Digging a Deeper Hole: The US Deficit

The time has once again come for Midterm Elections, and along with them comes the substantial news coverage, campaigning, and excitement. Yet, in their midst, there are many looming issues in the United States that are being overlooked or ignored to make time for campaign coverage. The United States’ total public deficit now approaches 14 trillion dollars, 96 percent of our annual GDP. To those unfamiliar with our country’s debt in the past, it is no trivial amount of chump change. This is over 10 times larger than it was 30 years ago, and the debt to GDP ratio has almost tripled. If that alone doesn’t scare you, get this: our debt increases to grow at a rate of 8.6 billion dollars every day. If nothing is done to control this spiraling rise, we could find ourselves as a nation in very serious trouble. We are literally digging ourselves a hole that we aren’t going to be able to climb back out of if something isn’t done soon. It is predicted that, if we continue down the path we have been taking, in 2012 our debt will eclipse our country’s total GDP, and that by 2050 our debt will be triple the GDP. In this debt-ridden future, Medicare and Medicaid will take up approximately 50% of the total budget, or 1.5 times our nation’s economic output. After I saw the graphs and budget plans the CBO released, I could already feel my hair beginning to fall out. With a national deficit that large, a huge amount of stress is going to be put on the people of the United States (like me). This is an issue that needs to be given a lot more attention than it has been receiving, especially by young adults like me. After all, we’re the ones who are going to have to deal with it, not a bunch of bureaucrats in D.C. They’ll probably be dead or busy using the Medicare that is going to be swallowing our budget. One can only hope that something will change between now and then; becoming a slave to debt is sounding less and less appealing.

Is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce really behind US?

In Lee Fang's post, "U.S. Foreign Funded Chamber of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads" on the ThinkProgress blog on October 5th, 2010, he claims that the US Chamber of Commerce has been receiving as much as 850,000 dollars a year from foreign companies in funding. This alone might not seem like something worth fussing over, but many believe that the Chamber of Commerce is using this money in their attack on partisan candidates through ads and other means. This use of funding is likely an infringement on campaign finance law prohibiting foreign funding on election campaigns, but because they successfully killed bills proposing financial transparency, it is impossible to prove anything. Additionally, Fang believes that the Chamber of Commerce allows corporations to fund ad campaigns that attack certain bills that pose as a threat to their interests (such as a health insurance company funding healthcare reform attack ads). If these allegations are true, then I think this is definitely worth disputing.
Fang is trying to appeal to Democrats who are looking for more information about their party and the opposition partisan candidates are facing, as well as readers of the ThinkProgress blog. He is trying to persuade people into opposing the Chamber of Commerce and its supposed foreign funding of  campaign attack ads. While he has proof that the money from foreign funding goes into the same account that the ad funding comes from, he can't prove that the same money is being used. He backs his argument with good statistical evidence as well as testimonies from a number of different Chamber of Commerce officials, but his use of language is definitely swaying the story to appeal to democrats, which may make the situation seem worse than it is. In my opinion, I agree that this whole situation is pretty shady as far allocating the money goes, but I think the real problem is that they can keep their finances private. If financial transparency was mandatory, then it would be obvious whether or not the foreign funding is actually going towards these ad campaigns, and something could be done about it.

How Exactly Does one Weed Out "Home Grown" Terrorists?

In John Farmer Jr.'s article How to Spot a Terrorist, Farmer appeals to those who are unsure of their constitutional rights being adhered to and shows the contraversies of profiling Americans from both a constitutional and law enforcement standpoint. In the article, the author shows his support for a project that the Justice Department is undertaking called the National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. This program allows people to report suspicious activity and stores it to look for patterns and potential danger. Many are worried that this initiative will put their constitutional rights in jeopardy, especially those relating to profiling based on race or appearance. The author says that it is a "balanced" way of obtaining information, as it holds suspicious activity as the primary cause of organization and not racial profiling. However, there is another controversy that is brought up; is enforcing this initiative taking away from the police's duty of law enforcement and placing it in intelligence? Farmer doesn't think so. He states that law enforcement officers are trained to look for suspicious activity anyways, such as someone robbing a house or a bank, and that this is no different.
Personally, I do not agree with the Farmer's claim that this will work. The whole initiative itself seems to have a lapse in logic from the start because it relies on the initiative of Joe Dirt to take time out of his workday and come in to report something that most likely isn't even an act of Terrorism. Then, the suspicious events have to be sifted through to find the relevant claims and correlated in a fashion that can't discriminate based on race or appearance. It may just be me, but it seems like it would be pretty difficult to find a terrorist if you don't know what he looks like. Additionally, if law enforcement officers are already trained to look for suspicious activity, then I don't see what additional relevant information this could bring them. His evidence he provides is good, but it seems like he is taking the evidence from sources that are likely to agree with him in the first place, such as a former FBI special agent. Ultimately, the threat of terrorism in our homeland is definitely a growing issue, but I don't think this is the appropriate way to act on it.

Obama's Plan to Increase Infrastructure

In an economy like the one that we live in today, there are many people who are searching an easy fix to this staggering financial crisis. But with unemployment rates rising and much of the stimulus already spent, it seems that there isn't a simple solution. In an attempt to remedy this situation, President Barack Obama plans to invest over 50 billion dollars into infrastructure. This includes rebuilding and renovating over 150 thousand miles of roads and over 150 miles of airport runways, as well as over four thousand miles of new rail construction. In addition to this, he also plans on installing a new air traffic system that is designed to reduce flight time as well as delays. You may be asking yourself, "what the hell is spending my tax dollars on infrastructure going to do for the economy?" The idea is simple enough: In the short term, it hires construction workers, electricians, welders, and other similar workers and gives them much needed jobs that they can complete over the long term. Personally, I think that this idea isn't so bad, considering it will (hopefully) make transportation regular car-less people like me as far as railways and efficient air travel go. Conversely, it might be detrimental to people who do own cars because some of the money that is going towards these infrastructure improvements is coming from tax breaks and other subsidies that the government is giving oil companies, which will most likely raise gas prices.
Overall, I thought this article was a good read because it gives insight into how Obama plans on stimulating our economy for both short term and long term improvements. We might not NEED 150 thousand miles or road improvement, but if it means that it will indirectly make the value of my parent's house go back up, it's fine by me.
Article: Time Politics