Andrew Yang is NYC's stand-out visionary political and economic figure.
Andrew Yang has always been a stand-out political and
economic figure in themix and mire of the AmerAmerican body-politic.
With a razor-sharp intellect and charisma to match, he truly came to light in the last
Presidential race when, for example, he easily raised more campaign funds than
some of his more experienced Democrat rivals.
Yang also championed the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which entailed a
monthly payment of $1,000.00 to every adult American citizen and unconditional
green card holder. Seen as an outlandish, unsustainable idea at first, the
various COVID rounds of economic stimulus since then have shown UBI to be in
the vanguard of new socio-economic thinking for a post-pandemic country and
global economy.
New York City took a pandemic pounding in 2020 and, harrowingly, 2021 is
proving to be no better. Yang, now an ex New York City mayoral candidate, is
committed to helping the city recover from COVID, in all its forms, as quickly
and effectively as possible. Consequently, Yang has promoted a New York City
specific UBI that would provide some low-income city residents with thousands
of dollars of UBI relief every year.
On the back of that, word has it that Yang is on the verge of jumping off the
Democrat ship with the launching of his own third party within the next month.
No doubt UBI will be at the heart of that new political set-up.
It is the understatement of the century to say that
the current American two-party political party system is not just fit for
purpose, but rancid and rotten to the core with corporate interests riddling it
like worms in an apple. And on that note, who better to bring up than another
New York City mayoral candidate, Eric Adams.
Adams is presently a Democrat who previously identified as a Republican, until
such time as it no longer suited his Machiavellian political purposes. This shallow
flip-flopping by Adams is not only a perfect snap-shot of a failed American
political two-party system, it is also, somehow, surpassed by Adams’ long-held
love affair with stop and frisk for the streets of New York City.
In an age when police brutality and highly dubious law enforcement practices
are under the spotlight like never before, some of that light undoubtedly shines
on Adams’ prior advocacy for stop and frisk. For a Black man to have embraced
that racially charged policing tactic is truly mind-blowing.
And he shows not one
iota of remorse when challenged about this. The best that he can come up with
is that his critics should simply “shut up.” That’s it. How childish and how very
demeaning. He also has a tendency to narcissistically refer to himself in the
third person. As does Donald Trump. Quite the comparison.
Not only does New York City needs better than this kind of two-party garbage
that can produce the likes of Eric Adams, the whole country needs to as well.
New York City is in two strangleholds right now. One relatively new, the other
seemingly as old as dirt. The first is the COVID pandemic that has cast a dark
social and economic cloud over the America’s first city and the most vibrant,
creative and welcoming city in the world.
The second is the choke-hold of an
electoral system that passed its expiry date in the late nineteenth century, let
alone the twentieth. And yet here New York City and the country remain in the
twenty-first century enveloped by that very same, patently flawed democracy.
The citizens of New York City not only need better, they demand better and we
back them to the fullest. Enough is enough. Our movement and that of Yang’s
are reflective of the future to come – and the dinosaur Democrats and
Republicans best get out of the way as there is going to be no stopping us.
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