may not be governor when this flier is being read, has said he would allow the law that increased taxes a tiny bit on the rich to sunset. That simply isn’t fair.

Also, there is going to be a tax increase no matter what happens. The question is who will pay it, millions of working New Yorkers, who are struggling to make ends meet, or the rich and superrich? Eliminating the student Metrocards means each student must spend an extra $2.50 each way to and from school, five times a week, four weeks or so per month, bringing the total to $100.00. Students are in school for about nine months per year, so the cost for one student is $900.00. A family that has two kids in school would spend an additional $200.00 per month, or $1,800.00 yearly—a huge “tax” increase!

Why not increase the tax those who really can afford it? There are sixty billionaires in New York alone (including, of course, our mayor, one of the top 20 richest people on Earth). Taxing them could bring in enough money each year to stop the cuts and even reduce fares.

Why not a tax on all stock transfers over a certain amount (in order to avoid taxing 401k benefits, etc.)?

Bloomberg’s not-yet-presented budget will almost certainly call for slashing education and other important services—and, consequently, jobs. The same goes for Paterson’s current budget proposal.

All of the budgetary problems of the city and the state could be fixed with a permanent or temporary tax on the super-rich, of whom New York has more than virtually anywhere else.

Unity for victory

But, given the dominance of Wall Street and the big developers over the city, the MTA and the state, none of this can be done without uniting all of the forces—TWU Local 100, the UFT, 1199 and the rest of the labor movement; the big churches; progressive elected officials, who have successfully put both the city council and the state legislature up as road blocks to the most egregious service and job cuts; the students, the Working Families Party and the rest of New York’s working people—in a big struggle, the same kind that was victorious just over a year ago in passing the Fair Share Tax.

If we stay divided, we’ll most likely lose these battles.

United, we’ll surely win.

Communist Party on NYC council election results: The struggle continues

New Yorkers elected a new city council November 3, with some remarkable, and contradictory, results. Some incumbents were sent packing, some new progressives were elected and some important victories were gained over the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine. At the same time, the pernicious effects of racism were exposed in some races, most notably the 19th district, in Queens.

Overall, the election results were better than might have been expected. Some of these important results are mentioned above. Another is that, for the first time in this city's more than 400-year history, most seats in the council are held by an African American, Latino, or Asian American, meaning that the council much more accurately represents the complexion of this predominately racially and nationally oppressed city. Four members, or about eight percent of the new council, will be openly gay, the highest number yet.

In addition, about 25 percent of the incoming council's members will be non-incumbents, i.e. new members. This is for various reasons: some went off to fight for higher office, others simply retired. But there is another, more important reason: popular revulsion with those city councilors who agreed to go along with Bloomberg's plan to override the will of New Yorkers and overturn the results of two term limits referenda-thus paving the way for himself to run for a third term. Many have seen this as an undemocratic power grab. Five incumbents were defeated, at least partially due to complicity in Bloomberg's power grab, marking the highest number of sitting councilors thrown out in nearly two decades.

At the same time, there were some serious setbacks. Two council seats were lost to Republicans, giving that party a total of five out of 51 seats. Worse still, one of the seats they picked up can be attributed to anti-Asian racism.

John Liu, the first Asian-American ever elected to any city office, left his council seat in the 20th district, which includes Flushing and surrounding Queens communities, to fight for-and win-the seat of city comptroller. There were several Democratic candidates who ran in the primary. Two Korean Americans, two Chinese Americans and a white candidate. In this district, the necessity was to build a coalition of Korean and Chinese people, as well as the relatively small African American community and some of the white population in order avoid a vote fractured along ethnic lines-and losing to the Republican.

John Choe, one of the Korean American candidates and Liu's former chief of staff, was in the best position to do this: he had worked for years with the entire community, and had the backing of the Queens Democratic Party. However, his candidacy was not able to overcome the divisions, especially given that another candidate, S.J. Jung, also a Korean American, received the backing of the Working Families Party. Choe ultimately lost to the little known Chinese American candidate Yen Chou, who lost to the (also Chinese) Republican candidate Peter Koo. It is worth noting that the margin of difference was less than the total number of votes cast for the Working Families Party and Green Party candidates if they were combined.

In the 19th council district, in Queens, Democrat and Korean-American Kevin Kim lost to Republican heathen Dan Halloran for the seat given up by Democrat Tony Avella. This, the other Republican pickup, looks to be due entirely to racism. Halloran ran an almost openly racist campaign, in which he essentially told voters that were Kim to be elected, Asian developers would change the entire community to look like (overwhelmingly Asian) downtown Flushing.

To make matters worse, the term used above, "heathen," was not an insult: this is what Halloran calls himself. In fact, he's a member of a bizarre religious sect called Theodism, which describes itself as heathen. This sect worships the gods and goddesses of Northern Europe-and has been linked to extreme racial beliefs.
Also, Kim's Asian campaign workers were reportedly harassed and surrounded by white thugs who chanted "white power" and "Asian man out!" all while carrying Halloran paraphernalia. It is clear that, in a district that is very much Catholic-and therefore not predisposed to vote for heathens and where Asian American campaign workers were set upon, and which had been previously Democratic, that the use of racism was the primary reason for Kim's loss.

It would be wrong to paint all whites in the 19th district as racist, of course. Halloran, beat Kim by only about 1,300 votes, so it is clear that at least a good section of the area's white population voted for Kim. Clearly, there is a basis here for the struggle against anti-Asian racism going forward.

At the same time, there were strong gains for Asian Americans. As mentioned above, John Liu, who was born in China's Taiwan province, has become the first-ever Asian-American elected to any citywide position. Also, Margaret Chin defeated incumbent Alan Gerson in the Democratic primary in the first city council district in Manhattan, making her the first ever Chinese representative of the district that includes Chinatown. Both of these elections are historic steps forward for the Asian American community, and New Yorkers should celebrate them.

In the 34th district, which represents Williamsburg and Bushwick, Brooklyn, as well as Ridgewood, Queens, incumbent Democrat Diana Reyna handily defeated, by a margin of 60-35 percent, her main opponent, Maritza Davila.

While Reyna is an incumbent Democrat, this race represents a victory for the grassroots. Vito Lopez, who represents the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine, and is notorious for alleged patronage and corruption scandals, and who is known to place people into office based on their allegiance to him, backed Davila, because Reyna, in essence, decided to fight for affordable housing instead of take Lopez's orders.

Even though she lost the Democratic primary, Lopez decided to take Davila to the general election anyway, on the Working Families Party line: He made an unholy alliance between himself, Democratic clubs he controls, the WFP and the Catholic Church. (The Brooklyn diocese is particularly thankful to Lopez for helping to scuttle state-level legislation that would have lifted the statute of limitations on child rape; the church claimed that if all their victims in Brooklyn and Queens were awarded compensation, the diocese would likely be bankrupted.)

Lopez failed miserably, delivering a rout to the Brooklyn Democratic machine, and empowering progressive currents within the party there.

On Staten Island's north shore, in a blow against racism, Debi Rose was elected the first African American council person to serve any area of the Island. In addition, Rose is openly progressive; she's a member of Staten Island's Peace Action and other organizations.

In uptown Manhattan, Ydanis Rodriguez, who is connected to Dominican left organizations, won with 94.7 percent of the vote-10,672 ballots to 592-after winning about 60 percent of the vote in a six-way primary. Rodriguez has been a staple figure in New York City progressive politics, especially in the fight for immigration reform.

In the primary elections, Jumaane Williams beat incumbent Kendall Stewart in the 45th district in Brooklyn, making him the first Grenadian to ever occupy a seat in the council. So ebullient was the Grenadian population, in New York City and abroad, Williams and his family were invited to meet with, and be congratulated by, the Prime Minister of Grenada. Williams beat Stewart in a six-way primary race by 12 points. Stewart, unpopular for siding with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in changing city term limit laws over the objections of city voters, ran on the Independence Party line in the general elections, after running an extremely dirty campaign. In that election, he suffered an even worse defeat, by a difference of 59.1 points.

Williams, who is only 32, has worked with progressive city council members, including Rosie Mendez, D-Manhattan and others, and has spent his time fighting for housing rights.

Of course, New York City has a number of progressive city councilors who were reelected. Perhaps the most well-loved on this list would be Letitia James, who enjoys an almost celebrity status in Brooklyn, as well as around the other boroughs, for her work in civil and human rights, as well as leading the fight against Forest City Rattner, a multi-billion dollar developer aiming to demolish much of the Fort Greene and Prospect Heights sections of Brooklyn in order to build luxury condos.

Twice in this discussion the Working Families Party was mentioned as playing a nefarious role. This fact cannot be avoided, but, at the same time, it is important not to demonize the WFP. Virtually all of the elected progressives (aside from Reyna) were backed by them. As the party is based in the city's labor movement, both the progressive and reactionary trends on display in the latter are also on display in the former. As we were so glaringly shown in the mayoral race, there are some big divisions in the labor movement-and they were also on display in these elections as well. The question for progressives becomes not how to defeat the Working Families Party, but how to help it, and all of labor, become more united, and to defeat reactionary trends. A weakening of the WFP would be a weakening of the progressive movement. The same goes for labor overall: progressives must work to help unite the labor movement.

Further, the Working Families Party is now leading or has recently led a number of important campaigns: it is fighting to ensure that all New Yorkers are eligible for paid sick days; it fought for fair share tax reform a few months ago; and, in what may have been its most heroic move this election cycle, the party fought a strong, if unsuccessful, battle to stop Bloomberg from overturning the term limits law.

This is only a brief sampling of some of the more exciting races, and some preliminary analysis, but even here it can be seen that the results of the elections were contradictory: some reasons for jubilant optimism, as well as reasons to renew important fights, especially against racism (as the mayoral election showed) are on display.

The struggle continues.

NYS Communist Party on budget crisis

Yesterday, Gov. David Paterson made a speech before an extraordinary joint session of the State Senate and Assembly, pushing the legislative bodies to accept his plan to alleviate the state's more than $3.2 billion deficit for this fiscal year (of which, four and a half months are remaining). Included in the Democratic governor's plans are about $1.3 billion in cuts to schools, health care and municipal governments.

Many people, both inside and outside the legislative chambers, are opposed to the governor's plan - and for good reason: there are ways for the state to remain fiscally solvent without balancing the budget on the backs of working people and the poor.

Today, both bodies, which the governor called out of recess, are expected to discuss these plans. Senate Democrats have come up with an alternate deficit reduction plan that would, they argue, eliminate the need to make any cuts to services important to working people. In the plan are the restructuring of the state's tobacco bonds and an increase in the hours casinos are legally allowed open.

Others, including some in labor, have signed on to this plan. Across the state, thousands of people and organizations have been demanding that there be no cuts to health care of the public schools and universities, which are already reeling from budget cuts and tuition hikes.

The Democrats are right: there is no reason for Paterson to cut these services. But, according to the New York State Communist Party, overlooked are a number of other ways to raise revenues.

From the New York State Communist Party:

Billions of dollars could be raised by implementing the full Fair Share tax reform that was demanded months ago (i.e. a surcharge on those making more than $250,000 per year, instead of $500,000, as was enacted). In New York City alone, there are about 60 people with an income of over $1 billion. A small one percent surtax on them would generate $1 billion dollars.

A one percent stock transfer tax on those with more than $500,000 (which would leave out virtually anyone whose retirement fund is tied up in a 401k) would raise another billion dollars.

But there is waste in the budget, says the NYSPC. There are things that can be cut - things that benefit only the wealthy and the big corporations. Ending the subsidy for industrial development zones would save $4 billion, more than the entire budget gap for this year.

Currently, there are 10,000 governmental units in the state, government bodies that overlap uselessly and serve mainly for patronage for a wealthy few. Trimming them a good deal would save another $4 billion.

Clearly, there are billions of dollars to be had. The question for the governor and the legislature is this: Will you go after the obscene amount of wealth that is being either given to or horded by the rich and super rich? Or will you put the burden on the already immiserated working people of our state?

CPUSA Denonces Gaza Invasion

The Communist Party of the USA expresses its outrage at Israel’s invasion of Gaza, carried out in defiance of world public opinion.

The entry of ground troops into Gaza at a time when the United Nations and many others were working toward a cease-fire and a return to negotiations is arrogant and irresponsible. It will cause many more deaths and injuries and untold destruction of the essential infrastructure of a community already devastated by economic blockade. It is an illegal action and a major threat to regional and world peace, and carries a grave danger of setting off a wider war.

The Israeli government justifies the invasion as necessary to stop Hamas rocket attacks. Although we condemn those attacks, we believe that by its actions Israel is pursuing more far-reaching aims in the region than stated by its representatives. The attacks by Hamas could be quickly ended in the context of a cease-fire.

Launching a ground offensive into Gaza is also designed to box in the Obama administration and new Congress and prevent them from changing US policy vis-à-vis this conflict.

We repudiate the outrageous speech made by President Bush yesterday, which gave a green light to a new Israeli escalation of the conflict. With this act, Bush leaves an even uglier legacy to our country and the world.

We also strongly condemn the attempt by the US delegation to the UN to block the Security Council from taking action to stop the invasion.

We repeat our call for an immediate cease-fire to be strictly monitored by the UN and other international organizations. It should include the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops as well as an end to the bombing of Gaza and a cessation of the rocket attacks into Israel.

It is urgent that Gaza be open immediately to receive food, medicine and other humanitarian aid, and that Israel end its economic blockade.

There is no military solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict. We call for an immediate return to negotiations for a peaceful solution based on the two-state concept, which will address the national aspirations of the Palestinian people as well as the security interests of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

We hope that as soon as President Obama takes office, he will pursue a new policy in the Middle East that contributes to peace, justice and stability in that region.

Finally, we urge the American people to add their voices to the millions worldwide protesting the invasion and calling for a cease-fire on both sides and for a just peace.