Issue 6 - A Special Report on Public Policy

thehorace mannReview

A Special Report on Public Policy

Issue

6

America’s Agenda

Education

Immigration

Congress

Health

Energy

The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XX2

Andrew DemasDanielle Ellison

Executive Editor

A Journal of Opinion on Current Events, Politics, Social Issues, and Relevant Affairs

Deependra MookimEditor-in-Chief

Aaron GoldmanDaniel GrafsteinJustin Katiraei

Victor LaddPhilip Lin

The Horace Mann Review is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the American Scholastic Press Association, and the National Scholastic Press As-sociation. Opinions expressed in articles or illustrations are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board or of the Horace Mann School. Please contact The Review for in-formation at [email protected].

FROM THE EDITOR

For this special report on public policy, we challenged our writers to be creative and develop innovative answers for this country’s

problems. The articles in our special issue focus on addressing issues in education, immigration, Congress, health, and en-ergy through concrete solutions.

We live in an increasingly complex, multidisciplinary, and dynamic world. As the United States falls back in scien-tific research and development (relatively speaking), the need for improving our schools is as pressing as ever before.

In addition, immigration remains a national concern due to the persistence of illegal immigration and its perverse effects. The “Congress” section of Issue 6 narrows in on flaws with the workings of Congress and the political process itself.

Looking at Domestic Affairs through the Lens of Public Policy

Possible Solutions to America’s Problems

ReviewThe Horace Mann

Editorial Director

Jasmine Mariano Senior Columnist

Gregory BarancikPhoto Editor

Alexander FamilantBen Marks

Business Manager

Dorin AzeradJordan Berman

Alexander DanielEmily FeldsteinHarrison Manin

Andre ManuelMathieu Rolfo

Zoe RubinRebecca Segall

Katherine WyattAssociate Editor

Seth ArarProduction Director

Aramael Pena-AlcantaraAndrew Stier

Production Manager

Richard LeeEditorial Assistant

Songge ChenJustin GilstonProduction Assistant

Gregory DonadioFaculty Advisor

Deependra MookimEditor-in-ChiefVolume XX

According to the Center for Disease Control, 34% of Americans over 20 years of age are obese. We also cover nutrition and health, in light of grave issues such as obesity. We conclude this report with ideas regarding America’s energy sector and alternative energies.

I feel that this special report of The Review epitomizes what we stand for: opinions and ideas. Each article in this is-sue is premised on the belief that we have work to do. We must strive to learn, ex-periment, and take action, because there are- and always will be- issues unresolved and ideas yet to be discovered.

Cover designed by Andrew Stier

Mark Wilson

The Horace Mann Review | Issue 6 3

Richard LeeEditorial Assistant

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Congress

Immigration

Education

Health

Energy

Horror in Arizona

The Rio Grande Problem

Spencer Reiss

Nicholas McCombe

America’s Failing GradeEmulating European Education

Illegal Immigration and the American Dream

Teaching Parents

Repeal the 14th Amendment David HackelTreshauxn Dennis-Brown

Charles Scherr

Sam Rahmin

Hannah Davidoff

Sahej Suri

Vivianna Lin

A Nuclear Iran

Crime & Punishment

Getting Kids MovingThe Great Marijuana DebateIn Healthy Food We Trust

Maurice Farber

Noah Lee

Kelvin Rhee

69

4

18

10

19

1214

20

16

252628

2223

Keep Our Army StrongDemocracy on Sale

Jonah Wexler

Mohit Mookim

It’s Time to Fix the Filibuster Isaiah Newman

At a Crossroad Will Ellison

Fallout of the Nuclear DimensionAll About FrackingWhere’s the Alternative Energy?

Adam Mansfield

Harry Manin

Daniel Elkind

30333437


Education

No one would argue in the im-portance of education. It serves as the means to bring about change in society, to develop our country’s youth to be able

to be good human beings and contrib-ute to society when they are older. These adults-to-be will soon be the next great politicians, writers, athletes, and scien-tists, and preparing them through educa-tion is of paramount significance.

Imagine a country ran by inept stu-dents, whose faults come not at the ex-pense of themselves, but of their coun-try’s public education. With a fluctuating economy and uncertain times ahead, it is more important than ever for our gen-

eration to receive a proper education and training that will allow them to acquire a good a job and revenue to live. So today, when taking a look at America’s educa-tion system, there are some alarming flaws that, quite simply, need to be fixed before this generation of students takes over the country.

Among the problems that are plagu-ing today’s education system include at-trition rate of teachers, lack of parental

involvement, and most importantly, an illiteracy epidemic. The solutions to these problems are not easy, but there are ways Congress can handle the flaws in our ed-ucation system. Among a list of daunting tasks for the incoming congressmen and women, improving our education system should be a top priority.

The alarming attrition rate of teach-ers certainly is one aspect of the education system that needs to be fixed. The profes-sion of a teacher is a very demanding job, one that requires a lot of devotion both in and out of the school. However, a shock-ing statistic shows that 46% of all teach-ers quit before their fifth year working, with the number growing to 50% in ur-

ban areas. This statistic is frightening, as not only are half of America’s teachers in-experienced, but also because this forces our schooling system to spend money on hiring new teachers, rather than invest-ing in new textbooks, lab equipment, or facilities. By one estimate, it costs almost seven billion dollars a year as states try to recruit and hire new teachers. There are however, a few solutions to stop this “re-volving door” of teachers.

It starts with a support system for new teachers. It is said that teachers need to be there to support their students, but what about supporting the new teachers? They’re learning the ropes of everything and the constant demands of the job can be a large reason for the low rate of teachers making it past year five on the job. The support system should be com-posed of old teachers and administrators who understand what teachers need to do to get through the hard years. Proper mentoring to the new teachers could be crucial in saving the low attrition rate.

Another problem facing America’s school system today, and probably one of the reasons for the low attrition rate

of teachers, is the lack of parental in-volvement. A lack of parental involve-ment, whether in the PTA or just simply checking up with their child, is very det-rimental to the education system. When parents don’t care, the effect trickles down to the children. They see the par-ents don’t care, so why should they? Pa-rental involvement in a teen’s education can have beneficial results; one profes-sional says the students “typically have

If the public schooling system adopted Horace Mann’s model of encourag-ing parental involvement, the system would certainly be in better shape.

by charles scherr

Teaching ParentsIs parental involvement the answer to the education crisis?


Education

higher grade point averages, higher test scores on standardized and classroom as-sessments, enrollment in more rigorous academic courses, more classes passed, more credits earned toward graduation,

and higher graduation rates.” The bottom line is, the statistics show that a success-ful student most likely has parents who are actively involved in his or her educa-tion and school.

The solution to this problem is simple, and one that students at Horace Mann may not even realize is part of what they do. From a young age, HM students are required to get their parents signature on all tests. This ensures that parents are actively involved with their child’s work. In addition, it needs to be stated that parents are expected to involve them-selves with the school, whether through contributions of money or time. In fact, on Horace Mann’s website, it states that they, “set a goal for the Annual Fund of 100% parent participation,” and parents are also encouraged “to donate their time to the School by participating in School and Parents’ Association activities.” If the public schooling system adopted Horace Mann’s model of encouraging parental involvement, the system would certain-ly be in better shape. Obviously, having parents involved in school life is tough -- busy work schedules make it very hard for most parents to keep up with their child’s work. That said, no amount of work makes it impossible for a parent to ask about his or her child’s school life. And it is of paramount significance that, public school or private, the notion of keeping tabs with a child’s work needs to be stressed.

The last, and probably most impor-tant issue affecting America’s students is an alarming illiteracy epidemic. It is well known that a large majority of children are not reading at their respective grade levels, and the effects of the literacy prob-lem are obviously disastrous. It is report-ed that almost eight million students out

of 76 million cannot read at a basic level. There is an evident problem, and fixing it needs to be of top priority.

Unfortunately, the solution to fix the reading problem cannot happen over

night, nor is there any systematic way to go about it. Improvements on the two previous fronts can go a long way for im-proving reading. Having teachers who

have a system to teach how to read and comprehend English is very important, as are parents stressing the importance of reading at home. It is a total team ef-fort to improve the reading problem in

America. It is without a doubt

that fixing something as large and important as America’s schooling system will take time. But by fixing the attrition rate, parental

involvement, and reading problem in schools, with all three parties (students, teachers, and parents) America’s school-ing system can get back on track. HMR

It is reported that almost eight million students out of 76 million cannot read at a basic level.

Drawn by Baci Weiler


Education

by saMantha rahMin

The children in America are the future of America; one day, they will be the con-gressmen, accountants, doctors, professors, plumb-

ers, and teachers debating the very issues discussed in this magazine. Consequent-ly, educating America’s children should be a top priority. Overall, public schools across the country require more funding and more competition to provide stu-dents with a better education.

In a speech in 2008, then-Senator Obama declared, “Now is the time to fi-nally meet our moral obligation to pro-vide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to com-pete in the global economy. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more sup-port. But in exchange, I will ask for high-er standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serv-ing your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.” Now, over three years later, it is time to evaluate: is President Obama

following through with his promises?A few years ago, students in New

Jersey, which statistically has some of America’s best public schools, and stu-dents in Belgium took the same test. The Belgian students performed significantly better. After taking a test administered in forty different countries, fifteen-year-old American students only ranked twenty-fifth. According to ABC News, “Ameri-can schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are gov-ernment monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is at-tached to the kids– it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education– at many different kinds of schools – but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.” Schools are not given any motivation to better educate their stu-dents; praise worthy public schools gain few benefits. In effect, America’s public school system represents a socialist plan for education. Socialism is a political and economic belief that advocates for col-lective ownership and equal resources, subordinating people to the state. The

arguably socialist American school sys-tem subjects all students to the govern-ment-regulated monopoly on all aspects of education, including curriculum and textbooks. Our current school system contradicts the competitive capitalist val-ues deeply ingrained in American soci-ety. The lack of motivated schools leads to a lack of motivated students.

In Europe, students have more choice for their high schools. There are two options: vocational schools or col-lege track schools. In America, most stu-dents simply graduate from their college track public school. In a way students are wasting time in school with such broad curriculums, and must later make up for the time in college, graduate school, or beyond. Furthermore, students are es-sentially forced into a particular school system due to their geographic location. A system must be implemented in which students are not zoned out of a better education. Different schools would lead to more types of schools, thereby lead-ing giving students the chance to find a school that is a better “fit” for them. Ide-ally, with more choices and more oppor-

World Education Report

Country Grade Education Official

Netherlands

Sweeden

Denmark

Switzerland

South Korea

Hong Kong

Japan

United States of America

A+

A

A-

A+

B+

A

B+

F

NA

Leif Pagrotsky

Lee Ju-hoo

Tina Nedergaard

Michael Suen

Marja van Bijsterveldt

Yoshiaki Takaki

Arne Duncan

Sweden

America’s Failing Grade


Education

tunities would lead to more competition for opportunities, thereby better motivat-ing students and leading to greater aca-demic success. If schools must compete for students, it would assure that schools and teachers are taking their responsibil-ity of educating their students seriously.

In analyzing whether or not Obama’s plans have come to fruition, one can no-tice that for the 2010-2011 school year, districts all around the country have made up to 48% budget cuts. In New Jer-sey, for example, Governor Chris Christie cut $820 million in state education aid. Programs such as art, music, and foreign language were removed from the cur-riculum. Unfortunately, there are predic-tions that the situation will only worsen

next year. Michael Griffith, an established Finance Analyst for the Education Com-mission of the United States, whose fi-nancial conclusions are frequently cited in the New York Times, CNN, and NPR, reported that “(the amount of budget cuts) is affecting classroom teachers one way or another, either with the class size rising, or cutting the school week ... or cutting the school year.” Many districts are buying fewer supplies and sending

kids home with school supply lists. In ad-dition, teachers all around the country are losing their jobs.

A direct reversal of what is happen-ing is necessary for America’s children to stay on the same academic track as stu-dents in other developing countries. The United States currently has a 77% gradu-ation rate, which is below the graduation rate for most developing countries. The monumental budget cuts impair students from learning. More funding must be poured into public education. A reduc-tion of class size is important so students can be given more individual attention in order to assure no student falls through the cracks. As a result, more teachers are needed within the schools. However,

America’s public schools need teachers capable of controlling the classrooms and teaching students both factual informa-tion and critical thinking skills.

Teachers and students in pub-lic schools need to accept less stability. Studying and teaching in school should not simply be a guaranteed daily routine. Teachers who fail to do their job should not be promised tenure, namely, a per-manent job contract. Tenure, as is the

American school system, is a socialistic concept. Teachers, like all other profes-sions in our capitalist society, should be forced to continue working and proving themselves. Tenure is merely supposed to assure that teachers receive due process for contract removal. However, tenured teachers are challenging for public school boards to remove, despite that they may not be meeting standards in their class-rooms. As in other professions, teachers should be penalized for failure to success-fully do their jobs. Teachers’ success, as students’ academic successes can be mea-sured through standardized tests.

However, more than just standard-ized tests are necessary to evaluate students, schools, and teachers. Each

teacher’s lessons and lectures should be evaluated in order that they meet fed-eral standard. As of now, principals can observe teacher’s classes. But, each state should have a form of educational board to compare each and every teacher at each and every school to assure that stan-dards are being met and kept consistent throughout all schools. One of the prob-lems within our public schools includes teachers merely teaching to a test, which

The average sal-ary of a U.S. high school teacher is $43,355

$11 billion of federal fund-ing is spent on school lunches

U.S. school buses provide ap-poximately 10 billion student trips a year.

Our current school system contradicts the competitive capitalist values deeply ingrained in American society.


is the concept of schools narrowing their curriculums solely to cover the material on the test. A high school algebra teacher states, “…at least in my district, and I be-lieve it’s much the same throughout the country, the pace at which the material is given to the students is much too fast. Standardized testing is to blame for this...” Students and teachers alike are forced to simply speed through material in order to be prepared for standardized tests. How-ever, critical thinking skills suffer due to this approach. The United States is the only economically advanced nation to be so dependent on standardized multiple-choice tests. Other nations evaluate stu-dents more heavily on projects and essays to develop analytical skills. Also, as this high school math teacher reports, “Stu-dents who do poorly in algebra… barely have time to digest it,” a she sights the magnitude of material as a reason stu-dents fail his class.

Passing grades for students in Amer-ica range from 60% to 75% depending on the school and the district. However, usu-ally students who are failing high school dropout. A vicious cycle begins in el-ementary school as in most districts little can be done for students who fail classes in middle school and even elementary school. By the time these students reach high school and must pass classes, they have not developed the proper skills to do so. High schools do not have room to keep these uninspired students. An ar-ticle in the Los Angeles Times reports, “The school typically has made little ef-fort to keep such students. It has few re-sources to spend on them and is often happy to be rid of the ones considered troublemakers.” Overall, a remedy to this problem would include making admis-sion to high school less automatic. There should be a standard for entering high school that every student must meet and until the student can do so, he or she must continue studying and if necessary re-peating middle school. Then, by the time students enter high school, they would be prepared to take their classes and learn.

Finally, Congress should take a stand against mainstreaming. In many schools, it is policy that students with special needs should be integrated into the class-room with other, non-disabled students. In this case, students with disabilities

would leave the room only occasionally to work on certain subjects. Some make the argument that having students with learning disabilities thrive inside class-rooms learning both social and academ-ic skills as well as life skills when in the regular class room with peers. However, the advocates for mainstreaming are so compelling to state legislators solely be-cause mainstreaming is cheaper. An arti-cle in The Wall Street Journal mentioned, “Ruth Lowenkron, a special-education attorney, testified that beyond being the right thing to do, mainstreaming would save money. “Repeat after me,” she told the legislators, “inclusion is cheaper than segregation.”” Many schools have turned to mainstreaming since it is cheaper than having special needs teacher, who must have a higher degree and therefore, a higher salary. Again, with more funding schools would adequately be able to ad-dress problems and better educate all stu-dents, both disabled and non-disabled. A large group of dissenters for mainstream-ing are teachers and parents of learning disabled children. The Wall Street Jour-nal reports, “Some teachers and admin-istrators have been less supportive of the practice, saying that they lack the train-ing and resources to handle significantly disabled children. And more parents are joining the dissenters. People like Ms. Travis (parent of learning disabled child) believe that mainstreaming can actually hinder the students it is intended to help.” Parents of learning disabled children, such as Ms. Travis state said when their children are forced into regular schools, “the progress Valerie(Travis) had made learning to speak all but disappeared.”

In addition, competition within the classroom is reduced because the teach-er’s grading system must be fair to the learning disabled students. Mainstream-ing is at the hindrance of excelling stu-dents, whom it is not fair to hold back. Learning disabled students in a class-room shift the classroom dynamic, espe-cially when numerous learning disabled students are in one class. Generally, les-sons are slightly altered and the teacher’s attention is more divided.

Ultimately, America’s public schools should not suffer due to the faltering economy. Education must be consid-ered one of America’s most important,

pressing issues. America needs a system, which fosters more competition between schools and students, thereby assuring that teachers do their jobs. Furthermore, more funding is necessary to reduced class size better implement more pro-grams and opportunities at our schools. Finally, students with learning disabilities should be given the attention they re-quire, despite the extra costs. Overall, the public school system in America must be revamped in order that our students are able to compete with international students. As said by president Obama, in his State of the Union Address, “Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test…”He continued to explain a competition he instigated forc-ing schools to compete with schools out of state. Programs such as this one, Race to the Top, are what our schools demand. HMR


Education

For decades, public schools in America have been behind those of other nations. Schools in Eu-rope are superior to the schools in America. Even an excellent

private school, such as Horace Mann, pales in comparison to highly structured schools in Europe. The United States ranks 7th in the world in the number of college graduates, and is below average in test scores. Congress should look into this nation’s poor education system, and initiate changes before it is too late. Con-gress should specifically focus on mirror-ing the European style of education.

There are many things that Congress should be changing in our public schools one of which is our curriculum. The United States should seek to emulate the structured European education system. In Europe, students must fulfill certain requirements between ages 7 and 13. In European schools, students are required to learn their first language as well as a foreign language, such as English, Span-

ish, French, German, or Gaelic. They must also take courses in mathemat-ics, science, history, geography, ethics, and physical education. Art and music courses, as well as a second language, are required for students in grades two through five. There are also additional options in later years, such as economics, or a fourth language. Unlike in America schools, classes generally last two to four hours, enabling the students to absorb more information. A great part about the European curriculum is that by the time that they are in 2nd grade students are often already fluent in three languages. This is one of best aspects of European schools that Congress should attempt to echo. Curriculums in America should be planned designed so that students can learn more and have more choices in courses even at a relatively young age.

Another large problem that Congress should look into is the declining quality of teachers in American public schools. The requirements to teach in Europe far

stricter than those in the United States; in Europe the government appoints all teachers after an exclusive selection pro-cedure. Meanwhile, in the United States, anyone with a 2.50 GPA (C+) in College can teach. The process to teach in Eu-rope is more stringent. American public school teachers often don’t perform as well as they should, leaving children un-educated, and our nation unprepared for a rapidly advancing world economy. In Europe, teachers are incentivized to try their hardest, and its students are reaping the benefits.

America is behind other nations due to its unnecessarily poor education sys-tem. It is imperative that Congress devise a solution to our education concerns. Europe has a great curriculum and great teachers: qualities that our country does not necessarily have, especially in poorer neighborhoods. Congress should take charge of the education system and make a difference in our country. HMR

TITLE

by hannah davidoff

Emulating European EducationWikipedia


Immigration

by nicholas MccoMbe

Pedro, forgive me for being ste-reotypical, has just crossed the border into the United States. He may have crossed the Rio Grande, through a boarder

town like Nogales, or via the vast deserts of southern: Arizona, New Mexico, or California. It doesn’t matter so much how Pedro did it only that he is comforted by that fact that there is more boarder than the boarder patrol can constantly keep eyes on. Although the boarder patrol are good at what they do, he might take sol-ace in knowing that thousands success-fully make the passage everyday and that once he gets in the chances of him being deported for lack of papers are very low. Pedro is one of millions in the United States who have entered the country il-legally in search of greener pastures. It naturally follows the question of how do sympathize with the plight of people like

Pedro while protecting law abiding U.S. Citizens. The solution starts with secur-ing the borders through new means. It also starts with the U.S. providing aid to Mexico in order to soften the color dis-parity in the pastures, therefore making the jobs picture better in Mexico as well as the U.S. The long-term solution is to provide a path to legal residence, not citi-zenship, for aliens already residing within the nation. There is an obvious partisan challenge that is embedded in the issue but it is one we must overcome.

The first part of the solution entails reducing the incentive of migrating and increasing the inverse. We have to pro-vide aid to Mexico so that it can provide a sense of law and order to its citizens. It has always been unpopular to provide foreign aid to needy nations because of the belief that it is not our problem. However, giv-en the trillions we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, trying and failing

to nation build, it reasonably follows that to provide merely billions to aid a coun-try which poses a civic threat and that is right on our boarders, we might be will-ing. Statistics show that during the depths of the recession illegal immigration from Mexico was halved because of a lack of jobs in the U.S. Rather that making the situation worse by decreasing the incen-tive to migrate why don’t we make things there better. We know from science that, a gas will move from an area where it is compresses to area with more space. The same is true for people, people move from areas with little economic opportunity and jobs to areas with more. The most common sense solution to solve this prob-lem is to help the Mexican government to provide more jobs in Mexico for its citi-zens. The second part of the immediate solution is increasing border security in new and innovative ways including more airborne video surveillance. The proposi-

The Rio Grande Problem

Immigration


Immigration

tion frequently brought by both sides to increase border security has always been a poplar one. Most agree that we should secure our borders. Where the disagree-ment lies is how to do so. The popular suggestion is to perpetually increase the number of border patrol agents; this sug-gestion is passed on the beliefs that more boots on the ground equals a more secure boarder. However, I believe this is not al-ways the case; we have reached a point of diminishing returns in the number of agents we employ. More agents may re-sult in less illegal immigrants but we will not get the sort of bang for our buck we have in the past. In other words, the ratio of increasing boarder agents to decreas-ing illegal immigrants is decreasing se-verely. To combat this issue we need to slightly decrease agent numbers and in-crease our investment into video surveil-lance. Obviously it would prohibitively expensive to put a camera on a post every hundred yards across the entire boarder, but what would be achievable is airborne video surveillance. The actual border pa-trol agents would not have to patrol no longer but rather act as a quick reaction force to apprehend aliens attempting to cross the boarder who have been spot-ted by drones. This sort of surveillance

is already conducted but by large human piloted helicopters. This is also expensive because of the fuel these large helicop-ters burn and the cost of training pilots. The ideal solution would be a large fleet of small antonymous drones that alert agents to movements on the ground. Some of this technology is already in use and it is only a matter of having the will to implement it.

The longer-term solution though, is a more complicated one. It involves pro-viding legal residence to the nearly 20 million illegal immigrants already here. It is clear that we cannot indiscriminately deport such a large segment of the popu-lation. The other challenge is how to en-force legal residence. Arizona’s law, which allows “paper-checking” of suspicious in-dividuals, has created an uproar across the country. We would have mass riots if such a law were implemented across the country. It is immoral and wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, it is something that the U.S. prides its self and not doing and that policy should contin-ue. In terms of the enforcement of legal residence my solution would be to hold employers responsible. Large and small-time employers would be spot checked and forced to provide proof of legal resi-

dence for all of their employees. This is not an ideal solution since some will view it as an impediment to hiring. As to pro-viding legal residence I would have them pay a fine for crossing the boarder ille-gally commensurate with the number of years they have been in the country and I would have them pay back taxes on income earned. The actual documents would be guest worker visa that last for no more than 10 years, at which point they can re-apply or go home. In my view the problem is not so much that we have these people in our country it is that they do not pay taxes. In order for immigrants to become full partners in the American experiment they need to pay taxes, and why would they want to do that if not forced to.

There are clear partisan issues with my plan. Republicans think that it is not in their interests to increase the Hispanic voters demographic but sooner or later my party will have to face facts, that some time in the near future minorities will out number non-minorities. Republicans have to realize this and craft their policies to reflect this bacillary issue. We have to realize that this is a problem worth solv-ing, because a divided America is not a strong nor a productive America. HMR

How to Solve the Immigration Issue

Aid to Mexico- Providing aid to Mexico will augment growth and negate the neces-sity for Mexicans to emigrate

Amnesty- Congress ought to pass a proposal similar to the McCain-Kennedy bill, granting amnesty to immigrants

Fines for Individuals hav-ing Immigrated Illegally- Immigrants should pay taxes in order to ensure that all immigrants contribute to the American economy

Effective Border Security- Border security must al-locate their resources more effectively

Short Term Long Term


Immigration

more power in this regard, since the illic-it drug trade is most definitely a national problem. Currently, some states even re-gard the possession of marijuana a petty offence, like that of a speeding violation. For example, the punishment for possess-ing 28.5 grams of marijuana is only a fine of $100 in some states, whereas,the pun-ishment for possessing less than twice that amount in other states is 180 days in prison and a fine of $2,000. All drug pos-sessors and sellers ought to be punished, regardless of where they live. Drug use not only harms users but also those indi-viduals around the user. Moreover, there is a direct correlation between drug use and crime. Addicts who are willing to do anything to get drugs may even murder and steal. Letting a drug user get off easy in the short term could amount to letting a murderer or thief escape.

First, Congress needs to pass legis-lation that gives the federal government the power to have complete control over drug-related crime penalties. It is the lax laws in certain states that make them hubs for illegal drug distribution. To combat this reality, drug legislation ought pertain to the entire country. In addition, national laws must be rewritten to create far more stringent penalties. Obviously, the prison sentences for drug posses-sion should still differ based upon the type of drug. First time offenders hold-

ing non-prescribed drugs should have to serve anywhere from a months to two years in jail, instead of at most one year in jail. Second time offenders should just serve life imprisonment. Only through stricter laws can law enforcement offi-cials effectively crack down on drug pos-session and drug trafficking. Even if drug offenders do learn from their mistakes, their absence from society will have a profoundly beneficial effect. What are the chances that drug dealers won’t go back to dealing once they get out of jail? Yet, first-time offenders should also be enrolled in treatment programs so that they at least have the chance of rebuild-ing their lives.

Nowadays, some political and me-dia figures advocate that, in order to decrease the power of drug cartels and end the violence stemming from the drug trade, states should consider legal-izing narcotics like marijuana. However, this suggestion should not even be con-sidered. Legalizing marijuana is para-mount to giving addicts full access to their drugs. In short, legalization would simply destroy all the laws put in place to prevent drug trafficking and possession. Legalization would only further increase the power of drug cartels and the size of the drug trade itself. Although some sup-porters of legalization argue that the fed-eral government would earn money from

by vivianna lin

The illegal drug trade is one of the largest and most dangerous global issues, spurring murder, smug-gling, and a slew of other

crimes. Illicit drug trafficking has dev-astated Central and South America, as well a regions of Central and Southeast-ern Asia— no corner of the world is left unscathed. In the United States, illegal drugs tend to originate from Mexico and Southeast Asia. Today, there are over 200 cities in America with Mexican drug car-tels that maintain drug distribution net-works. The federal government should be given all power regarding drug poli-cy; the issue is too large and dire to be handled by states individually. Laws re-garding the possession and trafficking of drugs should be much more severe and border security must be tightened. Most of all, awareness of the harm stemming from drugs must be increased so that the American demand can be curbed.

States cannot be given the right to decide laws for their own citizens. In-stead, all states should have the same laws regarding drug possession and dis-tribution in order to prevent certain cit-ies from becoming centers for the drug trade. The federal government must have


Crime & Punishment: Combatting the Illegal Drug Trade


Immigration

taxing drugs, the government would not actually be decreasing drug cartels’ pow-er. Cartels would still remain the main source of drugs. There is a reason these narcotics are illegal in the first place. By legalizing illicit drugs, lawmakers will only bring further devastation to drug addicts and the entire nation as a whole.

The majority of illegal drugs in the United States are smuggled over the Mexican border along California, Ari-zona, and New Mexico. Researchers have estimated that ninety percent of the co-caine entering the United States comes from Mexico. In Colombia, where most of the cocaine found in the United States is produced, drug trafficking organiza-tions have formed powerful alliances with insurgent groups. The FARC, other-wise known as the Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia, is a socialist guerril-la organization that funds itself on drug trafficking, as do numerous other groups on America’s terror blacklist. The FARC has kidnapped and murdered countless

government officials in the years since it began its bloody conflict against Co-lombia’s legitimate government, in addi-tion to terrorizing civilians and coercing children to serve within its ranks. These actions are absolutely unforgivable. To finally put a stop to this terror, the U.S. must target the FARC’s funding — the il-licit drug trade.

The main problem of drug traffick-ing stems from Americans’ insatiable demand for drugs. Trafficking would not be so much of a problem if the Ameri-can demand were not so high. Congress needs to increase the funding used to prevent drug use in the first place, as well as funding for drug treatment programs. Addicts do have a chance of recovery, de-spite the long and arduous journey ahead of them. Although some addicts never fully recover, effective treatment centers can give users their lives back. Further-more, these recovery stories can serve as examples to fuel the cause. In addition, the federal government must expand cur-rent drug awareness programs and initi-ate new campaigns at both national and local levels. Education is the best means of prevention, especially in high schools where many teenagers are exposed to drugs. For example, thirty-eight percent of illicit drug users in 2008 were 18 to 20 years old. Many of these teenage drug us-ers will develop into addicts later on in

life. Thus, it is crucial for kids to become aware of the threatening nature of drug use at an early age. Finally, Congress should expand government-funded re-search regarding drug use. Scientific re-search about drug use often is highly ef-fective in treatment programs, especially when this new information can lead to more efficient methods of recovery. Sta-tistics and surveys from this research can also be used to support the afore-mentioned awareness campaigns as well. Overall, our country needs to become far more educated on the dangers of drug use in order to curb demand.

Illicit drug trafficking is doubtlessly a multi-faceted problem that will not be solved overnight. The process of reduc-ing the trade will require time and per-sistence. If our government begins by passing laws that have a greater focus on prevention, then in the future the drug demand will decrease and hopefully so too will drug trafficking. That is not to say that increasing awareness alone will get rid of drug trade; only by imposing harsher punishments on drug users and dealers can law enforcement officials fully address the current problem. Congress must take a far more active approach towards addressing our nation’s current drug problem through a combination of both short and long term solutions. HMR

The main problem of drug traffick-ing stems from the US’ insatiable

demand for drugs. Trafficking would not be so much of a problem if

American demand were not so high.

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Crime & Punishment: Combatting the Illegal Drug Trade



Immigration

The 14th Amendment states that any person born in the United States of America is a legal citizen. Many for-eigners, however, come to

America illegally; they give birth to chil-dren here, so their children can live free lives, have the right to vote, attend public schools, etc. However, a good percentage of these illegal immigrants are a part of a Mexican drug cartel, and give birth to a child in America so the cartel can have a legally born American, across the board-er, which can cause grave danger to the innocent Americans around the cartel. However not all of the children of illegal immigrants are dangerous; some foreign-ers just want their children to have free lives. But, these children usually do not have high paying jobs, and therefore re-quire financial aid to live. Our economy is not in the best possible shape, and their are other things we could spend money on than financial aid for people who are taking rightful citizen’s jobs, and school

scholarships. As well as taking things away from true Americans, the financial aid the children of illegal immigrants re-ceive is money that could be going else-where such as alternate fuel sources of

stopping illegal immigration as a whole: more important areas. I believe Congress should pass a law in which children of illegal immigrants are also illegal. It is unfair to citizens whose family has been in America for centuries, legally, to not get a job position that he or she deserves because a child of an illegal immigrant

does; or, if a child to an illegal immigrant gets a college scholarship over a person who came to America legally.

Some people who are unhappy with their native country, come to America because of its freedom; the American Dream. Though the immigrants them-selves might not become successful, they come to provide their children greater opportunities. However, many immi-grants plan on giving birth to their chil-dren here, which would make their kids legal citizens. I believe this should not be the case. An example of something that happens is for a couple to come to Amer-ica illegally, and have an American born child. However, much of the time, the parents to the child are deported back to their home country, leaving the child to be raised on government money. In 2010, Los Angeles County spent more than six hundred million dollars on children of il-legal immigrants not even including edu-cation and schooling, which if included is estimated at over one billion dollars. That is only the expenses for one year, in

Why Illegal Immigrants’ Children Should Not be Considered American Citizens

by david hackel

It is unfair to a citizen whose family has been

in America for centuries, legally, to not get a job

position that he or she de-serves because a child of an illegal immigrant does.


Immigration

Yes

No

Unsure

Of Horace Mann students, 62% voted yes and 22% voted no.

Should children of illegal immigrants be considered American citizens?

one county. If we spend approximately 1 billion dollars a year for one county, how much would we spend on children of illegal immigrants for one year in the entire country? That money could go towards something of greater im-portance such as alternate fuel sources or trying to stop illegal immigration in the first place. It is hard enough for the government to provide of the Ameri-can’s it needs to in this economic cri-sis, so how is the government going to provide for millions more? However, it’s hard to get rid of such a large popu-lation who make up such a big part of our country. Approximately 5.5 million people in the United States are children of illegal immigrants. About 4 million of that 5.5 were born as American citizens. If congress were to pass such a bill, than all men and women currently residing in America, would have to become or stay citizens. It would be to complicate to send millions of people back to their home country. But we could stop people from coming illegally in the first place. It is no surprise what the illegal immigrants are doing: coming to America to give birth to free children. However, they are taking jobs and scholarships away from rightful citizens. Out of those four million, one in every three is living under the pov-erty rate, which means our government has to supply food stamps, healthcare, education etc. It might take a while, but eventually some of our immigration problems will stop.

As I mentioned, these problems can be fixed by Congress passing a law to make children of illegal immigrants also illegal. In fact, the GOP’s top prior-ity is to propose a bill, hopefully passed by Congress, which would make these children illegal, and no longer give ille-gal immigrants the incentive of coming to America for their children. Yes, im-migrants founded our country and our population is largely made up of them, but the problem is getting out of hand. By passing that law, we no longer will have to give the billion dollars a year to Los Angeles Country, or more to the

country as a whole. That money could go toward stopping to problem: improve security, fences around the boarder, tech-nology around the boarder, and hiring a larger staff to patrol the boarder. Such a law also would benefit. Children of ille-gal immigrants take jobs that should go to true America citizens, who have had family here for generations, as well as immigrants who came here legally and passed all of the required tests. Children of immigrants get college scholarships to top schools over rightful citizens. There are many people deserving to attend certain colleges, but do not get to attend

because they are not given scholarships. Many smart kids should get scholarships to schools, but don’t because children of illegal immigrants do. They take jobs, and opportunities away from rightful citizens. We need to act now.

Do you want to not be able to attend your favorite college because you didn’t get a scholarship? Would you like to not get your dream job? I doubt it. Congress should pass a law stating that children of illegal immigrants are also illegal. It is for the good of our country economically, so we don’t have to spend billions of dollars on something we don’t want to do. HMR


Immigration

An annual occurrence, No-vember 2, 2010 was the date set for the midterm elections for the Congress of the United States No-

vember 2nd bore a mixed bag of emotions for both the Democratic and Republican parties as the election results yielded an even more divided Congress. Whereas the Republicans dominated the House of Representatives, gaining 242 seats to the Democrats’ 193, the Democrats held the Senate with 51 seats (including two Inde-pendents who caucus with them) to the Republicans’ 47 seats. Despite these divi-sions, Congress, as the branch designed to propose and pass laws for the advance-ment of the country, must tackle the hot-button issue of immigration.

Our country is not referred to as the melting pot of the world for fallacious reasons. Millions of immigrants have im-migrated to this country for the purpose of pursuing the American dream, the promise of a life and lifestyle significantly better than the one they have left behind. There are three types of immigration: le-gal immigration, the movement of a per-son from his native country to a foreign country in search of livelihood and with an intent to settle down, with prior and proper permission (valid visa, passport, or citizenship) from the government; do-

by treshauxn dennis-broWn

mestic immigration, the movement of a person from an economically backward region of the country to another more de-veloped and economically well off region of the same country; and of course, illegal immigration, the movement of a person from his native country to foreign coun-try, with an intent to find a livelihood and settle down without the permission of the government. The latter is, and has been, the focus of particularly bitter debate in-volving how to command the problem of an increasingly present undocumented population.

In order to obtain a full understand-ing of the illegal immigration epidemic or to take a stance on the issue, one has to be fully educated on the topic. The most prevalent types of illegal immigrants are visa overstayers, border crossing immi-

grants, and immigrants with fraudulent visas. It is necessary to distinguish be-tween the three, as doing so would be es-sential in order to identifying the optimal

way to deal with the epidemic. Visa over-stayers are those who entered the country with a valid visa, enabling them to reside in the country for a specified amount of time. Instead of leaving when their visa runs out, these immigrants then con-tinue to reside illegally. Immigrants with fraudulent visas of course forge fake vi-sas, which then allow them to enter the country illegally. Despite the visible pres-ence of these other classifications of the illegal immigrant, the one that has domi-nated the Congressional political debate is of course, the Mexican immigrant who crosses over the border illegally.

The reservations concerning these undocumented residents are primarily founded on the claims of increased crime rates in large cities, the stealing of jobs that would otherwise have been filled by a law abiding American citizen—especially in a downturn of the U.S. economy— and their refusal to pay taxes. However, some of these claims are completely unfound-ed. For example, illegal immigrants hold American jobs of the lowest tier, such as workers in farming, restaurants, and fac-tories or—all jobs the average American citizen has no wish to obtain. To com-pletely remove this class, is to remove, the foundations of this country. And to the claim that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes, the truth is that they contributed

Are we to deny illegal immi-grants the dreams of a better

future? Should we not embrace the concept of the American

dream?



Immigration

$308 million in taxes to the government last year.

As mandatory as it seems for Con-gress to institute some form of an amnes-ty program for the purpose of integrating these hard-working, trustworthy immi-grants into our society, it will certainly be an arduous, uphill battle. Former President George W. Bush, in the waning years of his presidency, urged Congress to introduce a “temporary guest worker program.” Such a program would allow the 12 million (illegal) immigrants to work legally in America, upon the claims that the lack of legal status denies the protections of U.S. laws to millions of people who face the dangers of poverty and exploitation, and penalizes employ-ers despite a demand for immigrant labor (what do you mean by the purple- are employers penalized under the program or due to the lack of legal status of their workers? How are the punished?. He did not however, support an all-out amnesty program, a bill that would essentially “forgive” immigrants for their illegal sta-tuses and facilitate their applications for visas or green cards. A heated public de-bate followed, which resulted in divisions within the Republican Party and in the majority of conservatives opposing the bill because of its legalization or amnesty provisions. The bill was eventually defeat-

ed in the Senate on June 28, 2007, when a motion failed on a 46–53 vote. Naturally, for President Obama to even propose an amnesty program would be met with similar, if not more intense dissension within the ranks of Congress.

It is hard to view the foreseeable fu-ture as promising to the 12 million un-documented workers in our country. This assumption is fostered through the failure of the recent Congressional Dream Act, a resolution designed to grant permanent residency to students who entered the US illegally as minors through service in the army or higher education . On the state

level, Arizona recently passed the con-troversial Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070). The most inflammatory aspect of the resolution is the fact that the act makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the re-quired documents and obligates police to make the attempt, during a “lawful stop, detention or arrest” to determine a per-

son’s immigration status if there is reason-able suspicion that the person is an illegal alien. No one is asking for Americans to trust and integrate illegal immigrants immediately as full fledged citizens: it is true, they have committed an illegal act. But are we to deny them the dreams of a better future? Should we not embrace the concept of the American dream? The best compromise is a temporary guest worker program such as the one President Bush suggested, because only then can all sides win. Congress must analyze the myriad of benefits presented by integrating these hardworking immigrants into the Ameri-

can workforce and society. Therefore, it is time for Congress to put its differences aside and finally present a show of bipar-tisanship that has been lacking during these few years of the Obama Adminis-tration. HMR

In order to obtain a full understanding of the illegal immigra-tion epidemic or to take a stance on the issue, one has to be

fully educated on the topic. lu

naca

nus



Congress

On Saturday, January 8th, a crazed gunman Jared Lee Loughter opened fire at a political rally where Rep-resentative Gabrielle Gif-

fords was speaking to constituents. Six of the seventeen shootout victims died, among them, Mrs. Giffords herself and United States District Court chief judge John M. Roll. Giffords, the intended tar-get of the rampage, suffered a gunshot to the head, the bullet passing through her brain. She was rapidly transported to the Arizona University Medical Center for surgery. Doctors removed half of her skull to prevent injurious swelling to her brain. Only five days after the shooting Giffords regained some simple capabili-ties. She opened her eyes and moved her leg and one of her hands. She was later transported to a facility in Houston for physical therapy. Her survival has been pronounced a miracle, and her swift re-covery even more unprecedented.

The motivations for the shooting re-main unclear as to whether the debacle was politically driven. The volatile politi-cal climate in Arizona is certainly a plau-sible factor. Democrats pointed the finger at the aggressive Republican atmosphere. In a Republican dominated state, the democrat won the vote for a third term but faced stiff opposition from adversar-ies. Ms. Giffords strongly opposed the state’s controversial immigration laws and received condemnation for her endorse-ment of the health care law. The shooting transpired at an inauspicious time as the Republicans gain control of the House, ushering in a new period of government. Ms. Giffords helped maintain the biparti-sanship in the predominantly Republican House. The tragedy has highlighted larg-er implications of party disputes, serving

Then and Now: Shooter Jared Lee Loughner transformed notably from highschool (Above) to his mugshot (Left) taken days after his attempted assasination of Congresswoman Gif-fords (Below).

Horror in Arizonaby spencer reiss

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heloise9.files.Wordpress.coM

Congress

as a microcosm for the dwindling party relations in Washington. The antagonism in the House has un-dermined American progress and advancement forcing crucial legisla-tion to remain stagnant due to the inter-party hostility. The shooting should assuage the strained-rela-tions and facilitate a collaboration between the parties so they can work side by side to improve America.

President Obama attended a me-morial service for the victims to offer his condolences to the victims’ fami-lies. Mr. Obama delivered one of the most potent and touching speeches of his presidency imploring American’s to use the tragedy as a unifying force. Re-

maining nonpartisan, he asked people to refrain from pointing fingers, enjoin-ing Americans “to listen to each other more carefully to remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Mr. Obama attempted to bring the country together in a time of tragedy and in the midst of heated politi-cal rhetoric. HMR


Congress

A look at the more volatile superpowers reveals Iran at the top of the list. Iran has gone about achiev-ing its goals, the first of

which is becoming a consequential en-tity, in an appalling way according to many countries including the United States. On April 12th 2010, the leaders of 47 countries met in Washington D.C. for a summit conference called by President Obama to discuss the growing problem of what to do about the build-up of Ira-nian nuclear materials. At issue was the allegation that Iran is a supporter of ter-rorism. These two issues have lead to a major question: what would happen if nuclear weapons were available to ter-rorist organizations?

Iran claims that its use of nuclear en-ergy is only for purposes of the improve-ment of the abysmal quality of life of its people. Because it is such an intricate and delicate issue, the question of what to do about Iran and its disarmament has become a difficult puzzle to solve. Rep-resentatives of Congress have suggested a plethora of solutions to resolve the conflict. To date, President Obama has relied only on a series of diplomatic talks with Iran. There is not a plan in place as to what the next step would be should diplomacy fail. The myriad of solutions that have been proposed include plac-ing an embargo on Iranian imports and

exports, stopping imports of gasoline and exports of oil, imposing crippling sanctions, toughening military actions to disable nuclear facilities, and even ac-cepting Iran as a nuclear power. Though some of these solutions may have some validity, it is arguable that they would be able to be properly implemented, and therefore, would not be viable. In order to impose strong sanctions against Iran, the major powers of the world would have to come to an understanding and a mechanism to carry out the sanctions would have to be set in place. If the United States and/or other nations were to use open force in Iran, serious con-sequences could result. Senator Reed of Rhode Island suggest-ed, “The only way is to physically occupy the country and dismantle its nuclear facilities.” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote, “Should the president call for military options, we must have them ready.” General Jones testified in front of a Senate committee that Presi-dent Obama wanted to be prepared for any emergency. He mentioned that Obama wants to build a coalition of na-tions in order to put pressure upon Iran to make good its promises. Another op-tion is to accept Iran as a nuclear power,

but find ways to slow down its build-up of nuclear weapons. No one has yet come upon the optimal solution to the problem in Iran, but it has become more and more clear that finding a solution is imperative. In order to form a success-ful relationship with Iran, many would advocate for greater flexibility from all parties to help reach a compromise. All parties must speak candidly and honor the decisions agreed upon. Perhaps if all parties were to treat one another with respect, meaningful negotiations would stand a better chance of taking place. Although the government alleges force will never become necessary, if the agreement were to be violated, ma-

jor steps toward self-protection would be vital. In order to avoid such a catastrophic calamity, setting strict terms of agreements to which all parties will-ingly agree, is impera-tive. Instead of creating

sanctions that affect innocent people liv-ing in Iran, a rational agreement must be devised in such a way that only the gov-erning officials would be affected. In or-der to assure safety and compliance of all nations, the conundrum of how to deal with Iran must be successfully resolved both immediately and amicably. HMR

by sahej suri

A Nuclear Iran

“Instead of creating sanctions that affect innocent people living in Iran, a rational agree-ment must be devised in such a way that only the governing officials would be affected.”

1992-1993: U.S. President Clinton imposed sanctions on Iran because of its alleged support of terrorism.

2000: Secretary of State Albright lifted the sanc-tions.

2002: The United States discovered two nuclear sites by the usage of satellite imagery. The IAEA confirmed these formally.

2003: Iran explained that those sites were used as power plants for the good of its people. The Iranian government suspended their nuclear weapons programs because of the Non Proliferation Treaty.

2006: The United States declared it would join other European nations in talks with Iran if they stopped uranium enrichment. Because Bush feared that American aid to Iranian banks was be-ing used to help support terrorism and to develop nuclear and ballistic missile programs, he tried to limit American aid to Iranian Banks in 2006.

2007: The United Nations Security Counsel passed resolutions to stop Iranian uranium enrichment.

2008: During campaign elections, Presi-dent Barack Obama promised to open relations with Iran. President Barack Obama pushed to get support from the United Nations to seize cargo shops car-rying weapons, and stop financial credit to Iran, possibly pushing them to adhere to the NPT.

2010: On April 12th , President Obama held the Washington Nuclear Summit, including 47 countries around the world, but not Iran. Ahma-dinejad responded by hosting his own summit a month later. On May 3rd 2010, Ahmadinejad denied development of nuclear weapons. Iran charged the United States with having nuclear weapons. Ahmadinjed accused the United States of being the only country in the world to ever have used a nuclear weapon. Ahmadinjed suggested that the United States be eliminated from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT.


Congress

Our government works in complicated ways. It is a complex machine, containing different branches with different areas of jurisdiction and sets of powers. The most crucial path for all legislation is through

our two houses of Congress. For anything to become law, our elected representatives must in favor of its passage. Many bills meet significant obstacles before they are signed into law by the President. The most significant roadblock is one that occurs only in the Senate, however: the filibuster. In the Senate, in order to end debate and vote on any bill, measure, or motion, 60 out of 100 Senators must be in favor of doing so. It is at this time that a filibuster generally occurs. A filibuster is when a Senator, or group of Senators, tries to stop the debate on a bill from ending for as long as possible. These Senator(s) simply get up to speak in normal fashion, and then they refuse to relinquish the ability to speak on a bill to any other Senator(s) for as long as they can, or until 60 other Senators vote to end debate. This occurs when Senators are opposed to open debate on a bill because they are aware that the bill will come to pass. Filibusters take many forms: sometimes a single Senator simply talks for hours, trying to stave off defeat in a debate they know they cannot win; other times, Senators do not even remain on the Senate floor when they are conducting a filibuster. In the modern Senate, more often than not, it is the latter. No longer do Senators use the filibuster as a means of passionately fighting for a cause they believe in. Senators simply use it to stop legislation they are at all opposed to, never even giving an

argument in favor of their position. They simply stall, hoping that debate on a bill will go on for so long that the Senators who were originally in favor lose interest. The filibuster, over time, has turned from one of the finest aspects of debate in the Senate, such as when used by Huey Long during FDR’s presidency, to nothing more than a procedural roadblock. It halts the Senate from passing needed legislation. It decreases the effectiveness and efficiency of our government, and turns the Senate into a massive obstacle to the functioning of our government. The filibuster must still be retained, however, as an important part of Senate procedure. It prevents the majority party from steamrolling over their opponents on each bill and voting without even hearing the opinions of the minority party. If not for the filibuster, then any majority at all would allow for the passage of a bill, leading to mob rule within the Senate. That said, the government must reform the filibuster, keeping its useful properties while eliminating the rules that have allowed it to grow into a nuisance and embarrassment. Senators in the 112th session of Congress have worked on a proposal to helps solve some of these problems, which allows for fixed amounts of amendments that each party can offer and a fixed amount of debate on each, so as to limit possible filibusters on amendments. However, the final rule change, agreed upon on January 26th, 2011, falls far short of what is needed. Very few reforms to the filibuster itself have actually been agreed upon. The only significant agreement made between Democrats and Republicans was that Democrats would try to let Republicans make amendments, and Republicans would try to use the filibuster to block bills less frequently. The Senate’s rules were not repaired

by isaiah neWMan

It’s Time to Fix the Filibuster

The filibuster, over time, has turned from one of the fin-est aspects of debate in the Senate to nothing more than a procedural roadblock.

flaMeWarriors


Congress

as required. The reinstatement and passage of those proposals are what is necessary to fix the filibuster. One such proposal requires any Senators wishing to filibuster to actually remain on the Senate floor for the duration of the filibuster. The Senate voted against this proposal, and in doing so have made a foolish mistake. If a Senator or group of Senators is opposed to a bill, then they should have to say why! It makes absolutely no sense for a Senator to be able to bring the functioning of our Congress to a grinding halt and not provide a reason for doing so. If they are opposed to a bill, then they should try to actively change it or defeat it, rather than declare that they are staging a filibuster, and then leave. This proposal would also increase the amount of senators in favor of the filibuster required to be on the floor by 5 senators for each day

the filibuster continues. This would test a Senator’s commitment to his or her position, and make sure that they are serious in their opposition to the bill and not just filibustering in order to win votes from their constituents. Another proposal put forth by Senate Democrats would limit when a filibuster can be conducted. It would require only a simple majority to end a filibuster during debate on whether or not to consider a bill. This would further streamline the process of passing legislation in the Senate, and it would encourage debate in the Senate. If Senators filibuster a bill, then they prevent everyone from sharing his or her opinions on the legislation at hand. Important pieces of legislation need to be debated and considered, so that they can be amended if necessary and passed into law. If neither party

is allowed to state their opinions on a bill, then none of the Senators will be able to hear well-reasoned arguments from their colleagues and possibly change their vote. It disallows one of the basic principles encouraged in American government and society: an open public discourse and debate. The United States Senate has been crippled by the filibuster in recent years. The Senate needs to be able to effectively pass legislation and debate on it, otherwise none of the problems facing Americans can be solved. We need the proposals above to be enacted in order to fix our Congressional system. If this is not done, then the efficiency of our government will suffer and thus the American people will suffer. In these uncertain times, the Senate’s procedural rules need reform, and they need it now. HMR

the bad the ugly

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On June 12, 1935, Huey Long, senator from Louisiana, filibustered the Democrats’ attempt to retain a provision requir-ing Senate support for National Recovery Admin-istration jobs that would have given power to his political enemies.

length: 15 hours, 30 minutes

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In 1957, Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act for the longest time ever by a single Senator. Thurmond read and dis-cussed the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and Washington’s Farewell Address. His record still stands.

length: 24 hours, 18 minutes

“The government must reform the filibuster, keeping its useful properties while eliminating the rules that have allowed it to grow into a nuisance and embarrassment.”


Congress

our military budget and weakening our national de-

fense during a time of war would be a mistake, because providing for our na-tional defense is the most important function of our federal government. It is not appropriate to place national security in a position where it is on par with dis-cretionary programs. Wasted spending throughout government, including the Department of Defense, should be cut, however expenditures for our troops, in-telligence, counterterrorism, and equip-ment should not be cut. Congress should ensure that any savings from cuts are reinvested in the U.S. military to retain the best personnel and maintain aging equipment.

In a January 17, 2011 article, The Weekly Standard reported that in 1991 there were 710,821 soldiers in the U.S. army. By the end of the Clinton admin-istration in 2001, soldiers had dwindled to 478,918. After 9/11, the United States debated both the proper response to the attack on the World Trade Center and the ability of a weakened U.S. military to achieve those goals. Approximately 500,000-600,000 soldiers were not suf-ficient to maintain a presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq without putting se-vere strains on our volunteer army. The U.S. military is asked to prepare for con-ventional war (against a large force, like Russia or China), multiple small wars (Afghanistan and Iraq), peacekeeping and humanitarian missions (Haiti), and to be effective in the complex war against terrorism. Before the war on terrorism, the army was able to focus on troop lev-els and equipment to respond to whatev-er the President and Congress required. However, the growing threat of State sponsors of terror, such as Iran, who use both conventional forces and terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and cyber-warfare have made the Pentagon’s job complex

and require an even greater arsenal of weapons to effectively fight.

No great power has survived without the ability to project military strength. The West must address the economic strain that growing entitlement programs put on funding an effective military. Over the last two decades, Europe has grown its entitlements programs to a point where their militaries have become ineffective. With the exception of Great Britain, no European military at this point has an effective expeditionary force. European governments depend upon the U.S. mili-tary to do the “heavy lifting” they cannot perform on their own. They cannot even respond in their own backyard. During the civil war in Kosovo, the EU was very good at meeting and talking but the battle waged on. It took American intervention through NATO to bring the war to an end. The world would be a more danger-ous place if the United States did not have an effective military. The United States safeguards shipping channels from the Middle East to Asia, performs humani-tarian missions, and through agreements with weaker democratic countries keeps non-democratic aggressors in check.

Defense Secretary Gates has an-nounced cuts to military personnel and the budget. Today, the army is at around 566,000 soldiers. Gates plans to cut 27,000 soldiers, not including an already planned cut of 22,000 soldiers. The Ma-rines, who perform the most of the Ar-my’s front line work, are also being asked to cut about 15,000-20,000 soldiers. The Navy has only 287 ships, down from 529 in 1991. At a time when our troops are

spread thin throughout the world and we are in two wars, cutting about ten percent of our manpower is a mistake. Not only is the military being asked to cut per-sonnel, but also vital equipment. There are also certain programs that could be cut to fund other programs. The F-22 stealth fighter program has already been eliminated. The EFV, or the Marines’ Ex-peditionary Fighting Vehicle, probably should by cut because of cost overruns and questionable effectiveness. Those funds are better used to upgrade an ag-ing air force and other equipment, which has been overused during the Gulf, Af-ghan, and Iraqi wars. It is dangerous to cut these programs while China rapidly builds its arms and the growth of other problems the U.S. military may need to deal with.

Military strength is useful off the battlefield also. Military strength gives a country political and diplomatic power as it is less likely to be challenged and more likely to be befriended by weaker countries and respected by stronger na-tions. Democracies do not declare was on other countries. Militarily strong democ-racies maintain a balance of worldwide power, promoting peace and freedom. The U.S. military has been degraded over the past twenty years: as the U.S. and the West cope with an emerging China, an aggressive Russia, threatening Iran and North Korea, and a potentially explosive Latin and South America, we must re-verse this trend. As George Washington once declared, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of pre-serving peace.” HMR

by jonah Wexler

keep our army

strong

Reducing

WikiMedia


Congress

The current system of cam-paign financing under-mines the democracy we have so proudly constitut-ed. Money and politics have

never been as connected as they are now. Candidates with relatively less financial backing running for a political position have lower chances of election. Does the amount of money in one’s wallet really determine your ability to represent a con-stituency? Should corporate donations be able to bribe and determine the decisions made by this elected official? I believe that the answer to these questions is unequiv-ocally, “No.” Reform in the current regu-lations and policies regarding campaign financing are vital in creating a better de-mocracy. From television advertisements to political rallies, money allows candi-dates to reach an all-inclusive audience, which leaves opponents at an unfair dis-advantage. The origin of all of this money is the most inequitable and heinous as-

pect of this financing: campaign dona-tions and past wealth. While past wealth has its place in the private sphere, inherit-ed or self-made personal fortunes should not affect the electoral process. Under current regulations, any corporation can donate money to a candidate. Ideally, this donation would merely be an act of ap-preciation towards a campaign, but this is rarely the case. However, if this candidate enters public office, his decisions will be swayed by the supporting corporation. Simply put, corporate donations are in effect bribes to incline a candidate to act in a certain way.

Last year, Citizens United, an organi-zation dedicated to reasserting traditional democratic values, defied its own mission statement by attempting to release a film bashing Hillary Clinton within 30 days of election day. Not only would releas-ing this film have clearly gone against the McCain–Feingold Act of 2002, the film would have money flooding the political

marketplace and corrupting the demo-cratic system. Furthermore, the Supreme Court, with a split 5 - 4 vote, overturned Congressional regulations and deemed this corruption of democracy constitu-tional.

As bleak as the situation may look in its current form, precise and effective reforms to the current policies for cam-paign financing could result in a fairer electoral system. To meet this end, my proposal involves the government pub-licly financing election campaigns. If a potential representative is running for a public office, this money should naturally be government financed. To avoid wast-ing public funds, a potential candidate would additionally have to obtain an ap-propriate amount of signatures to run for public office. Some would venture to say that taking taxpayer money to fund po-litical campaigns would further worsen our economy. But we should not be will-ing to compromise the very principles

Democracy on SaleWhy campaign finance reform is imperative

to rectifying American governmentby Mohit MookiM

Fighting against Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory

for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to

drown out the voices of everyday Americans.

-President Barack Obama

“What’s happening right before our eyes is a bla-tant attempt by outside interest groups using se-

cret money to buy a Congress that will serve their interests at the expense of the American people.”

-Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

“Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves

an opportunity to change the law.”

-Justice John Paul Stevens


Congress

that define and distinguish America for a relatively small amount of money.

In contrast to the current system of campaign financing, this revamped sys-tem would eliminate significant unfair advantages non-incumbent candidates would otherwise have. Studies have shown a direct correlation between the likelihood of a candidate being elected and the amount of funding for his or her campaign. We can end this erosion of de-mocracy by placing opposing candidates on a level playing field and, in the pro-cess, creating a more fair and balanced electoral process. Although this simple solution has resolved one pressing issue regarding the campaign process and its relationship with money, another is yet to be addressed: campaign donations.

Although resolving the issue of cam-paign donations lends itself to multiple solutions, two basic proposals stand out: let people and corporations give dona-tions - as in the current system - or ban all and any campaign donations. Problems arise in both cases. In the former, when a candidate is running for public office, a corporation can heavily influence po-tential candidates, swaying them to take certain courses of actions, as previously described. In the latter solution, worthy candidates would be drained of their ability to glean well-deserved and much-appreciated campaign donations. As both alternatives taint at least one aspect of our sacred democratic system, a middle path can be found that resolves both of these issues. For example, campaign finance re-form could be successfully implemented by allowing any person or any corpora-tion to give donations to potential candi-dates, on the condition of anonymity.

Currently, several blatant flaws exist in our system for campaign financing. These pragmatic solutions would set us on the path for creating a better and more-representative political system. Through campaign finance reform, not only would a more legitimate, money-independent electoral process be created, but Ameri-can politics on the whole would be more focused on progress. American govern-ment would be reborn into one that can proudly attest to its most basic notions of fairness, equality, and democracy. HMR

Top Political Action Committee Contributors to Candidates, 2009-2010

Political Clout

Top Lobbying Sectors, 2009-2010

Should there be a cap on how much politicians can spend on political campaigns? 100 HM Students Polled

Opensecrets.org

Yes No Unsure

National Association of Realtors $3,773,296

Honeywell International $3,645,200

AT&T Inc. $3,251,375

National Beer Wholesalers Association $3,001,000

Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,988,373

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34

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$3.47 Total Lobbying Spending (2010)

billion


Health

In recent years obesity in Amer-ica has become a huge issue, especially among children from ages 6 to 11. What factors caused this sudden change? While living

environment and diet play instrumental roles in personal health, lack of physical activity has been cited as the largest con-tributor to rising childhood obesity rates. A relatively healthy diet isn’t enough to sustain physical health; without exercise, fat and calories will build up and muscle won’t be developed. Physical activity in children is especially important for chil-dren because they are in the initial stages of physical and mental development.

For some kids, the only daily physi-cal activity occurs at school during Physi-cal Education class. However, in some

Getting Kids Movingby kelvin rhee

Mvol

sparkpe

schools across America P.E. can be re-placed with activities like band or other extracurricular activities. In some ex-treme cases students are not required to do anything physical. According the Cen-ter for Disease Control’s study of schools health policies in 2006, 20% of elemen-tary schools, 23% of middle schools and 31% of high schools allowed students to be excused from physical education for extracurricular activities, including par-ticipation in community service or musi-cal ensemble. Across America only 4% of schools provide daily physical education and only 10% provided physical educa-tion for at least 3 days of the week.

Congress is now engaged in an ongo-ing effort to pass bills that require schools to make P.E. mandatory for all students of

all ages, no exceptions. These measures are necessary to the health of children in America. Recently, Congress ap-proved the Physical Education for Prog-ress (PEP) Act, which grants local education centers money for the expansion and im-provement of physical education programs for all students in all age ranges. The bill set aside five million dol-lars to fund schools’ physical education

programs though purchasing equipment, developing curriculum, hiring or train-ing staff, and raising awareness about the risks of obesity. The PEP Act is a step in the right direction and it is encouraging that Congress has demonstrated a will-ingness to take a role in the fight against rising obesity rates. The goal behind the PEP Act is an excellent one; however, the act has been somewhat controversial be-cause of the cost of funding the improve-ment of physical education programs nationwide. Our government is deeply in debt, so funding for the PEP Act is harder to access. The PEP Act, although contro-versial and potentially difficult to fund, is worth the time and money because of the potential benefits to national health.

Whether it’s sports teams, P.E. class, or field days, physical education must be required for all students. For this reason, Congress must continue the campaign against obesity, starting with the PEP Act and leading, hopefully, to dropping child-hood obesity rates. If Congress continues the efforts demonstrated in the passing of the PEP Act, physical education programs across the nation will improve and chil-dren will become more active. Exempting students from physical education for any reason other than injury is unacceptable; physical education must be required for all students and extracurricular activities cannot serve as a replacement. When it comes to the promotion of good health, exceptions cannot be made. HMR

The government is taking steps towards improving national health as childhood obesity rates swell

Health

Health


Health

Cannabis, marijuana, weed, pot, ‘kush’, and many other colloqui-al nicknames refer to the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States and in the world.

The drug comes from a matured cannabis plant, usually in the form of a dried flow-er. The flower is smoked, in a pipe, joint (rolled cigarette), blunt (rolled cigar), or in a number of other ways, or can be ingested by way of a heated butter or oil. When heated, marijuana releases a chem-ical called THC, which alters psycho-ac-tivity when circulated through the blood and to the brain. Recently there has been an increasing support of legalizing mari-juana for its medical usage in the United States, with the highest support of legal-ization centering around California, New York, and Southern Florida. Although not a major issue facing the United States Congress at the moment, the issue is be-coming more prevalent as scientists make more headway with the positive health

effects smoking marijuana presents. Prior to the twentieth century Mari-

juana was legal to posses, trade, and consume in every developed nation in the world. However, this was probably because of the incredibly low amount of usage as a drug. The usage of marijuana spiked from almost nothing at the turn of the nineteenth century, especially in South Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, and Southern United States. As usage in-creased, so too did profits of trading the drug, and, as a result, the competition created in marijuana’s markets created violence towards venders by rivals. In 1911, the possession of and trade of can-nabis was outlawed in South Africa fol-lowing a massacre of vendors by Johan-nesburg’s largest trader. In 1913, Jamaica followed suite, and by 1920 the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and all British colonies. The Canadian gov-ernment criminalized marijuana and the production of hemp in 1923, setting the

precedent for possession now used in the United States. At this point the United States was the largest consumer of mari-juana in the developed world. However, it wasn’t until 1937 that the drug was actually outlawed. A military study of the psycho-active effects of Marijuana preceded The Marijuana Transfer Tax Act passed Congress in February of that year and entailed the prohibition of the production of hemp and marijuana on the basis that hemp fields in the United States were also used to grow marijuana. It is speculated that the reason the sci-entific study was highly endorsed by the Secretary of Treasury and many notable businessmen is that they all had invested large sums of money into nylon and the timber industry. These were competi-tors of hemp which provided with much cheaper products.

The question currently facing many American people is not whether mari-juana should be wholly legalized, but

The Great Marijuana Debate

by Maurice farber


Health

whether or not medical marijuana should be legalized and recreational-use mari-juana should decriminalized. Medical Marijuana is considered a grey-area for many, where they are not sure whether it is completely un-beneficial or completely beneficial. This may be due to a lack of funding for government research in the topic and the small amount of scientific tests affirming either. Despite the lack of substantive tests, the amount of evidence compiled so far is pretty convincing. It shows that there is an increase of public support for the legalization of medical marijuana. These studies have shown that consumption of marijuana ameliorates nausea and vomiting, the stimulation of hunger in patients undergoing chemo-therapy or who have AIDS, where lack of appetite is rampant. In addition, marijua-na can lower pressure on the eyes, effec-tive for treating glaucoma, as well as less-ening the effects of pain for people with a range of diseases such as arthritis. Mari-juana is currently legalized for medicinal usage in 15 states and Washington D.C., and in Canada, Spain, The Netherlands, and Austria.

Besides the health benefits received from medicinal use, Marijuana can prove to be a cash crop for the government of the United States. Despite arguments that smoking marijuana is damaging to the health and that one isn’t in control of oneself whilst high, infrequent usage rec-reationally has been proven to not affect your health much. Marijuana has been proven to be less harmful in the long-term as smoking tobacco, or as harmful in the short-term as consuming alcohol. One is more likely to lose control of the senses or mind while drunk than while high. If the government legalizes marijuana or de-criminalizes it, a subsidized-industry for growing marijuana can be created in the United States. This could create small-businesses that could potentially help the economy. In addition, if marijuana were to be sold legally in pharmacies or shops, the government could tax it, just as is done in The Netherlands. The tax would be very similar to what is already in place for alcohol and cigarettes, and could cre-ate billions in revenue for local or the fed-eral government. HMR

The Student Voice100 HM students polled


Health

I asked some of my fellow students (20 of each grade) the following question: Do you think that raising taxes on unhealthy food will help prevent obesity? Of the 80 people I asked, 43 people an-swered yes, 4 people answered that they did not

know, and 33 people responded that it would not. And I ask you. Do you think that taxing unhealthy foods will help prevent obesity?

Of course, the best an-swer depends on the situ-ation, but there are three basic reasons for why people buy unhealthy foods: the convenience, the price, and, once in a while, the taste. Who wouldn’t go through a Mc-Donald’s drive through when in a rush? Tak-ing these concerns into account of unhealthy eating habits may require much more than taxation of un-healthy foods.

In the case of people who go to fast food restau-rants because of the convenience, extra taxes on fast food will not change the eating habit. To those in a rush, the speed of eating food would be most important. People in a rush will not take the time to find a healthy restaurant and wait fifteen minutes for the food to come out. Despite the taxes, people who are in a rush will not stop eating fast food.

For the many people who buy unhealthy foods be-cause of the taste, not much change in eating habits would

occur. If a person really enjoyed unhealthy food, he or she would pay the tax to eat it. Since many of the obese people fall into this category, we can assume that taxing unhealthy food will not help much in stopping obesity.

In the case of people who eat unhealthy food because of the cost, people will be limited to either eating less or

spending more. If someone is of low in-come, he or she will be forced to

spend more money to eat. By increasing the price

of unhealthy foods, the government would be exploit-ing lower income families, while the other classes will generally be unaf-fected. If the gov-

ernment were to give a healthier alternative to fast food with out affecting the budget of low income fami-lies, it would have to find a

way to make healthy foods as cheap as

unhealthy ones, a feat that would be ex-

tremely difficult to accomplish.

But a bigger issue lies in taxing unhealthy

foods. Taxing unhealthy food would be the same as robbing many of the lower income families of their money. Unhealthy foods may be the only practical option they have. If unhealthy foods were to be taxed, only the lower income class would be affected severely. Those who have the money to make healthier choices would not be affected as negatively by an unhealthy food tax.

In Healthy Food We Trustby noah lee

seventy Million dollar blog


Health

In Healthy Food We TrustAnother reason taxation of un-

healthy foods is impractical is be-cause of the definition of “unhealthy foods.” What distinguishes healthy foods from unhealthy ones? Salads

could be considered healthy, unless there is unhealthy salad dressing, such as the Thousand Island dress-ing. Protein is vital for the human body, so would steaks be considered healthy or unhealthy? Many compa-nies would claim that their foods are relatively healthier than they used to be. Fast food restaurants now use “healthier” oils. The defining of “un-healthy food” would be so chaotic and impractical that even experts would have trouble.

In order to change bad eating habits, we need to focus on three major points. Firstly, people need to be aware of what they are eating. Second, healthy foods need to be made inexpensive and convenient. Lastly, people will need an incentive to change their eating habits. The first point is solely up to the govern-ment to fulfill, and the government seems to be doing a good job. Most schools have health classes in which they learn about nutrition. However, in order to further help people real-ize what they are eating, providing basic nutrition information – such as amount of calories, fat, carbohy-

drates, should be required of all res-taurants.

Making healthier foods cheap-er is probably the toughest part of the three points mentioned. In or-

der for people in the lower class to take healthier options, healthy foods must be made at least as cheap as unhealthy ones. The government can start by cutting taxes on healthy foods. Although this does not make healthy foods as cheap as unhealthy ones, it is a step closer to it. There must be further development in many aspects such as preservation in order to further lower prices. As for motivation, cheaper prices will gen-erally motivate people to eat healthi-er foods. Moreover, awareness of nu-trition may further motivate change in people’s eating habits.

Although many of the students at Horace Mann stated that they believed that taxation of unhealthy foods may help stop obesity, 72 of the 80 people I asked added that they firmly believed that taxing un-healthy foods is not the way to try to solve that problem. And they are definitely right. Taxing unhealthy foods would be a myopic, impracti-cal attempt to solve a problem that ends up affecting only the people that it shouldn’t affect. HMR

A State IssueMany states already levy their own taxes on certain types of food. Would taxing unhealthy food be any different?

• “Thirty-one states and the Dis-trict of Columbia exempt most food purchased for consumption at home from the state sales tax. South Carolina is the state that most recently eliminated its sales tax on food (effective November 1, 2007).

• Seven states tax groceries at lower rates than other goods; they are Arkansas, Illinois, Mis-souri, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. [1]

• Five states — Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota— tax groceries fully but offer credits or rebates offset-ting some of the taxes paid on food by some portions of the population. These credits or rebates usually are set at a flat amount per family member. The amounts and eligibility rules vary, but may be too nar-row and/or insufficient to give eligible households full relief from sales taxes paid on food purchases.

• Two states continue to apply their sales tax fully to food pur-chased for home consumption without providing any offsetting relief for low- and moderate-income families. They are Ala-bama and Mississippi.”

-Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

“Taxing unhealthy food would be the same as robbing many of the lower income families of their money. Un-

healthy foods may be the only practical option they have.”


Energy

Energy

President Obama and Congress have the ability to end the US’ dependence on foreign oil, to clean the atmo-

sphere, to lower the cost of fuel, and to promote the development of more advanced, American fuel technology. If Washington works together, this can come to fruition.

There are many strategies that America can use to help amelio-rate the energy crisis. One of these strategies is for America to continue on its path of energy independence by using domestic coal, natural gas, and hydropower. It is up to Presi-dent Obama and Congress to decide

which plans of action are the easi-est, least expensive, most beneficial, and most important. Once they do so, they must initiate the processes immediately. Obama and Congress must demonstrate strong leader-ship. One thing is certain: Wash-ington needs to take the politics out of energy, begin to think about the planet, and get to work.

Until recently, Congress had a limited approach towards energy policy. The disastrous BP Oil Spill or, formally, the Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, served as a wake-up call for politicians. They realized that something needed to be done about the energy crisis. The spill revealed

that many problems existed within the oil industry. As a result Demo-crats and Republicans are trying to formulate bills that will force con-sumers to buy electricity from com-panies that derive their power from renewable, clean energy sources, primarily wind and solar power. According to this plan, by 2020, 15 to 20 percent of the electricity that distributors purchase will be generated by harnessing wind and solar power. This plan is called a renewable-energy or a clean-energy standard. Supporters say the bill will cut greenhouse gas emissions, will create jobs, and will reenergize communities. However, economist

OBAMA AND CONGRESS LOOK AT

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

by WilliaM ellison


Energy

Robert Michaels stated that the best way to solve the energy crisis is not to build-up new inefficient energy industries but to find a way to force energy consumers to cut back on their energy demands. Congress’ proposal to endorse clean, renew-able energy would actually prevent economists, scientists, engineers, and politicians from actually find-ing a way to produce energy that is more efficient.

Congress supports its re-newable energy standard by main-taining that wind and solar power production make more jobs than they eliminate. Yet, this statement has been proven wrong. An inde-pendent German economic think tank discovered that each new solar power job costs $240,000 and that, overall, hundreds of new solar pow-er jobs would result in greater ener-gy costs, people losing jobs in other, more stable sectors of the economy, and decreased consumer purchasing power. A Spanish university study

also found that every clean energy job created would destroy 2.2 jobs in other parts of the energy industry. Furthermore, agricultural govern-ment-sponsored subsidies did not manage to revitalize rural areas in the countryside of the United States. Therefore, Congress should not ex-pect renewable energy subsidies to reenergize the rural areas. Another major argument that renewable energy standard supporters emphasize is that solar and wind power cost less to pro-duce than coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and other conventional en-ergy resources. No evidence exists, however, to substantiate this claim. The US government would not be required to back the wind and solar power industries if they were actual-ly cost competitive with other forms of energy already. “Levelized” costs often allow economists to observe which industry makes more money when comparing two or more in-dustries. “Levelized” costs include the cost of building a power plant, the time needed to build the plant, the fuel and non-fuel costs of oper-ating a plant, and the cost of financ-ing. The “levelized” costs per mega-watt hour are $100 for coal power, $129 for advanced coal with carbon capture and sequestration, $149 for domestic wind power, $191 for off-shore wind power, $257 for solar thermal power, and $396 for solar photovoltaic power. Clearly, clean-renewable energy of all kinds are much more expensive than regular coal or other substances like natu-ral gas. Using the “levelized” costs statistics as a guide, economists in Congress should be able to see that

subsidizing wind or solar power would increase electricity prices by 10 to 20 percent.

Congress could solve the energy crisis without using clean-renewable energy, no matter how enticing “clean” and “renewable” may seem. Clean-renewable energy is extremely expensive and destroys other energy jobs that were previ-ously more standard, stable and ef-ficient. In fact, a recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation found that, by 2020, if solar and wind power are subsidized by the government as has been suggested, the typical Ameri-can family would lose $1,700 annu-ally due to extra energy expenses, and unemployment would increase by an additional half-million.

In addition to wind and so-lar subsidies, another way that the previous session of Congress tried to address the energy crisis was to pass a cap-and-trade carbon-ration-ing bill that aims to cut the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmo-sphere. However, the democratic leadership in the previous Senate could not garner enough votes to pass the bill. The 112th Congress may pass this bill.

President Obama and the 112th Congress should attempt to carry out many new strategies in order to deal with the energy cri-sis. While electric cars are already on the market, a major objective is to create an electric car battery that can run 200 miles on a 10-minute charge. Hopefully, the ingenuity, in-telligence and, entrepreneurship of America can create this technology as soon as possible.

The internal combustion

Democrats and Republicans are trying to formulate bills that will force consumers to buy electricity from compa-nies that derive their power

from renewable, clean energy sources, primar-ily wind and solar power. According to this plan, by 2020, 15 to 20 percent of

the electricity that distribu-tors purchase will be gen-erated by harnessing wind

and solar power.”“


Energy

engine that still powers our cars has existed for approximately 100 years. Over 160,000 well-organized and effective service stations exist throughout America. If Congress can manage to transfer this entire system to electric cars, a very suc-cessful energy policy is possible in the near future. The first step, which would transpire over the next ten years, is to force or convince auto-mobile manufacturers to make the switch to fully electric vehicles and to continue to develop electric car technology. The second step is to en-able electric vehicles to be recharged in homes, parking lots, parking ga-rages, and of course, service stations. However, this can only happen once the battery is actually developed. All

we need is the same recharging de-vices and batteries used to recharge computers, phones, iPods and cam-

eras on a much larger automobile level.

Other ways that Congress can alleviate the energy crisis are: to make the US’ electrical distri-bution system more efficient and speedy; to support the construc-tion of nuclear power plants so that more electricity can be creat-ed; to endorse the usage of alter-

nate fuel sources (primarily natural gas); to establish a new fuel-vehicle system; and to make the fueling, re-fueling, and transportation indus-tries run on electricity.

There are other uncon-ventional but ingenious ways for Congress to solve the energy crisis through legislation. The first is to endorse electric cars by completely banning gasoline-only cars. The av-erage car exists for 17 years, and, when an American consumer buys a car, he or she is about to depend on foreign oil for 17 years. Congress could make a law so that every car in the U.S. can run on practically any fuel, including gasoline, ethanol, and methanol. A positive is that the technology to allow cars to be able to run on practically any fuel already exists, although it is scarcely found on the public market. Granting ev-ery vehicle in the US the capability to run on these three fuels would cost about $100 extra per car, which is inexpensive when compared to how much this would improve our environment and help to solve one part of the energy crisis. This tech-nology would also open the public market to new, more advanced fuel-ing technology.

Another strategy would be to eliminate the Iowa Caucuses. The ethanol lobby has placed tariffs and taxes on ethanol created outside of the US; however, simultaneously, it has managed to halt the devel-opment of other alternative fuel sources at home. Ethanol is a helpful partial solution to the energy crisis in the US, but statistics show that it could only replace 12 percent of the American gasoline requirement.

Using sugarcane would also be beneficial. Although America does not have very good relation-

ships with many Middle Eastern countries that produce oil, America is friendly with several countries in Latin America, Africa, and South-east Asia; including Panama, Kenya, and Thailand. These nations grow sugarcane. Sugarcane can create ethanol that costs only half as much to produce as corn ethanol. Ameri-can foreign aid should be directed to helping these countries so that they produce more ethanol, more quickly and more efficiently. Such a practice would also strengthen American national security as the US would not have to rely on unfriendly oil-producing nations in the Middle East

A fourth strategy is to complete-ly revolutionize and “technologize” waste and other substances in order to produce methanol. 65 percent of garbage is considered biomass (food, paper, wood, etc.), and, there-fore, could be converted to metha-nol. Methanol is twice as efficient as cellulosic ethanol. Furthermore, America owns one quarter of all the coal in the world. Instead of using America’s coal to fuel power plants, coal should be converted to metha-nol for one dollar a gallon. Also, a byproduct of basic paper known as black liquor can be converted to methanol. All three of these meth-anol-producing paths working to-gether would generate nine billion gallons of methanol a year, or, about twice the amount of energy that is made through ethanol corn annu-ally in the US.

The energy crisis is a criti-cal problem, but, fortunately there are many approaches that President Obama and Congress can pursue to solve it. HMR

The energy crisis is a critical problem, but, fortunately

there are many ap-proaches that Presi-

dent Obama and Congress can pursue

to solve it. ”“


Energy

When thinking about nuclear strikes, most think of a huge mush-room cloud explosion that envelops every-

thing. This, however, is not the full story. Nuclear strikes are not the end all ca-tastrophe that they are often associated with. Although they are indeed devastat-ing, there are ways to prevent massive losses.

The initial strike of a nuclear weap-on shoots out enough atomic particles to cook anyone inside a small radius with a lethal dose of radiation. The radioactive particles created during the initial blast continue to spread at very high speeds. After the explosion, these traveling par-ticles are called fallout. They slam into human bodies and cause severe damage at the molecular level, causing a high loss of white blood cells, damaged nerve end-ings, and hemorrhaging. The radioactive materi-als also can cause different forms of cancers as well as deformities in embryos. To protect from these radioactive particles after the initial strike, people should stay inside, prefer-ably in a basement. The deadly particles cannot reach those who are properly sheltered. Many lives could be saved.

It may seem like a scare tactic to rile up citizens against an enemy to say all of this, but the point is to inform, not to instill fear. This information can be found in an unclassified planning guide that was made to help teach those about

nuclear disasters. Knowing what hap-pens during this possible catastrophe will better prepare populations against what might happen. The Obama admin-istration is discussing “how to spread the word without seeming alarmist about a subject that few politicians care to consider, let alone discuss.” Withhold-ing this information is putting millions of citizens at risk even if this particular catastrophe isn’t likely to happen in the near future.

Ironically, at the same time that the government is hesitant to teach the American people the proper protocol in case of a nuclear disaster resulting in fallout, the government is encouraging plans that carry with them a real danger

of a nuclear accident. The United States Government is in favor of creating and expanding new nuclear power plants. The Department of Energy agreed to a $3.4 billion guarantee for the expansion of a nuclear facility in Georgia, and the Obama administration asked Congress for more funds to create more plants including two new reactors to the Co-manche Peak plant in Glen Rose, near Fort Worth. These power plants can have problems, and, if they do, then the re-

sulting fallout could kill. Corrosion can build up in the exhaust towers which could lead to a major release of radioac-tive material into the air and water. Pos-sible plant melt downs also can occur of coolant isn’t properly applied. Melt downs can lead to a large nuclear bomb like explosion. The public has seen the possibility of such a problem during the 3-mile island crisis when it had a partial melt down.

The Obama administration at-tempted to explore what would happen during a nuclear terrorists attack, but was stopped in 2009. A live exercise was planned for Las Vegas which would involve a fake nuclear terrorist attack. The casinos and businesses protested,

of course, as did Senator Harry Reid. This, they be-lieved, would scare away tourism costing the city a lot of money.

It is under-standable that cities would be unwilling to do full scale nuclear bomb drills, but it remains important

that Americans understand what to do in the case of a nuclear attack or accident. Smaller scale ways to convey knowledge might be better. There could be school and business nuclear threat drills similar to fire drills. When deciding whether to educate and save the citizens in the Unit-ed States or ignoring what some might call an improbable catastrophe, it is clear that the answer is saving lives under any circumstance. It is better to be safe than to be sorry. HMR

WARNING: FALLOUT OF THE

NUCLEAR DIMENSIONby adaM Mansfield

The Obama administration is discussing “how to spread the word without seeming alarmist about

a subject that few politicians care to consider, let alone discuss.” Withholding this information is putting millions of citizens at risk even if this particular catastrophe isn’t likely to happen in

the near future. ”“


Energy

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY projects that 650 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas exist in the US in shale rock forma-tions that are known as shale plays. This form of energy has huge benefits. Although it is a fossil fuel, natural gas is less toxic to the environment than oil or coal. An MIT interdisciplinary study cited natural gas as having “the lowest carbon intensity [of any other fos-sil fuel], emitting less carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated.” Unlike coal, it contains no mercury. And unlike both coal and oil, its refining process is not costly because natural gas has few impurities.

Some environmentalists be-lieve that these qualities make natural gas a potentially viable bridge from coal and oil to renew-able energies like nuclear and solar.

The use of natural gas will have positive economic effects. It is abundant enough in the US that we could easily suffice on natural gas alone for two to three decades. Currently, the US imports about 20 million barrels of oil a day, spending

over 600 billion dollars on foreign oil a year. Natural gas could poten-tially wean us off of our addiction to foreign oil and end what is now the largest transfer of wealth in hu-man history (primarily to unfriendly nations), keeping money and jobs in America. Adopting natural gas would stimulate an economic boom throughout the US, especially con-sidering that workable shale plays ex-ist in the Northeast, the Midwest, the

Gulf coast, the Rockies, and the West. Seeing that America’s inces-

sant need for oil also sparked or fu-eled most of our military operations and wars in the Middle East since Operation Earnest Will in 1987, making natural gas our main energy source should be an easy decision.

But switching to natural gas has not been seen as such an easy de-cision, because of deregulation that has allowed companies such as Hal-liburton to pollute the environment. This follows a pattern set during the Bush years, traceable to the actions of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Though deregulation, and laissez faire policy in general, are conserva-tive tenets, Cheney converted these ideas into an attitude of self-serving neglect. It requires little investiga-tion to substantiate Cheney’s cul-pability for our present condition.

BY: HARRY MANIN


Energy

Cheney’s tenure in the White House did not begin under George W. Bush. As President George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, he re-duced the military by 426 thousand personnel and cut military expen-ditures by $20 billion. These actions benefitted his corporate connections. One of his final moves as Secretary of Defense was to award a $10 million no-bid contract to Halliburton to de-termine the efficacy of the private mil-itary sector in assisting a potentially undermanned US Armed Forces. In 1995, Cheney was named Hallibur-ton’s chairman of the board and CEO.

Cheney’s underhanded deal-ings with Halliburton were not an anomaly, but rather part of a much larger trend. He became vice presi-dent in 2001. Having served 10 years in Congress, part of it as House minor-ity whip, he is adept in the legislative process, and he masterfully exerted his power as president of the Senate, a usually inconsequential post. He compelled Congress to grant Hallibur-ton and the private military contractor Blackwater (now Xe Services) multi-billion-dollar contracts. Beyond the conflict of interest raised by Cheney’s involvement with the former, Black-water had connections to Cheney as well. The parents of Erik Prince, the private military contractor’s owner and founder, were in the upper ech-elon of conservative society and mem-bers of the clandestine Council for Na-tional Policy (CNP). CNP is a highly exclusive group whose mission is to “bring together the country’s most in-

fluential conservative lead-ers…to cultivate ideas to help solve America’s grow-ing problems.” Though the CNP deals surrepti-tiously, through leaks and its own condoned releases, it is common knowledge that Cheney has spoken there numerous times and is probably a member.

Blackwater and Halliburton conduct business in high-ly scrutinized fields. In order to make certain that they were well taken care of financially, Cheney had to ensure that they were above the law. Bush, pre-sumably under Cheney’s direction, is-sued executive order 13303, which ex-empts American companies that deal with Iraqi oil from legal action. Hal-liburton had a large presence in Iraq as builders of oil rigs, and Blackwater mercenaries frequently served as se-curity contractors defending Iraqi oil.

A substantial portion of Hal-liburton’s business takes place on the home front, including its natural gas operations. Cheney played a pivotal role in the deregulation of domestic in-dustry, which allowed companies such as Halliburton to operate with relative impunity. As its title implies, the Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 stipulates regulations to protect America’s water from terrorism and corporations. In response to its passage, Cheney essen-tially browbeat Congress into passing the 2005 Energy Bill later that year. It nullified much of the Safe Drinking Water Act, mandating decreases and

The US imports about 20 million barrels of oil a day, spending over 600 billion dollars a year.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, allows drillers to harvest valuable natural gas trapped in underground rock known as shale rock. After drilling vertically and then horizontally, water, sand and chemi-cals are pumped into a well, cracking the rock and releasing the gas.

Drillers use a perforating gun to inject water, sand and chem-icals into a geo-logica forma-tion when high pressure from the injection exceeds the rock strength, the fluid opens or enlarges fractures in the rock

A propping agent, often

including sand or ceramic beads, is

pumped into the fractures to keep

them from clos-ing. Released

natural gas then flows from the rock fractures. The fracturing fluids are then

returned back to the surface.


Energy

thevividedgetreehugger

even lapses of governmental oversight on industry. The bill became an ex-emption list, also freeing companies from the stipulations of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Com-prehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.

One of these exemptions de-regulated the process by which com-panies retrieve the natural gas in shale, called hydraulic fracturing or simply “fracking.” Fracking operates by drill-ing miles below the Earth’s surface to the shale formations. Then, through the recent innovation of horizontal drilling, the axis shifts sideways and drilling continues for about anoth-er mile. To release the gas trapped within the shale, a mixture of water and sand, together with thousands of chemicals, are injected into the hole at extremely high pressures.

Since regulation has been close to nil, the companies involved in the fracking jobs, Chesapeake, Cabot Oil and Gas, and Halliburton, to name a few, have been able to proceed negli-gently. They claim that since they drill miles below the surface, the chemicals involved in fracking cannot affect pri-vate drinking wells and groundwa-ter. On the contrary, however, people around the country who have fracking operations in their areas have com-plained of oddly colored water, water that makes them sick, and even water that ignites. The industry has claimed no responsibility and has emerged from numerous lawsuits unscathed.

Another reported problem oc-curs above ground. When investiga-tors positioned infrared cameras on the drilling structures, they saw toxic fumes oozing out of the complexes. In Fort Worth, Texas, scientists dis-covered that one of these harmful plumes enveloped a school. The in-dustry’s exemption from the Clean Air Act, thanks to Cheney, relieves it of responsibility for such occurrences.

Until recently, the chemicals in the fracking concoctions were un-known. Per the 2005 Energy Bill, they were considered proprietary trade secrets, similar to fast-food recipes. Aggravating the problem, the Bush Administration withdrew the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) jurisdiction to regulate fracking.

Dr. Theo Colborn, holder of the United Nations Environment Program Women Leadership for the Environment Award, uncovered ev-erything we knew, until recently, of the fracking fluids’ makeup. She took samples and identified 596 chemicals commonly used during the fracking process, some of which are carcino-gens. This September, the EPA, em-powered by Obama, requested of nine companies that they reveal the chemi-cals used. Every company except Hal-liburton complied. Halliburton, after years of Cheney’s protection, thought it was above the law. And with good reason: Even though Halliburton was implicated as a key player in the Deep-water Horizon oil spill, the Obama

administration exonerated it of any wrongdoing. In this instance, howev-er, the EPA, steadfast in its pursuit of justice, subpoenaed the conglomerate.

Given the myriad benefits of natural gas, more forthright action must be taken in order to legitimize it. Unfortunately, due to the broad scope of the deregulation, the effort to bring the fracking process up to adequate standards has been piecemeal. In such legislation as the Fracturing Responsi-bility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (currently deadlocked in the Senate), Congress has proposed to mend the disaster one problem at a time. Unfor-tunately, this is the only viable course of action, short of an onslaught of ex-ecutive orders that can confer on natu-ral gas extraction the respectability it deserves as a more prudent fossil fuel.

The Bush administration managed to blur the lines between free enterprise and the role of government. It forgot that government’s purpose is to serve the people, not to bolster the corporate sector. As great calamities befall the US, many resulting from Bush’s conservative deregulation jug-gernaut, the Obama administration is left to fix them. With popular uneasi-ness concerning natural gas increasing throughout America, the Democrats tried unsuccessfully to solve the is-sue before the Republicans took the House. Natural gas could have been the first step to an energy-independent America; now it may end up a perma-nent reminder of human greed. HMR

The natural gas industry does not have to disclose the 80-300 tons of chemicals used per frack. Scientists have identified volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene.

The Halliburton Loophole


Energy

Kennedy said the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. That was May, 1961, and by 1969,

we had done it. Today, America faces an even more urgent problem in the need to deal with its rapidly increas-ing energy needs. To deal with that problem, the U.S. must embark upon a government-led initiative with the same commitment and sense of ur-gency that led America to the moon. We are not doing so at the present.

Consider these facts. The impor-tation of foreign oil adds more than $200 billion per year to our national trade deficit. Among the leading sources of imported oil are 10 coun-tries on the State Department’s travel warning list - highly unstable na-

tions like Algeria, Columbia, Chad, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We import on average $1 billion of oil per day, and when oil prices spiked only several years ago, our monthly trade deficit from oil rose as high as $40 billion. Equally pernicious are the environmental consequences of our reliance upon coal and fossil fuels. Approximately 54% of our electricity is produced by coal-powered electric plants which spew tens of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and other pol-lutants into the air. Oil is like a nar-cotic to us - foreign entities getting rich off of our inability to wean off of it, the compulsive cries of “Drill, baby, drill!”, and the consequences for the American economy and the environ-ment that we often simply deny.

At the same time that our de-pendence on foreign oil is increasing, we are losing the lead in our commit-ments to alternative energy. In 2009, China, with an economy smaller than ours, dramatically surpassed the U.S. in investments in clean energy. Ac-cording to a PEW Charitable Trust and Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, Chinese investment in clean energy totaled about $34.6 billion in 2009, nearly double the $18.6 billion total investment in the U.S. China is now the leading maker of solar cells, and the leader in wind-turbine production capacity. China has em-barked upon a national objective of obtaining 15% of its total energy from renewable sources by 2020, and, just as important, is committed to build-ing a massive industry as the leader

by daniel elkind

The U.S. Government and Alternative Energy

Where’s the Alternative Energy?

thevividedgetreehugger


Energy

in renewable energy technology. By contrast, the PEW/Bloomberg report indicated that the U.S. is spending a significantly smaller percentage of its Gross National Product on such in-vestments than countries like China, Brazil, the U.K., and even Spain.

Critics of government sup-port for alternative energies are fond of pointing out that some forms of clean energy are still more expensive to produce than energy from fos-sil fuels. In some cases, this is true. Yet that argument misses the point, for a variety of reasons. First, if the government is successful in dramati-cally increasing the installation of al-ternative energy technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, and elec-tric cars, the cost of producing these technologies will go down, just as the costs of all new technologies decline rapidly over the course of their de-velopment. Second, if this country delays in rolling out clean energy technology until the costs of clean energy are less than the costs of fos-sil fuels, then, by the time that fossil fuels become more costly than alter-native energy, the U.S. will not have a competitive industry. Third, the cost of fossil fuels is not limited to the ex-pense of such fuels to the consumer, but also includes the enormous envi-ronmental costs that we incur as our result of the use of fossil fuels.

There can be no doubt that clean energy is destined to become

a massive industry of the future. The nation that becomes the leader in clean energy technology will gain

tens of millions of new jobs. Does America want to control the jobs that the new industry will produce, or do we want to see those jobs going abroad to countries like China?

While it is fashionable for conservative politicians to assert that all of our problems can be solved by the private sector and that the gov-ernment should have no role in as-sisting new technological develop-ment, that way of thinking will lead to failure in our quest to become the leader in clean energy and to capture the many millions of jobs that the new industry will create. China has already embarked upon a govern-ment-sponsored initiative to become a leader in the field. It is essential that the U.S. government aggressively fos-ter the use of alternative energy at a time when the energy is still in devel-opment, so that we will become the leader in the field by the time that it becomes more efficient and less cost-ly than fossil fuels and coal.

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act adopted by Congress in 2009, also known as the “stimulus” bill, President Obama and Congress included stepped-up spending for clean energy. However, that spending only slightly made up for years of neglect under President Bush. The new Congress needs to put in place a massive program of tax benefits and government spending initiatives to establish clean energy usage and build the leading world-wide alternative energy industry in the United States.

Perhaps the most compelling measure the government

can take to pro-mote alterna-

tive ener-gies and

reduce our dependence on oil is to embark upon a program to convert the country from gasoline-powered cars to electric-powered cars. The electricity used to power electric cars can be produced by electric utili-ties with wind, solar, gas, nuclear, or any other source. As a result, if the country’s automobiles are powered by electricity, then ultimately they will be powered by the alternative sources of energy which are the most efficient, the least expensive, and the cleanest for the envi-ronment. The gov-ernment must employ a sys-tem of tax credits for in-dividual consum-ers and tax ben-efits for the producers of electric automo-biles to convert the nation’s automobiles from gas to electricity on a massive scale and as quickly as possible. This means ex-tending and increasing tax incentives dramatically and immediately.

The U.S. needs to invest in nuclear power in order to bring our-selves into step with countries like France, Sweden, Belgium, Switzer-land, and Hungary. Nuclear power is currently the principal energy source in numerous European nations, pro-viding 76% of the total energy in France, 36.7% in South Korea, and

photos

My Wind poWer systeM


Energy

57% in Slovakia. Yet America’s prog-ress has continuously been thwarted by local objections to nuclear dis-posal and by prohibitive obstacles to the approval of new nuclear plants. While other countries are mov-ing forward, the U.S. had not built a single nuclear power plant in the past 14 years. For example,

the Yucca Mountain region has been identi-

fied by the Energy Department as a

potential site for the nu-

clear waste disposal,

since it is geo-logically inactive and a remote area. Two-

thirds of Nevadans

oppose the plan on

a “not-in-my-backyard” basis. Yet

the Energy Department recently estimated that the radi-

ation exposure per year to the Yuc-ca nuclear waste site would be 0.24 millirems per year, well under the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit of 350 millirems per year, and less than the 3 millirems to which a passenger travelling round-trip from Nevada to Washington D.C. would be exposed. The Yucca Mountain site should be approved and com-pleted promptly, and the politicizing of the issue should come to an end. In addition, the federal government

should immediately adopt stream-line procedures for the approval of new nuclear power plants so that the construction of those plants can be

accomplished in years, not decades. Investing in nuclear power would reduce our energy dependency on foreign nations, provide the most immediate alternative to environ-mentally-damaging coal, spur job creation, and create another promis-ing and competitive industry within the United States.

The government must also spur solar energy by investing in the development of the technology and extending tax incentives for the in-stallation of solar energy. Solar en-ergy is still more expensive for in-dividual consumers than electricity purchased from coal-burning power plants. However, the cost to individu-al consumers can be decreased if the demand for solar power is increased dramatically and the economies of scale in producing solar power en-able the costs of production to be reduced. But if we wait until the cost is less than the cost of other forms of electricity, then by the time that the costs are equalized, the U.S. will be too far behind countries like China to catch up in the development and implementation of solar power.

The government should sim-ilarly encourage other forms of en-ergy, among them wind power and natural gas. Congress must increase and extend tax benefits to the pro-ducers of wind power. The govern-

ment should also vigorously encour-age the conversion of electric power plants which currently rely heavily upon coal from coal to natural gas.

Although natural gas is a fos-sil fuel, it is substantially less pollut-ing than coal or oil,

and the U.S. has enormous domes-tic supplies of natural gas that can be tapped into, rather than importing from other countries.

All these can be accom-plished by the federal government. It will take more than private en-terprise. Those who believe that the federal government should not be involved are mistaken, for doing so while other nations make firm in-vestments in the promising energy industry of the future will leave the U.S. far behind countries like Chi-na, without any competitive indus-try, and without the jobs, economic stimulus, and environmental bene-fits that alternative energies will pro-vide. At a time when it is trendy to, in the words of Ronald Reagan, want to “get government off the backs of the people,” the issue of energy is a testament to the need for sturdy fed-eral government. The race for the benefits that the alternative energy industry will provide could well be-come another “Sputnik” moment for the U.S., as President Obama said, and the decisions that Congress makes now will determine how suc-cessful we will be in the future. If we procrastinate, it will not be long be-fore it is too late, and we will be too far behind to catch up. HMR

Investing in nuclear power would reduce our energy dependency on foreign nations, provide the most im-

mediate alternative to environmentally-damaging coal, spur job creation, and create another promising and

competitive industry within the United States.

My Wind poWer systeM

”“


Documents

Issue 6 - A Special Report on Public Policy