Issue 8 - The Social Agenda

Review THE HORACE MANN

Volume XXIII - May 2014

The Social Agenda Under Scrutiny

Issue

8

Review

Letter From the Editor

THE HORACE MANN

Caroline Kuritzkes Editor-in-Chief

Samuel Henick Executive Editor

Will Ellison David Hackel Sahej Suri

Jenny Heon* Mihika Kapoor Isaiah Newman

Managing Content Editors

Managing Design Editors

*Chair of the Senior Board

If you have ever taken a class with Mr. Donadio, you may have been exposed to frequent promotions of The Horace Mann Review as “the best student-run publication in the country.” You could call us hyperbolic exceptionalists, but I sincerely believe that his characterization is fitting. The truth is that no school in America produces what we do at such a high level, let alone eight times a year. The fact that Horace Mann possesses the resources and student-interest to generate this added opportunity for intellectualenrichment outside of our coursework is a tremendous benefit that no one should take for granted. Yet although I feel immensely fortunate to have led The Review in its twentythird volume, I would describe my experience as anything but supplemental to my Horace Mann education. On the contrary, this magazine has been instrumental to my development as a student and human being. Even more valuable than the knowledge I’ve gained as a writer, researcher, editor, and mentor is the pivotal role The Review has played in shaping and stimulating my current intellectual interests. The Review’s aim to foster global curiosity within the Horace Mann community inspired me with an international and political-mindedness that I know I will appreciate for the rest of my life.

This core mission of The Review is something I’ve always viewed as honorable, but its effectiveness and power in converting a clueless freshman who enjoys writing into a critical and conscious global citizen lies in its collaborative execution. Our staff ’s dedication and enthusiasm continue to amaze me on this front. It is evident in the sheer number of fifty-plus writers who have contributed articles this year, the fantastic content and design workshops led by junior editors for sophomore writers during our Junior Issue press night, their trip to a CSPA journalism convention over Spring Break, and the long Friday hours they remained after school in the Stupub – even until 9 PM the night before the SAT. Above all, The Review community operates as not only a production framework, but also a web of memorable friendships, teamwork, and leadership: a niche where I’ve formed lasting connections that mean more to me than I can say.

As graduation draws closer, I know that leaving The Review behind will be especially hard.

Yet I hope it has served to benefit you as much as it has benefitted me, and I am confident that it will continue to do so next volume and in the years to come. I am extraordinarily lucky and grateful in that each and every one of you – including Sam, Mr. Donadio, junior editors, and freshman and sophomore writers – has made my time on The Review my most rewarding experience at Horace Mann. Enjoy an Issue 8 Features topic on social controversy in American Politics. Volume XXIII, it has been a pleasure.

Catherine Engelmann Senior Editor - Features

Ben Greene

Senior Editor - Domestic

Hana Krijestorac

Senior Editor - International

Jonah Wexler

Senior Editor - Economics

Jacob Haberman

Senior Editor - Science and Technology

Daniel Baudoin Hannah Davidoff Henry Luo Mohit Mookim Kelvin Rhee Namit Satara Lenn Uchima Jacob Zurita Senior Contibutors

Neil Ahlawat James Megibow Edmund Bannister Adam Resheff Jenna Barancik Harry Seavey Lauren Futter Brett Silverstein Matthew Harpe Ikaasa Suri Laszlo Herwitz Nathan Tillinghast-Raby Emily Kramer Mitchell Troyanovsky James McCarthy Elizabeth Xiong Junior Editors

Charles Cotton Samuel Fisch Robert Hefter Sam Stern Associate Editors

Caroline Kuritzkes Editor-in-Chief Volume XXIII

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Adobe Cover Illustration

by Mihika Kapoor

Gregory Donadio Faculty Advisor The Horace Mann Review is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the American Scholastic Press Association, and the National Scholastic Press Association. 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 more information at www.issuu.com/horacemannreview

Table of Contents

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Shining a Light on Sexual Assault

Giving Rise to a New Cure

Ananya Kumar Banjeree

Sophie Maltby

page 4

Ben Greene

The Failures of Legalized Marijuana page 6

Peter Shamamian

page 10

Maximum Freedom, Minimum Government

Why Spy on Me Jacob Chae

A Culture of Ignorance Lexi Kanter

page 12

Power in Their Hands Gabe Broshy

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FEATURES

DOMESTIC

Steps Toward the American DREAM

page 14

page 16

30

page 28

Redefining the Separation of Church and State Alexander Karpf

page 30

My Body, My Choice Josh Arnon

page 42

page 44

page 48

Bitcoins or Bust Christopher Shaari

page 50

Detroit: Motoring into Oblivion Daria Balaeskoul

page 52

page 26

Elections in Afghanistan Alessandro van den Brink

ECONOMICS

page 24

50

page 32

54 SCI-TECH

INTERNATIONAL

page 22

The Underground World of Modern Slavery Daniel Lee

Zack Gaynor

page 20

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Settlement Issue Revisited Olivia Silberstein

Sydney Katz

Decriminalizing Prostitution: The Economic Argument

Outbreak in Guinea Philip Jordache

page 40

The Battle for Reform

Pro: Evan Greene Con: Vaed Prasad

Terror on the Rise: Boko Haram’s Cruel Tactics Celestine Samaroo

Henry Shapiro

page 38

Cruel or Constitutional?

The Debate on Capital Punishment

The World’s Largest Election Raag Agrawal

page 35

The Costs of CO2 Ben Alexander

page 54

Where There’s Smoke Emma Forman

page 56

Adderall: Addiction and Abuse John Eng

page 58

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Shining a Light on Sexual Assault

Ananya Kumar Banjeree

R

ecently, it has come to the attention of the media that many highly lauded colleges have dealt with numerous sexual assault and rape cases in a way that is beyond unacceptable. In many cases, their behavior was downright unjustified. In response to this, the government created the Clery Act, legislation meant to increase the transparency of crimes on college campuses. Although transparency is an issue that has persisted in colleges for a while, the root of the problem lies in an inability to deliver justice. For example, at Columbia University, the careless attitude of the administration has caused protests

and rampant anger with authority. Finally, after weeks spent trying to subdue this student body anger, the President finally created a student run representative committee responsible for dealing with these crimes. But this irresponsibility and uncaring attitude of college administrations is by no means a new phenomenon.

Down dark alleyways, and inside police stations, these attitudes are maintained. Words like “rape” and “sexual assault” are transformed into convoluted terms like “non-consensual sexual intercourse” and “non-consensual sexual contact.” Now, this should not be an issue as

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long as everyone agrees that these activities are wrong and that the perpetrators should be brought to justice. The problem? First of all, many of the students are attacked by people with whom they are acquainted. For this reason, victims often do not go to the police because they feel that they are destroying the lives of their attackers. In these situations, students often look to one group and one group only for justice: the administration. Take for example, Sara, Natalie and Josie, all victims of the same attacker. They went to Columbia’s administration for justice. Natalie had been a subject of domestic violence and

Domestic rape, Sara the victim of rape and Josie that of attempted rape. Even though their attacker was linked to all three cases, he was only punished minimally. For Natalie and Sara, their cases were dropped due to “insufficient evidence”, while a slightly luckier Josie ended up getting the attacker a mere six months of probation. This pattern isn’t new. In schools across the country, Pennsylvania State University, University of Florida, Amherst, Harvard etc., sexual assault is a consistent problem affecting people of all ages on these campuses. Despite how widespread and completely out of control the problem is, the administrations refuse to address these issues unless spurred to do so by the student body and media.

It’s an easy fix: instill a no-tolerance policy, encourage students to report these incidents, and talk about things more openly as a way to decrease stigma and increase justice associated with the topic.

None of this would be a problem if these administrations were genuinely interested in providing justice. However, this is not the case. It is arguable that some of these people do actually care about the state of criminal affairs in their institutions, and care about the application of justice in these situations. But, if these people really did care about providing these victims with justice, they wouldn’t make it so hard to achieve just that. If college administrators really did care about the effect these acts have on the individual, they would promote a no-tolerance policy. If these people really did want to improve the quality of safety and therefore lives of their students, they would

in

85%

prevent these criminals from roaming freely on their campuses. But the trouble is, most of these people just don’t care.

Where did this disregard for other people arise from? Does it exist because of some fault on the part of the parents? Were these people raised “wrong”? Or maybe, it’s something deeply ingrained in who we are.

Maybe the issue is ingrained in the ideals created by our culture and society. So what makes our ethical motivations so special?

We live in a meritocratic society.

For this reason, we are normally taught from a very young age that selfishness is

“By exposing these criminals, these schools run the risk of reducing the credibility and quality of their most popular programs, and the school itself loses popularity with incoming students and alumni.” a necessary evil and a tool for survival in a capitalist society. Although slightly intimidating, most of us learn from these experiences. The examples are everywhere. We learn this by seeing some kids do well and some fail. It is the selfish kid who gets the surplus animal crackers, the selfish teenager who prioritizes his time and himself over his friends, and it is the selfish adult who amasses great wealth and success. The relationship between the prioritization of the self and success has caused for many to equate success with a preference for the self. So how are people who are letting criminals go free being selfish? How are they prioritizing their

experience sexual violence while in college

of sexual assaults are perpetrated by an acquaintance

alcohol < 2%

self-interests by not permitting for the proper usage of justice? And why on earth do they think that is in any way okay?

It’s simple, really. The people who let these criminals go free are in positions of power and they do so for a few reasons: the first being that, in many cases, these sexual assault cases are tied back to sports.

Think of the Penn State football scandal, and the Florida state rape case. In both of these situations, the criminal is a part of a distinguished program, which gives these schools their highly laureated statuses (and lots of money). By exposing

is the #1 predatory drug on college campuses

of reported rape cases have been proven false May 2014

these criminals, these schools run the risk of reducing the credibility and quality of their most popular programs, and the school itself loses popularity with incoming students and alumni for obvious reasons. Another more obvious case is that the administrators who make the decisions have money and power. If and when they expose these criminals, they would most likely be held responsible and the school’s incompetence (namely, its incapability to prevent the crime) would be attributed to them. And, most likely, in an effort to re-attain its sense of trust with the students, the school would fire the administrator considered responsible.

You might see why it would be in the interest of the administrator to prevent these crimes, particularly those of serial rapists, from gaining public attention. The best way to guarentee that is to prevent the crime from entering any sort of situation in which others would view it: in other words, to prevent it from reaching a court. And the best way to do this is to claim the illegitimacy of these cases and let the criminal walk free.

A societal ideal which tells us to value justice and the truth has raised a generation of people whose prioritization of the self is greater than any moral capacity or compassion. Therefore, the fault of these people is less in their stars, and more in the model of our society. The real question is, what do we view as selfish? And what is truly just self-preservation? HMR

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FREEDOM IMMIG JUSTICE Steps Toward the American

DREAM BEN GREENE

A

lberto Yañez has 3 American-born children and 2 American brothers. Yañez has lived in the United States for 23 years after emigrating from Mexico to the United States at the age of 1. In American schools, he was awarded prestigious scholarships like one that allowed him to attend a summer course at UCLA. He worked his way into gifted programs and enrolled at Clover Park Technical College to achieve his goal of becoming a Pharmacy Technician. He held a full time job while enrolled in school to support his three American children. But on November 16, 2010, Alberto Yañez was de-

tained at his own home by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and placed in the Tacoma Detention Center for 30 days. Alberto Yañez is American in every way except in legal documents. He has been an exemplary citizen, working hard in school to ameliorate his life and that of his family.

The case with Alberto Yañez underscores a repeated problem in the United States’ protocol against foreign “aliens.” Yañez, representative of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants— many American in nature— yearning for a better life, serves as a reminder that the issue of immigration reform is

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multifaceted to its core. The Yañez case illustrates both a terrible blunder in American migratory policy and many people’s bigoted social view on the criteria of becoming a true citizen in our free country. A person may be born legally American, but an individual does not automatically embody the values and ideals of American society from birth. “Real” Americans are the Alberto Yañez’s of the world, who everyday uphold the principles of this country, and everyday the ICE arrests and deports thousands of these real Americans.

These “real” Americans are also namely referred to as “DREAMers,”

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Democracy

a nickname that alludes to the Dream Act initially proposed in the Senate by Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Orrin Hatch in August of 2001. The Dream Act, which since has failed on numerous occasions in Congress, illustrates tremendous strides to grant permanent legal residence to certain immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors and have lived in the United States for at least 5 continuous years prior to the bill’s enactment. The Dream Act also only pertains to immigrants who have maintained high moral character and can reward individuals who pursue higher education and maintain a reputable academic record in the process. Alberto

Patriotism

RATION FOR ALL

LIBERTY LIBERTY LIBERTY

Yañez would qualify for the Dream Act and end his long tenure in “immigration purgatory,” eliminating the daily fears of an impulsive judge or official who can deport Yañez at his or her whim.

However, in response to the failure of the Dream Act in Congress, 15 states have compensated by passing their own bills to accommodate the plight of immigrants by lowering tuition and providing financial aid for certain state universities.

The Dream Act stands as a beacon for progress in the American bout against rash and unfounded deportation. The bill doesn’t encourage illegal immigration into the United States, as some rightest critics wildly proclaim, but rather takes

May 2014

Americans in spirit, language, culture, and value and makes them legal Americans on paper. The United States government outlines one of the requirements for those pursuing a path to citizenship: “Be a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States during all relevant periods under the law.” Alberto Yañez and individuals like him embody this declaration each and every day. The Dream Act rewards DREAMers for upholding the key pillars of American society.

While many conservatives have been adamant that the bill does nothing more

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“To me deportation would mean leaving the only country that I know, leaving my mom and dad, leaving my four sisters, leaving my ten nieces and nephews, and leaving my friends, leaving behind an opportunity to make America a better place.”

-Bupendra Ram, Fijian immigrant

than encourage illegal immigration and reward lawbreakers, it’s important to acknowledge the limited audience that would be granted permanent residence.

No politician is advocating opening up the floodgates to murderers, thugs, and the entire world’s population. No politician is even advocating total amnesty for all illegal immigrants. The Dream Act is limited in scope to individuals under the age of 35, who arrived in the United States under the age of 16, who have been living

in the United States for at least 5 years, who are devoid of criminal record, and who have pursued educational opportunities to better their lives. The Dream Act, in actuality, is a rather limited bill in scope.

Perhaps the most compelling argument in favor of the Dream Act and more lenient deportation policies is the intrinsic moral compassion found in each human being. Like Alberto Yañez, Bupendra Ram is an undocumented American immigrant who arrived from Fiji to the United States at the age of two. Ram, along with many of his fellow DREAMers, has sustained exemplary academic records and followed every ethical code in our country. Now, we want to deport Ram. We want to penalize him for breaking the law, mind you at the age of two, for following his parents into the United States illegally and “depleting” our resources. As he put it himself on his blog, Ram says, “To me [deportation] would mean leaving the only country that I know, leaving my mom and dad, leaving my four sisters, leaving my ten nieces and

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nephews, and leaving my friends, leaving behind an opportunity to make America a better place.” There is no justification to deporting an individual like Ram who was quite literally voiceless when he “chose” to illegally immigrate into the United States. The moral predicament is in itself enough of a reason to grant permanent, or at the very least, temporary residence to all DREAMers who have done nothing more than follow the American dream since they arrived in this country.

And to punish them for someone else’s decisions is inherently immoral.

While some conservatives do propose legitimate concerns to the Dream Act and other similar legislation, others, unfortunately, clearly oppose immigration reform due to unfounded racial prejudices. Jason Richwine, a former staffer at the Heritage Foundation, argued that Hispanic immigration should be limited because it “is something that’s just a reality of human nature, that some groups of people are more culturally compatible than other groups of people is a reality of the human condition.” Along with arguing that Caucasian-American culture is not compatible with Hispanic culture, Richwine wrote his doctoral dissertation on the genetic IQ disparity between the “more intelligent” White population and migratory Hispanic populations. He argues, “in brief, my dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on a variety of cognitive tests.” Scattered among legitimate anti-immigration concerns are these preposterous racial arguments that hold very little credence in today’s society. To label all immigration reform opponents as bigots is terribly inaccurate, but to confirm sprouts of bigotry and racism in anti-immigration arguments

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is visibly credible. Immediately when ultra-conservative politicians or rightwingers use race as an argument against immigration, they lose all integrity instantly. Flawed in his argument against immigration, Richwine either fails to mention or doesn’t recognize that Hispanic immigration is only a part of the entire demographic influx into the United States. Often prejudiced opponents of immigration assume that all illegal immigrations are of Latino origin or as the right-leaning news source “Politico” put it: “Pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now,” creating “a ‘bonanza’ Democrats, as some conservatives fear.”

Well, Politico, all 11 million immigrants in this country aren’t Hispanic.

Bupendra Ram, the aforementioned, hard-working immigrant from Fiji, is surely not of Latino descent.

Back in November 2010, ICE officials essentially hunted down Alberto Yañez at his home in Washington State.

These government agents took the time, weapons, cars, and energy to arrest the harmless, hard-working man of three children. No one denounces the demanding work of ICE officials; every

day they work to make our country safer by “preventing terrorism and enhancing security, protecting the borders against illicit trade, travel, and finance,” and, of course, arresting people like Alberto Yañez. The latter mission does not merit nearly the same time or resources as the first two stated objectives, and it is especially a moot point when antiimmigration conservatives constantly claim that the Dream Act would be economically burdensome.

Politicians who oppose the Dream Act argue that the bill would be funded on “the backs of hard-working, law-abiding Americans.” They insist that subsidizing immigrants, and illegal ones nonetheless, will simply exacerbate our nation’s economic downturn. But in a speech to the House, President Barack Obama remarked, “and as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found, the Dream Act would cut the deficit by $2.2 billion over the next 10 years.”

The productivity of these immigrants would actually relieve some of our nation’s deficit and aid in the mending of the American economy. Moreover, the economic argument has very little validity when the ICE allocates resources

May 2014

towards people like Alberto Yañez.

Spend time protecting the boarders, spend time arresting drug smugglers and international terrorists and human traffickers, but do not spend time seizing harmless fathers of three. Doing so is trivial, inefficient, and harmful. In 2008, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized 49,823.3KG of cocaine within United States borders according to the United States government. We can start going out of our way to arrest DREAMers when we seize those 49,823.3KG of cocaine at the United States borders.

The American immigration issue is a complex one often deeply rooted in old ideals and values. It combines not only discussion on the morality of illegal immigration, but also how to deal with the budget deficit and a plethora of domestic social issues. Our border patrol is of the utmost importance and our homeland security is the backbone of American security. There are legitimate violent aliens who try each day to harm American citizens. Spend time and resources arresting these people, and reward individuals who work hard to uphold the very foundation upon which this nation was built. HMR

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“Almost all of the NYPD’s surveillance efforts during the past ten years have targeted members of the Muslim community.”

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s a new mayor comes to New York City, so does a new police commissioner with a revised policy. Newly selected NYPD commissioner William Bratton has replaced former commissioner Ray Kelly and so far many radical changes have been made.

As of April 2014, commissioner Bratton has officially disbanded the controversial spying by the NYPD on Muslims and their activities. The NYPD’S prior tactics drew criticism from civil rights groups and other government agencies, with one senior FBI official stating that “they harmed national security by sowing mistrust for law enforcement in Muslim communities.” Even through all this dismay about the NYPD’s spying on Muslims, some might ask, why would they do so in the first place?

Immediately following the major terrorist attacks on 9/11, the NYPD enforced many strict, radical, and rigorous changes to the way the organization perceived Muslims. The NYPD felt that overseeing the acts of Muslims and carefully examining their everyday moves could promote the city’s security and reduce the risk of terrorism. Knowing what each Muslim was doing at a certain period of time and knowing what they ate and said was supposedly crucial to the prevention of further terrorists attacks carried out by Muslims. The NYPD under Ray Kelly continually pointed fingers at Muslims and treated them like culprits. The stereotype that all terrorism was associated with Muslims stuck in the books like thick glue. However, all of this is not truly accurate. In fact, according to a study conducted by students at Princeton University, Muslims are responsible for only about 6% of the terrorist attacks that occurred on U.S. soil in the past few decades. However, it is important to note that almost all of the NYPD’s surveillance efforts during the past ten years have targeted members of the Muslim community. The NYPD took unlawful actions against Muslims by

abusing and violating their human rights.

The NYPD over the course of roughly 12 years tracked the activities of Muslims in New York City without their knowledge or consent. The squad that conducted the surveillance, known as the Demographics Unit, was formed in 2003 under mayor Bloomberg as a way to promote the general safety of the city. It was believed at that time that the unit would help to prevent any further terrorist attacks and bring peace. Yet the actions of the Demographics Unit served only to foment anger and suspicion amongst the people of the city. Law enforcement is blaming the entire community for the actions of a select few. This act can be seen to parallel the current stop and frisk situation and in the past, the detainment of the Japanese citizens in camps after Pearl Harbor.

We can see that racial profiling and discrimination are a huge issue in the past and are still highly prevalent today. Also another key thing to note is that important judicial statements handed down by courts around the U.S. everyday put a strong emphasis against this specific NYPD project. Legal standards indicate that a person is “innocent until proven guilty,” and that he or she has rights that protect himself or herself from unreasonable search and seizure.

What the NYPD did in this situation violated both of these major fundamental legal principles. As new mayor Bill de Blasio takes office, he is trying to foster a sense of unity between the government and the people. He stated that the administration of New York will continue to ensure that the police force will do anything necessary to keep the city safe, but will also enure that it is respectful and fair to every individualr. In order to have a healthy and stable city, the government and its people must know their role in society. The obligation of the police is crucial by encouraging safety measures and preventing harm done to the people.

The obligation of the people is to respect their government but at the same time,

May 2014

stand up for what is right. If both sides established a more amicable relationship, then New York could become a peaceful city. The idea of trust between the government and its people is key to not only a successful city but also to the populace’s security and prosperity. According to de Blasio, “this reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys.”

Even though this project has been disbanded and discontinued, the Muslim society is still trying to receive compensation. Recently as these particular lawsuits are being trialed in various courts, the heated debate continues as Muslim groups and civil liberties organizations are heading to court. Board President of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ryan Mahoney, said that the disbanding “is an important first step.

However, the damage of unconstitutional mass spying on people solely on the basis of their religion has already been carried out and must be addressed.” Muslims have been severely victimized and they should indeed receive compensation for that. To harm the welfare of innocent Muslims goes against all human rights and is morally wrong. To bring forth the ruthless stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists is blatantly far-fetched and dismaying.

As New York continues to develop as a diverse community, it is important to gain awareness of the people around us and accept each other, regardless of ethnicity. People of all races and religions should have equal rights and a say in society. If a society fails to meet these standard requirements, then change must be enacted. Even though Bill de Blasio’s political role has not gotten off to a great start, with this decision to reform the attitudes and practices of the NYPD, it is inevitable that he will make strides in the future for the better of his city’s people.

HMR

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A CULTURE OF IGNORANCE The Surge of Sensationalist Media

Lexi Kanter

T

he American media hails itself as free, objective, critical, and serious, and in fact, it seems to be all that it claims. Typical concerns about the press revolve around government influence, but the Constitution explicitly protects the rights and freedoms of journalists. With lack of government ownership in major press outlets, American news is certainly not significantly censored. However, with the rise of the Internet, government control of the news should not be the only concern. As access to the press has become easier with advances in technology, younger generations have shown increasing interest in the news. This has, in turn, sparked an increase in “soft news,” sensationalism and shallow media. The rise of media sensationalism and the subsequent loss of intellectualism and reliability in the press have consequences that are negatively affecting all audiences.

A critical distinction that needs to be made in order to understand this issue is the difference between “soft news” and “hard news.” Hard news is the coverage of breaking events on a national and

international scale, involving politics, finance, and science. Soft news is generally less informative and more entertaining. It is more personality-based, focusing on human-interest stories. There needs to be some amount of soft news, otherwise all media production would be dry and dense. The key is to strike a balance of soft and hard news, but over the past few decades, sensationalist media has begun to take over. Soft news has penetrated newspapers, networks, and online media sources. News outlets such as the New York Post and Buzz Feed have become increasingly popular, especially among people between people age 18 through 35. Headlines from these sites include “Mean Girls-where are they now?” “Selfie-taking Canadian kicked by train conductor,” and “Ronald McDonald is Rocking a New Look for the Social Media Age.” According to a study done by Stanford University, soft news stories with no clear connection to major events have risen from 35 percent in 1980 to over 55 percent today. Hard news stories have declined correspondingly.

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Not only have sensationalist media sources become more popular, but previously reliable and non-sensationalist media sources have started to change.

One of the most prominent examples of this is CNN. A network that used to be a premier source for in depth serious news coverage has turned into another sensationalist media source. CNN has introduced simulations, laser pointers and giant touch screens to make news more exciting. They introduced a segment where one of the staff members makes prank calls, and they have overloaded on soft news stories, some of which include “Mom bites pit bull as it attacks girl” and “Woah, baby! Newborn is 14.5 lbs.”

The switch to sensationalism is negatively affecting viewers and readers, especially those of younger generations. In an effort to attract younger viewers, the media is presenting our generation with “fluff.” Younger viewers are not being exposed to enough information that holds national or global significance. Our generation will soon be voting. We will be making decisions that affect our imme-

Domestic diate society and the world. We will be contributing to politics and government, finance, and progress in science and technology. School is essentially a vehicle to educate younger generations so that they are able to make informed decisions.

The media is an extension of that role.

The media should be a way for younger generations to gain additional knowledge about issues that they should care about as citizens of society. If the press only provides information about scandals and “selfies,” how are younger generations supposed to be sufficiently informed about global and national issues so that they can make political decisions? The rise of sensationalism and soft news promotes a culture of ignorance, and as this trend continues, it will lead to a generation that is ill-informed and consequently ill-equipped to contribute to society.

It has become increasingly clear that media organizations place making money before generating intelligent reports.

The material many news organizations now publish as top international and breaking news is hyperbolic and irrele-

vant. The problem lies in the audience.

Media coverage is driven by advertising dollars, which are in turn driven by popularity. If news sources were to simply increase serious news stories, ratings would go down, and advertisers would abandon the media organization, which would consequently fail.

The solution to reducing sensational media lies in increasing demand for serious news. School classes too often teach different subjects and material without explaining the relevance and importance of the information. This leaves students wondering why they need to know seemingly useless facts. The first approach to reducing sensationalism is to place an emphasis on the relevance of the information that students learn. If students understood the relevance of information, they would be able to appreciate hard news and understand why it is important to watch and read. Classes also focus more heavily on relatively distant history instead of current events. A second approach to reducing sensationalist media is to spend more class time discussing

current events. If students learned about current events early on, they would be more likely to have a thirst later on for serious information about current conflicts, and controversies. Lastly, in the United States, we tend to have a greater affinity towards local news or news that concerns Americans. Many Americans will dismiss news that covers conflicts that seem distant. We need to be taught with a more international orientation, so we can recognize that international events affect us and are worth learning about.

The media believes that audiences, especially younger generations, can only appreciate what is exciting and dramatic. Changes need to be made beginning in our education systems that will produce citizens that have a continued interest in the world in which they live.

The media should return to presenting balanced information that is important and relevant because substantive news is valuable, but this cannot occur until younger generations show that they are intelligent citizens with a genuine interest in serious current events. HMR

“The rise of media sensationalism and the subsequent loss of intellectualism and reliability in the press have consequences that are negatively affecting all audiences.”

May 2014

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POWER IN THEIR HANDS

Lobbying as a Problem of Self-Interest Gabe Broshy

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oliticiansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; decisions are constantly scrutinized and debated. Another facet of politics, lobbying, is equally controversial in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s age. Lobbying has existed in the US for as long as the federal government, and corporations, religious institutions, and other special interest groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbyists in order to exert their influence in Washington.

Lobbyists are able to give support and funding up to a certain limit to candidates in order to promote their interests.

Citizens have questioned the morality of such actions for many years, yet the

lobbying industry remains very large. Laws restricting the activities of lobbyists should be expanded due to the unfair power the industry provides wealthy organizations.

This in turn compromises democracy.

The legislation lobbyists promote is not in the best interests of the American people, including laws related to real estate licensing, tobacco, gun restriction laws, and government subsidies to student lenders.

One of the reasons lobbyists should have less power is the unequal political and voting power they create among citizens. One key facet of democracy is not just that all citizens have voting power,

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but that this power is distributed equally among citizens, regardless of socioeconomic standing. Lobbying allows institutions and organizations with more money to promote their opinions more so than those that are less wealthy and powerful, taking away citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; political equality. Furthermore, lobbyists advocate for laws that do not represent the best interests of American people at large, but rather a conflict of interest that serves to benefit only a particular group. Various lobbies offer government members not only significant political support, but also occupational opportunities. Currently,

Domestic 50% of retired senators and 42% of retired House members become lobbyists, a 1500% increase in the last 40 years, fueling speculation that these Congress members are offered jobs with the condition that they act favorably towards the special interest groups. In a democracy without undue influence from lobbying, politicians have a desire to act in the best interests of the majority of American citizens, given that if they fail to do so, they will not be reelected. Receiving political support, as well as a potential high-paying job offer from one specific organization, takes away this incentive since it benefits the politician to promote the interests of that group rather than those of the people.

One example of the significant negative legal effects lobbying has is in real estate licensing laws, whose intended purpose is to protect consumers. Because of the lobbying power of Realtor Associations, however, the law prevents consumers from being able to file class action lawsuits and entitles them to little to no legal duties from real estate licensees. The requirements for obtaining real estate licenses are very low, as high school graduation is not even mandatory in some states. This results in real estate agents and inspectors lacking competence, which hurts consumers.

“It could almost be argued that these laws now serve to protect licensees from consumers,” says CAARE, a consumer advocate group for real estate laws.

The federal government’s failure to pass a law eliminating its subsidies to private student lenders also demonstrates the negative influence of lobbyists. It appeared that a law ending government subsidies to private student lenders would unquestionably pass in late 2009.

President Obama anticipated that funds used to subsidize the lenders would instead be given directly to students, benefitting them significantly, but large-scale lobbying campaigns from large student lenders changed the plan.

The companies used “sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives” through lobbyists, according to the New York Times. The US’s largest student lender, Sallie Mae, spent $3.48 million on federal lobbying in 2009 alone in order to plead its case.

The abundant lobbying from these groups exerted significant pressure on lawmakers, making it difficult to pass the law, and which still hasn’t passed five years later.

Another example of lobby-inspired

laws that do not support the best interests of the people is tobacco regulations.

Cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products have been proven to be far more harmful and addictive than marijuana, yet they remain legal to use and purchase, while recreational marijuana is legal in only two states. This inconsistency in legislation is at least in part a result of tobacco companies’ powerful lobbyists: the industry spent $16.6 million on lobbying in 2010 alone.

Finally, gun control laws evidence the harmful effects of lobbying. 91% of registered voters support universal background checks for purchasing firearms according to a recent study by Quinnipiac University last year. Congress, meanwhile, has failed to act on the matter.

This disparity between public opinion and legislative action can be credited to progun organizations such as the National Rifle Association and the National Rifle Association of America Institute of Legislative Action, who combined to spend over $800,000 on lobbyists during

groups can use lobbying to express their wants to the government. While not only allowing these groups to unfairly promote their interests above those of the people, which often creates “bad” laws, Super PACs lower voter turnout due to suspicion of corruption. According to Adam Skaggs, the senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy program: “The perception that super-PACs are corrupting government is making Americans disillusioned, and an alarming number say they are less likely to vote this year [2012].”

In conclusion, lobbyists allow corporations, unions, and religious institutions to exert significant political influence that gives disproportionate power relative to that of ordinary citizens, eliminating the democratic principle of citizens’ equal voice in determining who governs them. Lobbying also takes away politicians’ incentive to support the wants of the majority of citizens, resulting in laws that do not reflect the best interests of the people, nor those of

blogs.reuters.com

just the first quarter of 2013. There is, as a result, a disconnect between the desires of the people of the US and the decisions of its government, as a result of lobbyists, contradicting the idea of a government “of the people, for the people, by the people.”

Super PACs have emerged as a new form through which special interest

May 2014

democracy. New ways special interest groups have tried to utilize lobbyists like Super PACs have similar impact, as well as further lowering public confidence in government, resulting in decreases in voter turnout. Lobbying, therefore, is an undemocratic institution and should have its regulations increased. HMR

15

International

The World’s Largest Election What India’s New Government Will mean for Asia’s Future and U.S. Foreign Policy Raag Agrawal

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ith over eight hundred million citizens expected to vote, India’s election this year will be the largest in human history, so big that voting is spread across five weeks. This election will decide the make up of India’s Congress, referred to as the “Lok Sabha.”

There are thousands of polling stations across the country, each of which will record thousands of votes from people from all walks of life. Why is this election so important? It will decide America’s policy in Asia for the coming decade and redefine how power is projected in Asia.

India is a burgeoning democracy with dozens of political parties, each with its own separate interests and lead-

ers. There is no two-party system with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other. Instead, coalition governments are formed by multiple parties with shared interests. They are usually helmed by one of the two bigger parties, the Indian National Congress (INC) or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Not only will the election determine how seats in Lok Sabha be distributed, but it will also decide who will become prime minister, an office that is currently being contested by a dozen candidates.

Given India’s growing power, this election is undoubtedly global; in fact, the TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World poll this year was topped by Indian poli-

“Why is this election so important? It will decide America’s policy in Asia for the coming decade and redefine how power is projected in Asia.”

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ticians, not American pop stars. Nahendra Modi, the BJP candidate and heavy favorite for the office of prime minister, was voted the 2nd most influential person in the world by TIME, behind Arvind Kejriwal, another candidate for the same office.

The Parties The BJP is one of the major political parties in India. Its platform focuses on anti-graft, liberalization of the economy, and infrastructure improvement. The party is expected to win the election, with its coalition (NDA) predicted to win 275 seats. The party is primarily Hindu, appealing to most Indians. However, catering to the majority has alienated minorities. Nahendra Modi, the current favorite for prime minister, is both highly praised and criticized. His oversight of the development of Gujarat, an Indian state, was highly successful and made it one of the richest in the nation. He wants to move the entire country in the same direction, promising reliable electricity delivery, better infrastructure develop-

International ment, and more institutions of higher education. His opponents are weary of his history with minorities due to his lack of action during riots that killed 1000 Muslims in his state. He was cleared of all wrongdoing by a court; however, opposition parties are exploiting this negative perception.

The INC, Indian National Congress, run by Rahul Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi), is the party that brought India into nationhood. The party is the current ruling party and has been in power for years. However, due to highly public corruption trials, the government is viewed as inept and corrupt. The party is enormously unpopular at the moment and will lose a majority of seats in the upcoming elections. Its candidate for Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi, is not very popular and is viewed as the continuation of a corrupt, ineffective dynasty. The INC aims to win its seats this year by appealing to minorities and the poor.

The AAP, Aap Aadmi Party (Every Man Party), is a newcomer. Created only a couple years ago, the AAP is focused primarily on anti-corruption. Its leader and founder, Arvind Kejriwal, won an upset victory and became the chief minister (governor) of the state of Delhi.

However, unable to inspire the change he

had had promised to enact once in office, he resigned and is now campaigning for prime minister. His party is viewed as an up-and-coming party and has a large following.

Modi’s Policies

As is evident from the polling data, Indians are predicted to vote Modi into office by a large margin. This is partially due to the disillusionment normal Indians have with the current ruling party and status quo. However, a large portion of this lead can be attributed to Modi and the BJP’s policies, which are immensely popular.

The BJP is more insistent than other parties on maintaining India’s position of power in the region, especially with respect to Pakistan and China. High tensions between all three nations have reached boiling points in recent years, resulting in some skirmishes and heated dialogue from all sides. Modi’s government would be more likely to step up the resistance to Pakistani incursions and attacks.

Moreover, stepping up to the ever-looming Chinese military juggernaut will be high on Modi’s agenda if he is elected; this has been the BJP party line for years.

As expected, Modi stands by the two

issues that have distinguished BJP foreign policy in the past. He praised Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s (former BJP prime minister) decision to conduct an explicitly military nuclear test in 1998, but also lauded Vajpayee’s public declaration of a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, striking a balance between strength and peace. This support of using nuclear weapons as a deterrent can have disastrous consequences, especially if used in dealings with Pakistan, which also has nuclear weapons.

Pakistan’s weapons are not as developed as India’s as they do not have the same range or power. In addition, in sheer numbers, Pakistan cannot match Indian nuclear armaments. This inadequacy on Pakistan’s part naturally leads to insecurities. Notching up nuclear tensions can cause a flare up of those insecurities and cause widespread nuclear proliferation

by Pakistan, a nation not known for its stability. However, that is Modi’s aim: to push Pakistan’s buttons and scare it.

A separate statement by Modi in December 2012 reinforces the expected tough message on Pakistan: he rejected any kind of compromise on the long-standing dispute over the coastal border in Sir Creek, where Modi’s state of Gujarat borders Pakistan. This also suggests that he will be tough on Chinese

Polling Data

The NDA, the alliance of parties helmed by the BJP, is predicted to claim a large majority of the upcoming seats in the Lok Sabha (Indian Congress).

This graph shows just how large of a majority the NDA is predicted to win.

May 2014

17

International border intrusions, toughening up Indian claims and trying to maintain the map that China has been desperate to change for years. The most important message in Modi’s October speech was the centrality of economics in his thinking about foreign policy. Modi is exhorting India to increase exports, especially in the defense, IT, and service sectors. Creating an open and free market, without the traditional red tape that has defined India, will do a world of good in attracting foreign investment, something that India needs for renewed economic growth. However, fostering new industries could also usher in a new age of prosperity. For example, a recent address by Modi stated his aim to turn the dangers of global climate change into a business opportunity for India’s entrepreneurs.

Finally, foreign policy under a Modi regime would completely change India’s use of “soft power”. Modi loves showcasing India’s talented migrant labor. He frequently cites doctors, nurses, teachers, and India’s innovation as the heart of its “soft power.” Using that soft power is tricky; however, with tens of millions of Indians living abroad, it can be enormously powerful as a tool for influencing policy decisions in other nations to favor India.

Registered Voters

by Country = 64 million voters

lence that left a thousand dead, Nahendra Modi was banned from traveling to the United States and diplomatic engagement with the state of Gujarat was cut off. Recently, the United Kingdom has rescinded its previous bans on Nadendra Modi. One can expect Washington to do the same in the upcoming months, granting Modi a visa to presumably avoid the prospect of banning a major world leader from traveling to the United States. Expect the United States to try to cool ties with India immediately should India elect Modi, a reflection of the increased strategic importance being placed on the region. With a Democrat, and a liberal one, occupying the White House for the near future, how will the United States deal with a conservative Hindu-nationalist Indian leader? One can expect no more state dinners being held for Nahendra Modi like the one held for his predecessor, Monmohan Singh.

Surprisingly, we can expect that Indian ties with Israel will improve dramatically. Even though an INC government initially established ties to the country, a BJP government from 1999 to 2004 made the ties between the two nations stronger. Traditionally, Indian politicians – wary of alienating Muslim voters – have resisted being seen as close to Tel Aviv and have avoided visiting Israel or even hosting Israeli leaders. However, Modi is unabashed in supporting Israel and is not averse to alienating potential voters as a result. A relationship with Israel would mean closer defense ties and a united force against common foes in the Middle East. Also a working relationship

Global Significance What would be the terms of engagement with a prime minister long given the cold shoulder by the West for his alleged role in the bloody sectarian violence that engulfed Gujarat in 2002? After the vio-

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International

Candidates for Prime Minister

Narendra Modi

Rahul Gandhi

Arvind Kejriwal A: www.hdwallshub.com B: http://modibharosa.com C: http://indiawires.com/

with Israel would allow for closer trade ties and increased economic expansion in the country. Modi may even be the first Prime Minister to visit the Jewish state.

This significantly stronger tie between the two nations may allow for Washington to back off the tense region.

What most people do not know is that India is a long-time supporter of Russia. India’s largest arms supplier is Russia, and Russia’s largest defense partner is India. (Many Sukhoi fighters are even produced in India.) This is due to the long relationship the nations share, a relationship that stretches back into the Cold War, when India sided with the USSR to counter American support for Pakistan. This relationship will only strengthen in the future as the United States continues to support Pakistan.

This is supported by India’s action, more like non-action, in response to the current situation in Ukraine. Shiv Shankar Menon, India’s national security adviser, recently said of Ukraine, “We hope that whatever internal issues there are within Ukraine are settled peacefully...there are legitimate Russian and other interests involved.” Vladimir Putin has explicitly thanked India for its support.

opment. Loosening economic red tape will encourage foreign investment and create the jobs to employ India’s growing young population. The increased infrastructure spending will allow for more business opportunities and again more jobs. Developments in foreign policy

935,000 number of polling stations set up for election

1.2 maximum number of miles voters have to travel to reach a polling station

$5 billion

Conclusion Overall, the upcoming elections are a lock for the BJP and Modi. Overwhelming support will result in important changes to India’s political and economic devel-

will include a strengthened relationship with Russia and other allies. It will also include strong-arming neighbors such as Pakistan and China. The United States should be prepared for the reemergence of India as a world power. HMR

total cost of election May 2014

19

International

TERROR ON THE RISE

BOKO HARAM’S CRUEL TACTICS

Celestine Samaroo

S

ince 2002, Boko Haram has instigated rebellion and disruption within Nigeria through a series of civilian attacks, affecting not only the general population but also the economy and the reach of the government’s control. As a militaristic terrorist organization, Boko Haram wants to overthrow Nigeria’s current government and instate a new government, which abides by sharia law.

Similar to the United States, Nigeria is a democratic republic. However, the

country’s military has undermined Nigerian democracy several times in the past by forcibly seizing power in coup d’états.

Due to the weak state of its government, Nigeria has experienced economic instability and is currently under-producing manufactured goods. Nigeria has also experienced many decades of political instability. Because of this, Boko Haram has been able to gain more power in recent years. It aspires to destroy democracy within Nigeria and instate sharia law,

2009 May: Boko Haram militants clash with military personnel as they raid government buildings and police stations throughout northern Nigeria. As Boko Haram’s first large scale attack, the uprising leaves over 1,000 dead.

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which would eradicate the equality and suffrage that Nigerian women currently enjoy.

Boko Haram in the local Nigerian language means “Western education is sin.” The group is trying to prevent the spread of Western education and influence through violent attacks against local school groups. On April 17th, teenage girls were kidnapped from a state school in Lagos, the capital and heart of Nigeria. About 60 vehicles arrived on school

Timeline from www.bbc.com/news

International property in the early hours of the morning. According to the New York Times, members of Boko Haram disguised themselves in stolen army uniforms and tricked administrators so that they could gain entry into the school. During the process, they also attacked and set fire to the nearby village and shot a policeman.

The only reason students were at school overnight was because they were taking their final exams. The kidnapped girls are now to become sex slaves and cooks if they are not rescued in time. According to CNN, Boko Haram has a habit for kidnapping young women, as they “abducted dozens of Christian women” last November. Boko Haram is targeting young innocent girls, and this is heartbreaking for the people of Nigeria. The young girls from the most recent abduction were carted into trucks, and only a few were able to escape by jumping out onto the road.

There were very few security measures taken to prevent the abduction of the students. For example, the government should have ensured students’ safety by stationing more police officers outside the school. Fortunately, some girls have managed to escape from the compound where Boko Haram held them captive.

Because Boko Haram is treating the students as slaves, they have been forced to cook and clean for their captors. Some seized an opportunity to escape when they were sent out of the compound to find leaves for washing dishes. Yet despite the few escapes, 52 parents still reported their daughters missing from home.

Government officials are doing whatever they can to locate and rescue them, but the international effort to save the girls has been limited.

On April 14th, Boko Haram bombed a local bus station located in Abuja, thereby killing 75 people and injuring 100 others. This is just another exam-

“Government officials are doing whatever they can to locate and rescue them, but the international effort to save the girls has been limited.” ple of how Boko Haram has been amping up its efforts and now poses a serious threat to Nigeria. Apart from young girls, Boko Haram is also targeting religious and political officials in Nigeria.

In August 2011, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle in the entrance of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria, killing 21 people and injuring 76 more. Because politicians and religious leaders hold the power in Nigeria, Boko Haram is trying to undermine their authority in order to instill their own cultural values within Nigerian society.

Boko Haram has also kidnapped and made threats against Westerners. Last year, a French family of seven was kidnapped. The terrorists wanted members of Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon to be released and used the tourists as leverage in order to get the French government to agree to its demands. The government acted rationally and was able to save the French family by reasoning with Boko Haram. Although this method was successful, they could have obtained the French family through military force instead.

The Nigerian government is losing in the battle against Boko Haram, because the terrorists are gaining more power and attention from the public due to their violence.

The elusive leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, generally uses many aliases and is very hard to track down.

As such, the United States has placed a $7,000,000 bounty on his head and has

January: Boko Haram kills 185 in a single day with coordinated bombing and gun attacks across Kano.

2012

February: Boko Haram kidnaps a French family of seven and holds them for two months in neighboring Cameroon.

2013

July: Boko Haram’s first attack on a Mosque kills five after a suicide bomber detonates himself.

provided technology and financial support to help combat Boko Haram. Nigeria is essential to the United States due to its high production of oil. However, Shakeu has stated that he plans on attacking the United States and Europe. “Our strength and firepower is bigger than that of Nigeria. Nigeria is no longer a big deal to us, as far as we are concerned. We will now comfortably confront the United States of America,” he said.

Boko Haram has begun to affect Nigeria’s economy in negative ways, and the only way to solve this problem is to put an end to or reduce the power that Boko Haram wields. Executing Shekau would be almost impossible, because he is very hard to locate. Also, the execution of the leader of Boko Haram could inspire a revolt by other Boko Haram members.

However, the Nigerian government must tak action against Boko Haram, because it has already carried out mass destruction and abductions of Nigerian people.

The government must reduce Boko Haram’s power by implementing new laws to restrict its power and enforcing these laws with military force.

Boko Haram is trying to prevent Western culture from influencing Africa and is determined to make Nigeria an Islamist state that follows sharia law. To meet its ends, Boko Haram tries to control people through violence and intimidation. Therefore, the only way to salvage the economy and save innocent lives is to eradicate Boko Haram or at least reduce its power over civilians. HMR

April: Boko Haram kidnaps more than 200 teenage female students by raiding a state school in Lagos.

2014

May: Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau releases a video claiming that kidnapped women and children will be treated as “slaves.”

May 2014

www.global-gateways.com

May: Shekau releases a video stating that he will “sell” the teenage hostages.

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International

OUTBREAK IN GUINEA: WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HASN’T DONE TO COMBAT THE EBOLA VIRUS

Philip Jordache

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eginning in March, an outbreak of Ebola virus took hold in the West African country of Guinea. This outbreak has occurred as a result of the Guinean government’s negligence regarding taking care of its people and prioritization of foreign investment in the country instead. The virus, consisting of a hemorrhagic fever that could lead to organ failure and internal bleeding, has seen several outbreaks over the past few decades, the first being in 1976 in Zaire (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo). The disease can have anywhere from a 25% to 90% fatality rate. Ebola is spread through skin-to-skin contact and contact with bodily fluids. Although the original source of the virus responsible for the outbreak is not certain, many doctors and researchers suspect several species of fruit bats living in the West African countries to be the cause.

These bats are known for not suffering from the virus even when they carry it, and they are a delicacy in several West African countries. Thus, people can contract the

disease by eating seemingly healthy bats.

Patients suffering from Ebola are treated in makeshift isolation wards run

by Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian aid organization.

These patients are cut off from the outside world; the only non-patients they see are volunteer medical personnel from Doctors Without Borders, who are completely clad in protective layers on every inch of their bodies. This is to take every possible precaution, for in previous outbreaks, a significant proportion of fatalities from the virus were made-up by treatment personnel. While the organization has made some progress in containing the disease by slowing the rate of its spread, the death toll continues to rise. The current state of the outbreak only goes to show just how poor healthcare is in Guinea and other West African countries. Many doctors were not able to identify the disease in the weeks leading up to the outbreak, a clear sign of an ailing healthcare system. Guinea is one of the poorest nations in the world, with

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55.2% of its population living in poverty and 64% of the total population living in rural areas as of 2012, and the country’s healthcare system certainly reflects this.

Only 4.9% of Guinea’s GDP value is spent on healthcare, and 88.7% of this amount is on account of private spending. Only 1.8% of the total amount of Guinea’s government spending accounts for healthcare as of 2010, one of the lowest values of any west African country. To put this into perspective, as of 2010, 22.4% of total United States government spending was spent on healthcare, and 10-20% of total spending by governments of most developed countries accounts for healthcare. Even Guinea’s neighbors Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Senegal, have amounts of government healthcare spending that make up 11.1%, 6.4%, and 11.6% of total government spending, respectively.

Guinea has substantial reserves of various precious materials and is the world’s top producer of bauxite, an ore crucial for the production of aluminum.

International

“In its negligence, the Guinean government has endangered the lives of hundreds of its people, as well as dozens more from neighboring countries.”

Guinea depends on the mining of precious metals (mostly by foreign mining companies) to attract investors. Over the past few years, however, investors have begun to lose interest, largely due to rising costs. As a result, Guinea’s government made several reforms to the mining sector. These included a tax cut on bauxite from 0.55% of aluminum’s international market price to just 0.15%. In addition, mining profit taxes were cut from 35% to 30%. The Guinean government claimed that these measures were taken to improve the climate for investors in Guinea; meanwhile, the majority of the country still suffers from desperate poverty and a lack of access to quality healthcare, making it more susceptible to an outbreak.

Of course, foreign investment does benefit a country in that it is provided with assets such as technology, quality product design, and brand-name products; however, these assets are virtually inaccessible to the very same people that make up the country’s majority: the 55.2% that live below the poverty line.

Rather, the tax cuts passed by the Guinean government benefit the country’s investors and the foreign mining companies in that it is now cheaper, and thus more profitable, for them to invest in and conduct business in Guinea. Finally, the tax cuts benefit the upper class in Guinea, a very small proportion of the population.

Thus, the Guinean government is essentially prioritizing foreign investment over the wellbeing of its people, relying on international organizations to take care of their people in the event of an emergency such as the current outbreak. All the Guinean government has managed to do for its people has been to deliver announcements on state radio and television that advocate the continual washing of hands and the general evasion of physical contact with sick people, as well as ban the consumption of “bat soup,” as bats are indeed suspected of being the carriers of Ebola. These are very rudimentary measures that can be thought of by simply using one’s common sense, and many Guineans are going even

further, bleaching their children once they arrive home from school, reducing the amount of physical contact when greeting someone, etc. In its negligence, the Guinean government has endangered the lives of hundreds of its people, as well as dozens more from neighboring countries, with the death toll of the disease continuing to rise.

The virus has spread from Guinea into neighboring Liberia, with several suspected cases in Sierra Leone as well. These countries normally have very free-flowing borders, making it quite easy to spread a contagious disease from one of the countries to another. However, in light of recent events, border security in countries neighboring Guinea has increased, with Senegal closing its land border with Guinea and the tightening of border security in Sierra Leone, Mali, and Liberia. Even countries farther away from the outbreak are on high

alert: France has requested its medical facilities be particularly vigilant with regards to spotting patients with symptoms of Ebola, and even in the United States, roughly 20 airports have stationed specialized medical personnel to be ready to respond to a scenario of encountering the virus.

Thus, the irresponsibility of the Guinean government has endangered the wellbeing of thousands in both Guinea and neighboring countries and has caused even more removed countries to be on high alert.

The Guinean government must take more responsibility for ensuring the well-being of its people by increasing its spending on health care, and it must loosen its grip on foreign investment as a priority. Only in this way will it be able to have a good enough healthcare system to prevent outwbreaks such as this from occurring. HMR

Major Ebola Outbreaks: Confirmed Cases and Years

May 2014

23

International

I L E ISRA N A I N I T S E L PA T C I L CONF THE SETTLEMENT ISSUE REVISITED Olivia Silberstein www.thirdage.com

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he Arab-Israeli conflict has its origins long before the foundation of the modern State of Israel. Even before the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, there were tensions between the Zionist Jews living in Palestine and the Arabs and other groups within the region. At the end of World War I, the area was assigned to Great Britain according to a League of Nations Mandate, which administered and controlled the area until the Mandate expired in 1948. Though the United Nations had drawn up a complex – and arguably completely unworkable–compromise that partitioned the area to create two states, conflict broke out immediately as five neighboring Arab nations rejected the partition and attacked the fledgling Israeli nation. Unfortunately, there is still an ongoing conflict in the region that shows little sign of ending. The United States, however, under Secretary of State John Kerry, recently launched yet another peace

initiative to try to stop the bloodshed and hardship that this enduring conflict causes to both sides. Any lasting peace will require compromise by both sides. The Palestinians have to agree to recognize Israel as a nation and distance themselves from groups like Hamas that favor terrorism as

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John Kerry would attempt to revive negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians with the goal of finding a speedy resolution for many of the outstanding disagreements between the two sides. The peace process itself formally launched at the end of July 2013, and by December of last year, Ker-

“Israel, for its part, has to be prepared to curtail new settlement activity and possibly even give up some of its existing settlements in the West Bank in exchange for peace.” a way of achieving their goals. Israel, for its part, has to be prepared to curtail new settlement activity and possibly even give up some of its existing settlements on the West Bank in exchange for peace.

The current peace initiative began in March 2013 with President Obama’s visit to Israel. While there, he announced that

ry felt confident enough to announce that a historic peace deal was in the making.

Instead, the two sides have rapidly drifted apart in 2014, with the Israelis failing to follow through on proposed releases of Palestinian prisoners, and the Palestinian Authority reconciling with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has an openly stated pol-

International icy calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. On April 24, 2014, the Israelis officially suspended negotiations, raising the question of whether the Kerry initiative will ever achieve its goals.

The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians has its origins in the wars that were fought in the second half of the last century. Israel emerged from the 1948 war as an independent state, having defeated the Arab coalition that attempted to destroy the new nation. Encouraged by the invading Arab states, many Palestinians had left what was then Israel, settling in neighboring nations and in the West Bank territory, which became part of Jordan. The West Bank was later taken over by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. In that conflict, Israel was threatened with invasion by Syria, Egypt and Jordan, but succeeded in defeating all three nations in decisive military campaigns. In recent years, the major peace initiatives in the region have focused on a two-state solution that would give the Palestinians an independent state comprised of the West Bank and Gaza. Most moderate Israelis agree that an independent Palestinian state offers the best opportunity for peace in the region, but many Israelis, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, take the position that there can be no true peace until

the Palestinians, at a minimum, recognize Israel’s right to exist.

One of the biggest impediments preventing peace currently is the approximately 360,000 Israeli settlers who currently live on the West Bank. From a Palestinian point of view, the Israeli settlers are part of an occupying power in a territory that they continue to see as their rightful homeland.

From the Israeli perspective, some of the settlers believe that the West Bank should be absorbed into the Israeli state because it was historically part of Israel. Many of the settlers tend to be deeply religious, and they base their geopolitical arguments on their religious writings - i.e., the Torah - and they view all of biblical Israel as a gift from God in his covenant with the Jewish people. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu distances himself from the extreme religious position and believes that Israel has little room to compromise on its borders because of fundamental issues of national security. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, many of the parties he is negotiating with have proved unreliable in the past. While it is easy to suggest that Israel offers land in exchange for settlements, Netanyahu is reluctant to compromise Israel’s border security in exchange for simply a promise of peace. It is also important to note that Israel’s the trau-

http://smpalestine.files.wordpress.com

May 2014

matic effort to forcibly remove settlers and turn over settlements in Gaza was very hard to achieve and yielded little reciprocity.

Despite the historical, religious, political and security concerns, it is vital that Israel be willing to address the settlement issue if cutting back on further settlement activity and attempts to reach some sort of compromise on the issue of the settlements that can lead to the prospect of peace.

Without movement on the issue of settlements, it may be unlikely that the Palestinians will ever be satisfied by any agreement that the United States, the United Nations, or the Israelis and Palestinians themselves could ever broker. Many may argue that Israel has a moral right to its settlements on the West Bank, especially given the long history of hostility at hands of Israel’s Arab neighbors, but the prospect of peace is worth making such a sacrifice. Israel would be taking a risk, but it would show the rest of the world how much Israel wants peace and give Israel the opportunity to find out whether the Palestinians are willing to negotiate in earnest. One im-portant caveat to remember: the Palestinians and Israel’s aggressor neighbors need to recognize Israel’s right to exist, otherwise Israel has no hope for a lasting peace and therefore no motive to compromise. HMR

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International

The Underground World of Modern Slavery A Look into South Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Red Light Districts Daniel Lee

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or centuries, humans have espoused human rights and dignity, and yet too often they commit terrible acts against each other. Though the presence of slavery and forced labor has waned from the majority of nations, remnants of human exploitation continue to linger in less developed countries mostly located in Southeast Asia.

Trafficking victims are entirely confined by offenders for financial, psychological, or physical reasons and are subject to inhuman living conditions and servitude.

The victim is confiscated of all rights, and he or she is exploited to the ends of being a mere object of trade, a tool for profit. Trafficking is an abuse of power over another, keeping victims in a position of weakness through the lowest forms of coercion, deception, and extortion.

One grave consequence that arises from trafficking is that almost all of those kidnaped or sold into trafficking networks have disappeared, enabling traffickers to gain even fuller control over their victims and making it harder for authorities to rescue them. The influence that traffickers monopolize over their victims is severe, as it often involves threats and even the forced movement of the victims to an entirely different country, countries in Europe in particular. At this point, victims are inevitably helpless, psychologically disoriented, and

completely unfamiliar and isolated in their new environments and surroundings, left only to further manipulation by trafficking dealers.

This modernized slave industry still leaves a second urgent problem at hand: the future of trafficking victims. According to the Minnesota University Human Rights Library, after experiences of brutal servitude and sexual-abuse, many victims acquire recurring sicknesses and/or disorders ranging from psychological disorders such as PTSD to fatal physical illnesses such as HIV and AIDS. In November of 2011, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking with the purpose of helping trafficking victims to rehabilitate from their traumatic experiences.

However, this new fund has not shown the slightest sign of success, lacking significant monetary and material support from the U.N since 2011, and indicating how political leaders working to end the trafficking industry trivialize these consequences.

Human trafficking, the illegal trade of humans often used for bonded labor, organ extraction, and sexual slavery, has grown immensely in South East Asia in the past decade. From just 2012 to 2013 alone, the number of people trafficked has grown from approximately 1.1 million people to 1.4 million, according to the United Na-

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tions Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT).

This explosion in the amount of human trafficking has been in large part due to the immense poverty of Southeast Asia. Traffickers exploit parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desperate circumstances by giving economic incentives and financial contracts to parents to sell their children into sex-slavery or other exploitative forms of labor. Those burdened by extreme poverty and lack of education often feel they have no choice but to sell their children to traffickers since they are unable to feed their families. With the poverty rate in Southeast Asia at 21%, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Southeast Asia experiences one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the world.

Like any other criminal activity, trafficking remains the third most widespread crime globally due to its immense profitability. The United Nations Office of Drug and Crimes (UNODC) reports that as of 2013, trafficking is a $2.8 billion industry and each trafficker makes an average profit of $67,200 from one victim. Additionally, the technique of debt bondage has become popularized, where after traffickers give parents cash in exchange for their children, they have no choice but to relinquish their parental rights.

In light of the increasing number of

International trafficking incidents in South East Asia, major organizations and agencies such as the United Nations have addressed the issue by promoting the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. Created in March 2007, the UNGIFT seeks to raise global awareness of trafficking and to support federal efforts to eradicate it. The U.N. approaches trafficking through providing sufficient protection and shelter to victims and through more vigorously assisting in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking criminals. The UNGIFT program has pursued such goals by continuing to collaborate with and to provide funding for the governments of countries where trafficking is most prevalent.

Despite such efforts, the many minor factors that these international groups leave unaccounted for have led to the sharp increase in number of reported trafficking and exploitation incidents in Southeast Asia in 2013. Yet, statistics from the UNGIFT emphasize that for every 850 people trafficked or kidnapped, only one person is been convicted. Oddly, according to the UNODC, 40% of the countries where trafficking is most severe have not convicted even one person on trafficking charges, and only about 9000 suspects globally are apprehended for trafficking annually. As a result, the failure of the U.N’s attempts are rooted in one major reason, that local authorities in Southeast Asia either continue to ignore trafficking or that they simply do

not have the necessary resources to combat it. Even with the United Nations’ offering to fund certain anti-trafficking effors in countries where trafficking is wide spread, these countries have responded negatively and have refused such help. Additionally, countries where trafficking cases are suspected to be quite high in number, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and Madagascar, have declined to even release trafficking statistics, implying that global trafficking statistics are actually much higher than reported. It is the lack of cooperation that the U.N. receives from the nations it attempts to support that hinders prevention of further trafficking.

We can only come to the conclusion that the UNGIFT program and other organizations’ methods in resolving the trafficking issue are in need of heavier reform and that such programs must work more diversely by reaching out to fund and coordinate with nations and agencies centered in the heart of Southeast Asian trafficking.

These groups should focus on strengthening each national government’s influence and control in these areas. Specifically, these international organizations ought to focus on two main solutions. First, organizations such as the U.N. must ensure that each country’s police and military forces have the necessary resources to combat human-trafficking cartels. Thus local authorities would be provided the necessary tools to recognize the severity of trafficking and

to combat its perpetrators. Thus, governments would be better able to efficiently and successfully protect residents of relatively poor neighborhoods from being coerced, threatened, or exploited into the trafficking trade.

The second solution is to reform and strengthen weak government bureaucracies through eliminating corruption and helping to identify the incompetent officials who have kept efforts against trafficking dormant for the past century. In turn, trafficking criminals will find it much harder to manipulate and to bribe government officials, and as such governments will be able to more effectively prosecute human traffickers and to combat their illegal activities.

As even many federal departments in countries where poverty levels are high are reluctant to participate in the global efforts to reduce trafficking, major organizations such as the U.N. should also prioritize working at the local level, making sure that its funds are actually being used to shelter trafficking victims and to prosecute members of the trafficking industry. Where necessary, the U.N. should aggressively urge strong anti-trafficking legislations and reformations.

All nations have the moral obligation to both prevent further cases of trafficking and to mitigate the effects of previous ones.

When nations fail to effectively fight human traffickers and provide necessary services to trafficking victims, nations ultimately bring great suffering upon their own citizens. HMR

“40 percent of the countries in which trafficking is most severe have not convicted even one person on trafficking charges.” candidkerry.files.wordpress.com

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International

Elections in Afghanistan High Hopes and Strong Potential for a Democratic Future Alessandro van den Brink

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fghanistan has almost never had a stable government during the modern era of history. Originally an empire modeled in a similar fashion to many other Middle Eastern Islamic powers, the Afghan Empire finally cracked into a republic after the fall of the monarchy in the middle of the 19th century, but the country was never able to function well as a democracy as two major factions divided Afghanistan. With the rise of insurgent groups such as the Mujahideen and eventually the Taliban, Russia decided to intervene and keep the People’s Democratic Party in power, but somewhat failed in what has been called the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam War.” The Taliban grabbed power back in 1996, but after a 2001 initiative by the US to dispel the Taliban, Hamid Karzai was named president, leading to what many could describe as a totalitarian regime with very little democracy and plenty of dissent among citizens. Karzai has made it seem like he would never relinquish his power, but if the elections currently underway go as planned, it will essentially be the first instance of democratically transferred power in Afghanistan’s history, a giant indicator of Afghanistan’s rising status as a representative global nation. The sta-

bility of an entire country rests in this transition of power, but Afghanistan has already made it clear to the rest of the world that it intends to clean up its politics and join the sphere of powerful liberal democracies across the globe.

However, this year’s elections were not the first opportunity for this monumental achievement. Back in the 2009 elections in Afghanistan, it appeared as though Karzai would finally have to step down from the presidency as competition from strong candidates such as former Foreign Minister and leader of the National Coalition of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah. Due to lack of security across voting centers and political demonstration points, violence erupted throughout the country in the months leading to the election and on Election Day itself, only to be censored by the Karzai government in an effort to encourage voter turnout in support of Karzai.

Another major flaw of the 2009 elections was severe voting fraud that resulted in thousands of voting cards being sold to just about anybody who wanted to buy them. The cards were completely authentic and contained the information of genuine civilians, meaning that a supporter of any candidate could easily buy

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several hundred of these cards and then stuff the ballot boxes accordingly. In addition to this, the inked finger marker that the Independent Election Commission (IEC) applied to all those who had voted in an effort to prevent them from voting twice was quite removable, essentially allowing citizens to gain entry into voting centers as many times as they liked. Finally, armed coercion from various warlords across the state and Taliban efforts at boycotting the election caused chaos and widespread fraud that seemed to demand a runoff election. Although a runoff was planned for November 7, 2009, Abdullah dropped out on his own accord after asking the top three officials of the Karzai-run IEC to be dismissed to no avail, thus conceding the election to Karzai.

Going back to 2014, many of the traces of flawed democracy that marred the 2009 elections have become points of emphasis for the new and improved IEC that is no longer resting in Karzai’s back pocket. One of the highly anticipated moments leading up to this year’s election was Karzai’s reaction to finally having to surrender his presidency since his two 5-year terms and change expired this year.

Speculation about Karzai delaying or cancel-

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“The turnout yield in Afghanistan will be incredibly similar to that of a Western power such as even the United States. Voting numbers have been so high in some regions of Afghanistan that those respective ballot centers ran out of ballot paper.” ling the election in order to retain power was remarkably abundant, but in a shocking move that foresees Afghanistan’s future ease into democracy, Karzai announced that regardless of the victor, he would throw his backing behind the next president of Afghanistan.

While fraud and ballot stuffing was inherently to be expected, regardless of the candidates, the IEC made sure early in the running to eliminate 16 potential candidates whom they deemed culpable to corruption or would simply act as outliers. After three more candidates dropped out on their own accord, eight have remained to this point with only three jumping out as clear possibilities: the aforementioned Abdullah and the independents Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank economist whose efforts to fix Afghanistan’s economy between 2002 and 2004 contained hints of left wing tactics, and Zalmai Rassoul, one of the few Pashtun (an Afghan ethnicity) candidates in the whole pool. The emergence of these three favorites makes the election process seem a lot more similar to the classic Western model that Americans and Europeans have adopted for centuries by now. The IEC has also explicitly stated that if no candidate wins at least 50% of the vote, which they almost certainly will not as Abdullah has yet to cross the 45% line with more than half the votes already counted, a runoff election will take place, featuring the two frontrunners at the moment, Abdullah and Ghani. Along with that possibility, votes that have been linked to corrupt measures will be discredited by the IEC in an effort to limit the effects of fraud on the overall outcome of the election. This highly functioning system proves that the IEC plans on giving Afghan citizens the best choice in their final decision, and thus the current elections can almost be seen as a preliminary round for the final runoff election.

In terms of physical security, the IEC has enlisted the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to provide protection for voters for the first time in the nation’s history, especially with the risk of Taliban intervention lurking consistently. There have already been instances of attacks on civilians and institutions, most notably a strike by the Taliban on the IEC’s headquarters on the eastern edge of Kabul on March 29.

On Election Day itself, April 5, police were able to stop many suicide bombers, many working in the name of the Taliban, allowing citizens to

vote peacefully, or bouncing back from strikes in time to allow them to cast their votes. Many regions of the country that had almost no voter turnout in the 2009 elections due to heavy violence have already spawned emphatic results and high voter turnout. Afghanistan has also profited from help from neighboring nations, such as Pakistan, who tightened security on its border in an effort to prevent cross-national terrorist groups from inhibiting the election.

One of the main reasons for the overwhelming success in the Afghan elections stems from the rising nationalism throughout the country as citizens feel that for the first time in their nation’s history, the power to change Afghanistan is in their hands. Of the 12 million registered voters in Afghanistan, approximately 7.5 million have already been counted, meaning that with the subtraction of illegal and fraudulent votes, the turnout yield in Afghanistan will be incredibly similar to that of a western power such as even the United States.

Voting numbers have been so high in some regions of Afghanistan that those respective ballot centers ran out of ballot paper and the IEC had to rush to open new polling places across the country on Election Day itself.

Another extension of this nationalism has been manifested by the media. While the Afghan news has been known to sensationalize much of the coverage of political events in the recent past, particularly the 2009 elections, many news outlets this year have felt a national duty in informing their audiences

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in order to make the best choice in the election. In the past, many press companies have seemed like extensions of propaganda from powerful and affluent political figures in Afghanistan, but this year much of the former criticism propelled by these outlets has been subdued at the very least. What the media recognizes is that a peaceful transition in power will yield more freedom of expression and press, thereby prying away from the former totalitarian aspects of Afghanistan. One of the most crucial differences between this year and 2009 was the extended coverage of political debates, a facet that was practically absent five years ago. Claiming that the media was out to get him, Karzai refused to partake in any featured political debates, but this year, the media has placed national coverage on civil debates between the eight major candidates, allowing civilians to understand their views better.

This year’s elections have truly served as an indicator of Afghanistan’s willingness to become a full-blown democracy. While it would be irrational to say that all crisis in Afghanistan has been averted, the road to stability in one of the Middle East’s most erratic countries is well on its way. The nationalism currently sweeping through Afghanistan as a direct product of these elections is an incredibly positive sign of cohesion in a state known for general disorder. For a country with this little experience with democracy, these presidential elections have been a huge feat and should be commended by the global community as such. HMR

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Features

Alexander Karpf

Redefining the Separation of Church and State

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nnie Laurie Gaylor is president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, an organization that attempts to instill the separation of church and state through lawsuits and newsletters.

At the end of August, Gaylor sued the IRS after she was given tax breaks on her housing allowance. Because the IRS perceived her as a spiritual leader, she received these tax breaks like all other spiritual leaders, such as priests and rabbis. Gaylor denies these allegations and has gone to court to prove the IRS wrong.

Gaylor’s actions against the benefits given to her by the IRS and in protection of the ideals and principles she believes were valiant and honorable; yet they are perceived as an attack on corruption. On the other hand, FFRF is actually one end of the spectrum of a zealous liberal attitude toward religious influence in government, the other end of which being populated by republicans entrenched in religious fandom in order to garner support from extremists within the party. A general consensus has been reached by the more extreme concluding that separation of church and

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state is a nonexistent principle and that American schools are miseducating their students on the issue.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann accurately states that the phrase, “separation of church and state,” does not appear in either the original Constitution or its amendments. Such an argument is greatly weakened by the numerous American judges, going back 150 years, who have interpreted that the First Amendment intends to separate the church and the state and effectively does so. Because precedent shapes our legal system, the separation of church and state is a real tenet within American law.

The much greater issue, however, is not whether this separation exists but whether it has actually been implemented; in other words, it is feared that religion has infiltrated the public sector in influence and bypassed the barriers brought up by the First Amendment. The FFRF and its radical Atheist constituents believe, through the foundation’s laundry list of lawsuits for violations of the First Amendment, that such incidents and examples of religious

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permeation occur too frequently today and undermine the principles upon which America was built.

Considering that the advocacy organization would be quick to point out every injustice it observes, its web page on filed lawsuits is an authoritative source on ongoing conflicts regarding the First Amendment. Indeed, some cover issues of a degree of significance. One lawsuit sues the IRS because churches and other Houses of God, in alleged violation of the First Amendment, are allowed not to report their revenues while other nonprofit organizations must do so.

Another complains that the IRS has repeatedly allowed churches to escape the law and electioneer, or to advocate for one candidate in a political election. A federal judge recently ruled that priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams cannot receive tax-free housing allowance.

Each of these arguments has inherent flaws. The IRS intentionally chooses not to interact with churches to ensure a distance between church and state, and requiring churches to report their revenues to the

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government directly undermines that goal.

Though electioneering is both illegal and ideally unfavorable, it certainly happens often enough so that it is unrealistic to persecute every pastor who committed the act. And tax-free housing allowance is the churches’ method to pay priests and pastors adequately without having to divert funds from humane causes.

More importantly, there is no reason for atheists to care. To broaden the claim, with the exception of priests and pastors and administrators of the church, there is no reason that anyone, including Michelle Bachmann and her Republican companions, should care. In other words, these issues are petty in that their negative consequences are few except for the violation of a principle. Atheist organizations should pride themselves upon behaving more fairly than churches and should not chase and pester them. The claimed injustices above are not catered to churches or religion specifically; they are catered to institutions and constituents of those institutions that are fundamentally different from other nonprofit organizations.

The significant issues listed above are a minority in the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s list of ongoing legal battles and past successes and failures. Most target trivial individual instances of public religion from a statue of Christ in federal land of Montana to the presence of the Ten Commandments in front of a Western Pennsylvania public school.

Another reports a City Council in California for reciting Christian prayers every week at its meetings.

Yes, these instances are of incredible triviality, and yes, FFRF has absolutely no reason to be concerned; these towns are largely Christian in religious makeup, and a passionate objector of these traditions would have the opportunity to leave the town.

I do not discuss the organization just to criticize its extreme views and actions.

Rather, the legal cases it pursues most accurately represent the condition of the conflict of religious influence in America.

The cases the FFRF points out, which are basically made into an example of the public sector’s favoring religion, best describe how

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integrated the church and state actually are.

The condition of this conflict is rather obvious. Evolution is no longer taught in schools, and no public organization, be it a governmental agency or a public school, has any denominational service. The conflict has become less and less pertinent and instead zooms in on piddling examples of religious presence among a population or of attempts by the IRS to cut churches some slack. To come to a conclusion, Thomas Jefferson has basically fulfilled his intentions of separating the church and state.

Maybe Annie Laurie Gaylor should get tax breaks on housing allowance, or maybe she shouldn’t. Regardless, Gaylor’s reason to fight it, her not being a spiritual leader, shouldn’t matter. Instead, Gaylor should simply accept the law and its minor loopholes for her own economic benefit.

This is no corruption – the government is specifically allowing her to receive tax breaks. Gaylor must take pride in her atheist nature, but accept the eradication of religion from the public sector instead of pursuing it without cause. HMR

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MY BODY, MY CHOICE 40 Years Later: Reexamining Roe v. Wade Josh Arnon

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wenty-one percent of all pregnancies in America, meaning over a million a year, are terminated by abortion.

These statistics are staggering and show the tremendous impact of this medical process on American women, as well as fetuses. Roe v. Wade is a Supreme Court decision that had its 40th anniversary last year, so why is what appears to be an outdated, arbitrary agreement between both sides virtually the legal standard on abortion today? It is so because it is still the most logical conclusion, both ethically and politically, available.

In colonial America, abortion was not permitted after “quickening,” that is after the start of fetal movements. Laws prohibiting abortion in any form became widespread in America in the second half of the 1800’s,

and preceding Roe, abortion was prohibited in 30 states and legal only under certain circumstances (such as pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, and date drug) in 20 states.

But in 1973, the Supreme Court decided to change everything.

In June 1969, Norma L. McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child. While she stayed in Dallas, Texas, her friends advised her to assert falsely that she had been raped in order to obtain a legal abortion, since the state allows abortion in cases of rape and incest. However, because there was no police report documenting the alleged rape, a legal abortion was impossible, and the unauthorized site she went to for an illegal abortion was shut down by the police.

She was eventually referred to attorneys Lin-

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da Coffee and Sarah Weddington, prompting one of the most famous and controversial cases of the last 50 years.

Using Roe v. Wade as the lead of several abortion cases under consideration, the Supreme Court deemed abortion a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, thereby subjecting all the states’ laws attempting to restrict it to the standard of strict scrutiny. The Court felt that the right to privacy, whether in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action or in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The Court attempted to solve the competing interests of the mother’s

Features health and the fetus’ “potentiality of human life.” A fetus was declared viable at “the interim point at which the fetus becomes... potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid” and this marker “is usually placed at around seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.” The Court ruled that, during the first trimester (when the fetus is not viable), when the procedure is safer than childbirth, the right of the mother to abort her fetus is given to the mother and her physician. The state may also not restrict the abortion if it can help preserve the life or health of the mother. The Court explicitly rejected a “right to life” argument because the Constitution never defines or uses “person” in a way that would be applicable to a fetus.

It is clear that Roe is only a compromise between the rights of the state and the rights of the individual. Constitutionally, it is difficult to argue that the Court was partial to the individual. However, if a fetus is not a “person” before birth and the Court explicitly rejected the fetal “right to life” argument, then why would the state have power over the mother’s body regarding “the potentiality of human life?” The answer is that since the Court did not know when a fetus becomes a person, the legal reasoning was convoluted and the extent of power the Court gave each party was arbitrary. The court opinion for the case blatantly states, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judicia-

ry, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate.”

Since we do not know when a fetus becomes human before birth, if childbirth would put the mother’s life in danger, we should allow the mother to undergo an abortion since we know that the mother is, in fact, human while we are not sure about the status of the fetus. A pro-life philosophy that allows abortion in the cases of rape or incest is extremely inconsistent; rape or incest appears to make abortion permissible only because the pregnancy is the result of an inappropriate sexual relation, so those particular circumstances should not change the conviction that a fetus is a person and therefore has a right to life except when the life of the fetus comes into conflict with the life of the mother. Allowing abortion only in cases of rape or incest thus undermines the entire pro-life argument. A perceived absolute right of privacy to do whatever one wants with his or her body proves to be problematic when one thinks of actions such as unrestricted suicide, since there is a consensus that the right to life is more important than the right to privacy.

The legality of abortion has remained largely the same after Roe; the only significant federal change to that decision was Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992., when the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state regulations were challenged and largely upheld. As a standard, the Court proclaimed that any regulation that imposes a “substantial obstacle” preventing a woman from obtaining a legal abortion is an “undue

burden” that violates the woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Pennsylvania’s regulations stated that doctors were required to inform women about detriments to health in abortion procedures and there would be a 24-hour waiting period after the information would be given before women could consent to the medical procedure. The regulations mandated that a minor must receive informed consent from a parent or guardian except in cases of “hardship,” and all abortion clinics must report themselves to the state. The only regulation that was rejected as an “undue burden” was one that declared that except in “medical emergencies,” a wife seeking an abortion must inform her husband of her plans prior to the procedure. The regulation was considered an undue burden because husbands could potentially resort to abuse and obstruction upon learning of their spouses’ abortion plans.

The overall meaning of Roe was kept, but Parenthood changed several important details. The power of the states was increased, permitting them to regulate abortions past viability if it is to safeguard a woman’s health, though not to limit a woman’s access to abortions. The Court also ruled that with the advance of life-preserving technology, the trimester system is no longer an accurate test of viability. The definition of viability was changed to the point at which the state interest in the life of the fetus outweighs the rights of the woman and abortion may be banned entirely “except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of

Last June, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis made national headlines when she carried out an 11-hour filibuster on the Texas Statehouse floor, as she attempted to prevent the passage of a state abortion law that would have implemented some of the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions. Despite the state senator’s best efforts, the bill still passed, and women in Texas are now prohibited from seeking an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

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Features the mother,” which may be slightly before the third trimester. This statement proved to be true as the limit of viability is now considered 24 weeks instead of 28 weeks and some fetuses have survived outside the womb prior to 22 weeks of fertilization. Parenthood is consistent with the ethical and political philosophy on abortion I have outlined.

As Parenthood showed, the federal government has proved to be more conservative in the years following Roe by allowing states to pose more restrictions to abortion.

In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was ratified, prohibiting an abortion if either, regardless of viability, the entire head of a living fetus is outside the body of the mother or any part of the fetus’ trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother. Also, in 2004, George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law, which by defining “child in utero” as “a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb,” recognizes an unborn fetus as a crime victim at least for the purpose of homicide or feticide laws. However, since this act has so far has applied solely to fetal homicide laws, it has not conflicted with Roe or Parenthood.

The right of government to infringe upon bodily integrity has always been a complex, and often convoluted, subject for the Supreme Court. Following Roe in 1978, in McFall v. Shimp, the Court ruled that a person could not be forced to donate body parts like bone marrow, even if such a donation would save another person’s life.

Conversely, the Court has also protected the right of governmental entities to infringe upon bodily integrity, such as with laws prohibiting drugs and euthanasia. Abortion is a particularly complex case of bodily integrity since the mother, the fetus, and the state may all have rights to permit or restrict an abortion.

As of now, Parenthood is the only major federal change to Roe, and that ruling upheld Roe’s spirit of no government regulation of abortion until after fetal viability. Last summer, Texas Senate Bill 5 was proposed, which would, in Texas, ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that hospital-style surgical centers do, and mandate that a doctor who performs abortions has admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. We saw the tremendous national backlash and

Abortion rate by state, as of 2012. National average: 19.1 abortions per 1000 women.

1.04 million abortions took place in the year 2012.

per 1000 women

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the filibuster by Senator Wendy Davis that immediately followed the bill’s proposal.

Leading up to the 40th anniversary of Roe v.

Wade in January 2013, a majority of Americans believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. As well, approximately 70% of respondents opposed Roe being overturned, which is the highest percentage on this question since 1989.

Abortion is an extremely complex issue.

There are many ways to view it, but separating church from state, viability appears to come before the major indicators of personhood. The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the public all agree with this view. Moving the marker of personhood earlier in fertilization would be needlessly harsh to women seeking abortions, and moving the marker later would be risking terminating the fetus when it is a person. So we do not have a true definition of when personhood begins, and our abortion laws end up making an arbitrary time frame of when a fetus can be aborted that appears to be prior to personhood. But this time frame is the best indicator of when abortions should be permitted that we have. HMR

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Giving Rise to a New Cure Challenging the Ethics Against Stem Cell Research Sophie Maltby

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tem Cell Research is a highly contentious topic circulating around Washington and society. Embryonic Stem (ES) Cells originate from week old blastocysts developed from in vitro fertilized eggs. Blastocysts are essentially a ball of cells surrounded by a cell border, the development of which indicates the earliest sign of specialization. A week into development, a cell is extracted from the center of the cell; this cell is known as an ES cell. At such an early stage of development, these cells are pluripotent, meaning they can give rise to any cell type. ES cells hold the property of proliferation, meaning they can replicate many times for long periods of time. They can also regenerate to aid in the replacement of damaged

cells.

Scientists believe that Stem Cell research holds the key to unlocking cures for some the most obscure diseases known to man. Cells were first discovered

by Robert Hooke in 1965; it was not until 1998 that scientists were able to extract embryonic stem (ES) cells from a human embryo. Since then, over 80 diseases have been cured using stem cell research, diseases including eight types of Leukemia, 13 Immune System Disorders, Sickle Cell Anemia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Multiple Sclerosis.

Due to the means by which these cells are obtained, there is much debate about the morality of Stem Cell research.

Religious conservatives and abortion op-

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ponents are against such studies because they result in the destruction of embryos.

They believe that by halting the further development of these embryos, a human life is being destroyed, seeing this a crime against life and infringing on natural and unalienable rights. This argument does raise a question of what constitutes a life, and at what point the destruction of an embryo or fetus becomes the destruction of a human life form.

The fact is that week-old blastocysts are merely a cluster of cells; this does not constitute a human being, and thus they should not receive the same rights as humans. At the point of development when ES cells are extracted, the DNA is a combination of four different bases: ad-

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Features enine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.

There has been no transcription during which cells use the four bases to create amino acids and then proteins. There are no tissues, organs, or systems. If we define death as when a human heart ceases to beat, then we must define the beginning of a life as when the heart begins to beat. When there are no organs, the heart cannot beat; therefore, blastocysts are not human lives.

Some argue that, because the cells are replicating, there must be some form of life accounting for this replication; this begs the question, do you then consider the cells of someone like Henrietta Lacks to be alive? Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells were extracted from her tumor, meaning that, while the cells are cancerous, they contain the same DNA as the rest of her cells. When doctors took the cells out of her body, they continued to grow and replicate, and are still growing in the present day. Her cells are often destroyed, and no one has a problem with that, though the ethical dilemmas surrounding the specific case of HeLa cells are a completely separate issue.

Dr. Dan S. Kaufman, an associate director at the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute and an associate professor at the department of Medicine, Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation, supports ES cell research, arguing that the embryos used in the study of embryonic stem cells come from fertilized zygotes that would otherwise be destroyed. Human ES cells come from embryos created in excess by fertility clinics.

If the embryos were not donated despite individuals’ specific intentions of producing ES cells for biomedical research, they would be destroyed regardless, or not even created in the first place. In addition, Kaufman states that, by utilizing embryos that were otherwise intended for disposal for research purposes, researchers are in fact paying more respect to the potential life of that embryo.

George W. Bush vetoed a bill to provide public funding to stem cell research in 2007. Since then, not only has the issue risen to the forefront of political debate in our nation, but it has also become an issue split by partisanship. At the time, even some of the most right wing of politicians agreed with the principles of the research, politicians including Sen. John McCain and Rudolph Giulianni; in addition, one of the sponsors of this Bi-Partisan bill was a republican.

The veto of the bill encouraged sci-

entists to discover new means of stem cell research, apart from embryonic, that were deemed ethical. Much research led scientists to discover Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. These cells are produced from adult somatic cells, including skin and blood cells. While this manner of acquiring cells may seem to solve the whole issue, it does have some complications. It is far more difficult to take the specialized cells and make them pluripotent. Furthermore, whereas the process of making the cells pluripotent is very difficult, there is often a fault in the reprogramming of the cells, and the cells end up not being pluripotent. While research directed towards improving scientists’ ability to reprogram adult somatic cells into iPS cells is still being conducted, the use of ES cells is a much more viable and efficient option.

So far, scientists have been able to manipulate ES cells to become new organs, new blood vessels, and even new ligaments for those with ACL tears; it is believed that these cells also have the potential to cure some of the worst diseases we know. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the bill vetoed by Bush was brought back to the floor again and passed.

In January of 2009, the federal food and drug administration allowed the first ever human study of a medical treatment for spinal cord injury derived from human embryonic stem cells. The objective was to help people with acute spinal cord injuries. While expected to assess only the safety of the treatment, the study would also test whether or not the paralyzed volunteers could regain feeling in and control over their lower extremities.

For the many Americans with type 1 diabetes, whose insulin-making pancreatic cells have been killed off by their immune system, stem cells may be the answer. In 2008, scientists reported that they had coaxed human embryonic stem cells into becoming insulin-producing, blood sugar-regulating cells in diabetic mice. The aim is to someday do the same for people.

Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and stem cells may provide some relief. Research is underway to see if injecting the cells into the heart could help regenerate heart muscle damaged caused by, for example, a heart attack. Again, researchers have reported success in rodents.

Stem cells may also help those who suffer from Parkinson’s, a neurodegen erative disorder that can cause trem-

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1908: Stem cells first discovered 1981: First in vitro stem cell line developed 2001: Scientists clone first human embryos to obtain stem cells 2007: Research proves normal skin cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells in mice

2009: The Federal Food and Drug Administration allows the first-ever human study of a medical treatment involving the use of stem cells to be conducted

2008: Scientists create first human embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo

2010: First trial of embryonic stem cells in humans

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“What the use of ES cells has accomplished in 14 years is astonishing, and the potential it holds is unmatched.” ors, stiffness, and other movement and speech problems. Studies show that embryonic stem cells can give rise to the dopamine-making neurons that Parkinson’s patients lack. When transplanted into rodents with disorders similar to Parkinson’s, the replacement brain cells improved the animals’ motor functions.

Likewise, embryonic stem cells may come in handy against Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive and deadly disorder that degrades and kills brain cells, leading to memory loss, cognitive decline, and behavioral problems. Stem cells may give rise to new treatments or even, some say, a cure; other experts have expressed skepticism.

There is hope that stem cells could

help those with Lou Gehrig’s disease, otherwise known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The crippling disease comes with a grim prognosis: Many die within three to five years of diagnosis, as their bodies progressively damage muscle-controlling motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Scientists are exploring ways to coax stem cells into becoming motor neurons that could be transplanted into ALS patients, restoring their ability to move.

From human embryonic stem cells, researchers in Texas have created transplantable sources of lung cells in the lab for individuals suffering from Lung diseases. These lung cells could potentially be used to repair damage brought on by

a variety of pulmonary conditions or by lung trauma resulting from a car accident, bullet wound, or sports injury. Unpublished studies using these cells have shown promise for tissue repair in mice with acute lung injury.

What the use of ES cells has accomplished in 14 years is astonishing, and the potential it holds is unmatched. What once seemed like something from novels and science fiction movies has become a reality. Not pursuing this research is simply not an option. Scientists estimate that as much as one third of the entire population will be directly affected by the discoveries of the research, and the other two thirds are indirectly affected by the improvement or saving of a life. HMR

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THE FAILURES OF LEGALIZED MARIJUANA Peter Shamamian

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nce sold as an illicit drug in an extremely profitable underground business, marijuana and its legalization has recently become a seriously debated issue in the United States government. Within the past few years, the federal government and state governments have begun to seriously consider the legalization of marijuana for both recreational and medicinal usage. Despite the fact that there is a large backing for the legalization of the drug, marijuana is a highly controversial drug that can have a negatively profound impact on American society.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, marijuana has been deemed a highly illegal drug that posed serious consequences to any of its possessors both medically and legally. Congress passed scores of legislation within the past century in an attempt to prohibit people from using marijuana and to punish those who were caught with it.

As of now, two states (Washington

and Colorado) have fully legalized and decriminalized the sale of marijuana for recreational use. Even though both states have limits on the quantity of marijuana purchased per transaction and laws regarding the minimum age allowed to buy marijuana, the drug still poses serious ambiguities that could be life threatening and even put people who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use the drug at risk.

The largest issue surrounding the legal sale and consumption of marijuana is the effects on the health of the user. It is hard for researchers to study the plant that marijuana comes from, Cannabis sativa, since it is difficult to get governmental approval and access to federally sanctioned samples of the plant. While most doctors and researchers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the legalization of the drug being overturned by its effects on health, they do have concerns about dependence on marijuana. If the price of marijuana falls too much, it could result in more dependence, especially among

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adolescents and low-income users. Adolescents are at the highest risk of being dependent on marijuana due to a combination of the higher potency of the drug and the fact that their brains are not completely developed yet.

Besides trying to research the effects of marijuana on the body and limiting its exposure to the adolescent crowd, both Washington and Colorado have been dealing with the immediate effects of legalizing marijuana. On its first day of legalization, more than 37 people died from marijuana overdose. It is very difficult to overdose on marijuana, but toxicologists who have studied in this tragedy say that these deaths not only resulted from an extremely high dose of marijuana in these peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bodies, but also impurities within the drugs they had taken. Not much has been done to control the quality of marijuana being sold, even to having marijuana planting grounds inspected, or inspecting the purity of the merchandise

Features sold by marijuana businesses. These tragedies have already set future implications for how the drug is going to be used in the states in which it is legal.

Besides the lives of the users being threatened by overdose or the drugâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effect on the body, nonusers are also at risk of being the victim of someone who is under the influence of marijuana. Within the first year that Washington legalized marijuana, traffic fatalities and accidents rose by a third (in 2012 and 2013), and most of these incidents involved a driver that was experiencing some degree of marijuana intoxication. States that have legalized marijuana have a limit of two nanograms per milliliter of blood. This is a relatively ineffective way of measuring the impairment of drivers, since regular users have a nominal amount of THC in their blood even when they are not under the influence.

If more states begin to accept the recreational use of marijuana, it could have serious implications for the near future and for more generations. As previously mentioned, users under the influence of the drug can affect others around them, and it is not only limited to automobile accidents or crimes committed. In the rise of health care costs, violence associated with the use of drugs, and the neglect of children by drug-addicted parents, marijuana has a serious effect on the choices a person makes. The consumption of marijuana can encourage crime, and greatly affect the upbringing of children whose parents regularly use marijuana, ultimately showing that it is acceptable to use drugs.

More expansively than affecting the development and upbringing of children, parents who use marijuana around their children create a belief that using marijuana is a normal activity, and could lead to a dangerous habit of using the drug while they are still underage, further affecting their brain development and future life choices.

Using marijuana, a soft drug, could lead to the use of hard drugs, a contention of the Gateway Theory. Marijuana is a gateway drug: it can be addictive, and once a tolerance is reached, users could look to other more potent and illegal drugs and narcotics that could be an even greater detriment to their health. Having states legalize marijuana will do exactly this. Regular users of marijuana will have even more access to marijuana, ultimately leading to the use of other drugs that are illegal. The

war on drugs within the United States is bad enough already, so why make it even worse?

The legalization of marijuana is a relatively new phenomenon within the United States; it is a phenomenon that is still largely undiscovered and still needs to be studied further in terms of health concerns and laws surrounding it. It took a very long time to regulate the consumption and distribution of alcohol in America and it still is not perfect. Therefore, it makes sense to continue to research and refine the contentions surrounding the legality of marijuana in order to protect the population and future generations from anything that could trouble their standard of living or well being.

If states were to decide to further their interests in legalizing marijuana, they should take heed and study the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado before taking their own action.

The states should study Washington and

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Coloradoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s violence and death caused as a result of marijuana use. A staggering 15% of adolescents that have access to marijuana in states where it is legal have tried the drug at least once, up from 3%. Studying the statesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; revenue from marijuana sales should also be considered: does this and other benefits ultimately outweigh the concerns posed from legalizing marijuana? Generally, the risks outweigh the benefits when it comes to legalizing marijuana, since the use of marijuana can cause serious health problems, as well as encourage violence or a botched upbringing for children.

Marijuana legalization in the United States is not a beneficial action; it causes too many concerns for the individual and the population. It is expensive to regulate and can serve as a gateway drug. The sale of legal marijuana should be limited solely to medicinal usages, and groups such as the DEA should work to subdue the use of the drug rather than let it flourish. HMR

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Maximum Freedom, Minimum Government The Overlooked Libertarian Perspective

Henry Shapiro

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n the avid and heated debates on hot topic issues including abortion and gay marriage, both the opinions of Democrats and Republicans have been strenuously instilled in our brains.

The clash of conservative Christian ideals and liberal ideologies has created a ubiquitous social stigma towards supporting the side that is not favored in most communities. What both Democrats and Republicans seem to ignore in their arguments on various hot topic issues are the principals that this America was founded upon. The Libertarian view, which is often overlooked by the general population, gives an alternative

solution when it comes to dealing with these issues.

The Libertarian party is a political organization in the US that promotes freedom, peace, equality, capitalism, and a limited government. With 149 Libertarians in public office, the Libertarian party is the third largest political party in the United States. Their stance on issues such as gay marriage and abortion is to remove the government from these institutions. The governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s defining of institutions such as marriage and supporting or disapproving of individual choices violates the first amendment. It is your right as an American to

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formulate your own opinions without government interference.

The Republican solution to these issues to illegalize abortion and gay marriage infringes upon the principals of freedom and equality. An individual has the right to determine how he or she wants to live his or her life and to make choices based on his or her own opinions. To try to universally condemn a lifestyle or personal decision goes against the American ideals of freedom and liberty. As stated in the first amendment, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.â&#x20AC;?

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en.wikipedia.org

The republican reaction to gay marriage and abortion is based off a single religious belief. To universally promote a single religion infringes upon the first amendment and the freedom of religion.

What Republicans seem to be doing is making Christianity a national religion.

Republicans are supposed to support small government and decentralization of power and wealth. The idea that gay marriage and abortion should be illegal comes from religious ideas stemming from Christianity. By attempting to make gay marriage or abortion illegal, individuals will then essentially be forced to follow religious beliefs on a national scale. To try to establish a religion as dominant only seems to give government more power. As the First Amendment states, the separation of church and state needs to be enforced by the government. Incorporating religious views into political policy violates the first amendment and cannot be tolerated. The government does not have the right to support a particular religion over another. We should be allowing individuals to determine their own religious beliefs instead of imposing our own beliefs on others.

Despite the popularity of the Democratic solution to legalize gay marriage and abortion, there still appears to be some flaws. Democrats aim to universally redefine marriage. Similar to Republicans, in the pursuit of support their own beliefs, they ignore our rights as Americans. To create a universal defi-

nition of marriage, which goes against many religious and personal views, creates a similar dilemma as the Republican’s solution does. Instead of legalizing gay marriage, which would imply that the government supports gay marriage, we should simply remove the govern-

something such as abortion should be a personal opinion. By funding these various programs, Democrats are forcing Americans to support something they may find immoral.

The simple solution that libertarians present regarding gay marriage and abortion is to remove the government from theses institutions. If it is your personal or religious belief that gay marriage or abortion is sinful, then don’t do it. It is not your responsibility to force others to believe that gay marriage or abortion is either moral or immoral.

Instead of imposing government regulation, libertarians solve these problems by enforcing the first amendment and promoting liberty and equality.

A government that condemns or supports a particular lifestyle, personal choice, or religious belief is both appalling and un-American. Our founding fathers created this nation with the simple goal of creating a free union. I like to believe that we live in a nation in which all citizens are born equal and have the right to practice our rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. For a government to either promote or con-

“What both Democrats and Republicans seem to ignore in their arguments on various hot topic issues are the principals that America was founded upon. The Libertarian view, which is often overlooked by the general population, gives an alternative solution.” ment from this institution which would allow gay marriage but at the same time, it wouldn’t be directly approving or condemning it. Although the Democratic view contains its flaws, it is more similar to the Libertarian view than the Republican view. Regarding abortion, Democrats have the same view as Libertarians in making abortion a personal choice. The central difference in the Democrat and Libertarian view lies in the fact that Democrats have implemented programs that support abortion on a national scale, such as government funded abortion clinics. The morality of

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demn a practice that causes no harm to society as a whole is a violation of the first amendment. It is the individual’s choice to decide if he or she believes something such as gay marriage or abortion is ethical. By removing the government from gay marriage and abortion, we allow individuals to formulate their own opinions without violating the first amendment. We should be encouraging individuals to create their own opinions, uninfluenced by society, on these issues instead of imposing government regulation or ubiquitous social stigma to sway ones opinions or choices. HMR

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www.theguardian.com

THE BATTLE FOR REFORM The Call for More Stringent Gun Control Sydney Katz

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ederal, state and local governments across the country have the power to regulate the use and ownership of firearms. Interestingly, state laws vary significantly in their form, content and level of restriction. Most states are even more lenient than the current body of federal laws on gun control. Mass shootings in various cities have demonstrated all too clearly the need to elect politicians who are willing to enact more stringent laws on gun control. The debate on gun control continues on such pivotal issues as what type of guns you should be permit-

ted to own and carry in public, whether permits should be a perquisite to owning a gun and whether background checks with waiting periods should be mandatory.

These battles are being fought every day in courts and legislatures across the country.

More needs to be done. Our federal government should take the lead in getting more stringent gun control laws passed.

Leading the battle for less or no gun control is the all-powerful National Rifle Association (NRA). The organization spends over $25 million a year fighting any and all attempts to place limits or bans on

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the purchase or use of guns. The NRA has millions of members and uses its influence to get local, state and federal officials elected who will support their views. The NRA relies on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, which in their opinion protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment states, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The NRA believes everyone should be permitted to own a gun in order to protect him or herself. According to the NRA Vice-President Wayne

Features LaPierre, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

To counter the NRA, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently launched a new advocacy group that will support politicians running for election who stand for more gun control. Bloomberg is donating $50 million to Everytown for Gun Safety, which is his new umbrella group bringing together several other smaller grassroots groups formed after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

According to Bloomberg, the NRA does not pay attention to facts. Bloomberg recently told reporters that “[t]he constitution says you have the right to bear arms, the Constitution talks about a well-regulated militia.

A well-regulated militia is not a bunch of people that have clips that hold 38 bullets for their Glock handgun in their home.

As expected, the NRA and other gun advocates immediately challenged the New York statute as unconstitutional. In December 2013, a federal judge upheld the law in the face of challenges to Governor Cuomo’s legislation. The judge wrote in his 54-page decision that “New York’s new law does not totally disarm New York’s citizens; and it does not meaningfully jeopardize their right to self defense.” The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action immediately posted a 9 page article on its website claiming Governor Cuomo “seized your guns overnight.” According to the New York Times, gun rights groups have responded with outrage to the new laws, holding demonstrations at the Capital in Albany, denouncing politicians like Mr. Cuomo.

On the federal front, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein has tried nu-

ban any weapon lawfully possessed at the date of the bill’s enactment. Therefore, anyone owning even a high-powered assault weapon could keep the weapon even after the bill was passed. Neither the President nor a majority in the Congress appears willing to support such a bill out of fear they will not get re-elected. The President and members of Congress know the NRA and its members will not vote for them as the NRA will provide financial backing for advertising campaigns for politicians who do not support Senator Feinstein’s proposed ban on assault weapons.

We need more stringent gun control laws. As Bloomberg argues, at the very least we need to make background checks mandatory. Future horrific shootings like those that took place in Sandy Hook, Newtown, Aurora and Tuscon can be pre-

“The only way the country will become safer is when the federal government takes the lead on gun control.”

One of the biggest hurdles to regulating firearms is that gun laws are very different across the country. For example, states like New York have somewhat strict gun laws and others have virtually no gun laws.

Some states are trying to pass tighter gun laws but are having little success. According to the NRA website, two Democratic state senators in Colorado recently lost their seats after they voted for gun reform laws. Others are having success, however.

In 2013, Governor Cuomo supported legislation which created some of the strictest guns laws in the country. Under the newly enacted state law, New York residents need a permit to own and carry a handgun.

Gun regulations even differ greatly within a state. In New York, unless you live in New York City, you still do not need to register or obtain a permit for a rifle or shotgun. Rifles and shotguns are only regulated in New York City. Therefore, outside of New York City, a NY resident can own a rifle, shotgun and a handgun but only needs to get a permit for the handgun. Additionally, it finally became unlawful to possess an assault weapon in New York unless you can prove ownership prior to September 14, 1994. However, more needs to be done to regulate the right to own and use all types of guns.

merous times to pass a federal ban on military-style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines. She is circulating a letter on Capital Hill calling once again for a ban on semi-automatic rifles and asking President Obama to take action in 2014, as her prior attempt in 2013 was not successful. Her bill included banning only the purchase of 157 different types of semiautomatic rifles and guns.

The proposed law would not exclude or

vented if the federal government passes a ban on assault weapons. The only way the country will become safer is when the federal government takes the lead on gun control. Relying on Mayors and Governors to pass legislation will not work. Organizations like the NRA are too strong.

Hopefully, former Mayor Bloomberg will continue to donate to Everytown for Gun Safety and politicians will be elected who are not afraid to vote for gun control. HMR

www.gamersareus.com

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CRUEL OR CONSTITUTIONAL? THE DEBATE ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

PRO

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The death penalty is necessary for our securityâ&#x20AC;?

Evan Greene

T

he press actively covered nearly all facets of the Boston bombing as we approached the regretful first year anniversary of the horrific tragedy. Everyone from politicians to celebrities to citizens hosted ceremonies and made speeches to honor those injured and the first responders. This repulsive act of terrorism took four innocent lives and injured 260 people. Many questioned who could be willing to commit such an appalling act at a friendly and community-oriented event. What would motivate an individual to construct a bomb solely to murder and maim others with the most devastating injuries?

Crimes of the most reprehensible nature such as deadly acts of terrorism need to be met with the highest punishment the state can offer: the death penalty.

Incarcerated in a Massachusetts prison facility, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been treated with contempt and judgment by both the leaders of the facility and the media as a whole. All his letters are censored and even the magazines and newspapers he reads are combed for possible codes to prevent future acts of terror. The public has heard virtually nothing of his potential trial defense; however, his guilt is hardly a question to the

American people. The trial is supposed to take place in early November, as both the defense and prosecution requested additional time to ready their cases for what may set the precedent for future domestic terrorism trials in the United States.

Why not the death penalty for this cruel and calculating murderer? The thorny and highly debated judicial issue of the death penalty needs to be discussed, and the death penalty reconsidered as a valid sentence for heinous crimes. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed four murders including an 8 year old child and injured so many others. The

advocate-online.net

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Features

“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty because his acts are incorrigible and downright unjustifiable. This is exactly the kind of criminal that should be put to death for outrageous crimes against humanity.” video evidence indicating his guilt shows that there can be little reasonable doubt that the bomber dropped a knapsack right in front of innocent bystanders at the marathon finish.

News outlets have speculated as to whether or not the prosecution will submit a special request for the use of the death penalty, but he would certainly be justified in doing so.

The constitutionality of the death penalty remains a debate divided generally along partisan lines. The Tea Party platform states: “The Tea Party will request that Congress and all state legislatures review criminal sentences and determine whether the goal of that punishment should be rehabilitation or the protection of the society as a whole from the acts of certain criminals. Although we believe certain criminals are capable of rehabilitation, we also believe that certain types of criminals should be considered incorrigible and as such the criminal must be removed from society to protect the society as a whole... removing such criminals from our society and treating their misdeeds as capital offenses.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty because his acts are incorrigible and downright unjustifiable. This is exactly the kind of criminal that should be put to death for outrageous crimes against humanity.

This conservative platform goes on to contend, “No felon deserves a fate better than that of his or her victim.” Considering the numerous murders and irreparable injuries directly and intentionally caused by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s actions, the use of the death penalty is morally justified.

Furthermore, capital punishment deters others from such inexcusable crimes against humanity. Studies indicate, perhaps obviously, that, psychologically, humans have no greater fear than death. It is the harshest and most definite punishment the criminal justice system can offer. Criminals’ fear of death, especially in acts of domestic terrorism, would serve as a major deterrent against capital offences. Naci Mocan, a behavioral economics professor at the University of Colorado, stated: “There really is no question about it. The scientific conclusion is that there is a deterrent effect.”

The arguments against the death penalty are based in good intentions, but fall short when one examines the pragmatic quagmires they create. The primary dispute against the death penalty is that it violates the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. However, the founding fathers who wrote that limitation regularly practiced the death penalty in contemporary criminal courts, indicating

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that it does not, in fact, violate the original intention of the clause. The other contention opposing capital punishment tends to be that its permanence results in the death of innocent people. This assertion has no basis in fact as not a single person convicted under the current system of appeal processes has ever been exonerated. Innocent people had been convicted before the most modern judicial reform took root, but since its inception, there have been no false convictions due to the enormous rigor and overwhelming body of evidence required to prove guilt.

Another positive aspect of the death penalty is that it brings closure for the victims of the crime. The 260 innocent victims directly harmed by the vicious act of terror carried out by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and their families deserve closure for the crimes committed against them. Psychologists generally agree that closure following traumatic events such as these vastly improves the situation of those affected by the incident.

The death penalty is not only justified but necessary in the most heinous capital offences.

With conclusive evidence proving guilt, the incorrigible nature of his act, the deterrent factor, and the need for closure for the affected families, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev deserves capital punishment. HMR

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CON

“The death penalty is cruel and unusual”

Vaed Prasad

S

ince 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, over 1,373 people have been executed in the United States. The barbaric deaths caused by capital punishment do more harm than good. Twenty-eight states have already realized that killing people as a form of “justice” is wrong. The death penalty should be abolished throughout the United States because it is more expensive than life in prison, innocent people could be killed, the methods of the executions are brutal and unconstitutional, and the executions in general have no effect on deterring crime.

Perhaps one of the most common arguments in favor of the death penalty is that citizens should not be coerced to pay for a felon’s life in prison through their tax contributions. However, before falling prey to such an argument, one must assess the actual costs of life in prison versus capital punishment. According to a study in Kansas, the death penalty case has a median cost $1.26 million, while life-imprisonment cases through to the end of incarceration were found to have a median cost of $740,000. To many this may be a surprising fact as one would think that killing someone would be relatively straightforward. However, the truth is that the cost of a death penalty trial is very high. Firstly, the amount of time it takes for a trial to take place in order to prove a man worthy of being executed can take upwards of a few years as usually two trials need to be held: one to prove guilt and the other to justify the punishment. Secondly, often those who commit crimes deemed

worthy of the death penalty do not have enough money to hire their own lawyers.

This means that the state has to use taxpayer money to hire several lawyers, as the number of lawyers typically appointed in a death penalty case is doubled. Finally, after the already long process of finding a criminal guilty to the extent which he or she can receive capital punishment, the criminal will typically make an appeal which takes a very long time to review and if accepted can take months longer for another trial to take place. This means more money spent on lawyers, trials, and public officials such as judges, security guards, etc.

After this process, if the criminal is still guilty, he or she will spend an average of over 17 years in an expensive high security prison on the death row. As a consequence,

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to do so since there is no perfect method to prevent this. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 142 men and women have been released from Death Row nationally, some only minutes away from execution.

In addition, in the past two years alone, evidence has come to light which indicates that four men may have been wrongfully executed for crimes they did not commit.

In another case a man spent over three years on a Georgia death row for murders he did not commit. Had the execution been speedier, he would not be alive today. The majority of people that face the possibility of the death penalty do not have enough money to afford the extravagant costs of a highly trained lawyer. This forces them to use lawyers appointed by the government who may not be as qualified as the

“The death penalty infringes upon our right to a humane punishment.” the total cost of an execution far surpasses the cost of life in prison without parole.

In American law, the Blackstone’s formula, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,” forms the moral backbone of our judiciary system.

When the punishment of a person’s crime is deat, no mistake can be made. However, the reality is that our judicial system in the United States has made many mistakes in convicting the innocent and will continue

prosecution. According to judicial writers: “In many cases, the appointed attorneys are overworked, underpaid, or lacking the trial experience required for death penalty cases.

There have even been instances in which lawyers appointed to a death case were so inexperienced that they were completely unprepared for the sentencing phase of the trial. Other appointed attorneys have slept through parts of the trial, or arrived at the court under the influence of alcohol.”

Features While government appointed lawyers are typically not lazy or immature, even one slip-up could put an innocent person’s life at risk. As long as there are extraneous drivers of a legal outcome, our judicial system will make mistakes, and the death penalty leaves no room for such errors. Life in prison, however, leaves room for mistakes as inmates can always be set free if new evidence arises.

Apart from judicial errors that lead to unfair prosecution, racial discrimination and utter randomness have plagued our courts. Many consider the death penalty a lethal lottery where out of the 22,000 homicides committed every year approximately 100 people are sentenced to death. Also, in 1990, a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that “in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.”

Another problem with the death penalty is that it infringes on our rights to a humane punishment. According to the Eighth Amendment, no criminal may face “cruel and unusual punishment,” rendering death penalty cases unconstitutional.

Recently, on April 29th, 2014, Clayton Lockett was to be executed by Oklahoma state. The execution would consist of 3 drugs in a certain order; one to make the victim unconscious, the next to stop the victim’s breathing, and the last to stop the victim’s heart. At 6:23 pm the sedative was administered to Mr. Lockett and at 6:33 pm he was announced unconscious. It was at this point that the doctors started to administer the other two drugs and this was when things became agonizing.

According to witnesses Mr. Lockett’s body twitched, his foot shook and he mumbled.

Doctors rechecked the victim and noticed a “vein failure” compromising the efficiency of the sedative. Without proper sedation, the last two drugs are known to cause “agonizing suffocation and pain.”

Mr. Lockett died soon after at 7:06 pm from a heart attack. Some of the witnesses of Mr. Lockett’s execution explained their terrible experiences of that night.

“This was botched, and it was difficult to watch,” and “It looked like torture” were just a few out of many comments the witnesses released about the execution.

Despite the fact that medical science has advanced tremendously throughout the years, the executions that take place everyday are still barbaric and cruel.

A key reason that people defend capital punishment is that it deters crime

however, very few people escape from prison and even fewer murderers as they are detained in maximum-security prisons. In Alabama’s state prison there are 9.4 guards to every inmate, hence making escape nearly impossible. Even if a murderer somehow

“As long as there are extraneous drivers of a legal outcome, our judicial system will make mistakes, and the death penalty leaves no room for such errors.”

following the notion is that if the penalty is harsher, fewer people will commit crimes.

This has given many Americans the false presumption that the death penalty actually prevents crime. As stated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, “there is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty,” (UNGA Resolution 65/206) meaning that no matter how many criminals we kill, we will not prevent crime. In fact, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate.

So why do many Americans prefer the death penalty to life without parole if the death penalty is more expensive, unfair, barbaric, and does not prevent crime? Well many concerned Americans believe that if a murderer is not killed, he or she may escape and kill more people. Realistically,

May 2014

escapes prison, past statistics indicate he or she would likely be caught within a day.

Therefore, keeping the death penalty is impractical, inefficient, unfair, barbaric, and without any merit. Killing criminals does not prevent crime. In fact it would be better for the general public to abolish the death penalty, as it would save the taxpayers money. It would also protect our rights as citizens and prevent cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, innocent civilians who might have been executed would be saved. The specific case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is not unlike other heinous crimes. Murder is not justified by murder. If the remaining 32 states do not stop capital punishment soon, then the federal government must take action to ensure our rights as citizens of the United States of America are preserved. HMR

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Features

Decriminalizing Prostitution: The Economic Argument 3.bp.blogspot.com

Zack Gaynor

P

rostitution is an illegal industry that is completely different from any other illegal industry, such as the selling of illicit substances. The practice is not detrimental to the community when regulated properly, as it is a victimless crime. The legalization of prostitution would lend many benefits to the community, including protecting both the prostitutes and the johns (men who use the services of the prostitutes) from sexually transmitted infections, creating jobs for both prostitutes and administrators, and funding the government through taxation from an otherwise fruitless illegal industry. Another issue with the laws against prostitution is that

the government does not, and should not, have the right to decide what our citizens are allowed to do and are not allowed to do with their own bodies. Another instrumental part of understanding this issue of legalization of prostitution is that we have been dumping millions upon millions of dollars into combating illegal prostitution, and we still have not tamed, let alone stopped, this industry that the government finds so appalling that it finds absolutely necessary to infringe upon our rights. We must legalize and regulate prostitution.

Right now, the American government is trying to combat STIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and is spending around $8 billion dollars a

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year trying to quell the issue, as in 2006, the number of people that were infected with STIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s was about 19 million. Many people that sleep with prostitutes are at high-risk for getting infected and many do. We should keep putting money into the research, but if we put government controls on prostitution, we could regulate the health of the prostitutes and their patrons and eliminate a large part of the pool of people who are at high risk of being infected and cut directly into that 19 million. The government would also be able to prevent many physical injuries and deaths that currently occur due to the violence of pimps against their prostitutes.

Features

“The average prostitute in New York makes $0 annually in income tax due to the sole fact that prostitutes must hide their wages from the government because their industry is illegal.”

Because America is coming out of a recession, we need jobs right now. If we legalized prostitution, job creation would increase dramatically in roles other than those occupied by prostitutes.

Assuming that there would be prostitution companies, they would need administrators to make appointments and executives to handle money and run daily operations. An issue people have with the job creation portion of the legalization is that we would be killing policemen’s jobs by legalizing prostitution.

My answer is simple: we would essentially be transferring police jobs that lose the American government money to private sector jobs. The legalization of prostitution would inherently create jobs in the private sector at a rate that would far out-number the jobs that the government has to pay for; this fix would also make the government more tax revenue.

The average worker at Nevada’s brothels makes around $100,000 in annual income with only having to work one week per month. This means on average, they would beproducing around $20,000 in income tax revenue a year. The average prostitute in New York makes $0 annually in income tax due to the sole fact that prostitutes must hide their wages from the government because their industry is illegal.

An additional reason why we should legalize prostitution is that the rules are flawed. Prostitution can already take place without the government being able to take revenue from it, and already does. Currently wealthy people looking for companions can call them a mistress and put them up in a home and pay them.

This is not illegal, and the government takes no tax revenue from it. If the government is going to let the rich do this,

then why shouldn’t the poor have the same ability?

Large portions of the people that disagree with the legalization of prostitution oppose it because of moral and ethical issues with prostitution. The same people believe that it is wrong to sell your body, but shouldn’t everybody have the right to decide what they want to do with their own body? On the same point, many people believe that it is wrong to abort fetuses because they think fetuses are alive in a mother’s bod, so it would be murder to abort them. The case of prostitution is not nearly as controversial because there is nothing other than a women and her body to contend with. As Americans, we should give every citizen the right over his or her own body, and not let our government impose its wills over the people as our founding fathers were weary of. HMR

A: vanessamcgowan84.blogspot.com B: www.stwerburghs.org

May 2014

49

Economics

Christopher Shaari

I

n 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto created the world’s first encrypted currency, the Bitcoin. The Bitcoin has been the driving force of digital currency for the past five years, but is it a smart investment? While there are a few reasons why they are a smart investment, there are many reasons why they are not.

Bitcoins are untraceable, easy to lose, hard to trade, and are not accepted by most businesses. Most importantly, the investment bubble surrounding Bitcoin is extremely volatile, and there is never a “safe” time to invest.

From the first transactions, there were security flaws. Satoshi Nakamoto

originally created codes for 21 million Bitcoins. Bitcoin miners, who use computer programs to solve algorithms that represent Bitcoins, mine these codes.

Anybody with the program Bitcoinx can tell his or her computer to begin mining bitcoins. However, 12 million of the

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“Although the Bitcoin is a relatively new form of currency, it is too unstable and untrustworthy to become full-fledged.”

21 million Bitcoins originally released have been mined. As more Bitcoins are mined, it becomes harder for computers to solve the math problems. A disruption of this system causes dramatic price spikes and decreases. Thus, when 184 billion Bitcoins were accidentally generated during a transaction, the entire Bitcoin world wondered if what they were doing was safe. Luckily, the transaction was deleted, and Bitcoin transactions continued as normal.

The anonymity of Bitcoins and their use in criminal activity also makes Bitcoins an unsafe investment. One example of this criminal activity is the Silk

Economics Road scandal. The Silk Road was an online illegal drug emporium, which used Bitcoins as the medium of exchange.

The anonymity of Bitcoins appeals to criminals because when a Bitcoin is transferred, it is “covered” by encryption. Therefore, there is no easy way to find out what is being transferred. Their records of transactions are not written in plain English, rather they are written in code and encrypted. Bitcoins are the currency of choice for people wishing to trade “under the hood” because they are global, private, and untraceable. The imperceptibility of Bitcoin transactions means that transactions can be made between users with no visible traces of the transaction.

Bitcoins can also be lost very easily.

An estimated $500 million worth of Bitcoins have been stolen as a result of poor password protection or a wallet kept online for too long. On the other hand, Bitcoins can be lost due to simple carelessness. For example, in order to access your Bitcoin wallet you need to put a password on it. If you forget your password, it can be lost forever. Conversely, when Bitcoins were worth very little and people thought their value would not increase, Bitcoin holders simply tossed their hard drives.

In November of 2013, Bitcoin stock

prices rose by 73%. From 2012 to 2013, the price per share of Bitcoin rose twenty times. However, just as the price increases sharply, the price also falls sharply. The volatility of the Bitcoin has caused an investment “bubble” around Bitcoin. Barry Silbert, founder and chief investment officer of Secondmarket, said “Looking at a price chart, it’s hard to say we’re not [in an investment bubble].” Ironically, Barry Silbert launched a Bitcoin trust with his business after commenting on the unstable Bitcoin economy.

Leading government officials say that investing in Bitcoin is a good idea.

Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the Director of Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the US, said, “We recognize the innovation virtual currencies provide...and the benefits they might offer society.”

The idea that Bitcoin may be beneficial for society is based on the concept that with Bitcoins there is no central bank.

The intermediary of transactions is taken out, thus removing any transaction fees. Despite some government approval, the investment bubble, the Silk Road, and theft have given Bitcoin a bad reputation, making the Bitcoin a poor investment. So, what lies ahead for Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin’s strongest cryptocurrency competitors are Ripple and Litecoin. They both follow the basic principle of taking the central bank or financial institution out of transactions. However, neither Bitcoin nor its competitors are close to the credit card industry. Although Bitcoin is a relatively new form of currency, it is too unstable and untrustworthy to become a full fledged currency. HMR

“The imperceptibility of Bitcoin transactions means that transactions can be made between users with no visible traces.”

idvsolutions.com

May 2014

51

Economics

DETROIT: MOTORING INTO OBLIVION I

Daria Balaeskoul

magine living in a place where the police station is closed between 4 P.M. and 8 A.M. Now this isn’t a sleepy suburban town, but a metropolis with the second highest murder rate in America. You are in Detroit: the once bustling industrial capital of America turned-ghost town, where only 60% of all street lights are working and only a third of all ambulances running. The ever-declining population of Detroit has been burdened with troublesome public service cuts since the recession of 2008. This past summer, in an attempt to alleviate its financial burden, the city filed for municipal bankruptcy. If Detroit’s bankruptcy plan is approved by a federal judge, the city will no longer be responsible for paying the $18.5 billion debt it owes to more than 100,000 creditors; moreover, with a proper fiscal strategy, Detroit could capitalize on this move and begin the road to financial prosperity.

Over the past few decades, as America has embraced a post-industrial society and outsourced much of its manufacturing jobs to Asia, vibrant cities once rooted in

the manufacturing industry have been rapidly deteriorating and depopulating. Things have been no different for the “Motor City,” which has suffered from job losses and a diminished tax base all linked with the decline of the American auto-industry. Wealth in America has continued to move towards commercial centers, like New York and Los Angeles, which house the financial institutions that define America’s growing “service based economy.”

In an attempt to manage the city’s fiscal free-fall, the governor of Michigan has put Detroit’s finances under the control of Kevin Orr, an experienced bankruptcy attorney.

Much of Orr’s plan has been met with opposition from city creditors, bondholders, public sector workers, city employees, unions, and retirees. Orr seeks to revive Detroit’s economy by reducing the already diminished pension plans of hundreds of thousands of retirees by an additional 30%, as well as virtually eliminating their healthcare benefits. In opposition to this plan, creditors and unions have instead insisted Detroit sell

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the city owned art collection held at the Detroit Institute of Art; a collection that in total has been appraised at almost $870 million.

This move, however, isn’t practical in that it would only provide the city with a fraction of the funds it needs.

How did Detroit, a once affluent city, become bankrupt in the first place? Much of the city’s bankruptcy has to do with the downfall of the automobile industry and the exodus of middle class residents that followed. As one might expect, when the number of jobs in Detroit was cut almost in half, the population rapidly declined, resulting in greatly decreased tax revenue. Moreover, corruption and poor fiscal management have continued to worsen Detroit’s economic recession, greatly diminishing the potential of any proposed recovery. When it comes down to it, the majority of Detroit’s mayors between 1950 to the present were unable to balance the city’s budget, and in an attempt to alleviate Detroit’s economic struggle, they would only increase borrowing and spending. In fact, the majority of spending actu-

Economics

“With so few educated inhabitants, it is no wonder that the modern businesses that would have ushered the city in to a post-industrial society have not yet developed.” ally went towards providing healthcare and bonuses for city workers and retirees, which is why Orr seeks to cut spending to this excessive and growing cost.

It seems highly unlikely that Detroit will relive its glory as the “Motor City.”

Since its heyday in the twentieth century, American industry has drastically evolved.

In fact, much of the auto-industry, which was once highly concentrated in Detroit, has sought to relocate to areas where unions are not as strong. Yet, some car companies such as General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have remained in the municipality, and after the 2009 federal stimulus, are even prospering. Unfortunatley, innovative and more effecient technologies for Detroit’s auto-industry come hand in hand with increases in the astounding unemployment rates. The car manufacturing industry has become less and less reliant on the labor of the city’s citizens, leading to only 4% of Motor City’s population being employed in the automobile industry.

Bankruptcy is the only way out of the financial hole that Detroit has dug for itself but is not a long-term solution. The first step in ensuring Detroit’s long-term rebound is the creation of a safe and comfortable city, making Detroit a more desirable place to live and discouraging further emigration.

Furthermore, perhaps the most important step in resuscitating the city is investing in education. Decades ago, when Detroit was far more prosperous, the majority of citizens barely had a high school education, not

to mention a college degree. Not much has changed since then, and the situation has deteriorated. Today, an astounding 47% of Detroit’s residents are functionally illiterate, according to The National Instituite for Literacy. With so few educated inhabitants, it is no wonder that the modern businesses that would have ushered the city in to a post-industrial society have not yet developed. In the future, if the city wants to see economic accomplishment, it is vital that the local government invest in its people first.

Not everyone in Detroit is suffering economically. In fact, the same anarchic deterioration of the city that drives so many citizens away is attracting a number of entrepreneurs.

In the chaos of the disintegrating metropolis, it is easy to start a business: doing so is cheap and there is not much bureaucratic red tape. One can say that proof of this lies in the fact that city liquor licenses are available on craigslist for $18,000. To put that into perspective, buying an already existing liquor license can cost upwards of $200,000 in New York City. Some businesses have even profited off of the city’s deteriorating infrastructure and lack of public services. For example, Detroit is the largest city in the United States without a municipal recycling program. In response, an entrepenuer, Mr. Naimi started Recycle Here, a business that serves as a substitute for city-funded recycling. Like Mr. Naimi, after seeing that the municipal, state, and even federal government have been unable to solve Detroit’s issues, many entrepeneurs have taken it upon themselves

May 2014

to restore the municipality. The Southwest Detroit Bussiness Associaton has begun a $6.4 million project to privately refurbish a 2.4 mile stretch of Detroit’s business district with new sidewalks, landscaping, and fully functioning streetlights. Perhaps now that the city of Detroit lays in ruins, it gives the city the ability to rebuild itself in a way that is sustainable in the long term.

Although much of the Detroit’s economic downfall has been a result of a diminished tax base, the municipality must be very careful with imposing new taxes so as not to drive away potential residents and bussinesses. In fact, the municipality can use tax breaks to create a business friendly environment. At the same time, it is critical that the city of Detroit invest in reinvigorating its infrastructure. Although some entrepeneurs may be lured to the city, because of the lack of regulation and the blank canvas that they see the city to be, just as many are repelled.

If Detroit wants to ever be prosperous again, it must restructure its public service program and redevelop critical city infrastructure.

Even though the Michigan state legislature is hesitant to ease Detroit’s economic burden and provide it with the funds necessary to rebuild itself, the fate of the state is deeply intertwined with Detroit. The state worries that helping reconstruct the city will create a precedent in which failing cities and townships will look to the state government to bail them out. This should be a minor concern for the state when weighed against the destruction of its most populous city. HMR

53

Science and Technology

The Costs of CO2 The Path to a Sustainable Economy

Ben Alexander

T

he other day on the subway I saw a small boy, perhaps three years old, with a bag of M&Ms. Instead of eating them, he was entertaining himself by dropping them on the floor, one by one. His mother stared at her phone and clearly didn’t care that he was making a mess. As I watched, my mind was drawn to the topic of this article: carbon taxes.

All right, maybe you wouldn’t think of carbon taxes. But the story does help illustrate a point. In this example, the boy knows that somebody would come by later and clean up his M&Ms, but he would be long gone by then.

This is called an “externality,” an activity that affects others but does not have any cost for the person doing that activity. Pollution is an externality. Companies, for example, can burn coal and create air pollution without worrying about harming the environment because they can continue with business as usual and are not penalized. This is true of individuals as well when they drive gas-guzzling cars that pollute the air.

Establishing a cost for air pollution is very important. To the majority of the scientific community, it is clear that our environment is facing great challenges from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. When fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are burned for energy, they release CO2, which gets trapped in the planet’s atmosphere. There the CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, leading to rising temperatures and global climate changes. When that

happens, polar ice caps melt at an accelerated rate, oceans become acidic, sea levels rise, and destructive weather events like hurricanes, floods, and droughts occur more often. Acidic oceans kill fish, coral, starfish, sea urchins and other marine life. Rising sea levels threaten coastal properties, and the rising temperature affects agriculture. Coal-related soot causes thousands of deaths around the world each year. A new book called The Sixth Extinction

by Elizabeth Kolbert even discusses the possibility that we are in the midst of a mass extinction of species due to human caused activities, such as the creation of greenhouse gases and global warming. It is imperative that we reduce the amount of CO2 released into the air so that we can slow the rate of global warming.

If CO2 emissions have serious costs for our planet, then those costs should be reflected in the price of burning them. A carbon tax, which researchers at MIT called a “win-winwin,” is the best solution. Carbon taxes place a price on pollution by taxing companies or individuals for the number of BTUs (British Thermal Units) of heat released. A carbon tax can charge consumers directly through electric bills, charge distributors such as utilities companies, or charge the producers such as coalmines and oil wells. In terms of pricing, each type of fuel releases a different amount of CO2 per BTU. Thus, knowing the type of fuel and BTUs released allows for the calculation of how much CO2 is released. Most CO2 comes

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from the burning of fossil fuels, so in practice a carbon tax is basically a tax on gasoline, coal, or other fuels. Most economists place the cost of a carbon tax at around $25 per ton of CO2 emissions, so the company or individual would be charged accordingly. Because the U.S. is currently the world’s second leading carbon emitter behind only China, instituting a carbon tax in this country is urgent.

In the long run, by making “dirty fuels” more expensive, a carbon tax would encourage companies and individuals to find ways to monitor and reduce energy consumption or use energy more efficiently. It would allow alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear to be cost competitive with cheaper, less green sources of energy such as coal.

It would also spur research into and development of other alternative energy sources that might one day be cheaper than existing sources. On a smaller scale, individuals facing higher gasoline prices would be more likely to use electric cars or public transportation in order to save money by not paying the carbon tax.

It always helps to look back in history, if possible, to see if a policy works. Ireland is an example of a success story. The country used to produce greenhouse gases on a per-capita basis similar to that of the U.S. However, after legislating a carbon tax, Irish companies switched to greener fuels and increased recycling to minimize emissions. The wind power industry has also blossomed in Ireland. Since 2008,

Science and Technology emissions have dropped 15%, and in the last three years the tax raised $1.3 billion, which was essential in helping Ireland reduce its debt.

The tax is so successful that the International Monetary Fund even suggested that Ireland “expand the well-designed carbon tax.”

British Columbia has also successfully implemented a carbon tax. Passed by the legislature in 2008, the tax lowered emissions 10% by 2011, and fuel consumption per capita dropped 19% in comparison to the rest of Canada. The economy of British Columbia has performed as well as the economy of the rest of Canada, suggesting that carbon taxes don’t necessarily harm the economy. All of the revenue has been returned in the form of low-income tax credits to those who are especially burdened by increased fuel prices.

Surprisingly, many corporations actually favor a carbon tax. In 2012, over a hundred major corporations, including Shell and Unilever, stated: “Putting a clear, transparent and unambiguous price on carbon emissions must be a core policy objective.” A spokeswoman from Exxon-Mobil said, “A well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions.” One reason for these comments is that carbon emissions have caused economic problems even for companies. Jeffrey Seabright, Vice President of Environment and Water Resources at Coca-Cola, cited “increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, [and] 100-year floods every two years,” as greenhouse-gas-related threats to the farming of ingredients essential to Coca-Cola such as sugar cane and citrus fruits.

As an added benefit, the U.S. government would welcome more tax revenue. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a tax of $20 per ton of CO2, or about 15 cents per gallon of gasoline, would reduce emissions by 8 percent and generate up to $1.2 trillion over 10 years. “I’d be shocked if people supported anything other than a carbon tax — that’s how economists think about it,” said Douglas HoltzEakin, the former director of the CBO. The carbon tax has received bipartisan support, which is not often the case and is therefore notable. Those in favor include Republicans such as Gregory Mankiw, former economic adviser to George W. Bush, and George P. Shultz, Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, and Democrats such as Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.

In fairness, some argue that carbon taxes have drawbacks. They worry that the tax would be regressive and harm low-income households, since these households would feel the pinch of having to pay more for products

such as gasoline for cars and heating systems.

Some of these households might not be able to afford fuel and would be left without a usable car and heating. However, economists have proposed that revenue from the tax be returned to low-income households in the form of income support measures that would eliminate the tax’s regressive effect. This has actually been done in a few countries, including Costa Rica, where the revenue is returned to poor indigenous communities in the form of a national forest fund that pays them for protecting local forests.

Others say that a carbon tax will reduce America’s competitiveness in the world by taxing American companies while their foreign competitors are not taxed. However, the Climate Commission reported that by 2013, there were expected to be 33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions with a carbon tax.

Among these 33 countries, the United Kingdom, Germany, and India, and even China are reportedly planning on having a carbon tax in place by 2015. Thus the U.S. would be far from alone. In addition, the problem could be alleviated by implementing a tax on imported goods from foreign industries that do not monitor their CO2 emissions, which would in turn help keep U.S. companies competitive compared to cheaper alternatives from abroad.

Also, in reverse, offering carbon tax exemptions on the production of exported goods

would help keep U.S. goods cheap enough for foreign buyers.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has no plans for a carbon tax anytime soon: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.” It is hard to understand why Obama is against a carbon tax considering the many benefits outlined in this article. Together, these benefits greatly outweigh the concern of a slight reduction in American economic competitiveness. The reason could be political. As Ireland’s former energy minister Eamon Ryan said, “Just imagine President Obama saying in the debate, ‘I’ve got this great idea, but it’s going to increase your gasoline price.’ People didn’t exactly cheer us on.” However, with other countries’ changing of their carbon emission policies, Obama or Congress should be urged to seriously consider a carbon tax. The argument for implementing one, as Gregory Mankiw said, “is so straightforward as to be obvious.” America needs a carbon tax. The environment and world need a carbon tax. On paper a carbon tax seems effective, and in practice it has been effective. If the U.S. has any doubts, it can look to Ireland for inspiration. Just ask Eamon Ryan. In Ireland, he said, “We were lapping up fossil fuels, buying bigger cars and homes - very American.

Now, we’re smashing through the environmental targets we set for ourselves.” HMR

“In 2012, CO2 accounted for about 82% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.” - The EPA

May 2014

55

Science and Technology

Emma Forman

E

lectronic cigarettes have reshaped the smoking world and created new regulation issues.

One major problem with these small cigarette look-a-likes is that no one knows exactly what side effects, short or long term, can occur. The e-cigarette industry has risen so rapidly that regulators have not been able to act fast enough to regulate these products. Based on the little factual evidence known about the health effects of e-cigarettes, the FDA should increase regulations on e-cigarette use,

manufacturing, and vending.

In 2003, the first e- cigarette was made in Beijing, China by a 52 year old pharmacist, inventor and smoker. Later in 2007, e-cigarettes were introduced in the United States. E-cigarettes contain chemical glycerol and propylene glycol along with nicotine flavoring and other additives. E-cigs have a rechargeable lithium battery cartridge filled with nicotine liquid, which, when heated, produces a mist that users inhale. They come in many colors, and are available

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in flavors such as Java, watermelon, and pink bubble gum. Tobacco smokers are able to use this product as a healthier alternative to smoking. The e-cigarettes have fewer toxins and chemicals than tobacco cigarettes do. Some users find that smoking an e-cigarette is similar enough to smoking a real cigarette that they can replace tobacco cigarettes with the new electronic cigarettes.

More recently the FDA has been studying the regulatory issues with e-cigarettes but has not enacted any reg-

Science and Technology ulations yet. Potential measures under consideration include disallowing sales to minors, banning indoor smoking, and regulating product manufacturing. In just a few years since its launch, electronic cigarette sales have risen more than cigarette sales did in decades. Reports to the U.S. Poison Control Center related to e-cigarette use have increased from just one call per month on average in 2010 to nearly 200 calls per month in early 2014. Electronic cigarettes have been marketed using similar tools to those of tobacco cigarette manufactures.

Companies are using candy-flavored nicotine to draw in kids. Companies also make inflated heath claims that make some cigarette smokers switch to e-cigarettes, rather then quitting altogether. An FDA report indicated that there are nine contaminates in e-cigarettes versus the 11,000 found in tobacco cigarettes. Since this does show that e-cigarettes have fewer contaminates than tobacco cigarettes, many companies are using this misleading fact to draw in people trying to quit smoking.

There is some data showing that after six months of smoking e-cigarettes, 7.3 percent of users had quit smoking tobacco. This statistic is at par with modestly effective nicotine patches, which have a quit rate of 5.8 percent. Many people have come to believe that e-cigarettes help with smoking dissention, but there is not enough data to confirm this.

For now, the devices remain unregulated by any governmental agency, and this situation worries many health authorities. Most e-cigarettes are made in China, with over 300 brands, and even though the e-cigarettes may be a sensible alternative to tobacco smoking, the large variation of brands makes these devices hard to regulate. This lack of regulation makes it harder for government agencies to do health checks and more difficult for consumers to know exactly what sort of long term side effects can occur.

Also, there are very large inconsistencies among devices, as shown by many FDA cases.

Researchers did find trace evidence of hazardous chemicals in e-cigarettes, such as the main ingredient found in antifreeze, propylene glycol. One ongoing study indicates that e-cigarettes could cause genetic mutations that can lead to cancer. Researchers from UCLA, Boston University, and the University of

Texas found that some cells exposed to e-cigarette vapor showed similar genetic changes as cells exposed to regular cigarette smoke. The changes were not exactly the same, but researchers said there were some clear similarities—enough to raise concerns that e-cigarettes could, at some level, still lead to lung cancer. The complaints from the public filed with the FDA cited trouble breathing, headache, cough, dizziness, sore throat, nose bleeds, chest pain or other cardiovascular problems, and allergic reactions such as itchiness and swelling of the lips.

Research has been done with two brands of the e-cigs, but these results do not represent all electronic cigarettes because of the large variety and the inconsistency among brands. Miguel Martin, president of Logic Technology, one of the biggest U.S. e-cigarette makers along with Lorillard Inc. and NJOY, said that the spike in health reports indicates a need for regulation. Because some companies see this as a new business opportunity, they are taking advantage of an unregulated environment with workers who are not “diligent or focused.”

This could mean that some e-cigs have

larger health risks than others.

Researchers do not know what the effects on the human body would be if someone were to breathe in the vapor regularly. It is unclear what the effect would be on someone’s lungs. Other researchers worry that since e-cigarettes do not provide a tobacco rush, many young users may look to cigarettes to get a larger amount of tobacco. One large issue that people do not realize is that nicotine is still addictive and can lead to the use of tobacco cigarettes down the road. Young people can become addicted to nicotine by using e-cigarettes and later switch to tobacco cigarettes to fuel their addiction.

It is unclear what the future for e-cigarettes may be, but it is certain that this increasingly popular product has many issues with its health effects.

These issues must be solved before it is safe to advertise and sell these products to young adults and children. The FDA needs to deal with the growing popularity of these products, and it needs to set boundaries for all vendors and manufacturers in order to ensure the safety of e-cigarette smokers. HMR

A: www.purelivingchina.com B: www.americaneliquidstore.com

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57

Science and Technology

A dderall : A ddiction and A buse John Eng

A

dderall is an addictive substance that is really only meant for people diagnosed with ADHD. However, it has become common for students, particularly those in college, to obtain the drug legally for nonmedical purposes, utilizing the few extra hours of energy that Adderall provides to stay up late. However, these benefits are not without their costs because using too much Adderall can cause moodiness, violent behavior, twitching, and disorderly body functions. This medicine, however helpful it may be for kids with ADHD, is not controlled enough.

Adderall, as classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), is a

â&#x20AC;&#x153;schedule II stimulant.â&#x20AC;? This means that it is a drug that has a high potential for abuse, especially among people who are not diagnosed with ADHD. Drugs range from schedule I to schedule V, schedule I being the most dangerous and addictive while schedule V is the least addictive.

This puts Adderall in the same category as cocaine and methamphetamine, two drugs that are infamous for their detrimental side effects. Being in the same group as those notorious drugs speaks to the abuse potential of Adderall. It is a highly dangerous drug and the only reason it is not considered as dangerous a drug as methamphetamine is because its intended usage is to help those with at-

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The Horace Mann Review | Vol. XXIII

tention disorders.

The effects of Adderall have proved to be detrimental in many cases, and since Adderall is not the only medicine for ADHD, it should only be dealt out by doctors who have done significant research into their patientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; medical histories to determine that they actually need Adderall. However, doctors prescribe it carelessly to students who fake ADHD symptoms, putting the students and others close to them at risk.

Now why is Adderall such an enticing prospect to students despite the side effects that they most likely know about?

For students who are struggling night after night and not getting their work done

Science and Technology

DOCTORS PRESCRIBE [ADDERALL] TO STUDENTS WHO FAKE ADHD SYMPTOMS, PUTTING THE STUDENTS AND OTHERS CLOSE TO THEM AT RISK. because of the need for sleep, getting into fights and vomiting is a small price to pay for being at the top of your class and a straight A student. The problem is that Adderall is addictive, and if you use it too much your body becomes reliant on it. So after using it several times, your body will not be able to work without it.

This dependence is why Adderall is such a big issue. The payoff of using this drug is so positive that many do not consider the consequences or think little of them and eventually end up becoming addicted.

According to The Daily Beast, college students’ Adderall usage triples its normal amount near the end of the fall semester when cramming is needed to get all the studying, papers, and projects done. The reason why the number of Adderall users rises so quickly is that it is such an easy drug to get one’s hands on. Those who have ADHD or are faking ADHD can get large amounts of it prescribed to them each time they visit their doctor, and with the abundance of pills they have, they will sell it to underclassmen or peers to make some money.

Many people feign ADHD symptoms to get doses of Adderall. After using too much Adderall and for too long, the dosages can keep on going up and up until the consequences have escalated from insomnia, diarrhea, or weight loss to death.

One documented extreme case reported by The New York Times was of an Adderall addict by the name of Richard Fee, an ordinary student who was quite smart and accomplished. However, when Richard turned to Adderall for help, everything changed. He pretended to have ADHD during a doctor’s appointment and got a prescription for 30 mg of Adderall pills. Soon, Richard became addicted to the drug. He kept on taking more pills, and when his regular dose did not provide him with the needed energy, he would take four times the recommended dosage. His addiction got to the point where instead of just admitting

that he had an issue with these pills, he lied to his family and even expressed violent behavior when his parents confronted him about his addiction. He would go to lengths just to keep his secret from his family, sometimes driving miles away to a pharmacy to fill a prescription of Adderall. And Richard Fee is just one out of many to experience big mood changes after taking Adderall.

In addition to dangerous side effects, there are also legal consequences from the usage of Adderall if someone is not actually diagnosed with ADHD. This is because, as is the case with other controlled substances like marijuana, possession of the drug is illegal unless you have a medical reason for having it.

Adderall also provides an unfair advantage for students. It is not human nature to sit still and study for hours on end, but for students on Adderall, their focus is sharpened and they gain the

ability to study hour after hour without a break. This means, for example, that students not on Adderall might only study for three hours the night before a test, whereas a student on Adderall is capable of studying double that amount of time and still being wide awake for the test.

An account of this was when The Daily Illini, a news website, interviewed a student named Derek. Derek stated that while on Adderall, he got multiple good grades and a near perfect score on his final all due to the effects of Adderall. For Derek, Adderall increased his studying abilities by increasing his comprehension, cognition, and memory while reducing fatigue.

Due to its dangerous side effects and addictive properties, Adderall should be strictly regulated and only given out when absolutely needed. The problem we have now is that many doctors do not thoroughly investigate their patients’ medical histories, so they do not know whether or not their patient is telling the truth when they say they have ADHD. Therefore, before handing out Adderall to patients, a look into the patient’s history should be mandatory so that the doctor is not putting the patient at risk by administering a prescription for Adderall when it is not needed. HMR

A: www.asubellringer.com B: www.minnpost.com

May 2014

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