Stagnant budget negotiations indicate that no “grand bargain” will be reached to lower the federal deficit. The United States does have a long run budget problem, but that budget problem is not nearly as large as many have made it out to be.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. These are words that, as Americans, we have all heard, and with the 150th anniversary of the “Gettysburg Address” being yesterday, Nov. 19, we should remember them now. These words clearly have enormous weight in the United States. But these words are more than mere words, they are the very pillars that support the American ideal.
Despite how ridiculously expensive tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison gets, one thing I will not gripe about paying is the student segregated fee that all UW-Madison students pay equally regardless of residency, year or school. UW-Madison’s segregated fees are taxes that are tacked onto our semester tuition that add a little over $1,000 to our overall tuition and fees annually.
Yes, indeed, two weeks ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, released the 2014 working schedule for the House of Representatives. Down nearly three weeks from last year, the House will work—drum roll please—113 days next year. No, this is not a typographical error. Your patriotic, dedicated, democratically elected members of Congress, while enjoying a cushy $174,000 salary and gold-plated healthcare benefits, will work for a total of 113 days next year.
?Israel and Palestine at West Bank. Assad administration in Syria. What common factor can be identified in relation to international forum? A failure of collective action. To be more specific, it is a failure of the United Nations Security Council perpetrated by Veto. Disputes from both of incidents could have been condemned early with resolution and halted if a veto power was not exercised by P5 countries in the UNSC
Regarding Ryan Bullen’s Nov. 11 column, the drug war is largely a war on marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. The days when fear-mongering politicians can get away with deliberately confusing the drug war’s tremendous collateral damage with a comparatively harmless plant are coming to an end.
Recently, a story about the Salvation Army circulated on Facebook that said the nonprofit hates the LGBTQ community. It even mentioned that the Salvation Army wants gay people to die. A member of the charity spoke on its behalf, and pictures of posters composed of hate speech coordinated with the article. I read it, I have heard about the Salvation Army’s stance about LGBTQ community in the past, I was horrified and I chose to share it. It was the most shared thing I have ever posted—multiple friends gave in-depth comments and shared it themselves.
The U.S. federal government has been governing from crisis to crisis. A symptom of this outside of the large (and ever growing) negative impact on the economy is that Washington has not been able to work toward solving problems that plague this country. At the top of this list is the growing discrepancy in academic achievement between wealthy and poor students. One-point-two mill. children drop out of high school every year or one every 26 seconds. That student who drops out is eight times more likely to go to prison and is not eligible for 90 percent of the new jobs created. More than half of those dropouts come from less than 15 percent of the nation’s schools. A large number of these schools are in urban environments and are made up of largely minority populations. Standardized test score differences between wealthy and poor students rose by 40 percent from 1976 to 2001.
This past week my mother forwarded a link to an article published in The New York Times. She did not mention anything about the content of the article besides the fact that it was about the Koch Brothers funding political advertisements. I expected to read about the Koch brothers paying for advertisements in a gubernatorial election or a mayoral race in a large city. After all, these two brothers are notorious for lucratively funding conservative political action committees, and they were the second largest contributors to Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign for governor in 2010. To my surprise, this article had nothing to with the gubernatorial election in Virginia or the mayoral election in New York. Rather, this article was about city council elections in Coralville, Iowa. The article detailed how Americans for Prosperity, a political action committee largely funded by the Koch Brothers, had become involved in these races. In a town of approximately 20,000 people, the two Koch brothers, each valued at $36 billion, were trying to influence the election with their money. This was shocking to me. Typically, these elections are not highly contested and they normally go unpublicized. This changed with the Koch brothers. Outside help was being brought in to run candidate campaigns and candidates were being forced to change their platforms. One candidate had planned a campaign on smaller issues such as painting the water tower. However, after Americans for Prosperity came to town, everything changed. Central debates of the campaign were shifted toward issues that pertained to Koch Brothers’ business interests. To me, the Koch brothers’ goal was clear. As much as they tried to disguise their intentions, it was clear control was the end goal. They wished to control government and create policies favorable to their interests. Apparently, no election is too small to buy.
Twenty-five years ago, our campus blazed the trail for diversity initiatives at universities across the country. We created the first institutional diversity plan, Plan 2008, which made major changes to the dynamics of our campus, encouraging the inclusion of students of a range of backgrounds and identities. Plan 2008 set many goals for our campus including increasing the number of Wisconsin students of color at UW System schools, increasing the amount of financial aid available to needy students and fostering environments and courses that would enhance learning and respect for racial and ethnic diversity.
Feminism takes a lot of heat. It is a stigmatized word. Celebrities like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry refused to call themselves feminists. Even Beyoncé does not consider herself a feminist. I think the word feminist, like the term rape culture, has connotations that are warped from any recognizable definition. I am here to set the record straight. Feminism is nothing more and nothing less than the desire for equal rights and opportunities for men and women. It is about humanity, not hatred. Anyone calling their hatred for men “feminism” should probably just take a vow of silence. If you hate men, that is a personal problem, not a political stance. So stop using the word that way, and stop hating feminists because of it.
The Badger Herald’s recent letter-to-the-editor “'Rape culture' does not exist” further proves the University of Wisconsin- Madison’s preeminent ego-inflamed, aggressively misogynistic, notorious “semi celebrity” David Hookstead unsurprisingly doesn’t harbor the capacity to understand the concept “rape culture.” There has already been an onslaught of backlash in response to his column—appalled voices furiously speaking against what is clearly a gross rhetorical misrepresentation of the truth on a core level. All anger toward this abomination is totally warranted. But my response here is not intended to insult or belittle Hookstead as a person (social media can take care of that). All I’m going to do is explain why his claim is wrong.
The roll out of the Affordable Care Act online exchanges have been plagued with glitches that have prevented millions of people from being able to sign up for healthcare coverage that the law mandates. This is an inexcusable mistake by the federal government, and someone must be held accountable for these egregious errors. That being said, these technical issues are not cause to lose faith in the broader policy. Despite the minor setbacks that the technical problems have caused, the Affordable Care Act was the right thing to do and will help American society in the long run.
Monday night, the Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which makes it illegal for an employer to fire or not hire someone due to his or her sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The passage of ENDA marks a significant milestone for the LGBT equality movement. Nevertheless, the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson and many other conservatives feel differently. Anderson stated ENDA is “bad policy” because “ENDA would create special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” ENDA ensures that as many as two-thirds of LGBT individuals do not face employment discrimination in their respective workplaces and that the third of men earn less than their similarly qualified heterosexual male counterparts earn the same. Ensuring all people are rewarded for their hard work rather than exogenous factors is by no means a ‘special privilege.’ Anderson complains that ENDA would “impinge Americans’ right to run their businesses the way they choose,” but Anderson forgets that the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. Surely, ensuring LGBT folks are treated the same as their heterosexual counterparts supercede the rights of businesses.
It looks like The Badger Herald has embraced the thoughts of the one Mr. David Hookstead again. And this one is a doozey!
Thank you, for the stunning example of how rape culture is alive and well on the UW-Madison campus. There are several aspects of the recent Letter to the Editor that Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment (PAVE) feels warrant response.
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