24 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(10/19/11 10:55pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last week, a federal district court judge upheld key measures of the new Alabama immigration law. Alabama claims this measure is necessary due to the inaction of the federal government to stop wasting state resources on illegal ?immigrants. It’s understandable that the officials of Alabama would feel frustrated with the federal government’s lack of action. There is a wide consensus today that our immigration system is broken, yet Congress has not acted to fix this. However, this frustration does not give Alabama power to break the law. The legal case is clear: Since immigration policy is tied to foreign policy, the federal government has the power under the Constitution to deal with it.Because this law will interfere with federal enforcement of immigration policy, it is unconstitutional. This is basic federalism. But if the legal case is strong, the moral case is stronger.Less than 50 years ago, then Alabama Gov. George Wallace declared he would stand at a schoolhouse door to stop racial integration into schools. As he put it, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Alabama’s politicians seem determined to reach back to that dark era with this law. Since the implementation of the law, hundreds of Hispanic families have been keep their children out of school for fear of what might ?happen to them. The Alabama Department of Education estimated that the day after the court ruling, almost 2,500 Hispanic students were absent from school. In at least one Alabama town, people are threatened with having water service cut off. According to the town of Allgood, “to be compliant with new laws concerning immigration you must have an Alabama driver’s license ... or you may lose ?water service.” This law is devoted to creating a culture of fear, terror and racial hatred in Alabama. Alabama’s politicians openly declare that this was their goal. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told POLITICO, “We want illegal aliens out of the state of Alabama, and I want illegal aliens out of the United States of America.” Wallace sure would be proud.Let us hope a federal appeals court can get the message through and stop this hateful, un-American law.— sidfletch@indiana.edu
(10/16/11 10:44pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I could think of a thousand ways I’d rather spend a Saturday morning. I was standing at People’s Park, listening to a woman shout and people wiggle their fingers like they were spazzing out at show choir.Like a camp counselor, she shouted, “We will go to Chase Bank,” and everybody repeated it back to her. So off they went, marching to take back the streets of Bloomington.“Tax the rich, feed the poor,” they shouted. “This is what democracy looks like.” As far as chants go, it ain’t up to “Hey, hey, LBJ” yet.But all around me, people seemed sincere and motivated. True, I did meet a homeless guy who might have just joined Occupy Bloomington when it took control of People’s Park, but most people seemed to believe what they were saying.Not surprisingly, the cardboard signs focused on bailouts and the idea that corporations aren’t people. Both people I interviewed mentioned Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections, in their reasons for attending the march.Of course, Citizens United doesn’t declare that corporations are people any more than Obamacare creates death panels. Due to my extensive training in the social sciences, I concluded that Citizens United is an ideological symbol for something deeper. Exactly what that was didn’t occur to me until we got to Chase Bank. Across the street, a business major was staging what might have been the lamest counter-protest I’ve ever seen. He was fighting with a protestor about the American Dream. The counter-protestor insisted the American Dream was to go into business and make money, while the occupier rebutted that it was to have an equal shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.I wouldn’t know because I’m not ancient, but didn’t we use to agree on these things? Once upon a time, I was taught America was a fusion of individualism and egalitarianism. It’s right there in the traditional American Dream that someone coming here has an equal opportunity to work hard, make a good life and climb the corporate ladder. Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing in that. That’s where the past four years come from.What I think almost everyone is missing is that deep down, the Occupy movement is really about radical egalitarianism in response to the Tea Party’s radical individualism. This is a similar ideal to the Citizens United decision.This is why the movement doesn’t have leaders and governs by finger-wiggling. This is what “We are the 99 percent” means. I don’t know if the Occupy movement is going to ‘succeed,’ but the speed at which the movement grew indicates that this country is more polarizable than ever. America today is like a train with two engines going in opposite directions. If you want to figure out which way to go, ask yourself if you’re more of an individualist or an egalitarian.I have to admit that despite wanting to be, I wasn’t inspired to join the Occupy movement Saturday morning. But if someday I’m forced to pick a side in the war, I’m with the finger-wigglers.Just don’t schedule me until Saturday afternoon.— sidfletc@indiana.edu
(10/05/11 12:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Call me Chicken Little, but I think the sky is falling.It all started when I was reading IU President Michael McRobbie’s State of the University speech the other day. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read it, no worries. You didn’t miss much.Here’s the 10-second summary:IU continues to be hunky-dory despite the recession. Faculty members are awesome. We are continuing to build on the campus and increase efficiency. I won’t be talking about any of the cool stuff, such as the new School of International Studies, or be announcing any new proposals.That was pretty much the speech. But buried beneath the mountain of platitudes about value and academia and who knows what else, there were a couple of key statistics that you should know. Two decades ago, the state provided 50 percent of IU’s operating budget. This fiscal year, it is providing 18 percent of the budget. Some project that by 2020, this number will be less than 10 percent.McRobbie’s response to this was irresponsible. He suggested that the solution is to cut wasteful spending and increase efficiency. My guess is that’s going to work for about another year. You can only cut so much fat out of a cow before it falls over.And worse, he didn’t mention what he’s been saying to visiting politicians: The state legislature is made up of a bunch of kids who just don’t listen to facts. In other words, there’s no knight in shining armor here. The level of state funding will not go back to “normal.” No, what’s going to have to happen is that tuition levels will rise to meet the shortfall and students will be unhappy. McRobbie defensively noted that almost three out of four in-state students in Bloomington receive some form of financial aid. What he didn’t mention was that the average amount of debt per graduate last year at IU-Bloomington was above the average for the Big Ten.I thought of this when I was reading the New York Times and came across an article about a new class being offered by a Stanford professor. The class is a version of Stanford’s “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” taught by Professor Sebastian Thrun, who led the team that built Google’s self-driving car. The class is free and open to the public. I’m skeptical about the clarion call of virtual classrooms, but I can’t think of the last time I was this excited about a class. If you live in a technological world, you should sign up for this class. McRobbie spent a long time talking about what it meant to be a public university in the 21st century and came up with a generic answer that I can’t remember for the life of me. If you ask me, at the core of this answer should be real innovation (like the Stanford class) and flexibility, no matter what. I don’t think McRobbie gets this.He says, for good reason, that the academy has always been a strong, durable institution. Thing is, that’s what they said about former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.I don’t think academia’s going to be wiped off the face of the earth, but I also don’t think students will be as willing to put up with tuition increases. It’s simply not going to be good enough to defend the institution and muddle through.If I were president of IU for a day, I would announce that the University will transition during the course of a decade to an Oxford-style tutorial system with virtual lectures given by professors all over the country. That’s a bold response to trying times. It’s not a perfect, one-size-fit-all solution. I would expect a few drawbacks, such as a scaling of IU’s population and a potential faculty revolt.However, I happen to think it’s a better solution than simply “cutting waste.” This solution would take a set of iron balls to implement, so I’ve got my doubts.But to tell you the truth, I just can’t get the image out of my mind that a large piece of technology is going to drop out of the sky and hit Michael McRobbie on the shiny part of his bald head.The sky is falling. Let’s fix it.— sidfletc@indiana.edu
(09/27/11 2:28am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Name Herman CainHeight 6’0” (estimate)Why he’s still in the race Wants to be a “party elder.”Herman Cain’s presidential campaign has been going like a high school guy’s first time in the back seat after homecoming: It started off with a lot of enthusiasm but petered out really quickly. Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, wowed audiences at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February and at the first debate in May. He then jumped to the top of the polls for many of the same reasons as Donald Trump and the “Rent Is Too Damn High” guy: He has a lot of personality, and he is (refreshingly) not a politician. However, even GOP primary voters realized Cain is too far out there to beat Barack Obama, the other “black American” in the race.Cain has made a number of racist statements about Muslims, saying that he was “uncomfortable” when he found out his surgeon was a Muslim and that he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. Even though he appears to have honestly and sincerely apologized, you have to wonder what this says about his character.Cain is also a fierce advocate for the so-called Fair Tax, a position which, surprisingly, has never been a big winner in a primary. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to turn it into law since he’s suggested that bills should only be three pages long. The list goes on and on. Cain was completely ignorant of what the Palestinian right of return is and decided he supports it; Cain’s foreign policy on Afghanistan amounts to planning to ask the generals what to do; Cain favorably called the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare “a voucher plan.” You just can’t make this stuff up.Cain still causes hard-core activists to get aroused — look at his win Saturday in the Florida “President 5” Straw Poll. But even as they cast their vote, activists acknowledge the Hermanator will not be winning the nomination. What a pity for Cain. The night started out with so much promise.