Tag Archives: corruption

Pseudemocracy

In a democratic system, the most important factor of any election is, of course, the voters. If the voters are misrepresented, or not represented at all, then the election is unfair and, thus, undemocratic. There have been numerous failings throughout the years and the questionable Iowa caucus results are merely the latest in a long […]

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A Chorus of Lies

Vetting your news media outlets is a vital part of becoming properly informed about your presidential options. With a constant stream of irrelevant, partisan information, most outlets cannot be relied on to truly present viewers with objective fact. Each of the “Big Three” news stations are guilty of regularly espousing misinformation. Some more than others. […]

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The Devils You Know

The political world is a jungle and politicians have historically been the lions that rule it. The last two decades, however, have seen the American government riddled with scandals, questionable ethics, and a mismanagement of both resources and trust. The lions have become pests and parasites. Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are the […]

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Obamacare: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

In 2003 a bill was drafted guaranteeing all American residents vision care, dental services, primary and emergency care as well as an extensive drug plan. This draft had majority support and clauses ensuring that privatized institutions (operating out of their own buildings) would be able to continue their business. Heck, it even included safeguards for […]

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Uninsured America

The above image comes from a New York Times article analyzing the number of people in each county in the United States who lack health insurance. Before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was rolled out in 2013, nearly the entire map was dark blue because nearly 20% of all Americans lacked any kind of health […]

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Wall Street vs Sanders

There is only one politician running for the nomination of either of the two main political parties who has any character at all. Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, despite the fact that he is running as a “democratic socialist” in a country where “socialist” is a dirty word, is running for the Democratic nomination and […]

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Wall Street Loves Illegals

Thanks to Donald Trump, immigration has become a hot button issue in this election. Immigration is always a contentious problem in the United States, with legalities, economics, compassion, and, yes, some racism all coming together to make for very heated arguments. However, the debate has been ratcheted up to a new level of tension this […]

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Martin Shkreli is not the problem

One of the biggest items in the news this week is the story of Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager who started a pharmaceutical company, purchased the US marketing rights to a 62 year old life-saving drug called Daraprim, and then promptly raised the price from $13.50/pill to $750/pill. While Mr. Shkreli has been […]

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Trump is Costing Us

Once again, the news cycle is obsessing over Donald Trump. This time, the Republican made the mistake of responding to a question about his history of sexist treatment of women by aggressively attacking the female debate moderator with sexist comments. So, of course, that is all the media will talk about for the next week, […]

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Turn Things Around

Earlier this month, the Obama government and the Labor Department were bragging about how they have lowered the unemployment rate from its record high levels at the beginning of Obama’s administration. The official unemployment rate at the peak of the Great Recession in October 2009 was 10%, and according to the government, it has now […]

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Where is the backbone?

The 2016 presidential election season is in full swing now, with Hillary Clinton riding high as if she’s already won the Democratic nomination despite her sinking numbers and the rising support for other Democrats like Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, more than a dozen contenders have piled into the Republican clown car, many of them blatantly and […]

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Clinton Won’t Commit

Things have not been going well for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. New polls are showing that Americans do not have favorable opinions about Clinton, and her numbers seem to be dropping more and more with every passing week. In a development that must be particularly distressing for her campaign staffers, voters are overwhelmingly declaring that they […]

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We Don’t Want a Dynasty

The national conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties may still be more than a year away, but the news media would have us believe that the nominees have already been selected. Pundit after pundit and columnist after columnist have declared that the 2016 Presidential election will be a titanic battle between two of America’s […]

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Clinton cannot be trusted

Since she launched her presidential campaign a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton has been trying to depict herself as a populist, fighting for the little guy. She has described herself as a “champion,” saying that she is going to fight for the rights of everyday Americans against the corporate interests of Wall Street. However, Hillary […]

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Don’t Vote Elite

Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is seeking the Democratic nomination for the upcoming 2016 Presidential election. As a self-described socialist, Senator Sanders is fooling himself if he honestly believes he has a chance of winning the nomination in competition with the juggernaut of Hillary Clinton’s campaign machine, but he is extremely perceptive about the flaws […]

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Media Corruption

According to the American Press Institute, the purpose of journalism is to “provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.” If a news organization were to take this goal seriously, it would obviously have a major impact on how they […]

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What is outsourcing?

It has been decades now that Americans have been worried about outsourcing. Starting in the 1960s, American corporations began closing factories and plants in the United States and moving them elsewhere, costing untold millions of Americans their jobs. As a result of this practice, the American middle class has been collapsing in on itself – […]

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Bush Criticizes Obama

Last Saturday, former President George W. Bush attended a fundraising event for the presidential campaign of his brother, Jeb Bush, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. At this meeting, former President Bush delivered a series of harsh criticisms of his successor Barack Obama’s record in the Middle East. Wealthy donors from the Republican Jewish […]

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Cutting Social Security

Last week, in a speech delivered on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared his intention to cut Social Security benefits across the board. He has received praise and accolades from wealthy conservatives who believe that Social Security is a waste of money and that this program, which millions of […]

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Populist or Crony?

This past Sunday, Hillary Clinton officially launched her presidential campaign with a video claiming that she wants to be America’s “champion.” She has spent the week since then in Iowa, where she has been talking to liberal and Democratic groups. She has been making headlines with her so-called “populist” positions and policy statements – this […]

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Clinton’s Email

There is currently only one name being spoken about as a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President in 2016. Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and wife of former President Bill Clinton has been the only serious contender for the Democratic nomination since campaigning started last year. The press has mentioned a few other Democrats […]

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Outsourced at Home

On April 1st, the government began accepting applications for a special kind of immigrant visa, the H-1B visa. Every year, the government issues 85,000 of these visas to highly skilled foreign workers. These visas are intended to help American companies fill highly technical positions that they have not been able to find qualified American workers […]

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Political Dynasties

There is a very good chance that the 2016 Presidential Election ballot will look identical to the 1992 Presidential ballot. While right now, more than a year from the election, it is too early to say for certain who the nominees of the two mainstream parties will be, it seems likely that voters on November […]

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Treason in Congress?

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was reelected in a surprise landslide victory. Israeli pollsters were predicting his right wing Likud party would come in second place to the centrist Zionist Union party, and are crediting his surprise victory with a blitz of media appearances he made in the final days before the […]

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Iran Talks

On Tuesday of this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addressed Congress on the subject of Iran. American diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have been engaged in negotiations with Iran over Iran’s desire to develop nuclear energy and, many believe, nuclear weapons. President Obama’s government is trying to find a way to […]

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They Hate America

Last week, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani declared his belief that President Obama does not love America. At a private fundraising dinner for Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker, Giuliani said, “I do not believe – and I know this is a horrible thing to say – but I do not believe that the president […]

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Funding the DHS

We are living in extremely dangerous times. It seems like hardly a day goes by without a new threat or a new terrorist action somewhere in the world. There was the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, in which Islamic terrorists stormed a Parisian newspaper office, murdering journalists and political cartoonists, while a separate gunman attacked […]

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Obama’s ISIS Plan

While it has fallen out of the news cycle to some degree in recent months, the terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State or ISIS has suddenly regained the media’s attention. With the incredibly barbaric and brutal murder of captured Jordanian fighter pilot, Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh, and the reported death of American hostage Kayla Mueller, […]

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Obama’s Budget

This week, President Obama introduced his budget plan for the next ten years. In this budget, the president created a wish list of government policies that sound too good to be true. The unfortunate fact is that these policies are too good to be true. They are simply another deception in the false Demo-Republican rivalry, […]

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Failing Security

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how our current government in the United States has bent over backwards to appease the world’s bullies, like Russia, rather than standing up for what is right. In that post, I mentioned the provocative and dangerous Russian act of aggression against a United States Navy warship, the guided missile […]

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Un-American Activities

Following the financial crisis in 2008, the crisis that some called the second Great Depression, many pundits predicted that there would be new restrictions placed on the financial industry to prevent Wall Street from running our economy into the ground again. After all, with Congress’s repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act in 1999 under President Clinton, […]

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Military Command

On November 24, 2014, the United States Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, announced his retirement from his position. This makes him the third Secretary of Defense under the Obama administration to retire without serving a full term. Before Mr. Hagel served, both Leon Panetta and Robert Gates stepped down after serving just a few years […]

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Crumbling Infrastructure

On November 23, 60 Minutes aired a report called “Falling Apart: America’s Neglected Infrastructure.” This report has brought America’s crumbling infrastructure back into the spotlight. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft traveled the United States to speak to experts and examine the state of our country’s roads and bridges. The cameramen collected images of crumbling bridges, […]

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Costs of Outsourcing

Judging by how rarely we hear about it these days, worrying about outsourcing seems to have gone out of fashion. Of course, there is a new crisis every week in America these days, and with massive riots, ISIS, and Ebola constantly dominating the headlines, it can be easy to forget the fundamental issues that have […]

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Dysfunctional Government

On November 20, 2014, President Obama issued an historic executive order intended to provide relief to thousands of families who are struggling with our broken immigration system. Many Republican critics are declaring that the president’s executive order is unconstitutional and that they are going to do everything they can to counter this action when the […]

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Immigration Reform

One of the biggest issues facing America today is the question of immigration reform. Every year, roughly one million immigrants are granted lawful permanent residence in the United States. However, at any given time, there are over 11 million immigrants living and often working illegally in the United States. Our government attempts to deport as […]

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Good Cop/Bad Cop

As a two party system, our government naturally falls into an adversarial dynamic. With alternative, outside viewpoints being so rare, the Democrats and Republicans define themselves by their opposition to each other. The parties work together so rarely that the ability to pass legislation seems to depend almost entirely on one party having a majority […]

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War on the Middle Class

Earlier this year, the New York Times broke some news that was difficult for many of us to swallow. For the first time since we began tracking such things, the American middle class lost its status as the world’s wealthiest and most well off. Many measures of our economy, such as growth in Gross Domestic […]

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Voter Turnout

This week’s midterm elections were significant for several reasons. Voters throughout the country passed a large number of important ballot initiatives and the Republican party has firmly taken charge of Congress. However, by far the most significant (and the most distressing) news story to come out of this election is that the voter turnout across […]

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Enough Lawyers

Rearrange Priorities: We’ve had enough lawyers Despite all of their other differences, our elected representatives have one important thing in common. Right wing or left wing, Democrat or Republican, in the Senate, the House, or the White House, the majority of our representatives share the same profession: law. For many years, studying law has been […]

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Nonprofit Insurance

More and more, average Americans are struggling in their day to day lives. With the loss of good manufacturing jobs and Wall Street’s attack on working people, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many Americans to get by. In this environment, the insurance industry’s continued nickel and diming of the American people is becoming intolerable. […]

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Medical Costs

The United States health care system is in a state of crisis, and every effort our government has made to improve things has only made it worse. The most recent effort, Obamacare, attempted to create conditions that would allow all Americans to have access to health insurance. Instead, it just drove up the cost that […]

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Over-Priced Utilities

Energy prices have never been higher in America than they are today. Energy costs for the average consumer have surged, nationwide. Most states are experiencing double digit price increases, even when inflation is taken into account. The only time in American history when energy costs have been nearly as high as they are now was […]

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