Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori
TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS
- Kucinich: "One of the greatest hoaxes of this campaign -- everyone's for universal healthcare" (Boston Globe)
- Brookings Institution's "Poverty and Income in 2006" released today, Bloomberg's praise for institute "above partisan politics" (The Nation )
- Fidel Castro: Obama, Clinton are playing cards on Sunday afternoon (The Caucus )
- California redistricting--trying the independent commission way again (Mercury News)
- Congress: what happens after they get elected? Nothing... (Rutland Herald )
- Meet the Citizen Leaders Who Are Changing America-independent "warthogs" (by Newt Gingrich, Human Events)
2 comments:
Wait a damn minute. The independent critique includes the notion that there is a corporate/political elite that both Democrats and Republicans are beholden to. The Brookings Institution is part of that elite. It is only non-partisan in the way that an HMO giving millions to both parties is non-partisan.
Additionally, the Brookings "scholars" O'Hanlon and Pollack are the recent darlings of the right for traveling to Iraq and coming back with the news that the surge is working. Does the fact that O'Hanlon and Pollack have "liberal" credentials while supporting Bush's surge qualify them as non-partisan?
My bottom line is that I think it should take more than just spouting the words non-partisan to merit such cheerleading.
As a follow-up, I recall that independents used to make a sharp distinction between non-partisan and bi-partisan, pointing out that bi-partisan was still subservient to the two-party system (by definition, in fact). But bi-partisan has gone out of fashion, in part because it so often referred to Democrats supporting Bush's evildoing, in part because partisan has become a dirty word in many circles.
But what we are now seeing is that "non-partisan" is being used in contexts where "bi-partisan" would be more accurate. Thus Brookings is a bi-partisan institution, Bloomberg is essentially a bi-partisan politician, and outfits like Unity 08 are in fact calling for a bi-partisan candidate.
It ultimately comes down not to how you label yourself, but whom you serve.
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