SPOTLIGHT: March Madness

The mainstream media have made much of the "sequestration" process that kicked in on March 1. But they're not fooling us - or Bill Black.

Economist Bill Black

Though Black, the highly-regarded associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has never heard of the NPA, he has, for the past four years, been singing our song.

Black has documented how sequestration is the ultimate assault on our New Deal safety net - and how Barack Obama's so-called "Grand Bargain" is in fact  the final "Great Betrayal" that seals the deal.

It started, Black contends, over 40 years ago, with "deregulation" under Jimmy Carter. It intensified with Ronald Reagan's "starve-the-beast" tax cuts and union busting; it continued with two public-sector "downsizing" schemes known as "welfare reform" and "reinventing government" under Bill Clinton; and kicked into overdrive with George W. Bush's two unfunded wars and tax cuts, which took us back to Depression-era revenue levels.

And now we're presented with "sequestration," the bi-partisan deal touted as "necessary" to cut the deficit and address debt through across-the-board budget cuts. This sham "solution" is in fact aimed at making us not only accept but embrace reductions in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits as being "in our best interests."

To which we - and Professor Black - say, "Hogwash."

The NPA agrees with Black: The antics of the duopoly have created our financial problems, and sequestration will only prolong and worsen them. 

Far better and more sensible solutions are found in the NPA's Unified Platform, which advocates rearranging our policies and priorities to support full employment at a living wage, and the creation of a real social safety net, particularly Medicare for All - which would provide not only significant future savings, but public-sector jobs, bringing to an end Big Insurance's practice of profiting on people's pain and suffering.

For a more thorough treatment of sequestration and its discontents, please visit It's Our Economy.

PIPE DREAMS: 

Keystone XL a Done Deal?

President George W. Bush infamously noted that America is "addicted to oil."  In his latest State of the Union address, President Obama specifically said "for the sake of our children and our future ... we must do more to combat climate change."

Yet, when the Forward On Climate rally gathered up to 45,000 people on a cold February Sunday in Washington to protest U.S. State Department approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, they mostly had the place to themselves: Obama and company had decamped to a posh golf resort in Florida run by - you guessed it - a Texas oil guy.

As protestors froze, Obama golfed - with the enemy.

Self-described "progressives" who hoped President Obama would escape his corporate handlers in his second term and live up to his soaring rhetoric at last could not have been pleased with these optics. Yet they still apologized for him.

Even more dispiriting was the State Department's March 1 release of a draft environmental impact statement which, contrary to much scientific and expert opinion, found "no reason" the Keystone XL pipeline should not be built.

Along with our allies at 350.org and Occupy Washington, we believe it's time to draw a line in the sand on climate change - by saying no to tar sands exploitation and no to the Keystone XL pipeline. In this spirit, March 16 thru 23 has been designated a Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands. We encourage you to find out more and participate in events planned coast to coast.  

The NPA has filed numerous letters and briefs on this particular issue and on environmental issues across the country. We encourage our members and supporters to counter the bald-faced bullsh*t of this latest State Department "analysis." More information is available here.  You can submit written comments to:  keystonecomments@state.gov.  And please - DON'T MINCE WORDS.

As NPA liaison for the state of North Carolina, I attended a meeting last month of the NC Independents.

Like the NPA, this group is dedicated to challenging party control of the political process, which they seek to do by "(1) bringing independent voices into the political conversation around the state and (2) pressing elected leaders to enact structural political reforms." Their most recent project is an online petition calling upon the NC General Assembly to support nonpartisan political reform. Three areas of reform are identified:

Open Primaries

Maintaining open primaries at the municipal, county, and state level, so that unaffiliated voters can participate in the party primary of their choice.

Redistricting

Redistricting in 2020 that is organized by an independent, non-partisan commission (not simply bi-partisan) that would include at least one-third politically unaffiliated commissioners.

Ballot Access

Ballot access reform that would dramatically lower the restrictions for new political parties and unaffiliated candidates to qualify for ballot access, and that would dramatically lower the barriers for new political parties to retain ballot access.

Readers seeking to model the election reform process in their own states can see the online petition here.  NC Independents can also be contacted through the "Our Allies" page  at the NPA website.