October 2012

OCTOBER 2012

TRUTH AND TWO STAPLES

BINGHAMTON REVIEW Ipsa scientia potestas est.

ABC’s of Binghamton 6 Galli Interview 8 Dorm Room Diplomacy 10 Health Care 14 Education 16 Romney vs. Johnson 19 War on Drugs 22 Tragedy in Libya 24

Binghamton Review

P.O. BOX 6000 BINGHAMTON, NY 13902-6000

EDITOR@BINGHAMTONREVIEW.COM

FOUNDED 1987 • VOLUME XXVII NUMBER 1 • OCTOBER 2012 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jacob L. Hayutin Managing Editor Daniel D. Milyavsky Copy Desk Chief Eric Larson Associate Editors Samuel P. Bondy Nicholas Fondacaro Editor Emeriti Aaron Ricks Mark Soriano Contributors Will M. Griffin, Daniel Rudder, Michael Hickey, Steven Kwon, Bridgette Cook, Heather Sherman, Eric Fitchett, Joshua May, Vincent G. Piazza 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

BU Local 6

World 24

U.S. 14

Opinion 28

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EDITORIAL

From the Editor...

I

n less than a week, the United States of American will have chosen its president for the next term. This is undoubtably the most pivotal election I have witnessed. To be fair, that’s not saying much. I am merely 22 years old making this only the second election I have truly followed. However, I maintain this election will likely be recorded as a watershed moment in American political history. In 2007, our nation was crippled by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Liberal thinkers blamed the banks, characterizing them as mischievous money-grubbers. While at the same time, conservatives blamed individuals lack of financial responsibility and government overregulation. Specifically, the establishment of the recourse rule that inc en ti vised predatory lending. Whatever the more true analysis may be, is at this point irrelevant. James Carville famously asserted “It’s the economy stupid” while running the ‘92 Clinton campaign. Now more than ever, in the increasingly globalized marketplace, our financial solvency is undoubtably the number one priority for the well being of our nation. The policies of the Obama administration have been impotent if not retroactive to America’s recovery. They are reflective of the pursuit of highly abstract principles of utilitarian justice that are simply impractical in our current political climate.

In 2008, Obama campaigned with fantastic oratory conveying abstract political goals aimed to promote hope and change. His lack of a relevant record was largely ignored by the public, making him hard to rhetorically combat. With no record to challenge his campaign rested on his ability to theorize. His theatrics in general and his oratory skills in specific, won the presidency. However, this time the President no longer has the privilege of simply theorizing. He has put himself in a position where he must defend his now established, anemic record. Subsequently, his only legitimate argument for reelection lately, has been he needs more time to make change and more hope that he is capable. Political philosophy, bipartisanship and fiscal policy aside, it would be nothing less than a symptom of psychosis for the American people to reelect Barack Obama and expect anything different in his second term. Fortunately, the republican party has been able to provide a challenger that has extensive experience in balancing budgets, and creating jobs. It just so happens too, that his most cherished political principles are diametrically opposed to our current Presidents. We here at the Review have taken a special interest in this month’s issue because of the election and we hope our readers can find our material both insightful and enjoyable.

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 Pipe Dream “The Morning After: Fun for Everyone” October 22, 2012

Why the hell would you ask about the weather? Are you kidding me? Your cure for awkwardness to a conversation on cloud cover?

For some reason, Jake Lewis thinks we care about his opinions on sexual escapades. Judging by the neck hair in his Pipe Dream photo, there is no way he actually has the experience to give advice on this.

“Get breakfast! I know this one is a little out there, but hear me out.”

“Let’s talk about the morning after…If you don’t want it to be awkward, just remember that it doesn’t have to be. To be honest, this applies to life in general, not just the morning after.” How insightful! Why has this cure for awkwardness never occurred to me before?! Does it work for other things? If I don’t want cigarettes to be carcinogenic, does that mean they don’t have to be? “Joke it off if you want — laugh about what a crazy night it was. Maybe you have a past experience to compare it to. If the other person sits there awkwardly, that’s on them.” Wow, this guy is quite the charmer. What girl wouldn’t be flattered when you told her that you have sex with random people all the time? She might even be so impressed that she’ll immediately go get the test for HIV. “Act calm, cool and collected. Tell them you had a great time, ask them what they’re up to today. Heck, ask about the weather if you want.”

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Who the hell would think that getting breakfast is a “little out there?” Human beings need to eat food to live. Breakfast is an activity that billions of people engage in every day. What could possibly be out there about it? How distorted does your view of college life have to be, where waking up next to a stranger is normal, but getting breakfast with him or her is “a little out there? “The morning after is one of the college student’s most awkward habits…” If you wake up with random people so often as to call it a habit, you have much bigger problems in your life than awkwardness. Binghamton Prospect The Entire September-October Issue Binghamton Review has never before Press Watched an entire issue, but for some reason the editors of this semester’s first issue of Prospect have decided that all the news in September and October only merited only FIVE PAGES of text. This issue of Prospect is so pathetic that we almost feel bad for making fun of it, as if I’m making fun of a pathetic little three legged dog. Almost...

Binghamton Prospect “The Vice Presidential Debates” Aside from the fact that “debates” should be singular rather than plural since there was only one VP debate, we can’t help but wonder why Prospect would choose to cover, in their very limited space, the debate that Americans care least about? Is there even a single person who says, “Oh, I don’t care who becomes President, but I’m very worried about who’s gonna be elected Vice President.” Of course not. Furthermore, instead of actually offering any insight on the debate, the article just summarizes what happened, like a book report you may have written in the third grade. It ends with the following laughingly naïve statement: “It may not be clear who won this debate, but let’s hope that no matter which candidate brings home the gold, the American people turn out to be the true winners.” Well, anyone who wasted even two minutes of their life reading this terrible issue of Prospect certainly aren’t going to be the true winners, we can tell you that much.

OCTOBER 2012

Professor Watch Making our Public Servants “Scholarly” Claims Public Knowledge Since 2012 Legal Professor Pizza & Coconuts “You all are pretty smart, at least compared to average, have you seen some of the people out there? They’re generally pretty stupid.” Professor Radical Feminist “To see the difference of perception in the way our society views black and white women, all you have to do is watch porn” “When you really think about it, gender separated bathrooms are bizarre” “But how about men who identify as women, are they legitimate women? Yes!” “Sex is the most highly regulated fun you’ll ever have” “Strong evidence suggests that Abe Lincoln had sex with other men” “We live in an age where reproduction should not be thought of as sex” Professor Gerry Atrick “We [Americans] are terrorists, too.” - 10/11/2012 Professor J. Lennon “I think citizenship is ridiculous, why do we have borders? “Why do we say the pledge of allegiance? Have you ever noticed how the cadence of the pledge is similar to Our Father in the way it is seductive?” “Naturalization is one of the most bizarre processes” Professor Marx “Taxes are charity.” “9/11 was an attack on the world” “I live in the world of academia, I don’t need to worry about real world application”

Hear your professor say something outrageous in class? Please send quotations to: editor@binghamtonreview.com www.binghamtonreview.com

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ABC’s

The ABC’s of Binghamton

A B C

sbestos- It’s everywhere!

ar Crawl- One of the greatest days ever.

hipotle- Welcome to the first world Binghamton! We finally have a few places to eat around here that make Binghamton feel like a normal college town.

D

ickinson Community- We can’t wait for it to get converted into office space. Why is it called a “community,” when everything else is called a college (e.g. Newing College, Hinman College)? Will somebody tell me????? Please????

E

instein’s Bagels - Have fun waiting in line for two decades. The administration thought this two register bagel shop would be sufficient to replace the union. The new hot spot for lunch feels more like the Rathskeller than an adequate college dining facility.

F G

ront Street - It’s in “front” of a piece of shit.

irls- Whether it’s 80 degrees or 20 degrees, they’ll still be wearing the same exact outfit. It’s funny seeing them try to walk in heels that are about five yards high when they’re drunk out of their minds. Girls going out on a Saturday night is the ultimate definition of tough as nails; like the honey badger they just don’t give a shit. Please keep in mind that part of this section was 6

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written by a girl; the last thing we need is crazy feminists picketing outside the Binghamton Review office.

H

azing- Yay! We’re in the New York Times again! And they even describe us as “one of the most prestigious public institutions in the Northeast!” So what if we also admit morons who are willing to hold hot coals, get branded, and eat vomit? Why don’t you try managing that schedule?

I

ntelligence- You’ll soon find that its something you DON’T need to 1) get into Binghamton 2) be a Teaching Assistant 3) become active in Student Government 4) be an RA or, 5) be a Professor. You will need it if you would like to be on staff at The Review ;)

J

ewish Holidays- You will learn to love them. Unless you’re one of Pipe Dream’s idiotic opinion columnists, and you decide to write an article about how we should have more school days.

OCTOBER 2012

ABC’s

K L

ennedy’s Fried Chicken- Just turn around before you get there.

ecture Hall- The best location to pick up a copy of the only intellectual publication on campus. That’s the only good part of the Lecture Hall. It’s round, an eye sore, and full of asbestos. Oh and by the way the new paint didn’t help...

M

ountainview- Enjoy the walk, and try not to smash your face on rocks as you scramble up the hill and over the fence.

N

YPIRG- I used your voter registration drive to register as a Republican! Take that, you god damn commies!

O

CCT Buses- The number one location for angry and belligerent drunk assholes to congregate. You literally have to fight people to get on the bus at 3:00 in morning to get back home.

P

arade Day- A day in which students and townies coexist peacefully to get wasted and pretend to be Irish.

Q

uestions- “Why did I come here?” “Must it rain all the time?” “Am I going anywhere in life?” “Is Sodexo secretly poisoning me?” “Why doesn’t my Professor/ TA speak English?” “Will it ever stop snowing?” “Does the sun still exist?” These are all questions you will ask yourself within the first month of school.

R

asa- I haven’t seen her out in a while, heard she went under the

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knife for another “upgrade”

S

tudent Association- A collection of self-interested, pompous students. About 8-10 of them will do real work that will make your everyday life better, like reducing the severity of pot possession charges on campus. The rest of them just are a collection of bickering idiots. It doesn’t matter, though, only 3-4% of campus will even know this body exists until Spring.

T U

alent- Something most of our sports teams evidently lack.

niversity Plaza-. The hallways are all vomit yellow and there is one door on every building that doesn’t lock. Unless you plan on walking to Chabad on Friday nights there’s no reason to live there.

by the non-English speaking TA, you are going to be throwing around some pretty fucked up things about foreigners. Seriously...you’ll deny it, but we all know at some point you are say something horrible about your TA while pointing out what country they are from. Shame on you.

Y

ear Book- Thanks to these guys, we are forever known as ‘Binghamton Univeristy’.

Z

ombies vs. Humans- A game most of us found entertaining between the ages of 5 and 10. B

V

estal- A small town 30 minutes from the Pennsylvania border, also the location of Binghamton University.

W

al-Mart - Thank God it exists. This greedy corporation will offer you good quality products at low prices, and will enable you to survive on a college budget. What evil profiteering!

X

enophobia- It’s so difficult to find words that begin with ‘x’ that actually make sense on this list. So we’ll repeat ourselves from last year: As a freshmen you expect to be an openminded individual who will not allow any of your prejudices take over and force you to preemptively form an opinion about anyone or anything. But after that first semester of being taught

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Anthony Galli

Binghamton Junior Runs for County Legislature

I sat down with Anthony Galli in the CIW dining hall to interview him about his campaign for Broome County Legislator. The election is on the same day as the election for President, on November 6. Nowadays, Galli is always wearing a shirt and tie, and this was no exception. Below is our exclusive interview: Daniel Milyavsky: So, why don’t you tell me why you’re running? Anthony Galli: I’m running to be a strong voice for students. I know students are often overlooked in this area and talked down to and I think it would be useful to have a student voice in local government to show the community what we have to offer. So, I think that with BU being the largest jobs creator in this area, it makes sense to have someone like me helping to create jobs here. Personally, I’ve always loved public service, I’ve always been infatuated with history, it was always my best subject, I was awful at math…history, gym class, were really the classes I kept my grades up and enjoyed the most. I was a poor student in elementary school and middle school, and then when I went to high school, I read this book on George Washington in ninth grade, and ever since then I’ve been reading about history, and it’s been a source of inspiration

to me. And in the tenth grade, I visited my cousin, and that same weekend they were going up to Binghamton University, and at the time I had no intention of coming here, but they brought me up here, and I really loved the campus, and it became a great source of inspiration for me to pick up my grades. So I eventually got into BU, and it was one of only two or three schools that I applied to, and now that I’m here, I’d like to stay here, and I’d like to encourage more students to stay here and invest in the community, and talking to the local community, that message resonates with them. DM: You mention that you’ve talked to people from the local community too, how was that? AG: It was good. I’m trying to think about how many doors I knocked on…probably a thousand… DM: That’s a lot! Is it ever awkward, when you’re knocking on some random person’s door? AG: It’s something I’ve gotten good at …over the summer, I worked with my local assemblymen, in LI, so I’ve gotten good at…I mean, there are always awkward people, you’ll knock on the door, and they’ll see you through the eye hole, and they

don’t open, and you leave, or they ask you what party you’re with, and you say Republican, and they close the door…but sometimes they invite me into their home. A lot of people have told me that they’re excited about having a fresh face in politics. DM: How do you like your chances? AG: I think it’s gonna be close, very close, and at the end of the day, I’ll win if most students vote for me. DM: Can you specifically list issues that you think are important to students, in regards to the Broome County Legislature? AG: Sure. One, I would like to create a student services office, which would be a one stop shop for students to go to if they have any issues with the town, city, or county government. It’ll also have information on jobs, and it’ll create a middleman between the University and the community, which think is currently lacking. I would also like to work with University with their 2020 plan, help them with their creation of a job incubator downtown. DM: Do you have any funny campaign stories? AG: Yeah actually, one comes to

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SEPTEMBER 2012

Anthony Galli

mind. So there was the Presidential Forum on Civic Engagement, which my friend attended, and he said that while he was sitting at one of the roundtables, he mentioned how I was an example of civic engagement, and a woman across the table shouted, “Anthony Galli! He’s running against my husband, who’s standing there across the room!” So as the discussion proceeded, she made remarks like, “I hope he realizes that he’s gonna have to stay here over the summer,” and this eventually started annoying people at the table… and that’s what this campaign is about, trying to overcome that negativity. DM: Where was this forum? Was it on campus?

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AG: Yeah. DM: Has your opponent done anything to reach out to students? AG: Not that I’m aware of. DM: Have you campaigned in all the residential communities so far? AG: Yeah. I’ve helped at least two voter registration drives in every dining hall. By the end of the campaign I will have spoken to every student council, and by the end of this week I’ll have fliers in every residential hall on campus… I’m encouraging students to like me on Facebook.

AG: If students have any ideas to help me with the campaigning, or if they want to volunteer, I need help, the more help the better. In the end this is about the students, giving us a voice about how things are done. DM: And who should they contact if they wanna help out? AG: They contact me on Facebook, at www.facebook/ rallyforgalli, or they can email me at rallyforgalli@gmail.com. And if they want a free T-shirt they can go ahead and ask me, I have plenty.

B

DM: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

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Door Room Diplomacy

You, Your Webcam and World Peace

Ben Sheridan, President of Door Doom Diplomacy

DRD is a non-profit organization with the purpose of stimulating our education by directly connecting students in the Arab and Western worlds. With American chapters at UPenn, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, NYU, and Binghamton, DRD opens the door for genuine discussion, understanding and unfiltered exposure. DRD is an entirely student run organization and is founded by the ideals of relationship, engagement, and open-mindedness. Traditional scholarship of international relations professes two distinct levels of diplomacy. Track I consists of talks between officials at the government level, Track II involves intellectuals. Treaties only exist between governments, but diplomatic breakthroughs like the Oslo Accords were a direct result of meetings between non-government representatives. In the last ten years a third, more effective track of diplomacy has emerged. Track III diplomacy is when normal citizens use social technology to engage each other and build lasting partnerships; it brings peoples closer together, not only governments. Track III diplomacy has grown in congruence to social media; it relies on information remittance, or the flow of information and conversations without sanction between people from countries with different cultures. Track III diplomacy depends on services like Facebook and Twitter to sustain 10

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inclusiveness; people who want to engage in it need only internet access and an open mind. Track III diplomacy is a phenomena of globalization; it has transformed the ways which we interact with people and, often, the place of origin of the people with whom we are interacting. Although the tools of information remittance might have been developed in the West, evidence suggest that the tide of influence is not limited to one direction. Max Fischer, an international editor at The Atlantic, wrote during the Occupy Wall Street movement, “that North Africans could be inspired by Americans who could be inspired by

North Africans suggests that, as popular movements rise in power and prominence, the national boundaries and governments that once defined world order are declining in importance.� An example of a grass roots Track III diplomacy effort that became a short epidemic was the Israel Loves Iran movement. It had the necessary aspects of cultural and political information remittance. It may have been initiated by ordinary people, but the message was intended for the political leaders who have led Iran and Israel to become adversaries.

OCTOBER 2012

Door Room Diplomacy

The political differences that had beset the two nations were shoved aside for playful photos of parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends and people who are willing to face the daunting task of creating familiarity and normalcy between two increasingly marginalized cultures. In its most effective form, Track III diplomacy is the art of engaging people who would otherwise be bitter enemies, in a completely de-politicized context; it is easier to find commonalities when discussing hummus recipes or sports than it is when talking about nuclear bombs and terrorism. These similarities help forge friendships; friends are able to have progressive discourse much more effectively than strangers. The internet has increasingly been used to connect students in ways that support learning and building critical partnerships. Dorm Room Diplomacy, an organization now taking root at Binghamton University, is leading the field in Track III diplomacy at the university level. DRD operates through weekly video conferences between students in the Arab and Western worlds. The conversations are mediated by professional facilitators and has proven successful at Ivy League schools. It has been recognized for its cutting edge approach to relationship building. Universities should embrace and employ Track III diplomacy to make classroom learning more experiential. Studying abroad is no longer the only way to gain worldly experience while in college— parents need not pay thousands

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of dollars for their kids to travel and study what one friend recently described to me as, “studying drinking, eating, clubbing and European anatomy.” Changing the way our youth interacts with the rest of the world will help

us overcome cultural barriers, reignite the American student’s competitive edge in the global market and confront the ignorance that prevailed leading up to the boiling point of the Arab world’s relations with the West. B

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SODEXO

Slop For Plebs Sam Bondy

In high school, the term “Freshman 15” was something that every senior was facetious about. Perhaps because they were confident in their self-control or perhaps because they hadn’t yet thought about making their own food choices. Either way, we had a feeling that a few of us would succumb to this pudgy fate. But, little did we know that one’s economic status would be the most important factor in defining our weight while in college. I recently transferred to Binghamton as a second semester freshman and have loved every moment of it so far. The only time I get anxious is on my walk to the dining hall. As I peregrinate from station to station, I see what is available that day. Sometimes pasta, sometimes tacos; but always, pizza and French fries. Luckily, everyday there is a nice salad bar with fresh fruit too. My second day here, I filled up a plastic cup with berries and yogurt along with a plate of lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables. I grabbed a Smart Water and walked to the register. My bill totaled $16.32! When I walked over to my new friends, all of whom were weathered Binghamtonians, they looked shocked as they saw my tray. They told me I was going to run out of money, and that I had to stop eating like that if I didn’t want to add several hundred more dollars to my meal plan. Since then, I have also seen a variety of “memes” spread on the Binghamton Facebook page, accusing Sodexo of charging ridiculous amounts of money for a couple of strawberries.

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A bacon cheeseburger at the dining halls is $1.85 whereas a pound of yogurt and berries is $6.72. There is no way that a handful of berries and a nice scoop of yogurt costs the dining hall that much money. Also, where can one find a bacon cheeseburger for that little money? It seems as though the Sodexo and our dining halls use this high price of fruits and vegetables to subsidize the low price of meat and French fries. Sodexo, who also provides food to many jails, is also accused of violating and abusing a plethora of human rights all over the world. The University of Washington has recently banned them from serving in their school, serving a 25-year relationship. Also, the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil were both asked not to work with Sodexo in providing food. At my old college, I used to cook for

myself so I didn’t have to worry about things like this. But now, I am in a position where I must. And assuming that I don’t want to ask my parents to refill my meal plan two times over, I am obliged to eat poorly. I spoke to many kids who all have the same issue. Some are even forced to steal from the cafeteria to make up for the extra money they spend to eat “right”. Michelle Obama is preaching “Let’s Move!” Which is a great campaign to get kids eating healthy as well as exercising. Last year, she beat Ellen DeGeneres in a push-up contest as well as Jimmy Fallon in a potato sack race. The first lady is trying hard to move America away from being the “obesity capital of the world” and it is time for Binghamton and Sodexo to do their parts too. B

OCTOBER 2012

SODEXO

Binghamton’s Nefarious Dining Monopoly Dan Milyavsky

If you’re a conservative or a libertarian, one of the most annoying aspects of your existence on this planet is liberals going up to you and telling you that you’re always in favor of “corporations.” Well, there’s at least one corporation (besides MSNBC) that this conservative/libertarian isn’t a fan of – and that’s Sodexo. Sodexo has used its status as the campus’s only comprehensive dining service in order to charge students prices far above and beyond what students would pay in a competitive environment. If you go to the College in the Woods dining hall store/Nite Owl, you will see frozen dinners, which sell for one dollar at Walmart, sell for four or five dollars. If you go to the regular dining hall, you will see a low quality piece of meat that Sodexo dares call a steak sell for six or seven dollars. All this, despite the fact that the prices should be far discounted, considering that all on campus students pay $1200 to Sodexo every semester regardless of whether they ever eat its food. Sodexo justifies this practice by saying that after you pay this flat, required fee – basically a tax – you then only pay for the actual cost of food, and not for the cost of paying employees, www.binghamtonreview.com

providing silverware and other dining materials, etc. But what would the reason for this practice be? When you go to a pizzeria, do you first have to pay a flat fee for the cost of paying the pizzeria’s employees, and its real estate costs, and the cost of the box the pizza comes in, and then finally pay for the cost of the ingredients in the pizza? No, of course not, that would be absurd. You only pay one price, which includes all the relevant factors of production in making that pizza. And this final price that you pay isn’t much higher, and in some cases perhaps even lower, than what you may pay for Sodexo food! I do not know how or why Sodexo got its monopoly when it comes to oncampus dining. Binghamton University owns the actual dining halls, so I don’t see why they can’t have multiple vendors competing to give students the best service and the best price. Anyone who takes an introductory economics class (in Binghamton’s case, Economics 160) learns about how a monopoly operates in a market, and how a competitive firm operates, and the differences between the two. A monopoly’s price is only limited by what a consumer is willing to pay. Sodexo can’t charge you a hundred dollars for a shitty and greasy slice of pizza because you would never pay that. However, they can charge you $2.50 for soggy mozzarella sticks because even though the mozzarella sticks are far cheaper than that to produce, you as the consumer are limited as to your options because of Sodexo’s monopoly. If Sodexo was competing with other dining services, then it would have to lower its prices and increase the quality of its products – otherwise no students would choose to eat there, and it would be out of business.

But, you may say, Einstein’s Bagels isn’t part of Sodexo, so doesn’t that mean that Sodexo isn’t a monopoly? No, because Einstein’s Bagels has extremely limited capacity, and is not a comprehensive dining service available at multiple campus locations like Sodexo is. And still, Einstein’s Bagels always has massive lines, because some students are just that desperate to avoid Sodexo’s products – even after they were extorted out of paying a $1200 fee! I really do not see why multiple vendors cannot all be located side by side at the various dining halls around campus and compete for customers. This would allow opportunities for better tasting food, while also making it cheaper, and this would get rid of the absurd mandatory fee that on-campus students must pay to Sodexo. I do not know why the University goes so far out of its way to collect the fee from students on behalf of Sodexo in order to appease this multinational corporation (Sodexo is actually a French company, headquartered in Paris). Instead, the university administration should reach out to other dining service companies and invite them on campus to compete with Sodexo. Until this is done, I’ll keep buying $1 frozen dinners from Wal-Mart. B

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Health Care

How to Fix Health Care Dan Milyavsky Here’s a hint: More government is not the answer It’s truly astounding how many problems that Americans have to deal with today have their origin in the unintended consequences of stupid government policies. For instance, why do most Americans today get their health care coverage through their employer, instead of their employer just paying them the cost of their coverage in salary, and then letting the employee choose their own health care plan? Well, during World War II, the government thought that it would be a good idea for bureaucrats to regulate wages and prices. Thankfully, during the 1970s, economists like the late and great Milton Friedman illustrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the free market sets prices and wages far more efficiently than the State can ever do, but that was thirty years after World War II. Anyway, during that era, the government set a cap on how much businesses could pay their employees. Small businesses and corporations then had to find a way to attract the best employees. Contrary to Marxist theory, corporations do not want to pay their employees subsistence wages, because then they wouldn’t be able to recruit the best and the brightest. So, businesses decided to offer their employees health care insurance, since they were prohibited by law from increasing their salary. Later, the government decided to 14

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make the money employers spent on health care coverage for their employees tax exempt. However, if you try to buy health insurance on your own, that would not be tax exempt. Why the difference in tax treatment? Does this make any sort of economic sense? Of course not. But hardly anything the government does makes any sense. Forcing individuals to obtain health care through their employer often results in people staying in jobs they don’t like merely so that they can get preferential tax treatment. This is just one example of bad government policy distorting our health care market. Another; is the profound effect of frivolous litigation. Doctors routinely order unnecessary tests because they are afraid of getting sued. Paying for malpractice insurance forces doctors to charge patients higher fees. Medical malpractice trials should be conducted in front of a jury of medical professionals who know exactly what a doctor is supposed to do and what his or her ethical responsibilities are. They should not be done in front of a jury that is vulnerable to emotional demagoguery by silver tongued lawyers like John Edwards. But now let us come to the very heart of what is wrong with America’s health care system: government regulation on what insurance must cover, and how much it must cost. This transforms insurance companies from an organization whose operations are run by really smart actuaries (basically a mathematician on steroids) who are able to determine what makes economic sense to cover,

into organizations that are run by the dictates of esoterically detached politicians. For instance, actuaries have calculated that on average, health care coverage for old people is about six times more expensive than coverage for young people, so they charge older people premiums that are much higher than premiums for younger people. But thanks to Obamacare, insurance companies are limited to charging older people only triple what they charge younger people, a policy known as “community rating.” Where did they get the number three from, as opposed to six? From absolutely nowhere! They conjured it up from political expedience! That’s not how an insurance company ought to be run! Does it really make sense to cover routine expenses such as birth control on health insurance plans? Imagine you, and everyone else, had food insurance. When you went food shopping, say at Wegmans or Wal-Mart, would you buy only what you needed, or would you shop recklessly and inefficiently? Well, this is what happens when you put every possible health care expense on an insurance plan; instead of being intelligent consumers, people purchase services without much regard to how much they cost or whether they really need them. This is also breeds massive fraud. It is estimated that there is 10% fraud in the health care industry. As Senator Rand Paul asks, why is it that there is not 10% fraud in the

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Health Care

bread industry? It’s because there is a consumer buying the bread, so bread companies really do not have many opportunities to be unscrupulous. However, because in health care, the insurance company is paying for almost everything, the patient has less of an incentive to exercise cost-control, and doctors have more of an incentive to be corrupt. If Obamacare is implemented, patients will have even less incentive to be smart consumers. The solution to these problems is a radical overhaul of our health care system: ending tax preferential treatment for employer providing health care, allowing consumers to

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buy health care across state lines and deregulating health insurance markets, enacting significant tort reform, and more. Not to mention issues like the effect of doctor licensing on the supply of doctors, and the effects of FDA oversight and regulation on the cost of producing and marketing pharmaceutical drugs. Democrats favor “solutions� that involve expanding government power and only making our system even more inefficient. However, unfortunately, Republicans offer reforms that are too timid, even if they do take us in the right direction. To make things worse,

the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, enacted a health care plan in Massachusetts that, while not as bad as Obamacare, is still pretty terrible, and he continues to support it. Conservative and libertarian think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute have drafted a lot of good policy ideas for fixing our health care system. I hope that Republicans in Congress turn those ideas into legislation, and get that legislation passed. B

15

Education

Liberating Education from our Intuition Jacob L. Hayutin “It is intuitive to think public is better than private, but next time someone tells you that, tell them to think about this: public toilets.” -John Stossel, No They Can’t Path dependence is a heuristic psychological mechanism that explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past. Even though, past circumstances may no longer be relevant. This concept was thoroughly explored in New York Times bestselling author Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. He argues that most people operate within the confines of subconscious cerebral phenomena, such as this, unknowingly and are worse off for it. While he presents his argument in terms of his experience as a trader on Wall Street, I found his description of human nature to be equally true in terms of political behavior. Path dependence explains why it is natural for people to resist change. This is especially true in the way individuals associate themselves with institutions. The longer one associates oneself with an idea, the greater the emotional connection. Anyone who has ever owned a dog can relate to this concept. The longer one owns a dog the more devastating its death will be. However, the death of a dog after one week of ownership is no less morally significant than after several years. When faced with highly personal issues, it is a part of human

nature to overreact. With regard to politics, the emotional attachment to a particular institution may have its roots in valid grounds. However, the factor of time has the tendency to skew perception in a positive way, even when institutions have substantially deteriorated. Subsequently, the greater the emotional connection, the more evidence demonstrating the decay of said institutions is required to change it. Anyone who has ever been in and out of a relationship can testify to this phenomenon; the

longer the relationship, the worse the quality of that relationship has to get for it to be terminated. Coming back now to politics, path dependence suggests that well-established institutions must become significantly harmful to society before the majority will acknowledge the need for reform. John Stossel thoroughly investigates overgrown government programs and their propensity for mismanagement in his book No They Can’t. We have come to a point in

Education

American history where we must reevaluate our public education system. We spend the most annually when compared to other developed nations, but rank low in performance scores. (http:// mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versusthe-world-infographic/). From a purely libertarian standpoint, this should be no surprise; it is simply another example of the inefficiency of federal programs. But, how far down in rank must we fall before we look to restructure our public education system. It seems that one of the worst performing states has recently begun making institutional changes to its education system. Louisiana is ranked 48th in the U.S. for kindergarten through twelfth grade performance. Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal signed an Education Reform Package into law this summer (House Bill 976 & Senate Bill 597). Essentially, these bills expand the eligibility requirements and number of seats for their voucher program. Traditionally, a voucher is a check made by the government given to families for the purposes of subsidizing private school education. These subsidies are allocated in poor communities that suffer from exceptionally bad public schools. In Louisiana, qualifications include: student performance at the C level or lower, and total family income could not exceed 250% of the federal poverty guideline. This new expansion involves over 125 participating schools that are both private and public. Around the country there are

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already 27 voucher programs in 13 states that have given the freedom of educational choice to a record high number of children totaling over 210,000. According to UAED reform website, 9 out of 10 “gold standard” studies conducted by seven different teams in six cities show that the voucher program implementation improved student performance at significantly lower levels of spending. (http: / / w w w . u ae d r e f o r m . o r g/ SCDP/The-Research-Facts-AboutParental-School-Choice.pdf). State Superintendent of Education John White went on the record saying “we are very pleased by the strong participation of schools and the opportunity to provide students and families across Louisiana with alternatives.” This new bill allocates 7,450 new vouchers. If the number of applicants exceeds the available seats, the state will implement a lottery system. If it is clear that the voucher system has proven itself to be superior to the public status quo, then why is it not more popular? It seems that the special interests of teachers unions have leveraged President Obama to reallocate voucher program spending. His 2013 budget (that spends more money than any previous budget in history) eliminated government spending from the highly effective Opportunity Scholarship program in DC. This scholarship has existed since 2004 when signed into law by Bush 41. The expiration of this funding will leave more than 1,600 voucher dependent students with

no choice beyond their inadequate public alternative. In terms of efficiency, the vouchers amounted to a mere $8,000 per student when compared to the public average allocation of $18,000. That’s right, it takes the federal bureaucracy more than twice the amount of tax dollars to provide a substantially worse education. How can this be so? This notion seems counter intuitive based on the path dependence associated with the Democratic party platform established decades ago. Are not the Democrats the party of education? I thought that Republicans didn’t care about the disadvantaged? It is not that Republicans don’t want to improve education; they just don’t think that the federal bureaucracy can adequately provide it. This comes down to a clear philosophical distinction: social conservatives believe that the people who know a child best are their parents. The power of choice should be up to the individuals in the most localized sense, not up to some bureaucrat in Washington who makes a living spending other people’s money. Although, the instinct of path dependence may have aided the survival of mankind two thousand years ago, let us not be fooled by the subconscious triggers in our brains that discourage us from objectively reevaluating the current failing state of our public education system. B

17

Romney

I Believe that Mitt Romney is an Ambitious, Greedy, Money-Hungry, Elitist 1%-er, Businessman…and That’s Exactly Why I’m Voting for Him Vincent G. Piazza I feel uncomfortable writing this article. I am a Libertarian, and I’m not the biggest fan of the current Republican Party. Since 2008, I have been an outspoken and unrelenting supporter of Ron Paul. Like many of my fellow liberty activists, I was outraged to hear that Dr. Paul’s son, Senator Rand Paul, endorsed the Republican nominee for President, Mitt Romney. The Libertarian Party headquarters released a statement directed at Senator Rand Paul that read, “No true libertarian, no true friend of liberty, and no true blue Tea Partier could possibly even consider, much less actually endorse or approve of, the Father of Obamacare, Big Government tax and spender, Republican Mitt Romney.” Three days ago, I whole-heartedly agreed with this statement. I planned on casting my vote for Gary Johnson (which might as well be abstaining) on election day and staying true to my ideals. Today, I feel different. I took a step back and re-examined Romney’s positions as well as his accomplishments. Some of his qualities, although controversial, may be exactly what our nation needs right now. I think I understand why

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Rand did what he did. Mitt Romney’s net worth as of 2012 is approximately $200 million. He has a JD from Harvard Law School as well as a MBA from Harvard Business School. In 1984, Romney co-founded of one of the largest private equity firms in the country, Bain Capital. He served as President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. As Governor of Massachusetts, he eliminated as $1.5 billion debt and created our nation’s first and only functioning universal healthcare system. Not terrible credentials, right? Right now, our federal government maintains a debt around $15.8 trillion. I think we can all agree that number needs to decrease. Ask yourself, who else is more strategically and rationally qualified to substantially decrease this debt? (a) A community organizer/law Professor (b) An extremely successful businessman, investor, consultant, governor that has spent the majority of his professional life creating prosperity and profit from failing institutions?

I’ll take the latter. Allow me to explain. Mitt Romney is a specialist at making something out of nothing. For instance, look at what he did at the 2002 Olympic Games. Ronald Kessler on Newsmax states, “Having faced a budget deficit of $379 million when he took over, Romney ended up with a surplus of $56 million. The money went to fund future Olympics.” So in his career Romney has already erased two public debts; $379 million during the Olympics and $1.5 billion in Massachusetts. Well, I’m not the best at math but I’m pretty sure that’s$1.879 billion more than President Obama has ever resolved in his life. This guy has literally lived the American dream. He has excelled in the fields of academia, business, and government. Yes, I am a Libertarian, but I am also a realist. For example; my ideologies tell me our country would be better off without entitlements and only private investing. But for right now, if Social Security is not reformed, my parents are not going to be able to retire on time and I have a real problem with that. So, as a rational individual

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Romney

do I not have an obligation to vote for the candidate who has the best credentials to reform the system? As a believer in the Libertarian movement, I really think that my vote is more useful getting Obama out of office rather than keeping my ideological integrity and voting for Gary Johnson. At least I know Romney will repeal Obamacare (his political future depends on it) and will chip away at the debt. For now, I will support Mitt Romney because I believe that as a real life private-sector successstory, he can address the problems that affect my life, my family, and my wallet. Relinquishing the tax burden and encouraging personal spending across the board is the only way to pull us out of this

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economic slump. And the only way to do that is to cut spending and decrease debt; something that Mr. Romney specializes in. It is difficult to say but I don’t really care about his archaic stance on marijuana legalization, whether or not he is pro-life or pro-choice, or if supports gay marriage or doesn’t. Honestly, I think we have reached a point in civil rights history where no politician will be able to stop social liberalism in these areas. To me, this upcoming presidential election is like a job interview. We need to hire the person who is going to provide the best results for our failing country as quickly and efficiently as possible. It may be hard to hear, but social issues are not going to be the President’s top concern over

the next four years. Libertarians will have more of an influence as friends rather than enemies in the upcoming election. B “This glass is half full” – Anonymous Optimist

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Johnson

Liberty is on the Ballot Zach Greenberg

We lean towards candidate 1 because despite all the despicability horrible things he has done or said he will do, we feel he will be best choice for this country. I guess I’ll support candidate 2 because even though his actions run completely against everything I believe in, I still feel that he can do a lot of good things for this nation. Let’s face it, no one is really happy about either candidate this election season. You have a choice between a lawyer and a Mormon, the guy who passed Obamacare and the guy who

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wrote it, a guy who will bomb Iran, and a guy who would rather bomb other unstable dictatorships in the Middle East. Your lukewarm support is understandable. Yet there is a candidate who will has the passion, the drive, and the ideas to put this nation back on the right path. This man is Gary Johnson, and he is running for Presidency of the United States as the Libertarian party candidate. He has scaled the peaks Mounted Everest, completed multiple Iron Man challenges, and hasn’t had a drink in over 20 years.

He’s the former governor of New Mexico who wants you to vote Libertarian for one election. Are you fiscally conservative? Johnson lowered taxes for every resident of New Mexicoduring his tenure and left that state with a $1 billion dollar budget surplus. He was also voted “most fiscally conservative Governor” during his 8 years in office. Are you socially liberal? Johnson is and has always been for marriage equality as a constitutionally guaranteed right, and he’s the highest ranking elected official to

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Johnson call for an end of the War on Drugs as well as for the legalization, taxation, and regulation of marijuana. Do you support a foreign policy that is peaceful and noninterventionist? Johnson will stop the fighting overseas and respect the sovereignty of other nations so that we can focus on rebuilding this country and not someone else’s. To reiterate; he is the only candidate that if elected today, will bring the troops home, balance the federal budget, lower taxes for everybody, repeal the Patriot Act, end the War on Drugs, and uphold the rights and liberties guaranteed in the Constitution tomorrow. But maybe you would be more inclined to vote for a candidate who could create prosperity or lower gas prices. Who could create jobs or improve the moral fiber of society. Who could halt the rise of the oceans, eradicated poverty, or reduce criminal activity. Yet the reality of the situation is that the government does not create prosperity. People create prosperity. The greatest engine of job creation history has ever witness has been the free market, not the State. The government cannot legislative morals, teach prudence, or instill a sense of responsibility into anyone. They can only use the coercive threat of violence if you do not comply with their presupposed notions of “fairness”, “public health”, and “justice”.

burden of excessive taxation and regulation allows them the freedom to improve their own lives and the lives of others. “Fixing America is not an insurmountable task. It’s actually about putting people before politics.” But it is not just his libertarian policy stances that separate Johnson from the field. What distinguishes the former Governor from the other two candidates is that, as put succinctly by GQ magazine; “Johnson in incapable of bullshitting.” He is willing to tell America the truth, the cold, hard truth that both Obama and Romney conveniently ignore because they know that is the only way either of them will get elected. It is the truth that it is impermissible to sacrifice our constitutionally guaranteed liberties for the illusion of security perpetuated by the USA PATRIOT and National Defense Authorization acts. The truth that

arresting 700,000 people a year is an inexcusable and immoral response to a victimless crime that over 100 million Americans (included our President) have committed. The truth that the only way to rid politics of the evils of money is to make the government so small that no one will want to buy it. There was an interview where Gary Johnson was asked, if put on a torture rack facing certain death, who would you vote for, Obama or Romney? His words; “Take this to the bank, I would rather die.” And for those who erroneously believe that to vote third party is to throw it away, from the man himself; “A vote for freedom is never wasted.”B

Gary Johnson understands the concept that it is not the government or the corporations or the even the President that must lead America, it is the people. Getting the people out from underneath the heavy

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21

War on Drugs

Please, End the War on Drugs Dan Milyavsky The Presidential Candidates Should Pledge to Stop Hurting America through this atrocious, racist and immoral monstrosity The Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914 was the start of the War on Drugs. When it was being debated in Congress, several prominent doctors gave testimony about the dangers of certain drugs. Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania alleged that “most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain.” Dr. Hamilton Wright testified that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority.* Well, fortunately, public officials and medical professionals today are a bit more enlightened about racial issues. Why, then, are we still continuing a campaign that was started almost a hundred years ago on behalf of a racist agenda? Politicians endlessly proclaim that America is a land of liberty and freedom. Well, in this land of liberty and freedom, you can be arrested and imprisoned for choosing to consume certain substances. Liberals endlessly charge Republicans with waging a “War on Women,” because Republicans don’t think that it should be legal to kill fetuses. Well, then what should be the proper term for a campaign to ruin the lives of those who want to get high? In a country where 50% of the adult population has, at least one point in their lives,

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experimented with an illegal drug, perhaps the proper term should be a “War on Humans.” Who benefits from the War on Drugs? Well, aside from the scores of DEA agents and police officers who make a living by invading the homes of innocent people, the drug cartels benefit. If drugs (and by the term “drug,” I refer to those drugs which are currently illegal, not to prescription drugs, which are actually much more widely abused than illicit drugs) were made legal, the cartels would immediately crumble, since once the drugs would be sold by legitimate corporations in actual stores, nobody would buy drugs from criminals on a shady street corner. Bootlegging mobsters like Al Capone, who, during the Prohibition era were America’s original drug

dealers, understood this, and they aligned with socially conservative Christians and with do-gooding Progressives to keep alcohol illegal. As soon as the 21st Amendment was passed, and alcohol could once again be sold by legitimate vendors, the mobsters crumbled and violent crime plummeted. Who are the victims of the War on Drugs? Well, quite simply, the general public, including those who, like me, don’t use any illegal drugs at all. Because legitimate businesses can’t sell the drugs that so many Americans, for whatever reason, obviously want (why else would they risk jail time and pay so much money above the actual cost of producing the product) it becomes profitable for drug dealers to sell these drugs. Illegal drug dealers are much more prone to violence than multinational pharmaceuticals like Pfizer and Merck, and as a result poor neighborhoods are forced to suffer through drug dealers shooting each other up with submachine guns over territory. Innocent and law abiding citizens in New York City are subjected to stop and frisks that are both time consuming and highly embarrassing and disrespectful, all because police officers have incentives via quota systems to get as many drugs arrests as possible. The most obvious victims of the War on Drugs, however, are drug users themselves. People who have what should be considered a medical problem are arrested and

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War on Drugs

imprisoned, thus making it nearly impossible for them to obtain respectable employment once they are paroled. Drug users overdose because of uncertainty regarding the potency and purity of drugs. This is something users of legal drugs never have to worry about – when was the last time you fretted about whether your antibiotics or your codeine were cut with baking soda or more harmful substances? Similarly, during Prohibition, drinkers of alcohol had to worry about whether their moonshine was safe to drink – something drinkers of legal alcohol never have to worry about. Part of the reason drugs are so potent, addictive, and dangerous today is a result of the War on Drugs. At the turn of the 20th century, cocaine was enjoyed in moderation and responsibly by large segments of the population. In fact, CocaCola originally contained cocaine, before the public turned against it because of the paranoid and idiotic racial fears that I mentioned at the start of this article. It was when cocaine became illegal that it became so much more potent and addictive. Had regular cocaine been legal, crack cocaine, which is more dangerous and deadly, would never have been invented. If drugs like opium and cocaine were legal, it’s doubtful that anyone would bother cooking a substance as dangerous and volatile as methamphetamine. A common argument for continuing the prohibition of drugs

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is that if recreational drugs were legally sold, everyone would be high all the time and desperately addicted. But is that really true? Would you, dear reader, really start doing crystal meth if you could purchase it legally? Is our faith in our fellow citizen so low that we need to control his behavior through coercive and violent drug laws? And are all recreational drugs really incompatible with a productive and healthy life? Already the tide is shifting when it comes to marijuana. Legalizing pot is a good idea, but it is not nearly enough. If we end the War on Drugs, vicious drug cartels will lose their revenue and wither away, and millions of people currently in prison on drug offenses will have a second chance at life. That sounds

like a plan that both Republicans and Democrats should be able to rally around. Instead, both Romney and Obama favor preserving this monstrosity. They also both favor retaining a flawed and budget-busting entitlement scheme, keeping most government agencies in place, no matter how useless they are or how much they strangle the economy, and continuing a failed War in Afghanistan, all while having no plan to deal with Iranian theocracy and a moribund economy. May God Save America. B *Cockburn, Alexander; Jeffrey St. Clair (1998). Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press.

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Coward-in-Chief

Tragedy in Libya and the Coward-in-Chief Aaron Ricks In this election cycle, President Obama seems to have an almost insurmountable lead in the approval polls regarding his foreign policy. This dominance was called into question when four members of the embassy staff in Benghazi, including the US Ambassador to Libya, were killed in what seem to be coordinated attacks by an al Qaeda-linked organization. By the time this article is printed, the supposed moratorium on criticizing the President will have passed, and we can finally have an adult discussion on an issue that actually does matter: is Obama’s

high foreign policy approval actually justified? The answer is no. You see, it’s quite easy to criticize the President on domestic issues. Five trillion dollars added to the national debt, slowing jobs growth, and a further decrease in middle class income. When it comes to foreign policy, however, it’s much easier to turn a blind eye to the mistakes of this administration after the success of killing Osama bin Laden. Libya. Egypt. Iran. Obama has consistently shown that although he is a coward when it comes to taking risky positions, he is at least willing to do what is generally

expected of almost any president. Democrats love to point out that this administration has “killed the number- two al-Qaeda leader seventeen times” as a result of killing one and continuing to kill their replacements. But, while killing top leaders of groups dedicated to killing Americans and wiping the state of Israel off the map is definitely a policy worth maintaining, it’s a policy of no risk that all presidents would pursue. The areas where Obama’s foreign policy fails are those where consequences are larger and the opportunities to improve the world

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Coward-in-Chief

are greater. Take for example in Libya: The administration’s initial reluctance to be involved in a major uprising was so painfully ridden with indecision, that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seemingly contradicted each other in interviews from day-to-day on whether or not the deployment of US troops in Libya was a viable option. The President’s biggest foreign policy flaw is not the minutia of operations conducted by the US military but in his unwillingness to assertively state American interests and values abroad. No one should question Obama’s willingness to bring justice to those that killed our fellow Americans in Libya. Many Americans, myself included, are concerned about the broader relationship between the United States and the Islamic world, and Obama’s willingness to defend freedom of expression not just at home, but also announce a firm belief in supporting those values abroad. Therein lies the reason why so many conservatives and other Americans have always doubted Obama’s foreign policy. In an attempt to supposedly mend the relationship with the Muslim world, the administration has completely abandoned the staple of American foreign policy for a century: a steadfast dedication to freedom for humanity. When did Americans become so complacent with revenge as an adequate substitute for foreign policy? Of course bringing justice

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to the murderers of Ambassador Stevens and his staff is necessary, but it is effectively the least that the Obama administration could do. Obama is a coward because he refuses to take risks. There it is, a great conservative talking point, but allow me to elaborate: What would happen if Obama decided not to pursue the killers of our ambassador? Or how about Osama bin Laden? It’s impossible to fathom because it would never happen, because these types of decisions are basically nobrainers. When Obama announces to the world that the “United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” but refuses to express his commitment to a fundamental American value to freedom of speech, we have a problem. When an administration official declares that the United States won’t involve itself in the Arab Spring because the “best revolutions are completely organic” but disregards possible outcomes, such as the tyranny that could develop, or the thousands of lives that would needlessly be killed, we have a problem. When Obama declares in 2011 that his “hope and expectation is that we’re going to continue to see the people of Iran have the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms” despite not having courage enough to support them when their people actually revolted in 2009, we have a problem. When there are notable increases

of barbaric violence against Christians in the Middle East by Islamic extremists and regular military forces and the President responds by announcing “now is the time for restraint” to those Christians, we have a problem. Barack Obama is a coward, it really is that simple. Obama does all of the little things right but refuses to take stances when the President’s opinions and policies actually matter. Say what you will about George W. Bush, the man did know a few very simple truths: that Islamic extremists mean us harm, their demands are contrary to our fundamental decent American values, and our values are worth protecting, vocally supporting, and potentially sharing. For once in the past ten years, liberals and isolationists alike can finally shut their mouths about the causes of such deep-seeded hatred towards the West. These people (Islamic extremists) actually do despise us and our values and they have made it painfully clear to the United States these past few weeks. These people mean us harm. They are our enemies. There is no compromise with them and there can’t be coexistence with them. Unless Barack Obama can learn that lesson, it’s time for him to go. B

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Of Leaks and Liars

Of Leaks and Liars Joshua May

The war on poverty. The war on drugs. Liberals seem to love applying the term “war” to any and all of their pet causes. For all their “war” making, the liberals in power seem to fail to appreciate the immediacy of the genuine and infinitely more deadly war being waged against us: namely, the threat of terrorism. Liberals either cannot or will not appreciate just how serious this threat is; at the very least, they fail to appreciate the consequences if we lose the fight. But true to form, President Obama has started another war: a war on secrecy. Never mind that countless American lives are at stake in this war; the President promised a transparent government and by God he is going to deliver one. President Obama’s contempt for the United States intelligence community is no secret- nor could it be, as he’s not a big fan of keeping any. His administration has repeatedly shown itself to be in opposition to, if not openly hostile toward, the work that our intelligence community performs in defense of our nation and our freedoms. From Attorney General Eric Holder’s legal pursuit of former CIA interrogators to Nancy Pelosi’s blatant lies about her knowledge of CIA practices- and then her despicable later claims that

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the CIA lied to her, it is clear that the liberals in power are no friends of the intelligence community. Rather, they have besmirched and dishonored the work of intelligence professionals for their own political gain. Perhaps the most abhorrent example of this contempt for the IC came in the aftermath of the bin Laden raid. President Obama gave unprecedented access to Hollywood filmmakers to Pentagon and CIA records, going so far as to arrange a meeting with the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, discussing crucial mission details and sharing the names of the agents involved in the raid. This is absolutely unacceptable for what should be obvious reasons. Crucial details of the raid, including a myriad of previously highly confidential special forces tactics and strategies, are now public knowledge. It doesn’t take a community organizer to realize that what is told to Hollywood doesn’t stay in Hollywood. The damage done by these leaks can only be measured in human lives. This is not merely an academic discussion; one need only consider the case of Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor whose vital work in the CIA manhunt for Bin Laden was nothing short of heroic. His name was leaked

by the Obama administration to the world, a contemptible act of cowardice and betrayal. The doctor trusted us, and he is currently suffering a 33-year jail sentence for treason. When a president is willing to sacrifice a friend and ally to a Pakistani prison for three decades in exchange for short-term political gain, it begs the question of that president’s competency in foreign affairs. Former Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA Robert Gates has spoken out- to say the least. “I have a new strategic communications approach to recommend,” the normally placid foreign policy savant recently remarked to President Obama’s National Security Team. “Shut the fuck up.” You can’t make this up. The dangers posed by these leaks have gotten to the point that a group of former Navy S.E.A.L.s and intelligence professionals have created a twenty-two minute video blasting the administration and strongly condemning the leaks. The video, called “Dishonorable Disclosures,” is available on YouTube and is a must-watch. It’s bad enough when the national security of the sole remaining superpower is more porous than a kitchen colander. The lives

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Of Leaks and Liars

of our fighting men and women, intelligence professionals, and foreigners who stand in solidarity with us (like the good doctor) are all pawns in the political game. But, what should be even more thoroughly disgusting is the fact that when it suits his needs, the President has demonstrated that he does in fact know how to keep his mouth shut. Perhaps the most chilling, telltale example of this came during the Issa probe into the Fast and Furious scandal. Congressional leaders

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requested full disclosure of relevant documentation, which prompted an immediate denial of their existence. Following an official subpoena, the administration fell back on the “executive privilege� cop out. The men and women of our intelligence community and special forces do not ask for recognition, and their work is by definition thankless and largely unknown. It is this very veil of confidentiality that allows them to save lives so effectively. By piercing the veil

and tearing down the shrouds, the Obama administration has exposed what must not be exposed. Men and women will die for this carelessness, make no mistake about it. What is it that Obama has to hide? Certainly not his contempt for those who serve. B

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A Letter from an Alumnus

A September 11th Reminder Larry Provost

An alumnus of the last millennium of The Binghamton Review The killing of four American diplomats in Libya is a tragic loss for their families and their country. Amb. Chris Stevens was working hard to improve life in Libya, and the consequences of his murder will be profound. Unfortunately, his death and similar attacks on our embassies in Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen and Egypt highlight the misguided attempts at over-tolerance. It is fundamentalism in reverse that does not achieve true diversity but instead causes international havoc and chaos. As such, we are sadly repeating history instead of learning from it. I remember September 11 every day but had to relive it during a recent return to New York. This year, of course, the anniversary of the attacks once again occurred on a beautiful Tuesday. I was there 11 years ago working search and rescue at the place where my Godparents had lost their beautiful daughter. Their grief is strikingly real and they know their lives will never be the same. However, they also have a great moral clarity because they understand the diverse nature of the world we live in. They know that the diversity of the world also includes pure, unadulterated, evil; evil that there is no negotiating with. While America is not perfect, and never was even when fighting Nazism and Communism, the contrast between us and our enemies is profound. Their hatred of us is intense, and there is no negotiating

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with this evil. During one of my tours in Afghanistan, an interpreter was very pro-American and was one of the few Afghans I knew that wasn’t an Islamic fundamentalist. He wore a laminated picture of Monica Lewinsky around his neck and was endlessly announcing crazy schemes to come to America, a country he’d grown to love. I would ask him, “Do the Muslims go to the Heaven?” “Do the Christians go to the Heaven?” “Do the Jews go to the Heaven?” He answered yes to the first two but was absolutely emphatic that the answer was no for the third question. This was one of the few, non-devout, pro-Americans I found. Imagine where the majority of the population comes down. You get the idea. I saw this example many times in Iraq and Afghanistan. Political correctness has caused us to go beyond loving thy neighbor, as well as embracing tolerance with respectful disagreement. Correctness has created a fundamentalism in reverse that is dangerous, selfdefeating, and intellectually dishonest. The United States is amazingly tolerant and has shown frustrating and, at times, frustrating restraint. American Christians did not riot when an “artist,” supported by taxpayer dollars, defaced the image of the Virgin Mary with, feces and hung it in the Brooklyn Museum. Jews in Europe are increasingly subject to anti-Semitism. But they don’t riot, either.

Yet, when someone makes a cartoon about Mohammad or intellectually dares to criticize any aspect of Islam, in the same way Christianity or Judaism have been criticized repeatedly, rioting and killing of Americans follows. It’s especially sad since Americans have done more to help Muslims than their own leaders. Our current Secretary of State is an example of this fearful and ultimately self-defeating accommodation. Hillary Clinton rightfully denounces works that could insult Islam. But she didn’t embrace the same standard in 2000 when running for the U.S. Senate from New York. Back then she couldn’t bring herself to criticize, during the Brooklyn exhibit. Even in Clinton’s flawed thinking, a speck of truth is gleamed; she can get away with not criticizing religious intolerance against Christians, as Christians will not riot in the face of intolerance against them. Yet, Clinton will criticize those who would possibly insult Islam. Her inconsistency in regard to religious tolerance raises the question: Is she simply being lackadaisical, or does she fear the radical Islamist uprising? The book, WHILE EUROPE SLEPT, written by a gay American journalist, illustrates the very real fear of radical Islam. The journalist left America because of supposed intolerance and went to

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A Letter from an Alumnus

Amsterdam to live out his life in peace and freedom. Soon, though, Bruce Bawer had to flee Amsterdam because of the larger threat. There are a growing number of radical Islamists in Europe who want to kill homosexuals. The difference between this journalist and Mrs. Clinton is that he is honest with himself and she is not. Mrs. Clinton condemns bigotry but fails to see the source of the hatred. America has flaws, but it is fundamentally better. Here, you

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can criticize your country and spit on its flag legally. Millions risk life and limb to come here in the hope of making a better life. The newly found citizens of President Obama’s amnesty program would be hard pressed to say America is evil. In the 1930’s America was at a similar crossroads. Some people were questioning the wisdom of having fought in World War I, considering it a waste of resources and a war for the rich. Adolf Hitler used this second-guessing, and the Treaty of Versailles to fuel his rise to power in Germany. This would

never have happened had the Allies of World War I had the intellectual honesty and moral fortitude to demand unconditional surrender and occupation of Germany, as they did during and after the Second World War. Only with force was evil destroyed, one war too late. Evil will always be evil. The real evil is those that want to use their religion as justification for unprovoked mass murder, as seen on beautiful September 11 mornings. B

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Turning a Blind Eye

Turning a Blind Eye The Wishful Economic Thinking of Francois Hollande’s France Guy de Maupassant

Francoise Hollande swept to power as the 24th president of France this past May with what appeared to be a powerful statist mandate to reverse the liberalization of former president Nicholas Sarkozy. The previous five years had seen the Sarkozy government attempt what, to most people, appeared to be timid moves toward freeing the labor markets, increasing pension ages, and deregulating the economy. However, these reforms were taken with extreme umbrage by many in France, who perceived these moves as an all out assault on the French socio-

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political system. Specifically, the move to raise the pension age from 60 to 62 sparked riots and protests for weeks across France. Additionally, Sarkozy maintained the near constant disapproval of his constituents for most of three last years of his term. The 2007 world financial collapse and subsequent economic recession impacted Europe more than most regions, and came at a terrible time for free market reformers like Sarkozy. So, on second look, the so called mandate that Hollande claimed exiting the presidential election may have been

thinner than many of his Socialist Party colleagues would like to believe. Instead, the election was likely a wholesale rejection of Sarkozy as a person, not necessarily the reform agenda the former president was originally elected to carry out. Since taking office, Hollande has been good to his word, to the complete detriment of his country and people. The Socialist Party program attempts to hark back to an age before extensive globalization, an aging population,

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Turning a blind eye

and financial collapse rendered the extensive post-war welfare state many Frenchman expect to be a pipe dream. Hollande promised to raise the top tier tax rates to 75% this year, but has so far been successful in raising the rate to only a paltry 62%. For French businesses, this spells the beginning of the end of France as a safe place to do business. The Economist reported in early September that Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and CEO of LVHM, was applying for Belgian citizenship in an attempt to avoid these potentially ruinous taxes. No matter what your personal convictions regarding tax policies, it is impossible to see that Hollande’s tax policies are entirely negative for France. Hollande campaigned on a platform that contained allusions to returning France to the status of a manufacturing center for Europe, but has quickly adopted policies entirely abrasive to firms. Why would any business stay in France when neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe offer such better business climates? Hollande’s approach to deficit reduction is also entirely reversed. Cuts to spending pale in comparison to tax increases, and defies all

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economic advice and experience. Private businesses in France are increasingly concerned about the country’s future economic outlook, and caution the government to slow down the pace of tax increases lest the economy fall permanently off track from its potential. Laurance Parisot, the head of a French business group, reported in a recent Telegraph article that firms across France are in “revolt across the country” in the wake of Hollande’s first few months in office. Hollande received significant support during his election from labor unions and the working class. However, these groups may be feeling buyer’s remorse as France’s economic productivity and competitiveness tank. As Germany pulls ahead, France stagnates, with factory closures spreading throughout the country. Don’t be surprised if popular unrest, which erupts at the drop of a hat in France, boils over in the next few months as out of work laborers join the ranks of unemployed young adults on the streets of Paris and Marseilles. Hollande must acknowledge that the ideology his party espouses is defunct in a modern France. Cradle to grave welfare benefits will have to be cut back. The pension age, which Hollande ludicrously proposes returning to 60, must rise

even more. However, it is important to acknowledge that these changes will be much more difficult in France than in the United States or United Kingdom. French perceptions of the role of the government in their lives have far deeper foundations than do those of the Anglo-Saxon world; the French identify much more closely with the state than most Americans or Britons. If France is to avoid the financial ruin and humiliation of Greece, he must quit the populist pandering and get to work preparing his country to function in a 21st century economic climate. Demonizing wealth and success will only drive the wealthy and successful to nearby markets and friendly countries, leaving France destitute.

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“COLLEGE GRADUATES SHOULD NOT HAVE TO LIVE OUT THEIR 20’S IN THEIR CHILDHOOD BEDROOMS, STARING UP AT THE FADING OBAMA POSTERS AND WONDERING WHEN THEY CAN MOVE OUT AND GET GOING WITH LIFE.”

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OCTOBER 2012