Northrop for Senate
www.Northrop
for Senate.org
P.
O. Box 13223 • Des
Moines, Iowa 50310
In the election of 2000, I found my political
voice in the Green Party, via Ralph Nader's candidacy. Faced with the
lackluster choices that year, I visited Nader's campaign website, and
was faced with the simple realization: the Green message made sense,
common sense! After lobbying my co-workers mercilessly to vote for Nader,
my friend Sam Howells and I founded the Polk County Green Party ( www.desmoinesgreens.org
).
During the 2002 off-year election, I was active in helping Green candidate
for Governor, Jay Robinson, and Green candidate for U.S. Senate, Tim
Harthan, in their local campaign stops. On election night, I appeared
on the local ABC television affiliate's election night round table,
where I represented the Green ideals: a message of hope, responsibility,
freedom, and truth.
In 2004, Republican Senator Charles Grassley will be up for re-election,
and the time has come to run for office. The Green message needs to
be shown to the people of Iowa, as a real alternative to the corporate
parties. Iowans deserve nothing less. Big money and big government
have walked hand in hand for far too long. It is time for citizens
to take back their democracy, and have our governmental institutions
serving our needs, instead of the needs of the board room.
Iowa City Press Citizen Endorses
Daryl Northrop
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Most Iowans haven't heard of Daryl Northrop, largely because he doesn't
accept special interest money and therefore can't afford television ads
showing what kind of car he drives or how he mows his lawn. But Iowans
ought to go online or see Northrop speak the next time he's in town. They'll
be impressed. We are. In fact, we think he deserves your vote for U.S.
Senate.
A change clearly is needed in the office. While
Sen. Charles Grassley has become a power broker in the Senate, few Iowans
can be all too satisfied with the results. Despite that Grassley heads
the Finance Committee, the United States has amassed a $7.4 trillion debt.
Most of it went to tax cuts for the nation's wealthiest and for pork,
including $50 million to the Coralville rain forest that Grassley was
instrumental in guiding through Congress despite his campaign trail effort
to distance himself from it. Regarding the quagmire in Iraq, Grassley
thinks America's exit strategy simply should be the training of and turning
over of that nation to Iraqi forces -- or Vietnamization, by another name.
"We just need to keep doing what we're doing,"
Grassley told the Press-Citizen editorial board last week, even though
that costs $25,000 every 15 seconds and a life every other day. In addition,
his solutions to health care are lacking. His work in the Senate has led
to dramatic increases in Medicare costs while preventing states from negotiating
for lower prescription costs.
"We can't do much about that," Grassley
said of health care. Meanwhile, 45 million Americans go without health
insurance as premiums see four straight years of double-digit increases.
Common sense solutions
In contrast, Northrop offers common-sense solutions
to these problems. To end the deficit, he backs repealing the recently
passed tax cut for those earning more than $200,000 annually, creating
a new Social Security payroll tax bracket for the superwealthy, closing
corporate tax loopholes and stopping wasteful military spending, such
as a proposed $100 billion missile-defense system at a time when terrorists
are more likely to attack us with a nuclear bomb in a suitcase or backpack.
On Iraq, he favors broadening the peacekeeping forces in that nation to
include our allies and the United Nations; this comes from the simple
realization that the entire world has a stake in seeing a peaceful Iraq
and that America-Britain going it alone acts as a catalyst for violence.
Finally, on health care Northrop wants to develop a system in which patients
can receive care from whomever they like and that allows patients and
their caregivers, rather than insurance companies and government bureaucrats,
to make medical decisions. As Northrop wisely recognizes, a major reason
for high health care costs is a bureaucracy that solely exists to divert
costs to the patients themselves.
Vigor and energy
While Northrop's positions aren't that different
from Democratic candidate Art Small, Northrop would bring vigor and energy
to the Iowa congressional delegation. The 32-year-old financial adviser
for a Des Moines insurance company speaks intelligently and passionately
on the issues. Fed up with gridlock in Washington and Des Moines, he co-founded
the Polk County Green Party in 2000; Small, in contrast, has been rather
silent since leaving the General Assembly several years ago. In addition,
Northrop accepts no PAC dollars and limits personal campaign contributions
to $200 a person a year. While Small also refuses PAC money, he accepts
larger contributions, as federal law allows. Among Grassley's largest
campaign contributors are DCI Group and Amgen Inc., the first a Washington,
D.C., public relations firm representing the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America and the second a California pharmaceutical company.
Finally, if elected as the lone candidate from his party, Northrop will
have to reach across party lines and seek compromise. We're not sure Small
would, given his strong Democratic background. Grassley, meanwhile, demonstrates
the kind of arrogance that fosters partisanship and gridlock in Washington.
Indeed, during the campaign Grassley repeatedly has refused to appear
in public forums with his competitors.
Grassley certainly deserves Iowans' gratitude
for his service to the state these past 30 years. But it's time for change.
It's time to set aside self-interest for the vital interest of this nation
and the state. And we can start with change in the U.S. Senate.
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David
Cobb is the 2004 Green Party Candidate for President.