I have referenced the Colorado Centrist Project in this space.  The organization’s mission is exactly what the name suggests.  It is dedicated to fielding and supporting independent candidates who might someday break the partisan ice jam that has become government’s status quo.

The project recently renamed itself Unite Colorado (UC) and affiliated with the national independent organization Unite America.  The Centrist cause has been gaining momentum, much to the chagrin of Democrat and Republican operatives, so when UC showed up backing a few independent candidates for state House and Senate, the Major Party Mafia decided enough was enough.  The Democrats were the first to mobilize, and the Colorado Pols* website authored the first strike.

Colorado Pols (CP) is the leftwing equivalent of Breitbart News, committed to the defense of the Democrat party and the public disparagement of anything or anyone who poses a threat to its influence.  Aside from snide inferences and general effrontery (“so-called Centrist Project” “failed congressional candidate Nick Troiano”) and out-of-context quotes (“It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issues”), CP’s hit piece relies mostly on the old conspiracy theory of vote-splitting.

Independent candidates, so goes the myth, do nothing but draw votes away from one party which allows the other party’s candidate to win with less than a majority.  Think Ross Perot, supposedly sucking the Presidency away from G. H. W. Bush and dropping it in Bill Clinton’s lap.  Why throw away your vote? CP asks.  Are you stupid?  Stick with us, or the Evil Others will seize power!  A vote for an independent is a vote for Donald Trump!!!

What the Dems are trying to paper over with this line of distraction is that in Colorado there are more unaffiliated (read independent) voters than there are Democrats, and if trends continue independents will very soon outnumber Republicans, who are losing registrants in droves – thank you, Mr Trump.  If Colorado independents all “threw away” their votes on an actual independent candidate that candidate would win.  Moreover, if an independent candidate or two should prevail in Colorado Senate races, neither party would hold a majority in that chamber, and both parties would be beholden to non-dogmatics in order to govern.  Does that not sound like a better alternative to the rancorous partisan stalemate we are living with?

The CP piece concludes by stating that the “post-partisan” branding of the Centrists is really a “post values” campaign, as if the “values” of the two major parties are anything more than a sop to their extremist bases and cudgels with which to thwack any who wander from the Party Line.  More than anything, the Democrats and Republicans appear to see their “values” as an excuse not to cooperate with, or even show common respect for, each other.  The only ”value”  they seem to actually value is power.

There are some easily readable tea leaves at the bottom of this bitter cup.  The only reason that Colorado Pols is the first major party proxy to start attacking the Centrist Project is because the present Unite Colorado slate is seen by Democrats as a greater threat to them.  But the Republican response will be the same or worse as soon as the state GOP wakes up to the budding threat from the Center.  Because the emergence of a strong political movement not their own is the worst nightmare of Democrats and Republicans alike, and they will use every weapon in their arsenal to derail such a movement.  The stronger the Centrist movement becomes, the bigger the guns we will see unlimbered against it.  Wait and see.

So, Colorado independents, we have a choice to make.  Do we continue to support evermore dogmatic politicians who offer us character assassination in place of reasoned debate?  Or do we try something else?  If this CP article proves anything, it is that state Democrats. at least, are scared spitless that we might.  I’m not calling anyone stupid, but I will note the fallacy of reason that is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.

* coloradopols.com – *”It’s Official: The Centrist Project Thinks You’re Stupid”

The United States Congress is expending vast amounts of time, energy, and polemics on legislating healthcare insurance, but nothing on a bigger issue: healthcare costs. The House in particular seems ready to eviscerate our major programs to Provide-For-The-General-Welfare, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They claim financial disaster awaits us otherwise, but surrendering the benefits of citizenship never seemed compelling to me.

(BTW – when did the word “benefits” develop a negative connotation? I always had salary and benefits as part of my job compensation and liked both words. I just can’t keep up with political correctness.)

A recent article from fivethirtyeight brings my gut feeling into intellectual focus.

Lawmakers’ plans to overhaul Social Security and other entitlement programs are missing the real problem… If the U.S. budget collapses after hemorrhaging too much red ink, the main culprit will be rising health care costs.

Social Security will get a little more expensive over the next 30 years; welfare and anti-poverty programs will get a little cheaper. But costs for programs like Medicare and Medicaid are expected to climb from the merely unaffordable to truly catastrophic. [my emphasis]

Yes, the demographics of the Baby Boom have an impact, but  that bulge in the system works itself out in 10 or 15 years when America’s percentage of elderly stabilizes. The program needs some maintenance tweaks, but Social Security isn’t a major problem. Programs often lumped into the negative term “welfare” (there’s that political correctness again) look manageable too.

The problem is totally different when you turn to health care. Spending on health programs — including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies required by the Affordable Care Act — will never shrink or stabilize. The CBO predicts these costs will grow over 65 percent between now and 2047 — and then go right on growing after that, heedless of the fact that the percentage of the population that’s over 65 should no longer be increasing. [my emphasis]

Draconian cuts to programs that are not cost drivers will cause pain while allowing the financial problems to continue. Higher and higher taxes don’t address the underlying problem either, so trading traditional-Republicans for traditional-Democrats isn’t a solution. And swinging back and forth between them is ridiculous, though that may be where today’s hyper-partisan, two-party system leads us.

Health care costs are driving us towards bankruptcy. Costs have been rising faster than overall inflation for years and that’s expected to continue.

What’s the answer? There are regulatory and free-market ideas out there, but until we insist that Congress tackle the problem with real facts (when did that noun begin to need an adjective!) and open minds, we’re stuck in a downward spiral.

Colorado lost another law enforcement officer last weekend, a young husband and father, killed in an ambush perpetrated by a deranged cop-hater who staged a domestic disturbance and shot up the responders from behind his bedroom door.  To compound his unspeakable act, he live-streamed the entire atrocity on social media.

As shocking and disturbing as this cold-blooded act was, it was compounded by TV stations’  unfathomable decision to air parts of this evil bastard’s broadcast on the nightly news. Bad enough that the news media repeated his name and paraded his life history in front of the world, but to give him actual face time?  Exactly what purpose does that serve? The gunman died in the lethal exchange so outing him removed no threat to the community, in fact quite the opposite.  Showing his face and his sick manifesto  only serves to provoke and encourage other sick, angry individuals to seek media glory by imitating him. That, and adding to the misery of those closest to the people he hurt.

I am sick and angry, too.  Sick of seeing the names and faces of these killers plastered on the same screens as the grieving families and colleagues of their victims.  Angry that our mass media puts ratings above the feelings of violence victims.  Purveyors of “news” are fond of excusing such behavior by citing the public’s “right to know.”  What about our right to not know?

If one media outlet would have the spine to keep the names and faces of mass killers out of its stories I would be a viewer for life.  As for the rest of them I will wait, in vain I’m sure, for an explanation.

The special Senatorial election in Alabama is over, and the era of the political earthquake continues.  Voters in this reddest of red states, a year after elevating a clinically narcissistic, linguistically challenged, misogynistic Republican to the country’s highest office, decided for the first time in 25 years to send a Democrat to Washington.  Both parties were quick to get on message about the result.  Both messages are predictably laden with partisan spin, and are a sad indication that neither party has gotten the real message.

Republicans assured us that Doug Jones’s win was not a refutation of Donald Trump or his/their policies, and that Roy Moore would have won easily if not for a Democrat-orchestrated smear campaign.  A more reasonable assessment might be that Alabama voters couldn’t stomach being represented by Moore, an accused sexual predator who also happens to be Elmer Gantry on steroids.  His alleged mall-trolling aside, Moore is a disgusting anachronism even in the Deep South, and his loss was a gift to the Republican party at a time when its image is already layered in mud.  Making the best of President Donald J. Trump has put the GOP on shaky moral and ethical ground, and having to support and defend Moore any longer would have stripped Republicans of any pretense of decency that might be left to them.  They already seemed hellbent on stripping themselves of any vestige of fiscal conservatism by concocting a tax reform plan that drills a trillion-dollar hole in the concept of a balanced Federal budget.  Has the Party of Lincoln become the party of misogyny and hypocrisy?

At the other end of Dream Street, Democrats are telling us that Jones’s victory is a referendum on all things Republican and the first falling rock of a liberal landslide that will return Congress to Dem control no later than 2020.  To prepare for this glorious occasion, the party has initiated a Reform Convention the apparent goal of which is to codify more, not fewer, extreme planks in its platform.  The Dems’ bewildering takeaway from the presidential election continues to be that Hillary Clinton was not liberal enough, and their response will be to anoint an aging, blustering European Socialist the party’s de facto standard-bearer.  Even if Bernie Sanders doesn’t run in 2020, whoever the Democrats nominate will be mouthing his words.  At a time when most Americans want to see more cordiality in Congress, the Democrats seem prepared to declare a full-blown class war.  In a country that pollsters say is still moderately conservative, this approach may get headlines, but will it get votes?  In his victory address Jones, a former US Attorney, sounded like a moderate Democrat.  How will he fit into the Party of Bernie?

So as the world of politics as we thought we knew it provides yet another election night surprise, both Republicans and Democrats appear unable to see beyond their respective dogmas. As both camps retreat further from the political center, are voters to be stuck choosing between government by the Old Testament and take-no-prisoners Populism?

Hopefully not.  A Centrist movement is gaining momentum nationwide, and every time the American electorate is presented with a lesser-of-two-evils choice by the two-party system, that movement gets a little stronger.

How much longer are we going to allow the political extremes to pick our candidates?  I’ll bet that many Alabama Republicans are asking themselves that question right about now.  And if the Bernie Revolution comes to fruition, many Democrats will be asking it as well.