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(12/08/09 2:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Global leaders and aid organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are perfectly justified in their persistent reluctance to offer aid to the government of Zimbabwe, despite that country’s recent improvements in its human and political rights records.Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai – who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his willingness to work as Prime Minister for the President who has had him beaten to near death on more than one occasion – has been touring global capitals in an attempt to drum up confidence in the new power-sharing government in Zimbabwe, including meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier this year. Despite these meetings, few governments have committed any aid to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean economy has completely collapsed, largely because of the abject mismanagement during the 29-year reign of autocratic President Robert Mugabe, and Zimbabwe is in real danger of becoming a failed state. Zimbabwe is absolutely desperate for foreign aid, and will need foreign investment to get back on the road to recovery. Despite President Mugabe’s unprecedented agreement to work with Tsvangirai, his political nemesis, there have still been consistent abuses of human and political rights and the government remains largely corrupt. While these abuses persist, foreign donors should remain wary of sending aid to Zimbabwe. Mugabe has harassed important members of the opposition, and has even had prominent members of his own Cabinet that were appointed by Tsvangirai arrested on trumped-up charges of treason (like the Agriculture Minister, Roy Bennett), prompting Tsvangirai’s party to withdraw from meeting with Cabinet members of Mugabe’s party for some time. Corruption in Zimbabwe has improved under Tsvangirai’s short rule, but it nonetheless remains widespread. Transparency International, an organization which rates countries’ corruption levels, improved their rating of Zimbabwe under Tsvangirai, but the nation still ranks 146th out of 180 nations. And late last year, it was reported that the Zimbabwean government had spent $7.3 million in aid money donated to fight AIDS on other things and has refused to return the money or to specify what the money was spent on. When funds are donated to Zimbabwe, they first have to pass through the hands of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which Mugabe controls. Senior officials report that the money often is significantly delayed there or never reaches its intended target at all, simply disappearing – likely into the hands of one of Mugabe’s cronies. It is impossible to trust a government with donated funds when it has consistently stolen donated money. In sum, the reluctance of foreign leaders to trust Zimbabwe’s government with donated funds, despite the good intentions of the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and because of the bad intentions of the more powerful President, Robert Mugabe, is perfectly justified. Foreign leaders and aid organizations should not trust Mugabe to spend their money wisely, and more concrete improvements in Zimbabwe’s corruption and political rights situation must precede the movement of significant funds to Zimbabwe.
(12/01/09 2:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s the holiday season and winter is fast approaching. I think now would be the best time to attempt to teach all of IU’s sorority members a brief but extremely crucial fashion lesson: Leggings, like underwear, are not pants and should never, ever be mistaken for a sufficient covering of your nether regions. They are not, and never will they be, pants. This will probably come as a shock to many of the girls (and the occasional confused male) who wear leggings as pants thinking mistakenly that by so doing they’re being fashion forward. But it’s a necessary one, for the sake of the rest of us. As a homosexual, you see, I am not licensed to, nor do I wish to see, your business. I have a feeling I share that opinion with the majority of people, gay or not. Unfortunately, many girls either incorrectly assume that the whole world wants to see their genitalia (that rule, as everyone should know, only holds true inside the confines of a fraternity or sleazy bar), or they are completely unaware that the entire campus is now being exposed to their special areas. This is quite unfortunate, as at least 50 percent of the people wearing tights as pants are people that should not be doing so even in the laughable make-believe world where wearing tights as pants is fashionable (let me be clear in case you haven’t gotten the point yet: it’s not – at all – fashionable). Leggings were not intended to be worn as if they were sufficient coverings for your legs; instead, they were intended to be worn under something else. They are not stand-alone items, you see. I suggest that you find some nice jeans or maybe even some (shock!) real pants. I guarantee you that you’ll be warmer this winter, and you’ll take a huge step in improving sorority-human relations on campus. But the point goes deeper than that – even if the entire world did, in fact, want to see your business, you shouldn’t just go flailing it about like you do when wearing leggings as pants. To do so strongly suggests to most onlookers an uncommonly high level of vanity and narcissism – neither of which, in case you didn’t know, are very appealing qualities. So please, this holiday season, spare the rest of campus the annual pain of unsolicited visual exposure to every physical contour beneath your waistline; it would be extremely helpful of you to please find something else to wear with your Uggs and North Face.
(11/17/09 1:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about-faced from her previous demand that the construction of new settlements in the West Bank be completely frozen, praising the moderate slow down in the build up of Israeli settlements by hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “unprecedented” progress. That statement was a slap in the face to the Palestinian people and their Arab allies. It is estimated by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics that 295,380 Israeli settlers live in Palestinian territory in the West Bank, not including many more living across the Palestinian border in East Jerusalem. Unfortunately, after a long series of wrongs committed by both sides in this ridiculously long-running conflict, most of the territory originally dedicated to the Palestinians is now owned by Israel. In addition to this territory occupied after the 1949 Armistice, the state of Israel exerts direct and exclusive administrative control over 60 percent of the territory of the West Bank and exercises limited control over an additional 21 percent. This means that Israel has exclusive or partial administrative control over 84 percent of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, areas including almost half of the population of the territory. Forty percent of the West Bank is completely inaccessible to Palestinians. These burdensome restrictions on free movement within the Palestinians’ own territory have gravely affected the economy of the West Bank and have made access to health care, educational opportunities and other public services incredibly difficult or even completely impossible. Additionally, acts of violence in the West Bank between settlers and Palestinians disproportionately affect Palestinians. According to data from the United Nations, in the first 10 months of 2008, 290 incidents were recorded of violent acts by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. Just 12 attacks by Palestinians against Israelis in the West Bank were recorded during the same period. If the U.S. really wants to rebuild its completely tattered relationship with the Muslim world, as this administration has rightfully asserted that it should, this is the last way to go about doing it. There is no other issue in the world that creates more distance between the U.S. and the Muslim world than our stubbornly blind support for the state of Israel. We should continue to strongly support Israel’s existence, encourage Arab states to normalize relations with it and speak out when it is unfairly attacked. But we should never, ever offer blind and unconditional support for the actions of any nation – especially when the consequences are so negative. If the U.S. wants to improve its relations with the Muslim world, it has to start with Palestine. Israeli improvements in the settlement situation are inadequate, and official U.S. policy ought to reflect that.
(11/10/09 1:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Women are sorely underrepresented in positions of power and authority around the world. There is in only one nation on Earth, Rwanda, that has more women represented in government than men. In every single other government on the globe there are more men making government decisions than women. Is this a problem? I think so. Let me be clear: My position is not that women are somehow inherently better than men at governing but that the participation of women (or any group) in politics and governmental decision-making bodies should be at least roughly proportional to their percentage of the population. Right now, the level of representation isn’t even close. Among the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the median percentage of female members of parliament (MPs) is only 23 percent. This is especially shocking considering that the OECD is composed of thirty of the richest and most “developed” Western nations around the world (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Japan and Germany, among others). The average figure for all nations is even lower, at only 18.5 percent. And the United States is certainly no exception. Since the U.S. Senate was founded, for example, there have been 1,913 US Senators. Only 38 (less than 2 percent) of them have been women. This startling lack of women in positions of authority reflects the rampant institutionalized sexism that exists in nations across the world, including the nations of the supposedly “developed” and enlightened West. In order to get past this and move toward a more equal representation of women in politics, the way people think about equality and women’s rights must fundamentally change. Millions of women around the world live under (often brutally) repressive regimes and belief systems which limit their ability to function as normal human beings, let alone actively engage in political life. In Saudi Arabia, for example, women are not allowed to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male relative nor are they allowed to vote or drive. The elimination of these types of regimes and the belief systems that affirm them is an absolutely key first step to the increased representation of women in politics and government. Whatever the solution may be, it is perfectly clear to me that women making up only 18.5 percent of the world’s legislators is a problem that needs to be addressed by political leaders around the globe.
(11/03/09 3:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Americans pay more out-of-pocket college expenses than almost any country on Earth. So how is it that students in France and Denmark, among others, go to school without paying a dime? Because their governments work like they’re supposed to. But college doesn’t have to cost anything out-of-pocket here, either. If the state government would simply raise the state sales tax 1.93 percent, every single student in Indiana could go to college without paying a dime. It’s as simple as that. And because I’m a nerd, I can prove it. Indiana has approximately 160,000 undergraduate students attending its public universities. Based on the cost of attending IU, I’ve estimated that $15,000 would more than cover the costs of one year of school at all of these schools for Indiana residents, with plenty of wiggle-room left over. If the state guaranteed a maximum of $15,000 to each of Indiana’s graduating seniors, it would cost the state $2.4 billion annually, or 4.6 percent of the state’s current budget, to fulfill the guarantee. Based on the expected generated revenue, by raising the state sales tax – currently set at 7 percent for counties outside of the Indianapolis metro-area – to 8.93 percent, the state would gain an extra $4.8 billion every two years on top of the current $12.57 billion it currently earns from sales tax revenue (a 27 percent increase). Because the state budget covers two years, dividing the $4.8 billion figure in half will get you the exact amount necessary to give every Indiana high school student who matriculates to a public university in Indiana $15,000 per year to cover all college expenses – namely, $2.4 billion (as it was calculated above). It’s as simple as that. Pay two more cents on every dollar’s worth of goods you purchase in the Hoosier state and you can go to college for free. Think that might motivate more kids to go to college? I certainly do. A university education is our right. I know, I know, in the United States we pay for our rights, like how we pay for our right not to die when we have medical problems, or how we pay for our right to get a free public high school education by buying high school textbooks. But it shouldn’t be that way, and it isn’t that way in the rest of the world. After all, if France can do it, then so can we. It is morally wrong that we have to bury ourselves in mountains of debt with usurious interest rates in order to pay for something that should and could easily be free. You shouldn’t have to pay to be here; the only reason you are is because your government has abdicated its responsibilities.
(10/27/09 1:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The President campaigned for extending equality for all Americans. While some of his ideas were fundamentally flawed even then – like his refusal to support same-sex marriage – I am realistic enough to admit that for now, no viable candidate for the presidency can be in favor of same-sex marriage and win. He did, however, pledge to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the rule that prohibits gay people from openly serving in the military, as well as the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law that doesn’t require states to recognize the gay marriages performed in other states where it is legal. Far from doing this, the President has actually instructed federal attorneys to support the Defense of Marriage Act in a court case suing the federal government over its constitutionality and has done nothing to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that was implemented in the 1990s. Needless to say, this is exactly the opposite of the progress that Obama promised less than a year ago. Since the implementation of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 1994, more than 13,500 gay men and women have been unfairly discharged from the military. The University of California estimates that the cost of retraining replacements for the discharged soldiers has been at least $190.5 million. At least 59 critically-needed Arabic and Farsi linguists have been discharged. So what, exactly, is the justification for all of this? So that straight soldiers won’t feel queasy or uneasy when they see how well-decorated their neighbor’s bunk is? We don’t need to actually protect them from things like, you know, bullets or bombs. Keeping them from having to deal with diversity is close enough. This assertion that the military couldn’t handle having gays is not only absurd, but completely untrue. According to a Zogby poll from December of 2006, 64 percent of soldiers report that they do not think that having openly gay soldiers in their unit would negatively impact them, and only 37 percent of soldiers are against the idea of allowing gays to openly serve. And to top it all off, dozens of prominent military leaders have come out (pun intended) in favor of lifting the ban, including retired general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John M. Shalikashvili, and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, all Republicans. So if the military isn’t even against it, why haven’t politicians repealed it yet? Do they fear the wrath of voters in the religious right? If so, they have nothing to fear. Even majorities of weekly churchgoers (60 percent), conservatives (58 percent) and Republicans (58 percent) favor outright repeal of this discriminatory and unjustifiable policy. When the religious right is more gay-friendly than the Democrats in power, something is seriously wrong.
(10/20/09 12:56am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>With the first international dialogue in years about the Iranian uranium enrichment program opening next week, the troubled relationship between Iran and the West is at an important crossroads. After years of open hostility between both sides, a new dialogue is being opened. This is a golden opportunity to decrease tension that cannot be missed. In order to succeed, Americans need to understand a few things about Iran.An Iran armed with a nuclear weapon would be bad, but not nearly as bad as most Americans think. It is likely that there is something fishy going on with Iran’s nuclear program, but there is absolutely no proof of this that we know of. There is a strong possibility that Iran is working toward nuclear capability, but it is unlikely that they will actually develop a bomb. A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the United States, but only indirectly. Iran is perhaps the country most misunderstood and misrepresented by the American public, the vast majority of whom write it off as simply another crackpot Arab dictatorship. Besides being completely untrue, the situation is far more complex than that. A history lesson for most Americans would go a long way toward assuaging the tensions between our two (similar) nations. The comparisons that many Americans draw between Iran and the Arab world are almost entirely superficial. Iranians are, in fact, not even Arab; they’re Persian. They do not speak Arabic, but a completely unrelated and far older language called Farsi. They do not practice Sunni Islam, as the vast majority of the Arab world does, but are mostly Shia. Iran’s history and culture are far older and – many Iranians believe – more sophisticated than that originating in Arabia, which some Iranians look down upon. Iran has, at best, a suspicious and distant relationship with its Arab neighbors. The Iranian population is immensely proud of Iran’s history and past accomplishments, but there is a very palpable sentiment among most Iranians that the world has forgotten their past glory and is ignoring their influence, which is perceived as an enormous affront by most Iranians. A nuclear program for Iran is just a means to an end: Iran is vastly more concerned about regaining its lost influence and glory than it is about developing nuclear weapons. This is why several scholars, including Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a game theorist who analyzes data to predict future events in foreign affairs (the CIA says he’s 90 percent accurate, twice the accuracy rate of the CIA’s analysts), thinks Iran will almost certainly come incredibly close to making a bomb, but will then back off. They’re just trying to show us that they can make a bomb – they don’t actually want to use one. Which is why most Americans overreact about an Iranian nuclear program. Iran is not a crackpot dictatorship hell-bent on American and European destruction. It actually has one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. Iran is concerned not with wreaking havoc but with building prestige. They want respect, not violence. Let’s start giving them a little.
(10/13/09 4:16am)
Here’s a novel idea: Nobel Prizes should be given to people after they have done things – not before.
(10/13/09 3:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“The Office” sucks. And this is all the more unfortunate because it used to be one of the best shows on TV. Instead of being a poignant – and more importantly, funny – commentary on the absurdity of the modern workplace, it has disintegrated into an artless, endless romantic comedy focusing on the relationship between two uninteresting and increasingly self-righteous coworkers, Jim and Pam. When their never-ending game of cat-and-mouse started somewhere way back in season two, it was a kind of cute distraction from what the show was supposed to be about: making fun of how America goes to work. Well, I’m here to inform you of what all die-hard fans of the original seasons of the American “Office” already know: The Jim and Pam saga has gotten unreasonably corny. I’m tired of the show focusing on Pam’s spineless mousiness and Jim’s complacent apathy and laziness. Enough with the furtive glances back and forth across the office. Enough with the shared smug smirks with each other about how stupid their fellow coworkers are. We don’t care. How the show’s main protagonists switched from Steve Carell’s character to two nobody actors, I don’t know. Perhaps it was an attempt to make the characters of the show more likeable. If so, the producers need to stop it; half the point of the show is that Americans spend vast amounts of time at their workplace with people that they have nothing in common with and really can’t stand. It’s fine if they end up being likeable in the end, but that shouldn’t be the goal of the show. Personally, I wouldn’t hang out with any of the show’s characters, except for maybe Creed, who should probably have a show of his own. The writers and producers need to stop trying to make us like the characters just for the sake of humanizing them, because they clearly fail at that.What makes “The Office” so great is that it shows us how modern office work isn’t about what the producers have tried to make it; rather, the modern workplace is often dehumanizing and bizarre. “The Office” should get back to being about this. The irony of this situation is that it was the Jim-Pam relationship that made the show so popular and successful with a widespread audience, but at this point it has spiralled completely out of control and is now threatening the show’s future. If the producers want “The Office” to stay one of the most popular shows on television, they need to quickly conclude this unfortunate saga and bring the show back to the roots we love. For humor’s sake, kill Jim and Pam. Or at least make them less annoyingly central to the plot of what once was the best show on TV.
(10/06/09 1:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Socialism. There exists no other word in the English language that provokes as much irrational fear in the hearts and minds of Americans as fast as this one does. And yet whenever I attempt to press someone on why, exactly, they are so scared, so absolutely petrified, of socialism, the only response I get is either a blank stare or incredulous anger, always coupled with the inevitable vague reference to the Soviet Union. After all, don’t I understand what socialism means?! I’m aware that the geography skills of most Americans are utterly nonexistent, but apparently no one has ever heard of Scandinavia, where socialism – or something very similar to it – has been operating vibrantly and arguably more successfully than capitalism in some of the world’s most affluent countries for decades. Take Sweden, for example.Sweden has what many people would call at least a substantially socialist economy. The government covers 97 percent of all health care costs, provides 88 percent of the funds for the cost of all education expenses (which makes education completely free until graduate school, at which point it becomes only mostly paid for by the government), pays 89 percent of the cost of daycare and guarantees more than a year of paternity leave at 80 percent pay, among other clearly communist notions.According to the American conception of socialism, Sweden should be a desolate wasteland filled with mindless communist zombies, right? After all, they give poor people things after transferring money from people who can afford it (gasp!). Wrong. Sweden tops almost every list of state progress, including being ranked as the least corrupt and the most democratic nation on Earth, not to mention ranking in the top 15 percent for quality of life, GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (a measure of citizen happiness and personal development) and life expectancy – exactly the sorts of things that Americans might offer as examples of what are supposedly dismally lacking in any given socialist economy. Where do they get the money to pay for this? They have some of the highest taxes in the world. For some this may be a deal breaker. As for me – I’ll take Scandinavian concern for the well-being of all instead of American corporate greed and self-interest any day. My grandfather never misses an opportunity to tell me that while I might think I’m a socialist now, I “wouldn’t make it a day in a real socialist economy!” I’m here to tell him that I’ll take that bet if he’ll buy me a one-way ticket to Stockholm, where there’s free education and an Ikea calling my name.
(09/29/09 2:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>T. Boone Pickens honored IU last week with a lengthier version of the commercial he so graciously broadcast to the entire country recently, leading me once again to ask myself: “Why do I care what a billionaire ex-oil executive senior citizen thinks about anything?” Oh wait, I don’t.Beyond the fact that he’s very, very rich, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about this man that should compel the other 300 million of us to give him one iota of attention. He has absolutely no public policy experience, unless you count lobbying against slaughtering ponies and donating more than $1.5 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (that went well!) as serious contributions to public policy debates.So why do Americans bother to listen to a man who has absolutely no more relevance to any public debate than you or me or Joe the Plumber? We listen because Americans are dense, and are easily distracted by a nice looking guy in a shiny suit, regardless of how crackpot his ideas or how thinly-veiled his personal ambition might be.In the marketplace of public ideas, the rich should not be handed a gold-plated bullhorn with which to trumpet their own opinions; it goes against the fundamentals of democracy.Everyone’s opinions and viewpoints should be given equal weight, and the debate should hinge not on the size of the speaker’s pocketbook but on the merits of their ideas and philosophies.Unfortunately we live in America, so people will continue to mistake any nearly-dead Texan white men with names as ridiculous as T. Boone Pickens as someone worth paying attention to as long as his net worth is higher than theirs.
(09/29/09 2:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Let me preface this by saying that I was a very reluctant supporter of Barack Obama during the general election. I had become heavily involved in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign and was less than enthusiastic – to say the least – about having to vote for a candidate whom I sincerely believed to be frighteningly less qualified in many areas than his opponents. I never drank the Obama Kool-Aid, nor did I ever buy into the messianic personality cult surrounding him, and I have always thought of Obama more as a demagogue than a great leader. So, now that you know a bit about where I’m coming from, I want to tell you that I genuinely believe that change, that over-used word with an ever-elusive definition, has come to America – in one area of policy, at least. No, it’s not in the form of health care, which will still suck even after the Obama administration rams through its completely toothless “reform” bill. And it’s certainly not in torture or security policy, either. In no other area have things stayed more close to the way they were under Bush than in domains like Afghanistan and revealing the contents of torture memos. This administration hasn’t even significantly changed in areas that would be relatively simple, like gay rights. Obama’s White House even continues to actually instruct its lawyers to defend the government from gay couples suing over the Defense of Marriage Act, which Obama pledged not to do when campaigning. So where’s the “change we can believe in?” It’s in foreign policy. In no other area has the Obama administration delivered on its campaign promises like it has on foreign policy, despite the constant (and accurate) reminders during the campaign from Hillary Clinton, John McCain and others that Obama was completely untested in foreign policy. The president has defied all expectations in this area, especially my own. From the results of dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran, the president has shown that his foreign policy acumen was seriously underestimated prior to his election. A perfect example of this are the actions the administration took last week on the foreign stage. After successfully passing a Security Council Resolution aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the number of nuclear weapons, the president stood, with the rest of the world at his back, represented by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy (with German Chancellor Angela Merkel sending her words of support) and gave an assertive and powerful statement revealing that Iran had developed a hitherto unknown secret nuclear processing facility. Within days, Iran conceded the plant’s existence and agreed to welcome international weapons inspectors. And for the first time in recent memory, we have a president who actually seems to be applying something close to a fair share of pressure on both the Palestinians and the Israelis, which – for America, at least – is completely revolutionary. So while Obama – so far, at least – has done a lackluster job in the domestic policy arena, he’s more than making up for it on the world stage.
(09/22/09 3:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s traffic laws killed one of my best friends. Two weeks ago, I received some of the worst news that I have ever had to hear: One of my closest friends, Peter Duong, had been struck and killed by a car in a perfectly preventable incident on Fee Lane. Had the University put some simple safety measures in place beforehand, he may still be alive today. Unfortunately the University didn’t, but perhaps his death can serve as a catalyst for actions to be taken by IU to make campus safer for pedestrians. I never want anyone else to have to experience the pain that his family and friends have had to go through in the past weeks. To achieve that goal, some serious changes need to be made on campus to make it safer for pedestrians and drivers.IU officials should seriously consider the installation of the following safety measures throughout campus to prevent accidents, such as the one that killed Peter, from happening again: (1) Raise the crosswalks. Raised crosswalks are effectively just speed bumps doubling as crosswalks, forcing cars to slow down. They have been shown to decrease accidents an average of 45 percent when installed.(2) Insert flashing pedestrian crossing signs. Under a perverse Indiana state law, pedestrians only have the right of way when these lights are present. Placing them on campus would go a long way in decreasing the likelihood of another incident like the one that killed Peter. (3) Separate the bus stops from the main part of the road. Providing an extra lane for the bus to stop in (e.g. the one at the bus stop at Third and Jordan), allows traffic to continue to move smoothly while allowing pedestrians to see around the bus from the sidewalk. (4) Insert pedestrian traffic lights. Major crosswalks should have either traffic lights or stop signs, which would stop traffic every minute or so to allow for pedestrians to cross the road. (5) Make more crosswalks. IU simply needs to have more basic crosswalks – preferably with all of the above measures. The lacking number of them only encourages pedestrians to cross where there isn’t one, greatly increasing the likelihood of an accident. There is a petition circulating online that advocates for more crosswalks; I strongly encourage everyone to sign it – it’s on Facebook under “Safety for Fee Lane Petition.”I never want anyone else to have to witness their friend’s parents closing their child’s casket. Putting in place the measures that I have outlined here will go a long way in preventing that from happening again. The most tragic part about Peter’s death is that it was completely preventable. Failure to install the safety features that I’ve outlined is a negligent and irresponsible act on IU’s part. If measures such as these are put in place, hopefully no one else on IU’s campus will have to carry their 19-year- old friend’s casket into a church.
(08/26/09 1:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The U.S. Senate is an outdated and undemocratic roadblock to progress that should be eliminated.Originally intended as a mere check on the whims of the House of Representatives (much like the upper house of Parliament is in nearly every other country), the Senate has become arguably the most powerful upper house in any legislature around the globe. The Senate presents an unnecessary step in the legislative process. Nearly every other nation has either no upper house in their legislature or one that is incredibly impotent. Countless states operate in a system that either has no upper house or effectively has no upper house, which lends significant proof that the Senate is entirely unnecessary. The U.S. House of Representatives is perfectly capable of legislating entirely on its own without the approval of the Senate.In addition to being unnecessary, the Senate is inherently undemocratic.The Senate was originally intended to represent the interest of the state governments at the national level. Instead, because of an amendment to the Constitution in the early 20th century, all U.S. senators are elected and represent the people of their respective states. While at first this seems to be more democratic, it actually gives undue disproportionate influence to states with very small populations. Wyoming, with a population of significantly less than 1 million, has the exact same theoretical influence in the Senate as California, with a population substantially larger than many countries.The Senate has also proven to be an incredibly successful roadblock to progress because of archaic rules that effectively require a two-thirds majority on any bill in order for it to pass. This has proven time and time again throughout our country’s history to be a major stumbling block for legislation. Recent examples of this include watering down both the cap-and-trade and health care reform bills.The House often has to tamper down any reforms that it wants to pass in anticipation of having to muster a two-thirds majority in the Senate, significantly slowing the rate of progress. It is perfectly possible for a coalition of Senators representing no more than 19 percent of the population to successfully, and perfectly legally under the existing rules, block a piece of legislation from passing.It is often argued that these obsolete rules help to protect the opinions of the minority of the population. This is true. It goes so far as to give the minority undue influence over the legislative process. The place for protecting minority rights is in the courts through the system of judicial review. Our legal system is perfectly capable of handling challenges to laws that have gone too far, as has been proven in the past.If countless other democratic nations are capable of operating with a very weak or nonexistent upper house of their legislatures, it is perfectly possible for the United States to do so as well. Eliminating the Senate would quicken the legislative process, increase the progressive nature of the U.S. political environment and more accurately represent the opinions and interest of citizens.