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(01/23/14 12:42am)
Last June, The Guardian published leaked data via National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden that revealed the boundless surveillance of private electronic communications, both domestic and foreign, by the US government. Always skeptical of unchecked political power, the American public largely condemned such a flagrant use of surveillance. Passionate opinion editorials labeled the NSA an undemocratic institution in direct contrast to core American principles, with some even comparing the NSA to the East German Stasi and George Orwell’s dystopian political machine in 1984. Libertarian-Republicans such as Senator Rand Paul somewhat shockingly sided with leftist Democrats such as Vermont Senator Peter Leahy to contend that the NSA’s surveillance methods clearly violate the Fourth Amendment’s declaration that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”
Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats and Republicans defend the NSA surveillance against this deluge of public outrage as a necessary precaution to ensure such security. “New bombs are being devised, new terrorists are emerging, new groups ... and I think we need to be prepared,” Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein opined last weekend. Former CIA Director Michael Morell shares Feinstein’s support of NSA metadata surveillance, stressing that “had the program been in place more than a decade ago, it would likely have prevented 9/11. And it has the potential to prevent the next 9/11. It needs to be successful only once to be invaluable.”
President Obama finally addressed the NSA debate last Friday in a historical allusion-filled and passionately patriotic speech that told the American people and lawmakers absolutely nothing. While promising that the NSA would no longer monitor communications of allied governments, Obama also stated that “our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments ... around the world.” While advocating that the NSA cede control of metadata containing phone and email correspondence to another collection facility, he did not demand the cessation of such data collection. While stating that judicial approval should, in the future, precede metadata’s investigational use, he also implied that exceptions would be made to this rule in extreme cases of national security. And, most remarkably, Obama provided no hints as to what form his proposed new system of metadata collection would take, a vagueness that implies his intention to merely create a new government agency with the same surveillance processes.
I do not oppose any of the President’s statements in this speech, but I wish he was more straightforward with the American people instead of accompanying every vaguely appeasing pledge with glaring loopholes. What President Obama should have said, plain and simple, is that the NSA’s boundless information acquiring must continue, unchanged and uninhibited.
While checks and balances remain a vital part of our governmental structure, our government cannot be inhibited by procedure in matters of national safety. The information gathered by the NSA over the last decade cannot be utilized by the government “only following prior judicial approval ... because the whole purpose of this program is to provide instantaneous information to be able to disrupt any plot that may be taking place,” Senator Feinstein emphasized in response to Obama’s statement. Not only is the NSA’s surveillance prudent, it is also non-invasive. The government is not eavesdropping on our phone calls: all that its metadata is confirmed to include are lists of the numbers you call and their duration. The ‘uninhibited’ collection of such metadata for surveillance purposes does not abridge one’s rights to privacy any more than traffic cameras at intersections.
In this digital age, our personal information is everywhere, from our emails and phone calls to the pornography we search on Google and the ‘private’ Facebook messages we send our friends. This information will never be used against us unless we ourselves abuse these methods of information conveyance. Former CIA operative Joseph Wippl agrees, rationalizing that “the government does not look into our communications, because frankly the government does not care unless you are implicated in terrorism or some type of crime. There’s a billion and a half pieces of data picked up every day. I mean, my God, who would look at any of it?”
Of course, as young Americans who read 1984 in high school and grew up influenced by Reaganian governmental distrust, we remain extremely unsettled by the notion that the government could know about the texts we sent our friends after that crazy J-Term party last Friday. But while I am not especially trustful of our government, America is not at all reflective of Orwell’s dystopia. Unless you are a vocal political extremist, breaking serious laws, or knowingly texting members of terrorist groups, you should be as alarmed by the NSA’s continued surveillance as by the peevish ‘hide your personal information’ spam shared on friends’ Facebook statuses.
(10/30/13 5:56pm)
On Oct. 1, the Obama Administration launched healthcare.gov, a government-run website aiming to provide Americans with easily adopted and inexpensive healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). From its conception, ‘Obamacare’ prompted intense partisan divisions, impassioned political attacks, and ideological defenses. Republican and Libertarian policy makers viciously and almost unanimously criticized the ACA for expanding government control over one-sixth of the American economy, coercing American citizens to adopt health insurance and subsidizing health care with the simple and economically-ignorant excuse that ‘healthcare is a human right.’ And yet, despite all this criticism, few of Obamacare’s critics predicted that its implementation would be so catastrophic. While the ACA’s website has been up-and-running for a full month already and Health and Human Services administrators brag that nearly half-a-million applications have been started, healthcare providers estimate that fewer than 100,000 Americans have effectively signed up for health-insurance through the problem-riddled program.
Last Saturday, President Obama bluntly affirmed that “the website that’s supposed to make it easy to apply for and purchase the insurance is not working.” But while the Presidential radio address admitted the program’s failures, it blamed ‘glitches’ caused by heavy website traffic rather than the Affordable Care Act’s inherent implementation flaws. The extreme problems with healthcare.gov are systematic failures that will take months to repair rather than mere ‘glitches’ provoked by the site’s fewer-than eight million weekly hits.
Firstly, the site’s healthcare applications are far too complicated and time-consuming for the average, healthy American to sit through, with some site visitors admitting they spent over an hour trying to enroll in a program before ultimately giving up.
Secondly, according to one health care provider, “even when consumers have been able to sign up, [we] can’t tell who... new customers are because of a separate set of computer defects.” In 99 percent of applications, the Obamacare site has failed to provide potential insurers with enough verifiable information to facilitate enrollment. Even more disconcerting is the fact that the website, according to insurance expert Bob Lazlewski, enrolls, un-enrolls, and repeatedly re-enrolls the same individuals, thus confusing healthcare providers and prompting them to ignore completed applications.
But I lost most confidence in the program watching Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ interview on Jon Stewart two weeks ago. When asked point-blank how many people had enrolled in health care plans through Obamacare, Sebelius replied, “I can’t tell you because I don’t know,” a confession of startling ineptitude that begs the question: if the government can not identify who enrolls in health coverage through their website, how can it expect to manage the system?
Yet these structural failures, extreme as they are, draw attention away from the Affordable Care Act’s greatest shortcoming: its unaffordability. As Obamacare forces insurance firms to offer low monthly premiums and cover people with preexisting conditions, insurers raise deductibles to stratospheric levels far outside the average American’s price-range.
Additionally, by regulating competition, premiums under Obamacare’s cheapest plans are estimated by the Manhattan Institute to be 99 percent more expensive for men and 62 percent more expensive for women than current premiums. As the Affordable Care Act overcharges the healthy to subsidize the health care of the chronically ill, elderly, and impoverished, these disparities are even wider for healthy, young, middle-class Americans. The result? The vast majority of the 50 million uninsured Americans will not sign up for Obamacare unless coerced.
Of course, this is exactly what Obama plans to do this spring, when the ‘individual mandate’ will effectively fine citizens for not owning health insurance. But penalizing Americans until they adopt expensive insurance plans should not be our government’s tactic; its primary goal should be to create more affordable and varied healthier plans for citizens to choose between. Regardless of the ‘individual mandate’ and the inherent political problems that arise through coercive governance, Obamacare looks destined to collapse. The system requires seven million participants, the majority of whom must be healthy, in order to function, and with fewer than 100,000 enrollments in the first month, this bare-minimum seems unattainable.
Nevertheless, conservative Americans and Obamacare opponents should not rest smugly with the knowledge that this program is collapsing. Instead, Americans should be wary that the Democratic Party will inevitably attempt to pump taxpayer money into the program, determined to fulfill their dreams of government-subsidized health care. Republican policy makers therefore must immediately begin to brainstorm cost-effective, free-market alternatives to the ACA and advocate for the program’s replacement. The Obama Administration has already spent half-a-billion dollars creating an unusable website. This is just a website. If the federal government is incapable of effectively and frugally setting up a website viewed by eight million people weekly, how can we trust it to effectively manage the complex and varied health care needs of 400 million Americans?
(10/09/13 4:23pm)
“Government shutdowns [are] an unpleasant but integral part of the legislative-executive power struggle ... built into the American Constitution,” former Republican Speaker-of-the-House Newt Gingrich wrote in a recent blog post. Gingrich knows this firsthand, having negotiated with President Clinton to end the longest government shutdown in American history seventeen years ago. Because our generation does not remember the yearly shutdowns of the Carter years, the twelve shutdowns initiated by Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill in the 1980s, or the cross-aisle negotiations that ended the Clinton Administration shutdowns, we feel understandably panicked, confused, and embarrassed regarding the current political dysfunction.
Government shutdowns, while costly, are completely constitutional last-ditch tools forcing negotiation between the legislative and executive branches. They have also proven extremely effective in the past, with the 1996 shutdown resulting in economic growth, a balanced budget, and bipartisan compromises on welfare and social services.
Yet there remains something fundamentally different about this government shutdown: instead of trying to reach bipartisan compromise through proper negotiations, both Republicans and Democrats seem more interested in playing a bitter blame game over who caused the shutdown and, therefore, who must bow to the other to end it. Democrats vilify the Republican House and its Tea Party members as “hostage takers” abusing their power; Republicans assert that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate are holding a gun to their heads, ignoring their concerns, and refusing bipartisan solutions.
Certainly, the Republican House is primarily to blame for this shutdown, but they have not, as President Obama opined last Saturday, “demanded a ransom just for doing their jobs.” When the Democratic-controlled Senate warned that they would accept “nothing short of a ‘clean’ continuation of funding,” rather than working across the aisle to facilitate an amenable budget inclusive of both parties’ interests, the Republican-controlled House threw the American government into shutdown mode to force bipartisan compromise.
While many media outlets and Americans have criticized GOP Congressmen for “not doing their jobs,” the shutdown represents House Republicans’ desperate attempts to voice the complaints and demands of their constituents. Yes, House Republicans are maintaining a hard-line on defunding Obamacare and other key conservative issues, but this stance is a reaction to the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to negotiate on the same issues. “The President just can’t sit there and say, ‘I’m not going to negotiate,’” Speaker John Boehner emphasized last week. “He got his revenues. Now it’s time to talk about his spending problem.”
Contrary to popular liberal belief, House Republicans know that Obamacare will not be defunded. But the Republican Party has proposed tax-rate cuts, expanded offshore drilling, Keystone pipeline approval, Wall Street deregulation, and Medicare cuts as potential alternatives Democrats could offer in exchange for Obamacare’s protection. Republicans do not want complete victory and Democratic submission; they only desire something in the budget appealing to their constituents.
Instead of launching into negotiations immediately after the shutdown, President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to negotiate with House Republicans “until the House passes a ‘clean’ budget,” a counter-productive proposal that ignores the House’s constitutionally ordained position as a check of executive power. “The Democrats have calculated that by prolonging the shutdown, and maximizing the pain, they can bully Republicans into doing whatever,” Republican Senator John Cornyn stated last Saturday, “but we’re never going to make real progress without cooperation from our friends across the aisle.” And so Democrats are deliberately prolonging the shutdown and hurting the American people in their efforts to force Republicans to fold.
The result? The two parties are both bullying each other, both continuing to maintain a hard line and both holding one another hostage. This is dirty, shameful politics, and so far, only the Republican Party has shown willingness to compromise.
The longer Democrats refuse to acknowledge the reasonable demands for compromise and collaboration being proposed by House Republicans, the more legitimacy our government loses and the closer we drift towards defaulting on our loans. While the government shutdown furloughs the wages of 800,000 federal employees and shuts down federal services from cancer research to national parks, crossing the debt ceiling would result in inexcusable global economic disaster. Both Republicans and Democrats are desperate to pass a budget before October 17th, but, as Speaker Boehner stated at the beginning of the shutdown, “the only way these problems are going to be resolved is if we sit down amicably ... and come to an agreement.”
Playing the blame game won’t cause our government to reopen; both sides have embarrassed the American people with their refusal to negotiate. But despite who is at fault for the shutdown, it is undoubtedly the Democratic leadership that must initiate actual compromise with the House Republicans and end this fiasco.
(10/03/13 12:26am)
The other day, a classmate asked me, “so is Washington State, like, crazy now that weed is legal?” Although I joked that Seattle seemed more overcast than normal, truthfully, little has changed since Washington voters passed Initiative 502 last November. That’s not to say that marijuana consumption is not prevalent: percentage-wise, far more Washingtonians smoke marijuana than Netherlanders. But, the same can be said about the adult population in nearly every state. In 2012, more than 17 million Americans admitted to smoking marijuana, and the Pew Research Center recently estimated that 48 percent of adult Americans have consumed cannabis. Despite trillions of dollars in taxpayer money spent fighting marijuana consumption, cannabis prohibition seems to have worked as ineffectively as alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.
Just as alcohol prohibition led to organized bootlegging, cannabis prohibition has empowered a system of underground, violent drug cartels that the Justice Department estimates operates in more than one thousand American cities. “Competition over the profits to be made from this illicit industry has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals in [Mexico], and an ever-increasing amount of violence spilling over into the United States,” said former American Immigration and Customs Agent Jamie Haase. Moreover, these same drug cartels ferrying marijuana across the border also provide the vast majority of hard drugs in circulation within the United States. Legalization cripples these drug runners and could effectively prevent imported drugs like cocaine and heroin from entering our borders. In Washington and Colorado, where marijuana is now regulated and grown domestically under state supervision, dangerous synthetic marijuana use, drug-related crime, and hard drug consumption are already declining.
From an economic perspective, cannabis legalization will redirect the billions of dollars now empowering drug cartels towards state governments. According to a 2010 study conducted by the conservative Cato Institute, marijuana legalization would generate $8.7 billion in annual state tax revenues. Washington alone estimates that marijuana taxation will generate $1.9 billion over the next five years. And the economic benefits of legalization are not limited to taxation; American hemp and medicinal marijuana-related industries gross nearly $100 billion annually, and are expected to provide over 100,000 new jobs in the next five years. Most importantly, however, legalization will save Americans $150 billion on annual policing and court costs. Every year, nearly 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana possession, and as Sen. Rand Paul opined over the summer, “there are a lot of young people who [smoke marijuana], and in their thirties, they grow up and quit ... I don’t want to put them in jail and ruin their lives.”
Finally, while prescription drugs are blamed for over 100,000 deaths annually, countless medical studies have failed to identify a single death, disease or deleterious health trend caused directly by marijuana use. Moreover, the vast majority of doctors now believe that cannabis provides massive benefits for patients suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease and numerous other ailments. Over three million Americans with chronic health conditions use medicinal marijuana annually, and almost unanimously report benefits to their health and comfort. Marijuana is also comparatively non-addictive, with a 1999 Federal Institute of Medicine study showing that “fewer than 10% of those who use marijuana meet the clinical criteria for dependence, while 32% of tobacco users, and 15% of alcohol users do.”
Certainly, cannabis legalization facilitates increased consumption among adults, but rest assured that legalization almost certainly minimizes marijuana abuse among teenagers. Growing up just outside of Seattle, far more of my high-school peers smoked than drank because it was easier to get marijuana from a neighborhood dealer than to pay someone with a fake ID to purchase alcohol. With hundreds of licensed and regulated marijuana distribution centers set to replace individual dealers over the next year, under-age Washingtonians will undoubtedly have a harder time getting ahold of the drug in the future. This is in line with historical trends: young Americans consume far less alcohol per capita today than in the 1920s and American tobacco use continues to decline. And though many misconceive that marijuana is a gateway drug whose legalization could encourage hard drug abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration concedes that 90% of marijuana users have not tried other illegal drugs. Marijuana, we must recognize, is not a gateway drug, but a terminus.
This editorial does not seek to encourage or promote marijuana use; it remains an addictive drug requiring caution and moderation. But the many social, economic, and medicinal benefits provided by cannabis legalization are undeniable. The drug war begun forty years ago cannot be won, just as alcohol prohibition was doomed to fail. The majority of Americans now support cannabis legalization, and our generation has become its greatest advocate. I predict that when our children are our age, they will ask us what Middlebury was like during the cannabis prohibition era.
(09/12/13 1:08am)
“I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad ... [that] the use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable ... if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons ... you will be held accountable,” President Obama stated last December. However, while Secretary Kerry has now confirmed that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad unleashed Sarin gas in a Damascus suburb, the Obama Administration has continued to timidly avoid a military intervention. President Obama holds the constitutional power to initiate a military intervention without congressional approval, as demonstrated by 2011’s Libyan intervention. However, with five battleships in the Mediterranean poised to strike key Syrian targets last week, Obama deferred the decision of intervention to Congress and further postponed direct involvement. America’s diplomatic and military history of interventionism has garnered extreme criticism in the post-Reagan decades; even the traditionally interventionist Republican Party is now divided between so-called war-hawks and a growing isolationist contingent. Liberals and conservatives alike seem increasingly willing to ignore the masses of dying Syrian civilians as a ‘distant problem’ rather than pursue another Middle Eastern intervention.
American isolationists view foreign wars as tremendous wastes of money and life that inevitably hurt our position in the international community. Advocates of intervention in Syria claim that with our military and political power, we have a moral obligation to end violence and remove human rights-abusing leaders. As a libertarian proponent of domestic and economic non-interventionism, I am more inclined to join the first camp. But although politicians lead us to think otherwise, no political issue is this black-and-white. As I argued in an opinion piece last Spring, while not an obligation by any means, we, as the world’s most powerful nation, do have a moral imperative to prevent mass human suffering. However, the United States cannot afford to be ‘humanity’s protector,’ intervening wherever human rights abuses occur. Intervention in foreign conflicts is only warranted when perceptible benefits to American political and economic interests accompany clear moral grounds for our involvement. While al-Assad’s removal from power through an American military intervention would certainly protect the Syrian population from further attack, an American-led military intervention is also in our best interest as Americans.
Without Western intervention, al-Assad has proven himself capable of maintaining power at the cost of his citizenry, the largely liberal Free Syrian Army has increasingly turned towards al-Qaeda and other Islamist networks for weaponry, and Syrian socio-politics has collapsed into anarchy. These are all unacceptable trends. Moreover, the al-Assad regime has never been friendly to the West and remains one of Iran’s closest allies, al-Assad’s military has killed well over 100,000 civilians, and continued Alawi minority rule ensures a continuation of Syria’s new sectarian conflict. Clearly, regime change in Syria is in everyone’s best interest. If the Syrian opposition manages to oust al-Assad without Western intervention, they will almost certainly establish an Islamist, anti-Western, anti-Israel regime friendly to al-Qaeda due to the growing power of terrorist groups over the Free Syrian Army. Finally, if the Syrian state continues to devolve into anarchy, refugees will continue pouring into Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq by the millions, threatening to throw the entire region into socio-political mayhem. To say that our choice of action or inaction regarding Syria will determine the future stability of the Middle East as a whole is no understatement. If we can arm the Free Syrian Army, oust al-Assad, and aid a new Syrian government in removing Islamist terrorist factions from the state, then even if we do not gain an ally, we will weaken Iran, protect Israel, and ensure relative regional peace.
While NATO’s intervention in Libya is largely viewed as a successful intervention off which the Obama administration should model any future Syrian military action, the Libyan economy’s struggle to rebuild under a largely ineffective transitional government has greatly impacted Western oil prices. Economically, our intervention in Syria will be far less taxing considering that we currently embargo trade with Syria. Furthermore, while military action is traditionally good for our economy, the ousting of al-Assad from power will alleviate the current strains on Syrian infrastructure, strengthening rather than weakening the Syrian economy. Although military intervention is certainly an expensive option, our action now will come at far less a cost than the price of maintaining regional stability should sectarian violence, mass displacement, socio-economic chaos, terrorist networking and chemical weapons stockpiling be allowed to continue. In our globalized and interconnected world, the potential destabilization of the Middle East greatly threatens American economics and security. Obviously, the humanitarian crisis and civilian slaughter in Syria is horrific and should be stopped, but it is our grave self-interest in the outcome of this Syrian conflict that must turn justification for our intervention into a necessity for American military action.
(05/01/13 11:21pm)
Just after midnight, exactly two years ago today, U.S. Navy SEALs stormed a small private compound outside of Abbottabad, Pakistan and ended the world’s most expensive manhunt with a couple of well-aimed bullets. After nearly 10 years of relentless intelligence work, many Americans felt that they could finally come to terms with the events of September 11 2001, and rest easier at night with the knowledge of Osama Bin Laden’s death. I remember going to the city park in Bellevue, Wash., and screaming Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” while families stood on picnic tables waving American flags and policemen abandoned the task of monitoring public alcohol consumption. But for many Americans, the Obama administration’s decision to “follow the SOB [Osama Bin Laden] to the gates of hell,” as Vice President Biden choicely phrased it in 2012, inspired more frustration than patriotism. “I’m sorry, but I can’t celebrate anyone’s death,” one of my classmates posted on Facebook that May. “We’re all human beings.” While this remains scientifically true, the argument that the death of a terrorist capable of such atrocities against humanity should be entitled to the same rights and respect as one of his or her victims is ludicrous.
Liberal media sources currently remain in an uproar over Boston Law Enforcement’s decision not to read Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda Rights, advising him of the right to remain silent, until after 16 hours of questioning. More absurdly, many liberal news agencies are reporting heavily — one might even say obsessively — on Tsarnaev’s parents’ claims that their sons were innocent victims of American governmental conspiracy, seemingly encouraging viewers to question Tsarnaev’s guilt and whether due process of law was served. “When the law gets bent out of shape for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us,” one New Yorker editorial warns.
This claim mistakenly assumes that Tsarnaev should be subject to the same treatment in our legal system as you or I. Tsarnaev is an enemy combatant in the same group as Osama Bin Laden; he is not merely another citizen of he United States of America. Tsarnaev forfeited his rights when he decided to plant explosives at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, kill three innocent young Americans, injure almost 300 civilian bystanders, evade arrest for several days, murder a police officer and hurl homemade explosives at the SWAT team pursuing him. The American legal system is designed to protect the American people, and while Tsarnaev remains an American citizen, his entitlement to American legal rights is negated by his efforts to destroy the social fabric of this nation. The Boston Marathon bombing was neither an attack on the specific bystanders affected by the blasts nor on the city of Boston itself — it was an attack on the American people, and our government has no legal responsibility to offer compassion and “fairness” to enemies of the state.
Our legal code is designed to dole out justice both to victims and criminals where it is due, but it also has a duty to protect the American public from harm. In Tsarnaev’s case, the FBI saw fit to exercise the “public safety exception” to the Miranda Rights, which allows the criminal to be interrogated before his rights are read. If Tsarnaev had planted other bombs, or if he had been networking with other terrorists, his immediate questioning could have prevented further civilian losses; the fact that the brothers appear to have acted alone and only vaguely discussed future attacks is merely fortunate.
Many Americans found it absurd that the entire city of Boston was shut down as law enforcement sought out the Tsarnaev brothers. Some are infuriated that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not subjected to “due process of law” and informed of his rights before questioning. But I am proud of how Tsarnaev’s arrest was handled, just as I remain proud of our government for tracking down and killing Osama Bin Laden at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of American combatants’ lives. To quote President Obama, “as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies.”
Politics is not merely about maintaining hardline principles; it’s about making exceptions for the public good. It is worth putting an unprecedented amount of time and effort into killing Osama Bin Laden, just as it is worth refusing Tsarnaev immediate access to rights offered by the very country he attacked. The American government’s duty to its citizens goes beyond simple principles of what is “fair” — it must ensure that threats to our nation are immediately and forcibly removed, no matter the cost. There is nothing more honorable.
(04/17/13 10:39pm)
“We cannot be the anti-illegal immigration party. We have to be the pro-legal immigration party,” Marco Rubio emphasized to fellow Republicans at a 2011 rally. “We have to be a party that advocates for a legal immigration system that’s ... good for America and honors our tradition both as a nation of immigrants and as a nation of law.”
Growing up in an extremely diverse Seattle suburb, some of my best friends and closest neighbors were green-card holders or first-generation immigrants. I remember going to friends’ houses and hearing stories of grandparents who worked their entire lives with the single goal that their grandchildren – not even their children – could live in America. Other neighbors told stories of sending money to the other side of the world as they waited for their family to get visas or green cards. Some of my neighbors and friends’ parents work several jobs and still can hardly afford monthly international calls home; some have entry-level jobs at Microsoft that they studied for 40 years to obtain; some received great job offers while studying in American colleges. But despite their different paths, my neighbors have something in common: they worked hard to give their children access to American education and freedom, and they are now among the proudest Americans I know, regardless of the languages they speak at home.
Our strength as a country depends on the ingenuity and labor of our citizens. Since its inception, the United States has attracted the best and brightest minds with the promise of work and freedom. Generations of intelligent, hard-working immigrants from every corner of the planet have travelled here and assimilated into American culture, learning English, studying for citizenship tests and becoming active members of their new communities despite the roadblocks.
Today, our immigration system is clearly broken, with 81 percent of Americans believing that America needs to reform its immigration strategies and policies. In some states like Texas and California, one in every 15 people is undocumented, with the majority of these illegal aliens speaking “little to no English” and living in highly segregated communities without any pressure to assimilate into or contribute to American society.
Though not all illegal immigrants are from Latin America and almost 40 percent of undocumented workers arrived legally and simply refused to leave when their visas expired, illegal immigrants are largely disconnected from American society even while benefitting from American jobs and federal programs. Few illegal immigrants participate in federal programs, yet American taxpayers still lose an estimated $113 billion each year providing education, healthcare and other services to undocumented workers and their families. $53 billion of this tax burden goes towards education alone.
Furthermore, while the 11 million illegal immigrants benefiting from our freedoms and rights while evading taxes and strict immigration procedure certainly hurt all taxpaying Americans, illegal immigration is most harmful to the millions of intelligent, hard-working foreigners attempting to legally immigrate to the United States each year. Many politicians have voiced their frustration at our broken immigration system by declaring that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, but in reality, most of the jobs they are taking are the jobs sought by other immigrants – many of whom have spent their entire lives working for the chance to find employment in the United States. These are the real victims of illegal immigration.
We need to ensure that it is easier to immigrate to America legally than illegally, while also finding a viable solution for the 11 million illegal immigrants already here. Mass deportation, surprisingly expensive and indiscriminating between undocumented families that have lived in the United States for decades and those who just arrived, is not the answer. Besides, we do not want illegal immigrants to leave. Economically, they present potentially great benefits to our country – we merely need to ensure that they become assimilated into our society as taxpayers and English-speakers. Indeed, if all illegal immigrants became citizens, the United States would make between $5.5 and $10 billion more in annual taxes and working-class wages would dramatically increase.
On the other hand, granting amnesty to immigrants neither invested nor participating in American socio-politics will intensify American social divisions and encourage further illegal immigration. We need to encourage foreigners to immigrate legally, and this must be achieved through a defined and easily navigable route from temporary visa to permanent citizenship in conjunction with a difficult and long process for illegal aliens. It is absurd that our government turns away 40 percent of American-educated, foreign-born math and science graduates after their graduation. Our priority must always be to attract and keep the best immigrants, but we must not forget to help undocumented workers assimilate into our society through education, hard-work and a demonstrated commitment to America through taxation.
(03/20/13 11:04pm)
Last year, President of the United States Barack Obama asserted in a White House press release that one of “America’s greatest goals must always be to foresee, prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.” But last Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the Syrian civil war, a conflict that has taken between 70,000 and 90,000 lives and displaced one tenth of Syria’s 23 million citizens. President Obama’s response to this bloodshed has remained steadfast in its inefficacy. As Bashar al-Assad continues to indiscriminately slaughter his people at rates now surpassing 1,000 deaths per week and with tools now including chemical weapons, Obama merely raises his voice a couple decibels and furrows his brow with slightly increased disapproval. While the media’s fatigue regarding the Syrian conflict may falsely imply that Obama’s tactics calmed the bloodshed that dominated the news last fall, Obama’s finger-shaking and ineffective sanctions have only enabled increased chaos and carnage.
Two years into the conflict, it is now clear that the Free Syrian Army lacks the cohesiveness to successfully oust al-Assad independent of Western help. As sectarian and Islamist groups battle for supremacy among the anti-Assad forces, the Syrian conflict seems less likely to be resolved than to devolve into another Somalia composed of quarreling warlords and thugs. Western inaction has driven increasingly desperate Syrian rebels to trade their beliefs and goals for armament, and liberal Syrian rebels favoring secular democracy now slowly lose power to the better-organized Islamist militias receiving funding and weaponry from terrorist organizations. Unless America can work with the liberal Syrians who have repeatedly requested our help over the last two years, Syria will either return to al-Assad’s tyrannical and oppressive control, or become a safe-haven for the Islamist, anti-Western groups now threatening to dominate the conflict.
The United States must lead a responsible and clearly planned military intervention aiming to empower the Syrian factions amenable to Western aid and guidance. By training, arming and uniting these dependable partners of democracy, the West can prevent the continued power of Iran and Islamism in the region, while also ending one of the largest humanitarian crises of the 21st century. It may seem hypocritical for an anti-government-spending libertarian like myself to demand expensive military action, but when we spend trillions of dollars building the world’s most powerful military, we mustn’t be hesitant about intervening to end innocent bloodshed and encourage new democracy. Nevertheless, an American intervention must focus not on removing al-Assad from power through a military invasion, but instead on empowering and uniting Syrian rebels. We need to establish no-fly zones and corridors for humanitarian aid between Turkey and northern Syria so that the Free Syrian Army can have a stable and safe zone where they can solidify their political agenda and popular legitimacy. During the seemingly hopeless Bosnian genocide of the mid-1990s, a U.S. and NATO-led air strike bombed Serbian forces besieging Sarajevo and ended bloodshed in two weeks. The Syrian conflict will likely take longer to resolve, but as Senator Joe Lieberman testified to Congress, “civil wars we get involved in can be settled more successfully than civil wars where we don’t get involved.”
Certainly, the Syrian conflict is complicated, convoluted and unpredictable, with various factions fighting for supremacy and dozens of international actors vying to secure their own interests. But the complexity of such an atrocity should not be our excuse for remaining sedentary. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen sums up the effect of inaction the best: “Inaction spurs the progressive radicalization of Syria, the further disintegration of the state, the intensification of Assad’s mass killings, and the chances of the conflict spilling out of Syria in sectarian mayhem.” These trends must be halted. We cannot afford for Syria’s increasingly sectarian conflict to spread into Iraq, Lebanon or Israel. We cannot afford an Islamist government that tolerates al-Qaeda in the Levant. We cannot afford another 90,000 civilian deaths. But we can afford an intelligently planned military intervention.
There are, unfortunately, a plethora of conflicts around the world which merit American assistance and intervention, but few could have as great a consequence in a region as vital to global stability, and none hold the same potential to transform into a massive regional conflict. The longer the United States remains deskbound in our disapproval of al-Assad’s actions and support of the rebels, the less influence we hold over the future of Syria, and, more importantly, the longer the bloodshed will occur. One year ago, Senator John McCain declared: “We should be ashamed of our collective failure to come to the aid of the Syrian people.” President Obama needs to prove himself worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize he received four years ago. Our generation must not remember the Syrian civil war as a tragedy of inaction, just as our parents’ generation remembers the Rwandan genocide.
(03/06/13 11:13pm)
Last Friday, President Obama began the gradual enactment of the long-dreaded “sequester,” a series of budget cuts that will cut funding from nearly every American government agency. Nearly everyone seems certain that in failing to avoid this “last resort,” bipartisanship has yet again proved itself more of an ideal than a practice, and yet the bipartisan “failure” to avoid the sequester seems to be surrounded by uncertainty. From Senator Harry Reid to Speaker of the House John Boehner, the only visible bipartisanship in Washington D.C. takes the form of frustrated confusion over what aspects of American politics the sequester will compromise. It seems that the deal, part of the Budget Control Act approved as a last resort by President Obama in 2011, has been so overhyped by politicians that nobody can give any definite answers over what the “drastic” cuts will affect. Or whether or not they will drastically affect anything at all.
The sequester is set to cut government spending by $1.2 trillion over the next eight years, with $85 billion in spending cuts during the remainder of this year. These budget cuts are divided equally between the American domestic and defense budgets, and are spread among nearly every government agency or provision, from national security to scientific research to unemployment benefits. While a few specific areas of government spending are protected from cuts, including Social Security, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits, the sequester basically aims to ensure that necessary budget cuts occur even while our politicians cannot agree on where.
Over the last year, Democratic (and, to a lesser extent, Republican) politicians have spoken of the feared sequester with increasing anxiety in an attempt to pressure Congress and the Senate to reach a bipartisan compromise. But while Obama and his allies have spoken repeatedly of the “widespread devastation” which the “Republicans, in refusing to negotiate, ensure,” is this sequester really as terrifying as Obama would let us believe?
While Republicans are currently being ridiculed and attacked for refusing compromise with the president to avoid the sequester, a compromise with Obama would have led merely to more specific but less drastic budget cuts, more tax hikes and more accommodations for liberal reform. By slashing government funding across the board, Republicans will have again succeeded in reducing government size and spending. And, more importantly for our country, by allowing the sequester to pass as a “last resort,” Republicans will avoid full responsibility for the proposed $550 billion to be cut from defense spending. Nearly every American politician understands that American military spending must be streamlined and reigned in, but campaigning for military budget cuts remains politically suicidal. So the sequester is not some terrifying example of bipartisanism’s failure; it’s a triumph for fiscal conservatism. The broad and all-encompassing cuts outlined in the sequester, while perhaps ill-advised, are necessary when our country is $16.6 billion in debt, and, in the words of Representative Bill Frenzel, “a bad sequester is worlds better than no budget deal at all.”
We should not let Democratic politicians and dramatic media headlines fool us into being distressed over a budget cut of 2.2 percent to our $3.8 trillion budget. Indeed, the budget cuts outlined by the sequester deal allow the defense budget and other government agency spending to increase, just not as quickly. Even with sequestration in effect, the 2013 budget will still exceed the 2012 budget by $15 billion, and if I remember correctly, our nation did not collapse into chaos last year, despite Mayan predictions. While the budget cuts outlined in the sequester deal will certainly have far-reaching effects, they are neither drastic nor devastating, and they will strengthen our society and economy by reeling in our government’s uninhibited spending. As we dig ourselves deeper into nearly $17 trillion of national debt, we need drastic budget cuts, and I would venture to say that in two years, this sequester will be viewed as “not good enough” rather than “too extreme.”
(01/24/13 12:42am)
From the Aurora Theater shooting to the horrifying Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, the widely publicized mass shootings of 2012 provoke an important social question on whether or not the Second Amendment right to bear arms should be readdressed. In the wake of these tragedies, politicians and newscasters from President Barack Obama to Piers Morgan have declared their support of stricter gun control as a way to prevent further bloodshed. But in their desperation to prevent another year as rank with gun violence as 2012, many Americans, caught up in anti- or pro-gun rhetoric, have ignored statistical evidence. Furthermore, America’s growing association of guns with mass shootings has led many to declare them as inherently evil and dangerous weapons, when, in reality, they retain an important role in American society.
In 2008, offenders carried firearms in only eight percent of violent crimes in the United States (436,000), while civilian-owned guns were used in self-defense roughly 1,480,000 times, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Though these numbers account for extremely small percentages of the nearly 300 million firearms in our country, the fact that a handgun is three times more likely to be used in self-defense than in crime serves as a reminder that guns are multipurpose tools. Two weeks ago, a Georgia gun-owner shot, wounded and helped detain a crowbar-wielding robber after he broke into her house and threatened her two small children. Guns are not intrinsically evil objects, but rather tools that can be used for self-defense or evil, depending on the goals of the individuals wielding them.
From hunting rifles to the cap guns we played with as kids, guns play a huge role in American society, shaping our national identity and affording a sense of independent protection to each citizen. Today, more than 40 percent of American households contain loaded firearms. Due to their proliferation and perceived importance, guns are simply not disappearing. Strict gun control, therefore, doesn’t prevent access to guns; it merely prevents legal access to guns. Indeed, more than two-thirds of guns used in violent crimes are stolen or purchased illegally. In the 1970’s, when handguns were banned in Washington, D.C., the rate of firearm-related murders rose to average 73 percent higher than at the outset of the law, demonstrating the complete ineffectiveness of banning and restricting access to firearms. The idea that deranged individuals who ignore laws and morality to achieve murder, robbery, rape and assault will obey gun control laws or fail to carry out gun violence due to inconvenience is a ludicrous assumption. To quote conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter, “bad people are going to have guns. And if you’ve ever smoked a joint, you are disqualified from arguing that prohibition makes illegal things unattainable.”
Instead of addressing the inanimate tools used in these attacks, we must instead focus on the perpetrators firing them and what feelings of social isolation and detachment led them to commit such heinous acts. Instead of addressing gun proliferation, we must instead focus our attention on the lack of community and empathy that encourages our neighbors and compatriots to violently communicate their frustrations against society. We in the United States provide little sympathy to people who don’t “fit in,” who can’t deal with stress and who suffer from mental illness. As Americans become more distant from their communities and more pressured by society to be “normal,” individuals with social, economic or mental problems preventing their conformity are thrown to the periphery. For these outcasts alienated within their own nation, the sensationalism surrounding violence in American society convinces them that murder may be the only way they’ll be noticed.
Nevertheless, nearly all of the 16 mass shootings in 2012 were carried out with the help of semi-automatic weapons, guns designed explicitly to fire multiple, deadly shots without reloading. Semi-automatic weapons like those used in Aurora and Newtown are fundamentally different from the rifles or handguns many of us own; they are not tools of defense, but needless tools of destruction that present far too great of a risk for Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, to defend. Simply put, James Holmes and Adam Lanza would not have taken as many victims without semi-automatic weapons, and there is no justifiable reason why any American civilian requires one. While the National Rifle Association (NRA) has taken a stance against any and all forms of gun restrictions and regulations, I sincerely hope that politicians assert their independence from this over-powerful interest group and defend only the rights of Americans to possess handguns and rifles. Our Founding Fathers did not seek to defend the right to a semi-automatic bushmaster on your mantle in 1791. If gun owners want to successfully defend their Second Amendment rights, they must recognize that their greatest threat isn’t the liberal political machine — it’s the endless mass shootings carried out with the aid of semi-automatic weapons.
(11/14/12 5:37pm)
After last Tuesday’s election, the media immediately began its post-presidential election process of savaging the losing campaign for reasons explaining their defeat. While it is true that Romney’s campaign could have made many small, yet beneficial changes to improve its positioning against President Obama, it did not fall short in the election because of gaffes or poor organization or Paul Ryan. Instead, the Romney campaign suffered from long-term social trends in the Republican Party that must be corrected if the party hopes to win control of the presidency in 2016.
This year’s election results show that the Republican Party lacks support among women, minorities and our more liberal generation — three groups becoming more important within American demographics. Single American women supported Obama two-to-one over Romney, and non-white voters (now more than one-fourth of the voting population as opposed to nine percent in 1980) voted more than three-to-one in Obama’s favor. But while many political journalists and analysts have asserted, quite convincingly, that the Republican party needs to replace its social views to prevent itself from solely catering to conservative white male voters, the abandonment of social views is less important to the GOP than a clarification of its party ideologies.
Women and American minority groups are not, as the media would like us to believe, single-issue voters. Despite assertions from Chris Matthews that Romney’s views on abortion “destroyed his ability to win over women voters,” a 2012 CNN poll showed that the majority of women (52 percent) considered themselves pro-life. Similarly, Hispanic Americans did not vote en masse for Obama out of a desire for illegal immigration to continue. The problem is not the socially conservative views of the Republican Party, but rather that these views are not applied conservatively.
In order to gain support from women, young people and minority groups in 2016, the Republican Party must distinguish between true social conservatism and their current policies of social control by extending their fiscal principles of “small government” and “increased personal freedom” to social policy. Republican candidates must clarify their goals without compromising their party’s beliefs, opposing abortion and illegal immigration, for instance, but not attacking Planned Parenthood and illegal immigrant populations. Conservative women don’t like government control over their taxes or uteruses, and the Republican Party’s willingness to force its social views on Americans isolates voters whose social views may not even align with the Democratic Party. One of my favorite examples of how this distinction is possible comes from Congressman Marco Rubio, who asserted over the summer that the Republican Party must “not define [itself] as the anti-immigration party, but as the pro-legal immigration party.”
By changing its rhetoric while maintaining its social conservatism, Republicans can gain more support in the moderate majority and break away from the increasing control of the party’s radical few. The Republican Party is not the party of homophobes, sexists and bigots, and in order to sever themselves from these extremist social interests, the Republican Party must clearly adopt policies denouncing government attacks on social freedoms. Moreover, Romney’s decision to pander to this socially controlling extreme right wing resulted in a redefinition of his views later in the campaign that confused and isolated both moderate and right-leaning voters. If the GOP wants to succeed in the 2016 election, it needs to not sway in its values, but maintain pragmatic and clear social, fiscal and foreign policy goals. The GOP’s social stances are not outdated, but they have become so corrupted by the Tea Party Movement and Bush-era conservatives that they contradict the Republican principles of individual rights and privacy. The message of the Republican Party needs to return to its ideological roots; if it does, it will be successful. Economic freedom and social self-determination will remain popular even as American social views and demographics shift and evolve.
(10/31/12 7:17pm)
I am a proud Republican. But last week, I filled out my absentee ballot and voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate.
When I first announced that I planned to vote for a third-party candidate, many of my friends were a little angry. “This may be the most important election of our lives. How can you throw away your vote on a third-party candidate?”
Nearly a quarter of Americans feel that in this election, they support “the candidate they disagree with less,” and bipartisan polarization has long been blamed for this “lesser of two evils” outlook. Indeed, our bipartisan system has divided most political issues to the point where the two party’s views stand in fundamental opposition to each other, leaving no room for compromise. And yet, many of these platforms stand against their party’s smothered philosophy, having been arbitrarily adopted to capture votes by providing an alternative to the other party’s stances. In 1981, Ronald Reagan asserted that the “government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives,” and this principle applies to many Republican party platforms. Yet, while advocating decreased private-sector control and huge government spending cuts, Republicans champion social platforms aiming to control peoples’ decisions. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, compromises the integral American social and political value of freedom to establish politically manufactured equality through tax hikes for the wealthy, affirmative action and nationalized services.
The government shouldn’t pick winners and losers in our economy, and it shouldn’t judge marriage eligibility. Yet both the Democratic and Republican parties impinge on Americans’ freedoms and seek expanded control, whether fiscally or socially. Whether Obama or Romney wins this election, Congress will work to thwart the president’s attempts at political or social progress, military spending will increase, foreign entanglements in the Middle East will continue, climate change will remain unsolved, taxes will probably be raised on some sector of Americans and government power over the American citizenry will expand. We clearly need a pragmatic alternative.
While “our two-party political system is destroying America,” remains a popular declaration, Americans will largely ignore the half-dozen third-party presidential candidates come Election Day. It’s mostly psychological — we want to vote for the winning candidate; we don’t want our vote to be wasted — but the media and misinformation are also at fault. Last week, an obese dachshund named Obie received more national press than Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Seven in 10 Americans believe our government was designed as a two-party system, while political parties didn’t exist until the 1790s, and third parties have historically played major roles in influencing American politics.
While third parties may not elect candidates or rally widespread support, they can shape the political system by illuminating unrepresented political beliefs and prompting platform readjustments in the vote-thirsty, dominant parties.
Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, advocates socially tolerant, fiscally conservative leadership stressing economic, diplomatic and foreign non-interventionism. Governor Johnson wants to abolish the corporate tax to encourage business, immediately end our costly military occupation of Afghanistan, repeal Obamacare, cut government spending, remove tax loopholes instead of raising taxes, end government subsidies, expand states’ control, legalize and tax marijuana, ensure government neutrality on social issues and encourage legal immigration rather than attack illegal immigration. These lofty goals aren’t pipe dreams — they rest on tried and true principles of non-interventionism and personal liberty advocated by our Founding Fathers. And in New Mexico, Gary Johnson’s libertarian leadership and budget slashing created one of the only state budget surpluses in the last four decades.
I know that Gary Johnson will not be elected, but my hope is that if he gains a substantial portion of the popular vote, libertarian views could reign in the fiscal liberalism of the left and convince the Republican Party that its social policies are isolating young people.
Voting for a third party is not wasting my vote when compromising my beliefs for a Republican or Democrat who leads based on polarized party stances rather than moral and economic pragmatism is the alternative. A vote for Gary Johnson challenges current political gridlock, voices frustration in the failed policies of both Democrats and Republicans and helps politicians recognize that their parties have lost touch with the values held by the majority of our socially tolerant, fiscally conservative nation. We can’t afford four more years of Obama, but Romney’s policies are not the alternatives we need. You don’t have to pick the lesser of two evils — vote libertarian with me and demand a change in our divided, stagnated political system.
(10/10/12 10:47pm)
Every U.S. President since Richard Nixon has promised “energy independence,” and both President Obama and Governor Romney are doing their part to continue this political tradition. But while the two candidates agree that energy independence is essential to political and economic stability, they differ on how best to reach this historically unattainable goal. Perhaps not as much as you may think: both have continually voiced their support for an “all of the above” energy strategy, encouraging hydraulic oil fracking, natural gas drilling, the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal and green energy development. Moreover, while Obama has presented himself as the “green” candidate, vowing to “use energy sources of the future like wind and solar and biofuels,” his promise for “five million green jobs” has led to a mere 211,000, where the largest solar companies in America struggle to stay afloat and the wind industry shed 10,000 jobs in 2011. Obama’s green energy experiment proves that these technologies are not competitive enough to provide desperately needed jobs. But while some politicians have poised the energy debate as a choice between the energy independence, job creation and low costs provided by fossil fuels and the long-term sustainability provided by green energies, Romney and Obama are correct in advocating both. However, both candidates’ plans for energy development have fundamental flaws.
We’ve all heard the story: Obama granted a $535 million federal loan to solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, and the company quickly declared bankruptcy and defaulted. Several other failed investments by the Obama administration have led Romney to proclaim, and rightly so, that “the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers.” Romney’s opinion is that “markets, rather than governments,” must determine which energy sources prosper, with rising gas and energy costs facilitating a natural shift towards green energy dominance. Yet while Romney has voiced his intention to let wind and solar subsidies expire if elected, he simultaneously defends fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks preventing market control. Energy subsidies give certain energy sources advantages over others regardless of supply and demand, often with disastrous results. Free markets have long been a conservative ideal, so why does Obama’s criticism that “the oil industry gets $4 billion a year in corporate welfare,” put Romney on defense?
Romney’s pledge to subsidize and support coal mining would both harm energy markets and fail to sustain the dying industry. While coal made America strong, the industry is no longer profitable or competitive due to low natural gas prices. Romney’s subsidies and tax deductions for coal mining, coupled with his vow to roll back environmental regulations, will merely waste taxpayer dollars on funding ecological destruction. “Clean coal” is a political invention. American coal mining is no longer economical and our president needs to focus on creating new jobs for the 200,000 American coal miners, rather than paying them to work in an outdated industry. Last Wednesday, Romney signaled that his support of fossil fuel tax breaks and subsidies could be traded for a lower corporate tax rate, a sensible exchange that most Republicans support. Let’s hope he follows through.
Both Obama and Romney will almost definitely approve the costly Keystone XL Pipeline project with the contention that it will create jobs, lower gas prices and bring us closer to energy independence. However, according to the only independent report conducted on the pipeline, the multibillion-dollar project will only generate 2,500 to 5,000 temporary construction jobs, a comically small impact. Moreover, the majority of the oil will be exported overseas by TransCanada, rather than sold in the United States, so gasoline prices and overall supply will remain unchanged. Finally, more oil flowing into (or more accurately, through) America, more drills pumping in Texas and the Arctic and more fracking in the Rockies will not reliably lower gas prices in the increasingly globalized market, so neither candidate can honestly pledge to ensure low costs at the pump. The Keystone XL Pipeline would probably not be an environmental disaster, but it provides us with no real benefits and it’s unfortunate that neither candidate is denouncing the project.
The future of energy in this country depends on Obama’s and Romney’s willingness to let supply and demand, rather than government influence, direct support of new technologies and the abandonment of old ones. Multibillion-dollar projects, huge subsidies and firm regulations will not help us become more energy independent and could provoke a choice between environmental and economic security. Obama’s strict energy regulations create more problems than they prevent, as they hinder economic growth and have provoked some oil, gas and coal facilities to move abroad. Energy development, economic growth and environmental protection are not impossible goals, however, and Romney’s proposal for “a government that facilitates private-sector-led development of new energy technologies by focusing on funding research and removing barriers,” sounds promising.
(09/26/12 11:41pm)
Each election year, an overenthusiastic media tries to convince us that a single verbal slip-up can destroy a Presidential campaign. Gaffes are reported endlessly, featured in attack ads, defended and debated, only to retreat from the limelight and be forgotten come Election Day. This year has featured several such gaffes, and now, a leaked video showing Governor Romney speaking off-the-cuff to donors has entered the media frenzy. Romney’s comments in the video have been labeled as “devastating,” “a rolling calamity,” and “an utter disaster” by the New York Times, Huffington Post and MSNBC, respectively. Bloomberg News even asserted that the video “has killed Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.” But while the liberal media has blasted the tape, voter polling has remained steady at 47 percent for Obama, 46 percent for Romney.
In the video, Romney asserts that “47 percent of the people ... will vote for the president no matter what ... 47 percent who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it ... these are people who pay no income tax.” While this quote grossly simplifies a complex problem, it is true that for various reasons, over 46 percent of American households pay no federal income tax. Nevertheless, I would hope that Romney understands that this 46 percent contains war veterans, college students, retirees and unemployed workers — not just government freeloaders. Also, declaring that this 46 percent will support President Obama “no matter what” is a bizarre exaggeration, as many of these people want jobs and thus want to pay income tax and therefore want a new president who can make that happen.
“We should have enough jobs and enough take-home pay such that people have the privilege of higher incomes that allow them to be paying taxes,” Romney later clarified, although he added that he worries many of the 46 percent won’t want to contribute their “fair share.” This sentiment closely resembles the picture Democrats paint of wealthy Americans as squanderers of wealth — a manipulative argument that divides and defines people based on income and incorrectly implies that America’s fiscal problems can be erased if the rich are overtaxed. The class-based views of politics emphasized by both Romney and Obama miss the point that most Americans who don’t pay taxes would actually prefer to have a well-paying job that requires them to pay taxes. They also overlook the fact that most middle-class Americans do not begrudge the rich but aspire to become wealthy themselves.
Finally though, Romney’s so-called gaffe isn’t a gaffe at all. Rather, it’s an ineloquent way of pointing out that nearly half of American households don’t pay taxes — a fact that angers most Republicans. We want these people to have jobs, contribute to society and pay taxes; we believe that much of the people within this 46 percent can and should have the means to care for themselves rather than depend on governmental systems for support and security. In the summer, when Obama famously told business owners, “you didn’t build that — someone else made that happen,” he was ripped apart by Republicans for stating, without bells and whistles, a fundamental principle of the Democratic party: that government helps create the social and economic systems which shape our successes. These “gaffes” are based on truths perceived by one party and fundamentally disagreed with by the other, and I’m glad that these ideological questions are defining the presidential race this year. Did you create your success or did it result from the systems in place around you? Should we be proud that our social and economic security nets allow for 46 percent of Americans to not pay taxes, or should we shrink that percentage through job creation and economic growth?
But sometimes politicians make statements that are neither gaffes nor crudely stated party ideologies. In a speech last week, Obama declared, “the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside ... that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done.” This statement illuminates Obama’s inefficacy as a leader — he believes that he lacks the power to create change and he acknowledges that “the big accomplishments” of his first term succeeded not through his leadership, but from outside support. Do you want to keep Obama in Washington if he “can only change it from the outside?” This might not be what Obama intended to say, but the political climate in Washington has become so gridlocked that I imagine the president has given up on the American political system — just as many young Americans have. I do not blame Obama for this standoff, but it’s clear that Democrats and Republicans have failed to work together as they did during the Clinton-Gingrich era. If Obama believes that he “can’t change Washington from the inside,” then how can he combat this dysfunction?