Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Sicko

Published by KP February 14th, 2008 in Politics, america, government, health care, money and election. 2 Comments

Last night, I watched a very interesting documentary about health care in America. This movie is called Sicko and it was produced by Michael Moore. All I have to say is WOW, everyone needs to see this movie whether you have health care or not.

In the movie, Michael Moore interviews different people who have either been denied medical care because they were uninsured or because their health insurance didn’t want to pay the money. At some points in this movie, I was almost in tears because it was just so sad to see people be denied cancer treatment or necessary surgeries because they couldnt pay for it or their insurance felt the treatments were “experimental” or”medically unnecessary”.

I learned alot about the American health care system and how corrupt it is. its run by the government, HMO’s were approved by Nixon and President Bush gets paid off by the drug companies so they can charge whatever they want for medications. The system is so bad that almost 50 million people are unsured. I cannot believe that this country would deny help to anyone who needs it. they even deny care to people who served during 9/11.

Either health care needs to be universal like in canada and france or the health care workers needs to come together and either have a strike against the health care businesses or the new president needs to come up w a new plan for REAL change, unlike G. W. Bush. This leads me to another reason why you need to watch the movie. They talk alot about Hillary Clinton and how she wanted to univeraslize health care when she was first lady. thats fine and dandy, but they also explain that she was another one of the gov’t figures who was PAID off by the health care system not to have it changed. That is something to think about since the elections are coming up… Obama anyone?

The movie explains that univeral health care really does work, they go to france and canada and talk to people who use the health care system. they get timely and effective health care; infact, the american health care sytem scares them, most of them are alfraid to come here in fear that they will get injured and be denied care while here.

Watch this movie! Also, if you have any health care stories about being denied and you would like to share, post em or email em to me!

About the Making of TV Show “Lil’ Bush”: The Politics of Washington Seem Like a Schoolyard

Published by Jackie Vesci June 28th, 2007 in Cartoons, Country, Politics and Presidency. 1 Comment

Comedy Central Orders Lil' Bush For Next Year

 

“Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States” is a cartoon created by writer/producer Donick Cary (“Letterman,” “The Simpsons”). The idea started out as a series of five-minute cell phone cartoons for Amp’d Mobile in September 2006, and has now become a half-hour series on Comedy Central with two 10-minutes cartoons in each episode.

Lil’ Bush pals around with other young versions of his administration including Lil’ Cheney, Lil’ Condi, and Lil’ Rummy. Lil’ Tony Blair, Lil’ Barack Obama, Lil’ Bill Clinton, and all sorts of other lil’ political leaders have made appearances since the television episodes starting airing June 13, 2007.

If you go to Amp’d Mobile’s site promoting the series, you can watch a “Behind the Scenes of Lil’ Bush,” that contains a short interview with Cary. In it, he explains that he always liked the concept of “shrinking people down” and making them little versions of themselves.

Making a cartoon of a young Bush administration made sense to Cary because “on a basic level” the politics of Washington seem “so childish…it in some ways seems like a schoolyard or like kids just screwing around.” The narrow-minded and supremely confident judgments made by Lil’ Bush and his pals work because they are just innocent kids. It’s funny because you can disassociate the outrageous content of the cartoon (Lil’ Bush giving Bush Senior an Iraqi orphan called “Lamey…because he can’t walk so good” as a feel-good Father’s Day gift to make up for all the negative press coverage from Iraq, for example) from the real, more outrageous problems facing our nation on account of our leadership.

To create the show, Cary collaborates with a group of internet designers and artists from Bulgaria, one of them being a childhood friend. He explains, “It’s been sorta funny, uh, the translation of stuff, cause’ they don’t totally understand why you’d make fun of your president. They were sorta like ‘Isn’t that your leader? You all support him, right?’ And it’s like, n…ah, it’s kinda, you know, 30% of us do and the rest kinda just shrug, you know?” He stumbles through the interview trying not to be “too political” or perhaps, too honest about how the majority of Americans view the President.

I am sure the artists in Bulgaria are not the only ones perplexed by our reported overwhelming disapproval of the President and our endorsement of fake news shows like “The Daily Show” and satirical cartoons like “Lil’ Bush.” Part of living in a democratic state means questioning our elected representatives and having a system of checks and balances. However, have the politics in Washington become so unbelievably unbalanced that the only way to accept the reality is to think of it as fake? Are we accomplishing anything by laughing it off?

I’ll admit, I watch the entire Comedy Central lineup of “Lil’ Bush,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” every week, and “Lil’ Bush” makes me laugh out loud – every week. I don’t know if I necessarily feel good about it though.

“Lil’ Bush” currently airs on Comedy Central, Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.

Washington D.C.

Published by Matt Gondek June 24th, 2007 in Uncategorized, culture, Community, Country, Politics, Capitalism, Washington D.C., Tourism and Sight-seeing. 0 Comments

5in1-reader-wcord.jpgfca5_1.jpgI recently got back from a Trip to Washington D.C. One of the biggest differences between there and here in Pittsburgh is that the bums yell at you in foreign languages. Also, everything is more expensive. A $28 shirt from Urban Outfitters here will cost you $32 there. Not to mention the $27 I spent on two drinks at an upscale Asian French Restaurant called OYA.

Also, for some reason, the back of the White House was completely blocked off, and there were military people at the Washington Monument to “scare” tourists (his own actual words). Eventually we found out that they were there for a ceremony later that day which we missed. There weren’t alot of places to buy a drink, which was bad due to the constant walking and heat.

Everyone there that works for the city was mean, including the lady who was working at the Metro Station. When we asked her for change for a dollar that wouldn’t feed into the ticket machine, she refused and we had to get change from a random woman.

Also, there was no grafitti or anything of that sort anywhere. It was a very clean city and all the buildings were really nice and visually pleasing.

More pictures later.

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Washington Monument
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El Casa De Presidante


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The Capital Building

Can Bill Gates Save the World with “Creative Capitalism?”

Published by Jackie Vesci June 19th, 2007 in Community, Economy, technology, Country, Politics, World, Bill Gates and Capitalism. 1 Comment

An article in the June 18, 2007 issue of TIME entitled, “Bill Gates Goes Back to School” by Lev Grossman, highlights Bill Gates’ commencement address to recent Harvard graduates and his acceptance of an honorary degree to the school he dropped out of to eventually co-found Microsoft.  The speech notes his plans t0 leave Microsoft in 2008 and become a full-time philanthropist, directing his efforts to improve global education and global health through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Follow the first link to the TIME article and the second to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website for a transcript of his commencement speech - both worth a read.

Gates’ explains during the speech his one big regret about leaving Harvard: “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world—the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.”  He cites the millions of young people lacking educational opportunities in America, and the millions living in “unspeakable poverty and disease” around the world.  It took him decades to understand the complexity of injustice around the globe, he comments.

At Harvard, Gates took great interest in new discoveries concerning economics, politics, and advances in the sciences.  However, as he realizes now, humanity’s greatest achievements emerge as a result of our ability to apply new discoveries to reduce inequality, such as on issues of democracy, quality health care, and broad economic opportunity.

As a promoter of capitalism, an economic system contributing to his wealth and success at Microsoft, Gates acknowledges the limitations on the system to help the greater good.  During his commencement speech, Gates introduces an idea he calls “creative capitalism.”  Creative capitalism means finding ways to use the market forces to create profit, or at least a living, for more people to serve those suffering from the worst inequalities.   He explains, “If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.”

Much like Al Gore as I noted in “Let’s Get Political,” Gates points to the accelerating technologies and information available to today’s college graduates.  Now more than ever we can come to recognize, understand, confront, and solve the problems of disparity at home and abroad.  Gates notes, “You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort…For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.”

Bill Gates, cited as the wealthiest human being on the planet for over a decade by Forbes magazine, could easily ignore the great inequalities of the world and swim in his billions of dollars.  But Gates has a conscience.  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $33 billion, making it by far the largest charitable foundation in the world, and last year close friend Warren Buffet committed to eventually adding an additional $30 billion (Grossman).  The magnitude of wealth he has acquired and full-time efforts he will dedicate to closing the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States and between first and third world countries provides a model for the youth of the world to follow.  Gates began as an entrepreneur, worked to become wildly successful both in advancing the field of technology and growing a colossal fortune, and now finds his greatest regret in failing to recognize how to use his knowledge, access, and privilege to reduce inequality. 

His speech serves as a reminder to consider the global market and community, in which we all now participate, when designing your career path.  Through technology we all have the ability and opportunity to affect positive change on a global level.

Race, Gender, and the 2008 Presidential Election

Published by Jackie Vesci June 14th, 2007 in culture, Community, Country, Reason, Politics, Barack Obama, Thomas L. Friedman, World and Presidency. 4 Comments

“It’s time for us to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of the night to be tortured in far-off countries, that runs prisons that lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with.  We are not a country that preaches compassion to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city.”

“We are America.  We are the nation that liberated a continent from a madman, that lifted ourselves from the depths of Depression, that won civil rights, and women’s rights, and voting rights for all people.  We are the beacon that has led generations of weary travelers to find opportunity, and liberty, and hope on our doorstep.  That’s who we are.”

-Senator Barack Obama, presidential campaign letter

Is the United States ready for a black president?  Or, to be more accurate, multiracial president?  How many U.S. citizens know or care to know Barack Obama’s actual ethnicity?  Does race factor into Obama’s ability to lead our country?  How about a female president? And a ”First Man”/former President at her side?  Why or why not?  The fact that a black or female president is a real possibility in 2008, and oftentimes a difficult subject to talk about in casual company, seems to be a source of tension as the election approaches.  Is it wrong to think that our society, for the most part, has transcended hatred based solely on race or gender?  I imagine most of us know the tension persists - at home, in our neighborhoods, across state lines, and certainly on a global level.

The debate about race and gender politics stemming from the campaigns for the upcoming election encourages citizens to expand their ways of thinking, question what it means to be “American,” and to accept the potential for change.  I receive e-mails and letters from the Barack Obama campaign and enclosed in the last letter was a copy of an article from The New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman (author of The World is Flat) entitled “Obama Could Repair U.S. Image.”  Friedman, a current leading expert on foreign affairs and author of several influential books and articles on the subject, argues that Obama shows the most potential to mend the “broken relationship” between the United States and the rest of the world.

Upon returning from a trip to Africa, Friedman entered the U.S. at the height of the Don Imus controversy (a show on which he had been a guest).  The ordeal, he writes, “underscored how much work we have to do in learning how to listen, talk and yes, joke with one another across racial, gender and religious lines.”  Certainly, the Don Imus controversy highlighted the debate over acceptable speech concerning race and gender not only on morning radio, but in hip-hop music, over the Internet, and throughout all the various media outlets.

Friedman promotes communication on contentious issues, such as the Don Imus case, and argues that Obama (as President) would provide the best moderator for a wide discussion.  He explains, “I believe that what has propelled his candidacy up to now is that many Americans have projected onto him their hunger for community, their hunger for a president with the voice, instincts and moral authority to make it so much harder for foreigners to be anti-American or for Americans to be anti-one another.”  Only an informed leader - someone with experience in civil rights cases and on issues concerning diversity - can communicate effectively with foreign leaders to put the U.S. back in good standing around the world.

Black, white, female, male – connotatively, do these words elicit a more powerful response than they should?

The respect attributed to Barack Obama so far in his campaign gives our society a design of acceptance that can be received with overdue optimism.  Throughout history ordinary men (and I use that term loosely as I feel the term currently reflects mankind and not gender) have transcended to extraordinary status by presenting these models for us to follow.  Right now Obama stands as an ordinary man with extraordinary potential.  However, the contention exists in the fact that if he were to be elected President, the situation’s primary aspect of distinction would be his skin color and the fact that no President before him had dark skin.  He would be the first black President.

This post started out with a seemingly simple question.  However, the question first identifies the individual by color and then by presidential candidate.  Is that the way voters see the upcoming election?   In retrospect, that question may serve as the answer as to whether or not we as a society are ready.

-Thank you to the contributions by Brian Vesci

Let’s Get Political

Published by Jackie Vesci June 8th, 2007 in culture, Community, Reason, Politics and Al Gore. 20 Comments

 

Al Gore in his office, May 2007- photo from Time

Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason

Closing in on minute 30 of the audiobook The Assault on Reason by Al Gore (published May 22, 2007), I felt compelled to write a political piece.  I am not yet recommending anyone read or purchase the book based on the first 30 minutes, but I will share that the experience alone led me to note taking, reading various Amazon.com reviews, and stopping iTunes to start posting.  If you are so inclined, read the beginning of the book at the link I’ve provided above.  It’s worth it.

Part 1 (of the 2 part audiobook) lasts roughly six hours.  In the first 30 minutes Gore touches upon the use of torture, Iraq, the manipulative power of television and the “pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time” (O.J., Michael Jackson, Britney and KFed), the continuously vacant Senate floor, the decline of reading, and the source of hope in the knowledge exchange via the internet.  As American citizens, each of these topics in some way defines our culture, our way of communicating, and our position on a global level. 

Whether you agree with Gore’s arguments or not, the overall idea is to promote discussion, intelligent debate, and the use of reason when crafting your speech.  Gore writes, “Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.”  He argues that reasoned debate based on science or logic matters significantly less than images of power, wealth, and control to the American people when it comes to decision-making.  As a result, government decisions can pass without regard for evidence, truth, or reason. 

The problem lies considerably within the way we receive most information - through television. Gore notes, “According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.”  The image domination and precise marketing tactics used through the medium guarantee decisive responses from viewers.  Coupled with fact that only a handful of corporations control the airwaves, our consent has become “a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.” 

But wait, hope does remain for Americans to regain control of their actions.  “Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It’s a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It’s a platform, in other words, for reason.”

Allow me to respond personally to the argument that the Internet provides a virtual marketplace of ideas that is easy to enter and navigate.  I have received a B.A. in Political Science from a credible institution of higher learning, so perhaps I’m more qualified to reason through political arguments than the average American citizen.  However, blogging is a very new medium for me.  I think in total it cost around $30 to set this website up (correct me if I’m wrong).  Within a week the two of us have roughly 20 posts published.  Mind you, the coordination did involve the help of tech-savvy partners.  My point being that the costs are minimal and if you care to put the time in, anyone can start a website or a blog.  Then anyone with access to the internet can immediately join you in starting or continuing a discussion.  As long as individuals use the medium for intelligent and mindful discourse, we can take back our democracy and have a government run by reasoned debate, both online and in person.

As a note of caution Gore warns, “We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.”  Protecting our ability to self-publish our thoughts and ideas online without threat or interference is crucial to an active role of the American people in the future and survival of our democracy.  We must not forget or allow government or corporations to take that away.

Yes, it takes concerted time and effort to sit here and write reasoned articles on politics or the economy.  Is it worth it?  Absolutely.  Even more so when I receive reasoned comments in response, whether they affirm my position, completely disagree, or offer a new way of thinking.  On that note, thank you to those who commented on ”Corporate America and the Intern Culture.”  Had I not received the intelligent discourse that followed, I may not have been motivated to continue writing elaborately thought-out posts in the future.

As Gore writes, “…the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.”  So let’s converse, on a meaningful level.  I welcome all reasoned responses.

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