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FROM THE EDITOR
Review The Horace Mann
A Journal of Opinion on Current Events, Politics, Social Issues, and Relevant Affairs
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Conservative Resergence
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The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Domestic Powering the U.S.
Deepti Raghavan
4
THe Texas Textbook Massacre
Kevin Yoon
6
Elizabeth Rosenblatt William Ellison
8 11
Julia Pretsfelder
12
THe Tea Party
Samantha Rahmin
14
Faith. Hope. Charity
Jonah Wexler
Tea Party or Beer Party? THe Myth of Equivalency
Daniel Elkind Jasmine Mariano
16 18 21
Special Coverage: Results of the Races
Nathan Raab/Alexander Posner
39
Jenny Heon
24 26
International Intervening in Myanmar Toxic Sludge Partners for Peace
Features
Economics Bridging the Income Gap Beginner’s Mistakes Up in the Air Buy Buy Baby
Nathan Raab Ben Marks
28 30
Cryogenics: A Moral Dilemma
Vivianna Lin
32
Robotic Skeletons: The Future is Here
Andrew Stier
33
403 Error: Access Denied
Alexander Posner Kieran Birch-Desai
34 36
Nicholas McCombe
Science and Tech 4G: A Smartphone Revolution
The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
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Domestic
Domestic The Texas Textbook Massacre
Nicola Dale
by kevin yoon
I
t sounded like a typical day in Congress: arguments here, screams there, and bias everywhere. But this scene played out far from Washington D.C. It was Texas, where lawmakers are debating textbooks, the very foundation of our educational system. Every ten years, the Texas Board of Education revises the state curriculum. This is usually a simply and relatively carefree process, but this spring, everything changed. The Board, comprised of ten Republicans and five Democrats, voted last May to mandate a more conservative social studies curriculum. Texas, which has the second largest population of any state, is one of the largest consumers of textbooks in the country. Textbook manufacturers are reluctant to make different textbooks for each state; such a massive change to Texas’s curriculum will have
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a profound impact on the textbook industry. The changes that the Texas Board of Education has made are a complete distortion of history and a blur of the line between fact and fiction. Reputable historians throughout the nation are in agreement: the changes are both biased and unethical. The Board has rewritten history and has compromised the integrity of education in Texas. The losers in this situation are students, who will now learn an altered version of history approved not by actual historians or teachers, but by members of the Texas School Board with a specific political agenda. Throughout the process of revising the curriculum, board members introduced an unprecedented one hundred amendments. The overwhelming majority of the amendments that have made sweeping changes to the Texas curriculum were proposed by Republicans. Although Democratic board members were active participants in meetings, they failed to provide a counterbalThe Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
Domestic
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Historians would provide a more reliable, factual version of history than the biased historical narrative composed by government officials.
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ance to the overwhelmingly Republican agenda. A Democratic board member proposed an amendment instructing that students study how “how the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.” Every single Republican voted against the amendment. The Republican majority swiftly passed many controversial amendments while the Democratic voice remained mostly silent. Many recent decisions made by the Texas Board of Education have sweeping implications and have sparked intense controversies. The board has proposed to end the separation of Church and state and emphasize historical religious figures, such as John Calvin, over important political figures. This emphasis, not on freedom of religion, but on the support of a specific religion, Christianity, contradicts an essential edict of the United States of America: the freedom of religious practice. Without basis in fact, the board has renounced Darwin’s “Theory” of Evolution despite the fact that most informed individuals consider evolution scientific actuality. The board also suggested replacing the United States’ title as a Democratic Republic to Constitutional Republic and replacing hip hop with country music on lists of influential American art forms. Each of these changes, although impacting very different facets of education, represents the board’s desire to editorialize what children are taught. According to the board, the Venona Papers, very complicated and nuanced historical documents that may have suggested Communist infiltration into US institutions, confirm with certainty the Communist evil that plagued our nation. The changes show the Board of Education’s warping of history in ways that are founded in ideology and speculation rather than actual history. Many Republicans defend these changes with outlandish claims, throwing blame for the poor education system at different groups. They claim that current textbooks are the result of the liberal agenda of politicians over a decade ago and that current modifications are only to balance that injustice. One potentially valid piece of information that the Republicans presented was that prominent individuals in the Muslim community have invested heavily in textbook companies in an attempt to place Muslim ideals into American education. However, according to a recent article in the New York Times, these individuals were only trying to combat the anti-Islam sentiment present in many history classrooms. The recent additions and eliminations to the Texas education curriculum reveal an extremely close-minded mentality. Many biased changes have been made with little foundation in historical or scientific fact; they are attempts to promote the The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
skewed religious and political agenda of Republican board members. Although there are obvious faults with the education system, the question becomes: How do we fix these problems? Who should be deciding what our nation’s children are taught? Historians, and not misinformed politicians, would be most effective in determining a Texas’s history curriculum. This switch from elected politicians to informed scholars would also end the partisan antagonism prevalent in school boards. Historians would provide a more reliable, factual version of history than the biased historical narrative composed by government officials. The future leaders of this country will all be products of our current education system. A deeply flawed education system could have grave implications for our future. It is imperative to prevent the devastation that the Texas Board of Education could bring forth.
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proposed changes Photo Bucket
religion: New textbooks will say that evolution is now an unproven theory, the Founding fathers had religious motives, and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and other secular figures will be replaced with those of John Calvin and priest Thomas Aquinas.
economics: the term capitalism is being changed to “free-enterprise system” and the curriculum is being shifted towards Republican free-market economic ideals. Boston
PubRecord
conservatism: The Conservative revival, the National Rifle Association, the Contract with America, the violent nature of the Black Panthers, and the negative effects of the Great Society in the 1960’s are emphasized to add a right-wing shift to textbooks.
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Domestic
Powering the U.S.
by deepti raghavan
C
urrently, 85% of the energy in the US, about two thirds of the electricity, and most of the transportation fuels come from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum. These energy sources account are non-renewable and are running out. Furthermore, they pollute the environment with massive amounts of toxic carbon dioxide and are the source of our global warming woes. As a nation, we need to come together and switch to cleaner, renewable sources of energy. Three discussed alternative sources that are not coymmonly discussed are geothermal energy, nuclear power from thorium, and plasma gasification. These three energy sources don’t have powerful lobbies advocating for their use. But they do have the facts—they are renewable, green, and feasible. Fossil fuels generate a lot of waste. They pollute the air, poison the environment, and contribute to the destruction of our planet. In one year, a coal plant will emit around 3.7 million tons of CO2, 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide, which can result in the forming of smog, and many other pollutants. A coal plant can also create a lot of waste, such as ash and sludge. These toxic substances, including mercury, arsenic, and chromium can damage our water supply and put our lives at risk. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the
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Thorium-232
nationstates
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Federal Government allocated 854 million dollars in subsidies to coal producers in 2007, funding the generation of 1946 billion kilowatt-hours of energy. For refined coal, there were two billion dollars in subsidies; 72 billion kilowatt-hours of energy generation were funded. 227 million dollars in subsidies were given out for natural gas and other petroleum liquids. Even though government spending on green technologies now surpasses that of fossil fuels, clean sources are dwarfed by their dirtier cousins in terms of energy production. There are many different renewable source of energy, but these three alternatives are most appealing. The government must take the initiative in reducing our dependence on non-renewable and dirty energy sources, lest we run out of fuel and destroy our planet through the continuing use of fossil fuels. Politicians need to rid themselves of their delusions regarding global warming. It is here, it is manmade, and it threatens the very survival of the human race. Regardless of the results of the upcoming midterm elections, Congress and the President need to end their partisan bickering and come up with a way to ensure that clean and renewable energy sources become our most important energy sources in the near future. Global warming and the consumption of fossil fuel reserves are not problems that we can afford to continue ignore. Promising to change how we create energy is a good step, but swift and decisive action is needed. HMR
Another viable alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear energy from thorium. In the United States, 794 billion-kilowatt hours of energy are generated yearly from nuclear power. Nuclear power usually involves uranium, but we should seriously look into replacing uranium with thorium. Thorium is advantageous because it more widely available than uranium, and it because produces less radioactive waste. Thorium as a fuel has superior physical and nuclear properties than uranium. It produces less nuclear waste than uranium, and it is much more abundant on Earth. Carlo Rubbia, A Nobel laureate working at CERN is working on developing thorium as a viable alternative to uranium. He says that a ton of uranium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3.5 million tons of coal. Furthermore, reactors running on thorium have no possibility of melting down. Thorium also does not produce weapons-grade waste, so there will be no worry of rogue nations and terrorist groups obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material from nuclear energy facilities.
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Domestic
Geothermal Energy
In 2007, 14 million dollars of subsidies were allocated for geothermal energy. Geothermal Energy is the process of extracting energy from hot rocks deep in the earth’s crust. Some kind of pump is drilled into the ground, where a “hydrothermal convection” system exists. Cold water is pumped down into the earth’s crust where it is heated by geothermal heat. The heated water rises to the earth’s surface and generates steam, which rotates a turbine and generates electricity. There are many advantages to using geothermal energy over fossil fuels. But geothermal energy also holds several advantages over other clean energy technologies, such as solar or wind power. Firstly, it is emission free. Although geothermal energy production can produce silica and sulfur dioxide, these chemicals are removed from the steam and returned to the hydrothermal well. Geothermal energy requires only small amounts of land to create the same amount of energy as other technologies, and there is no need to undergo the expensive and wasteful process of transporting materials, like coal, across the nation. Although it is quite expensive to drill into the ground to reach these pockets of energy, the heat in the earth’s core is not going away any time soon. Geothermal energy becomes economically feasible in the long run, since geothermal plants are easily and cost-effectively maintained. Geothermal energy is extremely advantageous because it does not produce the massive amounts of waste that fossil fuels do.
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Plasma Gasification
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One last energy source that is not used widely is plasma gasification. This process involves converting garbage into products such as ethanol, electricity, or vitrified gas. Vitrified gas can be used to create electricity. This technology simultaneously relieves the problems caused by a society that produces too much garbage and a society that relies to heavily on fuels that destruct the natural environment. A plasma gasification machine that would cost around $250 million would be able to break down around 2,000 tons of waste daily. This one machine would deal with the needs of a city of around a million people, and would pay for itself within ten years, not counting the money made from selling the excess electricity.
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manitousys
International
Israel and Palestine: Partners for Peace or Tragically Missing Opportunities?
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by william ellison
hen trying to negotiate difficult issues between nations it is of course important to stand up for and protect your country’s rights and interests. But there is such a thing as being too stubborn and allowing the goal to get obscured by the process. In the most recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, unfortunately both sides are allowing obstacles to block the road to negotiations, compromise and peace. The Palestinians are stubbornly demanding that Israel extend the expired ten-month moratorium or freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank before the peace talks that commenced in September can resume. Meanwhile, Israel is stubbornly refusing to extend the moratorium so that the peace talks can continue. To understand the present state of
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the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations it is critical to consider the context of the past. For over 60 years Israel has hoped to live in peace with its Arab neighbors, in land Jews have lived in since ancient times. In 1947, in recognition of the need for a Jewish homeland after the murder of Europe’s Jews in the Holocaust, the United Nations voted to divide Britishcontrolled Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. In response, while Israel gratefully accepted the state it had been granted, Palestinians refused to take their state, and instead five Arab nations declared war on Israel, invaded Israel, and tried to eliminate Israel. Up to 1967 Arabs controlled the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (the land the Palestinians now seek for their state), but still did not establish a Palestinian state. These lands were then among those captured by Israel in subsequent wars initiated by Arab neighbors seeking Israel’s destruction.
Israel kept some of the land as essential for its security, but returned much of the land even though it placed Israel at an ongoing security risk. For years the Palestinian people were represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964 with the goal of achieving Palestinian liberation and destroying Israel. For decades the PLO, led by Yassir Arafat, conducted a massive terrorist campaign killing innocent Israeli children, women and men. When Arafat ostensibly renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1993, Israel agreed to negotiate in order to try to live in peace. Even though the terrorism against Israeli citizens continued, in 1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin met with Yassir Arafat commencing a process to attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However significant offers by the Israelis have been rejected by the Palestinians. In The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
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for negotiations, ruled out extending the moratorium. On September 26, 2010, Israel allowed the moratorium to expire, and the Palestinians again threatened to halt the peace talks. Since then, no direct peace talks have occurred. Shortly after the moratorium expired, on October 8, 2010, leaders from the Middle East and Africa met at an Arab League Conference in Libya. At this conference the Arab League participants decreed that they would give the United States a month to devise a compromise so that the peace talks could continue. This allowance of time to reach a compromise was the result of intense lobbying by United States proxies. However, officials at the Arab league conference stated that President Abbas introduced several other options to them that the Arab League would discuss when they reconvened in November if the efforts of the United States did not restart the peace talks. During the month of October, the United States attempted to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend the moratorium. However, Netanyahu is currently receiving harsh criticism and difficulties within his governing coalition, which contains several hard-line pro-settlement parties, and his own right-wing Likud party, regarding a possible extension of the moratorium. These right-wing members of his coalition are hinder-
ing Netanyahu’s efforts to compromise. American officials offered Israel security guarantees and military supplies in exchange for an extension of the freeze. Mr.
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Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians appear ready to take some necessary and critical political risks in order to finally make peace with one another.
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Netanyahu responded by offering to extend the moratorium in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. This proposal was quickly rejected by the Palestinians. In an interview with IsraelTV on October 17, 2010, President Abbas said that he prefers to continue negotiations with Israel, but he will consider other options if necessary. One option he mentioned was that the Palestinians might approach the UN Security Counsel to obtain recognition of their state, a move that would altogether sidestep the peace talks. He also stated that the Palestinians were ready to end their historic claims against Israel once a Palestinian state is established. Netanyahu declared that he might consider extending the West Bank construction moratorium in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a
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2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, more than 95% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the offer was rejected. In 2005 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forced all Jewish settlers from their homes in Gaza and reiterated his support for a Palestinian state. In 2007 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed almost 100% of the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem and his offer was rejected by the Palestinians. On September 2, 2010, President Barack Obama began an initiative to end the violent conflict that has lasted for six decades between the Israelis and Palestinians. In Washington, D.C. President Obama brought together Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. It was the first time in two years that Netanyahu and Abbas had met face to face. Netanyahu attended the conference despite the fact that hours before it began four Israelis were murdered in a Hamas terror attack. Just bringing the parties together to talk was an important step. The goal of these preliminary talks was to establish ground rules for negotiations, discuss the situation between Israel and the Palestinians in general, and to establish another conference among the same world leaders two weeks later. The plan was for the parties to meet every two weeks to discuss the issues, make progress, and ultimately agree upon solutions. President Obama voiced his goal of seeing a framework agreement resolving fundamental issues, such as the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees, reached between Israel and the Palestinians within one year. The second meeting among the parties took place in Egypt two weeks later on September 14; however the next meeting date was not set. The unprecedented ten month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank was set to expire on September 26. About half a million Israelis live in the West Bank. The Palestinian president threatened to discontinue the peace talks if the moratorium expired, and the Israeli prime minister, stating that this should not be a precondition
Working together for peace (from left) Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Barack Obama of the United States, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, King Abdullah II of Jordan. 9
International Jewish state. However, he also stated that the resolution of settlement construction, which has been ongoing for four decades, should be one of the many issues that must be resolved by the parties, and not a precondition for negotiations. On October 31, 2010 as it appeared that the month long time period for the United States to secure a compromise between the parties had failed, Egypt proposed an international peace summit to sustain the Palestinian’s claims. There have also been further suggestions to have the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and the signatories of the Geneva Conventions make a global assertion of Palestinian statehood. There
withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas is ruling Gaza with brutality and terror, and refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. If extremists such as Hezbollah and Hamas are successful, the hope for moderate nations and governments in the Middle East will decline, and the peace and safety of the world community will be threatened. Skeptics and pessimists of the current peace talks say that the talks will be unsuccessful since the United States has not been able to come up with any new solutions regarding the conflict for
ten years. But many claim that solutions that have been previously suggested are sufficient to bring about a resolution between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis and the Palestinians need to have the political courage and strength to reach for and secure peace. HMR
Editor’s Note: As this issue goes to press the first week of November, efforts to restart the peace process are continuing, so the situation may have changed by the time the article is published.
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Netanyahu declared that he might consider extending the West Bank construction moratorium in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. However, he also stated that the resolution of settlement construction, which has been ongoing for four decades, should be one of the many issues that must be resolved by the parties, and not a precondition for negotiations.
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are great concerns that such an act would increase tensions and upset the United States and other involved nations. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians appear ready to take some necessary and critical political risks in order to finally make peace with one another. However, neither party wishes to be seen by the world as the party who walked away from the American-sponsored peace process: unfortunately for all of the parties, a very fragile and unstable situation has been created. Another critical reason for the peace talks to resume is that their breakdown assists the dangerous extremists in the Middle East such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Hezbollah has turned Lebanon into a protectorate of Iran, and has allowed thousands of missiles to be placed on Israel’s border. After Israel’s unilateral
Two State Solution The primary solution on the table involves creating a Palestinian state out of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem (shown in green), while leaving the rest of Israel, including West Jerusalem as an Israeli state (shown in yellow). The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
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Toxic Sludge
International
by julia pretsfelder
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n Monday October 4th, a corner of a concrete reservoir wall retaining toxic waste from the MAL Magyar alumina refinery in Hungary burst, spilling onehundred and eighty-four million gallons of toxic red sludge leaked into the local Marcal River. Eight hundred people were displaced from their homes in the neighboring towns of Kolontar, Devecser, and Somlovasarhely, eight were killed, and over one-hundred and twenty were injured. In addition, all local wildlife was extinguished in just an hour. With another ecological disaster occuring only six months after the BP oil spill, we must insist that companies and governments around the world cease to risk the welfare of the environment by having safety measures on oil rigs and other kinds of chemical processing, to stop disasters like this leak from occurring in the future. Greenpeace, an organization whose self proclaimed goal is to, “ensure the ability of the Earth to sustain life in all its diversity,” named this tragedy as one of the top three European environmental disasters over the last few decades; however, it could have been prevented. In 2006 this same plant was featured on a list sites threatening the welfare of the Danube, compiled by the International Commission of the Protection of the Danube River. Had the Hungarian government paid attention to this list and investigated the risk this plant posed, they could have identified the safety problems in the wall. Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, admitted to the mistakes of the Hungarian government stating to Reuters, “ The wall [of the reservoir] did not disintegrate in a minute. This should have been detected.” After the leak occurred, the MAL Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company played down the toxicity of the sludge, claiming its contents to be nearly half iron oxide, which causes its red coloring. They claimed that the rest of the sludge was composed of aluminum oxide, The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
silicon dioxide, calcium dioxide, titanium oxide and oxygen-bonded sodium oxide, a claim that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences supported. Neither the company nor the academy ever mentioned the presence of toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and chromium that WWFHungary found when testing the contents of the sludge. MAL said that nothing was wrong after inspecting the sludge, and wanted to commence with alumina production the same weekend. The sludge itself burned those who came in contact with it, and the red dust that was caused by the dryness of the air after the leak caused respiratory problems to those who inhaled it. When these negative health indicators came to light, the company denied responsibility for the leak and said it’s devoted to helping clear up the spill using “all its energies and efforts”; however, the company only gave $150,000 to help with the cleanup. Lojas Tolnay, MAL’s chairman of the board, has a fortune of $118,000,000, seven hundred and eighty six times the amount donated to the cleanup. MAL’s denial of responsibility as well as its downplaying of the environmental impact and desire to commence production right after the leak was a response nearly identical to that of BP when the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred. Although the sludge’s alkalinity is no longer a threat now that it has been diluted in the Danube and it no longer proposes a threat beyond Hungary, 2000 acres are now uninhabitable, soil change is neces-
sary, food won’t be able to be grown for 30 years, and the cleanup will cost tens of millions of dollars the and take at least a year. The Prime Minister stated that at this point it would be pointless to cleanup some of Kolontar because it is uninhabitable. The sludge has left the affected areas industrial wastelands, and furthermore, there are three cracks in the wall, half a meter wide and twenty meters long. Even if nothing else damages the area from this plant, Eastern Europe is peppered with dormant mines and plants from the communist era to the 90’s that have not been cleaned out properly. This disaster may well be a warning for other plants and mines that lack proper safety measures. It is very important that old toxic plants and mines are disposed of properly, not only in Eastern Europe, but in any area of the world. This sludge could deter plans to build other potential hazardous waste sites, such as: a gold mine in western Romania using cyanide that could be extremely dangerous to its surrounding towns and a huge coal mine in central Poland, near Lake Golpe National Park. The disasters that have occurred from the sludge are a hard-learned lesson because they further expose corporate greed and how companies ignore safety in favor of profit. It also solidifies the point that companies ought to treat chemical plants with more caution in order to not only protect the environment, but to protect those who live in the communities endangered by chemically toxic leaks. HMR
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International
Intervening by elizabeth rosenblatt
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or the past two decades, Myanmar has been following what they refer to as a “road to democracy.” However, their recent steps have proved to be disappointing thus far. The governmental power in Myanmar rests within the corrupted military junta and the dictator Than Shwe. The totalitarian regime has little regard for the wellbeing of their people and has oppressed them unnecessarily. Furthermore, they have controlled the election process to retain their position of power. The governmental election in November, held for the first time in 23 years, serves as an example of their authority and dominance. The current totalitarian government has taken many measures that render the upcoming election illegitimate, which should be a cause of great concern. Many racial groups have been banned from participating, the media has been heavily censored by the state, and over 2,000 political prisoners have been excluded. The military has been guaranteed a quarter of the seats in both the House of Nationalities and the House of Representatives. Although the Democratic Party of Myanmar boycotted the election in response to its invalidity, they failed to make any compromise with the military regime. The election will not contribute to Myanmar’s progress toward democracy; even if the Democratic Party were to participate, the election is designed so the Junta would retain its power. The elections are designed solely to perpetuate military rule and further establish the Junta’s power. Myanmar’s population now faces desolate conditions. The totalitarian government has exacerbated the economic situation and ignored basic human rights. Human rights violations in Myanmar include the restriction of Internet access through software-based censorship, forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor. Particularly alarming is the sexual violence that is used by the military as an instrument of control. Several hundred thousand men, women, and children are forced into labor by the administration, and the troops of the military regime are encouraged to terrorize and subjugate the people. Despite all the efforts from different countries worldwide, the Junta has also rejected humanitarian aid. After the cyclone Nargis in May 2008, the military prohibited unaffected citizens from helping out and purposefully delayed the visas of aid workers sent from other parts of the world. We, as members of the international community, begin to feel helpless in a situation such as this one. We are unsure what the extent of our response should be. Issues like these have grown increasingly common in United Nation debate in recent years, trying to balance state soverAugust 15, 2007: Anti-government protests begin
January 4, 1948: Myanmar gains its idependance from the British March 2, 1962: Ne Win successfully stages a coup
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in Myanmar eignty with human rights. This is even obvious in the UN charter. In one location the charter maintains that the Security Council should be able to use military force when it is “necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security,” while other parts uphold the preeminence of national sovereignty. According to the doctrine of national sovereignty, other countries of the world are not allowed to act upon their concern for the wellbeing of the citizens of Myanmar. National sovereignty enforces the concept of “self government” and looks to prevent potentially harmful outside meddling. Humanitarian intervention is a term that refers to a legitimized outside military intervention in an effort to reduce the unnecessary suffering of its population. The rationale for this form of intervention is to minimize the civilian suffering. Humanitarian interventions have occurred previously, though not frequently; examples include the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, intervention in Rwanda and East Timor in 1999 and 1994, and the Unified Task Force in Somalia in 1992. Not everyone is content with such actions, such as the opposition to America’s presence in Iraq. Some are concerned that the breaching of national sovereignty may be used as a method by western countries to spread liberal western democracy and lifestyle. So the question is, at what point is the violation of national sovereignty in Myanmar justified by humanitarian intervention? The people of Myanmar have a moral entitlement to basic human rights, just as the rest of the international community does. The corruption of the totalitarian Junta is established upon their abandonment of fundamental ethical principles. By not taking a stand on the violations against the citizens of Myanmar, we should consider ourselves as giving tacit assent to the dictatorship. In this instance, a verbal stance is not enough. We must begin by placing more diplomatic pressure on India and China and encourage them to withdraw their support for the regime. Rather than focusing on the skewed democratic elections that are a hopeless forum for change, we must focus on enforcing a reasonable quality of life for the citizens of Myanmar and establishing a government whose primary concern is the wellbeing of its people. In this instance, humanitarian intervention is not only justified, but it is necessary. A breach of national sovereignty would be beneficiary to Myanmar and its development. If we do not act firmly in order to induce change, we will remain spectators of this crime against humanity. HMR August 10, 2008: Burmese Constitutional Referendum held in the midst of Cyclone Nargis May 3, 2008: Cyclone Nargis hits Myanmar
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November 7, 2010: Myanmar holds its first elections in 20 years
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The Tea Party 2010 v
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by samantha rahmin
igh taxes plagued America in 2009. The federal gov- why they dumped the tea off the ship and refused to pay for the tea. ernment’s stimulus package, officially known as the In effect, the members of the Tea Party Movement are doing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, same thing by trying to reach the government in anyway possible. made Americans especially frustrated. As people Now, in order to be heard by the government, they are trying to began to protest, their dissatisfaction with the gov- shift the balance of elections and put the candidates they endorse ernment became channeled into the “Tea Party Movement.” The in office. Additionally, citizens are bonded together due to a firm Tea Party reformation is populist United States protest movement conviction that taxes are too high and the federal government has focused on fiscal conservatism. The movement is given its name gotten too big and powerful. They are trying to unite together in due to the parallels between this movement and the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Just like the independent spirit of the Like the colonists in the 1770s, Tea Partiers are all passionate, strong willed citizens, most of whom had no previous American Revolution, the ‘Tea Party’ moveexperience in politics. Their fervor is equally as strong as was ment is spreading across the United States the fervor of the Obama supporters around a year ago. During the Boston Tea Party, frustrated colonists banned together in order to defend themselves against what they felt were unfair taxes. order that the government will hear their voice. They felt that the British Parliament had no right to tax them and Importantly, like the Boston Tea Party, Tea Party members was becoming too involved in their own affairs. This feeling is syn- are fighting for more than just economic goals. Colonists and Tea onymous in the Tea Party today, for the acronym “TEA” stands for Partiers alike found motivation through a moral agenda. In 1773, “taxed enough already.” colonists were angered by the Tea Act, which ironically lowered the In order to have a say in government, the colonists tried price of British East Indian Tea. The colonists felt they were being to gain attention by protesting together. They knew to successfully tricked into buying a certain type of tea. Their rebellion was ignited reach parliament, they would have to attack their treasuries, hence by a passion that their economy should not have to benefit Britain,
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Features but it should benefit the colonies. Similarly, under all the “hoopla” of the tea party is the firm belief that government should reward those who are hard working and responsible. Those who are responsible should not be heavily taxed, so that there is even more motivation for people to finance their own debts. America’s economy should be structured to benefit diligent citizens and punish the irresponsible citizens. Many areas in America are filled with “Tea Party Patriots” embracing the party’s motives. While the Tea Party movement is generally gaining momentum throughout the country, it is not gaining as much power in New York. Consider a New York Tea Party candidate, Carl Paladino. Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Tea Partybacked Republican Carl Paladino are both vying to become the next New York governor. However, candidate Paladino faces skepticism from many New Yorkers! The Sienna College Poll reports that Cuomo has opened a 37-point lead over Republican Carl Paladino. This statistic shows the lack of Tea Party support in New York. Significantly less than one third of New York’s voters support the new conservative- populist movement. Furthermore, in general, Democrats are more prevalent in New York. Consequently, in the upcoming November elections, other interests groups will probably have more power than the Tea Party does. For even the New Yorkers who are upset with the government have not endorsed the Tea Party. In large part, this is because citizens are becoming skeptical about the Tea Party’s motive and image. The slogan was simply “taxation without representation” at the time of the Boston Tea Party. Now, members of the Tea Party cheer “taxation with bad representation.” The colonists felt members of parliament did not have their best interests at heart because they were too far away to understand their concerns. Tea Partiers now feel representatives do not embody the principles they stand for. They too feel elected officials do not understand them. Many party members believe elected officials are not taking the right actions to
help the economy. One strong supporter of the Tea Party remarks, “We elected these guys and gals and they’re not doing what we elected them to do.” New York Times columnists, David Brooks states, “In America today, it’s genius and geniality that enable you to join the elect.” This “new elite” of elect is the class of people involved in the law making and politics of our country. Most New Yorkers consider themselves part of this powerful class of Wall Street businessmen and lawyers. In general, people from this class of “new elite” are elected to government positions. Consequently, the Tea Party is not New York because New Yorkers feel they are represented in government. However, similar to the feeling of the colonists in the pre revolutionary era, many people outside of major cities, in rural America, feel as if the government is not representing them accurately. As a result of feeling ill represented, the Tea Party Movement is a reaction against concentrated power. The Tea Party is united in what it is against. Some consider it more of an “anti- party” than a political party, solely united against large governments. Tea Party members are afraid that the government will become socialists, and maybe even an oligarchy. Fear of socialism drives their desire to prevent raising taxes. Tea Party Patriot, Everett, says that tea party principles will, “grow our national economic pie, create jobs, and increase federal tax revenues.” Overall, the Tea Partiers in 2009 and the Tea Partiers in 1773 were not satisfied with their respective governments and sought to take action. Both “Tea Parties” included ordinary people who became interested in the structure of government due to unreasonable taxes and feeling ill represented in government. Both “Tea Parties” gained more momentum in certain places than others. Finally, as the colonists in 1773 hoped to form a country based on democratic principles, the Tea Party Movement hopes to bring the country back to its democratic principles. HMR wikipedia.org
s 1773
Top: Sarah Palin, Tea Partier - Sarah Palin represents the Tea Party at a RALLY SOMEWHERE. She is seen as the head of the organization and recently announced that she may have the intent of RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012. Bottom: Boston, 1773 - A group of colonists who wanted change dumped LOTS O TEA over the side of SOME BRITISH SHIPS into the Boston harbor, after CAUSING CHAOS AND TURMOIL in the city itself. The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
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faith. hope. charity. restoring america’s core values and beliefs
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by jonah wexler
The Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which ne year ago, Glenn Beck decided to hold a rally in ensures that every child of a fallen special operations warWashington, D.C. At first, Mr. Beck intended for the rior receives a college education, honored Glenn Beck in an rally to be political and a way for conservatives to emotional ceremony that morning. A child of a fallen solexpress their ideology. As Mr. Beck was announc- dier, who already finished college, spoke gratefully about the ing the rally to the public he felt a purely political support and care SOWF gave her as she was growing up. The breakfast ended a little earlier than expected when expression was “just not right.” He sought to achieve something Glenn Beck announced the entire reflecting pool area at the Nationfar more meaningful. That was the point he pivoted both on the nature of the programming of his weekday show and what would al Mall was already filled and his security advised us to go over to the ultimately be the theme for the August 28, 2010 rally. Mr. Beck met Mall immediately. The whole room was excited as we knew, at that with his staff and the management at Fox News to tell them that he point, the crowd would be enormous and the event would be a success. Buses, from all over, filled the streets of Washingwould spend a year focusing on American history, the Constitution, and primarily the basic religious values of faith, hope, and charity. ton, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the area from The morning of 8/28, the day of the rally, I had the op- the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, from the portunity to have breakfast with Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck’s staff, and many of the participants in the event. We met at 6:30 that morning to The day was striking because of its peacefulness and its honor the Special Operations Warriors Foundapositive message. As the crowd left the Mall, every piece tion (“SOWF”), the cause supported and promoted of trash was picked up and thrown away with the crowd by the rally. It was a family affair. At breakfast, the treating this public space like their own backyards. small staff of the SOWF, volunteers, Ministers, Rabbis, families of fallen soldiers, and children of Glenn Beck’s staff met to reaffirm the values that would be the theme for the day: Faith, Hope, and Charity. reflecting pool, through the fields and trees, to the streets of Glenn Beck stood before our group at breakfast seemingly Washington. The press would not report on the true size of the overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for the event, awed by the crowd, but no less than 350,000 people assembled for the rally. People came carrying lawn chairs, snacks for the day, crowds already assembling in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Those of us in the room did not know until later that tens of thousands of and brown bag lunches. Noticeably absent were political signs. The people slept out on the National Mall the night before in order to be day was to be nonpartisan and the message of the rally unifying close to the front of the rally. Mr. Beck said that when he came up not divisive. Everybody was friendly and in a good mood. We sat with the idea of holding a non-political rally centered only on core in a crowd with people from Illinois, Indiana, Virginia and Convalues, he, and his staff, worried about whether it would attract the necticut. The majority of people appeared to be hard-working, interest of anybody else. In fact, he asked his staff, “What if nobody middle income people, who shared a love of independence, talked comes?” A year ago, he embarked on something no one had ever about self-reliance and were proud of America. Two sisters from done on television. He substituted newsmaker guests with college Illinois, who sat in front of us, drove all night to be on the Naprofessors, and political pundits with ministers. On his show, the tional Mall. To our right, two artists came from Virginia on their professors talked about forgotten American history and the minis- motorcycles. The family to our left, who drove in from North ters talked about faith. He said, at first, when he described this idea, Carolina, shared their food with the crowd and let us borrow an his staff and the management at Fox had the same reaction, “What?” extra umbrella to shield us from the sun. Before the rally began,
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the glenn beck rally was
25% the size of president obama’s inauguration $5.5 million dollars were raised for the
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special operations warior foundation
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Features Features an announcement that a child had been lost was made over the loudspeaker. About an hour later, the crowd cheered at the announcement that the child had been reunited with his parents. Veterans of past wars identified themselves with patches on their jackets. The crowd was calm, friendly and excited to be together. At Tea Party rallies, people come together looking for less government intrusion. Tea Partiers typically affirm their belief in hard-work and smaller government in order to achieve the American dream. The crowd at the 8/28 Restoring Honor rally was a spiritual group who believed in the main religious principles America was founded on. They believe in American Exceptionalism. In a world increasingly secular, the participants in the rally were there to express their pride in duty, honor, religious values, fairness, and democracy. While this group respected other people and cultures it rejected the idea of moral relativism. The program for the day was uplifting. Sarah Palin was received like a rock-star, as she represented parents of our soldiers. Alveda King was one of the most moving speakers of the day. The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, spoke about spirituality on the anniversary of the speech her uncle gave at the Lincoln Memorial. She felt Dr. Martin Luther King would have approved of the rally and its core values. Glenn Beck ended the program by empowering the crowd to make a positive difference in their communities. He said that sitting among the crowd could be that one person, who would be a leader, and make a huge difference in the world. Faith. Friday night, Glenn Beck hosted religious leaders who addressed an audience at the Kennedy Center and he ended the restoring honor rally inviting a couple hundred religious leaders to join him on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in a show of faith and unity. Charity. SOWF was highlighted before and throughout the rally as a worthy cause. At one point, participants were asked to text to donate to SOWF and everyone around us took their cell phones out to give. However, the discussion of charity and giving to the community was not limited to the SOWF. Hope. The overall message was one of optimism, looking forward to a making a positive difference in America and in the world. The day was striking because of its peacefulness and its positive message. As the crowd left the Mall, every piece of trash was picked up and thrown away with the crowd treating this public space like their own backyards. It is perplexing that, other than Fox News, this event was so underreported. Just as the Tea Party rallies have been misunderstood by the Main Stream Media, so too are the people who attended the restoring honor rally by the liberal press. Attempts to counter or poke fun at the Restoring Honor look petty. A group of socialist organization held the One Nation rally in September with paltry crowds. Humorists John Stewart and Steven Colbert planned competing rally on October 30th directing satirizing the Restoring Honor rally. Participants in Tea Party rallies and now the Restoring Honor rally have been called bigots, religious zealots, and ignorant. Those categorizations could not be further from the truth. The overwhelming majority of participants in the Restoring Honor rally have been sincere, fair-minded, hard-working Americans who are concerned about the direction of our country. It is disgraceful to mock the non-partisan, unifying, and uplifting Restoring Honor rally participants. America could use more rallies like the Restoring Honor rally to bring America back to its core values and beliefs. HMR http://glenn-beck.com/
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tea party or beer party beer.com
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by daniel elkind
hen Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party-backed candidate in the Senate race in Delaware, was on the cusp of defeating Rep. Mike Castle, the Republican establishment’s preference, in the Republican primary, a distraught Karl Rove, George Bush’s right hand man, condemned O’Donnell’s “nutty” pronouncements, “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior,” and “checkered background” on the right-wing media outlet Fox News. It was impossible to sympathize with Mr. Rove. After all, the Tea Party is an outgrowth of the radical libertarian philosophy which the Republicans and Rove have advocated for years: that government is the problem and the deregulated “free market” is the solution, that the average person is overtaxed and underserved by government, and that the Democrats and President Obama are of dubious loyalty to the American Dream and are dragging the country to the precipice of socialism. The Tea Party employs anger and rhetoric born from the tactics that Republican figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Rove himself, and sympathizers such as Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, have used to rouse support for the Republican Party. It is no surprise that Sarah Palin, who distinguished herself for her ignorance towards the facts and an absence of any understanding of policy during the unsuccessful campaign of 2008, has now established herself as the Crown Queen of the Tea Party movement, proclaiming to lead in the
point in American politics, a triumph of ignorance over reality. Most disturbing is that the Tea Party is an organization which - if it had its way - would damage the interests of the average American whom it purports to represent, instead catering to the interests of the wealthy and powerful and reestablishing the policies responsible for the economic crises of today. The enactment of its policies would mark lower taxes for the wealthy, the deregulation of Wall Street, and the elimination of essential government programs and entitlements. What Are the Tea Party Policies and Who Do They Benefit?
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) – the infamous “Government Bailout” - represents to the Tea Party the worst example of government interference in the economy. Some 63% of its members assert that that the economy would be better off if the “big banks” had been allowed to fail. Party leaders like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, and Glenn Beck uniformly draw cheers at Tea Party rallies by railing against the “Bailout”. Recalling the events of 2008, however, one wonders what reality they are looking at. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial markets plummeting, the economy teetered on the edge of economic disaster. There is hardly a reputable economist alive who would dispute that the Government Bailout saved the economy from another 1930s style Depression and averted the loss of millions more jobs. The first TARP program was enacted by the Bush Administration, which itself recognized the dire need for government interference. The European governments also recognized the need for a similar bailout for their troubled banking sectors. If the Tea Does it reflect a movement that substitutes Party had any respect for the facts, it would acknowledge that the “Bailout” rescued us from utter fiscal catastrophe. ideology for intelligent debate, rhetoric for The Tea Party’s crusade against Big Government is butfact, and name-calling for reality? tressed by ire and radical propositions. Its leaders advocate the elimination of the Department of Education, the elimination or reduction of the Environmental Protection Agency, “restoration of American honor”. To conclude the story of Rove the reduction of federal regulation of industry at every level and and O’Donnell - the plot takes a predictable and very political allowing the “free market” to reign, the elimination of the Departturn: after an outing with Hannity, Rove was suddenly inspired ment of Energy, the elimination, privatization, or reform of Social to change heart, and now keenly supports the Tea Party candidate Security, and the elimination of federal aid for the impoverished and the federal minimum wage. Its message centers around a cenin Delaware. What are we to make of the Tea Party movement? Does it re- tral tenet: that the problems of today are the result of too much flect the rebirth of the great Revolutionary spirit? Or does it reflect government. Far from demonstrating that our problems are the result of a movement that substitutes ideology for intelligent debate, rhetoric for fact, and name-calling for reality? The Tea Party is a low too much government, and that the solution to those problems is
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Features to allow the “free market” to regulate itself, the problems we now face – which have, ironically, given rise to the Tea Party movement - are the result of too little government regulation. The collapse of our economy due to wild speculation in derivatives and financial instruments and fraudulent mortgage practices stemmed from too little government regulation, not too much. Environmental catastrophes like the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the damage to our environment, result from too little environmental regulation, not too much. Do the fishermen and the Tea Party members living on the Gulf Coast really believe that we should let reckless oil companies like British Petroleum regulate themselves? Government provides vital services; support for education when the states fail to do so themselves and aid to the poor are among the benefits of federal government involvement. These policies are important national objectives, made particularly crucial at a time when our country is lagging in education and our weak economy has left many without the opportunity for work. Who, exactly, do the radical Tea Party’s policies benefit? They certainly don’t benefit the middle class, who look to Pell Grants and other government assistance to put their children through college and who bear the major brunt of the economic collapses that result from the excesses of an unregulated “free market.” They certainly don’t benefit the average worker, who looks to regulation by the federal government to protect safety in the workplace, such as coal miners exposed to hazardous conditions by companies that cut corners for added profit. The Tea Party’s policies primarily benefit those who enjoy power and wealth, those who received the largest tax cuts under President Bush, and those who would like to be free of government regulation. The objection of the average Tea Party member to the Obama tax plans is sadly misplaced and even delusional. The Tea Party purports to represent the average and “overtaxed” American in the raging tax debate of today. But who are they actually fighting the battle for? The Obama administration has already lowered taxes on small businesses, has adopted a billion dollar small business initiative, and has proposed to keep the lower Bush tax rates for all families earning under $250,000, which includes 98% of the
American public. The disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans on individual tax rates is whether the Bush tax rates should be maintained for the upper 2% of our population, or families earning over $250,000. The Tea Party is in support of the extension of the tax cuts that this tiny elite of the population savored under Bush, in addition to tax cuts for the lower and middle classes which President Obama has already proposed. Once more, the Tea Party is battling not for the interests of the average American, but for the upper echelon of America who made off like bandits in the eight years of George Bush while the middle class suffered. Under President Obama, the tax rates of the wealthy would rise to their reasonable level under President Clinton – during times when the economy flourished. The phrase once coined by Ronald Reagan – the quest to “get government off the backs of the people,” has become the slogan for the Tea Party, the means of attracting uninformed Americans and using them to advance their hidden agendas. Ironically, Tea Party leaders support government being “on the backs of the people” when they seek to regulate individual conduct. Although the Tea Party focuses primarily on economic issues, many prominent Tea Party leaders, including Sarah Palin, support laws regulating when women can have an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. They support the use of taxpayer money to teach their religious beliefs in Creationism in public schools. They support laws limiting the civil rights of people on the basis of their sexual preferences. Who are the Tea Party Candidates?
If the Tea Party has its way, a class of wholly disreputable individuals will be empowered to the highest political offices in the country. In the gubernatorial election of New York, the tea party has backed businessman Carl Paladino, whose record is littered with the immorality and political deceit that the Tea Party supposedly condemns. While Paladino and the Tea Party vehemently profess righteous conduct, Paladino secretly fathered his daughter through an extramarital affair. Though the Tea Party champions political honesty, Paladino surrounds himself with shady advi
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Features sors. His campaign manager was hunted by the IRS for failing should not be required by law to provide services to minorities to pay $53,000 in federal taxes, while his aide served jail time in in public places. He has suggested that departments of the federal Arizona on drunk driving charges. His close advisor was indicted government, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the for pilfering more than $1 million from the Bloomberg reelection Department of Education, should be eliminated, that the minicampaign and his campaign chairwoman departed her local government position amid claims that she steered If the theory of evolution holds true, asked $1 billion of taxpayer money to a politically-connected investment manager. O’Donnell during a TV appearance, then “why As if it could get any worse, the candidate himself aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” made a habit of producing emails to friends and business associates laced with pornographic material and bigoted caricatures of the President. One e-mail sent by Paladino, mum wage should be repealed even at a time when people are entitled “Obama’s Inauguration Rehearsal”, was accompanied by suffering from the economy, and that Social Security should be a video of an African tribal dance, which Paladino - when coneliminated in favor of individual accounts invested on Wall Street. fronted by an offended friend - declared to have thought to be Despite a long history of fatal mining accidents in Kentucky, a “just humor.” More recently, Paladino was taped threatening to large coal mining state, Paul suggested that federal oversight of have New York Post editor Frederic U. Dicker “taken out” when mine safety be eliminated, and that mine safety be left to state Paladino couldn’t produce evidence to legitimize the slanders officials and corporate operators. It is hard to see how Paul could that have characterized his campaign against Democrat Andrew advocate the reduction of federal oversight for mine safety when Cuomo. In addition, Paladino has made disparaging comments there have been so many deadly mining accidents in recent years. about homosexuals. Where is the Money Coming From? Now shift to Delaware. The facts have emerged about its Tea Party-backed Senate nominee, Christine O’Donnell, are anything The identities and motivations of the principal financers of but flattering. The radical political platform of the candidate the Tea Party movement further substantiate the notion that the includes the elimination of Social Security; this has been comTea Party serves not the interests of the average person whom pounded by a troubling personal background, including exploits it purports to represent, but the interests of the wealthy person into witchcraft and the denial of evolution. If the theory of evoluinstead. tion holds true, asked O’Donnell during a TV appearance, then The oil and gas billionaires David and Charles Koch, who “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” A non-partihave donated over $100 million to conservative causes, play san watchdog group sited O’Donnell for using $20,000 of camprominent roles in financing Tea Party causes. One Republican paign funds for her personal expenses, an accusation supported campaign consultant remarked of the Tea Party that “the Koch brothers gave the money that founded it.” Far from intending to support a grass-roots movement that serves the middle class, the Koch brothers have siphoned money into Tea Party causes which support their private corporate interests. Koch Industries is one of the top ten polluters in the United States, and the Koch brothers have publically declared climate change to be a “liberal hoax”. They finance organizations - including the Tea Party - that fight climate change legislation and advocate the deregulation of big corporations across the country - BP included. Alongside Valero and Tesoro, two Texas-based oil and gas companies, the Kochs pumped $1 million into the campaign to repeal AB 32, California legislation with bipartisan support that will reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 by requiring cleaner cars and more energy-efficient buildings and appliances. The Republicans are infamous for their connections to the elite. Now in a Tea Party that promises to reform the old and tiring ways of by her former campaign manager, and it has been revealed that Washington and support the common person, we see the same O’Donnell grossly exaggerated her educational background. disturbing patterns emerging. Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senator from KenThe Tea Party has become a darling of the Conservative metucky, is another in the line of marginal Tea Party candidates and dia, and has even been romanticized. However, the causes which leaders. Paul, an ardent libertarian, has distinguished himself for it advocates and its basic, underlying, libertarian philosophy his radical views. He has indicated that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would do great harm to the vast majority of Americans, and its the country’s landmark civil rights legislation, is unconstitutional leaders are most assuredly not worthy of positions of leadership and should be repealed, and has argued that public companies in this country. HMR
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The Myth of Equivalency
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by jasmine mariano
e hear it all the time. Both sides are wrong, Limbaugh or Michael Savage. Democrats do not proudly and centrism is the way to go. The mistakes of vocally oppose the “World Trade Center Mosque” while votthe left are inflated to and conflated with the ing down a bill that would’ve provided healthcare to 9/11 first mistakes of the right in a weird attempt to responders, the very heroes they claim to be defending. seem balanced and fair-minded. In reality, Perhaps the most salient example that the two sides just an equivalency between both sides just doesn’t exist, and this aren’t the same is the rise of the American Tea Party. Preis one of those times when one side is just, simply, more wrong Obama, tea partiers were anti-war, libertarian intellectuals who than the other. We are allowed to look at Rachel Maddow’s hated mainstream Republicans as much as they hated DemoRhodes-scholar educated political analysis and Glenn Beck’s crats. And while Ron Paul weeps at the appropriation of his rants about an impending takeover by Socialist overlords, and grassroots movement by the pro-military, pro-torture, corpoaccept that, hmm, one of them does seem to make more sense ratist machine, the media constantly reiterates the narrative that than the other, without being some radical Democratic partithis is true populist anger from the heart of America, instead san demagogue. News media especially has There is no left-wing radio talk show host as openly racist given up on actual journalism and falls back on this comfortand extreme and still holds significant influence in the party able illusion of neutrality. It’s establishment as Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage. why CNN is so trite and annoying to watch. It’s easy to say the Left is just as bad as the Right, but Code Pink just doesn’t share of the well-funded Astroturf lobbying groups that it actually is. the same level of influence as the Tea Party, and Democratic Corporately funded, fake grassroots organizations like former opposition in the Bush era was nowhere as virulent and dogRepublican Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and matic as the current Republican obstructionism. It’s not just David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity organize Tea Party ralthe usual suspects either; even liberal stalwarts like Jon Stewart lies and Fox News reports on them to show the discontent of are falling into this fad, with his Rally to Restore Sanity directed Real America, and the funniest (read: most frustrating) part at ‘both’ sides. Yet, there is no Democratic borderline illiterof it all is that balanced political analysis are supposed to take ate party-leader equivalent of Sarah Palin. There is no left-wing them seriously. radio talk show host as openly racist and extreme and still The Tea Party is a collection of Americans who have had holds significant influence in the party establishment as Rush enough of those tax-and-spend liberals, even though most of
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The Left The Media Jon Stewart: Although Stewart employs satire and has a clear left-wing bias, unlike his conservative counterparts his rhetoric does not victimize minority groups.
babble.com
CNN: Even though the networks’ fails to provide interesting new analysis, the network has remained relatively impartial.
Corporate Interests George Soros: Soros has played an active roll in bankrolling liberal initiatives, including using his clout and resources to mobilize efforts promoring health care reform. georgesoros.com
Labor Unions: Big Labor has funneled significant resources to Democrat election committees, seeking progressive reforms.
Grassroots Fringe Elements Code Pink: This organization has denounced the Iraq War and Republicans causing the war. www.codepinkalert.org
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them voted Bush and conspicuously yawned through two record deficits. Tea Party members protest against a welfare state, though a cursory assessment of typical Tea Party members shows that a majority of them are on Medicare and support it Medicare. I really do believe that they are for cutting spending, except, of course, the spending that benefits them. Take Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, who is so principled with the idea of small government that he takes unpopular stances such as being against the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and wanting to abolish the departments of Education and Energy but to reduce Medicare payments to doctors like himself? Dr. Paul says now, because that’s crazy, and probably un-American. The thing is, the Tea Party is not a conservative revolution (which is already an oxymoron in itself), but it is the conservative movement in a shiny new package. It’s still the same billionaire businessmen hiding behind the (muchlouder) face of (broke, white) Middle America and persuading them to lobby for lower taxes on Wall Street. Just toss in some thinly-veiled racist ‘us-versus-them’ rhetoric to take America back, and perceived cultural victimhood that their way of life is being threatened by radical leftists, and voilà! You have the modern Tea Party. But the myth of equivalency between ‘both sides’ is not just an inane but ultimately harmless fallacy. In a misguided attempt to be moderate, ‘both sides’ of the aisle are presented to share the same equal blame, a mistake that ultimately hurts our political discourse. The reason for the recent more-rampant-than-usual impotency of Congress is the admirably united front of Republicans, fueled less by populist anger than it is by millions upon millions of corporate funds. The Republicans have filibustered twice as often as Democrats during Bush, as they have filibustered nearly every piece of legislation that’s come to a vote on the floor. In comparison, the Democrats have a long history of compromise and bipartisanship—anyway, we can’t simultaneously excoriate Democratic spinelessness and capitulation to the demands of the opposition while declaring at the same time that they are on the same level of obstructive partisanship as the Republicans. The thing with the modern Democratic Party is that it’s not the monolithic collective of the Republican Party, neither does it have the same level of party discipline. You have your Blue Dogs, your actual centrists, your actual progressives to have a bill pass within Congress with 0 Republican votes is bipartisanship because getting all the Democrats to agree on any single thing requires compromise and cooperation. Anyway, when you think about it, is a bill really better if it has Olympia Snowe’s seal of approval on it? (Or maybe Susan Collins, if she feels like being in the spotlight too.) But lobbyists and special interests controlling our government is a much harder sell than impassioned apolitical citizens who are rising up after being dormant for so long, mostly because those same lobbyists and special interests The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
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own these media outlets. So the narrative becomes that under every middle-class white American who leans right is an outspoken libertarian yearning to come out of their disinterested cocoon to protest over-spending, but only once a Democrat does it, never mind that the current fiscal crisis was incurred by the very same tax-cuts for the top 1% of Americans the previous Republican administration put in place. ‘It’s-mostly-Bush’s- fault’ is very old meme, but it needs to be reiterated, as the impending Republican gains in both houses of Congress speaks volumes to the collective attention span of American voters. The two sides would only become comparable if the Democratic Party was suddenly a collective of Bernie Sanders and Al Frankens, or if Code Pink decided to organize as a party and started winning races throughout the country with the backing of the party establishment. In truth, the two-party system makes it so that the Democratic machine is just as hostile as the Republicans to any candidates who are more left-of-center than they are comfortable with. Just look at how the Obama Administration handles leftist criticism of their policies—his supporters are thrown under the bus in favor of appeasing the other guys who have made it clear that the only way they’ll find common ground is if Obama adopts their policies. Progressive critics are readily derided by their own side, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, “for being some sort of naive, fringe-leftist idiot who thought [Obama] would eliminate the Pentagon and bring about world peace in 18 months, and/or because you [critics] simply don’t sufficiently appreciate everything he’s done for you because you’re congenitally dissatisfied.” So really, Democrats have no trouble shooting their own foot repeatedly. The party slogan is Will Rogers’ “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” and we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, one election at a time. In any event, the muddled moderation that this administration keeps trying to enact is a misguided effort in the extreme, as they alienate their own base for a handful of conservative votes, and eventually resulting in legislation that leaves both sides dissatisfied. While citizens are definitely obligated to hold every part of their government accountable, it’s also necessary to actually look at the picture when levying the blame for the relative insanity of our congress, for the lack of decorum, and the lack of decent legislation, and the lack of actual progress. It’s not enough to just throw your arms up and condemn this as an inevitability of government. Compare the amount of corporate money spent in this midterm election, and try to say it’s still both sides. The extremism of the Tea Party and the Republicans is downplayed by the whole false equivalency meme, as centrists and moderates are proposed as the ideal. But how can the center be any better if the political spectrum, the political dialogue is so radically skewed to one side? HMR
The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
The Right The Media Glenn Beck: Beck has made inflammatory, racist, homophobic statements in the past, even intimating that President Obama is a “racist” with a “seething hatred toward white people
glennbeck.com
Rush Limbaugh: Radio stalwart, Limbaugh, has denounced individuals recieving welfare and unemployment benefits and has stated that “he hopes Obama fails”
rushlimbaugh.com
Corporate Interests The Koch Brothers: The billionaire Koch Brothers, along with Dick Armey, and other special interest groups have provided the Tea Party aligned PAC’s with much of their resources kochindustries.com
Special Interests: Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie’s American Crossroads has raised an astonishing $50 million to elect conservative candidates this election cycle karlrove.com
Grassroots Fringe Elements Tea Party: This organization has denounced the Iraq War and Republicans causing the war. 2000px-Gadsden_flag.svg.png
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Economics Bridging The Income Gap The yin and yang of wealth disparity in the United States
I
by jennifer heon
ncome inequality is present in our economy. To a certain extent, this is vital for our society and economy to function properly and efficiently. A person who works hard in school should end up earning a higher salary than one who disregards his or her schoolwork. Someone who does not work as diligently and does not put as much effort into homework should not receive the same amount of income as somebody who works hard on schoolwork. At the same time, is it fair that a person who attends a school with a low qual-
a whole, some income inequality helps maintain stability in society. Income inequality creates a social structure consisting of the upper class, middle class, and lower class. There are a variety of different jobs, all of which must be completed, in each of these three classes. Without some income inequality, this stability would be ruined because nobody would choose to pick up garbage when they could own a hedge fund. However, both of these jobs must be filled, and this requires some form of social hierarchy. But what happens when there is too large a gap between the rich and the poor? Studies by a policy and economic historian at Harvard Business School, David A. Moss, have indicated that economic inequality and financial crisis are directly correlated. In addition, as the income inequality between the rich and the poor widens, the middle class begins to break down into either rich or poor. This results in more people in the lower class who are in need of jobs. However, there are only so many jobs that are available and only a certain amount of people who can be hired for these jobs. With too many people trying to obtain a specific job, the rate of unemployment Rising Above the Rest The after tax income of the country’s top 1% has risen will increase, sending the economy 281% since 1979. This is over 17 times the 16% increase of the country’s botinto a recession. Finally, too much tom fifth. income inequality destabilizes the
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ity of education but works relentlessly will have a smaller salary than somebody who has access to a higher quality education? How can we justify the fact that many people receive a far smaller income than people who work half as hard as they do? Additionally, is it morally justified to let a person who is not as bright or has not been given the best education scavenge for his next meal? Obviously, income inequality is a very touchy subject with different subjective components. While cases of extreme income disparity can be harmful to the society as
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Economics
unity of purpose that allows the companies and organizations of our country to work effectively. The people who work for these companies and don’t receive a high salary will start to ask questions such as, “Why work hard if I don’t receive any of the benefits of what I am doing?” This drives their personal productivity down, meaning the effectiveness of the companies and organizations they work for will dramatically decrease, propagating the cycle of economic recession. Obviously, it is necessary to have
Percent of Total After Tax Income: 1979-2007 Top 1%
a certain amount of income inequality, but too much of it can be harmful to the economy and society. Currently, the US is in a recession with the unemployment rate at almost 10%. Though income inequality provides stability, in excess, it has negative effects on our economy and on the people who are hit the worst by the recession. If nothing is done about this excess amount of income inequality, people will start to believe that it is quixotic to think that we are all in this together. HMR
Bottom Four Fiths
1979 57.9%
2007 17.1%
A Bigger Piece of the Pie The country’s top 1% now owns more than twice as much of the country’s wealth than it did in 1979.
2007 35.4
1979 34.6%
If all groups’ after-tax incomes had grown at the same percentage rate between 1979-2007, middle-income households would have received an additional $13,042 in 2007 and families in the bottom fifth would have received an additional $6,010. In 2007, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.3 million, up $88,800 just from the prior year; this $88,800 gain is well above the total 2007 income of the average middle-income household ($55,300).
2007 48.4%
1979 7.5%
Income Gap Fast Stats (taken from the Congressional Budget Office)
The share of income going to the middle three-fifths (or 60 percent) of households shrank from 51.1 percent to 43.5 percent. The share going to the bottom fifth of households declined from 6.8 percent to 4.9 percent. The share going to the bottom four-fifths (80 percent) of the population declined from 58 percent to 48 percent.
Rest of Top Fith The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
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Economics
Beginner’s Mistakes How Obama has enacted a cycle of economic stagnation by nathan raab
P
luck a random sampling of ten working-age people from any place in the U.S. and at least one of them will probably be looking for work. Another will have stopped looking. A third will be “underemployed,” meaning that he or she technically holds a job but is either overqualified for it or underworked in it. This means that only seventy percent of people who want to work—to help grow the economy, raise a family, feed himself or herself and his or her spouse—can. Under most grading schemes, whoever is running economic policy in the United States would be getting a C-. Obviously, America’s economy is not Section A on the Great Presidential Final Exam, nor is full employment the only
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goal—or even the primary one—in economic policy. But it’s not natural for unemployment to hover at ten percent for months, or for GDP to stagnate forever after a sharp, deep recession. The great engine of the American Economy shouldn’t just cut out like that. Instead, like the student that gets a seventy percent on a test, the Obama Administration’s economic schemes are wrought with confusion and contradiction. When the pressing needs of a nation demand that the government help the private sector put people back to work, the President has dithered, pushing propositions that muddy the waters for entrepreneurs and make it costly for small businesses to expand. The stimulus package, ObamaCare, financial regulations, cap and tax climate bills, , impending tax hikes: all of these have inhibited
growth by misallocating resources, sowing confusion, and breeding paperwork. To start the economy up again, someone will have to remove these obstacles to growth and instead create an environment where investors and workers feel safe and comfortable. Let’s start with the stimulus. Although President Obama billed it as a jobs measure, claiming that it would keep unemployment under seven percent, unemployment is at ten percent now: it failed. Why? No one knew where the money came from. When a country has as much debt as the United States does, or as many structural issues in its budget, it can’t just purchase loans indefinitely: loans, after all, require interest, and if the United States were to continue on its present financial path for ten years without raising taxes or cutting expenditures, interest on those loans would make up 20% of all tax revenues. That means 20% of tax revenues—taxes taken from hard working Americans—would go to currency speculators and institutional investors in places like China or Japan, and American workers and companies would feel the pain. Alternatively, Washington could raise taxes or cut spending. But where? That, of course, is the problem: no one knows. As a result, people who might want to start a business, or invest in a new start-up, don’t know whether their investment will last the next five years or get swallowed up in sudden austerity programs: in situations where returns of half a percent matter immensely, sudden changes in government demand are a huge deal and taxes hikes of less than five percent can make or break a sale. Those plans Leduc 998 then get put on hold until Congress The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
Economics Median Duration of Unemployment Source: U.S. Department of Labour : Bureau of Labour Statistics 30 25
Weeks
20 15 10 5 0
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
Shaded areas indicate a U.S. Recession acts, raising taxes or lowering spending or does something—anything—to show the private sector what taxes and spending will look like in the near future. Acts of Congress that just add to the deficit, and confuse business in the process, only add to the uncertainty and stall employment, investment, and production. Next, the president galloped off to massively gut the nation’s health care system. Under ObamaCare, hiring a new worker is far more expensive than it ever was before: either an employer has to give employees no health benefits at all, or a bureaucratically determined amount that’s probably a lot more than the employer can afford either if he pays for it directly or pays taxes to the government so it can provide it. Businesses small and large are shedding workers and cutting worker insurance plans as a result. What does that mean? It means not only that workers who lose their jobs essentially lose income, moving the economy backwards, not forwards; it also means that workers who haven’t yet lost jobs or insurance have to face the real, heightened possibility that they might. Those workThe Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
ers will spend less and save more as a result, slowing down the economy. That’s a rational decision on the behalf of those workers—what happens if they do get laid off?—and one that the government can’t regulate away by forcing them to spend more, but it’s another example of how uncertainty slows down economic growth. Then Obama signed into law a bill concerning financial reforms, which might have been a good thing if anyone really knew what those reforms were. In its thousands of pages, the bill never actually regulates anything; instead, it authorizes unelected, unknown bureaucrats to regulate those things by fiat. No one has a clue what those bureaucrats will do. As a result, investors don’t want to invest and businesses don’t want to hire. How can they, if they don’t know whether those investments or expansions will be legal in a year or two? And to top off the brew, various initiatives are still floating around in Congress which could make matters worse. A disastrous cap-and-tax climate change bill might pass later this year in a lame duck session of the Senate, sending busi-
nesses that rely on cheap, quality energy into a death spiral of high costs. The Bush tax cuts might (or might not) be extended. All of this ambiguity means that investors would rather wait to invest, and companies wait to grow, so that they can grow with more knowledge of the regulatory scene. This means a tepid recovery. The great engine of American prosperity isn’t broken; it’s just stalled. Uncertainty has gummed the works of our economy and kicked the legs out of our markets. Obviously, then, the best way to un-gum the machine—to build up our markets—is to remove the uncertainty. Congress needs to clarify how it plans to pay for its stimulus and confront head on the looming avalanche of unpaid debt. It needs to decide once and for all how it will regulate the financial system. And it needs to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with something that at the very least keeps people employed, and that allows people who have health insurance they like to keep it. Only then will America regain its rightful place as the leader of the world economy. HMR
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Economics
by nicholas mccombe
U
nited Airlines and Continental Airlines have officially closed their merger deal, creating the world’s largest airline. The merger will be very beneficial for the company’s corporate interests. It illustrates that the American economy is slowly improving. However, while businesses may reap the benefits of the merger, it will prove to have deleterious effects on consumers. This specific economic instance echoes the idea that while corporate circumstances are improving, consumers and individuals remain in the throes of the recession. Consider, a previously expected amenity: cabins service. The acquisition
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is sure to result in inferior cabin service. Mergers, more often than not, result in large numbers of job and spending cuts due to internal redundancies. Therefore, consumers can expect poorer and less service. Even before the merger, a recent consumer opinion poll of all airline passengers showed that travelers are more than 20% more dissatisfied with airlines than in the past, especially due to poor service. United and Continental claim that they have few competing routes and therefore prices will stay low and routes will remain the same. The merger between United and Continental will decrease competition in the airline industry. In many different sectors, companies merge to create few, possibly only one, conglomerates that dominate that sector. The most notable example of
such a conglomerate is Microsoft’s control of the software used in Intel computers for which Microsoft faced serious antitrust lawsuits. Another example, United Technologies, a company that still exists today, achieved the “ultimate” vertical integration, owning United Airlines, the plane manufacturer Boeing, and the engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney. As the airline business grew, United Technologies was forced to United Airlines under antitrust laws. The merger of United and Continental will create an organization on the same scale as Microsoft’s and United Technologies’ trusts. In this case, the merger will make both companies more profitable. Yet, the consumer will feel the effects differently; it will result in higher seat prices and more
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Science & Tech
Up in the Air The merger of United and Continental Airlines creates a dynasty in the skies
hidden fees for baggage and refreshments. The business climate that airlines have had to endure has been toxic, making these new fares unsurprising. They face a very challenging business model– they have billions of costs and much lower revenues. A tenth of a percent increase in fuel prices, or the strike of a few hundred people, can push airlines into the red. As consumers, we have enjoyed an unsustainable period of extreme competition. We are now faced with the choice of more expensive airlines or none at all. Consider the merger in the broader scope of the economy, mergers and acquisitions have become increasingly more common in the markets, bringing a sign of an economic recovery. Recently and most notably, Comcast bought out NBC Uni-
The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
versal, the media wing of General Electric (GE). Without a doubt, this increase in mergers signals the improving economy. In contrast to today, in the midst of the recession, companies were scared to merge due the poor economic forecast. Washington has a key part to play in this story. It is clear that the government understands that the growth of the economy depends on them fostering a pro-business agenda. Global mergers and acquisitions hit nearly $200 billion last August, compared to a fraction of that in the depths of the recession. Although the increase in mergers, may be a cause of some hope, we are far from being in the clear. There is plenty of negative data consider. The unemployment numbers for September were weaker than expected. Massive job cutting in the
public sector led to 159,000 jobs lost. The unchanged unemployment rate at 9.6 percent and the increase of 64,000 new jobs in the private sector demonstrate that there is an ever-growing silver lining. The merger between United and Continental is a micro economic story in a macro economic recovery; it’s a sign that there is hope again. Although I might sound optimistic about the state of our economy, the bottom line is that for the majority of Americans their outlook is not improving. For many, this “slow recovery” is beginning to seem just like a long recession. Consumers are like passengers, and, as every wellseasoned traveler knows, the passengers may be on the runway, ready to take off but forced to endure unexpected and prolonged delays. HMR
29 Planet Lonely
Economics
Buy Buy Baby An examination of the consumer cycle in our current stagnant economy
by ben marks
T
he unemployment situation in America is terrible. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate is likely to remain high for so long that the best place for us to be until the economy improves is in college, and then in graduate school, because there will be few jobs available for many years into the future. Unemployment is currently close to 10%. “Under-employment,” which is the sum of people who are unemployed plus people who have given up on even looking, is now close to 20%. Basically, the job market hasn’t
been this bad in nearly 30 years. You might ask yourself, “How did the economy get so sick?” The short answer is too much debt. Consider the graph above. It shows the ratio of all debt in the economy to gross domestic product (GDP), which is a measure of all of the goods and services produced in the country over the course of a year. As you can see, the ratio of total US Debt to GDP recently peaked at over 3.7 to 1 in 2008. This ratio includes all debt not just the debt from the government, but also all consumer debt (home mortgages, auto loans, college loans, credit cards, etc.) and business debt, too. One might not think that 3.7 to 1 is so bad. Think again! During the Great Depression in the 1930s the ratio US Debt to GDP was
only 2.6 to 1. Until the level of debt in America comes down, the economy is unlikely to improve enough to bring down unemployment so we can all get decent jobs. Another question you may ask is, “Who was the biggest culprit in running up so much debt?” The answer is the American consumer. The amount of consumer debt exploded during the last decade. We have all heard that the housing crisis caused the current financial crisis. It was a chain reaction. As houses increased in price, more homes were sold to consumers. As prices went up, many people bought second and third homes to speculate on rising prices. As consumer demand for homes increased, banks lent more and more until the housing market eventually collapsed under the weight of too much debt. As a result, consumer mortgage debt has more money than doubled in the last ten years. (Figure 2) In 2000 total consumer mortgage debt was under $5 Trillion. By the end of 2007 total consumer mortgage grew to over $10 Trillion. So, why is the consumer so important to our economy? Here is a mathematical identity that describes our economy: C + I + G + NX = GDP
Rising Proportional Debt (Figure 1) This chart illustrates the ratio of national debt to gross domestic product (GDP) between 1920 and 2010 30
In this equation, C = the Consumer, I = Business, G = Government and NX = the amount of Exports over Imports (but for simplification assume that NX is part of business or I.). Let’s attach average coefficients and dollar values to this equation so everyone can appreciate how important the consumer is our economy:
The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
Features C(70%) + I(10%) + G(20%) = GDP = $14.5 Trillion What you should see in the above equation is that the consumer is not merely an important part of our economy. The consumer is 70% of our economy! Without the consumer being financially healthy, the whole of the US economy will be sick. This is because the consumer represents $10 Trillion out of the country’s $14.5 Trillion GDP. Notice in the first graph the ratio of total debt to GDP declined from 3.7 to 1 in 2008 to 3.5 to 1 in 2010. This decline marked the depth of the recent recession. Moreover, the decline in debt was related to the consumer increasing his rate savings in order to pay down his vast debt. Such debt reduction is the equivalent of savings because the consumer’s spare cash is not used for purchasing good
and services. This debt reduction can also be seen in the second graph where total consumer debt peaked at $12.5 Trillion in 2008 and is now currently about $1 Trillion lower. Strangely, this $1 Trillion of increased savings by the consumer is not necessarily a good thing for GDP. Of course, the consumer needs to shed debt over the long term. However, over the short term, the increase in consumer savings is very harmful to the economy. This is known as “the paradox of thrift” that was popularized by John Maynard Keynes. When consumer savings increase, the economy slows because there is less money being spent by consumers to purchase goods and services from businesses. Basically, while the consumer saves and pays down its huge debt, fewer iPhones, cars, and clothes, etc. are sold in our economy. This causes another damaging chain reaction. As a
result of the increased savings, businesses make less money, so they cut jobs and unemployment increases. This leads to even fewer purchases because there are even fewer consumers available who can afford to buy goods and services from businesses. Businesses will continue to cut costs until the situation improves. Therefore, as a direct result of the consumer’s recent increase in savings, US GDP has slowed to a crawl. How long will it take for the economy to improve? If it took two years for the consumer to reduce the US Debt to GDP ratio from 3.7 down to 3.5 to 1, then it will take about seven years to get back to where we were in 2001. That’s why our best plan for the future is to stay in school for as long as possible… perhaps until 2017. By then, hopefully, there will be plenty of well-paying jobs for members of Horace Mann’s Class of 2011. HMR
1.bp.blogspot.com
Debt Balance and Composition (Figure 2) This chart illustrates the annual debt balance of the consumer The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
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Science & Tech
Science & Tech Ice Ice Baby
C
BY VIVIANNA LIN
ryonics has long been thought of as a myth. The word brings to mind images of people frozen in freezers for centuries, waking up in a future world. Yet, cryogenic preservation of eggs and sperm has become commonplace over the past few years. As of recently, gametes can survive for as many as ten years under well-controlled laboratory conditions at -196°C. As a result of these major breakthroughs, cryonics can now be used in a variety of different fields of science, from cancer treatment to tissue preservation, with remarkable results. Just this May, a healthy baby boy was born from a 20-year-old embryo to a 42year old woman. The embryo had been donated in 1990– the same year that the woman gave birth to her first child. This means the new baby boy was conceived at the same time as the first child, but is twenty years younger. The ethical and practical implications of this new breakthrough are staggering. In the future, we could be living alongside people with genes from previous generations, but who are the same age as we are.
This is certainly bizarre to think about; you could be older or the same age as someone who was conceived long before you were.
Cryogenics: A Moral Dilemma?
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Cryogenic births have also raised moral questions, as in the case of one woman’s decision to freeze her eggs for her sterile 7-year-old daughter’s use
later in life. If the girl ends up using these eggs, she would be giving birth to a halfbrother or a half-sister. This in and of itself is overwhelming; the girl would not be passing on her genes, but her mother’s genes instead. The girl’s father’s genes would cease to be passed on, unless they have another child. As a result, some experts argue that such a future child’s rights are being ignored. They believe a future child born from frozen egg would prefer not to be sisters with his or her own mother. However, if that child did not want to be born from his or her own sister, then it would not have been born in the first. We should not make assumptions about what an unborn child would want. Should it really matter that your mother is biologically also your half-sister? Nothing will change the fact that she is still your mother. In addition, cryopreservation of gametes has proven to be helpful for cancer patients. Preserving eggs or sperm can save them from the harmful radiation of chemotherapy and so allow cancer victims to have biological children after their treatment. No matter their ethical implications, these recent breakthroughs in cryogenics may be only the starting point for countless future discoveries to come. Mankind should not stop researching in order to adhere to the moral perspectives of a select group of critics. The purpose of scientific research is to improve the lives of patients everywhere, not to uphold a controversial set of morals. HMR The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
Science & Tech
by andrew stier
I
magine an army of soldiers outfitted in super strong Iron Man-like exoskeletons. Such a sci-fi fantasy is closer to reality with the unveiling of the Raytheon-Sarcos XOS (Exoskeleton) and the Lockheed Martin HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier). These two competing exoskeleton systems have the potential to increase our military efficiency and so make our country safer. The RaytheonSarcos XOS is a full body exoskeleton that allows the wearer to carry more and go farther than an unsuited soldier. The main competitor to the XOS is the Lockheed Martin HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier), a lower body exoskeleton that gives the user increased load capacity either in the front or back. Either the XOS or the HULC, once integrated into our military will greatly increase our nation’s combat efficiency. The extra support and stamina that the exoskeletons provide will make soldiers to be far less tired and far more alert durThe Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
ing longer missions. By allowing soldiers to be stronger and quicker, the effectiveness of American military operations will directly increase. Moreover, these exoskeleton suits will decrease the military’s crisis response time. Since just two or three suited soldiers will now be able to load heavy weapons– such as missiles or bombs– with ease, the army can deploy armed vehicles far more quickly. Through the Raytheon-Sarcos XOS and the Lockheed Martin HULC exoskeleton systems, our nation’s combat strength
will dramatically improve. With such an expanded strength, the Department of Defense (DOD) can decrease our overseas military presence and increase our presence at home. Not only will these exoskeletons improve our nationwide security, they will safeguard our troops too. Due to the afore- mentioned benefits of this technology, military casualty numbers could be greatly reduced. The strategic advantages resulting from this new military technology will give the U.S. an edge over the countless enemies we face today and redefine modern warfare for the better. HMR
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403
Error: Access Denied BY ALEXANDER POSNER
W
hen this year’s Nobel peace prizewinner was announced, the government of China was far from pleased. The recipient of the award, a man named Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last year for his work on human rights. He was a lead author of “Charter 08,” a manifesto that calls for significant political reform and democratization in China. As it states in the opening paragraph, “After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance.” Published on the 60th anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the document spread rapidly across the Internet as thousands of people throughout China
signed on to the charter. The Chinese government responded swiftly and aggressively to what they perceived as an internal threat to their power. Liu Xiaobo was arrested along with those who had signed on to the document. In addition, a statewide media blackout on the Charter was issued. Unfortunately, this type of scenario is far too common in China. Those who dissent from the government are silenced, free speech is restricted in the media, and Internet censorship is a harsh reality. In fact, the government of China employs 30,000 people with the sole purpose of monitoring and controlling the internet. Just last year Google was part of a contentious public exchange when it decided to stop filtering its search results following criticism from many prominent human rights groups. When the Chinese government hacked the Google servers, Google China threatened to pull out of the country. While an agreement was eventually reached, the Internet still remains limited for most of China’s citizens. In many ways China’s Internet policy is anachronistic to
China’s internet policy is anachronistic to the gargantuan system that is the Chinese economy.
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Science & Tech
the gargantuan system that is the Chinese economy. It seems so primitive that in the world’s fastest growing and one of the largest economies, open Internet is not a reality. A strong sustainable economy and an open society with unfettered Internet access are not mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, the two are closely connected. Behind China’s booming economy there exists one fundamental long-term problem. Today, China is the manufacturing capital of the world. But the question remains whether it has reached the limits of its capabilities. The Chinese have been extremely good at replicating what others have created. They find ways to produce things cheaply, efficiently, and in mass. However, new ideas and inventions are far and few between. Thus far China has not been successful in creating its own large and successful brands. Think about it. What brands does Japan
The Horace Mann Review | Issue 1
call its own? Sony, Nintendo, Toyota, Honda, etc…the list goes on and on. What about South Korea? Samsung, Hyundai, LG, among others. But aside from the computer firm Lenovo, there are very few successful Chinese brands. Simply put, to date the Chinese economy has been incapable of widespread innovation and creativity. And part of this is the result of the lack of freedom of expression and thought, symbolized by the continuing restrictions on the Internet. As I mentioned earlier, open societies and sustainable economies go hand in hand. Countries with open democratic governments tend to be the places where there is the greatest flow of ideas and creativity. It is the countries where an open Internet is a reality that innovation thrives. Thus today the Chinese economy is at a crossroads. While its growth has been unprecedented on all accounts, its ability to sustain and build on that level of economic success and take it to the next level remains unclear. The Internet is the next great frontier of innovation. However as long as the Chinese government is determined to maintain control over society on all levels, its preoccupation with control will continue to infringe on its citizens ability to think, to share, and to connect. It is only when Chinese authorities allow the spread of information and ideas that China will be able to meet the demands of the 21st century. For as Albert Camus once said, “Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear…the uproar of empires and nations.” China has the capability to accomplish great innovation and to be a leader in the 21st century. Ending its Internet firewall is an essential first step. HMR
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Science & Tech
4G: A Smart Phone Revolution?
BY KIERAN BIRCH-DESAI
O
n March 23 2010, Sprint released the first 4G cell phone in the United States; the HTC Evo 4G. With it came blazingly fast download speeds, a huge 4.3 inch display, and a snappy processor and graphics card. Sprint, desperate to gain back their slowly shrinking market share, has so far left Verizon and AT&T in the dust. Despite this, you should wait for about nine months before going 4G. Most importantly, Sprint’s nationwide coverage is nowhere near on par with that of Verizon. Also, Verizon has announced that its 4G network will be released in thirty eight
1973: First successful call with a mobile phone 36
cities nationwide by the end of this year. According to the company’s website, this initial launch will cover about one-third of all Americans, and further launches in 2011 will bring coverage across the US. For those holding their breath for the iPhone that will run on Verizon’s CDMA network, the unfortunate reality is that it will most likely debut as the current 3G version and be updated later on. Meanwhile, according to Gizmodo, the Internet’s most popular “Gadget Guide”, AT&T has teamed up with Sony Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build their 4G network. Many speculate that the network could be up and running by the end of the second quarter of next
1990’s: Cell phones become popular with the public
2007: Advanced “smartphones” introduced
year, along with a plethora of compatible and feature-rich devices. For iPhone fans, rumors have also been circulating that the fifth-generation version of the “smartphone king” will debut simultaneously. Despite the unprecedented speed that 4G networks offer, there are a few downsides to the Evo that should make you reconsider rushing to buy. Firstly, reports of Evo’s battery life have been downright abysmal. Even with Wi-Fi turned off, and screen brightness lowered all the way, the Evo will last you about fourteen and a half hours not in use. If you’re one of the many not fond of Android’s frequent crashes and quirks, the Evo is no different. HMR
2008: First 4G cell phone released in the US The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX
Special Coverage
The theme of this week’s Midterm elections was massive GOP gains across the board. Gubernatorial races were no exception, reflecting a general anxiety over the nation’s economy and dissatisfaction with the Obama administration. While the nation’s statehouses were essentially divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats before the elections, the GOP achieved a net gain of 6, which is very significant. Their control of these governorships will influence upcoming redistricting of Congressional districts, something known as gerrymandering. President Obama plans to meet with the governor-elects at the White House on the 2nd of December.
Overview
Senate
Despite the GOP’s dramatic victories in the House of Representatives, Democrats were able to maintain their control of the Senate. Though he was widely believed to be in trouble, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada defeated Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, and will return as the Democratic majority leader. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will return as the GOP minority leader. The Republicans, who lost control of the Senate in 2006 after a wave of strong anti-Bush sentiment, did make some gains. Of the 37 seats up for election, the Democrats were able to hold on to 13 seats meaning that the GOP saw a net gain of 6 seats. By all measures, President Obama will have a difficult balancing act in the years ahead. With a general divide in the Senate and significant Republican control of the House, it is unclear how much President Obama can accomplish in the upcoming 112th session of Congress. At a time when partisan politics seem to be escalating, only time will tell if the President and Congress will be able to establish a more constructive bi-partisan approach.
Special Coverage
COLORADO Colorado saw a tight race between Republican Ken Buck and Democrat Michael Bennet, ending with a paper-thin victory— almost certain to be contested—by the Democrat Bennet. Mr. Bennet will serve as one of three or four crucial votes for Democrats in the Senate for the next two years; his win bucked polling and halted a Republican advance for control of the Senate.
ALASKA The race in Alaska remains tangled, with possible write-in winner Lisa Murowski waiting for a manual recount to see if she will go to Washington to serve another six years. Alaskans chose Ms. Murowski, a moderate, over highly conservative Republican Joe Miller. CALIFORNIA Senator Barbara Boxer of California was successful in her quest for a 4th term, defeating her Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, by a margin of 700,000 votes (9.3%). Even though Fiorina poured more than $6 million of her personal fortune into the race, she ran an ineffective campaign. One major controversy was her weak record in running Hewlett Packard. While she was CEO, the company performed poorly and she was forced to layoff 30,000 American workers. This, among other factors, prevented her from successfully winning over California voters.
2008 Senate Results
KENTUCKY Kentucky Senator-Elect Rand Paul coasted to a twelve point victory over Democrat Jack Conway. Paul had drawn media coverage and voter ire at the beginning of his campaign for his belief in extremely limited government, and his election will drag the Senate to the right, along with popular opinion.
2010 Senate Results
Special Coverage
WISCONSON Veteran and well-respected Senator Russ Feingold was unsuccessful in his bid for a fourth term in Congress. He lost by a margin of 4.8%. The Tea Party supported businessman Ron Johnson unseated Feingold and will become Wisconsin’s next Senator. Considered by many to be one of the cleanest run races in the country, in part because Feingold refused to take PAC money, the election was close until the bitter end. However, Feingold’s liberal policies, including his strong support for the Obama Administration’s health care bill and stimulus package, proved too much of a burden for him in this election cycle.
ILLINOIS The Illinois senate seat vacated in 2008 by President Barack Obama has long been shadowed in controversy, stemming largely from the scandal involving Rod Blagoievich. The former Illinois governor was criminally charged with trying to obtain bribes from those interested in interim appointments to the seat. The seat maintained its presence in the public spotlight with a tightly fought battle between Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. By a margin of less than 2% Mr. Kirk was ultimately able to squeeze out a victory for the Republican Party.
NEVADA In Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled a rabbit out of his hat with a five point victory over Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, defying polls showing Angle with a three point lead. His win not only denied Republicans a seat they needed to take control of the Senate, but showed also that at least in Nevada, the Tea Party remains too extreme for many voters.
House
Overview Republicans made history November 2nd, taking sixtyfive seats in the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party and seizing control of the House with twenty-seven seats to spare. Their victory—the largest for either party since the Second World War—marks the end of four years of Democratic control of the chamber. The election results show a nation at odds with the President Obama’s agenda but not certain that Republicans can provide a better alternative: only a third of Tea Party backed candidates won election, a good but not great margin. Voters will judge Washington again in two years to make up their minds. Whichever party can claim credit for an economic turnaround— or shift the blame for continued stagnation onto their competitors—will most likely succeed in 2012 and beyond.
Andrew and Danielle Rock
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