Freedom to Game: Reply to Jared Blackford's post

Violence is nothing new. When I read Jared Blackford's post on the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a law banning the sale of violent videos to children under 18, I couldn't help but think that the justices knew waht they were saying. It's very easy to take the Jared's position on this subject and "protect the children" is an excellent flag to rally around, but does the virtual world really have a bearing on reality? He claims that because of video games, kids  "lose their temper over the littlest thing", but there are other factors to consider when remarking on a population's personality change. A great number of social scientists have noticed that narcissism has been on the rise in America, a trait associate with short tempers due to a feeling of entitlement which is not satisfied as often as narcissistic believe. The fact is, we aren't all behavioral psychologists, and while it might seem intuitive to link violent video games to violence, there isn't one. While pathos based arguments like Jared's "I coulden't believe how it could change his mind, just killing everyone" might sound convincing at first, people like Texas A&M professor Christopher Ferguson have been been conducting research proving that there isn't any link between video games and violence. It just seems wrong to me to treat this as an ethical debate to be discussed with anecdotes when there are specialists in the subjects giving us empirical evidence to help form our opinions.

Furthermore, from a constitutional standpoint, video games deserve the first amendment protections as any other form of media, and just like movies already have systems in place to prevent children from accessing mature content. Ultimately it is up to parents to decide what their kids should be able to play with, and as someone who grew up with violent video games and has neither a temper nor intentions on killing anything, I say: keep it that way

The Drug War; from Juarez to Congress

When Nixon first brought America into the War on Drugs,  it was with an idealistic drive that he believed we could cure society of this perceived evil. 40 years and a 10 presidents later, we might as well still be at the drawing board. While Cocaine and hard drug use has marginally diminished, the american public is beginning to resent the de-facto draft against marijuana. In many ways, we've turned into our own worse enemies in this front. But this is a war of many fronts, and the much, much, MUCH bigger problem lies at the source: Mexico

While we squabble over whether drugs are immoral, ponder on whether the government should have a right to tell you what to put in your body, and forecast the economic impact of legalization, over 5000 people have died from murder alone in the last 5 years on Mexican soil. Mexico has overtaken Colombia in murder per capita (TIME, Jully 11 2011), and Mexican gangs have grown to monstrous proportions because of drug money. The Police force has grown so corrupt it is now essentially preliminary training for gang membership, and what have we done to help? We've given money, but the root of the problem lies much deeper than that, and who knows how much of that money is used for the opposite purpose than which it was sent.

President Calderon has made it clear that Mexico is in a state of emergency, and has explicitly asked the U.S to legalize marijuana for the sake of his country. With public support approaching majority for the idea, an overcrowded prison system, and the lives of thousands of innocent Mexicans at stake, it seems ridiculous that we cling to our sense of moral purity and keep the drug illegal. Now don't get me wrong, I have no intention on turning this blog post into a Marijuana legalization ad, but as of late congress has been having the tendency of applying broad principles to highly delicate situations of tremendous importance (Just look at the republican's staunch refusal to even mildly raise taxes in the budget ceiling debate).  We have always seen ourselves as the protector of democracy across the world, and this current drug war is threatening one of the world's largest democracies while we stand there and feed money to the problem. Congress must act quickly and decisively, and we can do this in two ways: direct and indirect. The indirect way is the aforementioned legalization of marijuana, but for this problem to truly be solved we also need direct military confrontation.

Our current war on terror is also moving at an immeasurably slow pace,  as most wars on abstract concepts tend to do. What I suggest is to move over much of the funds on this monetary sinkhole to protect the people of Mexico against a much closer opponent, taking a direct stance against this problem. This Mexican bloodbath must come to an end, lest it makes its way across the bathroom floor.

Reply to Alec Hubble's Nuclear Energy post

you make a really good case about nuclear energy with this blog, and pretty much address every aspect of safety concern people have about it. 
However, I think its important you address whether you see nuclear energy as a short or long term energy source. 

A lot of nuclear energy advocates do simply suggest it as a stepping stone to renewable energy, but you seem simply to suggest it as our main source. something to consider is that both renewable and nuclear energy are inefficiency (sub 50%) at converting gathered energy into usable electricity, but are both constantly improving. Now I remember hearing a Bill Gates ted talk about how close we were to being able to profitably recycle nuclear waste to provide additional energy, and I think that instead of trying to expand the current nuclear programs a lot we should do so only moderately but invest heavily on developing "nuclear recycling" (there's a real term for it out there somewhere, I just don't know it. 

I'm not saying this tangentially, I just think that resources spent advocating the growth of nuclear energy would be better spent advocating its technological advancement. Ultimately the threat of overrunning the world with nuclear waste is going to have to be addressed with the same urgency that Co2 emissions are today, So instead of finding ourselves in a similar situation from today in 100 years I think we should try to juse used a more refined nuclear program as a stepping stone to practical global renewable energy. 

Great blog though, I like your rhetoric and the flow of your arguments

The Debt Ceiling: A Congressional Centrifuge

For the pass month congress and the president have been fiercely debating a new budget to justify raising the debt ceiling and preventing America’s first debt default.  With no major election for the next 16 months, you would think that congressmen would look past their careers in the face of impending crises. You would be wrong.  Republicans and Democrats have grown increasingly polarized, the former showing an unprecedented amount of stubbornness. When senate minority leader Mitch McConnell proposed a reasonable centrist budget that gathered presidential, as well as bipartisan, approval, house majority leader Eric Cantor called on his party members to reject the bill for its concessions. Instead the Ryan budget and the GOP’s “Cut, Cap, and Balance” legislation are the ones being advanced, bills that raise not a single tax but more or less dismantle Medicare and Medicaid.

                                                 

To raise revenue or lower spending; that is the question.

Despite how different these two concepts seem, the end result for both is a lot more similar to the average than congress would have you believe. They both raise the price of living; only taxes spread the burden across the entire population, while spending cuts in social security programs are disproportionately detrimental to the poor. In a country where the income gap has been steadily growing and the continued bush era tax cuts have prevented the elite from feeling the impact of the damage they dealt the global economy in 2008, it seems ridiculous for Republicans to be so vehemently opposed to tax rate increases.  As college education, the strongest income booster available, becomes ever more expensive, the income gap problem is compounded and perpetuated to the point where America is starting to lose its famed social mobility that is the essence of the “American Dream”.

While its reasonable that politicians, who get most of their funding from wealthy donors and lobbies, should have a preference for the rich slightly above the threshold of common sense, the fact that a Majority of Republicans are not willing to compromise with budget policies really makes you wonder whether they care about the country at all.  Clinging to Reagonomics like captains of a sinking ship, Republicans are spreading the wreckage to the U.S’ hull and if they don’t plug up the hole soon, a much bigger ship will soon be underwater.

The Education Business

In Inojit’s post on mypolitikal.com, featured in My Direct Democracy, we are shown a voice in the debate over education reform; specifically high-level education. Inojit begins by explaining a bill proposed by the department of Education, suggesting cutting funding on for-profit colleges with a 65% rate of student debt default and with loan payments exceeding 30% of the student’s income.  By throwing out these statistics early on, the audience is presented with neutral, yet unilateral, facts that lead the reader into coming to his/her own conclusion of the subject.  When Inojit throws out his first opinion that “those are some pretty lenient conditions”, the reader finds it as easy to agree with him as to agree with himself.  He further expands this logic by pointing out the obvious, that these schools are a failure, and adds credibility to himself as a bastion of common sense.

What strikes me about this blog is that it shows one of the finer, but important nonetheless, details of the hotly contested budget wars going on, and absurdity of many house decisions. For-profit colleges were able to get substantial support from the Republican Party, and Inojit uses this information to show how vital money is in the legislative process.  Republicans, who have endorsed cutting funding for community colleges and student loans, mysteriously support to continue spending on well lobbied for-profit colleges with abysmal track records.  At this point in the article Inojit oversteps his boundaries. While arguing about the importance of important Pell Grant, he puts words in Republican’s mouths by suggesting that they would rather spend $450 million on jet engines, which is a statement both out of context and unnecessary. 

Despite that heavy handed rhetoric, Inojit backs up the rest of his arguments clear cut logic and evidence. After showing the increasingly tough financial situation for college students, he suggests the next logic step: community college. Postured as a last refuge, community colleges seem like the most reasonable thing to funnel funding into. That is why it is so devastating when Inojit reveals that Republicans rejected a student loan reform that cut community college funding from 10 billion to 2 billion; not because it devastated the college’s budget but because it didn’t do so enough.  The author ends the article on a positive note, reminding the reader that the for-profit college reform will do good to students, but also that there is a long road ahead of us in terms of educational reform.

Kicking the employment can('t)

Paul Krugman is a well respected member of the NY times for good reason; hes sharp, concise, and convincing. In his New York Times job creation op-ed, Krugman realizes it's time to stop beating around the bush when it comes to the economy. He argues that job creation, while being desperately needed and plausibly implemented, has been ignored for too long and the excuses for doing so are weak.

Like any good author of an editorial, Krugman knows that you can't attack your opponent without making it clear you understand his point. He argues that politicians are being "destructively passive" and ignoring the perceived "short-term" problem of unemployment as it slowly spirals out of control, but also offers the 4 most common counterarguments to that. In showing these well-known arguments in their simplest form, Krugman really reveals what their roots are: procrastination, fear, resignation and being downright delusional. He proceeds to dismantle these arguments one at a time, and by the time he is done they all seem awfully weak considering what is at stake with the topic.

I particularly like Krugman's response to the "we already tried stimulus money, look where it got us" argument. not afraid of diving into statistics, he shows how inefficiently the money was spent and how in reality almost none of it got spent on job creation. I for one was surprised at the apparently sudden rise in unemployment, but after reading this editorial I feel stupid for not having anticipated it in the first place. Nothing has been done to aid the job market, and continuing this policy can only succeed in delaying the depression that loomed so heavily over our heads just a few years ago.

The same stagnancy in decision making that I discussed last week with the debt-ceiling can be seen in all sectors of American politics, and Paul Krugman writes an excellent article denouncing this. He knows that we can easily overcome our doom, but the biggest challenge is to break the status-quo and not give in to the temptation of sitting back and watching it all unfold.

Debt defaulting: Will primary politics supersede common sense?

The United States' economic situation is dubious at best, and anyone will agree that we are in a desperate need of shrewd financial decisions to steer it from catastrophe.  NPR's recent coverage of a debt ceiling debate outlines the complexity of this situation and reminds us that there's no Washington without politics. It's really interesting to see how lawmakers stubbornly dig in their heels at the face of critical legislation, and the article gives you a really good perspective into the politician's heads. It quotes GOP strategist John Feehery on the simple truth that for both sides, policy becomes a question of how it will affect their primaries. Trying to simultaneously think of how to please constituents and provide a viable solution to the problem is a very demanding task, and in an effort to fulfill the former of these goals any attempt at conciliation oftentimes just goes out the window.

President Obama is having a very tough time balancing these two apparently conflicting goals, and the article shows how difficult it for him to keep public support an opposition party willing to work together. It just makes me really concerned how recently every debate has turned fierce and how polarized our government has become, but just as the ozone crises brought the U.S and the U.S.S.R together, hopefully an economic one will spark bipartisanship