Could Pelosi’s plan improve health care?
Columnists Jarrod Lowery and Ashley Ames face-off on the strengths and weaknesses of Pelosi's proposed health care bill.
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Columnists Jarrod Lowery and Ashley Ames face-off on the strengths and weaknesses of Pelosi's proposed health care bill.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Do you know who Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is?Until this summer, I didn’t.Then, on a rainy July day in the Netherlands, I sat 20 feet away from him. He never said a word; he only listened through the court-issued headphones to the translator who repeated in his native language the testimony against him. He displayed little emotion. If anything, the defendant appeared bored. There was a glass barrier between us. He sat calmly. Watching his stoic posture, it was hard to believe that this man was guilty for the charges listed in the educational pamphlet that the International Criminal Court handed out to visitors. Nevertheless, I was thankful for that barrier. It separated me from a defendant of war crimes, a man accused of conscripting and enlisting children younger than 15 into the Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo and using them to actively participate in hostilities in 2002 and 2003. Lubanga’s Union of Congolese Patriots is responsible for the rape, murder and torture of thousands of civilians in Ituri, according to Human Rights Watch. The case against Lubanga also marks the ICC’s first trial since it was established under the Rome Statute in 2002. Former President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but George W. Bush “unsigned” it just two years later, citing concerns for the sovereignty of U.S. courts. Moreover, Bush passed the American Service-Members Protection Act, dubbed the “Hague Invasion Act” by many because it enabled U.S. troops to storm the peaceful Dutch Hague in order to liberate Americans or American allies being kept for war crimes. It also forbade government officials from cooperating with the ICC. The act had no legal basis; according to Article 17 of the Rome Statute, “the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where the case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it.” The ICC acts as a court of last resort and is intended to prosecute the most abominable criminals in nations where the government is either unable or unwilling to seek justice. Because they uphold a functional justice system, the sovereignty of U.S. courts was never at risk.Yesterday, the trial of Radovan Karadzic commenced. The former Bosnian Serb leader’s alleged crimes include ordering the massacre at Srebrenica of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the three-and-a-half year siege of Sarajevo that resulted in more than 10,000 deaths. If all goes according to plan, someone else will be sitting, watching Karadzic with unease from behind the glass, listening through their headphones to a translator’s account of the witnesses’ heinous stories against him, just as I did with Lubanga.There is just one difference: Karadzic is not being tried in the ICC, but rather in the ad hoc Yugoslav tribunal set up temporarily for the sole purpose of crimes committed in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. The ICC is necessary to set legal precedents and avoid ad hoc systems such as the Yugoslav tribunal that are set up only when necessary after atrocities. Individuals such as Karadzic and Lubanga, the world’s future war criminals, must know that one day they will certainly be brought to justice. This certainty is only guaranteed by a permanent body like the ICC.Moreover, the American Service-Members Protection Act still stands on the books. And the Dutch (along with the rest of the international community) certainly still remember it. The Obama administration should work to repeal this unilateral policy and resign the Rome Statute. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has voiced regret that the United States is not part of the court. Moreover, the administration has said it will send a representative to the ICC review conference next year – something Bush refused to do. These things are a step in the right direction, but they aren’t enough. The prosecution of the world’s most atrocious criminals and the protection of human rights call for the United States to stand behind the ICC by repealing the American Service-Members Protection Act and signing the Rome Statute.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Here’s something guaranteed to shock and amaze you: I’m a registered Republican. I’m not proud. In fact, it’s downright embarrassing. What on earth went through my 18-year-old mind when I registered, I might never fully grasp. But I have an idea.I was living in Chicago, surrounded by Oprah-lovers and political arguments that made no sense. Maybe it’s just that I really enjoy disagreeing with the people around me – but I think there’s more to it than that.I had a new-found fascination with economics – or at least what my immature freshman self’s simplified concept of economics was. I liked to think that all the liberals’ heads were in the clouds. Sure, it’d be nice to have a minimum wage equal to a living wage and less income inequality, but these things simply weren’t feasible if we wanted our economy to continue growing at a rapid pace. Everyone would understand this, I thought, when they got a job and entered the “real world.” For now, I told myself, they’re just collegiate daydreamers.Instead of everyone else coming around to my superior libertarian ideas, however, I “saw the light,” so to speak, when I began working to cover the expenses of college. (Taking macroeconomics might have also helped a teensy-weensy bit.) Often times, we liberal college students are accused of being in our own bubble, away from the “real world.” But it was precisely moving closer to that “real world” that challenged my stale taxes-are-bad, Ron-Paul-is-good economic outlook.It seems to be lost on many in the “real world” that the vast majority of them are better off under Democratic economic policies than more conservative ones. Not only have Democratic presidents presided over significantly more total economic growth since 1948, the real incomes of the middle-class have grown more than twice as fast on the Democrats’ watch. Moreover, the real incomes of working poor families, defined as families below the 20th percentile of the income distribution, have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, according to the Census Bureau’s Historical Income Tables.But real-worlders have been brainwashed. I’m assuming that most of the people who attack the economic “idealism” of college students like me on the basis of parental financial support, or our inexperience with substantial income taxes fall into the categories of middle class or working poor. Clearly, they have failed to realize that for the past five decades, they have actually been much better off under the economic principles of the Democrats than the Republicans. And even if they are among the affluent, their real incomes have stayed relatively similar regardless of the party in office.The Republicans have somehow managed to convince America that they are the party of realistic economics, that Democratic principles sound nice and fair but in reality have mitigating effects on economic growth. We’ve been trained to believe that the progressives would have us trade a robust economy for social justice. But there’s more to the macroeconomy than the simplified Republican vilification of taxes and government spending. Yes, the arguments for Reagonmics sound nice, but empirically they have failed to deliver for the vast majority of Americans. Perhaps those in the “real world” should focus less on the tax amount docked from their paychecks and more on their actual economic well-being. They might find that, in reality, the Republicans are the ones living in an economic fantasy.
Two columnists face off about the potential benefits and pitfalls of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's requested troop surge.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It really bothers me whenever people spell the contraction of ‘you are’ as ‘your.’ Maybe it’s the editor in me – I’m not sure. But it drives me nuts. Even when texting, I type “ure.” Yeah, I’m lame like that. I guess you could say it’s a pet peeve.But what really gets me – and I mean, as a history major, really gets me – is the recent trend in political discourse of interchanging the terms ‘communism’ and ‘fascism’ as well as the relative frequency with which they are employed.You’ve seen and heard it. Signs that declare “fascists are now in control,” and commentary like Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s comparison of a pro-Obama song to “the type of propaganda you would see in Stalin’s Russia or Kim Jong Il’s North Korea” have littered our T.V. screens and front pages. YouTube videos entitled “Yes We Can: Barack Obama = Joseph Stalin” and Take Back America Conference workshops with the title of “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists” muddy our sound bytes and Google results. I, too, have even had the recent pleasure of being compared to Hitler. Either Obama and I have a lot more in common than previously thought or the use of Hitler metaphors is out of control.At the rate we’re going, ‘fascism’ and ‘communism’ will soon be handy phrases for use in everyday language. “Yeah, I saw that Michael Moore film. It was terrible – in fact, it was fascist!”“Dude, I can’t go out tonight. I have to study. It’s so communist.”Never mind that most people guilty of this over usage and confusion probably can’t even correctly spell fascism or tell you who Karl Marx is. The looseness with which these designations have been thrown around recently is much more problematic than that. These two words represent distinct ideologies, conceived at separate points in history in vastly different circumstances and political climates – and each with various, discrete, catastrophic results. They are complex and contradistinctive political systems – not synonyms for the word “bad.”Obama is not a fascist. Or a communist. You might disagree with him, but he certainly does not prescribe to either philosophy. If you think he does, then you have ultimately failed at grasping what the denotations behind these powerful words actually are.Communism is a type of social organization in which property is held in common so as to produce a classless society. Fascism allows for state control of every aspect of national life and glorifies total subjugation of the individual to the state. Or, in the words of Les Adler and Thomas Paterson as they appeared in The American Historical Review, “The Marxian philosophy looked for social and economic improvement among disadvantaged people, whereas, as Hans Buchheim has suggested, fascism was designed not to improve mankind, but rather to destroy that part it disliked.” That’s not to say that similarities don’t exist between the radical regimes. Yes, they both employed a form of authoritarian rule. And yes, in practice they both allowed for the murder of millions under Hitler and Stalin (although the murders occurred for different reasons).That, however, is where the similarities stop. And since Obama’s Great Terror has yet to commence, let’s please stop with the historically inaccurate comparisons. When your friends and family members start disappearing in the middle of the night, and we’re required to live by the motto “Believe! Obey! Fight!” – then, and only then, will these terms be appropriate.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Amid all the voices chiming in on the health care debate, one group of people ought to have a unique perspective on the future implications of reform: pre-med students. As future doctors, should they be concerned about change, or should they embrace it? Most agree that costs are ballooning out of control, and that something needs to be done. However, just like the rest of the country, there is little agreement about how exactly to go about it. While many pre-med students don’t necessarily oppose reform, they are wary of sweeping changes. It is, after all, a costly career to pursue.Medical school tuition is currently the highest it’s ever been and is increasing rapidly. Since 1984, median tuition and fees have increased by 165 percent in private medical schools and by 312 percent in public medical schools. Some medicinally-focused students point out that doctors make a significant investment studying for many years and thus deserve to be paid well. Investing so much money in a career path that could potentially undergo changes just in time for a pre-med’s graduation from med school is unnerving.Many pre-med students expect decreased pay in a government-controlled health care system, although such expectations seldom seem to cause a change in career path. However, in a survey taken by Kaplan, 49 percent of students taking the MCAT cited money as a motivating factor in becoming a doctor, compared with 71 percent of law-student hopefuls taking the LSAT. Senior Cristiano Piron, a pre-med student, said, “I’m not looking forward to coming out of med school, residency and possible fellowship training with a mountain of debt only to see the earning potential drop significantly, but that’s an inconvenience I am willing to deal with.”A notable majority of future doctors have other reasons for choosing medicine besides money. Some IU students have even been inspired while working in foreign medical systems that pay doctors less. One student’s experience as a medical intern in Costa Rica, a country with universal health care coverage, encouraged her to continue in medicine, despite the comparatively low pay doctors receive there. Other students still strongly oppose universal coverage. A few predict a brain drain of doctors when the U.S. can no longer attract top foreign doctors with high salaries. Most doctors are now compensated for each service they provide, an incentive structure that some say encourages unnecessary and costly procedures.But there is a push to change the way doctors are paid, perhaps to merit pay based on “quality of care.” The hope is that a structure that rewards the best diagnosis using the least resources will help rein in the wild increases in health care costs.The problem, as several pre-med students pointed out, is finding a fair measure of quality. A few students pointed out a similar problem in education, where many teachers oppose merit pay because of the benchmark used to define quality, namely standardized test scores. Others expressed concerns that doctors who are paid on an outcome basis would not accept risky cases where the likelihood of failure is significant.High on the list of concerns is the impending cost of malpractice insurance. With a lawyer around every corner, doctors “practice defensively,” ordering extra tests to ensure a missed diagnosis doesn’t open them up to litigation, and driving up the cost of care in the process.So-called “tort reform” has been a major point of contention in the health care debate, with Republicans advocating caps on awards juries can hand out and limitations on the powerful lobby representing trial lawyers leaning hard on Democrats to crush that possibility.Overall, very few pre-med students feel that reform is a cause for a change in career – at least, as long as medical students were never in it for the money. Most medical students just hope to be able to live their own dream of practicing medicine – regardless of whatever type of medical system is in place. “It is known that there is a shortage of doctors and that role is going to need to be filled as the looming prospect of a geriatric baby-boomer generation faces the health care system,” Piron said. “So for someone with a real desire or calling to help patients, I’d say its a good time to go into medicine.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When an overweight frat boy spills his beer all over me at Kilroy’s, I blame him. For obvious reasons, I extrapolate that blame to all the rest of mankind. My drenched shirt is, clearly, a man’s fault. When I am subjected to blabbering ESPN commentators droning on and on about how “watching the game in HD even sounds more realistic,” I blame men.Moreover, I wholeheartedly believe that if men did not walk the planet, I would never again have to listen to explanations of how awesome Marissa Miller is. (She hasn’t ever done anything. At least Brad Pitt can act.) So, for that, I also blame men.And when the economy comes crumbling down, crashing under the weight of the imploding financial sector ... that’s right – I blame men.Credit crunch? Global economic downturn? Oh, they have guilty male fingerprints all over them.Now, boys, in all fairness, I am no anti-male feminist. Before you throw my column down, muttering under your breath “stupid man-hater,” hear me out (I know, I know, listening has never been one of your stronger skills, but bear with me). If you were to begin pointing fingers for the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, where would you start? The disgraced CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, would be a great first pick. Or perhaps George W.? He was, after all, behind most of the deregulation that allowed the state of American finances to decay so much in the first place (and he’s just fun to blame for stuff).So, here’s my challenge to you, men of IU: name for me one prominent female figure deserving of a finger point. Can you provide even one woman responsible for any of the companies that led to our economic demise?As Harriet Harman, the British Labour party’s deputy leader, suggested, had it been the Lehman Sisters rather than the Lehman Brothers, the crisis may not have been so bad.A study that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences correlated more confidence and risk-taking appetite with higher levels of testosterone. The study suggested that too much testosterone could lead to impulsive decisions and extreme risk-taking. I am not the only one who has taken notice.“Maleness has become a synonym for insufficient attentiveness to risk,” Chris Caldwell said in Time magazine. Bloggers have suggested that we refer to the current economic situation as the ‘he-session.’ Reihan Salam even went so far as to reference the “macho men’s club called finance capitalism” in his article in Foreign Policy.Females have always been underrepresented in the business sector. Girls, we make up just one-third of business school students. And while we account for 35 percent of MBAs, only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are ladies. Had women been holding the reins of the financial sector, rather than men, would we find ourselves in the current predicament? It’s impossible to know – but I’d like to think not. Nonetheless, it is certainly an idea worthy of contemplation. Perhaps this world still stands a lot to benefit from the contributions of women. Hopefully, they will not continue to be such a stark minority in powerful positions such as chief executive.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Democrats suck at terminology. Like, they’re really bad.For all the things President Barack Obama has done right – most notably keeping Sarah Palin as far away from the White House as possible – he cannot coin a phrase to save his life.Take health care, for instance. The scream of “Death panels!” inevitably emerged on the Facebook page of our favorite good-natured Alaskan sweetheart in reference to the end-of-life counseling she had previously advocated. “Obama lies, Grandma dies!” a sign exclaimed outside a New Hampshire town hall meeting. And, of course, not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh has drawn a nasty comparison by labeling the Obama health care logo, which features the ancient Greek symbol for health superimposed on Obama’s campaign logo, as “right out of Hitler’s playbook” because of his perceived resemblance of the Nazi swastika symbol.And what does Obama have? Talks about “bending the cost curve” in reference to curbing the exponential growth of health care costs and “universal coverage.” The president says, “The status quo on health care ... is threatening the financial stability of families, of businesses and of government.” Bor-ing. Where’s the catchy buzz word in that?The Republican response is that “Obamacare” will place a bureaucrat “between you and your doctor, denying you exactly what you need.”“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” Obama tells us. “Obamacare: You Will Lose Your Current Insurance. Period. End of Story,” declares a headline on the Heritage Foundation blog, The Foundry. Come on, Dems! You can come up with better rhetoric than that. As any person well-conditioned in the art of verbal altercation knows, defining is half the battle. And, quite frankly, conservatives are kicking your ass in the definition department. All you need is a little fear mongering mixed with some hyperbole.It’s time to step up, fight back and denominate as you see fit! They aren’t out-of-pocket health care costs; they’re bankruptcy inducers! Forget the uninsured – they’re the sorry victims of health care rationing! And bending the cost curve? No! We’re averting the impending doom that health care costs will havoc on our economy if we don’t do something! But we have to act now!See, that wasn’t so hard now was it?Of course, there’s always the option of denoting health care as what, in actuality, it is – a right. In his column in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes, “Passage (of health care reform) would end the shameful era in our nation’s history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick.”Just as we as Americans have come to believe that we have the right to not starve to death, to not be denied emergency medical treatment, to get aid from the government as senior citizens and to not be discriminated against because of our race, gender or sexual orientation, we should come to see health care as a U.S. citizen right. And, perhaps most importantly, it is ultimately up to the Democrats and Obama to label reform as such.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jim Cramer: former hedge fund manager, best-selling author, self-proclaimed infotainer, television personality and – most recently – Jon Stewart victim.Cramer interviewed this week with Time magazine’s Justin Fox, and despite his hope that his tragic interview on The Daily Show was behind him, the interview included a multitiude of questions regarding his appearance.Fruits of the conversation included such lines as “We all have to answer for things when we’re vicious and when we try to take people down, and we should because it’s not fair” as well as “But uh, if I’m waiting for an apology, I’m really stupid. But he was very vicious.” Ultimately, however, Cramer concluded that he’d just been had. Between his accusations that Stewart was trying to get him fired and that Stewart’s attack was “gravely misplaced,” the host of CNBC’s “Mad Money” mostly defended himself by saying that he was trying to take the high road while Jon Stewart leveraged personal attacks.Of course, there was nothing personal about Cramer’s later responses to that interview the next morning on “The Today Show” declaring, “A comedian’s attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!” And his comment to Fox about Stewart that “One day he’ll answer for it” had not the slightest ambiance of personal attack.All this, of course, has very little importance beyond the general entertainment value of celebrity tiffs that make the cover of People. The main point driven home by the interview, however, should not be disregarded simply because the man making the point drops the f-bomb on TV.Sure, the attack unfairly targeted Cramer as a centerpiece for an entire industry. And it’s true that hours of footage of nearly anyone, including even Warren Buffett, could produce several incriminating 30-second clips. But Stewart’s interview drove home the notion that the Jim Cramers of the world are truly disconnected from those they are advising. He illuminated the real-life divide, to use a generic and overly referenced phrase, between Wall Street and Main Street.In his response to Cramer’s “Today Show” appearance, while noting Cramer’s awkwardness as he watched the interview clip live on the show, Stewart deadpanned that “it put a human face on my mocking, and gave me a sense of the damage I had done to a real person. ... It’d be like him having to watch me as his Bear Stearns advice wiped out my parents’ 401(k).” Stewart’s influence can no longer be written off because of his comedic appeal. The fact that about half the letters written to Time for Fox’s interview with Cramer involved that fateful episode, which took place months after The Daily Show episode aired, illustrates Stewart’s non-comedic sway. The points he makes through his satire are tangible concerns and have real repercussions, as Cramer discovered only too late. In times like these, we almost have to laugh. Stewart can do it while making a great point; meanwhile, Cramer has lost his sense of humor.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Little 500 has come and gone. I am filled with a combination of bittersweet adieu and a renewed longing for next year that is usually reserved for Dec. 26. The event everyone’s been anticipating since the beginning of the semester has passed.Yep, our school year is pretty much over.Except for finals. Sick. Just the thought of being crammed in the library at 3 a.m. amid the aura of stress and the looks of panic from freshman who are realizing that it was not actually a good idea to make Little 500 a month-long celebration makes my skin crawl.It’s time to get serious, kids.My proposition: I’m staying off Facebook. I know it sounds trivial, but the new page layout isn’t the only atrocity committed by everyone’s online addiction. According to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, college students who use the social network have significantly lower GPAs. Of the 219 students surveyed, those who reported using Facebook had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while those abstinent ranged from 3.5 to 4.0.Moreover, Facebook is annihilating our treasured As and Bs, and we don’t even know it; 79 percent of the same students said they saw no link between their Facebook usage and their GPAs. It’s a silent killer.So I quit my Facebook.I’m really proud of myself, but it’s been a long 23 hours. How did all my friends survive Little 500? Where did they go? What did they do? I want to see pictures! By hour 10, I was struggling, so I did what I think any reasonable person having trouble giving something up does: I decided to join a support group.I googled “help quitting Facebook” and found tons of great sites. Firstly, there’s a plethora of anonymous addicts spilling their hearts out on YouTube. Great find.But my Google search bore more fruit than pure entertainment value. There were many informational sites. I learned that many college students suffer from “Facebook Addiction Disorder” and that you can take the Facebook Addiction Test, a 10-item questionnaire, online to discover your diagnosis.Reading through the questions made me especially nervous. “How often do you prefer the excitement of Facebook to intimacy with your partner?” “Oh my gosh!” I thought. “I had no idea other people experienced this too!” Then, “How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Facebook?”Cripes! I’m addicted!I need help! Immediately I clicked on the blue beacon of hope, the one thing that can save me: the “join group” link. If this Facebook group can’t help me, I don’t know what can. Now I just have to hope and pray it isn’t too late to save this semester’s grade point average.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One of my favorite quotes in middle school came from the cinematic classic “Austin Powers” when Fat Bastard exclaims, “I eat because I’m unhappy! And I’m unhappy because I eat! It’s a vicious cycle.” While at the time I appreciated this for its humor and the fact that it was mumbled by an overweight Scottish man who proceeded to expel a long and utterly disgusting flatulence, no one could have predicted that the quote would one day serve as a great analogy for the relationship between the financial sector and the top segment of the American income distribution. Of course, by “eat,” I mean making massive profits, and by “unhappy,” I mean getting filthy rich.The deregulation of the financial sector since the 1980s has largely contributed to income disparities between top earners and the rest of the population. In 2007, the top 1 percent of American earners received 23 percent of U.S. disposable income (a 9 percent increase since 1980). Strikingly, in 1929 the top 1 percent also received 23 percent.I’m not saying that the deregulation since the 1980s brought us to where we are or that we disregarded the golden nuggets of truth produced by the Great Depression. I simply present the facts. You decide.In 2007, a year after he retired from the CEO position at Citigroup, Sanford Weil said, “I think that the results our company had, which is where the great majority of my wealth came from, justified what I got.”Weil is one of the top earners in the United States, a group whose income share sharply rose over the past few decades. Very high incomes in the financial sector, such as Weil’s, have largely contributed to the post-1980s income inequality.By now you’ve probably read a superfluous number of news stories that shame the lack of regulation for the financial crisis. You’ve probably also been exposed to the whining of self-important, bleeding heart liberals regarding income inequalities and CEO bonuses.But it’s relatively unknown that the two are inextricably entangled. While it has become the common knowledge that AIG executives must only park in well-lit areas and use the buddy system and that Alan Greenspan has been made into a Congressional punching bag, few have pointed out the role played by income inequality in the collapse of the financial industry.Since 1980, some interesting things have been happening in global financial markets. Deregulation has been “the thing to do.” Between 2005 and 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the main U.S. regulating bodies, cut its staff by 11 percent and slashed financial penalties in half. The 1920s economy experienced a similar state of extreme deregulation.Both times, compensation in the financial industry was relatively imbalanced. In 2006, bankers were taking home approximately 1.7 times what comparable employees in other sectors earned.Perhaps more importantly, growth in financial sector incomes fueled nationwide income inequality. During the Clinton era, the top 1 percent of earners accounted for 45 percent of the total growth in pre-tax income. If that sounds impressive, consider the Bush era: During the four-year upswing overseen by none other than America’s most grammatically challenged administration, the top 1 percent captured an astounding 73 percent of the growth. This concentration of income was a main contributor to the growth of the financial sector and in turn the emergent financial sector fed income to the top of the distribution.As the financial sector luxuriated, consumer debt soared. While the top earners patted themselves on the back for remarkable economic growth, the average income of the bottom 90 percent actually fell between 1973 and 2006 (a dramatic contrast to the preceding decades since World War II in which that income actually grew twice as quickly as the incomes of the top 10 percent).We normal folks began to augment our stagnant incomes with credit cards, mortgages and auto loans. Between 1980 and 2006, debt relative to personal disposable income doubled from 65 percent to 136 percent. Moreover, fast-rising home prices allowed people to use home equity loans to pay for private education and health care. By encouraging massive lending for home purchases, the central bank fueled the indebtedness of the average Joe.That was a lot of economic terminology and statistics to say one thing: The salaries of overpaid bankers have pillaged the entire world economy. The deregulation seen since the 1980s allowed for skyrocketing incomes, extreme complexity and non-routine risky endeavors in the finance industry. This attracted America’s smartest and most skilled students and created an income bubble within the industry while aggrandizing income inequality.The result? Massive indebtedness for most Americans and the emergence of a supercharged financial system, increasingly fattened by the top earners who took risks and the rest of society who took loans. In 2006, that system, which had over the past two decades pulled an incredible Hulk, came crashing down.What we need now is a return to the financial regulation witnessed between the 1930s and the 1980s. Yes, banking was boring, and banks only paid slightly more than similar jobs in public service and education. But this era of boredom in the banking sphere coexisted simultaneously with an era of prodigious progress for most Americans.After the Wall Street crash of the 1930s, tight regulation caused banking skill and pay levels to fall to an altitude analogous to other industries. And they stayed there for five decades. This is terrible news for financiers – but great news for the economy. All the talent and human capital previously occupied in making paper wealth by tinkering with numbers might just begin moving into more productive fields and – gasp – creating real wealth through problem solving and science. Several bankers have sturdy backgrounds in science or engineering, such as Sanford Weil, who holds a bachelor of science from Cornell. The United States is currently producing 30,000 less engineers than we need.Not only would they make great engineers, these people would also be excellent supporters of manufacturing, information technology or high-tech startups. The education and nonprofit sectors could greatly benefit. Not to mention that the public sector is in need of some talent in the regulation department.Besides, what better way to punish the financial industry for their misdeeds of the past 30 years than making them work for the good of the economy? The banking industry needs to be regulated. Forever. But that doesn’t mean that our economy or our bankers can’t prosper.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>They range from the freshly graduated 23-year-old whose been ousted from his first job to a 61-year-old who blames the Chinese for killing the American textile industry. Mostly white-collar, few of them expected to find themselves unemployed. They’re lawyers, physician assistants, computer programmers, advertising agents and opera singers (OK, maybe she could have seen unemployment coming). They have been jobless for an average of four months. They’ve downsized apartments. They’ve moved in with friends. Three of them have lost weight from their cutback on groceries (there is a silver lining to everything).“I’m seriously sad,” Lauren Diamond admitted to Time magazine. “But,” concludes the victim of recession-era layoffs, “at least I’m not from Lehman Brothers.”Then she steps up to see how far she can throw an office telephone wrapped in electrical tape. They are the “unemployed Olympians,” 30 or so contestants gathered in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park on a Tuesday afternoon to try their hand at the Payday pinata, Pin-the-Blame-on-the-Boss – “The Feds,” “The Economy” and “Consumer Spending” are also available targets for those who prefer – the “You’re Fired!” footrace, and the Telephone Toss in first-ever “Unemployment Olympics.”“It’s not like I have anywhere I have to be,” explained Elia Roldan to Time. “I mean, not anymore.”Quite frankly, I must commend the Unemployed Olympians. I can only hope that should I ever find myself with nothing to do on a Tuesday afternoon, I will be both creative and motivated enough to spend my time organizing an event that involves chucking office telephones.More importantly, I think it’s great that despite the prospect of living with their parents at 45, they still know how to have a good time.“Happiness,” as one of my favorite quotes goes, “is a journey, not a destination.” Yes, the recession is painful. But recessions are a natural part of the business cycle.We need them to do things like reverse the U.S. dollar’s free fall – despite that warnings from France, China, Venezuela, Iran and most notably supermodel Gisele have failed, I think a recession will drive the message home – and just maybe force fiscal restraint back into government.Our government may even be forced to tackle the entitlement disasters that are Medicare and Social Security.Besides, it’s not like we can do anything about it. So we have to make the most of it. Take advantage of Walgreens’ goodwill and get your checkups for free in their in-store clinics. Get that free Denny’s Grand Slamwich (but go running afterward, for Pete’s sake). Go to Disney World for free on your birthday. Hell, we could have our own Olympics! Tuesday I’m booked, but Wednesday afternoons are totally free (who needs Spanish class?). Dunn Meadow for a game of Pin-the-Blame? See you there!
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Ever since I was a child, I’ve been told “no” countless times. “No, Ashley, you cannot eat the entire package of Oreos.” “You absolutely cannot stay out past 11!” To which, of course, my response was, “But all my friends get to!”I kind of understand how North Korea feels right now. On Oct. 4, 2002, the United States asserted that North Korea admitted to secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade. If true, this would be a violation of a 1994 agreement made between Pyongyang and Washington to freeze North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.The allegation by the United States resulted in a resumption of the reprocessing of plutonium and the ejection of international inspectors. And on Sunday, North Korea launched a rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. Take a deep breath. It’s OK.Yes, the rocket was capable of delivering a warhead of 1,000 kilograms to a distance of some 6,000 kilometers, a distance far enough to hit parts of Alaska. Yes, North Korea defied the United States, our allies and several United Nations resolutions. And yes, even though Pyongyang insists the rocket was intended to launch a satellite into space, most of the world’s intercontinental ballistic missiles began life as satellite launchers since Sputnik in 1957. It’s safe to say the rocket launch was, at least on a certain level, a military endeavor. But what North Korea wants is not to eventually attack us or other peaceful nations. They want respect. While it now is largely accepted that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence data in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, little questioning has been addressed to the accusation that reversed U.S. policy in North Korea.Selig Harrison, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, writes, “Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is making uranium-based nuclear weapons.” After this, moreover, Bush classified North Korea as a member of the “Axis of Evil.” This probably didn’t help.What North Korea is really after is to defy being told “no.” They are tired of competing in a nuclear world without nuclear technology. They want international respect. Most importantly, Pyongyang wants to come to the negotiation table with the others, knowing it can launch a multistage rocket capable of traveling thousands of miles. While its actions certainly deserve the international condemnation they have received, opening negotiations with North Korea is necessary. Steven Bosworth, President Barack Obama’s special envoy on North Korea, is prepared to resume talks. “We must deal with North Korea as we find it, not as we would like it to be,” Bosworth told The New York Times. “What is required is patience and perseverance.”And deal with them we must. Hopefully this administration can provide at least minimal respect throughout negotiations.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Times are hard for adult Americans. The state of affairs in the world is such that Joe Biden has actually been reduced to begging protestors gathered in Europe in preparation for the G-20 summit to “give us a chance.” But while trudging through our daily “how much did the DOW fall today?” grown-up troubles, we have failed to notice that those younger than we have some bones to pick with the government, too.A police scheme in Britain known as the “Channel project” is intended to identify children who are “vulnerable” to the black hole that is Islamic radicalization. It has labeled more than 200 children, some as young as 13, as potential terrorists.Spotting the troublemakers is relatively simple: They tend to be less social at recess, are drawn toward more violent video games and are rarely willing to trade their Snack Packs at lunch. The giveaway, however, is that they are 13-year-olds with political views. The police described flag-raising beliefs as “racism and the adoption of bad attitudes toward ‘the West.’” These elements are simple to pick out in potential kid-terrorists because they are pretty much nonexistent among everyone else in Europe.Once identified, the kids are lucky enough to take part in a “program of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual.” Often this includes discussions with trusted adults that – while the police never explicitly stated of what the discussion should consist – I imagine would intend to do away with the whole “virgins waiting upon death” thing (I feel like that’s key for middle school boys). The potential threat of the children could, however, be deemed serious enough to necessitate police intervention.It is important to note that although the program has focused on Muslim children, the Muslim community is not being targeted. In an intriguing paradox, police proclaimed that they “are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric. That is not the same as targeting the Muslim community.” They seem to have missed an important discrepancy: The junior high kids they’re prosecuting aren’t actually guilty of a crime. They just kind of seem like they could maybe be guilty in 20 years or so.We, as citizens of democracy, have a nice little saying about criminal prosecution: “innocent until proven guilty.” Instead of targeting problem children (who all just happen to be Muslim) and “intervening” in the lives of law-abiding seventh graders, perhaps we should demonstrate to them that the reason to avoid extremism, the real reason to support democracy, is because in a democratic system everyone is equal, the law is fair and the courts and the legal system are just.Because, hypothetically speaking, in a democracy, one will never be prosecuted for a crime one has yet to commit or be targeted for one’s religious beliefs. Maybe if we demonstrated the real benefits of democracy to these “vulnerable” kids, they wouldn’t need police intervention to show them why they should appreciate the “freedoms” against which they should not rebel.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>So, all you spring breakers, how was Mexico? Didn’t go? That’s too bad. The weather and beaches down there are amazing. Not to mention the cost of a drink is about 10 pesos. Of course, there is that whole travel advisory thing. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military response to drug cartels in 2006, violence has been on the rise. One thousand drug-related deaths have occurred in Mexico so far this year alone. Before Christmas, the severed heads of eight soldiers were found in a shopping center in the city of Chilpancingo. Another three were found in an icebox near Ciudad Juarez last month. A man named Santiago Meza, recently detained by police near Tijuana, admitted to dissolving more than 300 bodies in acid on the orders of a local drug baron. Resorts and tourist attractions have been complaining about the reduced amount of spring breakers. But there is so much more to fear. The U.S. Joint Forces Command published a report last month revealing that the countries most at risk to become failed states were Pakistan and Mexico. That’s right. America’s second-largest trading partner might be on the verge of becoming a failed state – and for what? “To take back from organized criminal groups the economic power and armament they’ve established in the past 20 years, to take away their capacity to undermine institutions and to contest the state’s monopoly of force,” according to a statement by President Calderon’s attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora. There is another way to do this, without violence. It is possible to drain most of the power from the Mexican drug cartels without a single murder, without placing a single soldier or police officer in harm’s way. “We are not winning the battle,” Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said at a congressional hearing this week in Washington. “Sixty percent of the battle is marijuana.” Decriminalization of marijuana would undo the growth of organized crime around the globe. The illegal drug industry is worth about $320 billion a year. All this money is flowing to criminals, fueling violence that can throw a stable democracy such as Mexico into “a life-or-death struggle against gangsters,” as The Economist puts it. Shifting the focus of the drug war away from violent struggles and prison time to public health and harm reduction is the answer to Mexico’s problem with organized crime. The drug war has been senseless for so long – making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (think President Obama’s youthful experimenting), putting addicts in danger and supplying organized crime and terrorist groups with untraceable, illegal dollars, all the while being rather unsuccessful. The same amount of the world population still takes illegal drugs as it did a decade ago. But now the policy is directly resulting in the deaths of soldiers and police, terrorizing the Mexican population and even threatening the stability of the Mexican government. Not to mention these problems are posing a severe security threat to the United States. We need regulation, not criminalization. It is time to drain the strength from Mexican drug cartels and others like it around the world by decriminalizing marijuana.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>So, Rush Limbaugh headlined the Conservative Political Action Conference. I know, I know – you already know. You’ve probably already heard countless accounts of how screwed the Republican party clearly is, as exhibited by their obvious lack of leadership. But you have yet to hear my take on it.My response to Limbaugh’s speech can be summed up in one short but extremely descriptive syllable: bah.In case you are unfamiliar with this highly useful slang term, “bah” should be used sparingly to describe irritations so insanely ridiculous that no string of coherent English words could possibly provide a proper portrayal. For instance, should you find yourself forced to wait for an awkwardly long time in line at Kroger because the old lady in front of you is purchasing Vagisil and it won’t scan, as you watch the cashier struggle with the computer while nervously laughing, feel free to mutter a “bah” (should this ever happen to you, I recommend going to get that Colby-Jack you forgot). Or upon hearing that one of your friends who is studying overseas ended up at an Amsterdam sex show after eating a few too many moon cakes, you could appropriately describe the situation with “bah.”Rush Limbaugh’s speech? Bah.Beyond asserting his own hope for President Barack Obama’s failure – I hate to break this to you, Rush, but at this point we’re all in the same boat – Limbaugh stated, “Well, what do we do, as conservatives? How do we overcome this? . . . One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas.”Edmond Burke would be oh, so sad. In case you’re asking, “Who on earth is Edmond Burke?” he is the man often credited as the father of conservatism. Burke believed many political thinkers were too theoretical, ignoring the in-depth complexities of interdependent relations found in reality. He argued that tradition stabilized society and change should come about slowly. Most importantly, he thought the realities of society should be studied and analyzed and that workable polices could be derived only from the practical, not the theoretical.Limbaugh and other Republicans have lost contact with Burke’s wisdom. I have always felt that a major downfall of Democratic policy is how often it is rooted in head-in-the-clouds thinking. However, since the Bush administration took over, Republicans have been committing the same fallacy, trading practical truths and realities for ideologies and theoretical notions that do not always cohere to actuality.We need to study the veracious properties of the real world and allow them to shape our strategy. And more importantly, we need to reward those politicians who can offer solutions, not simple conceptual rhetoric. The way to triumph against the crises currently ailing us – especially the economic ones – is to adopt practical and efficient policies.I can only hope that the team with the best guiding principles wins come 2012. To anyone who disagrees, I simply say, “Bah.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“I don’t think that any economist disputes that we’re in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” – President Barack Obama At this point in our nation’s economic meltdown, we’ve all heard the dire and hopeless Great Depression metaphors. From the meltdown of the financial sector to the painful collapse of the stock market, it’s becoming all too easy to invoke catastrophic images from the 1930s – especially when the dire prediction of a 25 percent unemployment rate and other staggering statistics not seen for over seven decades aid in convincing legislators to support your economic stimulus package.Let me get this out of the way – we are in no way experiencing a Great-Depression-esque downturn at the moment. When dust storms again ravage the Great Plains and people are once more forced to grow and can their own food, I will be willing to compare my own experiences with those of my great-grandparents.We are, however, experiencing some financial discomfort. More importantly, like the Great Depression, this economic crisis is impacting the entire world – and could have effects much more grave and profound than shrinking 401(k)s.In 1929, the German national elections were hardly the stuff of headlines. No one noticed when a far-right politician and his fringe party captured 12 seats in the Reichstag. Throughout the next year, German unemployment soared and Berlin found itself on the brink of defaulting on international debt payments. Riding on promises of a strong Germany, jobs and national glory while placing the blame for his country’s woes on the Great Depression, which he described as a Jewish-Communist plot, Adolf Hitler enjoyed exploding popularity. In 1930, the Nazis became the second most powerful party in Germany, claiming 107 Reichstag seats. The world was yanked from the economic slump by massive military spending and a jump start in worldwide industry to produce armaments. The United States emerged 15 years later as a superpower with the world’s largest economy. Economically speaking, we enjoyed major benefits from World War II. Regarding national security, however, the rise of Hitler produced a grave threat.Turmoil begs for scapegoats and is often a catalyst of internal political upheaval. This can already be seen in eastern Europe. The Latvian government collapsed Friday after Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis resigned amidst predictions that the Baltic state’s economy will shrink 12 percent this year. Germany’s rejection of the bailout plan for eastern Europe has caused Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to accuse it of drawing a second Iron Curtain.Will countries such as Russia, China and India, which are economically powerful but not necessarily politically established, become destabilized? Obama’s new Director of National Intelligence posed these questions in his annual “worldwide threat assessment” to Congress, along with wonderings about possible humanitarian crises in Africa and new threats of terrorism.As we focus on our shrinking stock portfolios and Detroit’s bailout addictions, we should not forget the enormous impact this depression is having on the rest of the world. Inevitably, this will affect us in terms of national security and foreign policy.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Not being a particularly Catholic person myself, I generally ignore the Lenten season. I usually spend Fat Tuesday with all the other non-Catholics looking for some excuse to party, Ash Wednesday trying to take my friends and peers seriously despite the enormous black marks on their foreheads and then resort to teasing and tempting my Lent-participating acquaintances with chocolates, booze, a hamburger or whatever they gave up for the remaining days until Easter. For all my life, this has been the extent of my Lenten participation.This year, however, I have felt moved to take part in Lent. It could be because I failed to keep a single one of my New Year’s resolutions. Or maybe I just finally gave in to the nagging of friends who are tired of me tagging ridiculously embarrassing photos of them on Facebook after they vowed to give up the site for 40 days.Regardless, I have decided to spend the next several weeks deprived of something – but what? Giving up chocolate is absolutely out of the question. Alcohol? No way. I read online about one girl who gave up her boyfriend. This seemed pretty reasonable, except the dating adviser’s column she posted strongly advised against this – and my boyfriend expressed mild discontent with the idea. Homework seemed like a spectacular idea; after all, I believe I’ve earned a break after midterms. Think of all the time that would free up! Unfortunately, my parents nixed this one.Then the perfect sacrifice dawned on me: TV. I know it’s pretty ambitious considering the upcoming Lenten lineup, but I think I can do it.The first week of March, U2 is appearing on Letterman not one, not two, but five nights in a row. I think missing five U2 performances is much more propitiatory than 40 days without meat. Not to mention that this is a historic moment for the Letterman show, which has never featured a single artist for an entire week. As if that’s not enough, in anticipation of Lent beginning Wednesday I chose to give up watching Sunday’s Academy Awards. I think all the other major stars who declined the honor of presenting the Oscars were probably doing the same.Obviously, Kate Winslet’s excuse of being “too nervous” to present and Nicole Kidman’s objection to appearing onstage without the right hairdresser were just humble cover-ups.Luckily, I will still be able to catch MC Hammer’s new reality show, which doesn’t look like it will air until after Easter. Be on the lookout – you don’t want to miss this. It’s creatively titled “Hammertime.” Despite the temptations I may face from the alluring offerings of network television, I think I will be able to stick to my guns on this resolution – mainly because I don’t actually have a TV. Plus, everyone knows all the good shows are on the Internet anyway.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Some things are just terrible ideas. For instance, Stormy Daniels, professional adult film star (couldn’t have possibly guessed that from the name, could you?) is running for a Senate seat in Louisiana. She is clearly qualified because, as her online biography puts it, she has been ‘breaking glass ceilings her entire life’ through such consequential roles as high school newspaper editor and president of her school’s 4-H club. Surprisingly, the resume kind of stops after she graduated the 12th grade. This is a terrible idea.Ticketmaster, so used to being a monopoly that they felt the need to sue all their competitors for – ahem – being competitors, has decided to merge with LiveNation. Folks, prepare for surcharges more expensive than your beer tab at the concert. This is another terrible idea.And how about the “Sex and the City” sequel? Without a doubt, this is a dreadfully abominable idea that only appeals to the Ugg-wearing population.Administering drug tests to public school teachers is an equally ignorant and vapid notion. Hawaii, North Carolina and West Virginia are among the states toying with the concept. In each state, teachers are preparing for a legal showdown. I don’t blame them.First of all, try to imagine a situation more degrading in the workplace than peeing in a cup – with supervision. If you came up with one, then it’s probably the reason you’re in college now. Professionals with post-secondary education have come to expect a certain level of dignity on the job, and reasonably so. The Constitution implicitly provides some level of privacy; as a West Virginia judge declared last month, teacher testing crosses the line of unreasonable searches. Moreover, this is absurd economically. Each administered drug test costs $44. In one of the West Virginia school districts, testing will amount to approximately $37,000. That’s enough to hire another teacher! While I realize that no one wants Mrs. Johnson teaching his or her second grader when she’s high as a kite, teacher testing is an inappropriate and ineffective way of addressing this. Education as a profession ranks among the lowest in illicit drug use. Only about 4 percent of teachers surveyed by the federal government reported use of illegal drugs in the past month, making educators 18th out of the 19 professions surveyed. Our school systems should be focusing on ways to improve education and target teachers doing a poor job, regardless of whether their substandard performance is drug-induced. Mike McCartney, executive director for the Hawaii State Teachers Association, remarked, “Random testing isn’t going to suddenly increase test scores. This is a huge distraction from how to make our schools better.” Not to mention that I think pot-smoking teachers could possibly bring something extra to the table: a more colorful classroom perhaps? Or snacks! Everyone remembers the teacher who always had snacks.But seriously, while illicit drug use among educators is to be condemned, drug testing our teachers is devaluing them at an extraordinary financial cost that could be much better spent. I applaud the teachers who are resisting. I hope that others follow their lead.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This is the kind of situation where you talk to 25 different economists and get 25 different answers (or, if you’re me, you talk to three. You get the idea). An unprecedented economic downfall calls for an unprecedented fix. This much we know for sure. But the debate about precisely what the solution should be to our financial woes has become a battlefield for political ideologies and partisanship.Does the answer lie in tax cuts or in government expenditures? And if so, how much (or how little)? The economic crisis has pitted the fundamental beliefs of Republicans against those of Democrats, and no one wants to budge.So what’s the result of all this combined with a newly elected president who ran on a platform that boldly asserted transcendence of partisanship?A mishmash. A hodgepodge. Potpourri. A gallimaufry, if you will.Whatever you call it, it seems that in an effort to appease everyone, the stimulus fails to please anyone. By striving for broad bipartisan support, Obama undercut his own political ideology and created a stimulus that was too small and too reliant on tax cuts.IU economics professor Edward Buffie offered this explanation: “Most estimates forecast an output gap of $2 trillion over the next two years. A stimulus package of $800 (billion) to $900 billion will probably fall well short of filling the gap – even after taking multiplier effects into account.”In case you don’t know, the multiplier effect is the idea that for each dollar spent by the government, consumption and national income increase by more than a dollar.How does this happen? While it’s fun to think of it as magic, in reality it is because the dollar spent does not vanish – it merely trades hands. Contrary to popular belief, your $50 Kilroy’s tab does not consign last week’s paycheck to oblivion. Kilroy’s happily extracts your money and then re-spends it on excise fines or whatever it is that Kilroy’s purchases. This – repeated many times and on a much larger scale – produces the multiplier effect.Because of this effect, all spending is not created equal. The dollar increase in the Gross Domestic Product per dollar spent on stimulus is highly dependent on the type of spending being done. For instance, direct federal spending or federal funding of state and local infrastructure can produce as much as a $2.50 increase in GDP for each dollar the federal government spends. On the other hand, temporary individual tax cuts, such as Obama’s “Making Work Pay” credits that provide up to $1,000 in tax credits for families earning below $150,000, might increase the GDP by only about 50 cents. This is because the cash-strapped states are forced to spend the money posthaste, whereas an employed citizen sitting on a cushy $150,000 salary might very well decide to save his $1,000 (or at least a large portion of it).“Look at your favorite IU professor,” said professor Gerhard Glomm, chairperson of the IU economics department. “This has yet to really adversely affect them, especially those who are tenured. If they receive $1,000 from the government, they may use it as to pay off their car or save it to send their child to college.”While personal saving is part of a healthy economy, it detracts from the multiplier effect because the money is not re-spent. For a stimulus package that gets the most bang for the buck, the money must continue circulating in the economy for as long as possible instead of being saved.“The tax cuts are poorly targeted,” Glomm said. “I think that a lot of people can take care of themselves. We must help the people that need the help.”Aside from being a noble notion, helping those in the most dire straits is also economically strategic. When faced with rising debt and unpaid bills, our nation’s jobless and impoverished have no choice but to immediately spend any government money they receive.But the poorest 5 to 10 percent of our population does not generally decide elections. We are thus left with a tax cut provision that will be writing checks to about 95 percent of the American people (those making less than $150,000 annually). Many of those people will be more likely to put their tax cut into a savings account rather than into circulation. Frankly, that’s just a sloppy policy – not to mention ineffectual.This is where the hodgepodgery comes in. Many economists and analysts, especially those who still cry themselves to sleep at night reminiscing about the November election, have pointed out that the package seems to be a conglomerate of pet projects and infrastructure spending sprinkled with a few tax cuts here and there. There’s a little piece of the pie for everybody, but a lack of heavy-duty multiplier-effect-laden proposals.Professor Eric Rasmusen of the Kelley School of Business, who recently signed a full-page ad in The New York Times opposing the stimulus, agreed. “The various Congressional proposals so far are not stimulus bills at all,” he said. “They are a mix of special-interest tax cuts and pork-barrel spending with a general-interest layer of tax cutting on top.”It seems that in order to please voters (as well as Congressional members) the bill has included benefits for nearly everyone. Unfortunately, that doesn’t amount to much of an impression on the economic system.Many of the spending provisions in the original package that could have had a significant positive impact were reduced or altered as the bill fought its way through Congress.Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for The New York Times, drew attention to the fact that some of the original bill’s strongest features (hint: ones with big multiplier effects), including aid to moneyless state governments and school construction, were drastically reduced. The final bill agreed upon Wednesday by the two chambers of Congress eliminated $35 billion from a state fiscal stabilization fund, $16 billion from funds intended to aid in school construction, and harshly-pared down health care subsidies for the unemployed, ignoring the fierce lobbying efforts made by governors. Also, the bill is infused with tax breaks for businesses that won’t do much good in the current economy. The large tax cut component weakens the package, Buffie said. “This is especially true of the tax breaks for businesses,” he said. “Output is contracting because demand has collapsed and firms cannot fully utilize their existing capacity.“Giving tax breaks to businesses does not make much sense when the underlying problem is a shortage of demand,” Buffie said.By trying to lure Republicans onboard, Obama began with a bill that was incoherent and too small and ended with one that was much smaller and more incoherent.Congress has whittled down the package from the $838 billion approved by the Senate and the $820 approved by the House, somehow deeming that a bill below $800 billion is “fiscally responsible,” as Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, put it. But the total amount shouldn’t matter as much as what the provisions are, and many of the provisions simply cannot be labeled fiscally responsible. For example, about 9 percent of the finalized bill will go toward fixing the alternative minimum tax, which was going to be addressed in a tax bill later this year. A baffled Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, questioned: “Why is it in there? It has nothing to do with stimulus. It has nothing to do with recovery. This makes no sense whatsoever.” The provisions laid out by the stimulus bill aren’t the only source of miscellany. Glomm points out that it is difficult to evaluate the stimulus because there is no clear policy goal.“We need to strictly separate the short-run from the long-run expenditures,” he said.Things such as medical research and investment in green technology are great uses of government expenditures, but spending in these areas is long-term and won’t kick in for several years. The extension of unemployment benefits, on the other hand, has a nearly immediate effect because the funding is going directly to people who must spend it right away.These weak aspects of the bill are mere inefficiencies. One major fallacy committed by Congress is the inclusion of protectionist measures. Features such as the “Buy American” provision are downright counterproductive.The cost to the economy far exceeds the value of jobs that could be saved. If you doubt this, go Google the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, often blamed for the severity of the Great Depression.Not only do tariffs harm consumers by driving up prices, Glomm said they also put us at high risk for trade retaliation. Note: This is not a good time to tamper with free trade.“The beggar-thy-neighbor policy-making that spread in late 1920s and early 1930s should provide a bleak warning,” The New York Times’ editorial board recently wrote. We need a concerted effort of all the wealthy countries in the world working together, not isolationism.For all it lacks, I must say that I believe this package is certainly better than no package at all. “At this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life,” Obama said in his speech Monday night.Perhaps, but as Rasmusen said, “Whether Keynesian stimulus works is an open question in economics, but it is fairly well settled that what governments implement is not the non-political stimulus that professors recommend.” This can certainly be seen in Obama’s stimulus bill.But despite its watered-down end product, the bill’s enormity in size alone guarantees a boost in spending on some level, and it will provide funding – though perhaps not enough – to projects in need. The stimulus supplies $150 billion for spending on infrastructure and, although decreased, still includes significant aid for state governments. An increase in government expenditures of this size has to make some sort of ripple. If nothing else, it will hopefully relax consumers and raise confidence in the markets.But it isn’t going to be enough.Reform of the housing and capital markets and encouragement for the American public could go just as far as the $789 billion. When discussing the economy, Obama must move away from the recent hyperbole that makes use of terms such as “catastrophe” and “disaster” and “doom.” The truth is, no one really knows for sure the nature of this downturn or how to find the magical key that will unlock the door to economic prosperity.“We can spend the money and the economy may still flounder,” Glomm said. Nevertheless, I think the stimulus is a step in the right direction. However, it is certainly not the final solution. It needs to be paired with reforms and reassurances.