November 2011 - Binghamton Review

Truth and Two Staples

November 2011

Binghamton Review

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WHO’S NEXT?

THE SEARCH FOR BINGHAMTON’S PRESIDENT Deer Culling on Campus Broken Government Part II The Tea Party, Pros and Cons Occupy Wall Street Semester Report: The Obama Presidency

Binghamton Review

P.O. Box 6000 BinghamTOn, NY 13902-6000

editor@binghamtonreview.com

Founded 1987 • Volume XXV Number 3 • November 2011

Editor-in-Chief Aaron M. Ricks

Contents:

Managing Editor Mark Soriano Copy Desk Chief Eric Larson

Associate Editors Chris Formisano Ari Greenberg Nick Fondacaro William Obilisundar

Binghamton’s Presidential Search

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Editor Emeritus Rachel Gordon Contributors Will M. Griffin, John Ewing, Nick Valiando, Daniel Rudder, Venanzio Cortes, Michael Hickey, Steven Kwon, Bridgette Cook, Heather Sherman, Daniel Eglovitch, Richard James Secretary Marissa Beldock Patriarchs of the Review Louis W. Leonini Adam Shamah Friends of the Review Dr. Aldo S. Bernardo The Leonini Family Mr. Bob Soltis WA2VCS The Shamah Family The Grynheim Family The Menje Family The Leeds Family The Lombardi Family The Packer Family Mr. Michael O’Connell Binghamton Review is printed by Our Press in Chenango Bridge, NY. We provide the truth; they provide the staples.

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Gaddafi is Dead by Michael Hickey

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Ides of November? by Ryan Maloney

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Multiculturalism, Racism and Stereotypes by Richard James

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Wildlife Management 101 by Nicholas Fondacaro

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Why Don’t We Try Sobriety? by Amelia Whinehaus

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Life in Our Nation’s Capital by Anderson Storms

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Party of Radicals by Mark Soriano

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The Presidential Search by Ari Greenberg

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Broken Government, Part II by Mark Soriano

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Thoughts on “Occupy Wall Street” by Aaron Ricks

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Party of Hope by Nick Valiando

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SEMESTER REPORT: Obama Administration

Departments 3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 4 CAMPUS PRESSWATCH 5 what you missed 18 Broken Government

General Staff Meetings: Every Tuesday at 7pm in UUW-B05

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR I’m a regular reader of the campus newspapers and magazines including the Review. I want to point out that I’ve seen numerous misspellings and typos which is ironic considering you guys always like to expose the errors of other publications.

So word of advice, fix your mistakes instead of talking about others cause you make just as much them. Otherwise, I like reading your articles and thoughts despite the one sided political stance.

Oh and the bit about the tunnel ceiling leak and bucket was very needed. Props to whoever put that in. Just wanted to say Great Job on the October issue of the Review.

- Alvin Trust me, no one notices more mistakes in grammar once the Review has been already sent to the publisher than the editors. We have an A+ copy editing team, but we too can make mistakes mostly through lack of communication between edtiors. We apologize. The more important part is advising us to not to critcize other campus publications. We thought about perhaps toning down the insults of other publications, but then we remembered that we are bullies.

Aaron, Just wanted to say Great Job on the October issue of the Review. Especially loved Bridgette Cook’s piece about the tuition protests and walkouts. Really enjoyed reading your two articles as well. Keep up the good work, let the haters hate, and great job as editor.

- Filip Thank you. The haters are going to hate, and we are here to make sure that the Binghamton Review remains the most loved and hated publication on campus.

“To Whomever Wrote ‘The ABC’s of Binghamton,’ as a member of Binghamton’s Zombie-Student Association, I have to say that I feel rather insulted by the way that you described it. Obviously you lack any kind of an understanding about the types of people who play this game. Essentially it’s a tag game.

The group is run by and includes some incredible people. We are strategists, fun-lovers, inventors of impressive Nerf mods, and we’re passionate about what we do. We aren’t ‘nerds,’ and the term is a bit childish in the first place. What is this, high school? I’d appreciate it if you didn’t outright insult a wonderful organization at the university. There are a great number of positive things that could have been said about the group that you denied to mention any of.

P.S. Furthermore, we resent being called a group of virgins.

Apparently you’d be surprised. Really surprised. P.S.S. I have a feeling that you’ll really regret having said what you did when you see our fundraiser.”

- Anna No one cares. Our publication has no underlying animosity towards your organization. It is just an unfortunate coincidence that your group’s name starts with a “Z.” The only reason we continued to mention your group after our September issue is because we found your group’s over-reaction to our brief snippet quite entertaining.

If you are truly looking for a valid place to direct your wellwarranted anger, look no further than Pipe Dream’s extensive editorial condemning your group’s practices. Now tell us, who is the “shit rag” now?

As for group’s apparent rampant sexual indecency, please keep your necrophelic fetishes to yourself, this is a wholsome publication.

Make no mistake, this is by no means an apology.

Tell us what you think!

Direct letters to editor@binghamtonreview.com.

Our Mission Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run periodical of conservative thought at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives.

In that spirit, we seek to promote the free exchange of ideas and offer an alternative viewpoint not normally found on our predominately liberal campus. It is our duty to expose the warped ideology of political correctness that dominates this university.

We stand against tyranny in all its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the principles set forth in this country’s Declaration of Independence and seek to preserve the fundamental tenets of Western civilization. Finally, we understand that a moral order is a necessary component of any civilized society. We strive to inform, engage, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission. www.binghamtonreview.com

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CPampus resswatch

by The Editors Experimental Media Organization November 13, 2011 “E.M.O’s reaction to a Pipe Dream article on deer culling, as posted on the bulletin board outside their office.”

2009 yielding 45-125 pounds of venison each. Many families use their deer harvest to supplement their food budgets. See page 10 for the real story.

E.M.O demonstrates how hippies from the city think they know and understand the forest more than the people who live there and are directly affected the health of the forest…

Prospect October 11, 2011 “We are All the 99%”

Above the clipping of the article is the Head Line “Yet Another Wonderful Idea” It is clearly meant to be sarcastic but they will go on to show their complete ignorance of the issue.

They have highlighted a section that states “The deer population on campus is far greater than the environment can handle.”

E.M.O seems to be calling that fact into question. To answer them, YES a population of animals can reproduce to the point where they exceed the carrying capacity of their habitat, thus starving to death. Since there are too few natural predators in this area, humans are left to manage their populations.

The article then goes on to say “The deer meat will be donated to local food pantries, such as CHOW.” E.M.O shows its blissful ignorance by commenting with “Who eats deer?”

Millions of Americans consume venison every year. Many people prefer venison over beef because it is more tender and leaner than beef. In New York State alone there were around 222,800 deer harvested in 4

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Allie Carmichael has fun with numbers...

“We are All the 99%” Wait, what? This means that everyone is part of the 99%, so there is no one else to be protesting. Ms. Carmichael presents a world where 99=100. Perhaps Prospect advocates a world similar to Orwell’s 1984, where 2+2=5. “you are part of the 99 percent of the population that does not hold a majority of this country’s wealth.”

This is just false. The highest 1% of income earners do not control 50%+ of the wealth. Statements like this only discredit the message of the occupiers.

“People are not unemployed because they are lazy or ignorant. They are unemployed because the bankers and CEOs that caused the recession got bailed out while the rest of us got laid off.”

We agree, laziness is not a cause of unemployement in most cases. However, Mr. Carmichael’s statement is not logical. People are not unemployed because of the Wall Street bailouts, and bankers and CEOs did not cause the recession.

Pipe Dream October 18, 2011 “Defining ‘Progressivism’” Jeff Schwartz does not define ‘progressivism,’ and uses the word “certainly” three times without ever seeming too certain...

“They [Occupy Wall Street Protesters] have also provided us with a dignified form of political theater” Maybe instead of endeavoring to define “progressivism” Mr. Schwartz should have given us his definition of “dignified form of political theater.”

“Can we merely rely on the checks and balances of our current constitutional framework to effectively deter expansive powers of corporations” Checks and balances in the constitution only protect against branches of government becoming too powerful. Last time we checked, Walmart didn’t have a seat in Congress.

“Hopefully ‘progressivism,’... can provide an answer. It already seems to represent the efforts of ‘the 99 percent,’ and can hopefully deter the possibility of a second gilded age.”

We still have no idea what ‘progressivism’ means, Mr. Schwartz never defined it for us.

November 2011

WHAT you missed The Voting Dead

Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of Steve Jobs, announced that the founder of Apple, Inc. would have voted for President Obama in the upcoming election. This led to what has been called the “Scramble for Deaceased Endorsers,” with Mitt Romney claiming Ronald Reagan, Rick Perry claiming George Washington, and Herman Cain claiming a slice of pizza he ate in 1995.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Russia’s former president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced his intentions to return as president in 2012.

Putin’s return is apparently part of a deal going back to 2007 with current president Dmitry Medvedev, who will take over as prime minister. Once in office, Putin will be able to remain president until 2024, thanks to constitutional changes extending terms from four to six years. Putin announced plans for his upcoming presidency, including the creation of a Eurasian Union binding former Soviet countries closer together, the collectivization of Russian agriculture, and the reestablishment of “vintage” prisons in Siberia.

Alcoholic Painters

Authors of a new biography of Vincent van Gogh, titled Van Gogh: The Life, claimed that the Dutch painter did not commit suicide, as was previously assumed.

Instead, van Gogh was accidentally shot by two teenage boys while playing cowboys with them, after the three had gotten drunk.

This revelation brings up many new issues, chief among them the question of why van Gogh was drunkenly playing cowboys with teenage boys. Shortly after the book’s release, a biography of Julius Caesar was published, contending that the dictator was not killed by Roman senators, but instead choked to death on a pretzel. www.binghamtonreview.com

1 = 1000

On October 18th, imprisoned Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been captured

by Hamas forces in 2006, was released. As part of a plan between Israel and Hamas, Shalit was returned in exchange for over one thousand Palestinian prisoners. In a speech shortly after his return to Israel, Shalit announced “it is important to remember that every human life is priceless; mine just happens to be one thousand times more priceless as yours.”

Insert “Wizard of Oz” Cliche

On October 19th, Ohio farmer Terry Thompson was found dead, having shot himself after releasing 56 exotic animals into the rural Ohio countryside. Among the animals released were lions, bears, tigers and a monkey infected with herpes.

An FBI investigation discovered that the release, previously thought to have been an accident, was actually a plot by Iranian officials to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. Terry Thompson, formerly Ehbrahim Jahangir of Tehran, had been cultivating the animals for years, training them to flee to Washington D.C. and murder the ambassador, and apparently committed ritual suicide after releasing the animals. Fortunately, Ohio police gunned down all 56 creatures within hours of discovering the plot.

Surprise!

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise visit to Libya and Afghanistan to inspect progress toward democratization, the status of human rights, and as a show of support to both regimes. Upon her arrival at the presidential palace in Kabul, Clinton was shocked to find Afghan president Hamid Karzai holding a pool party with top level members of Al-Qaeda.

When confronted about the scene, Karzai pretended not to speak English and covered

his ears with his hands. Afghan officials later announced that the Karzai had not been expecting Clinton to stop by, and that he was simply probing Al-Qaeda for weaknesses.

Birth to a Nation

Carla Bruni, the wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy, gave birth to a baby girl on October 19th. Sources report that although Sarkozy was greatly pleased by the news, he was disappointed that his wife had been pregnant with only one baby, instead of the million voting age French citizens he had desired to help him win his faltering re-election campaign.

Just to be Sure

Colonel Muamar Gaddafi was killed

by Libyan National Transition Council (NTC) forces on October 20th. The NTC’s international allies demanded an autopsy be performed on the former dictator. The results erased all doubt, confirming that Gaddafi died from a bullet wound to his head. This gets added to the list of unneccesary autopsies through history, such as those performed after the deaths of Abraham Lincoln, Marie Antoinette and Jesus.

Occupy Everything

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in September, continued through October, with similar protests spreading to cities across the developed world. An Occupy Binghamton protest sprung up downtown, although it is unclear whether it is aimed at Binghamton’s nonexistent financial sector, Binghamton’s hoards of millionaires, or university students on State Street. The Review is also fairly certain that most of the tents at the occupiers’ compound are empty, and that the whole protest is being run by three sociology graduate students.

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GADDAFI

Gaddafi is Dead

What does this mean for the Arab Spring?

by Michael Hickey

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he recent death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi brings attention to the events occurring in the Middle East, and many may be wondering what has become of the Arab Spring.

While the civil war in Libya has been taking the center stage in the Media’s coverage as of late, very little attention has been given to those other countries which only a few months ago were going through revolutionary changes. It is true that in some of these countries change has been achieved, but perhaps we must take a less optimistic view and instead take a more realistic look at events taking place in Middle East.

The upheaval of the Libyan regime and the death of Gaddafi have been hailed as a victory for the Libyan people and for America’s interests in the region. Here in America, along with those in other Western democracies, always seem to cheer the fall of authoritarian dictatorships in the Middle East. They hope for the spread of democracy and personal freedoms in a region many view as unstable and restricting in the liberty of the people living there. However we must remember that the fall of a leader like Gaddafi will not automatically bring peace or democracy, and that Western intervention tends to exacerbate the problems faced by these countries. Eight years after the start of the Iraq war, many in America seem to have forgotten that toppling a dictator is the easy part. It can take years to bring peace to a war torn region, let alone lay the seeds for a true liberal democracy. While it is true that the situation in Libya is different and we have no US troops 6

Binghamton Review

on the ground, the rebels would not be where they are today without the help of coordinated NATO air support.

Libya has suffered through months of armed struggle, and many factions exist among those armed fighters we call collectively “rebels.” Furthermore, U.S. and NATO involvement however limited, entangles this coalition to the future stability of the government in Libya that will rise to replace the old regime. Politicians and pundits seem optimistic that with Gaddafi’s fall that the new government will live up to the principles we seem to assign to the Arab Spring, though the future of Libya may hold more violence as different groups try to fill the vacuum of power left in Gaddafi’s wake.

With the focus on the events in Libya at the moment, the state of many other protest movements in the region have been pushed to the back of news coverage. While the Arab Spring seemed to affect nearly all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, in most countries the protests have been subdued before or since the end of the summer. Resignations have been made and Cabinet positions have been shuffled, but on the whole the governments of most of these countries remain much as they were before the start of the protests. In Egypt, which was so heavily covered by the Media only a few months ago, little has changed since after the resignation of President Mubarak. Despite the most noble intentions of the protesters, many of whom seem so optimistic themselves that real change was being made, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces has still yet to hold the elections it has promised and remains stubborn in its implementation of reforms.

While Libya is yet to see if elections will be held before the end of the year, the slowdown of the movement in Egypt and the military control of the government still make the implementation of those reforms seem uncertain.

Almost completely absent in the media’s coverage of the Arab Spring is the number of countries where protests continue and where violence had made its mark. In Yemen, where violent protests and riots occurred throughout the summer, President Saleh remains in exile in Saudi Arabia while control of the country remains divided between Islamist militants and opposition forces.

In Syria, the government has instituted a brutal crackdown by the Syrian Army on the civil resistance campaign of the protesters there, leaving over 3,000 dead and many thousands of protesters detained. Other countries like Bahrain and Tunisia, while relatively subdued since the summer, the atmosphere remains tense and the future of their governments remains uncertain.

It should be recognized that real change has occurred in the Middle East as a result of these protests.

The status quo of power, which has remained unchallenged in many of these countries for as long as 30 or 40 years, has now been called in question by the protesters. With the exception of Libya, these protests have occurred and in some places succeeded without western intervention in bringing some reforms and at the very least letting these governments know that they remain accountable to their own people.

But like so many things, the Arab Spring cannot be expected to achieve all that the protesters have set out to accomplish and the media has been optimistically predicting uncertain outcomes. Reforms will take time, and no single movement or series of protests can achieve the lofty aspirations of people long oppressed by these November 2011

IDES

governments. While we should support and hope for reforms and democracy to take root in the Middle East, we should also acknowledge the short time frame of these dramatic changes and that the people of these countries face a long and arduous journey on the road to achieving the ideals of the Arab Spring. B

Ides of November?

Barack Obama, Starring George Clooney

by Ryan Maloney

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efore I begin, yes this is a movie review of sorts. But no it’s not a thesis dissertation designed to lull a professor into a slumber in hopes of the puddle of drool forms an A. I am going to talk about what made this film disturbingly real, and what we as educated Binghamton students can take from a well-crafted film like this.

For all intents and purposes, in The Ides of March, George Clooney is Barack Obama.

Well, a more handsome version of Obama, but that’s a discussion for a “quality” paper like Prospect. And the film shows what really happens to false idols in political spheres.

Before you cry out “Ryan, don’t ruin the movie for me,” be calm and do not scream at an inanimate object.

Clooney at the onset is very charming and idealistic, or at least we are to believe he is.

The movie is played out in Ryan Gosling’s eyes in his role as Stephen; the bright-eyed and enigmatic campaign assistant. He goes on and on about Clooney’s character, “He is different, I’ve been around enough campaigns to tell the difference, and he’s the one,” Sound familiar? Also it’s no mistake that the story tells about a presidential nomination campaign of the Democratic Party. The opposition to Clooney’s Obama is a very un-fleshed out and more-masculine Hillary Clinton, if that is possible to imagine. www.binghamtonreview.com

Bland, uninteresting and uninventive; yet somehow still a constant threat to the bright eyed and bushy-tailed Clooney-Obama character. And Senator Pullman (ManClinton’s character name) has a sneaky campaign manager played by the dashing Paul Giamatti, who begins the destruction of the clean-hearted Stephen.

I won’t ruin anymore of the story, but needless to say, shit hits the fan. Stephen gets taken for a ride much like that of the American public during and after the election of ’08. Once the rollercoaster ends, Stephen (along with the American people) are feeling sick to their stomach, pissed for falling for such stupid idealism, and smelling something quite different than roses. Instead of ending with a sense of hope for the future, a looming fear of status quo ominously settles overhead.

The Ides of March does not forward an extremely liberal view (A la Josh Brolin’s interpretation of “W”) or even a rare example of extreme conservatism; the film opts for a more of anarchistic approach. Before you send me angry e-mails, let me finish my thought. The film isn’t anarchistic in a sense of Rage Against the Machine, flipping a gigantic middle finger to Wall Street, Main Street and Pennsylvania Ave. It’s more of a quiet, detached feeling; ‘Why bother?’ instead of ‘Rebel!’ if you will. Obama was the last hope of good government for many Americans, and when it’s all said and done, this film is trying to encapsulate the hope more than than the disappointment that followed.

The film really drives this home with it’s ending. It ends and after all that’s unfurled, Stephen really doesn’t care about the election. We don’t need to find out what’s going to happen, because the result is irrelevant. It’s two like-minded, bullshitpacked individuals seeing who can attract the average voter better than the other. It no longer is a battle for everything; instead it’s transformed into what I like to call the “Words with Friends Election”. The ads at the end of each play provide more substance than the game itself. Each move

cold, calculated and translucent. Intentions set on gaining the most points in hopes of winning instead of the quality of words played. And once the last move has been made, and all the tiles are counted, the anticipation begins for the next game 4 years later. My pessimism (and hopefully yours as well) roots from the system in general, and not necessarily along party lines.

I mean, both parties are to blame are they not? The Democrats are bringing Obama back on the mound for another start; but instead of glamor associated with opening day, it feels like a spring training game, no real opposition and no implications riding on the line. As the movie even explicitly states “The Republicans have no one, whoever wins the Donkey’s wins the presidency”. The Elephants are mucking around, throwing their dung at each other (especially on Bachman). Scarily enough, Palin is the one hope, waiting to man the forklift to drudge them all out (In capable hands right?).

So what is there to look forward to then?

Both in the film and in reality, there is very little to grin upon in wonder. Will any Republican (or even Democrat for that matter) come upon and bring a sense of… something, anything. Just so that we can feel some vitality when the word election gets tossed around. Or is that just how the political climate will be for the next few years… cloudy with a chance of lowered expectations. B

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MULTICULTURALISM

Multiculturalism, Racism, and Stereotypes Race Relations on Campus and in America

by Richard James W ARNING: This article may anger you or make you laugh. The goal here is to open your mind, and see things from an inherently logical perspective.

If you are angered, I assure you it was not my intention, but I also do not care. If you agree with me, I also do not care. If you disagree with me, then you are only going to keep doing or not doing what you are doing or not doing and keep us all where we are.

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s American citizens we recognize inalienable rights of every individual, granted we did not ALWAYS abide by this. It took hundreds and hundreds of years and lives to curb the social inequity that previous generations left us. Nevertheless, some individuals still hold onto the ignorant grudge that defined this nation for years.

The fact is that those people do not matter; I do not care about them. Save yourself the trouble; don’t care about them either, but we are not helping the situation either.

For all of the hardline fanatical ‘individual rights, free choice, liberal, all inclusive and empathetic nature’ our generation swears to abide by, we are in actuality the most useless generation to promote these ideas. To see my point, you need look no further than our beloved campus where willful segregation runs rampant.

The primary goal of higher education is to make you a ‘learned person.’ This means you take a variety classes which will ‘open your mind’ and ‘stretch your boundaries’ all the while teaching you information you must know before progressing. That part about opening your mind and stretching your boundaries—that is the learning; that gives you culture—thus tolerance, 8

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knowledge, and understanding. Yet, take a look around your beloved campus when you are walking to class, not at the beauty that Binghamton University has to offer, but rather look at your fellow peers walking around. What do you see? You see white kids with whites, you see blacks with blacks, Jews with Jews, Hindus with Hindus, Muslims with Muslims, Asians with Asians, etc. Not only that, there are groups on campus that exist solely for people of a certain race or belief, so these people feel ‘welcome.’ They push some sort of unified agenda, whereby they only remove themselves; People who join these groups only pull themselves away from the American university cultural experience/education, which includes everyone together regardless of the way you look or where you come from or what you believe. Then these groups have the audacity to claim they are either not represented at all, or are underrepresented and march around campus just to inform everyone of what they think, when they actually separated and segregated themselves in the first place. By removing yourselves from the masses; you make yourself a minority. America is the great melting pot—Binghamton University is a great melting pot; embrace it, do not run away from it.

When we sit in a class, in a restaurant, in the union, in some student group meetings, or possibly even in your own dorm room you’re surrounded by people who a) do not have the same skin color as you b) have different 1st languages c) observe a different religion d) have a different socioeconomic upbringing e) have different ‘values’ f) and different political ideologies. Many would call this a ‘diverse’ or ‘multicultural’ setting, and they would be right. Culture is not limited to a race, origin, religion, etc.

etc. The simple fact is whenever you are with another person, you are in a diverse setting, even if they look just like you. Why? Because there is something about them, that differs from you: their culture. Literally, in all facets of life we are surrounded by different ‘cultures.’ That culture is inherently American.

‘We’ are supposed to be all about free speech, but we have to be careful what we say or how we say it or we all will be made a spectacle of. I am not white, I am Caucasian(even though I am technically Western European); I am not black, I am African American; I am not fat, I am overweight; I am not a slut, I just like to have fun. ‘Political correctness’ is probably the single most undercutting structure that exists, for it erodes an individual’s ability of free thought and free speech. The only time we can possibly be ‘incorrect’ is in the privacy of our own home with family and friends. I know this doesn’t stun you.

You don’t think a bunch of white people sit around together and make fun of black people? You don’t think a bunch of black people sit around together and make fun of white people? What about the Asians in the nail salon? Do you honestly think they are not talking about how ugly you look or pointing out to each other your imperfections? Oh and let us not forget about my favorites: the stereotypes! Jews

Love Us? Hate us?

TELL Us! Direct letters to editor@ binghamtonreview.com.

November 2011

MULTICULTURALISM

are shysters and cheap; the Irish/Scottish are a bunch of drunks who beat their wives and have babies every 10 months; blacks eat watermelon and fried chicken; the Chinese, Korean, Japanese or any of the Asian-‘eses’ can’t drive worth a damn.

Obviously, these are examples and they are not all necessarily true, but the funny part is some of them are.

Now, by no means am I advocating that you should go around calling white people ‘crackers,’ black people ‘niggers,’ Asian people ‘chinks,’ Arabians ‘sand babies.’ You probably shouldn’t walk up to a proud Jew and scream that they killed Jesus—the son of God, nor should you really ask a devout Catholic how their child-molesting priest is doing. I am simply saying, we all know you want to, www.binghamtonreview.com

unless I’m assuming too much.

Let me put the problem of political correctness into a different context, and then maybe you’ll see why we probably should stop being so god-damn sensitive, and maybe you’ll be less angry too. Who, in American culture can get away with the use of blatantly racist, discriminatory, cold, dark, objectionable, and incredibly stereotypical language and situations? ….

Yes, that’s right! I knew you could get it eventually! Comedians and TV shows.

The Archie Bunkers, Red Foxx’s, Richard Pryor’s, George Carlin’s, Eddie Murphy’s, and Chris Rock’s of the world tell it how it is, and nobody says a word—they laugh, and they laugh because it’s funny and true. Okay, maybe you don’t know who all of those men are, and if you don’t, look

it up you cultureless idiot. Let us try this: South Park, Family Guy, and American Dad. How come they can get away with making fun of peoples’ inadequacies and point out stereotypes but it’s forbidden in everyday life? Because its animated comedy?

What I have described above is the definition of American culture. We are defined by our stereotypes but we are forbidden to talk about them openly in public for fear of being blacklisted. This is our censored America, thank you overly sensitive people for obscuring our culture.

Not all stereotypes are true. Where you draw the line is up to you. B

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DEER

Wildlife Management 101 Misconceptions of a Conservation Necessity on Campus

by Nicholas Fondacaro

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n the middle of October, the Committee on the University Environment (CUE) met to discuss a very serious problem that is plaguing the Nature Preserve and that is starting move to the lower parts of campus. This problem has led to the destruction of the undergrowth in the Nature Preserve and the CIW Woods, is putting night time drivers at risk, and is leading to property damage not only on campus but also in the neighborhoods that surround the university. The problem that the CUE met to discuss is the overpopulation of White Tail Deer on campus.

According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) a population density that is below 30 deer per square mile allows for forest regeneration and a population of 15 deer per square mile does not have any harmful effects on their environment. The Committee has yet to do a comprehensive study on the deer population, but through preliminary studies has determined that there is server overpopulation of White Tail Deer on campus. According to CUE’s preliminary study documents, the White Tail Deer population on campus is upwards of 40 deer per square mile.

Deer populations this high have vast negative impacts not only for the forest but for the population itself and for humans as well. With a population that is well above the number needed for healthy forest regeneration, food supplies are being quickly depleted. It is clear, if one was to walk through the Nature Preserve, and more notably the CIW Woods, almost all of the undergrowth and anything as high as a deer’s head have been eaten. With the disappearing

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understory the diversity of ground nesting birds has decreased and erosion of the soil has occurred.

With the exhaustion of their food sources the deer have been venturing further and further in to the lower parts of campus and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The roads around campus, on and off, act as a corral for the deer. As such, incidences involving deer and vehicles have increased on and off campus. The deer have been moving in order to take advantage of the convenient food source of cultivated plants around campus and in local yards and gardens, causing significant damage to those areas.

With the increase in deer population and movement, there is an increased risk for the spread of Lyme disease. With the increase in deer comes the increase in the Black-Legged Tick which is the main carrier of the disease, thus putting every outdoor enthusiast at risk.

The question now, for CUE and the university, is “how are we going to manage this growing problem?” The answer lies in the realm of a misunderstood practice, done in the name of conservation, known as wildlife management.

As a person that has lived in the country, I care about the conservation of natural areas and the wildlife therein.

Unlike those from urban or suburban areas, I have a long history in the field of conservation and have a unique insight into the methods and tools used by conservationists. So, what is wildlife management? Wildlife management consists of numerous methods, both lethal and non-lethal, of dealing with what are known as “nuisance animals”.

A common non-lethal method is Relocation. Relocation involves trapping an animal and moving it long distances

to another location in which it can live.

There are a few problems with relocation when it comes to deer. One of the ways to acquire a deer for relocation uses tranquillizers made up of controlled substances that require special and expensive permits. Since the university is trying to get its budget under control the school is shying away from that option.

Another option in acquiring a deer for relocation involves actually trapping the deer in a physical trap. The problem with that is that in order to trap a deer sometimes the deer needs to be sick and close to starvation. With the deer in that state, the likelihood of the deer surviving after it is released is minimal. Another method of dealing with nuisance deer using traps is Sterilization. Sterilization requires the trapping of a fertile female deer and having a license veterinarian perform the sterilization surgery. The problem with this process is the trapping of the deer. The likelihood for trapping only fertile female deer is very low. The deer learn to stay away from the traps from seeing other deer trapped and nonfertile female are likely not to return to the traps if caught already.

The problems with non-lethal wildlife management techniques are numerous.

They take long periods of time to implement and carry out. Non-lethal

November 2011

DEER techniques also cost more money than lethal methods, which is not good when one is trying to balance a budget.

Lethal wildlife management techniques are faster, easier to implement, and more cost effective. The technique is known as Culling. Culling is, often used in terms of livestock and, means the selective killing out of a group of animals.

The technique is comprised of two main methods “controlled hunting” and “sharpshooting”. Controlled hunting is selecting hunters to receive special permits to hunt in protected areas and out of season. Often the hunters use hunting bows because they are silent, unnoticeable to the surrounding population, and safer due to the limited range of the arrows.

Sharpshooting is a more professional way to administer lethal wildlife management.

In sharpshooting rifles are used to hit vital areas so that the death is quick and painless. In some cases wildlife

management companies are hired for a nominal price.

As of right now all of the options are still on the table for the Committee on the University Environment, however they are leaning toward using the sharpshooting method. CUE is thinking of hiring a company called White Buffalo, Inc. According to their web site they are “…founded in 1995, is the leading expert in population control of white-tailed deer in highly sensitive areas such as suburban communities and city parks… a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit wildlife management and research organization.

We sponsor, support, and conduct scientific research and educational efforts to improve the understanding of natural resource management for the purpose of conservation.” In addition, White Buffalo, Inc. does not just do sharpshooting. They specialize in all of the above techniques, both lethal and

non-lethal. Hiring this company will be the most cost effective way to deal with this problem. Their methods are quick, humane, and cheap in that they only charge $150 - $400 per deer. They are also a very charitable organization, donating all of the venison they get from the deer and donate it to local food pantries and soup kitchens.

No matter which technique the university chooses to go with they are going to get negative responses from the students. Even if they choose to go with a slow and expensive non-lethal method students with still come out against it.

People from down state do not often understand the complexities of humananimal interactions. For me dealing with wildlife with these methods is completely normal. My only hope is that this article sheds light on the situation and informs students of the facts of wildlife management. B

Don’t forget to get your hunting license, regular deer season starts November 19th!

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11

SOBRIETY

Why Don’t We Try Sobriety?

Being a drunk isn’t cool...

by Amelia Whinehaus

S

obriety is not a common occurrence on the Binghamton University campus. Excessive drinking occurs every Friday and Saturday night, when students need not worry about having a hangover in class the next day. Though, Binghamton does boast an adventurous few that excessively drink during the week, and find that they can barely function during their classes. After all, how much does it really matter if you are hung over during class?

You are only spending thousands of dollars to attend class and hopefully gain a respectable education.

A usual Friday or Saturday night occurs as such; girls dress in extremely tiny skirts and cake on makeup several layers deep. Some student, usually a guy, stuffs his backpack with a plethora of alcoholic beverages and brings his “books” to other dormitory halls, with the false claim “to study with a group”. Once the front door of the dorm room is closed, the booze comes out and the “study group” anxiously awaiting the backpack, rapidly pulls out the bottles of alcohol. They then begin taking shots in order to pre-game before the big frat party or night at the club. Afterward, once they are well past tipsy; they are prepared to go downtown to the destination of their choosing. Regardless of the place, whether it’s a club, frat house, or bar, the intoxicated study group drinks more and more until many of them become completely wasted.

Somehow the group ends up back 12

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on campus and spend the night, or should I say the wee hours of the morning, either puking their guts out or passing out and falling into an alcoholic coma, only to wake up to a hangover. If things really get out of hand, the drunkard’s friends have to call Harpur’s Ferry who will take them to the hospital where they can get their stomach pumped. This Halloween weekend some students from Broome hall in Newing single handedly matched the rest of campus. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Excessive drinking is definitely a prevalent problem on campus.

There are some students who drink less and I applaud them.

I’m not saying that drinking is evil; people just need to keep moderation in mind. But why is drinking at the center of the ability to have fun? I firmly believe that even at the college age, one could still have fun without alcohol; the fun is more organic that way.

Alcohol essentially masks one’s true self. Friday and Saturday nights are very social nights. When meeting new people wouldn’t you want to be yourself? Why hide yourself with alcohol? I understand that alcohol can help overcome insecurities and make an uncomfortable social situation more enjoyable. However, the connections will not be valid after the night is over because both you and the other people you met will act much differently once you have sobered up. This is especially valid when people are impressively

drunk. It is understandable if one who has social anxieties has maybe one or two drinks to loosen up.

But drinking so much that you can barely comprehend what is going on defeats the entire purpose of going out in the first place.

The real question then is why must people drink with the intention of getting drunk? Socially drinking, as I define it is one to two drinks.

But why are people so sensitive that they need alcohol to hide their insecurities? I truly hope that this is not the sole motivating factor, but if so it goes to show how much society has changed. Instead of working on their insecurities people feel that alcohol is the magic pill to make their undesirable traits go away. This definitely needs to stop.

People need to be themselves, and as cliché as that may sound, if you were to try to deny that you would sound absolutely ridiculous.

Sobriety is nice, but it is understandable if people want to drink, however, it needs to be done in moderation and definitely not done every day. Excessive drinking can have so many consequences in both health and social ways. If people tone down their drinking a little maybe they will look at socializing in a new light, and maybe even make long lasting friendships and relationships. As with everything in life, moderation is crucial. B

November 2011

WASHINGTON D.C.

Life in Our Nation’s Capital Washington DC isn’t the coolest place ever...

by Anderson Storms

S

o you’re interested in politics? Maybe you want to pursue an internship that will build your portfolio. Perhaps you’re enchanted with the idea of living in our nation’s capital. If so you really have no other choice than DC. I have already had the pleasure of finishing my internship over a summer there and am currently waiting to taking a trip back. Here are a few quick and dirty facts about the city you will be snuggling up with.

• Everything closes earlier, for those of you acquainted with NYC, the lack of 24/7 places will get to you. Also cause of blue laws, liquor stores are closed on Sundays and after nine; you can’t buy beer outside a bar then.

• Don’t talk politics with people in politics. It’s their jobs and no one wants to talk about that; it’s like asking doctors about medicine, or plumbers about plumbing.

Mostly they swap funny stories and there is also a lot of political gossip.

During the Spring Anthony Weiner jokes were abound.

• You will learn what government really is; a bunch of people behind desks. Good people mostly, but not the abstract that makes your hair stand up on end during the national anthem. You will find plenty of people who like the West Wing, though the whole deal is more “In The Loop” (UK movie, not the short lived TV show). To paraphrase Dashell Hammett, about Sam Spade verses the Contential www.binghamtonreview.com

Op regarding the private detective industry, The West Wing is who we wish we were, In The Loop is probably who we are.

• No one is from DC, it’s almost like a college campus.

Everyone is from some other state or country. When you meet someone from the same county (a bouncer who looks at your ID perhaps?), you will make small talk about home.

You will feel a strong state based pride, unless you are from NJ, in which case I suggest you get a DC I.D. quick and tell people you’re from NY. • The monuments will be awe inspiring for two weeks, and then they become that building near my apartment, office, friend’s apartment, or meaningless landmark.

• You will come to hate tourists; they walk slow and often take pictures of just some random office building. Learn to navigate around them. People in general

walk slower.

• Wearing a suit is awful, because DC is hot, muggy, it was built on top of a swamp, you can feel it.

• The homeless here are a bit more aggressive than NY. Just a heads up there.

• You’ll grow to love and hate this town. When you do leave, you will find just how much you miss your new friends. Like any good town, it’s like getting heart worms, it buries itself in there. When you return to Binghamton, though the cold weather will hit you hard, the change will bring partial relief.

But still the city sized sauna that you called home, getting used to a plethora of delivery places, and the different districts each with their own brand of flavor (much like NY) will be missed. Also the being part of the government (even in a small way), but mostly the food. B

13

THE TEA PARTY

Party of Radicals

The Dangers of the Tea Party to Republicans and Conservatism

by Mark Soriano

D

uring the 2010 midterms campaign season, Republican officeholders across the country struggled to win re-election. For many, the threat came not from Democratic candidates, but from forces within their own party, primarily the Tea Party.

Thanks to the efforts of the Tea Party Express, an organization committed to electing conservative candidates to national and state political office, longtime Republican officeholders and candidates were swept aside, and Tea Party loyalists installed as Republican nominees.

In Delaware, former congressman and governor Michael Castle, heavily favored to win in the general election, was defeated in the primary by Tea Party darling Christine O’Donnell. In Alaska, moderate Republican senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller, after Sarah Palin weighed in and swung Tea Party support 14

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away from from the Senator.

Miller and O’Donnell both lost the general election; O’Donnell to the Democratic challenger, and Miller to Senator Murkowski, who pulled off a stunning independent writein campaign.

Similar examples from the 2010 campaign abound, where Tea Party candidates were able to maximize support in the Republican primaries over moderate candidates, only to lose the election to Democrats.

The Tea Party candidates who won their elections have formed a solid coalition, challenging the Congressional establishment under Speaker John Boehner at every turn.

The Tea Party Express expects the 2012 elections to be no different, and has already formed a list of moderate Republicans it intends to unseat, including Maine senator Olympia Snowe. Senator Snowe, a leading Senate moderate, is a prime target of the Tea Party, who views

her tendency towards compromise as a betrayal of conservative principles.

In their efforts to revolutionize the Republican Party, the Tea Party throws the term “conservative” around a lot. However, their definition of what it means to be a conservative is wildly different from what it has been for much of the 20th century, and threatens to rip the Republican Party apart by excluding moderate, traditional Republicans in favor of rightwing extremists.

When asked how she reacts to challengers who question her conservatism, Senator Snowe reacts with confusion. In a recent Maine Web News interview, Snowe said “I’ve been a lifelong Republican” since first registering to vote. She affirms her continuing support for what were the core Republican values when she started her public service career: “limited government, fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense, individual liberty and opportunity.” Snowe refuses to acknowledge any change in her support for those core principles, and instead posits that the Tea Party is changing the definitions.

“I didn’t get a memo that something had changed” in the Republican Party, she finished, before moving on to another topic.

The plight of Senator Snowe, who is facing some of the strongest primary challengers in her career, illustrates that in many ways the Tea Party’s influence on the Republican Party is largely November 2011

THE TEA PARTY

negative. An insistence on purity tests, right-wing social activism, and a refusal to compromise push Republicans farther away from the political center that most American voters identify with.

Modern conservatism is increasingly focused on petty squabbles relating to social issues that largely distract from important political debates.

Constant struggles over abortion, gay marriage, and religion only weaken Republican candidates in the general election. Forcing candidates to adhere to standards of purity exclude electable moderates in favor of radicals.

This trend only damages the Party.

Movements like the Tea Party Express bring national attention to local races and foolishly impose radical standards on candidates.

Olympia Snowe is extremely popular in Maine because of her willingness to cross the aisle on issues. Maine is a moderate state that traditionally elects moderate officials; its congressional representation is made up of two centrist Republican senators and two conservative Democratic congressmen. Snowe’s problem does not come from her electorate.

Rather, the Tea Party Express will attract hype and media attention, in support the Tea Party candidate in the primary.

Although it seems unlikely that Senator Snowe will lose her primary bid, she is an important example of exactly what is wrong with the modern Republican Party and the state of conservatism.

Republicans in general are too unsure of themselves and the traditional beliefs that have served their party well for decades. This uncertainty allows Tea Party www.binghamtonreview.com

radicals a voice in the debate over the future of the Party.

Ronald Reagan understood the threat posed by forces like the Tea Party, and offered this valuable advice: “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty. As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

Reagan knew how to win elections. His political instincts drew him towards issues that Americans truly cared about, without focusing on the things that tore them apart. His message should caution his Party against

listening to extremists and purists.

The Tea Party does make valuable contributions to the Republican Party. Most Tea Partiers support traditional conservative values, and challenge establishment doctrine. However, the Republican establishment is what gives the Party its strength in government and to the electorate. The establishment understands that compromise is required to govern effectively, and prevents Congress from becoming a den of ideological extremists.

Additionally, Tea Party strategies, such as turning elections into anti-moderate witch hunts, only harm the party they profess to be supporting. Such tactics threaten to exclude the contributions of valuable Republicans like Olympia Snowe, who remind the Party that compromise and moderation is not anti-conservative, but an essential element of our political system. B

15

BU PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH

The Presidential Search Process

A Timeline of Success and Failure in the Search for the Next BU President

by Ari Greenberg The nearly two-year long search for the new Binghamton University president is coming to a close as the final candidates have been reported to be chosen and President Peter Magrath’s term will end on December 31st 2011.

Our previous president Lois DeFleur was here for 20 years and helped set the direction of Binghamton University and its reputation for years to come. While the Presidential Search Process has not been the smoothest, we should learn from our mistakes and create better practices for future executive searches.

• President Lois DeFleur announced that she will be resigning in July. DeFleur held the position of president since 1990.

• The Presidential Search Committee holds its first meeting.

• Presidential search committee is named. Committee Chair: Kathryn Grant Madigan. Members: Michelle Adams, Thomas Doty, Katie Howard, Bonnie Jenson, Wayne Jones, Thomas Kelly, David Lavallee, Jared McShall, James Orband, Timothy Perry, Matthew Salanger, Edward Shephard, Gale Spencer, Krishnaswami “Hari” Srihari, Dawnie Steadman, Mark Zurack, Aimee Bernstein, and Laura L. O’Neil.

• Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher announced that she will recommend the appointment of C. Peter Magrath as President of Binghamton University to the SUNY Board of Trustees, effective March 28, 2011, for a term that will run through Dec. 31, 2011.

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• Isaacson, Miller selected as search firm.

• The Search Committee announces that the search is lead by the ”Isaccson, Miller team of Gale Merseth and Kate Barry, who conducted Binghamton University’s search for a vice president of student affairs in 2007, which brought Brian Rose to our campus”.

• SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher Nominates C. Peter Magrath as Interim President.

• The Pipe Dream reported, “According to Kathryn Grant Madigan, chair of the BU Council as well as its Presidential Search Committee, the candidates submitted to Chancellor Zimpher, whose names have not been released, were told that they would be allowed to withdraw their candidacy, but were rejected by Zimpher before they were given a chance to do so.”

• Binghamton University Magazine reported that Zimpher rejected the two final candidates and the “Council President Kathryn Grant Madigan was disappointed with the timing of Zimpher’s announcement, saying the two unnamed finalists had already withdrawn their candidacies, but she did not say when.”

• It is a common practice in executive searches to allow candidates to withdraw their candidacies if a search is deemed unsuccessful in order to prevent possible embarrassment and difficulty in future job searches.

• At the BU Faculty Senate Meeting, Prof. Thomas O’Connor asked about the presidential search procedure. According to the official minutes, Prof. Peter Knuepfer answered that “Chancellor Zimpher has pressed BU Council to be far more closed in the continuing search here at BU.” • WBNG reported that “SUNY has already spent $200,000 in its search to replace Lois DeFleur”.

• “Presidential Open Forum with search firm Isaacson, Miller” held from 3-3:45pm. Most students already went home as finals finished on the 14th.

• Chancellor Zimpher and Binghamton University Council announce changes to the Presidential Search Committee.

• Kathryn Grant Madigan and James Orband are made co-chairs.

• The changes also include “an open invitation from the Council to both the Chancellor and the SUNY Board to discuss any concerns regarding the committee’s activities” and that the committee will send updates to the Chancellor and the SUNY Board.

• WBNG reported, “Zimpher decided not to recommend either of the final 2 candidates for the presidential position” because “they did not have enough experience leading an institution as highly competitive as Binghamton.”

• In a letter to Presidential Search Committee Chair Kathryn Madigan and Members of the University Council, Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher announced that the SUNY Board of Trustees approved her nomination of Peter Magrath as President of Binghamton University.

• The letter also calls for a new search committee to be formed, for James Orband, a managing partner at law firm Hinman, Howard and Kattell, to be the new chairperson, and for President Magrath to designate a senior member of his staff to work with the committee.

• She also wrote, “Once a reorganized search committee is in place, I will be pleased, together with senior members of my staff, to join the committee for a formal relaunching of the search process“.

November 2011

BU PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH

• SUNY Board of Trustees Appoints C. Peter Magrath as Interim President at Binghamton University.

• “Meet The Candidates” forums for the final five candidates are held on campus.

• The Search Committee narrows down search to eight candidates.

• At the BU Faculty Senate Meeting, Prof. Gale Spencer (member of the Search Committee), said “We lost a number of candidates when they knew it was going to be public. The BU Council and the search committee felt it was important to have the search as open as possible.

We will not just drop in a candidate that no one has seen.

The search committee hopes to have people meet with candidates but they will sign confidentiality agreements to protect the candidates’ confidentiality.”

• The new Presidential Search Committee meets for the first time.

• New search firm Russell Reynolds Associates is hired with Ilene Nagel in charge of leading the search.

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• Off-site interviews with new candidates held.

• In a letter to the Presidential Search Committee, Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher announced that she will not recommend the two finalists to the SUNY Board of Trustees for appointment.

This is the first time that the number of finalists is made public.

• No reason is given for the rejection, but Zimpher wrote, “The next president of Binghamton University must have the broadest qualities as a leader in higher education, and the experience and academic accomplishment necessary to successfully meet the challenge that public higher education faces in New York and throughout the country.”

• In a statement to the Pipe Dream, Kathryn Grant Madigan said that the memo was released to the media before the council.

• The Search Committee announces that one candidate withdrew their candidacy.

• The Search Committee submits finalists to Chancellor Nancy Zimpher. The number of finalists or their names is not announced.

• At the SUNY Faculty Senate meeting held at Purchase College, BU Faculty Senator Peter Knuepfer raised concerns directly to Chancellor Zimpher that the closed search approach has prevented faculty governance leaders from meeting the candidates in confidentiality, which has hampered the evaluation process, implies that faculty leaders can’t be trusted to maintain confidentiality, and can “engender an initial mutual distrust that may hamper effective campus operations in the future.”

Zimpher responded by highlighting the importance of anonymity in presidential searches, however she also stated that she would work to “allow senior faculty leaders to meet with a near-final group of presidential candidates.” It is unclear if this would happen in the current search, but it was not ruled out.

• WBNG reported that ”top candidates” made “stealth visits” to the campus over Homecoming Weekend.

• A letter signed by 16 Executive Committee members of the BU Faculty Senate is sent to the Co-Chairs of the Presidential Search Committee stressed that the search process has become closed and is “proceeding without any provision for direct faculty input from outside the search committee”. They argued that they should meet the candidates since they will work with the future President on a regular basis and that a President with the support of the elected faculty body will be more likely to accept the position and be more successful at it. They requested to sign the same confidentiality agreements as the search committee and have face-to-face meetings with “all members of the group from which the final list would be chosen to send to the Chancellor”.

• WBNG reported that the Search Committee is close to picking the “final top 3 to 5 candidates”.

17

Broken Government Part II: The Senate Filibuster

by Mark Soriano

T

he framers of the American constitution designed the Senate as a counterweight to the House of Representatives.

The House was meant to express the will of the people as a direct link between the government and voters; short term lengths and direct elections for congressmen meant that it would be a volatile representation of the American political climate. The Senate, in contrast, was created to represent the states as sovereign entities, to ensure continuity and deliberation.

Long, staggered terms and election by state assemblies for senators only enhanced this continuity.

The Senate’s moderating force on American politics is boosted by the filibuster, a debate tactic used in the chamber to prolong debate on a bill in order to stall or prevent a vote.

A filibuster occurs when a senator or series of senators speak during debate for long periods of time.

Senators may speak for as long as they want until they are forced to stop by a 3/5 vote in the chamber, called a cloture.

Due to the nature of America’s two party system, 60 votes in the Senate are usually hard to come 18

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by, especially during debates contentious enough to lead to filibusters. Practically, this means that the party in control of the Senate, even if they have 59 votes, cannot pass legislation without the consent of the minority power.

Theoretically, the filibuster should further moderate the Senate, forcing parties to compromise in order to pass legislation. This has been the experience of the filibuster for much of its history; the tactic was rarely used by senators before the 1980s, and usually only during extremely combative issues.

However, since the 96th Congress (1979-1980), filibuster use has grown massively, to the point where the passage of any legislation is a feat.

The rise of the filibuster and cloture votes in indicative of the changed nature of the Senate in American politics. While senators had previously been elected by state assemblies, reforms in the late 19th and early 20th century led to direct elections for senate seats.

The culmination of this process was the 17th Amendment of 1912, establishing direct elections for senators nationwide. The effect

of direct elections was to allow partisan politics into the Senate to a degree never seen before.

Senators had previously been responsible to state assembly houses, but the 17th Amendment made them answerable to constituents. This made the Senate far more contentious and less deliberative then it had ever been before, as senators were forced to acquiesce to the short term desires of voters. As the 20th century progressed, American politics became increasingly partisan, a trend that has only accelerated in the past decade.

Partisanship in the Senate manifests itself in the form of filibuster abuses.

Previously a tool of last resort, senators now turn to filibusters during debates on routine legislation.

Almost any action within the Senate can be filibustered, from executive appointments to treaty ratifications. Since the election of President Obama in 2008, dozens of executive offices have remained empty, as Democrats are unable to muster the votes necessary to overcome Republican filibuster threats. Additionally, the use of November 2011

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filibusters is so pervasive that the Senate cannot react to crises, such as the Debt Ceiling issue this past summer, because a minority of senators can hijack the chamber and refuse to allow bills to be voted on.

The blame for its misuse cannot be attached to any one party; members of both parties use the filibuster as a tactic. Republicans have recently been smeared with criticism over their frequent use of the filibuster since they fell into minority in 2007. However, it can reasonably be expected that if and when Democrats lose their majority in the Senate, they will take up where the Republicans left off.

Increasing and shameless filibuster use in the Senate is harming the ability of the American government to act decisively, and is delegitimizing our democracy. The bicameral legislative branch features a House and Senate that work to maintain balance, requiring legislation on most issues to be passed by both houses before it becomes a law.

The filibuster essentially means that a minority party in the Senate, so long as it has at least 41 members, can prevent legislation from ever becoming law, even if the other party has a majority in both houses.

During the recent debt crisis, the Republican minority in the Senate vowed to prevent any bill from passing through the Senate that raised the debt ceiling without a deficit reduction plan to go along with it. The catch was that the deficit plan could not include any tax or revenue increases. The

Republicans stonewalled, pushing the country to the brink of default, until Congressional leaders finally cobbled together a last minute scheme that in effect kicked the can down the road three months.

Even though a debt plan was eventually passed, the crisis put America’s byzantine congressional politics on display for the world to see. S&P, a credit rating agency, lowered the U.S. credit rating from its AAA score to AA+ for the first time ever, citing concerns over “political brinksmanship” within the American government.

This brinksmanship had made the government “less stable, less effective and less predictable,” and the agency feared that the U.S. government is losing its ability to react to problems.

It may be tempting to level blame on the Republicans, whose intransigence over tax increases led to the late and faulty debt deal. But it is unlikely, were the situation the reverse, that Democrats would have been any less stubborn in their demands for increased revenue. The blame instead is on the nature of our political system.

American politics are reaching a point where politicians are unable to act responsibly for fear of losing the support of the party radicals in control of their electoral destinies.

Reforming the rules regarding the filibuster needs to happen in order to return the Senate to its status as a functioning part of the government. One option may be to abolish the practice all together; this could be accomplished in a number of ways, including putting time limits on speeches by senators during debates over bills.

Filibusters could be eliminated by lowering the vote threshold needed to cloture debate to a simple majority, allowing the party in control of the chamber to user their legislation to the floor without opposition.

Full out abolition of the filibuster may not be wise. When abused, the filibuster becomes obnoxious and obstructionist. Still, when used appropriately, the tactic does contribute to the Senate’s nature as a moderating force on the government. It allows the minority to slow down reckless actions by the majority, and forces senators to consider and deliberate legislation more thoroughly. Eliminating the filibuster would make the Senate mirror the House of Representatives, and may actually have the effect of further radicalizing the chamber.

Jonathan Krasno and Gregory Robinson of Binghamton’s political science department suggested ways of reforming the filibuster in their 2010 article, “Krasno and Robinson: Fixing the Filibuster.” In the article, the authors suggest a three stage approach to filibuster reform: make the minority party achieve 41 votes to continue the debate, instead of forcing the majority party to arrive at 60 votes to halt debate, make voting on clotures easier, and reduce the time senators have to debate.

A final reform method would be aimed not at the filibuster itself, but at the Senate as a whole. This would be to repeal the 17th amendment, allowing states to return the election of senators to their state assemblies. This option may at first seem impossible, undemocratic, and unreasonable, but one should consider the idea before tossing it 19

OCCUPY WALL STREET aside. The Senate was designed to represent the states, not the people. The slow and deadlocked nature of the chamber was deliberate, reflecting the desire of the framers of the Constitution that the chamber should be an elite body of intellectuals working to build up long term strategies and policies and ensure continuity. Senators elected directly by the people must engage in the pettiness of partisan politics, putting a strain on Senate practices not designed to accommodate extremism.

Realistically there is very little chance of senators changing the rules on filibusters willingly; they realize that although they may currently be in the minority or majority today, they could quickly be in a different position after the next election. Senators will be unwilling to take actions that could harm their ability to act in the future. Only by making the filibuster and Senate practices a campaign issue will voters be able to force change on the system. B

Thoughts on “OWS” Ever heard of voting?

by Aaron Ricks

A

ctive political movements have the ability to bring about great change or act as a catalyst for much-needed social reform.

Nevertheless, the danger within these movements is their ability to bring about some the greatest tragedies in democratic political expression. History has shown us that not all political movements are for the best; Nazis, Commies, hippies, the largest threats to human liberty and civil rights all had their roots in political movements. Furthermore, these political movements all gained their base of power and validation through synergizing with other political movements. These fragile, and often artificial, linkages that form between movements mislead the public down a calculated logical fallacy. This ostentatious display of lies attracts more people to the salacious movements.

Today we are seeing the comparisons form between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the revolutions in the Arab Spring, the Civil Rights movement, and Vietnam War. This is not to say that these delusions of grandeur are exclusively owned by left-wing protesters. The Tea Party has long claimed itself to being vanguards of the American Revolution and the ideals of our Founding Fathers.

But because we at the Review are aware

our reading audience is well above average intelligence, we want to bring these fabrications to your attention before they get a chance to mislead you down a fearful path to the dark side.

First, the comparison to the Civil Rights movement is just absurd and degrades the significance of AfricanAmerican struggles to gain political representation and equality under the rule of law. Secondly, the Arab Spring is another example of disenfranchised people attempting create some type of representative democracy, something we have already achieved. So for the sake of the lives lost in the pursuit of actual liberty, please stop comparing yourselves to them; it is embarrassing and dishonest.

The Occupy Wall Street movement could most likely be compared to the Tea Party movement on the Right. Both groups emphasize rage over rationality, both claim to speak for the little guy despite both being comprised of people above average levels of education and income; and once again, delusions of magnificent grandeur prevails in both camps.

The question that actually needs to be asked to the OWS specifically is this: If you really represent “the 99%,” then why do you not already dominate our government? Actually, a former staffer

Binghamton Review is a monthly, independent journal of news, analysis, commentary, and controversy. Students at Binghamton University receive one copy of the Review free of charge (non-transferable). Additional copies cost $1 each. Letters to the Editor are welcome; they must be accompanied by the author’s current address and phone number. All submission become property of the Review. The Review reserves the right to edit and print any submission. Copyright © 1987-2011 Binghamton Review. All rights reserved. Binghamton Review is distributed on campus under the authority of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Binghamton Review is a member of the Collegiate Network and is a Student Association-chartered organization. Binghamton University is not responsible for the content of the Review; the Review is not responsible for the content of Binghamton University. Binghamton Review thanks the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

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November 2011

OCCUPY WALL STREET

of Alan Grayson laid it out pretty clearly why the OWS movement actually cannot operate within the ballot box in his op-ed for Politico: “Many of them saw an uprising in Madison, Wisconsin, over Governor Scott Walker’s collective-bargaining and privatization initiatives; and they understand the choice to initiate recall elections rather than strikes resulted in a crushing loss for workers.”

Yes, when the democratic process does not achieve your organization’s goal, you usurp it. When they saw that a majority of the electorate is against them, they began looking for alternatives, thus the artificial attachment to the Civil Rights movement and the Egyptian Revolution. Anne Applebaum of The Economist wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post that adds: “[T]hese international protests do have a few things in common, both with one another and with the anti-globalization movement

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that preceded them. They are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted, ‘This is what democracy looks like,’ but actually, this isn’t what democracy looks like.

This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring.

Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous, time-consuming activities.” None of which is more fun than camping in Zuccotti Park. She goes on to say: “Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, to whom the London and New York protesters openly (and ridiculously) compare themselves, we have democratic institutions in the Western world. They are designed to reflect, at least crudely, the desire for political change within a given nation.”

For better or worse, the Tea Party has nearly grasped this lesson of channeling mass anger into electoral participation, which is why the 2010 election was such a success for hard-core conservatives.

Although I disagree with most of the stances of OWS protesters, I do believe in electoral democracy. The last wave of mass left-wing protests occurred in the 1960’s in response to the Vietnam War and the draft that ensued. When you look underneath the prevailing hippie culture and the police response, you know who came out on top? Richard Nixon. This should be a sober warning to all activist organizations: legitimate reform can only be made through the ballot box. Openly engaging in anti-systemic behavior in a country with preexisting democratic institutions only undermines your popular appeal. Cast your vote at the ballot box, and let true democracy run its course. B

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THE TEA PARTY

Party of Hope

The Tea Party in American Politics

by Nick Valiando

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ince the overwhelming success of Republicans in the 2010 mid-term elections many political analysts have pondered and debated what influence the Tea Party will have on future elections.

Some have decried its negative effect and have worried that Republicans are being pulled in the direction of “radical right-wing extremism”.

Nonetheless the Tea Party remains, despite its great influence in 2010, a nascent and developing movement.

Though it has been plagued by some bad decisions, questionable candidates, and poor political strategy the Tea Party at its heart represents a ray of hope for the Republican Party.

If the Tea Party can mature in its attitudes towards politicians, it will empower the Republican Party into the future.

In order to analyze the role of the Tea Party on the Republican Party we must understand what drives the Tea Party. The Tea Parties were formed as a reaction to the fiscal insanity in Washington. Although many Tea Partiers typically hold Republican views on social issues, the primary focus on the Tea Party is on fiscal issues to the exclusion of other issues.

Since the 1980’s the Republican Party have forged close ties to Christian conservatives who form the base of the Republican Party. The weakness of this arrangement is that socially conservative issues generally have limited appeal outside of conservative states. The Tea Party with its focus on fiscal responsibility and governmental nonintervention in the economy, offers the Republican Party a base whose theories are both federal in nature and have a broad appeal 22

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in most states. This shift allows the Republican Party to develop a national approach based on fiscal responsibility and leave socially conservative issues to the states.

Though the Tea Party represents a potentially positive force for the Republican Party, it is still in many ways naïve in the ways of the political system. The Tea Party’s main weakness is its penchant for nominating ideologically conservative but politically inexperienced candidates. Take the cases of Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller. These famous candidates, backed by the Tea Party, defeated experienced but moderate Republicans in the party primary, but went on to lose in the general election. Of the two, Joe Miller is the most experienced.

He served as an Army Captain in the Gulf War and served as US District Court magistrate judge in Alaska (an appointed position) in 2002-2004.

Despite this, he had never been elected to any public office and had never served in a legislative role. His Republican opponent Lisa Murkowski had 8 years of experience in the US Senate and before that several years in the Alaskan House of Representatives. In addition she came from a well-known Alaskan political dynasty. Other Tea Party candidates have been even worse. Take Christine O’Donnell who shockingly won the Delaware senatorial primary over former governor Michael Castle.

What were her qualifications? The extent of her political experience was appearing on a few political talk shows as a Republican strategist. Her opponent Michael Castle had served as Delaware’s governor for 8 years and as its only House member for 18 years.

These two examples demonstrated

one of the key deficiencies of the Tea Party; they wants too much too quickly. Even more harming then nominating deeply conservative candidates in liberal states is the fact that these candidates themselves are so inexperienced that the average voter could not be asked to take them seriously. No voter should be asked to vote for a candidate who is so vastly unproven especially when a more experienced Republican is available.

The message of fiscal discipline, low taxes and minimalist, reasonable regulation form a party policy which can be implemented anywhere in the United States. However the message is not a substitute for experience. The Tea Party must start at the bottom and have conservatives gain the experience that they would need to win statewide elections. Not only would this lead to a more conservative and experienced Republican Party but it would avoid the sort of disunity that can be said to be threatening the Republican Party.

Despite these failures the Tea Party has also had its successes. The greatest success of the Tea Party is also the greatest representation of hope for the future of the Republican Party especially in the north eastern United States. In 2010, Tea Partiers and Republicans around the country rallied around the candidacy of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Scott Brown had served in the Massachusetts state legislature for 12 years and though his voting record showed him to be a moderate republican, the Tea Party rallied around him for one reason. He represented a vote against out of control government spending, an overhaul of the American healthcare system and President Obama’s expansion of government control. In the end Tea Partiers knew that a Senator Scott Brown was better for Massachusetts, better for the Senate and better for the United States. B November 2011

Semester Report: The Obama Presidency Three Years since the 2008 Election Inside: -Foreign Policy -Guantanamo Bay -Presidential Appointees -The Economy

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n the Review’s first ever Semester Report, we look at President Obama’s time in office three years since his election in 2008. Focusing on foreign policy, the status of the Gauntanamo Bay detention center, the state of America’s economy, and the progress of Obama’s various presidential appointees, this report seeks to bring the Obama administraion into perspective a year out from the 2012 presidential election.

Foreign Policy

by Aylone Katzin

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hile increasing the national debt and federal spending, pushing the United States deeper and deeper into economic depression, and limiting our personal freedoms, President Obama also has some time on the side to ruin standard American foreign policy. We can start with the international “apology tour.” According to the Wall Street Journal, while speaking in France, President Obama said that America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” The President made similar statements about how the United States has a social responsibility and is dependent on other countries. Overall the apology tour stretched from Latin America to Europe, and more recently into Asia, where a cable from the Japan Times was revealed stating that Obama was planning to apologize for the droppings of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The next thing you would expect the President to do would be to apologize for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Oh wait!

He did just do that when the apology tour came to Nicaragua. After a one-hour anti-American tirade by the Nicaraguan president: “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” What about an apology to the British for breaking away from them and beating them twice? Don’t worry, he hasn’t done that… yet.

Now, if you are not already annoyed at our president, try analyzing his policy towards our allies. In February 2009 the Daily Telegraph reported that President Obama returned a bust of Winston Churchill to England. There is a theory on this, however; During 24

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Churchill’s premiership, Britain fought the MauMau rebellion in Kenya. One of the prisoners of that rebellion, the President’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, was tortured as a prisoner. This is a slap in the face not only to the British but also to Americans, since President Bush received the bust as a gift of solidarity by the British after the September 11th terrorist attacks as “a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship”.

Continuing with our theme of offending and abandoning our allies, we now turn to probably the most controversial element of the Obama regime’s foreign policy: Israel. During the 2008 election, approximately 80% of Jewish American voters voted for Obama, who promised to keep strong relations between the US and Israel. However, with the January 2009 Israeli-Gaza conflict going on right before the new presidency, Obama did not take a definite stance on the conflict.

Two months later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an outspoken supporter of Israel, travelled to Israel and spoke out against Israeli settlement plans in East Jerusalem. She stated that these plans are “unhelpful” to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, when not only does Israel have the right to build the settlements, but the United States does not have the right to tell Israel not to. Further, each conflict that arises between Israel and the Palestinians usually starts with Palestinians attacking Israel, and while there is barely any analysis of that fact, there is always time to attack Israel for any small thing they do.

Fast forward to May 19, 2011 when President Obama gave a speech at the State Department stating that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Proponents of this idea cannot know much about Middle Eastern politics. In short, this is a summary of Middle East politics as pertaining to Israel: Israel wants peace through diplomacy, and the Palestinians want peace through the extinction of the Jews and of Israel.

What’s the problem with that? It’s so obvious! Just keep giving the Palestinians more land and eventually there will be peace because all Israeli land will eventually belong to the Palestinians. It’s that simple!

As we move on to the Arab Spring and all the wars that we have involved ourselves in, we can now look at President Obama’s inconsistencies. Let’s start with the wars America is involved in. [M1] The President has a fairly consistent record against the wars, dating back to 2001 and 2003 in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively.

President Obama made a promise when he ran for

Semester Report: Obama Presidency

November 2011

office that by the summer of 2010 combat troops will start to return from Iraq, and that by the summer of 2011 we will be completely out of Iraq. In February 2009, it was announced that 17,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan. Then, in a December 1, 2009 speech at West Point, the President unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan, where 30,000 more troops would be sent in, and that “after 18 months our troops will begin to come home”. 18 months came and went[M2] , and not only do we still have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is still no definite plan for complete withdrawal.

Next up: the Arab Spring. While this event started in December 2010, I would like to take a look back at the Iranian uprising in 2009. The protests were caused by possible election fraud during the election for the Iranian presidency between the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Green Party candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Ahmadinejad won with 64% of the vote. Several factors caused the protests. First, public opinion polling in Iran before the election reported that over half the polls taken showed Mousavi leading over Ahmadinejad. Second, there was pre-election violence against Mousavi’s campaign office in Qum. Third, cell phone communications were interrupted on Election Day and Facebook was blocked all over the country. Fourth, there were signs of vote rigging, including reports of turnouts of over 100% in some vote counts. These factors led to unrest from June 2009 www.binghamtonreview.com

to February 2010. Meanwhile, the only indication that President Obama ever paid attention was when he threw his support for Mousavi, but that was the only thing that Obama did to react to the protests. What happened afterwards was that the protests were broken up, thousands were arrested, and the Iranian people went back to fearing their government. Fast-forward to the Arab Spring. President Obama is one of the most outspoken supporters of the revolution in Egypt, which leads to the fall of President Mubarak and a new government with supposed intentions of democracy.

As for the rest of the countries involved in the Arab Spring, Obama has been selective as to which countries to make statements on, choosing Syria, Libya, Bahrain, and Tunisia over Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mauritania, Oman, Yemen, Algeria, and Jordan.

This finally brings up the war in Libya. While President Obama and pretty much every liberal harped on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was near silence about political ideology from the left when it came to the war in Libya. Whatever happened to isolationism and the military industrial complex?

There was even less political coverage on the bombings in Yemen by the United States in July 2011. The bombings were from airstrikes on suspected Al-Qaeda militants. While most Americans may think it would be acceptable for this to happen against terrorists, it is not okay, at least according to liberal ideology, to go into a country unannounced and perform a military operation without the sovereign state knowing about it. The same thing happened with Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Getting back to Libya, not only is it an ideologically inconsistent war, but it is also unconstitutional.

President Obama sent troops into Libya without letting Congress vote on making a declaration of war, which is required to have an official war. The President used the War Powers Act, which was passed after the Vietnam War, to justify the war, which allows the President to use military action for a crisis for a maximum of 60 days without gaining Congressional approval. After 60 days the President must end the military action. Operations by the United States in Libya started on March 19, 2011. On top of that, according to the War Powers Act, the act can only be implemented during a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Last time I checked, there was no legitimate threat from Libya.

Another excuse by President Obama for this war is that it is a humanitarian crisis and that it was necessary

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Guantanamo Bay

by Daniel Rudder

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to enter Libya. If that is so, then why aren’t we in Sudan, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Burma? On top of that, since when does the federal government deal with humanitarian efforts? That used to be a private field for charity and awareness organizations. The most recent news of military action came on Friday, October 14, when President Obama unexpectedly sent 100 troops into Uganda and planned out deployment to Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Congo.

In the end, the best answer that can be given about President Obama’s foreign policy strategy is that there is none. The Obama Doctrine, referring to President Obama’s foreign policy, cannot exist with such glaring inconsistencies as those that the President has shown since taking office. Only two main themes can be concluded about the President’s foreign policy: an assault on Western values and military expansion.

Now, I am willing to give President Obama a break, although this is probably the only thing I could give the President a break on. Obama has done an excellent job in killing top terrorist leaders, including Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. However, the President can’t even get any relief from this, after being attacked by some liberals, libertarians, and constitutionalists over killing an enemy combatant without justification or a trial. I am willing to defend the President in these actions by saying that these terrorists were considered enemies of the United States and were even planning to harm and kill the American people, but I may even be wrong on that. Sorry, Mr. President.B

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aking after the habits of his soon-to-be rival and flip-flopper extraordinaire Mitt Romney, President Obama changed his mind about his course of action regarding Guantanamo Bay and it’s detainees. Prior to taking office Obama promised to close the facility and relocate its inhabitants. In January 2009, two days after assuming the role of President, Obama signed an executive order suspending military proceedings for the 120 days and mandated the detention center be closed within one year. On January 7th 2011, the President signed the Defense Authorization Act, implying that he had rescinded his initial promise. This bill prevents the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to other areas under U.S. jurisdiction or to any foreign countries, effectively preventing the complex from closing.

Further evidence proving that the administration has reversed course came in the form of a presidential decree in March 2011 authorizing the continuation of military trials of terror suspects at Gitmo roughly two years after Obama’s order to close the facility.

Interestingly, Obama took the issue a step further than even his predecessor dared, signing an executive order making it lawful to hold detainees indefinitely and without pressing charges. This is a direct conflict to the principles expressed in our nation’s constitution.

Patriotic and conservative Americans should be disgusted.

In war, nations are faced with the dilemma of dealing with prisoners and captives. In contemporary political terminology, certain individuals are referred to not as prisoners, but ‘enemy combatants.’ Under the Bush administration’s foreign policy, enemy combatants were treated differently than criminals. For several years, these suspected terrorists were not protected under the guise of the Geneva Convention and many were not given a chance to defend themselves in a court of law, instead being prosecuted via military tribunals, which have a lower standard of evidence required for convictions than domestic civil or criminal courts.

Though there is no doubt that prisoners at Guantanamo were subjected to harsh and uncomfortable interrogation techniques (despite receiving healthcare benefits most Americans can only dream of), conditions for the prisoners have slowly but surely improved. In

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November 2011

the 2006 Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Bush administration’s military commissions were found to be insufficient and unjust. In addition, Obama ordered that all future trials be carried out with revamped procedures. Regardless, Guantanamo will always serve as a symbolic representation of abuse and hypocrisy for many observers. In a 2008 article from the International Herald Tribune, Scott Shane exposed details which further demonstrate why the operations at Guantanamo are un-American. According to Shane, a U.S. Military interrogation class used to prepare interrogator candidates at the base references what is essentially a 1957 Chinese torture chart. This publication explains techniques North Koreans used to force confessions (often false) out of captured American soldiers during the Korean War and includes references to sleep deprivation and prolonged constraint.

Many argue that Gitmo should remain open, some suggest indefinitely; hiding behind the vague and flawed logic that the existence of such a controversial detention center will somehow make Americans safer. However, they fail to explain exactly how this happens. Rather than illuminating Guantanamo’s true role in U.S. National security, which is likely more negative than positive, it is simply assumed that harsher interrogation and treatment of detainees results in increased national security. This may or may not be true: while there are rumors that information from Guantanamo interrogations has saved lives and helped avert tragedy, the government, despite the best efforts of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), still insists on keeping most information regarding detainees confidential. As long as this data is classified, there will never be definite or verifiable proof to any of these claims. Even if, for the sake of argument, Guantanamo has increased America’s safety and reduced security threats, these benefits do not make it’s existence justifiable. Morality transcends politics, and there is no argument that can defend America’s political leaders not acting within our moral principles.

Many have an unfavorable view America’s often unwarranted meddling in foreign affairs and its all-toocommon hypocrisy in overseas endeavors. To date, eight people have died in captivity while in Guantanamo.

While most were suicides, this does not excuse the U.S. Government of responsibility. Remember, these people have to be driven to suicide, their deaths were not a spontaneous event.

Would-be terrorists are reassured of America’s perceived corruption and indecency when released www.binghamtonreview.com

detainees recount the horrors they suffered. Many of them should never have ended up at Guantanamo in the first place; a good portion of detainees never did anything wrong. Many of them were simply turned in by neighbors or rivals with grievances who were seeking the reward money offered by Americans to those who turned in terrorists/insurgents. They were victims of circumstance. To terrorists, this gives credence to their efforts to destroy this great nation and bring harm to its people. By closing Gitmo, the U.S. would not only be acting in accordance with its founding principles (which it should be doing anyway), it would be robbing Al-Queada of one of its premier recruitment tools.

It is a known fact that torturous interrogation techniques are counterproductive. Depending on one’s personal definitions, the harsh interrogation techniques employed at Guantanamo may or may not be considered unfair and unjust. Nonetheless, the classification of torture is a different issue; there is still no denying that detainees were put through the ringer, so to speak, in an effort to extract information.

This raises serious questions about the validity of these individuals’ testimonies. The U.S. should not act upon information unjustly obtained from untrustworthy characters, particularly when the lives of American servicemen and women are in danger. Why should someone ever trust a terrorist?

Values are what make people who they are; actions are a reflection of the actor. The U.S. needs to practice what it preaches, not stab its values in the back and resort to barbarous tactics. Spreading freedom, democracy, and human rights without embodying

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those attributes is unacceptable. After all, it is this cruel and hypocritical behavior which helps inspire terrorism in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t improve America’s international reputation. It is not right to let fear influence decisions and policies and allow Americans to waver from their collective values because we as a nation are confronting a new and dynamic threat. This is inappropriate, unnecessary, useless, and perhaps most importantly, un-American. During the 2008 election campaign, Candidate Obama promised that he would close Guantanamo Bay upon assuming office. Instead of fulfilling his promise, the President folded to political pressure and kept the center open.

President Obama promised change, but delivered more of the same. B

Presidential Appointees

by Nick Valiano

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leader must be measured both by his accomplishments and the success of the people he has surrounded himself with.

Others can handle the measure of President Obama’s accomplishments; I shall instead examine the men and women who the President has appointed to some of the most powerful positions in the United States. One of the greatest responsibilities of a leader is the ability to delegate authority to experienced and responsible people. Now, three years after the election of Barrack Obama, we look back upon his tenure as President, and see how the people Obama raised to high office have performed. Chief among such appointments are the prestigious Cabinet positions; both Attorney General Eric Holder and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have seen their departments involved in controversy and scandal.

One of the most important appointments made by the President is the Attorney General, who is responsible for the oversight of the Justice Department which coordinates most federal law enforcement in the United States. Despite this important charge, Attorney General Holder has been responsible for 28

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several questionable allocations of Justice Department resources and a possibly criminal and reckless ATF operation whose details are still coming to light.

One such decision involved Holder not prosecuting members of the New Black Panthers party who were accused of voter intimidation after they were recorded on camera standing outside polling stations with clubs.

It is an interesting and quizzical decision for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to decide not to enforce the law.

The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) operation known as “Fast And Furious” is currently the center of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The operation consisted of the ATF encouraging the sale of nearly 2,500 guns to Mexican drug cartels through intermediaries with the goal of tracking those weapons.

The concept of the program, similar to programs held under previous administrations, would be to release the weapons and carefully trace their progress with the goal of arresting cartel members before the weapons were used by the cartels to hurt innocents. All of this had in the past been performed with the knowledge and cooperation of the Mexican government. “Fast and Furious,” however, demonstrated a key lack of oversight in the Justice Department. The ATF agents were instructed not to arrest the illegal gun dealers and allow the weapons to fall into the hands of violent cartel members were upon ATF surveillance was withdrawn

Semester Report: Obama Presidency

November 2011

and the guns were allowed to disappear. Some of these weapons have been later traced to hundreds of deaths in Mexico and the death of US border agent Brian Terry. Although briefed on this operation, Attorney General Holder never determined to pull the plug, nor have ATF agents reorganize the operation. Attorney General Holder testified before congress recently and described the operation as “flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution” and admitted to misinforming the congressional committee as to the specifics of the program. The Attorney General, who is charged with oversight of the entire Department of Justice, seems to have little idea of what its agencies are doing and is not exercising the oversight with which his position is charged.

While running for president, Barrack Obama defended the concept of medical marijuana and promised that he would not use Justice Department resources to override the decisions of states that have legalized it. To this effect, in 2009 Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department instructed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on investigating individuals who complied with state medical marijuana laws. Since 2009, seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized or expanded their medical marijuana programs. Despite their original relaxation of prosecution, the Justice Department has since resumed its prosecution of those who are in accordance with state medical marijuana laws but in violation with the federal ban. Federal law enforcement resumed raiding state approved medical marijuana dispensaries and shutting them down. Regardless of your beliefs on

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medical marijuana, this governmental double standard and shifting recognition had left states and individuals in a dead zone, unsure of how to proceed. Rather than clarify, Attorney General Holder has seen fit to leave the existing uncertainty surrounding the issue of medical marijuana to fester.

Like the Holder in the Justice Department, Secretary Steven Chu and his Department of Energy have been surrounded by controversy. Unlike the failure of Attorney General Holder, whose mistakes reside in lack of oversight and the setting of double standards, the Energy Department’s failures are ethical. The Department has been accused of a number of loans to green energy companies of questionable stability. Chief among these scandals is the controversy surrounding an Energy Department loan to Solyndra, a company based on the idea of promoting a new form of energy panels which were incapable of competing with more traditional varieties. The Energy Department in 2009 authorized a $535 million loan to Solyndra as part of an initiative to boost alternative energy growth.

The Government Accountability Office found that the preliminary loan approval for Solyndra had been approved before officials had performed the legally required investigation and evaluation of the company.

According to a former worker of Solyndra, as quoted by the Washington Post, “[a]fter we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right”. While questionable loans to companies who lack a complete and viable business plan is a problem in and of itself, the scandal goes deeper. Many of Solyndra’s key investors had substantial fundraising ties to the Obama administration. George Kaiser, whose foundation owns more than a third of Solyndra, was a bundler for the Obama campign collecting over $50,000 for him. The combination of improper an insufficient oversight of government loans and the question of political motivation in the granting of loans present a serious critique of the operations of the Energy Department. Secretary Chu either fails to offer any responsible control over his department or is more nefariously bending government resources to reward campaign contributors.

Presidential appointments beyond the Cabinet have also been controversial. In 2009, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

She received ccriticism over commenting that “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived

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that life.” She received much criticism for suggesting that the interpretation or application of the law should have anything to do with skin color or ethnicity. In 2010, President Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court despite the fact that she had so little practical experience. She served as Solicitor General of the United States for just over a year but besides that had no public service experience and had never served a judge. How can a person who has no practical experience interpreting and applying the law be expected to perform such duties on the highest possible stage. What kind of leader would nominate an unqualified candidate to such a prestigious position?

President Obama has been responsible for numerous appointments to powerful positions. It would be insincere to depict President Obama as only having appointed stupid and unqualified people to important positions. His decision to retain the services of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense who had served under President Bush provided admirable continuity during two wars. However many of Obama’s appointments have shown far less merit and have ignited several controversies. In the case of Cabinet appointees, Obama’s choices have demonstrated a failure to properly oversee their departments while the court appointees demonstrate considerable inexperience and ignorance as to the proper role of a justice in the American judicial system. Now looking back on three years of Obama presidency, we should ask ourselves what these appointees tell us about his presidency and about Obama as a leader. B

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The Economy

by Aaron Ricks

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elieve it or not, we are living in Obama’s economy now. You can try to deflect it and blame every single one of our economic woes on the previous administration and Congress, but after almost three years of Obama in office, it is safe to say that his administration’s response to the economic crisis that began in 2008 is more to blame for our current economic malaise. Here, I will provide three of the biggest lies the administration loves to tell about how, without Obama’s apparent leadership, our economy would be even further down the path of destruction than it already is.

1. Without intense government intervention, we have avoided a depression and saved or created 1.5 million jobs.

No one questions that Obama inherited an extremely lousy economy by any American standard, starting with 7.6 percent unemployment and rising on the day he took office. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) signed on February 17, 2009, was supposed to be the President’s signature intervention into an already struggling economy in an effort to keep the unemployment rate from reaching 8.8 percent and create some 3 million jobs – 90 percent of them from investment in private sector endeavors.

The reality of the Obama economy is far from as pretty than the administration’s most likely of projected scenarios. Unemployment peaked at 10.2 percent in October 2009. Since the enactment of the stimulus bill in February 2009, the unemployment rate has not approached pre-ARRA levels, even though $382 billion has been made available by government departments and agencies (on top of tax credits and other tax-related items). In fact, unemployment has remained woefully stagnate, hovering between 9 and 9.2 percent for the past six months In fact, the ARRA has essentially become best known for inflated, obscure, and unsupported job creation numbers. The former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer, began giving the stimulus credit for 1.5 million American jobs in 2009.

However, all efforts at checking her claims come up with very different numbers. Most local or national

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November 2011

news reporting agencies around the country have failed to find actual jobs to match up with those being reported by the Obama administration. Their only concession to this disparity has been rhetorical: after claiming that hundreds of thousands of jobs had been “created” early in 2009, Romer and her council turned to the phrase “saved or created” by mid-year. In December the Obama administration again changed its measure to jobs “funded” by the stimulus.

2. The American Recovery and Investment Act introduced sweeping infrastructure spending, which is a good way to create “shovel-ready” projects and stimulate the economy.

Actually, there is little disagreement about the creation of infrastructure projects given the relatively poor state of infrastructure in America. But the reality of the ARRA is that it involved extreme design inefficiencies within the actual legislation that created it. Economists on both sides of the aisles argue that one reason why the stimulus failed is that it was not designed properly. Stanford University’s John Taylor, for instance, has argued that although much money was spent, very little stimulus money was spent in the form of actual government purchases. In a paper which he co-authored with John Cogan, Taylor finds that out of the total $682 billion package, federal infrastructure spending was just $0.9 billion in 2009 and $1.5 billion through the first half of 2010—or less than four-tenths of 1 percent.

Projects that could have actually served a purpose in the long-run were instead spent in favor of bailing out www.binghamtonreview.com

state and local governments. But even if the money were spent on infrastructure projects, the jobs and the increased demand would inevitably disappear, and the federal government would be left holding the check.

3. America will be led to prosperity through the creation of a new “green” economy.

The President likes to maintain that government investment in green technology will allow the United States to take the lead in this emerging global market.

However, this position ignores the fact that the race for a green economy has already been won by countries like China, which invests millions of dollars in these industries annually.

In 2010, six Chinese solar power firms made it into the list of the top ten solar cell producers worldwide, according to the Guardian Environmental Network.

This has been accomplished by a Chinese state that is able to mobilize funds for projects without obstructions from red tape. Obama’s strategy cannot compare with this. The President funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to individual American manufacturers, while the Chinese government sends their firms billions of dollars. Chinese companies therefor are able to flourish internationally, thanks to large and meaningful government aid, while American companies, like Solyndra, waste their relatively small government contributions.

Obama’s policy panders to the desire of many blue collar Americans who wish for the return of manufacturing jobs in the heartland. However, it is unfair and incorrect for the President to make these promises. American manufacturers simply cannot compete against Chinese and other Asian companies with low labor costs and strong government support.

If there is one thing that can be certain, Obama has failed the American people. Instead of providing for a recovery, he has left this nation in an additional $4 trillion in debt with little improvement in confidence or employment. America needs real leadership, willing to engage in actual reform of archaic tax structure and capable of decreased popularity to accept lower spending for lower services, instead of attempting to please everyone and never succeeding in bringing about the change that Obama stood for. B

Semester Report: Obama Presidency

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How Different Majors View Humanity

Economics: People are rational and self-interested

Accounting: People are bad at their taxes

Political Science: People are stupid Sociology: White people are racist

History: People are dead

Philosophy: People think, therefore they are

Engineering: People are obsolete Environmental Studies: Trees are people too