OPINION
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1HLJKERUKRRG :DWFK SURJUDPV VKRXOG VXSSRUW VKULQNLQJ SROLFH IRUFHV In response to decreasing revenues across state and county governments, everywhere police and fire departments are shrinking due to BRYANT budget cuts. Our FONG public safety is now at risk. Contributing It isn’t that I’m Columnist unconcerned with the threat to fire departments, but I’ll focus here on the ways to increase police presence and local crime fighting. Police forces are shrinking everywhere across the nation, in places including San Diego, Calif., New York and Grand Rapids, Mich.. The focus on speed checking and speed traps doesn’t make our communities safer. This seems to be a main source of funding, according to USA Today. Since raising taxes is never a good option, local governments need to promote measures of individual protection and monitor the streets themselves. In a sense, they should create a volunteer civilian police corps. The police can slash costs by operating on an on-call basis. The government needs to give the citizens more control over their protection to streamline unnecessary spending and decrease dependence. Such a program already exists. Neighborhood Watch, formed in the 1980s, consists of an organized group of citizens who work to protect a neighborhood from crime and vandalism, and who agree to report to authorities when problems arise. Neighborhood Watch needs to be sponsored and encouraged by governments—
when I checked the Web site, I needed to purchase materials and earn permission before I could initiate the program. The process to institute this type of program currently is a hassle. Only when the process becomes convenient will neighborhoods adopt the group efforts of Neighborhood Watch. Instead of looking to raise revenue to strengthen government presence, a neighborhood watch would make citizens more involved with law enforcement by establishing a crime-fighting force all around the community. According to a Lakewood, Colo. police report, only about 10 percent of burglaries, auto thefts and vehicle trespasses happened in Neighborhood Watch areas. When the total burglaries are 780, it means that Neighborhood Watch does work in crime prevention. It establishes a citizen responsibility of the neighborhood. Citizens should act and form their own groups rather than complain of shrinking police forces. The new income sources for increased police operations would come from raised taxes, which hurts citizens. In organizing local citizen-sponsored crime fighting, the government and its citizens save money, creating a more efficient operation. In order for Neighborhood Watch to gain popularity, it requires concerted action by the government and the citizens. The government needs to make implementation of this program easier, and provide greater incentives for it, perhaps through tax breaks. Citizens need to take action, and not rely on the government. Neighborhood Watch is the future of crime prevention. Bryant Fong is a sophomore majoring either in chemistry or economics.
/LO :D\QH à RRGV PDUNHW ZLWK PHGLRFUH PL[WDSHV What’s the name of that one song, again? I think to myself while stumbling through the world of legally downloaded music. All I know is that it’s a Lil Wayne song JOEY and that it has a sick KERN beat, but these are Columnist two things I can’t type into a search engine with any degree of success. My solution: Download the Lil Wayne discography, putting me on the level of middle school boys worldwide. I ignore this unfortunate connection, click download and walk away content that I’ll get what I want. I come back to see my package completely downloaded. I add the folder to iTunes and watch in horror as 681 songs relentlessly add themselves to my library. I can’t help but ask myself, why and how the hell does Lil Wayne produce so much material? Why is it that I only like about one out of every 50 songs he produces? Why do people like me feel the need to download all of these songs knowing 640 out of the 681 or so will languish, ignored, in my library forever? The answer: I have no idea. Lil Wayne has songs that are irresistibly catchy. I won’t deny this fact, as it enabled me and countless other unfortunate souls to go about flooding their laptops with his
countless mixtapes. But this doesn’t justify the amount of shitty songs with which he floods the market. It seems to me, Mr. Wayne, that you record anything one or two times through, call it good and then release it to the public. While this process may enable you to release an ungodly number of songs, it makes people have to sift through them for days to find something worth listening to. So, to put it simply, stop releasing so many songs and settle on the ones worth a listen. By flooding the market, Lil Wayne ensures that some of his songs will inevitably become popular because, simply, almost no recording artist can release that many songs and fail to produce a decent single. His methods seem akin to throwing 40 darts and praying that one of them lands on the target. It honestly makes me question whether he actually knows what a good song sounds like, or if his ears have grown so numb with cough syrup that he has to guess. Start listening to your own songs, Lil Wayne. Editing to ensure that published material is worthwhile has always been an important facet of media, music included. Rampantly releasing material shouldn’t be the goal of any artist. Being the most prolific artist of the generation amounts to nothing if half of the songs you release amount to wasted space in someone’s iTunes library. Joey Kern is a first-year English major.
the Pioneer
December 3, 2009
I T ’S RIDICULOUS
Too few Americans travel It’s ridiculous that fewer than 30 percent of Americans even own a passport. That’s right—it is, in fact, ridiculous. At a British comedy club reDEREK cently I heard a THURBER joke that hinged on this fact that Contributing fewer than 30 perColumnist cent of Americans own passports. Though I can be as pessimistic about American ignorance as most people, this number seemed impossible to believe. So I checked it. According to an article in USA Today, 74 million Americans owned passports as of spring 2007. Though that is actually a good number of people, when you realize that there are a little over 304 million people that live in the United States, this number becomes much smaller. The percentage works out to about 24 percent with these numbers. This is, of course, an old statistic, but most estimates put the current rate up by only a couple of percentages points. The other ridiculous thing to note from this statistic is that having 24 percent is record-
breaking. The article probably rightly suggests that this is due to the increased immigration regulations between Canada and the United States. Plus, Canada hardly counts as a foreign country, anyway. As an American who is living in London this semester and has spent his free time traveling across England, Scotland, Ireland and mainland Europe, I can honestly say that it is truly sad how few Americans have traveled. My recent trip across the highlands of Scotland has made this more apparent than ever. We got to see the great castle in Edinburgh, drink fine Scottish whiskey—Scotch—in traditional pubs, wander through streets that are full of history, search for Nessie on the great and beautiful Loch Ness, try to figure out the public buses, fear getting attacked by our hostel employee, take long train rides across the British countryside and generally learn about a whole different culture. With so few Americans really and truly knowing what it is like to live and get around in a foreign country, it’s no wonder others think we are arrogant pricks. It is hard to defend our nation to weary foreigners when confronted with such startling statistics. And, really, it is embarrassing to think that a country which arguably holds the
For most of us Thanksgiving means a table piled with steaming mashed potatoes, roasted turkey carved into hearty slices, cornbread JAMES stuffing, cranberry SLEDD sauce and pumpColumnist kin pie heaped with whipped cream. But not all families are so lucky and last week millions of Americans gathered around empty tables. No American should ever have to sit at a barren table. The U.S. government should expand food stamps and other programs so that no one in the United States struggles to feed their family three meals per day. According to The New York Times, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last month that 49 million Americans went without adequate food at some point last year. This is an increase of 13 million people over the previous year, the highest number since the USDA began keeping track in 1985. According to Northwest Harvest, 15 percent of children in Washington live in poverty, and nearly 300,000 live in households that find it difficult to put together three healthy meals each day. Rural Washingtonians—especially those in the south-central part of the state, near Walla Walla and the Tri-Cities—are more likely to face food insecurity. Of the 49 million Americans who experienced food insecurity, one-third faced “very low food security,� where family members had to miss meals or reduce portions to save money. The remaining two-thirds—over 30 million people—had to eat cheaper foods, rely on government aid, or visit soup kitchens to feed themselves and their families. Single mothers were the most likely to battle food insecurity. In over one and a half-million households, children went
without enough to eat—more than double the previous year. Why did so many more Americans go hungry at some point in 2008? The answer, unsurprisingly, is the downward spiral into a deep economic recession. The unemployment rate, which was at 4.9 percent at the end of 2007, rose to 7.2 percent in December 2008. This year, the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2 percent. More Americans without jobs means more people who can’t afford to adequately feed their families—so even more families could go hungry this year. The increase in hunger is directly linked to welfare reform. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Welfare and Work Opportunity Act, a key component of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. The act imposed a lifetime limit of five years’ benefits for welfare recipients, strictly limited aid to immigrants, whether legal or illegal, and reduced job training opportunities. Proponents of welfare reform, including Newt Gingrich and former president Bill Clinton, claimed that it would reduce poverty rates
ZKLWPDQ QHZV GHOLYHUHG REPORTERS
BUSINESS
Editor-in-Chief Gillian Frew
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and unemployment. Neither unemployment nor poverty rates have improved, while millions of Americans have stopped receiving aid, forced into menial jobs that won’t feed their families. Today, as the country struggles to climb out of the deepest recession, we must reevaluate all aspects of our economy. The United States is the richest country in the world, and no American should ever go hungry. With over 30 million Americans forced to miss meals or eat less to save money, it’s clear that welfare reform has failed. Congress should seriously consider repealing the Personal Welfare and Work Opportunity Act and other welfare reform laws. James Sledd is a senior environmentalpolitics major.
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Derek Thurber is a junior history major studying abroad in London this semester.
Congress must act to combat increasing hunger in America
EDITORIAL
Director of Content Andy Jobanek
most influence internationally out of any country in the world has so few citizens that have actually seen that world about which they are creating policies. Of course, it is expensive to travel. Not everyone can afford to take romantic vacations across Europe, see the Great Wall of China or hunt for kangaroos in Australia. But there are certainly more than 26 percent of Americans who can afford to travel at some point in their lives. Also, to be fair, the United States is very large and further away from most foreign countries than Europe for example. Although traveling around the United States is interesting, important and educational, it is not an adequate substitute for seeing at least part of the world. On average, more than 70 percent of Europeans and between 60 and 70 percent of Australians have passports. Maybe more Americans should step out of our protected bubble and see something really new for a change. If I have done nothing else, then I hope that every person reading this will seriously consider traveling abroad whenever they get the chance. You will not regret it, and neither will the rest of the world.
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