I Am Pissed.

Seriously? No public option? Over the course of writing my blog I have become more and more dissatisfied with the American legislative process, and this is a prime example of why I am so dissatisfied. Congress decided on a health care reform bill that did not include a public option. I wrote my first blog this year about health care reform, and I find it sad and ironic that my last blog this year will be a reiteration of the first. I guess that goes to show the speed and efficiency of our U.S. Congress.

To put it simply, we need a public option. That’s it. Not even just a public option, but true universal, socialized healthcare. 60% of Americans agree with me, but, unfortunately, 0% of health insurance companies agree with me. And, unfortunately, 60% of Americans don’t have $400,000,000 to donate to congressmen, but 100% of insurance companies do. This goes back to another blog I wrote about publically funded races and corruption in Washington, but I digress. Actually, maybe I don’t. I think I’m going to use this blog to vent a little anger and wrap up everything I’ve said in my other blogs. Politicians are corrupt. I think that just about sums it up.

I know. I’m being a little too harsh, but I really wanted a public health care system. I wanted real change, “change I could believe in.” I feel like a kid who asked Santa for a bike and got a pair of socks instead. No. It’s worse than that. The bill requires all citizens to buy heath insurance, even the working poor. This is a travesty. It is just an example of the blatant corruption in congress, and I’m beginning to loath our legislative process. We need real change, not just campaign promises.

Bust the Fillibuster

Filibusters kinda suck. A filibuster is when a minority party stalls legislation in the Senate by debating ceaselessly. This leads to an annoying, counter-productive waiting game that wastes time and money. Although the filibuster can be used to give a voice to a minority party, it has become too widely used and has become an obstruction to democracy rather than a tool to progress democracy.

The filibuster has recently become the tool of a vindictive, grudge-holding minority GOP who simply tries to block any piece of legislation that comes to the Senate. In the 1960s, only 8% of major bills were filibustered. Today, around 80% of major bills are filibustered. This has led to a lack of meaningful progress within Congress and has merely prevented anything useful from happening and has led to, according to the Daily Kos Poll, an abysmal approval rating of just 12% for republicans in Congress. Clearly, the filibuster no longer serves its purpose of being a weapon for the underrepresented in Congress.

What can we do about it? There re lots of ways to preserve the filibuster and the power it provides while allowing progress in the Senate. One option is to limit the number of filibusters allowed. This would bring the filibuster back to its original purpose of allowing the blockage of bills deemed essentially important to the minority party while destroying the function of the filibuster as a tool of simple obstruction. Another option is to allow multiple bills to be o the floor at one time. This would let the minority party block necessary bills while still letting other bills be voted on, ending the logjam and backup created by filibusters. A final option is to change rules of cloture in a novel way. Under current rules of cloture, a filibuster can be broken with 60 votes against it. I propose that there should be allowed one vote for cloture per week. The first week, cloture would require 60 votes, but the second week would require 57, the third week 54 and so on. This would preserve filibuster to a point but still eventually lead to progress within Congress. I think at least one of these should be implemented in an effort to have some meaningful legislation happen for once in congress.

Bring on the Nukes!

What is wrong with nuclear power?! Many environmentalists are strongly against nuclear power because there is a belief that every nuclear power plant is bound to go Three Mile Island on our asses and we’ll all either die or turn into mutant freaks. But this doesn’t make any sense. There have only ever been two meltdowns in history, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And this is among 436 active nuclear power plants in 31 countries, who have been producing power for the combined equivalent of about 14,000 years. Those are pretty good odds.

I consider myself a left-wing nut job and an environmental activist, and as such I am compelled to support nuclear power. Nuclear reactions themselves don’t produce CO2. In fact, the reaction that produces the electricity emits no greenhouse gasses whatsoever. The only waste is the spent fuel rods, which can be disposed of safely. This is the best argument I can think of for nuclear power. It is not as clean as wind or solar, but it pumps out a lot more electricity. However, it is much cleaner than coal or gas yet produces comparable amounts of energy. Nuclear power is safe and clean.

As an environmentalist, I support nuclear energy. While it has its flaws and an ideal world would be powered solely by wind and solar energy, nuclear power is practical and it is a much better alternative than our current dependence on atrociously dirty coal and gas plants. Like I said, nuclear is surprisingly safe and clean, and I think we need to demand a switch.

I'd Kill for a Job in this Economy!

The recession must be getting really bad. For the first time in over 35 years, the U.S. Army met all of its enlistment goals, despite the near certainty of recruits seeing combat in one of the two wars we’re fighting at the moment. This hasn’t happened since 1973, just after Congress ended the draft. Recently, Army recruiting has been slow and the army has consistently fallen well below its recruiting goals, but this year the military saw 168,900 new recruits, or 103% of their goal.

This drastic influx of recruits was caused by one thing: the recession. In today’s awful job market, struggling young men and women naturally turned to the armed services, enticed by guaranteed work an around $14,000 in bonuses. This is a pretty sweet deal for someone who has been laid off, maybe supporting a family. It might even be sweet enough to risk losing your life or your sanity to war.

I find this to be somewhat depressing. People are being forced into military service because they cannot support themselves any other way in today’s economy. I think it’s sad that people have to risk their lives in an unpopular war just to feed their families. This influx was not caused by the wars “justness” or popularity or by national pride. It was caused by necessity and poverty. Oh well. During the Great Depression FDR created works programs like the CCC to provide employment for struggling citizens. I guess the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are our equivalent of a New Deal.

A New Dirty Air Bill

Today I saw an interesting article in the New York Times. This article detailed the story of a new movement in the Bay Area against a new clean air bill. Ya, AGAINST a new air bill. That didn’t seem right. One of the most liberal parts of the country is fighting what seems to be a very liberal bill. Something isn’t right here.

Bt as I read the article, it all became clear. The bill would make it expensive and difficult to build any new building in heavily urban areas. So it’s about money? Well, a little bit, but there is a legitimate environmental grievance against this bill. If development in urban areas is restricted, there will be more suburban development. More suburban development leads to more commuters driving polluting cars farther distances to work, which has a huge environmental impact.

This finally leads to the big problem: why can’t our legislation do anything right? This clean air bill was supposed to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gasses and make our air cleaner. This is a novel and necessary motive, but it was executed terribly. A clean air bill that will lead to more cars on the road and, ultimately, more pollution? Come on now. Decreases in CO2 need to be implemented immediately and strictly, but half-hearted attempts and blunders will do absolutely nothing to help save our dying planet.

Meat: It's Not For Dinner

I just became a vegetarian. I had been considering vegetarianism for some time ever since my brother became a veggie last year. Over the past year, the case against meat has become more and more compelling in my eyes, and I just recently took the plunge. In a society so focused on meat, backed by a government that subsidizes meat, vegetarianism can at times be a struggle simply because the overwhelming prevalence of meat in our culture. However, I have found so many reasons not to eat meat, my decision to become an herbivore was fairly easy to make.

There are two major reasons for my vegetarianism: environmental and salubrious. Meat is astonishingly bad for the environment because of the resources and land needed to sustain it along with the greenhouse gasses produced throughout all aspects of its production and transportation. Take for instance the fact that producing eight ounces of beef requires 25,000 liters of water. Also, it takes far more fossil-fuel energy to produce and transport meat products than to deliver equivalent amounts of protein from plant sources. In the U.S., 56,000,000 acres of land produce hay for livestock. Only 4,000,000 acres support vegetables for human consumption. In Central America, 40% of all the rainforests have been cleared or burned down in the last 40 years, mostly for cattle pasture. These facts make a strong case against meat.

But, what really took it over the edge for me was my reaction to the film “Food Inc.,” which I strongly recommend. This film explored the modern meat industry and showed the horrible, unsanitary, hormone-riddled conditions of today’s mass production “farms.” Honestly, I don’t care that much about the inhumane treatment of these animals. It’s unsettling, but that prompts pity, not lifestyle change. What really sparked disgust were the unsanitary conditions of the pens and slaughter houses. Take cows, for instance. Cows in large factory farms spend their whole lives knee deep in their own feces, and they go to slaughter caked in manure. No matter how well these cows are washed, some of the manure inevitably winds up in the meat. Or what about chickens, who are pumped full of hormones so that they grow as fast and as large as possible, so fast and so large in fact that their bone structure cannot support their weight so they cannot take more than a few steps without collapsing. These images and explanations disgusted me, and coupled with my knowledge of the environmental impact prompted me to turn veggie.

But what about the arguments for meat? Ummmmm… it tastes good. That’s about it. It harms the environment. It is unhealthy. It is a leading cause of obesity, heart disease and e-coli. I’m a vegetarian and I’m proud of it.

The Best Government Money can Buy

Here’s how it all goes down in Congress: republicans are vindictive and corrupt and Democrats are spineless and corrupt. That’s it. Politicians care only about campaign contributions and reelection campaigns. Congressmen have merely become the pawns of big businesses, representing their owners while maintaining the façade of representing their constituents. We do, after all, have the best government money can buy.

The reason I am going on this tirade is I happened across a fabulous comic in the newspaper this Sunday. This comic centered around a thought provoking allegory for our political system. Say you are a UCLA football fan, but someone offered you $1000 to cheer for USC just once. Naturally, you’d do it, because you can always cheer for the Bruins next week plus you just got $1000 richer. This is a perfect allegory for our Congressional system. No matter how much a Senator wants a public option and no matter how much his constituents want a public option, if a health insurance company makes a million dollar contribution to your campaign, you’re gonna vote down a public option. It’s simple self-preservation. And what’s the true irony, if a Senator refuse the contribution and stand up for his own beliefs and his constituents’ beliefs (i.e. do the job he was elected to do), he would lose his reelection for lack of funding.

I think this is tragic. Our representative government barely represents us anymore. It is shifting to an oligarchy or even a plutocracy. Our Congressmen have been bought. They have betrayed us. I find great truth in a quote by Mark Twain: “To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.”

Mr. Sutley = Grinch

This week in a government building in Sonoma County, a man named Irv Sutley noticed an angel and a star among the holiday decorations in the building. Being an atheist, Sutley was deeply offended and demanded these religious symbols be taken down immediately. Neither angels nor stars belong to any single religion, but Sutley nevertheless demanded their removal, and they were soon removed.

I am a staunch proponent of separation of church and state, as well as a staunch atheist, but even I find Sutley’s reaction to the decorations severe and unfounded. Why does he care if there are a few Christian symbols put up by a Christian? Is it really so offensive? I’m an atheist too and I am not offended at all by any religious symbol, indeed I find religious art and symbols beautiful and interesting. I don’t care if someone expresses their faith, I even encourage this. Even in a public, governmental space, I cannot see why religious symbols should not be permissible unless they are overwhelming.

I think Sutley’s reaction was much too severe, and I disagree with him entirely. People like him reinforce the stereotype of atheists being repressive, angry, immoral curmudgeons. I abhor this stereotype because I see myself as an accepting, open-minded, moral atheist. I believe that one’s religion should barely affect one’s political decisions, especially the opinions of those in power, but I know this is unrealistic. I do, however, believe that one has the right to express and practice their religion however they please, even if it means putting up religious symbols or idols in public places. Thus, I strongly disagree with the rash, selfish actions of Mr. Sutley.

The Green Revolution

Why can’t America invest in clean energy? Can’t politicians, lobbyists and businessmen look past their own greed for just a second and realize that their actions along with their inaction, although nearsightedly profitable, will only lead to catastrophe? Politicians and businessmen alike should recognize the fact that striving towards truly renewable and “green” energy will lead to new jobs, increased profits, and a better world for the rest of us.

But, this whole global warming thing isn’t entirely the fault of these powerful few. I place much of the blame on myself and the rest of the American population. We need to stand up and demand clean energy and a swift and radical attempt to end climate change. We need to stop being manipulated by those few people who stand to make disgusting profits while ruining our planet. We need to reject the lies they feed us about biofuels, ethanol and “clean” coal. Americans need to find ways to reduce our consumption of both energy and resources. We must demand nuclear, wind, wave, solar and hydroelectric power. We can no longer be afraid of severing our ties with oil, gas and coal because oil, gas and coal tell us we can’t live without them. We can become a nation run on renewable, clean energy and we can establish ourselves as a forerunner in the green movement.

There is some progress being made, and there are some powerful people who are brave enough and selfless enough to make a stand for clean energy, but it is not nearly enough. The U.S. is still the largest consumer of energy in the world, and we are nowhere near the front in the race towards renewable, sustainable energy. I agree with our Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who told the Senate, “When the Starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled, but I remain confident that we can make up the ground.

Karzai's Korruption

What are we doing in Afghanistan? I realize that eliminating the Taliban and freeing the Afghanis from their control is a very noble and humanitarian ideal, but we are doing it all wrong. Why did we send American men and women into a war to replace one corrupt, tyrannical government with another? If we ever want to get out of Afghanistan, we need to establish a legitimate government that is concerned with the needs of the people, not just send more troops.

Let’s start with the recent presidential election. There have been many reports of widespread fraud in this election, with allegations that up to 1/3 of all ballots were fraudulent. There have also been reports of ballot box stuffing, armed coercion, shutting down polling places, bribery, and vote buying. It is no wonder the Taliban has seen resurgence as of late. They are no longer simply opposed to our lifestyle or ideologies; the U.S. has been kind enough to offer them a legitimate reason to hate us. We have replaced one corrupt government with another, and Afghanis have begun to turn to the Taliban because it has begun to seem like a nationalistic, patriotic endeavor to drive out the corrupt government along with the foreigners (that’s us) who have created it.

In order to stop the Taliban, we can’t just send more troops and more drones and more missiles, because you can’t bomb an idea. We need to offer the Afghan people an alternative. We need to do whatever we can to show that we do not approve of Karzai’s corruption and greed, and we need to do everything we can to establish a legitimate, sound government for the people by the people. Only then will Afghani’s turn from the Taliban and begin to accept the U.S. as a benevolent force.

Why Obama?

I believe that Obama deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize… about three years from now. Because honestly, he hasn’t done anything yet! I hope that Obama will rise to become the world’s foremost harbinger of peace someday. This is one of my deepest wishes. But he did not deserve to win the Prize this year. He hasn’t earned it, while plenty of other people have.

Why didn’t Morgan Tsvangirai win? He has striven for peace in Zimbabwe for years, trying to overthrow despotic president Mugabe and end civil rights abuses in his nation with a message of nonviolence. Tsvangirai has faced imprisonment, torture, and multiple assassination attempts because of his message of peaceful overthrow of the current tyrannical government. What about Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest who has been peacefully opposing and protesting the despotic Communist Vietnamese government and its abuses against human rights and civil liberties. He has faced almost 15 years in prison for his peaceful, pro-democratic beliefs and actions. Wei Jingsheng, another possible recipient, is a Chinese dissenter whose outcries against Communism, the Chinese prison system and Tibet’s freedom earned him over fifteen years in prison and eventually deportation. Or even Helmut Kohl, the ex-Chancellor of Germany who was one of the main architects of the German reunification and one of the founders of the European Union. These men have earned the Nobel peace prize. They have sacrificed immensely to bring about peace and civil liberty in their home countries. What has Obama done to put him above these embodiments of peace?

However, I do admire how Obama handled the award. He did not claim he deserved it. He even admitted that he hasn’t done anything to deserve it yet. "I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee," Obama said. "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century." This is a very noble outlook on his winning of one of the most prestigious awards in the world, and I hope he is truly called to action and that he goes on to truly deserve the great honor awarded to him so prematurely.

I'm Not an Ass or an Elephant

Why is partisanship such a major problem in the U.S.? Why do Americans feel they must subscribe to a party that holds some of their beliefs instead of merely subscribing to those beliefs? Why do Americans blindly follow what their party or influential members therein tell them to do despite the fact this may not be in their best interest or in the nation’s best interest?

I am not against partisanship as an institution. I believe that partisanship is beneficial and perhaps necessary as long as it is in moderation. Partisanship can give a likeminded group a sense of community and influence as well as provide the foundation for the conflict that fuels and regulates our political system. However, in recent years political parties have been corrupted, becoming instead vehicles which allow manipulative demagogues to satiate their lust for power, recognition and wealth. Parties have become breeding grounds of indoctrination, hate, ignorance and blind obedience. A political party should be an opportunity to express and empower your own personal political views. A political party should not tell you which views are correct and which are incorrect, or tell you that you are not a true Democrat/Republican unless you believe this. I am the only one who can decide what is good or bad, right or wrong, beneficial or detrimental, and it should be my right as an American to be able to develop and express these views without the constraints of an oppressive partisan system.

Parties in themselves are not bad or evil. But when the wellbeing of a party or its leaders begins to take precedence over the wellbeing of the nation and all its people, parties become dangerous, destructive entities. Take for instance the response of some conservative Republicans to Chicago losing its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games, despite a personal appeal from President Obama himself. It has been reported that some Republicans actually rejoiced upon hearing of Chicago’s and, ultimately, America’s defeat because Chicago’s plea had become associated with Obama, and because Chicago lost, in a way Obama lost. In Fact, some Republican-controlled newspapers printed headlines like “Obama Loses!” and “World Rejects Obama.” This is a clear example of putting partisan malice ahead of the nation’s wellbeing. It is small instances like this coupled with larger examples such as the incredibly partisan fight over health care that are revealing America to be a divided, disjointed and dysfunctional nation that cannot be whole or prosperous until this partisan extremism comes to an end.

Keep Public Education Public

I thought public school was supposed to be cheap? As a high school senior at a private school hoping to attend UC Berkeley next year, I was under the impression that public schools were affordable, not like those bourgeoisie-infested, impossibly expensive private schools like Stanford or Harvard, right? Well, thanks to a plan to raise tuition at UCs by upwards of 30% along with Stanford offering me free tuition because of my family’s financial status, it is actually cheaper for me to go to Stanford than it is for me to go to a public UC. With the rate hikes, UC tuition will go past $10,000 a year. Add this to the cost of room and board, and the cost of going to a UC comes out to about $24,000 a year. That doesn’t really seem like public education to me.

What are we going to get with all of this tuition money? I’m going to get an amazing education right? Well, I’m sure I will, but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to see much of that $10,000. In addition to tuition hikes, UCs are also mandating teacher furloughs in an effort to cut funds. Won’t this just cut students’ opportunities to learn and receive the opportunities they are paying $10,000 a year to receive? Not only is this unfair to the students, it is unfair to faculty and staff. In addition to the unpaid furloughs, faculty and staff will also face pay cuts of up to 10% as well as layoffs. How can the UC system claim to be top-notch if it is comprised of students who pay too much to be taught by underpaid professors who are required to not go to work?

But, there is an even more heinous crime underlying this affront to our education. The very man who proposed the tuition hikes, furloughs, lay-offs and pay-cuts, Mark Yudof, will earn $828,000 this year, including salary and benefits. I think I may have just spotted an area where cuts can be made that won’t affect my education in the slightest. I wholeheartedly agree with the 5000 Berkeley students who demonstrated against furloughs and tuition hikes on Thursday, and I believe the true solution to the UCs budget problems is to reduce inefficient and overpaid bureaucracy and chop from the top.

Legalize It

That’s right. I think weed should not only be decriminalized, it should be legalized as well as taxed and regulated by the government. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t smoke. I think smoking weed (smoking anything actually) is stupid, dangerous and disgusting. I don’t want to legalize weed because I personally want to get high and avoid punishment. I believe it makes sense, socially and economically, to legalize cannabis and that legalization would be beneficial to the nation.

Let’s start with arguments against legalizing weed. The most widely-used argument against legalization is the claim that marijuana is a “stepping-stone” or “gateway” drug, that marijuana often leads to more harmful drugs such as cocaine. I think this is absolutely true. However, I believe this is partially because it is criminalized. Another valid point is that legalization would increase high driving incidents. This is also valid, but I believe regulation on par with drunk driving regulation would greatly reduce this risk. Another argument is that marijuana is simply dangerous. This point in indubitable, but I would like to point out that alcohol, tobacco, guns, fireworks, cars, and even pizza are all dangerous if used irresponsibly or in excess, yet all of these are perfectly legal. I believe that if a person wishes to slowly commit suicide, he should be able to choose weed as a viable option along with the aforementioned, very legal methods.

How about the arguments for legalizing weed? There are quite a few from a social standpoint, including the fact that legalizing marijuana will lead to a decline in crime, a decline in the number of prison inmates and a decline in overall arrests. For example, in 2008, 847,863 people in the U.S. were arrested on marijuana charges, most of them for simple possession. Thus, legalization would eliminate the need to waste time and money on these meaningless arrests. Furthermore, just as mob violence was all but wiped out after the end of prohibition, legalization of marijuana would greatly reduce gang and cartel-related violence in the U.S. There are also substantial economic arguments for the legalization of weed. For instance, alcohol and tobacco, two undeniably dangerous, legal drugs, account for a combined $20 billion dollars in tax revenue each year. Thus, if marijuana were legalized, regulated and taxed like these two drugs, America could find a significant new revenue stream. In addition, the U.S. spends about $7.6 billion a year attempting to combat and control marijuana use in this country. Therefore, I believe that although marijuana does indeed have certain dangers and drawbacks, it makes social and fiscal sense to simply legalize, regulate, and tax the hell out of it.

My Government is Trying to Kill Me

I used to think even though our government is pretty corrupt and rarely makes decisions based on public opinion or public good, it at least actively tries to keep us from dying by doing things like ensuring clean water for its citizens. I mean, that’s pretty basic. I figured the politicians who represent us in our government wouldn’t possibly trade our well-being and even our lives for campaign contributions and lobbyists’ dollars, right? Looks like I was wrong.

Today I found a New York Times article about tap water in Appalachia being contaminated by coal mining. The article tells the tale of the Massey family’s ordeal as they try to deal with a contaminated water supply. Their tap water contains dangerous amounts of lead, arsenic, barium, manganese, and other toxins and heavy metals that lead to cancer, birth defects and other health issues. The entire family has rashes and lesions from bathing, while their teeth are being eaten away from brushing their teeth with the contaminated water. The Massey’s have resorted to having fresh water delivered to their house and brushing their teeth with bottled water.

Somebody’s doing something about this, right? Well, not exactly. The Environmental Protection agency should be regulating this kind of contamination under the Clean Water Act of 1972. Yet, during the presidency of George W. Bush, regulation has declined sharply. Indeed, over the last five years, factories, plants, refineries, and other businesses and corporations have violated EPA standards 500,000 times, but only about 3% of these violations led to punishment. Although the EPA boasts that it collected $14.7 million in fines from more than 70 mining companies since 2006, $14.7 million is how much those businesses’ parent companies make every 10 hours. So, thanks to loose or even completely lacking regulation, it pays to put peoples’ lives at risk. As it is, about 10% of Americans live with tap water that falls below EPA standards.

According to The New York Times, “Enforcement lapses were particularly bad under the administration of President George W. Bush, employees say. ‘For the last eight years, my hands have been tied,’ said one E.P.A. official who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. ‘We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.’” In fact, over the last twenty years, coal mining corporations have donated $22,235,623 to political campaigns, with $3,446,336 of that in 2008 alone. And is it any surprise that we saw the sharpest decline in regulations during a Republican presidency when 80% of coal-funded contribution dollars have gone to the Republican Party? Indeed, in 2004, Bush’s reelection year, a full 90% of coal-funded contributions went to the Republican Party? We need to radically change how our greed-fueled political system operates. It’s becoming a matter of life and death.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Banning gay marriage is simply unethical, unfair, unconstitutional, and wrong. Yet, a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage. Why? Many cite a belief that gay marriage will degrade heterosexual marriage. How? Will it make heterosexual couples love each other less? Others claim allowing gay marriage would lead to the legalization of incest, bestiality, and polygamy. This very same argument was used to support a ban on interracial marriage in the ‘60s, and I haven’t noticed a legalization of bestiality over the past few decades. Still others claim that thousands of years of human history have taught us that homosexuality is unnatural and a sin, but there have been dozens of cases of societies accepting and even embracing homosexuality, societies from China to Greece to Native America. Some opponents claim that homosexual marriages are unstable environments not fit to raise children. However, Massachusetts, a state in which gay marriage is legal, has the lowest divorce rate among all states and research has been done that suggests children raised within homosexual relationships are just as psychologically stable as those raised in heterosexual families.

Thus, the real agenda of those opposed to gay marriage is revealed: bigotry, homophobia and religious beliefs. This is a slap in the face of the constitution, our government and civil rights. Our Constitution and Republican government were set up to prevent the tyranny of a malevolent majority and protect the rights of minorities. This was upheld in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down the idea of “separate but equal” used to suppress African Americans. Yet this idea is being used today to prevent gay couples from marrying, which is a blatant example of separate but not equal. The controversy boils down to one thing, a deterioration of the separation of church and state. People are letting their religious affiliation affect their decision making, and letting their religion seep into our government. What happened to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”

So, what repercussions would gay marriage have? It would lead to widespread happiness, contentment and equality. It would further the basic beliefs of liberty and egalitarianism written into our Constitution. Gay marriage would harm no one. It would not lead to the downfall of western civilization. It would not make straight couples love each other less. It would not trigger the apocalypse. It would merely bring happiness to thousands of people, an idea that I believe our society should embrace more often.

The American Wealthocracy

If I had hundreds of millions of dollars, I know exactly what I would buy. I’d buy a mansion, a Rolls-Royce and a U.S. Senator. Whoever said our democracy was ruled a majority of the population was wrong. Our current political system is indeed run by a majority, but a majority of wealth. And the majority of wealth is held by a very small minority, a minority who always seems to be fiercely protected by our democratic government. How else do you explain the massive jump in income for the wealthy during the past decades? Between 1979 and 2005, the top 1% richest Americans have seen their incomes increase by 228%, while the bottom 20% poorest Americans have only seen a 6% increase in their incomes. How have we as a society let this happen?

The answer: privately funded political campaigning. Political campaigning has become an expensive endeavor over the past few years. In 2004, a candidate for U.S. Senate spent on average almost $6 million to get elected. In all, candidates spent a total of $407 million dollars to campaign for senate seats. Where did they get all of this money? Most of this money comes from big companies who spend millions of dollars to ensure their candidate wins the election. This method of financing campaigns leads to government officials who represent companies and the wealthy rather than the American people.

But campaign contributions only account for a fraction of the money given to legislators by special interests. Plenty of money changes hands through the magic of lobbying. In 2008, a total of $3.3 BILLION was spent on lobbying. This money was spent specifically in an effort to influence decisions in the government. Wonder why pharmaceuticals cost so much and no one wants to socialize health insurance? The health sector (aka drug companies and HMOs) spent almost $500 million lobbying last year. This illustrates how small of a factor the public good has become in influencing national policy. The only way to be represented in congress is to buy your very own congressman, or, better yet, the entire Congress. The American government needs to go back to representing the people rather than the money.

Socialize It!!!

When I got an assignment from my gov teacher to start a blog about current political events, I was really excited. I had never been very well-informed about my country or its political system, so I was intrigued and eager to learn new things about this great government of ours. Yet, the more research I do for this blog, the more depressed and disillusioned I become as I begin to understand the dishonest, self-serving, blatantly corrupt political system in which I have no voice and over which I have no control.

Take for instance the debate over health care. I am a huge proponent of socialized, single-payer health care. I believe this type of system would benefit every single American, except of course those few, super rich Americans who make millions of dollars exploiting the well-being of those 250 million Americans who have over-priced, insufficient health insurance. For example, George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, made 2.2 million dollars in the year 2000, while Kaiser itself is worth over 13 billion dollars. Because health insurance companies are private, for-profit enterprises, making money is there first priority while patient care is their last.

While the insurance companies are making gross profits, the average American still struggles with medical bills. In 2007, medical bills contributed to 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Of those that filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance. Seriously. Also, Insurance companies create needless bureaucracy and paperwork that are drains on the system. Nearly one third of all health care costs are wasted on needless administration. 350 billion dollars a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. switched to a single-payer system. That’s enough to pay for the entire system! Why don’t we switch to socialized medicine? Every other Western country except Holland and Switzerland has socialized medicine, and their life expectancies are vastly beyond our own. We need to switch to a government controlled, single-payer system that cares about patients rather than profits. Socialized medicine is a necessity.