It seems that the party that’s become notorious for hardlining on the economy may not be so polarizing as the media makes it sound…Or are these the select few?
Guess what percent of Congress consists of women?
17%.
Enough said.
It’s not that I forgot about this tumblr, or that I was disinterested in politics over the course of the election. 2012 was quite the year- Debt ceiling, election, Benghazi, etc. I decided to take a hiatus because I didn’t want to bore you all with the same nonsense- bipartisan gridlock. It’s always the same story, nobody seems to want to get along. It’s like watching a kindergarten class trying to organize itself into alphabetical order, except the kindergarten class usually works together eventually.
Yesterday, I was at a New Year’s Eve party. My friends and I were chatting about how excited we were for college next year. One of them checked his phone and noted that the house reconvened, and wasn’t going to vote until tomorrow (which is today now). Suddenly, the topic of conversation wasn’t who was going to party, but how we were going to be able to afford to go to college. The fiscal cliff is going to have unintended consequences on all of our families. Is it fair to ask our parents to drop 50K a year? Is it even possible that they can afford half of that?
But no, Congress doesn’t seem to care about the plight of students and their families. You know, they spend a lot of time preaching bipartisanship but don’t seem to understand what that means. This criticism mostly extends to certain portions of the GOP, especially the tea party. You know what the headline was on CNN? It wasn’t “GOP concerns for the future of America”. it was “GOP Anger threatens to undo fiscal cliff deal in the House”. Anger, really? Is that what this has come to?
Let’s look to the facts. Tax increases v. Spending Cuts. It’s obvious we need both. Anybody who advocates just one is facing an uphill battle to prove the feasibility on that. As per Greg Easterman in Reuters, increasing taxes on the wealthy to a 26% would add about $220 billion per year to federal revenue. In the long term, the Heritage Foundation reports that the proposed tax increases would add approximately $1.8 trillion to government revenues over the next 10 years. These funds would substantially improve the US economic situation, which would have key societal benefits. On the other end, spending cuts also have benefits. The most successful fiscal consolidation policies have had a significant portion of the plan consisting of spending cuts.
The bill isn’t perfect. It has it’s flaws. But right now, it’s essentially the last chance bill. Like my debate friends can attest, you have to do a cost to benefit analysis. The cost of doing nothing outweighs the benefits of sticking to a “principle”.
So let’s get cracking Congress. I’m back, and I’m still not happy.
Remember the Salem Witch Trials? Countless women, were unfairly accused, tried, and convicted of being witches. All of these women were actually innocent, and many lost their lives in this period.
Remember McCarthyism? Senator McCarthy called everyone a communist. It didn’t matter who it was. Those “communists” had to endure social, political, and economic isolation and struggles because of this.
So let’s get back to 2012. Representative Bachmann has REALLY outdone herself. Except instead of labeling people as witches or communists, she’s claiming that people have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. And that it’s a national security risk.
Really? Huma Abedin has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? And so does Representative Ellison? If this is true, I, and the rest of America, would like to see some evidence or some logic behind these claims.
Huma Abedin is one of Secretary Clinton’s top aides. Former President Clinton presided at her wedding. I think America can be assured that the Clintons are able to weed out Muslim Brotherhood members from their circle.
Representative Ellison is hardly a member either.
So why does Representative Bachmann keep pushing this? Speaker Boehner and Senator McCain and countless of other fellow Republicans are calling her out on this. She’s losing popularity across the nation.
I’m staying tuned for more details.
So a lot happened to me this summer. I lost my grandfather, grew apart from some friends, and made some new ones. I also started looking at colleges. Its scary to think that I might have to decide my whole future by May 1st of next year.
Its an election year. What’s scarier for me, is that I have to vote for the next president of the United States in November. Its my first time. And I have no idea who I’m going to vote for.
Issues are a big deal for everyone. I know how I feel about every issue. But this time, knowing isn’t not enough.
President Obama and Governor Romney both fail in the most important category. A president is supposed to lead his/her people, supposed to push Americans forward, to inspire innovation and success in the country. But neither candidate is able to achieve this.
The clock is ticking…
So as most of you know, Egypt had their first “democratic” elections. I use the quotation marks for a reason. Yes, the election did occur. And yeah, there was a good voter turnout for the first post-Mubarak regime election. People ran for office, on various platforms- some diversity between candidates. So why the quotation marks?
I’d like to take the time to introduce my wonderful readers to two of the most undemocratic people on the ballot. Meet Mohamed Morsi, Muslim Brother extraordinaire. He’s facing Ahmed Shafiq, former colleague of Hosni Mubarak. Evidently, it’s hardly the election most of the Western world was expecting. Personally, I was expecting the Egyptian populace to select a more moderate or liberal candidate, in order to draw a contrast from the strict, conservative regime in the past.
However, it is important to note that a majority of Egyptians did not vote for Morsi OR Shafiq.
According to this diagram found on Ahram Online, Only 49% of the voters actually voted for Shafiq or Morsi. The remaining 51% of the vote was split between the other three candidates.
One thing’s for sure, regardless of the outcome, neither candidate seems to be good for the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood, at its origin, dislikes Western World. Having an old Mubarak regime member hardly seems like a benefit to anyone.
While processing this, I started thinking about the United States’s own electoral process. A lot of people complain about how it doesn’t really allow for third-party candidates to occur. Is that really such a bad thing?
Even though some third parties have good merit, and the US isn’t in as critical a period as Egypt, consider what Tara Ross at the Heritage Foundation said about the two-party system.
“…it tends to prevent the rise to power of extremist groups and radical minorities. Instead, American public policy tends to remain in the middle—not too far left, not too far right.”
And at the end of the day, that’s where most people are on political issues- in the middle. So it works.
In Egypt, because neither candidate reached 50% of the vote, a candidate will be elected that got less than 30% of the original popular vote. How does that work for the people?
It doesn’t.
