branch of the NY State Independence Party.
The Central Mission
The Independence Party of New York is organized around a core of values,
beliefs and principles, and these are embodied in the objectives described in
this platform. The following elements define the mission of the party:
To restore democratic choice and electoral accountability.
To put an end to budget deficits, unfunded pension liabilities, and other
underfunded long term liabilities.
To create a modern budgetary process that uses professionally acceptable
accounting standards and accrual accounting, avoiding mandates,
understated liabilities, and off-line budgeting.
To diminish the pervasive and pernicious role of campaign contributions in
buying access to legislative decision making and in promoting claims to
public money.
To promote public policies that are more directly consistent with the desires
and needs of the public:
In welfare, where Americans want a system that discourages teenage
pregnancy, encourages work, and encourages families to stay together.
In education, where Americans want to promote improvements that move us
toward a world class education system.
In crime, where Americans want a system that keeps violent felons off the
street, and which promotes more creative alternatives to incarceration for
nonviolent criminals.
In taxation and spending, where Americans want solutions that do not require
continually increasing the burden of taxation on Americans and do not require
continually expanding the scope of government activity.
In area after area of public policy, the state and federal governments
continually produce policies that are badly unrepresentative of the desires of
the American people. This occurs because the current election system
renders incumbents all but indestructible, making them unresponsive to the
public and highly responsive to the campaign contributions that guarantee
their electoral invulnerability. As a result, Americans are angry, frustrated,
alienated and discouraged at a level that has not been present in at least 50
years or more.
In effect, our current two party system has proved a monumental failure in the
most essential public function it performs -- the representation of what
Americans want from government.
