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(05/06/10 6:34pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sometimes writing columns reminds me of a quote from Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”You’re never certain when you write a column what the reaction will be. Sometimes you’re met with genuine appreciation, sometimes laughter. More often, you’re called an idiot.Occasionally there’s real outrage. People have no problem telling you you’re an insult to humanity after reading something you spent hours painstakingly researching, writing and editing.Over the years, I’ve tried to welcome all of it — the good and the bad. At times, it’s a frustratingly thankless job. In the end, however, it’s been worth it. I’ve truly loved having the opportunity to be part of the IDS editorial board.It has pushed me to not just keep up on all the news but to really analyze everything I read. Each time I flip through a newspaper or check out Paul Krugman’s blog, I wonder what kind of column I could write with that information. I even pay more attention in class; I think about how a lecture could fit into my writing.It has also taught me how both to take and give criticism. When I first started writing columns, I was nervous about being published. What if people don’t like it? I was scared to speak up in editorial board meetings. Other writers had been there a long time; they must be more informed than me!Two years later, I know I’m right, and I don’t give a shit what you think.In all seriousness, this job has taught me how to be bold and unapologetic about my opinions. It has given me the confidence to be critical of others when I think they’re wrong. And it has also taught me how to cope with having my intelligence insulted hundreds of times via online commentary, e-mails and even phone calls.So I’m not walking away with a huge paycheck (you’re stunned, I’m sure). But I am walking away with a lot more than money.Sure, I could have done much more enjoyable things on Sunday mornings than writing columns — namely, sleeping. But I had the chance to do something I really enjoyed, and that’s pretty rare.Moreover, I’m now fully prepared for a career in the humanities: I’ve realized I am actually capable of living off spaghetti in order to work a fun yet less-than-minimum-wage-paying job.So my cheesy parting words for you are these: Do what you love, and love what you do.Don’t sit through some organization’s boring meeting just to write something on your resume. Make the effort to search for an extracurricular activity you actually want to do, something that gets you excited. On a campus as diverse as IU’s, you’ll be sure to find it. Step out of your comfort zone.Well, this is it. Love me or hate me, my columns are gone for good. You might just find yourself slightly lonely during your Monday classes next year.I wish you the best in your endeavors, whatever they might be. I sincerely thank you for reading. E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(04/25/10 11:15pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sometimes writing columns reminds me of a quote from Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”You’re never certain when you write a column what the reaction will be. Sometimes you’re met with genuine appreciation. Sometimes laughter. More often you’re called an idiot. Occasionally there’s real outrage. People have no problem telling you you’re an insult to humanity after reading something you spent hours painstakingly researching, writing and editing.Over the years, I’ve tried to welcome all of it — the good and the bad. At times, it’s a frustratingly thankless job. In the end, however, it’s been worth it. I’ve truly loved having the opportunity to be part of the IDS editorial board.It has pushed me to not just keep up on all the news but to really analyze everything I read. Each time I flip through a newspaper or check out Paul Krugman’s blog, I wonder what kind of column I could write with that information. I even pay more attention in class; I think about how a lecture could fit into my writing.It has also taught me how to both take and give criticism. When I first started writing columns, I was nervous about being published. What if people don’t like it? I was scared to speak up in editorial board meetings. Other writers had been there a long time; they must be more informed than me!Two years later, I know I’m right and I don’t give a shit what you think.In all seriousness, this job has taught me how to be bold and unapologetic about my opinions. It has given me the confidence to be critical of others when I think they’re wrong. And it has also taught me how to cope with having my intelligence insulted hundreds of times via online commentary, e-mails and even phone calls.So I’m not walking away with a huge paycheck (you’re stunned, I’m sure). But I am walking away with a lot more than money.Sure, I could have done much more enjoyable things on Sunday mornings than column writing — namely, sleeping. But I had the chance to do something I really enjoyed, and that’s pretty rare.Moreover, I’m now fully prepared for a career in the humanities: I’ve realized I am actually capable of living off spaghetti in order to work a fun yet less-than-minimum-wage-paying job.So my cheesy parting words for you are these: Do what you love, and love what you do.Don’t sit through some organization’s boring meeting just to write something on your resume. Make the effort to search for an extracurricular activity you actually want to do, something that gets you excited. On a campus as diverse as IU’s, you’ll be sure to find it. Step out of your comfort zone.Well, this is it. Love me or hate me, my columns are gone for good. You might just find yourself slightly lonely during your Monday classes next year.I wish you the best in your endeavors, whatever they might be. I sincerely thank you for reading. E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(04/19/10 12:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Have you ever tried to reason with an angry drunk?Well, if you haven’t before, you’ll likely get a chance this week. Try to convince someone on the verge of blacking out that what they’re saying makes no sense. Not only will this prove highly entertaining, but you probably will not succeed. Logic just doesn’t work with the intoxicated.I’m beginning to feel that explaining economics to the Tea Party works roughly the same way.Recently, The New York Times conducted a study on the beliefs of Tea Partiers nationwide and allowed them to send in two-minute videos explaining their gravest concerns for the nation. The surveys revealed some severe cases of cognitive dissonance.Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif., told the Times, “I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” Then she added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”The Boston Globe quoted Valerie Shirk, 43, of Prospect, Conn.: “The problem in this country is that too many people are looking for handouts.” She explained: “I agree with the signs that say, ‘Share my father’s work ethic — not his paycheck.’ We have to do something about the whole welfare mentality in this country.” She and her husband have 10 children and are on Medicaid. Listening to the online video snippets, the Tea Partiers collectively sounded like a self-righteous frat brother who just got thrown out of Kilroy’s for puking on the bar: They’re angry, and they don’t know why.Sure, each person had their own reasons, but few of them were the same — and many were even contradictory. The one thing they shared was anti-government belligerence.The New York Times/CBS News poll results backed up my suspicion. Fifty-three percent of self-identified Tea Party members are angry, but there is no agreement among them about what, precisely, they are angry about. When they do venture to explain their grievances, they offer only overly general blanket statements about Washington or disconnected cherry-picked statistics. As far as I’ve seen, there is little to no understanding of how federal budget deficits work or even what spending contributes to the deficit.They fiercely protest government spending but find Social Security and Medicare, which make up roughly 41 percent of the 2010 federal budget, to be worth the cost to taxpayers. Signs held up at Tax Day rallies included one that read “Starve the Beast by Tax Cuts,” an old conservative line that proved only to massively increase the deficit under President Reagan and both Bushes. In fact, the deficit-financed Bush tax cuts will have cost $2.48 trillion for the 2001-10 period. While eight in 10 Tea Partiers say that they are more concerned with economic issues than social ones, they exhibit no real understanding of macroeconomics, simultaneously demanding smaller government, lower taxes, a reduced deficit and the retention of our biggest federally financed programs, Social Security and Medicare. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. Simply put, it is economically impossible to have all of these things.It is, however, possible to be angry. E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(04/11/10 11:40pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One sign depicted a nude female body dissected by marker lines into different beef cuts, labeled appropriately as “rib,” “flank,” and so on. “If you want meat, go to the butcher!” another proclaimed. “Welcome to the Miss America cattle auction!” cried one more.Unfortunately, I’m afraid the message of the 1968 Miss America protestors has been lost on us — or at least a lot of us.I’m sure those women hoped that more than thirty years later we females would no longer be subjected to impossible beauty standards or objectified as sexual playthings.In some ways, we’ve made a lot of progress. But in others, like the recent Odyssey column “Rating Girls,” we definitely haven’t.If you’re unfamiliar with The Odyssey, it is “a weekly lifestyle newspaper focused on the Greek community at Indiana University,” according to its Web site.In “Rating Girls,” Yale Reardon details different categories of women, from a “one” (“Lucky enough these girls hardly ever go out in public”) to a “ten” (“The Holy Mecca of girls” who “can have the personality of a cardboard box” but are still the most desired).My goal is not to berate Mr. Reardon for his disturbing lack of morality or his absent sense of political correctness — authors all across the blogosphere have already taken up that cause. Mr. Reardon is not the first to attempt to determine a woman’s worth by her thinness and breast size — nor will he be the last.Perhaps more troubling than the column itself was the reaction; it was embraced and even praised by some. “Rating girls. Spot on,” read one congratulatory Facebook wall post, “Funniest shit I have read in a while… The whole house is reading it and lovin it.” “I’ve never been so proud to be called an 8.5 in my life,” another declared.Don’t get me wrong. If you enjoy being evaluated and ranked in a similar fashion to, say, a used car, by all means be my guest. But the idea of ranking women, whether meant in a satirical fashion or not, has serious repercussions for all of us and absolutely does not belong in any kind of newspaper.Not only is it unpleasant and humiliating to imagine a bunch of guys critiquing your body and criticizing each flaw, you don’t have to look far beyond the dehumanization inherent in a ranking system to find ties to domestic violence and rape. In fact, Mr. Reardon’s own Twitter bio reads “Yale is my name and raping is my game,” and he’s a fan of the Facebook page “I Don’t Like Chicks With Tans. It Means They’ve Been Out Of The Kitchen,” which depicts several scenes of domestic violence including an image of a bloody woman with her mouth duct taped and a gun to her head that reads “my girlfriend has a learning disability.”The idea that women are purely sexual beings whose personalities are dispensable is inextricably linked to the idea that they don’t necessitate humanitarian treatment, which leads to the acceptance of violence and rape. All actions, including violent ones, begin with an idea. A ranking system effectively takes away a female’s humanity.On a college campus, where one out of four of our peers will be the victims of actual or attempted sexual assault, we should be absolutely ashamed to promote the sexual degradation of women by ranking them.I hope I will never again pick up a publication with my university’s name on it and be subjected to a column that makes me feel, as a woman, like less of a human being. E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(04/05/10 5:04pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One night last weekend, I had the pleasure of being escorted home by a very verbose, very intoxicated young man. I got off work at midnight, and on the way home, I passed the aforementioned young man, who promptly turned around. “Can I walk with you?” he questioned. “I’m just so lonely.” “I’m going home,” was my firm yet non-aggravating response.He was not deterred. We walked across Bloomington; he told me about his job, his son, his recent breakup. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world!” he exclaimed.I wasn’t scared — the man was so drunk I probably could have just pushed him over — but I noticed my mentality was remarkably female in analyzing the situation: Am I in danger? He’s bigger than me. What are my options? Stay in well-lit areas. Get to Kirkwood. Text my friends. If the situation worsens, call someone immediately.I doubt that the man had any malicious intentions; the slurring of his words suggested that he really didn’t know what he was doing at all. I’m sure he had no idea I even felt threatened.Men on campus never really experience that sense of unease. Women feel it all the time, and we structure our habits and everyday livelihoods around it — we use the “buddy system,” we know where the blue emergency lights are on campus, some of us carry pepper spray — because almost all of us, at one time or another, have realized we are vulnerable. I can hardly imagine a guy getting hit on by a complete stranger for almost a mile.The fact is that women and men still experience campus life differently.The term has this way of immediately making you feel like you’re stuck in some obsolete feminist class when you’re asked to discuss it. But, for as starchy and academic as the wording is, “gender roles” provide a deep insight into our culture and our everyday lives.From greek society where rules are applied based on the gender of members to Little 500’s infamous pudding wrestling, gender roles are on display everywhere. Last week I was asked to aid the history department in understanding how men and women differ in their history course preferences.Even if you don’t stand in line at Sports in six-inch heels fluttering your fake lashes, you’ll probably have several experiences in your college career where your gender is obvious. But, even when you aren’t paying attention, gender roles structure our society and they’re sure to define your life subliminally every day.
(04/04/10 10:03pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>That’s right: don’t you give the federal government the satisfaction of prying into your personal privacy. Never mind that this is one of the shortest census forms ever. You can’t have Big Government poking around, asking you about your name and stuff.Ten whole questions? That is outrageous, my friends. That’s invasion into your life! That’s unconstitutional. Oh, er, wait, there it is Article 1, Section 2. Well ... don’t worry about that.Just say, “enough is enough” to government intrusion like Michele Bachmann recommends. Of course, as Glenn Beck pointed out on his show, there’s always the worry that the government might, you know, use your failure to fill your census form out as, like, a loophole to prevent you from getting a gun permit.Proper representation in the House of Representatives be damned. Only God knows what a sad day it would be if Glenn Beck were deprived from firearms. But truly it’s just a small price to pay to get back at those rowdy census workers, the foot soldiers of Washington. Moreover, according to Bachmann, if you fill out your Census form, you could end up in the next Japanese interment camp. Yikes! Not convinced yet? Maybe the Superbowl ad looked tempting, but don’t fall for it. After all, the form that arrived in your mail might not even be from the Census Bureau.That’s right. Some crazy right-wing fringe organization has decided to prey upon unsuspecting, law-abiding citizens by sending out Census-look-alike forms from the “Congressional District Census” marked “Do not destroy official document.” Many people are surprised to learn that “Do you believe the huge, costly Democrat-passed stimulus bill has been effective in creating jobs or stimulating America’s economy?” is not a census question. Neither is a request to donate between $25 and $500 to the Republican National Committee. Unreal, right? Hopefully for RNC Chairman Michael Steele, not too many people ignored their census forms this year. You’d hate to see such a creatively deceptive fundraising scheme go to waste.Of course, the Census Bureau wanted each resident to complete their form by April 1 and as of then 52 percent of forms had been returned. Have you already sent yours in? Oh no, It’s too late. They know who you are. Not only have you saved the government about $57 (the Census Bureau estimates it will cost $1.5 billion total to follow-up with everyone who does not return their mailed form), but the community in which you live will be given its proper portion of the $447 billion of federal assistance (things like Medicaid payments) and $420 billion of federal grants up for grabs. And, the number of seats your state has in the House of Representatives, as well as the redistricting of state legislatures and even county and city councils, all will happen more accurately.But the cost was high: You provided the government with roughly the same information you gave Google to create your Gmail account. Madness, I know. It’s not like the penalty for unlawful disclosure of Census information is a fine of up to $250,000 or imprisonment of up to five years, or anything.Oh, wait. It is.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(03/28/10 10:15pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This might surprise you, but I get into a lot of political arguments with my friends.One friend, a business major and staunch Republican, and I have had quite the feud over health care reform. The night Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, he gloated over the demise of reform when I saw him at $2 Tuesday. So, when I ran into said friend at Nick’s this past weekend, I had to bring it up: “What do you think about health care reform passing?”I expected a skeptical “We’ll see how this thing works out.” Instead, I got, “Oh, we’ve got one more chance. Daniels 2012 and then Republicans can knock that thing out.”I was intrigued. “You really think you’re going to gain enough votes to actually repeal this thing?” I questioned.“Nah, but we’ll be able to punch enough holes in it that it will be ineffective,” came the optimistic response.I was taken aback. With the vast majority of Americans believing that our health care system needs major overhaul and the polls revealing that Americans support the passage of the health care bill, attempting to undermine “Obamacare” seems like an odd strategy.“Aren’t you at least curious to, you know, see if this thing works now that it has passed?” I inquired.Summary of his response: “No.”Sadly enough, I think that’s how virtually all Republicans feel about health care reform. House Republican Leader John Boehner’s Web site declares in bold print on the home page, “Repeal the Dems’ Health Care Law and Replace It.” Republican attorneys general across the nation are suiting up to challenge the constitutionality of the law, fights that aren’t likely to succeed.Moreover, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele announced prior to the passage of the health care reform legislation that the GOP will run on the platform of ‘Repeal the Bill’ in the 2010 mid-terms. I can only hope that Republicans repeat Alf Landon’s catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign, in which he railed against “the largest tax bill in history,” that compared poorly to the “much less expensive” and “practical measures” favored by the Republicans. “We must repeal,” he asserted. “The Republican Party is pledged to do this.”He was talking about Social Security. Franklin Roosevelt handed him the worst electoral defeat since 1820.The point, however, is that Republicans have invested themselves in the failure of American health care for the next several decades. They have no interest if seeing if the reform that 49 percent of Americans were happy to see passed could actually improve the welfare of American citizens.This is either because they are so audacious that they believe they hold all the solutions to health care reform and absolutely nothing Democrats put forth could possibly work, or they do not care about fixing the system. The fact is that no one knows what the exact effects of the new law will be until they begin to unfold.It’s an ongoing process, and this is only the start; as the law plays out in the real world, undoubtedly it will need to be altered and added to. But we owe it to ourselves and to those who suffered so much under the old health care system to see if this works, if this is the solution for which we’ve been waiting. Undermining a law at the detriment of those who would be aided by it, not to mention the nation that desperately needs some type of health care reform, simply because it was passed by the opposition party is not only childish — it’s malicious.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(03/21/10 8:12pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Politicians don’t get much praise. Being Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., could arguably be even more thankless than being an IDS opinion columnist. Maybe.But, as I write this column on the eve of the vote on H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, I must say: I’m proud of the way I voted in November 2008, and I think my elected representatives deserve some praise.The fate of health-care reform is still uncertain, although as you read this on Monday, I can only hope that millions of uninsured Americans will be on their way to receiving health coverage. It’s beginning to look that way and I must admit — I’m feeling downright giddy.What I am certain of at this moment though is that my people in Washington are doing everything they can to improve the status of health care in the United States.Not long ago, everyone had given health-care reform up for dead. Just weeks ago, as Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., made his way to Washington and pundits argued that Massachusetts voters would dictate the fate of health-care reform to the rest of America, things seemed hopeless.Moreover, many chastised the president for his invisibility in the process of reform. As the Talking Points Memo blog said, “President Obama, hammered for taking a hands-off approach on health care to begin with, has all but disappeared from the discussions as congressional leaders attempt to figure out a way to finalize a health care plan now that they have just 59 Senate seats.” On Jan. 21, two days after Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old seat, the greatest columnist of all time, Paul Krugman, wrote: “(P)art of Democrats’ problem since Tuesday’s special election has been that they have been waiting in vain for leadership from the White House, where Mr. Obama has conspicuously failed to rise to the occasion.”But then, in a magnificent changing of the winds, Barack Obama did something that for eight years I never knew a president was capable of: He admitted he was wrong, and he altered his strategy.During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Obama acknowledged that his hands-off approach was probably a mistake. Now, he’s gone as far as threatening Democratic congressmen that he will not be helpful come their campaigning season if they don’t support reform. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told the New York Times that the last time he remembered round-the-clock talks with legislators similar to those Obama has been having was fifteen years ago during the government shutdown.Obama’s newfound involvement with the legislative process is no doubt responsible for the revival of health-care reform and its progression to Sunday’s vote. I couldn’t be happier that I helped to elect this man.Some of Indiana’s politicians have also stepped up. Bloomington’s own Rep. Baron Hill said Saturday, “I will proudly cast my vote in support of a bill that covers 32 million Americans, allows all Americans to access a private insurance exchange similar to the one offered to me and my colleagues, stops the abusive practices of insurance companies, and accomplishes those goals in a fiscally responsible manner.”I’m overjoyed to live in Hill’s district and be represented by a rational and respectable politician rather than one like Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who appears at fringe protest rallies where it is acceptable to throw racist and homophobic slurs, not to mention loogies, at congressmen. Here’s to you, Mike Pence. I never said it was praise for all the politicians.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(03/08/10 12:45am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I’ve been preparing for the Graduate Record Examination. That’s right. I’ve purchased the GRE prep book and signed up for word-of-the-day e-mails from Dictionary.com. Sometimes I even read them.My plan of attack for the GRE looks strikingly similar to my earlier SAT strategies: never mind learning the covered material, just get to know the exam — very, very well — and manipulate it. Anyone who has sat through a Princeton Review SAT prep course is familiar with this plan of action. The point is, when preparing for a standardized exam, often the most efficient strategy is to narrowly focus on methodology and material for that specific exam. This test cramming does little to benefit the test-taker after the test.And no standardized test is immune. However, while preparation for the SAT or GRE very rarely affects coursework or teaching priorities, the Adequate Yearly Progress assessments mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act have reshaped the classroom.Psychologist Donald Campbell predicted this effect 35 years ago: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making,” he concluded, “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”Indeed, states, which are allowed to devise their own standards and testing methods, have lowered the bar for proficiency while schools have devoted more and more time to narrow test preparation. For an increasingly large part of the school year, the elementary classroom has morphed into a Kaplan course for third graders.The results? The “meaningful assessment” NCLB sought has been muddled, and we’re left with incomparable scores ranging from Florida, where 71 percent of schools failed to make AYP in 2006, to Wisconsin, where only 4 percent of schools missed the AYP mark.Perhaps the lack of success resultant of NCLB is part of the cause of Dr. Diane Ravitch’s gradual 180 on almost all of her previously staunch positions. Ravitch, who served in the Department of Education under George H. W. Bush, used to be an advocate of the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools. Now, however, she refers to these strategies as “faddish trends” and said she discovered they were undermining public education.As Dr. Ravitch has recently conceded, the most important lessons don’t easily translate to a Scantron. In fact, looking back on my academic career, the skill I have most often relied upon is writing. Arguably, the ability to communicate exactly what I mean and to truly understand the meaning of others’ communication has enabled my learning and contributed to my academic success more than anything else.Of course, each individual is different. And, by definition, standardized testing cannot accommodate that. When we place so much emphasis on standardized testing, the result is that the classroom can no longer accommodate that either.Dr. Ravitch once supported NCLB but now says its requirements for testing in math and reading have squeezed vital subjects like history and art out of classrooms. She’s right. As NCLB comes up for rewrite in Congress in the next few weeks, legislators should follow Dr. Ravitch’s lead, admit that No Child Left Behind has been a relative failure and work on a new method of school reform.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(02/22/10 12:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“The U.S. Senate has an opportunity today to consolidate a fundamental change which reformers in both parties have struggled to achieve for a generation. This reform would relax the Senate’s stringent pro-filibuster rule and make it easier for the democratic principle of majority government to prevail.” Unfortunately, this passage did not come from any newspaper today. This was in a New York Times editorial from Feb. 24, 1975, immediately before the Senate reduced the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster from 67 to 60.Everyone has recently decided to comment on the gridlock status of the Senate. The cover of this week’s issue of Time depicted the Capitol building frozen in a block of ice and purported to explain “Why Washington is Frozen.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman compared Congress to the legislature of 18th century Poland, the Sejm, pointing out that it operated under the unanimity principle and resulted in an ungovernable Poland.But few people have been discussing practical ways to remedy the situation beyond increases in fairy-dust-and-rainbows “bipartisanship” and convincing Republicans to be less stubborn. That is, except for Indiana’s own senator.“When too many of our citizens take an all-or-nothing approach, we should not be surprised when nothing is the result,” Evan Bayh remarked in an op-ed in Saturday’s New York Times about why he’s leaving the Senate.“In many ways, our representatives in Washington reflect the people who have sent them there,” he wrote. And nothing quite embodies the all-or-nothing approach our representatives are reflecting quite like the filibuster. Bayh goes on to suggest that the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60. He wrote, “During my father’s era, filibusters were commonly used to block civil rights legislation and, in 1975, the requisite number of votes was reduced to 60 from 67. The challenges facing the country today are so substantial that further delay imperils the Republic and warrants another reduction in the supermajority requirement.”I couldn’t agree more. Not only are the challenges facing America substantial, but they are also controversial and bound to effectuate divisive voting. Moreover, Senate culture has drastically shifted from what a Congressional Research Service report described as the practice of “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity and accommodation,” to, well, what we have now. So far, the 111th Congress has had 43 cloture votes (votes to end a filibuster) and is well on its way to breaking the record currently held by the 110th Congress, which boasted 112. Not only had filibusters been increasing beforehand, but the 110th Congress from 2006 to 2008 also saw a massive hike. It appears there will have been an even larger increase from 2008 to 2010.It is imperative for our national progress that the Senate reduce the supermajority threshold. I’m convinced it’s the only pragmatic way the Senate can be relieved from its inhibited state.And what if it doesn’t? What if we keep the status quo and gridlock goes on? Well, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff estimated that by 2303 every single penny of our gross domestic product will go toward health care.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(02/14/10 10:08pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Since Valentine’s Day was Sunday, I’m guessing everyone has had a recent experience of trying to make themselves seem more impressive than they actually are.We all do things for the sake of creating a desired impression at times. Unfortunately, when Barack Obama does it with regard to the budget, harmless coquetry becomes a political maneuver to gain some brownie points with voters. When the president released his fiscal year 2011 budget to Congress on Feb. 1, it included a temporary freeze in nondefense discretionary spending. While the military and entitlements are untouchable, the proposed budget will slash funding for things such as air traffic control, education and national parks.How much will this painful “tightening of the belt” reduce the deficit? The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would actually be less than 3 percent. It’s a move to create an impression for the public, which has recently become enthralled with panicking over government spending and the fiscal deficit. This is despite the fact that, according to the projections, a decade from now interest payments on the deficit will have risen to 3.5 percent of GDP. Not to mention that “the eye-popping $1.56 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year ... to be followed by a further $1.27 trillion in fiscal 2011 ... ought mostly to be seen as a consequence of the downturn that Mr. Obama inherited,” according to The Economist.The United States is lacking in its amount of “automatic stabilizers.” These are things like unemployment benefits and welfare that act as a negative feedback loop on GDP and kick in during times of recession to help boost demand. Compared to other rich nations, the federal government has to step up spending to stave off a deeper economic downturn. But Obama has suddenly felt he needs to pander to “politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next,” in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.It appears that Obama has prescribed to the philosophy of H.L. Mencken: “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”Obama’s proposed spending freeze is contributing to the illusion that our deficits are harming us in the short run. He should be focused on what would truly help the budget — reducing entitlement payments through things like heath-care reform — rather than trying to impress “fiscal conservatives” with dog-and-pony show spending freezes.E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(02/07/10 11:13pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Americans have no common sense.I’ve had the sneaking suspicion this might be the case for quite some time. But now, I’m sure of it.Even when we do have the right ideas, which is pretty hit-or-miss, we go about them in all sorts of wrong ways. Our ends are questionable, and our means are downright irrational.For instance, in 2008 Youfa Wang of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health drew a line from recent trends and projected that 100 percent of Americans would be overweight by 2048. His model predicted health-care costs attributable to excess weight would approach a trillion dollars a year by 2030.But that’s not to say that we Americans don’t try. We spend about $40 billion a year on weight-loss products and programs. We’ll go for weeks eating nothing but hamburger meat and pork chops, avoiding those atrocious carbs. We’ll take non-regulated, non-FDA-approved diet pills.A BusinessWeek article summed up the business model nicely: “Like psychic readings and astrology hotlines, the weight-loss industry sells hope to desperate people.” Unfortunately, hope doesn’t reduce your chances of suffering from diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and cancer – four of the top 10 killers of Americans. You’d think living your life at a healthy weight was impossible. But the problem can be tackled with common sense. Michael Pollan, a professor of science journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, describes the entire concept in seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I might add that exercise doesn’t hurt. But the main thrust here is that, in reality, it’s just not as difficult to be healthy as we make it out to be.Our waistlines aren’t the only things we are failing to grasp logically. Take, for instance, being “green.” I came across an “eco-friendly” dog bed in Women’s Health magazine not too long ago. It boasted all the key words – organic, natural, hemp, no harmful products – and a $120 price tag.Common sense would tell me that the most eco-friendly option would be to make your dog sleep on the floor. But “green” has become trendy and therefore people are clamoring to waste money on everything from over-priced and far-from-useful products to cars that won’t stop. What we as individuals need to focus on is simply not being wasteful – you know, the old “three R’s” – and supporting government measures to help our planet. The fact that your dog sleeps on organic material really makes no long-term difference whatsoever.In so many important aspects of our lifestyles, we fail to be commonsensical. From our health to our environment and beyond, we seem to have lost the ability to apply rationality and perceive hoaxes. We need to remove ourselves from the trendiness and the hype and return to what we know. We need a retreat to simplicity.Improve your life today: Have a locally grown salad for dinner and let your dog sleep on the couch.
(02/01/10 12:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Was someone killed? Check.Were they killed intentionally? Check.And was it premeditated? Most certainly, check. Scott Roeder brainstormed elaborate schemes to reach his end goal: sneaking into his victim’s home and killing him, crashing a car into him, and even cutting off his hands. Ultimately, however, he decided to walk into the Reformation Lutheran Church, put a gun to Dr. George Tiller’s forehead, and pull the trigger.Could this case have been anything but first-degree murder?While thankfully the jury thought not, many “pro-lifers” are upset with the verdict.Some abortion opponents have argued that the killing of an abortion provider can be justified and that, because the judge did not permit descriptions and images of aborted fetuses to be used as evidence, the trial was unfair. Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, described the trial as a “scam” because Roeder had not been allowed to “really tell his side of the story.”Judge Warren Wilbert undoubtedly did the right thing by keeping the trial focused on the facts of the case and not allowing his courtroom to be morphed into a graphic Right to Life ad.But the shamelessness of defense attorney Mark Rudy was truly astonishing. Not only did he make a logically flawed and ignominious case that “no one should be convicted based on his convictions,” he distastefully compared Roeder to leaders who “stood up for their beliefs” – including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They were “celebrated individuals (who) stood up and made the world a better place,” Rudy asserted. “They leave their marks based on their words and deeds.”Not only is the mention of a staunch advocate of nonviolence incontestably out of place here, but the use of a cultural hero like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to further the agenda of a murderer and the violent movement behind him is also sick.King fought for racial equality and prided himself on his resistance to violent means. The radical group supporting Roeder is arguing for its right to be the next Boondock Saints – except instead of killing Russian mobsters, they want to undermine the law to take out legally practicing physicians. Given that they honestly believe deadly force is justified, of course.The defense hinged on a Kansas law that states intentional killing can be considered manslaughter if the act is committed “upon an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.” Those who believe that Roeder’s actions were justified are clinging to this scrap of legislation.It’s clear, however, that this statute was intended not for strongly held convictions like Roeder’s but for mental illnesses and other such cases.For instance, I’m sure Sirhan Sirhan passionately believed Robert Kennedy’s death would prevent imminent harm and therefore killing him was justified. I’ll bet John Wilkes Booth thought the same about Abe Lincoln. Would we have considered manslaughter for their verdicts?You know who else’s assassin unreasonably, but honestly, believed circumstances existed that justified deadly force? I’m certain James Earl Ray, the man who pulled the trigger ending the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., felt circumstances justified his own actions.The name-dropping of Martin Luther King, Jr. goes to show how off-base the supporters of Roeder are. Law enforcement should take the lessons from Dr. Tiller’s murder and be more proactive about protecting law-abiding citizens involved in the practice of abortion. E-mail: akames@indiana.edu
(01/25/10 12:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What caused the Great Recession?I won’t pretend to be audacious enough to answer this question. But, while the exact cause of our economic catastrophe is difficult to pinpoint, we do know some factors that played major roles, one being personal debt.Everyone has been quick to assume that greed and irresponsibility caused millions of Americans to max out their Visas and it’s certainly true that those played a part.What people haven’t said, though, is that resisting living above one’s means can be difficult or nearly impossible when one’s means aren’t enough.As last week’s issue of The Economist pointed out, stagnated wages combined with an increasing cost of living forced people to borrow to maintain their standard of living.The Economist did a poor job, however, of addressing why wages have stagnated. It mentions the dismal rate of job creation – only 400,000 more Americans were employed at the end of 2009 than 1999 despite a population increase of almost 30 million – and argue the scarcity of jobs has pinned down wages.But that is where the explanation stops. And that is untruthful.The Economist presents stagnated wages and a lack of job growth in the face of an otherwise seemingly healthy economy as a matter of fact. But in reality, a funny thing happened on the way to the financial crisis.An explanation exists. And that explanation is important as we look forward, past the recovery, and begin to implement policies that will hopefully prevent a similar economic catastrophe. The explanation is this: Wage stagnation is inextricably linked to income inequality – at least in this instance.In 2006, Paul Krugman contributed an article to Rolling Stone magazine titled “The Great Wealth Transfer” in which he explained that even though the economic pie was getting bigger, most Americans were getting smaller slices. Why? Because a few Americans were getting much, much bigger slices.While noting that income disparity is nothing new, Krugman stated, “For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth.” Their failure to gain ground, of course, is just what The Economist is talking about. The lack of financial gain for most Americans led to rising personal debt as people fought to keep up with rising prices.The point of the story is not to get hung up on the past, rather, it’s to look forward to the types of legislation that could prevent another economic collapse caused, in some part, by personal indebtedness.There’s no way to get around it; personal debt must be reined in. But that is much easier to do, and happens much more naturally, when the incomes of all American families – not just the top 1 percent – are rising.Reform should address income disparities, focus on strengthening America’s middle class and bettering the plight of the working poor.We’ve seen where relying on credit card balances and mortgages has gotten us – we need policies that won’t force us to rely on debt just to keep up with prices.
(01/14/10 1:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>T.I.S. has run out of books. So has the IU bookstore, for that matter. And Amazon.com. You thought this would be your best semester yet. You’re still so motivated right now. Come on, 4.0!But now you can’t buy your books. They’re nowhere to be found. The entire college textbook industry has crashed.Professors are having aneurysms left and right.But all the book suppliers are out of money. They lost it all on some complicated digital music and online book bundle. There was a bubble for a bit – they were doing great, charging obscene prices for textbooks all the while and making massive profits – but then everyone realized they could download all that stuff for free. And now, college bookstores across the country are in trouble.So IU gives them a loan. A huge one. Straight outta your tuition money. Things you love about IU begin to disappear thanks to “tough economic times.” The Beatles class that highlights every music lover’s curriculum: gone. The free New York Times you pick up every day: gone. Free IUWare? Forget it. Scholarships dry up. Bus routes are cut. And there’s just no way we can afford Coach Crean’s salary. Sorry, IU basketball.And still, halfway through the semester, you don’t have your damn books. As midterms approach, panic begins to set in.Finally, bookstores are able to turn their loans around, turn a profit, and, for the most part, repay IU. But books are still difficult to come by. And the economic hardship undergone by IU has forever reshaped our Hoosier community.An entire semester of classes that had to make do without textbooks, bygone beloved courses, students who would have come here if they only had landed that scholarship, a basketball program thrown to the wayside ... these effects persist, even though the loans have been repaid.So maybe the bookstore analogy isn’t the best way to point out the lasting effects the collapse of the financial industry is having – and will continue to have – on the U.S. economy, even though it’s quite possible that students hate bookstores as much as Main Street hates Wall Street. But the idea remains the same: as average Americans continue to grapple with unemployment, emptied retirement accounts, and cut programming (IU is, in reality, still searching for ways to cut $58.9 million from its base budget after already slashing $29.3 million) as well as trying to deal with the long-term effects of economic “scarring,” or lost productivity in the wake of the Great Recession, banks are crying injustice about Obama’s proposed banking fee because they’re paying their loans back. Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association, whined to the New York Times, proclaiming, “It is perplexing to us.” That’s ridiculous. The cost borne by American society far exceeded the government loans contained in the bailout. And while other factors contributed to our economic downfall, it’s clear that banks, their lust for the huge profits that result only from high-risk endeavors, and their flat-out carelessness played a central role.Now that they’re turning out record profits (not to mention the eye-popping bonuses to match), they should be expected to pay up.
(01/12/10 12:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan struck a chord with Americans when he famously asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”To put the decade of the naughties, the aughts or whatever you decide to call it (yes, for those of you with nothing better to do than nitpick columns, I realize that technically the decade began in 2001, not 2000. Honestly, does it matter?) in perspective, perhaps we should ask ourselves the same thing.Are you better off now than you were ten years ago?The past ten years marked the first decade on record in which private sector employment actually declined. Job creation on the whole has remained relatively flat. Median household income has fallen for the first time since the Census Bureau started tracking household income four decades ago. The typical American family earns less now than it did in 1999 once everything is adjusted for inflation. Moreover, other measures suggest that even before the Census Bureau documented it, household income hasn’t fallen over the course of a whole decade since the 1930s. And the stock market has certainly lost ground. On Jan. 14, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit the “Clinton bull” high of 11,723. On Dec. 31, 2009, the Dow closed at 10,428. Add to all of this two economic crises, Sept. 11, a botched presidential election, Afghanistan, Iraq, Enron, WorldCom, anthrax, D.C. snipers and Katrina, and it’s easy to see that the world we live in today is certainly not better than the world of 2000. Time magazine labeled it the “Decade from Hell,” writing that “This decade was as awful as any peacetime decade in the nation’s entire history.”New York Times columnist and Nobel economist Paul Krugman dubbed the decade “The Big Zero,” pointing out that “It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.” Now I realize that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, but I can’t help but notice that eight-tenths of a decade that consisted of flat-out retrogradation for the majority of Americans were presided over by a single man. The ’00s were led in large part by George W. Bush, and his policies to a great extent are responsible for shaping the decade.True, many of the atrocities we’ve suffered in recent history were beyond the control of anyone, even the president of the United States. But the vast majority of simple quality-of-life issues – the things that most shape our daily lives today – can be traced back to Bush-era policies. For example, the fact that in 2008 the median household brought in $998 less than in 1998 can largely be traced back to sharply increased income inequality resultant of policies such as the Bush tax cuts (38 percent of which went to the top 1 percent of earners) .As we embark on a new year and a new decade, here’s hoping that we can learn from the suffering of the past ten years. I can only anticipate that in 2020 I can say, “I am better off now than I was ten years ago.”
(12/03/09 2:43am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I hope Sarah Palin runs for president. I really do. A Palin presidential run is exactly what the Republican Party needs.Her campaign could finally free Republicans of the teabaggers and Glenn Beck worshippers long enough for them to nominate a viable presidential candidate – hopefully one that brings intellectualism back to the forefront of the Republican platform.When Ronald Reagan first rallied the religious right, he probably didn’t realize that he was selling the Republican soul to the devil. Shortly after Reagan left his post as Governor of California in 1975, Christian fundamentalism made its way into American politics. In 1977, James Dobson founded Focus on the Family. Two years later the Rev. Jerry Falwell established the Moral Majority organization, warning the country that “Satan had mobilized his forces to destroy America.” In 1988, Rev. Pat Robertson started the Christian Coalition. The GOP has happily milked the support of these major evangelical organizations and the religious right that they represent for decades. But, in doing so, they have set themselves up for failure.Even Reagan recognized the potential danger of alienating certain segments of the Republican Party with religion, saying “as to the ... issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.” But his party has been a far cry from the party of tolerance. The Republican you’re-either-with-us-or-you’re-not mentality has the effect of alienating people like Sen. Jim Jeffords, who left the party for independent status in 2001, and Sen. Arlen Specter, who crossed the aisle earlier this year. Moderates have become less and less welcome. Olympia Snowe has described the experience as sometimes feeling like she’s a cast member of “Survivor,” “often get[ing] the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe.” Demographic trends like growing minority populations and the coming-of-voting-age of a generation much more likely to support things such as gay marriage than their elders mean that if Republicans want to win future elections, they need to divorce the religious right and end their marriage of convenience.Sarah Palin is the woman for the job. She’s the embodiment of socially conservative populism. If you don’t believe me, just watch some YouTube clips of fans at Palin book signings fumble answering questions like “What specific policies of hers do you support?”In fact, she is overwhelmingly supported by loyal followers of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – while 17 percent of Republicans polled by the Washington Post said they would vote for her if their state’s primary or caucus were held today, she has the support of 45 percent of regular Limbaugh listeners and a third of Beck’s audience.Palin, should she run, would attract the votes of the religious right and the ultra-conservative fringes of the party, those who worship talking heads like Beck. This would allow other Republican candidates freedom from the need to pander to Focus on the Family and return to the pre-Reagan days of a diversity of ideas and figures within the Republican party.
(11/23/09 2:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For Confucius, personal virtue was cultivated through the practice of ritual; that is to say through certain customs and traditions, we are taught and reminded of the proper way to live.In the spirit of Thanksgiving, perhaps we should focus on what this holiday teaches us and how we can apply that lesson throughout the year – not just when surrounded by family and football.In the words of W. T. Purkiser, a scholar, writer and preacher within the Church of the Nazarene: “Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.” As very blessed college students, we should use our privileges and fortune to give back. The role played by service in the local community is undeniably beneficial. President Barack Obama has made advocating service a priority of his administration. This past summer, he launched the United We Serve initiative and signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which will increase the size of AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 members by 2017 and will create a Social Innovation Fund to improve the efficiency of service projects. He also signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included $201 million in funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service in order to support an expansion of AmeriCorps State and National and AmeriCorps VISTA programs.He isn’t the first president to realize the betterment of both the community and the individual that is a corollary of community service. President Richard Nixon advocated the Senior Companion Program, asking Congress to “expand the role of low-income older volunteers who provide person-to-person services.” President George H.W. Bush in his inaugural address spoke of “a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.” And President Bill Clinton signed the 1993 National and Community Service Trust Act, which created the Corporation for National and Community Service. But community service must also be advocated on the local level, and there are few avenues more apt for service encouragement than universities.The IU Office of Service-Learning lists 22 courses in 17 departments that offer credit for service. They range from “Service-Learning in Chemistry,” in which students may visit after-school programs and demonstrate elementary chemistry concepts, to “Topics in Psychology: Real World Program Evaluation: ‘Applying Psychology Research to Service Learning, Focus on Battered Women and their Children,’” which requires psychology students to volunteer weekly at Middle Way House and The Rise. IU could do more, however. If the University required service-learning credits for graduation, much like the distribution requirements such as A&H and N&M currently needed for most bachelor’s degrees at IU, more students would have a real incentive to become involved in local charities and organizations. The hope would be that after finals are over and the three credits of service-learning are earned, students would continue to volunteer.My high school required 40 hours of community service right along with senior English and geometry to nab a diploma. The requirement made everyone get involved – and once they did, many people chose to continue their service even after their requirement was met.We should not forget that this Thursday is as much about giving as it is about thanks. The holiday should remind us that we should all do what we can to make our community better – not just now, but throughout the year.The service I did for my diploma was one of the most valuable educational experiences I had in high school. IU should afford its students the same opportunity to step out of their comfort zones and offer a helping hand. Most students will probably take a lot more away from a service-learning requirement than they will from suffering through a semester of Finite – and the Bloomington community as a whole will reap the benefits.
(11/12/09 3:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Googled anything lately?If so, you’ve probably become reacquainted with some old friends from childhood: Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar, Elmo, Count von Count, Bert and Ernie all graced Google’s homepage this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the longest-running children’s television show in history.Follow the link to the gallery of high-resolution “Doodles,” however, and you’ll find some unfamiliar faces. Ieniemienie, the mouse character on “Sesamstraat” which is the Dutch co-production of Sesame Street, makes an adorable gray ‘e’ to substitute for the last letter of the Google logo. Boombah and Chamki, from the Indian “Galli Galli Sim Sim,” peer through the large Google ‘G.’ And Google visitors from South Africa were greeted by Kami, the HIV-positive “Takalani Sesame” character that “has helped dispel the culture of silence that prevents so many South Africans from seeking and receiving care for their illness,” according to Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the show. “Sesame Street” is currently exported to 18 different countries, including places such as the Palestinian territories, Kosovo and Bangladesh. And as a global community, we have benefited greatly from Big Bird and company. Sure, “Sesame Street” should be valued because it taught us the alphabet, how to count and that “C is for Cookie!” But it taught us so much more than that.“Sesame Street” first aired in 1969 and found an America that was reeling from recent riots in Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago, as well as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A television show that afforded African-American children equality with their white counterparts was a radical notion at the time in many places in the United States.Today, the show continues the tradition of tolerance throughout the world. While muppets on “Shara’a Simsim,” for instance, don’t directly address the political turmoil affecting its viewers in the West Bank and Gaza, the show attempts to help children develop sympathetic attitudes toward others. But “Sesame Street” never could have happened without some government expenditures and private donations. The show that’s “arguably the most important children’s program in the history of television,” according to Newsweek, received half of its original $8 million budget from Uncle Sam.Moreover, PBS currently gets about 15 percent of its funding from the federal government, despite President George W. Bush’s repeated attempts to slash public television funding. Today, the Sesame Workshop tries to “give all children the power of learning,” according to its Web site. Worldwide, it educates 120 million kids each year, many of whom don’t have access to preschool education and many more who live in areas where tolerance is, well, rather wanting. In the United States, studies found that children who regularly watched “Sesame Street” did better on tests of number and letter recognition. Moreover, a 2001 study suggested that those positive effects could last into high school.Shows like “Sesame Street,” corporations like PBS and many other nonprofit arts organizations are suffering through the recession. Private donations have waned, and state and local governments are quickly slashing arts out of their tight budgets. The Sesame Workshop recently laid off 20 percent of its staff because of decreased budgets. As Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, stated: “More than 10 percent of the nation’s 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations are at risk of closing this year at the loss of thousands of jobs.”Even though times are hard, it’s important that we keep our arts organizations funded, whether we take it upon ourselves to make private donations or offer political support for government arts funding.We wouldn’t want to miss out on the next “Sesame Street.”
(11/10/09 4:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Tim Pawlenty, Republican governor of Minnesota, declared that President Obama’s budget “will require higher taxes and unfairly loads debt onto future generations.” And according to a FOX News poll, 77 percent of Americans say they are worried about the increasing size of the federal deficit and 74 percent worry about “leaving the country worse off for future generations.” But if our concern is really for future generations, we should be focusing on job creation.Currently, unemployment rests at 10.2 percent, the highest since 1983. Grimmer still is the underemployment rate, a number that includes jobless workers who have not recently looked for work and part-timers who need full-time jobs, which is currently about 17.5 percent. The Commerce Department recently announced that U.S. GDP had grown at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of this year. Even if this growth, which can largely be attributed to the stimulus passed in February, were maintained – a highly unlikely scenario – we would be lucky to see the unemployment rate fall by more than half a percentage point per year, according to Paul Krugman, a Nobel economist and New York Times columnist. Unless something changes, these numbers will have a grave impact on our economy for decades to come. Prolonged unemployment results in “scarring” or, as John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute defines it, “long-lasting damage to individuals’ economic situations and the economy more broadly.” As IU economics professor Edward Buffie said, unemployment has many hard-to-quantify effects such as divorce, drugs, crime, domestic abuse, prostitution and increases in runaways. Perhaps most importantly, at the sustained unemployment rate currently predicted, we can expect to see a huge rise in child poverty which will affect the health and education of a future generation. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the “output gap,” or the difference between the amount the economy is capable of producing and the amount it actually produces, will be more than $2 trillion from 2010 to 2013. This is largely because people aren’t working.We absolutely must focus on getting America back to work. To do so, we need to spend some federal funds. A recent International Monetary Fund report revealed that after recessions caused by a financial crisis such as our own, “the path of output tends to be depressed substantially and persistently,” i.e. economic growth is damaged for the long-term even after the recession ends. The same report found that government spending could curtail these losses: “Short-term fiscal policy response is significantly associated with smaller medium-term output losses.” An additional stimulus is a positive sum game. It will benefit us now by affording us a quicker recovery and it will benefit future generations by minimizing the losses from scarring and prolonged unemployment. Our current levels of joblessness will cause much more damage to the economy than deficit spending, especially because low interest rates and dollar depreciation mean current borrowing isn’t very harmful.“If economists can’t devise something that benefits everyone,” Buffie said, “then they’re not very good at their craft.” A properly devised second stimulus will provide jobs and spur economic growth both now and in the future. We can’t afford not to.