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(05/11/09 12:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During the latter part of the presidential elections, the discussion seemed to shift toward wealth distribution and freedom versus equality. To an extent, the discussion continues. Whenever I hear an issue broken down into some kind of dichotomy, I immediately become suspicious. But the difference between parties might be a genuine dichotomy, between freedom and equality.In the short story “Harrison Bergeron,” by Indiana native Kurt Vonnegut, a futuristic dystopian society exists where the innate abilities of everyone are in some way counter-balanced so that all members of society are finally equal.Each character is physically impaired in such a way that their superior abilities are lowered in order for them to become average. George, a man naturally more intelligent than most, was made average by forcing him to wear an earpiece that disrupted his train of thought every 20 seconds. Others, who might have been naturally strong, were required to carry cumbersome weights. There were handicaps for every attribute.The story brings up an interesting question, and one which Americans have been thinking about since Alexis de Tocqueville’s book “Democracy in America”. Are absolute equality and absolute freedom mutually exclusive?Interpreting Vonnegut, it seems that in order to bring about absolute equality, sacrifices to our freedoms must be made. It’s funny, then, that both are associated with America.But, in a somewhat unorthodox literary analysis, we can also apply this question to economic policy. Are free choice, which maximizes efficiency, and governmental programs that seek to improve equality also exclusive? Maybe that’s where the tension during the debate over wealth distribution came from – those in favor of “freedom” and those in favor of “equality.”That is, because absolute freedom and absolute equality are exclusive, then finding the right balance between the two is very subjective. And during the process of collectively pooling together like-minded people, a dichotomy must arise, between those leaning toward “freedom” and economic efficiency and those leaning toward “equality” and a progressive tax system.I’m reluctant to place myself completely in either camp, seeing merits in both. And it’s impossible to say who is right. More than likely whichever becomes politically ingrained as habit will become “right.” It’s somewhat analogous to what Rudolf Rocker said of political rights: “They do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.”Looking back at the discussion’s timeline, and its different manifestations – from Tocqueville’s work to turn-of-the-20th century collective bargaining and labor to modern-day welfare politics – it makes me wonder when it will end, and which side’s position will become habitualized enough to resist if threatened.It would be naive to say, even during today’s democratically controlled government, that the issue will be resolved. More than likely we’ll be having this same debate during the 2012 presidential elections.
(04/23/09 12:33am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Just around the corner is “The World’s Greatest College Weekend,” so I thought nothing could be a timelier topic to write about than drinking. Even though many of us students are underage, we are probably going to be drinking this weekend (if you haven’t already started). Although it is illegal, is it a bad thing? Or is it minors’ slurred way of saying “Svil Dis-ohbedienz”?A new report by Jeffrey Miron, senior lecturer in Harvard’s department of economics, confirmed that when the federal government pressured states to adopt a minimum legal drinking age of 21 it had little or no life-saving effect.In 1984 Congress passed the Federal Underage Drinking Act that withheld transportation funding from states that did not make it illegal for those younger than 21 to drink, under the justification that a higher minimum legal drinking age would reduce traffic fatalities.However, the recent report showed that the states forced to change their minimum drinking age from 18 to 21 saw only a temporary life-saving effect during the first year or two of policy change.This makes sense. States forced to increase their drinking age against their citizens’ choice undoubtedly enforce the policy less. Think about college campuses, whose “citizens” have almost no respect for the drinking age. Violators are usually given only slaps on the wrist.While the minimum legal drinking age has had little or no positive effect, it has managed to create two negative effects. First, it manages to disenfranchise youth.I’d love for one of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving to explain to me why our society trusts me at 18 to vote for the leader of the free world, and to fight and possibly die serving in the armed forces, but yet can’t seem to trust me to drink responsibly.The central argument that a higher minimum drinking age would reduce traffic fatalities has not only been disproven through this report, but even if it were true, a large impact would have to be present to warrant restricting citizens’ rights. After all, where do we stop? I’m sure by restricting many people’s habits we could reduce a lot more deaths. No more cigarettes. No more fast food. Hell, no more driving.Second, Maintaining the current legal drinking age also promotes binge drinking.Many other productive, industrialized countries around the world manage with a younger drinking age such as 16 or 18. Their youth grow up in an environment that inches them into alcohol and that doesn’t demonize it.However, here in the United States, most of us only first experience drinking when we leave our parents and go to college. We’re being let loose to a potentially dangerous drug without ever having taken it in moderation and with supervision. We don’t know our tolerance or what the drug does to us.It took me a year until I found my tolerance, and if I didn’t have some friends willing to hold my glasses while I puked (and hold my hand steady while I shaved my head) then I could have done something dangerous.At the very least, whenever considering restricting someone's choice, the costs of restriction and its benefits must be measured. This new report makes clear, the costs out-weigh the benefits. This weekend save one toast for a change to the policy. Cheers.
(04/16/09 1:08am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Red-Hot ticket was the only one in the IU Student Association election to raise the problem of a lack of funding for the IU Campus Bus Service. Although they naively hinted that an expedient solution was possible, merely bringing up the issue is helpful for awareness.Students complain that there aren’t enough buses or routes. In 2005, the mandatory student transportation fee was extended to the IU Campus Bus Service – eliminating the sale of bus passes and cash fares – as the way to cover operating expenses. According to the 2007 Campus Bus Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis, “to date Campus Bus has obtained no federal or state financial assistance to support its operating expenses,” and therefore is “almost exclusively dependent on the student transportation fees.” On its Web site, Red-Hot asked the rhetorical question: “Did you know that there is nearly $2 million per year of state transportation funds that would be available to Campus Bus if IU would just apply for them?” To put that in perspective, the Campus Bus Service currently has an operating budget of only $3.6 million. Admittedly, that sounded very suspicious to me when I first heard it – surely there must be a reason why Campus Bus isn’t just taking this “free” money. After talking to Kirk White, who helps coordinate the partnership between Bloomington Transit and Campus Bus to eliminate inefficiencies, I found that Red-Hot is technically right. Campus Bus could just apply for funding from the state’s Public Mass Transportation Fund. However, it is difficult politically. The annual amount of state money allocated to the fund is fixed. For each public transit system in a city, a formula based on the criteria of ridership, total vehicle miles and locally derived income is used to determine how much funding each city will receive. However, the size of the Public Mass Transportation Fund is fixed. So if one city increases its portion of funding received from the fund, other cities’ portions decrease. If Campus Bus were to apply for funding with Bloomington Transit for Bloomington, then other cities around Indiana would lose funding. Although Campus Bus could get an additional $2 million, that’s $2 million less for the rest of the state. Obviously, until Campus Bus applies for funding, Bloomington will not receive its fair share, because a large portion of our ridership will remain unaccounted for when determining funding. Other Indiana cities, like Lafayette, have coupled college transits with city transits. However, Bloomington still has to consider the other cities’ welfare before incorporating Campus Bus, if not because we’re generous, then because we could upset other municipalities. Their congressmen could cut into our appropriations at next year’s budget proposal to make up for the $2 million. Awareness is low on this issue, and for bringing it up Red-Hot should be commended. But even hinting that we can just charge in there and apply for funds could backfire on IU. Campus Bus is aware of the reliance on the student transportation fee and since fall 2007 has been working appropriately to get the much-needed additional aid without taking away from the rest of the state.
(04/09/09 1:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The next several years might see a decline in the availability of financial aid due to the hit many university endowments took last fall.An endowment is money or property donated to a university. When in the form of money, most endowments are invested. The principal, or the money given to the university by a donor, usually goes untouched. Instead, it’s invested, and those investment revenues go to pay for the endowment’s stipulated purpose (financial aid, an endowed professorship, etc.).IU endowments are no exception. IU’s endowment portfolio declined by 26.7 percent during the last six months of 2008, said Gary A. Stratten, vice president and chief investment officer of the IU Foundation, in an e-mail. The Foundation manages University endowments. The decline in the value of the endowment assets will have some impact on the financial support for IU students, and colleges across the country are facing a similar problem.However, whereas IU is optimistically facing a situation where distributions drop 6 to 7 percent throughout 2009, some colleges and universities are facing much worse. According to The New York Times, because these schools expect to have much less financial aid available, some have begun considering an applicant’s ability to pay – along with high school grades and SAT scores – when making admission decisions.Luckily, “IU does not consider financial need when determining who to admit,” Jim Kennedy, IU director of financial aid, said.The colleges that do decide to become need-aware risk producing an effect that Morton Owen Schapiro, the president of Williams College, said could “be a cascading of talented lower-income kids down the social hierarchy of American higher education, and some cascading up of affluent kids.”It’s unlikely that poorer students will be excluded from anything other than private, highly selective schools. Community colleges and state universities, which also provide “American higher education,” will still be available and affordable. Keep in mind you don’t need to go to Harvard to become middle class.Although Schapiro’s “cascading” theory doesn’t seem to be ubiquitous to all of “American higher education,” even a small cascading effect would be an unfortunate loss in educational equity.Children from poorer school districts already receive less money to fund K-12 education, and yet its members give up more for it.According to the book “Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance,” poorer school districts have less property tax to support their local schools. Although state aid is given to them, it’s usually not enough to make up the difference. So, to compensate, residents of poorer school districts usually face higher tax rates per dollar of assessed value of property. This entire mess just goes to show the lose-lose situation that the financial crisis has created for universities and aspiring students. There’s the practical concern universities must take into account – most are realizing the economic reality they must face and need-awareness is, if nothing else, financially prudent. And there’s the more idealistic concern of maintaining a respectable degree of fairness in higher education.
(03/26/09 12:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When President Barack Obama called together a fiscal responsibility summit in late February and a health care summit in early March, he seemed to be on track to start addressing our long-term fiscal policy.Now that the AIG bonus frenzy is over, we can get back to that discussion, which has been sidelined for years. In fact, even during last year’s general election, neither candidate brought up the fiscal issue of Social Security reform. It’s understandable. All the potential solutions require telling voters something they don’t want to hear – in this case, cut guaranteed benefits, raise the payroll tax or increase the retirement age.But Obama does realize that while Social Security might not be an issue to campaign on, this and other fiscal matters aren’t going to go away. As a matter of fact, they’re only going to get worse. As time goes on, baby boomers will begin to retire and health care costs will continue to rise.Fiscal matters haven’t been solved yet simply because nobody’s willing to face the fact that sacrifices will have to be made – because, as Obama often says, we can’t “maintain the status quo, because it is unsustainable.” In such cases where sacrifice is inevitable, the best solutions aren’t necessarily great solutions, just the least bad. Medicare is another program that is going to require significant sacrifice. The best proposal I’ve heard so far has actually come from Arnold Kling, a libertarian. Although I don’t personally subscribe to a libertarian philosophy, I do believe that on this particular issue, his solution makes the least-worst sacrifice.His solution isn’t necessarily derived from libertarianism. Rather, it is the only rational response if you believe he has correctly diagnosed the problem. And this part, correctly diagnosing the problem, has been the hardest part of this whole mess.Some say rising medical costs are due to price gouging by pharmaceutical companies, others say it’s due to doctors paying high malpractice insurance, and still others believe that taxpayers and insured patients are subsidizing the uninsured.If pharmaceutical companies are price gouging, their profits (or malpractice insurance costs, etc.) should make up a large portion of health care spending. However, as Kling notes, “neither drug company profits nor malpractice costs nor ‘free riding’ amounts to even one half of 1 percent of GDP, when total health spending is 15 percent of GDP.”Instead, Kling attributes the rise to cost-ineffective medical services, like plastic surgery or unnecessary MRIs, that we as Americans have come to expect. As a result, these services, along with their costs, have been incorporated into health insurance premiums for private insurers and higher taxes to cover those under Medicare. Therefore, to reel in Medicare spending, anyone who believes in Kling’s diagnosis of the problem will have to cut these medical services that, although providing benefit, aren’t cost-effective.It’s definitely not a solution anybody wants to hear – that price mechanisms will determine whether or they get a service that probably will help them – but to keep spending in line, it’s a sacrifice we’re going to have to own up to, and soon.
(03/12/09 2:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Attending college and living purely among college kids, I don’t feel the world’s economic slump. I don’t see anyone struggling with it. College has shielded me from the effects of our unfortunate economy, as if I’m someone else from somewhere else.It’s dehumanizing. All my life I’ve been able to see the problems that most Americans face, because to a certain degree, they affected me as well. It’s mystifying, then, to see how apathetic I’ve become to the circumstances of others.I used to live in Loudoun County, Va. Growing up there, I saw a rural area outside of Washington transform itself into the fastest-growing county in the United States. Houses couldn’t be built fast enough to keep up with demand. My house’s price doubled in just six years. Two of my adjacent neighbors were housing speculators whose sole intention for moving into the area was to flip the house at 25 percent profit or more.This wasn’t uncommon; in 2004, the National Association of Realtors calculated that 23 percent of homes were purchased for investment.Given the market, it seemed like an easy way to make a huge return: sit on a house and wait for it to inevitably appreciate. And it seemed safe. My high school business teachers always said that housing is the only thing that always appreciates. I don’t think I was the only one privy to their “insight.” Even Alan Greenspan stated in 2005 that a housing bubble is “quite unlikely.”I moved out before the bubble burst, but unfortunately, one of my neighbors did not.Despite the media’s rhetoric of speculators’ complete irresponsibility or greed, the ones I knew were anything but these descriptions. They were engineers and teachers listening to the advice of their financial planners and realtors. The profits they planned to make were going to pay for their kids’ college tuition. After taking out loan after loan and struggling to pay for college yourself, can you not sympathize? There’s been a lot of talk about the mortgage-bailout plan and how it reinforces borrowers’ bad behavior. I want to make it clear that I’m not supporting the mortgage-bailout plan, especially while it covers all mortgages under the oddly high ceiling of $729,000. But it does upset me that so much blame is put solely on the borrowers.The mortgage-bailout plan would certainly subsidize bad behavior, but that bad behavior was not limited to the borrowers. In fact, the bad behavior expanded far beyond them: lenders and politicians weakening mortgage-loan underwriting standards, lenders giving out NINA loans, rankers who gave AAA ratings to some poor CDOs, real estate agents encouraging buyers to overbid, housing companies building too many houses too quickly and the media failing to report that the housing boom was unsustainable.I’m not saying we should subsidize my neighbor’s mortgage, but we shouldn’t stigmatize him for making a decision with risks that professionals understated. Although he must take some of the blame, he shouldn’t take it all.We need to remind ourselves of this – particularly when we can’t see his position.
(03/05/09 3:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One of my favorite quotes by Winston Churchill, the master of the epigram, goes: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” He’s not saying anything blasphemous about democracy, but pointing out that for democracies to work effectively, voters need to be informed.I completely agree. And that’s why the issue of governmental transparency is so important. It seems so long ago, but when both candidates were campaigning each promised to increase transparency in the government. Admittedly, I didn’t believe either of them – I’m too cynical to think any campaign promise will be fulfilled.But since President Barack Obama entered office, I’ve been happily surprised. Within days, he set forth two executive orders and three presidential memorandums, including a reversal of a Bush administration policy that made it easier for governmental agencies to deny requests for records through the Freedom of Information Act. Thee actions also led to the repeal of an executive order that allowed former presidents to claim executive privilege even after leaving office.Again, I’m too cynical, so I thought it was a quick effort to maintain the face of change and show people he’s already mixing it up. “It’ll last till people calm down,” I thought.OK, I was again happily surprised last week when reviewing Obama’s budget proposal.Well, happy in one aspect. Obama has decided to put the price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the annual federal budget, further increasing transparency. Before the costs for the two wars was buried in emergency supplemental bills.The Bush administration got a lot of undue criticism, but it’s been rightfully pointed out that hiding the costs of war from the American people is misleading. I’m not going to act like the federal budget was the only way information could become available to us – it’s the message it sends (also, it made the budget deficit seem smaller than it actually was).Furthermore, I was especially glad to see Obama had stuck to his commitment at a time when he didn’t have to, a time when the public discourse wasn’t mentioning it. (Of course, with this budget’s huge spending increase maybe he just figured “might as well just tack it on.” Sorry, the cynicism is coming out again.)But it doesn’t stop there. According to Obama’s Freedom of Information Act memo on the matter of transparency, “(Government) agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public ... Disclosure should be timely.”So not only are we going to be given access to information, but they’re going to let us know when something comes up?Even if the last bit about requiring government agencies to report information is a little too optimistic, the rest of the measures for increased transparency that the Obama administration has put into effect so far should be applauded for their efficacy, promptness, and independence from press pressure.
(02/26/09 1:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Many children enrolled in public schools do not receive an arts education unless there exist local organizations that provide outreach programs. As a result, President Barack Obama thought it necessary to reinvest in art education, and hoped to increase funding for the National Endowment of the Arts and the Education Department art grants. However, due to the numerous crises facing the United States right now, Obama’s platform on arts education has been drowned out in a sea of other issues.Within the art community, though, this problem hasn’t faded from the forefront of their minds. Recently, Quincy Jones has been petitioned by more than 150,000 people to become what Americans for the Arts has been asking for: a Cabinet-level secretary of culture.But is it really necessary? Art carries such a large spiritual benefit that “spirituality is just as important as military defense,” Jones said.With all due respect to the man who produced “Thriller,” that is ridiculous – art is not an essential need. And right now the government’s purse isn’t big enough to cover the true essential needs of its citizens.But even if we did have the luxury to spend on such a thing, I’m not sure I’d support forging such a strong connection between the arts and the government. In fact, the fragmented representation of the arts and language in the United States ought to be admired, because centralizing the dissemination of art grants – even if funding is limited to organizations – could easily politicize artistic expression and decrease artists’ willingness to experiment.On another note, one of the proposed duties that this secretary of culture would be required to perform would be to showcase American art.But what art can be said to be prototypically American? For instance, what would be “American music”? Right now, much of the funding for music goes to jazz and classical musicians – but the average American doesn’t have an ear for either jazz or classical music. In fact, based on popularity, “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” would be a better representation of American music. Likewise, what would be “American painting”? Most Americans can’t tell the difference between a Jackson Pollock and a monkey throwing paint on a canvas.The argument put out by Bob Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts, for having a secretary to bring together the arts and government is to unite parts of government that each partially deal with the arts to start talking with one another.Listening to his examples, whether they are cultural diplomacy in the State Department or trade issues involving intellectual property laws, there’s rarely, if ever, any need for these different parts of government to coordinate with one other about art. This is a perfect example of bureaucracy.The creation of a secretary of culture isn’t needed and would be an inefficient use of our money. Also, it seems like a potentially bad marriage between the arts and government. Obama can stay true to his platform – to reinvest in arts education – without creating this position.
(02/19/09 3:25am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Too many people today only go to daily newspapers or nightly broadcasts for their news. Regardless of whether or not that source adequately explains some current event, by the time the broadcast is up or the article is read we move on to prime-time programming or watch the Star Wars kid on YouTube one more time, our curiosities apparently satisfied.Dailies aren’t enough. They give us nothing but the cold hard facts and omit the context. This is fine if you have an historical understanding of the topic, but most Americans don’t.Events earlier this year exemplified why we need to change the way we present information in dailies so they also provide context. Looking at the coverage of the three-week Israeli offensive against Hamas, which ended Jan.18, we can see that the overwhelming amount of coverage was reporting the “situation on the ground” – that is, reporting how many casualties occurred that day, what military maneuvers were exercised, etc. But this information is useless to us, because it doesn’t help us understand the conflict. It doesn’t tell us why the conflict occurred. The news shallowly tried to address that concern simply by framing the fighting, saying it began when Hamas started shooting rockets into Israel. But why had Hamas done that, and why then? No reason? Apparently this conflict just arose. A healthy dose of skepticism will immediately raise alarm at such a proposition. It’s no wonder, then, that such simple narratives about those involved exist in the United States: “Oh, they just hate each other,” “That’s the way it is in the Middle-East,” “All Muslims are evil,” etc. Oversimplifications are bound to exist when explanations are necessary, but learning historical context is inconvenient.The Middle East is only sporadically mentioned in the news when there is some bombing or attack. Meanwhile, events between these constant atrocities – which could help explain what caused them – go unreported or aren’t connected.This past Monday, the Wall Street Journal was the only daily of the big four (the others being the Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today) to report that Israel just took another chunk of land in the West Bank to pave way for 2,500 more settlement homes.I certainly don’t want to create an inaccurate black-and-white narrative with Israel as the “bad guy,” but events like this have led to fighting in the past. Yet many dailies decided not to mention the issue, and the one that did failed to connect that some Palestinians will kill people over it.It is likely that another conflict between Israel and her neighbors will break out in the future, not because “Oh, they just hate each other,” or “That’s the way it is in the Middle-East” – but for more complicated reasons. Maybe the next one will be in part because of these new settlements, maybe not. But if we don’t start explaining the significance of news like Monday’s, then when another bombing occurs or conflict breaks out, we won’t have a chance to understand it.
(02/05/09 2:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It looks like both the White House and Congress are set to adopt the economic recovery package sometime next week, sending nearly $900 billion into the economy with the Keynesian hope that federal spending will propagate economic activity. Most of the critics’ dialogue on the package so far has been over the issue of pork-barrel spending, like the proposed $1.5 million to reduce prostitution in Dayton, Ohio, or the $20 million for a proposed minor league baseball museum in Durham, N.C., or my personal favorite, a $4.8 million polar bear exhibit in Rhode Island. And while I sympathize with the point these critics are making – that a president who promised to go “line by line” through the budget and to eliminate any wasteful spending is actually going to permit wasteful spending in his first project – I can’t help but think that pork, in this case, is being overblown in discussion, compromising only a fraction of the total cost. Instead, what discourse on the topic I’d prefer to see – if not the economic theory behind the matter – are investments that aren’t considered pork aren’t considered entirely necessary either, and that will cost quite a lot. Among them is the $9 billion broadband Internet expansion that the New York Times reported earlier this week. The intent of the expenditure is to expand broadband Internet service to rural and underserved areas. This has actually been a campaign promise of Obama’s, to bring the Internet to every corner of America. And while I think this idea is rooted in good intentions and theory, it won’t serve the purpose of stimulating the economy or developing businesses. The idea of the package is that it seeks to borrow money to spend on facilitating business development by improving infrastructure. The Internet certainly is infrastructure; like roads or bridges, you cannot make accessible some things – in this case information – without the underlying framework: Coverage. But, according to industry analyst Craig Settles, who was interviewed by the Times, there is a possibility that in this case “you will spend money for things that people don’t need or can’t use.” After all, there’s a reason Internet service providers haven’t entered into the underserved and rural areas yet. When thinking of what the Internet has done to business in recent years, one seems quick to jump to the conclusion that it will do a great job at bringing about new growth regardless of circumstance. However, the businesses in underserved or rural areas aren’t likely to be the type to benefit from the Internet. Small-town groceries or inner-city convenience stores aren’t likely to get more customers through Internet expansion.So although it sounds nice to expand infrastructure to these areas, it’s probably not going to promote economic growth, which is what the stimulus package is intended for. But at the least, there’s no reason to believe that it will work. Overall, it seems just a hair above very expensive pork.
(01/28/09 4:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I always get excited for the Oscars. It’s one of those events that seems to happily sneak up. And putting together a friendly pool with your bet for winners is as much a part of the tradition as March Madness. Last year, when I missed the two most competitive movies because they were released only weeks before the awards ceremony, all of us in the pool did less than stellar. Taking that into account, some friends and I decided to watch all of the movies in the main categories – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay – and whichever ones we could for the lesser categories. There’s only one problem: Very few of them are making it out of “selected theaters.” And those that do have only recently been released here in one of Bloomington’s theaters, so there’s a good chance that even with excessive cramming, us die-hards won’t catch all of them before Feb. 22. Kerasotes has only just released most of the Oscar nominees to either of its Bloomington theaters, probably only because the films were nominated for an Oscar. And yet some of them have been out for months. It’s very disheartening to see that good, artistic movies are being squeezed out. An experience of a few movie-goers this past weekend framed a microcosm better than any movie could. Upon hearing that the late release “Revolutionary Road” was going to be playing at Kerasotes East, we caught one of the first showings. We were surprised immediately upon entering the theater; there were more than a dozen people there! It definitely wasn’t like when we saw “Gran Torino” – which actually wasn’t nominated but was a potential – “Slumdog,” “Milk” or “Frost/Nixon.” Sam Mendes’ movie wasn’t mind-blowing, but it certainly wasn’t bad. However, as soon as the lights came on, the first comment we heard was, “Oh my gawd, that was terrible! It wasn’t romantic at all.” It was partly the point of the movie not to be romantic, so why is it terrible? Well, the lights illuminated this girl and her friends. And it looked like they might have been in high school. In fact, most people there seemed like they were under the impression that this film, reuniting Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, was “Titanic 2.” They left saying they wished they’d have gone and seen “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.” I don’t mean to judge. They can see whatever they want, and in fact I’m more upset that they were probably duped into believing this movie wasn’t something it wasn’t: a romance. It reminds me of last year’s Best Picture winner, “No Country For Old Men,” where the post-award trailer advertised it like an action movie. In that regard, it’s a “terrible” action movie. But that experience has made it more clear now why artsy-fartsy films are being released later and later in the year. Sadly, there’s no audience for them, so they’re relying on the Oscars to provide venues and hopefully commercial success if they can advertise it as “entertaining.”
(01/22/09 3:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s doubtful you missed it; the president’s son caught smoking weed made big headlines on campus last week. I can’t really remember what our first reaction was upon hearing the news. We at the Opinion desk thought about which angle we wanted to take on the matter, addressing whether or not it was newsworthy, if he’d get the same treatment as any other student, etc. But I immediately reacted differently. Oddly, considering how much I like to poke fun at the news, none of that came to mind. Instead, I thought, “God, weed is still bad?” No doubt college newspapers around the country perennially write a “legalize it” column. And every now and then, between those desperate cries, we’ll see cliche caricatures of hippies on TV making the case, usually with poor rhetoric and without much empathy from the audience. But isn’t there something to the argument nonetheless? Isn’t criminalizing marijuana hypocritical considering the drugs we do allow? The only justifications for its criminalization I’ve ever heard have always been from the same group of people about the same two things: from social conservatives, saying that it’s harmful to your health and that it impairs your judgment. However, we allow other drugs that do one or both of those things in magnitudes equal to or greater than weed does. Well, when I brought up the point the other day to a staunchly conservative friend of mine, he replied, “So you liberals want to exclude cigarette smoking while permitting marijuana smoking. That’s hypocritical.” Actually, the reasoning only seems hypocritical on a very superficial level. Smoking negatively affects the entire public, and others will be affected by the smoker’s decision to light up. So, if marijuana were legal, then smoking it in public would still be illegal, too. But, in the privacy of one’s own home, it could be consumed. Of course he replied, “Well, what right do they have to smoke it in the first place?” But what right does the government have to say you can’t do something that doesn’t hurt anyone else? I believe President Ronald Reagan would say that decisions like these should be left up to “personal responsibility.” If we can trust people to drink responsibly, how can we not trust them to consume equally impairing marijuana responsibly, too? Smoking marijuana certainly poses a health risk. However, to consume it, you don’t have to smoke it. And long-term risks posed by smoking it are about equal to smoking in general, which the government allows. As for short-term risks, it’s actually very safe, and unlike alcohol, nobody has ever overdosed on it.To look at it another way, alcohol has detrimental health affects associated with it, and it obviously impairs your ability to make judgments in a similar manner. So if these two justifications are sufficient to criminalize marijuana, shouldn’t alcohol be illegal too? Maybe lurking beneath my clean-cut image is a tie-dye-wearing hippie waiting to burst out, but I find it ridiculous that a student might be demonized just for smoking weed.
(01/14/09 5:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>We’ve all heard that a certain degree of unemployment is good – it means we college kids can enter the job market after graduating – but high levels just means that no one’s hiring. Likewise, it’s been thought that a certain number of personal bankruptcies are good, representing Americans taking entrepreneurial risks. But the high levels we’re seeing today show that something’s wrong. 2007 filed the most personal bankruptcies in decades, and 2008, with its increased housing foreclosures and job losses, will probably be higher when we get the numbers. Harvard Bankruptcy Law Professor Elizabeth Warren addressed the incoming members of Congress in December, saying that stagnant real income coupled with rising core expenses were creating the need for most Americans to finance more and more. This along with a credit market that’s largely unregulated and lacking proper oversight, has given rise to predatory lending practices, duping those Americans who rely on financing. Credit card scams have become widely known, and you’ve probably seen a few companies out earlier this year on Third Street trying to entice us kids with freebies. But the fact that advice from Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey is so popular means people are still getting nabbed every day. Warren recommended to Congress that they establish a committee that protects the consumer from malicious financial services like consumer protection does with other goods like toys and kitchen appliances.The example of the 30-year fixed mortgage is often mentioned, the contract for which used to be just two pages. Now, it is fifteen or more pages long and mostly filled with “traps” to be misunderstood by purposefully contrived language. And while I agree that not every American is competent enough on their own in handling these contracts to say that they’re “personally responsible” for any misunderstanding, especially when the language is purposefully ambiguous or misleading, are we really addressing the whole problem?Looking back at people who have filed bankruptcy, we can see the majority of filers aren’t those who recklessly went splurging one day, but are frugal individuals who didn’t have much of a safety net. Due to some unforeseen circumstance that creates a pause or a stop in their cash flow, such as job loss or divorce, they are suddenly in over their heads. The overwhelming majority of these people had every intention of paying back their debt. Living in this culture of financing the things we need, it’s like living on thin ice, waiting for a crack to appear. And people in their 20s are desperately trying to file for bankruptcy due to the “undue hardship” of their student loans. In this economy, can you blame them? When were they supposed to save up? It’s going to be a scary reality for seniors who will be graduating into this dismal job market with the obligation to pay back any student loans, even with a grace period. So while I love to see our newly appointed congressmen being educated on the dangers of predatory lending, I’d like to see a bigger solution, one that addresses America’s lust for financing.
(12/11/08 3:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Two years ago, Brazil garnered kudos from policy analysts when the country announced that it was officially energy independent. It took a single scare to motivate the Brazilians to get off of foreign oil – the 1973 oil crisis. Over the past three decades, Brazilians have exhausted themselves in developing an alternative to gasoline through ethanol derived from sugarcane. Unfortunately for us, the United States has been slow to learn the importance of energy independence. We often ignore looking outside our borders to see if someone else is doing something better. Now, with ethanol, we’re facing the opposite problem – we’re looking at other countries to see what they’re doing right, but failing to distinguish differences in political economies that permit or inhibit success.For Brazil, sugar-based ethanol solves both problems with oil that Americans are trying to address – the ethanol is green and homegrown. But Brazil got lucky. They did not set out in ’73 to create greener fuels, only to become energy independent. It just so happened that the most viable domestic resource that could be produced to supplement their domestic oil production was the “green” sugarcane.So after finally concluding that we want to become energy independent and studying the nation that did it the best, the United States has decided to take a page from the Brazilian playbook and go after ethanol, only we don’t have sugarcane to make it. So what do we do? Well, we can’t import it (that kind of defeats the whole idea of energy independence). So ... is there something we can use to make domestic ethanol, something that would be plentiful in the United States?This is where we should have paused and started looking at another form of alternative energy – hydrogen, solar, electric, etc. But we didn’t. We decided to go with corn. To make ethanol from corn requires much more work and chemicals than making it from sugarcane. Also, corn is only a seasonal product that is a staple of our diet – which means we won’t have as much of it to consume. I think you see where this is going. Corn-based ethanol is much more expensive than ethanol from sugarcane.Therefore, in order to compete against Brazilian ethanol imports coming into the United States, we have put up ethanol tariffs and quotas. That means that in an attempt to create greener fuels that lead us away from foreign oil, we’ve chosen an alternative that can only give us independence if it doesn’t compete in a free market.Going to ethanol was a great decision for the Brazilians – they got off of foreign oil and, as luck would have it, created a greener fuel which only became important recently. But that doesn’t mean that we can do the same. It’s good that we began to look at other countries to see what they do well, but we need to understand differences between countries, too. Here, we should have known that ethanol wasn’t right for us. If we want energy independence and a greener fuel, we need to look at what else America has to offer.
(12/04/08 5:04am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I don’t know why when I ask everyone what they did for Thanksgiving break, they always seem reluctant to say they just lounged around their parents’ house.It’s certainly not shameful for me to say I spent my entire break just relaxing. College kids need that.If it weren’t for Thanksgiving, when would we be able to fit in watching those guilty pleasure movies and shows? You know, those programs where you can just turn on and tune out (and if your sister does find you drooling on yourself while watching “Legally Blonde” you can just say the turkey made you and the dog both salivate).Thanksgiving is perfect for relaxing.Like I said, I’m not bashful to say that I vegged out for a couple days. It even got me to do some appropriate introspection about the American tradition.After catching myself up on all the old “Entourage” episodes I missed while being at school, I got a chance that I haven’t had since this semester started: to make some ground on that ever-growing book list. In particular, I was looking forward to a “Freakonomics”-esque book by Democratic strategist Mark Penn called “Microtrends.”One of the interesting little peculiarities Penn found in American culture was a huge miscalculation of the number of millionaires believed to be in the United States. It seems most people believe that about 40 percent of people in the United States are millionaires (in fact, the actual figure is closer to 4 percent). So why this miscalculation? Penn didn’t hypothesize, so it got me wondering ... during the commercial breaks, of course.Surfing around for an hour or so – mesmerized by the vanity of “My Super Sweet 16” and re-runs of the “Fabulous Life of the Rich and the Famous” – was enough to make me feel like an old person when I say, maybe it’s the TV.Well, it is the goal of TV and film to show us something that doesn’t normally happen. After all, the author has chosen to pick this story, this character, over an infinite number of others because supposedly this one is different. We can learn something important from that difference. But what happens when every channel you encounter has a story about an exception, especially a rich exception? It seems to normalize the marginal, so that eventually, in an attempt to show us something that our ordinary lives miss, these marginal lifestyles become over-represented.If MTV is any representation of the average teenager’s lifestyle, we should’ve all gotten Caddies or Beamers for our 16th, right? And we all certainly can afford to go on thousand-dollar shopping sprees once in a while.So could so much wealth being constantly displayed on TV affect our perceptions of the number of millionaires in America? I don’t know, and to be honest, I didn’t really care. I was going to finish watching “Ocean’s Thirteen” and go to bed early, so I could wake up Friday at 4:30 a.m. and buy, buy, buy.
(11/20/08 3:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>President-elect Barack Obama said throughout his campaign that he plans to withdraw our troops from Iraq and re-deploy some of them to the failing state of Afghanistan. Iraq will be left to handle itself.Although the Iraqis have everything needed to prosper in a modern world – a commodity to sell in a modern economy, public schools, electricity, roads, etc. – their future is being left up to speculation. Hopefully, their government is strong enough to maintain stability after the glue that’s been holding it together picks up and moves out.Coming from this conflict, besides the thousands of lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, are new lessons for the United States. New manuals are coming out on conducting modern warfare and stabilization after invasion. Unfortunately, many of the manuals’ lessons are things we should have already known. After Vietnam, we discarded operations manuals on countering guerillas, saying that “we’d never fight that war again.”In Iraq and Afghanistan, 30 years later, when we needed to recall that information, it wasn’t able to be found. Undoubtedly, we recreated the same mistakes to learn lessons that could have been taught the easy way. If we could compare the manuals coming out today with the manuals from Vietnam, no doubt there would be overlaps. Only now are these lessons being taught to our soldiers.However, many within the armed forces are reluctant to maintain these teachings. West Point is divided right now over whether it should change its curriculum to permanently incorporate counter-insurgency tactics or whether it should go back to “traditional” military teachings. Warfare changes, and arguably this new trend of fighting insurgents might become traditional in modern warfare.As one “traditional” warfare strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in 1873, you need to make sure that the war you are fighting and the war you think you are fighting are the same. The recent trend of U.S. war in the past half century has involved combating insurgents. Therefore, we need to mandate training for our soldiers, or at least officers, in this regard. This also means we need to constantly reassess the situation to make sure our strategies are right for the war we’re in. This goes beyond the military. To a large extent the insurgents were the result of our terrible execution in the aftermath of the invasion.It’s become cliche now to say that the Bush administration has refused to hear dissident voices, people who point out discrepancies between what we perceive is going on and what’s really happening. In November 2005, Donald Rumsfeld suggested we shouldn’t call the forces we are fighting in Iraq “insurgents.”We’re about to shift troops to Afghanistan, a place that’s even less hopeful than Iraq (if that’s possible). Let’s hope we take some of the lessons learned with us, and let’s institute those lessons in the training of our future soldiers, so that they don’t have to spend five years learning them the hard way as well.
(11/13/08 3:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>America elected her first black president, and yet I only felt “meh.” Apparently this was a historic election. Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t depressed about it, shoegazing like an anchor at the Fox News election center. But I certainly wasn’t crying with the Rev. Jesse Jackson either.I mean no slight to Rev. Jackson. It’s just that the racial implications of this election meant something completely different to us both, and I’m not sure it’s because he’s black and I’m white. No, I think it’s more generational than racial, and I believe the callousness of my reaction actually goes to show the correct direction race relations is moving.To most in our generation, race is no longer a defining attribute for someone. James isn’t “James, my black friend” – he’s just “James.” To me then, when Obama was elected, I didn’t feel proud to say that we’ve elected our first black president. Race isn’t a useful attribute to describe what a president is or needs to be. I just felt like we elected the most qualified candidate.And although I understand that it must be emotional for those people who are living today that grew up when we were forced to distinguish between races, like Rev. Jackson. I believe that we cannot pat ourselves on the back; that to congratulate ourselves for electing a black president is the opposite of what needs to be done.Because, ideally, if racism were non-existent, then we wouldn’t find any need to acknowledge the fact that we’ve elected a “black president.” But let me continue further with the election’s race relations “success”: Is it racist to vote for someone solely because of the color of their skin? A June Gallup poll found that 19 percent of black voters and 5 percent of white voters said they were more likely to vote for Obama because of his race. At the same time, 6 percent of white voters and 2 percent of black voters said they were less likely to vote for him because of his race. The majority of voters said race would not affect their vote.When you vote for a candidate because of his race, you’re implicitly voting against the other candidate because of their skin color.Jesse Jackson Jr., a congressman from Illinois’ 2nd District, took a few questions from the Chicago Tribune including some about Obama’s soon-to-be vacant senate seat. Currently, Obama is the only African-American senator, and so with him goes that diversity. When Jackson was asked whether or not the governor should take this fact into consideration for the seat’s appointment, Jackson replied that it was an issue that couldn’t be ignored. I couldn’t believe what I’d read. When did race become an important factor for a senator’s performance? Will a person of a particular race make wiser decisions than the others?Positions need to be filled based on merit alone. And when merited African-Americans do win those positions, we can’t get in the habit of congratulating ourselves. There are too many refrains of “Yeah, we did it. We conquered racism,” which can simultaneously acknowledge a distinguishable difference among races.
(11/06/08 3:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During the past year, we have all followed two candidates as they vied for that coveted desk. They’ve gone back and forth at each other countless times trying to out-do the other in an effort to show America who’s more Christian, more apple pie, more middle-class, even who’s more humble.Recently, as a result of the financial crisis, each has been trying to prove he’s more free market. I’ll leave aside the obvious implication here that free market capitalism is righteous as it obviously presupposes its legitimacy – because I’m mainly in agreement – and address instead the nature of each platform with respect to where America wants to go.They both say they are free market capitalists, John McCain even going as far as to dub himself “the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see.”But how does America feel about Free Trade? A CNN poll conducted on June 29 (before the financial crisis came into attention for most Americans) stated that 51 percent of the public feels that foreign trade is a threat to America, whereas only 41 percent thought it represented an opportunity.This fear comes with empirical rationality. Throughout the past decade, we’ve seen American jobs outsourced or American companies pick up and move factories overseas. And there’s only more to come. Former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman, Alan Blinder, recently said globalization will cost 30 to 40 million American jobs in the next 20 years.It’s certainly understandable then for some Americans, especially unskilled workers, to want an effort from our president to create protectionist policies. Although President-elect Barack Obama is the closest, saying he’d like to keep but amend NAFTA and other trade agreements, neither is for fair trade.So are the candidates representing America and its values even when polls show that they’re sitting on the wrong side of the issue? It’s hard to say. I mean, on one hand, America revolted against mercantilism, a British form of protectionism, so that we could trade freely. On the other, we’ve had protectionist policies in some form or another throughout our history and only slightly let up after Germany and Britain lost their seats as the supreme industrial powers.Furthermore, the parties themselves have changed over time. We’re often reminded by modern day Republicans when they’re defending themselves that Lincoln was a Republican. But, unlike “the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see” Lincoln was strongly opposed to free trade. And back then, the Democrats were those who wanted relatively little restrictions on trade.It’s hard to say, as an advocate of free trade and a believer in democracy, what the president should do in this case. Do you trick, bribe or swindle people to go along with free trade if you can’t convince them it’s the best option; or do you represent the will of the people even in their “ignorance?”In fact, many of Obama’s stances on the issue during the campaign seemed like an attempt to give just enough leeway to voters while at the same time not fall too far from free trade theory.
(10/30/08 1:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>John McCain has correctly pointed out that the mortgage crisis resulted from giving loans to people who couldn’t pay them back. But there’s more to the crisis.The rest lies in what Obamanites are barking. One word: “deregulation.”Undecided voters hearing these followers must think they’re either being more concise than “Family Guy’s” Olli the Weatherman in their explanation, or they don’t know what they’re talking about and are satisfied with regurgitating the party line.But there is some truth in this word, if explained.Banks rely on the fact that in reasonable market conditions only a small percentage of lenders will remove their money from the bank on any given day. The amount to cover this small proportion of total lenders is held by the bank on hand, and the rest is invested. However, if a run on the bank were to happen, the banks would go bankrupt, and the people who were owed money are left short.In many respects, the financial market works the same. Regulations were in place requiring investment banks to have enough capital reserves to make good on all their obligations even if a run on the bank occurred. But under former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the market was deregulated so investment banks were allowed to operate in the same manner as the aforementioned banks.This deregulation created a fundamental problem in the credit market that was just waiting to blow up at the first problem, hence the mortgage crisis.Deregulation largely affected credit default swaps. Credit default swaps can be thought of as insurance. Think about your car insurance. You pay a company some money every now and then, a premium, for the guarantee that if something happens to your car, they’ll cover the costs of fixing it.Similarly, banks have been buying up “insurances” or credit default swaps for houses to cover against their potential default. From 1997 until mid-2006, during which time the credit market was partially deregulated, housing prices continued to increase. There were relatively few defaults because homeowners could, if they needed to, sell the house or get a piggyback loan. As long as housing prices continued to increase this was true.So companies that held “swaps” to guarantee houses rarely had to pay for a default and at the same time received premiums. In this market, the premiums become essentially easy, risk-free cash. So, investment banks bought up as many of these swaps as possible.Under a regulated market, investment banks would only be able to buy up as much of these insurances or swaps as they had capital reserves.But the market was unregulated recently, and investment banks bought up more swaps than they could pay back if all insurances were triggered at once. Again, this, like a run on the bank, would not occur in reasonable market conditions.When the mortgage crisis broke and more houses defaulted than would normally be expected, all these people defaulting came to claim their swaps. Those over-extended investment banks weren’t able to pay off all debts, and declared bankruptcy.Regardless of who gets elected, we need to restore underwriting standards and reregulate the credit market. Both candidates are partially correct and any solution must include both their propositions.
(10/23/08 2:04am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I have a hard time walking around campus right now.It’s not the weather, but the sidewalks – they drive me crazy. Everywhere I look, I see “9/11 Truth Now” or “9/11 was an inside job.”I’m disappointed in IU.Don’t get me wrong, students should have every right to chalk the sidewalks, but the fact that so many of our students still believe in this conspiracy theory after seven years is saddening.Worse yet, this comes at a time in the year when high school students are checking out IU with their parents and sizing it up.I remember when I was in high school, my father and I visited the University of Chicago. When we walked around that campus, we saw chalking, too. Only in Chicago, it spelled out, “Save Darfur.” Keep in mind, this was a year before George Clooney and other actors made wearing Darfur T-shirts cool.My father and I were very impressed with the school’s students and their obvious political awareness, even if they were a little socially awkward. So I’m saddened to see the opposite here. I can only wonder what some parents must be thinking: “I’m working how hard to send my kid here?”I believe every theory should have a chance to be heard. And the Truth Now movement has received that ear, and yet they still exist. Well, I gave them my ear when I watched the highly recommended and lauded DVD among conspirators, Loose Change.Made by three kids with absolutely no credentials in engineering, architecture or aerospace science, this movie set out to refute evidence whose legitimacy was authored by a multitude of government consultants, all of whom had degrees in their respective fields.For some reason – call it the inner conspirator in me – I finished out the movie even after hearing this. But, unlike those in the movement, afterward I looked for criticisms of the movie or explanations that refute the proposed theory of the movement. The History Channel showed a special on its validity (I know right, the History Channel was playing something that didn’t involve Jesus, Nazis or the Civil War?).Step by step, experts refuted every single argument with precise analysis that came as the result of magisterial research.And yet this movement still exists. Are these people so stubborn and vain that they won’t retract their previous position? No, I’m convinced the reason they’re still around is not due to any credit of their argument or inadequacy in their character, but rather the fact that they are impervious to logic.Last year, the small student group for Ron Paul wound up chalking virtually the entire campus with “Who is Ron Paul?” The group must not have had more than a dozen members, yet their efforts could have fooled me.In this case, hopefully the Truth Now movement on campus is the same – not a representative portion of the Hoosier student body, just laden with free time.If only they used some of that free time to educate themselves.