A Senator’s Lavish Lifestyle

Check out this humorous CNN article and video about the real “Alpha House,” the inspiration for the new Amazon Series. You might be surprised that these men who represent their states in the governing body that runs our entire nation live in a manner not too dissimilar than a few of us. Well hopefully a small few. Let’s just say they puts some frat houses to shame!

 

The American Dream?

In his book, ,The Epic of America (1931), James Truslow Adams defined the American dream as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In other words, with hard work anyone can achieve anything, in America of course.

The problem with this dream, however, is the years of history pointing to this dream only working in the favor of the vast minority of people. The wealth gap has always been hindrance to the people who found themselves on the wrong end of the deal.  Of course ambitious and brains will help you succeed, but that isn’t nearly as helpful and the size of your parents pockets. Though we like to look at all of the great success stories in our American history, with billionaires like Rockefeller or Bill Gates working from rags to riches, we also like to ignore the fact that most people will get swept up by student debts and low paying jobs.

This an ongoing issue for Americans, with Obama speaking out today about the wage and income gap eroding the American Dream.  According to a CNN article about the speech, the growing gap between the rich and poor is threatening the very ideals that America was founded on. Obama even stated the issues with our economy as the defining challenge of our time. “Growing inequality and lack of upward mobility has jeopardized middle-class American’s bargain, that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.”

Obama went on to say that “the idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough, but the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty, because she lacks a decent education or health care or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us.”

Barack Obama (Photo credit: jamesomalley)

To face this challenge, Obama pointed to a push for more left-sided economics, such as through raising minimum wages. A current proposal  in on Capitol Hill, for example, is looking to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10. Other techniques would include simplifying the tax code, provide more working training in high schools, and making saving for retirement easier for Americans.

Click here to watch Obama’s speech!

I think anyone can agree that our “profoundly unequal” economy needs some changing, and while I tend to side with Obama’s plans to help enhance our economy and decrease the gap between haves and have-nots, I’m sure there are other opinions out there for what our best path may be.

Do you have any suggestions? Put them in the comments section below!

Fast-Food Workers Want More Money

This is a topic that I’m fairly on the fence about. I do think that wages should be “livable,” as they say, but on the same token is it truly fair to pay fast food employees the same as what people with jobs that required degrees earn? And will the restaurants simply hire less people? Maybe the best solution is what they are voting on in DC, with gradually increasing the minimum wage over a few years.

MorganMolnar1

 

While people are out going to the Hunger Games, many people in the fast-food industry are going on strike. On Thursday many employers of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and other fast-food chain restaurants will fight to get their pay increased to $15 an hour. (NYT). This strike is being backed by the Service Employees International Union and is demanding that the workers be allowed to unionize with no threat of a retaliation. “Officials with the National Restaurant Association have said the one-day strikes are publicity stunts. They warn that increasing pay to $15 an hour when the federal minimum wage is $7.25 would cause restaurants to rely more on automation and hire fewer workers,” (NYT). The point of this one day strike is to raise the pay, well the article goes on to mention that the average fast-food worker is 29 with at least one child to…

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Is It Finally Fixed?

Things have been rough for Obama’s key legislation lately, to say the least. The controversial healthcare plan has had many critiques on both sides, and we can’t forget how Congress was okay with shutting down the government just because they didn’t like the bill. The latest debacle for the big man in charge has been the shambly mess of a roll-out for the ObamaCare website. Finger pointing aside, the Obama administration has finally said the site is fixed and all systems are go. But with such a bold statement, of course, comes increased scrutiny to a site that has been plagued with errors since day one.

Experts say the architecture of the obamacare website is deeply flawed

According to an article on CNN, since Obama declared the site as “working” on Sunday, public scrutiny has only increased. Though it seems many of the major issues have been resolved, however, many small errors continue to add annoyances to many people trying to access the President’s new healthcare plan through the online portal.

Insurance company in particular are still finding multiple issues, with statements being sent with missing and inaccurate data, as well as a fear that the site may still be broken on the “back-end.” According to Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the health insurance industry trade association group America’s Health Insurance Plans, “In some cases [insurance companies] are not getting the enrollments at all.”

There seems to be no end to the problems associated with the website established by Obama’s administration. I do not know a lot about programming, but I do know the importance of double checking my work before turning it in. You would have thought with the amount of money poured into the site, someone could have picked up some of the folks from Silicon Valley to look over the hunk of coding mess to fix the glitches. For all the people who actually need to get Obama’s new health insurance plan, I hope they can fully patch up the website soon!

113th Congress Sets New Record of Low Congressional Accomplishment

I remember a joke my brother once told me. “You know Pro is suppose to be positive, and Con is suppose to be negative? Well doesn’t that mean Congress is the opposite of Progress?” Seems the joke gets more true all the time!

ineedmyownpoliticalopinion

Even before I started paying attention to politics, even when I was a kid, I remember always vaguely understanding or hearing that Congress wasn’t doing anything right, or wasn’t doing enough, or any number of other negative things. Now that I have been paying attention to politics for the last year, I’ve realized just how unproductive this session of Congress really was. According to this article, in the past 11 months there have been fewer than 60 laws enacted. This number is so significantly lower than the previous record-low that officials have already declared this the least productive session ever. The previous record was from 1995, when 88 laws were enacted, when the newly empowered GOP congressional majority confronted the Clinton administration. Quoted in the article is House Speaker John Boehner, who told reporters that “the GOP was most proud of putting a brake on tougher regulations on business…

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Short, Sweet, and to the Point

Some of the greatest speeches in the history of public speaking have been powerful, not just from their language choices, but simply from their brevity. In American politics, for example, some of our most memorable speeches include Roosevelt’s “Infamy” speech regarding the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s ‘Ich Ben Ein Berliner’ speech during the Cold War, Reagan’s Challenger Disaster Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. All of these speeches  are notable, not just for their content, but for their length.

But the mother of all American speeches, at least in my opinion, has to be Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In  less than three minutes, President Lincoln created some of the most memorable quotes in American political discourse, as well has helping begin the healing process after the American Civil War.

Keeping speeches short was the main focus of a recent CNN article, Lessons From Lincoln: Mr. President You’re Talking too Much, which looked at speeches like Lincoln’s address as a lesson that should be taken by all lawmakers, especially for President Obama. Though Obama is certainly a talented public speaker (whether you like him or not), his recent speeches and briefings have dragged.

Ronald C. White, a Lincoln scholar, has stated quite a few differences from modern speeches like Obama’s and the speeches of President Lincoln. For one, teleprompters. To be fair, presidents have to speak in public far more often today, but teleprompters will never allow for the connection to an audience that a memorized speech can.

White has also pointed to the speech writers cramming far too much information into a single speech as a major difference. “It’s almost like a committee where everyone involved in the writing process wants to get their points in,” he stated. Obama has been noted to edit his own speeches, however. Maybe he should be just be a little more willing cut.

English: United States President Barack Obama making a speech to a large crowd at College Green in Dublin, Ireland. Behind him, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People today also do not digest speeches like they use to. “We don’t read speeches anymore,” White explained. Not only is watching a speech not as effective as reading it, most of us get our dose of speeches from snippets on The Daily Show. Getting short summaries of the key points of a speech can be a good way to get just the facts, but it doesn’t allow for the analysis and understanding of what the speaker was trying to convey nearly as well as reading and comprehending it. Plus these news snippets often focus on the “screw ups” rather than the important information.

The biggest difference from Lincoln’s time and now, however, is the lack of trust in our politicians and government. “We’re cynical about speeches and about words,” White said. Ever since the Watergate Scandal that rocked the Nixon Presidency and forever changed journalism, it seems the media has only really been out to get politicians. While blind trust certainly isn’t good, 24 hour news networks really do specialize in nitpicking. Just pick the side you want to see bashed more often, and choose your media outlet from there!

Though the times have certainly changed the rules of speech delivery since Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, maybe Obama could still take a lesson from his favorite President and cut back on the information overload in all of his speeches.

Let us know what you think!

“Second Term Woes”

With the recent fumbles regarding the roll-out of ObamaCare and its accompanying website, Obama has had a difficult time with approval ratings during his second term. More than just the mismanagement of Obama’s signature legislation, Obama has been hit from both sides for multiple issues, ranging from gun rights, to not holding campaign promises, to of course being a general scapegoat for when things in Government don’t work out.

English: In January 2009, President of the United States of America, George W. Bush invited then President-Elect Barack Obama and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter for a Meeting and Lunch at The White House. Photo taken in the Oval Office at The White House. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This certainly is not new phenomenon, however. In fact, CNN has just posted an article discussing many of the “Second Term Woes” of our past presidents. With a list of political scandals and general screw-ups, political analysts have long pointed out the trend of declining popularity of our presidents during their second terms.

For example, before Obama Bush had to handle an increasingly unpopular war (that he sorta started and all) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even more staining than the weariness of bad news emanating from the Middle East, the Bush administration dealt with a large public backlash for their “response” to Hurricane Katrina.

Clinton, of course, had his second term in office plagued with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment trials. Though he still got quite a bit done in the last few years of his presidency, Clinton’s presidency will forever be remembered for this.

Looking farther back, we might remember Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal, Truman and the war in Korea, and the mother of all American political scandals; Nixon and Watergate.

So why is it that so many of our presidents, even ones that are remembered fondly, had so many issues in their second term?

Russell Riley, a presidential scholar and professor at the University of Virginia, has pointed to a few reasons why the popularity ratings for some of our past presidents declined in their final years.

One of the biggest reasons is a problem that plagues everyone, president or not. People get burnt out, and not just the president, but their entire team.

Clinton with President Barack Obama and Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett in July 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The longer a President is in office, the more people get to know what they are and are not good at. Congress in particular likes to take advantage of a President’s weaknesses for their benefit. As David Nichols, Presidential historian and expert on Eisenhower, stated, “the longer presidents are around and when people get to know you well, they begin to know where your soft sports are.” More dirt begins to pile up on presidents the longer they stick around, as well.

The amount of time it takes for policies and changes to occur also effects popularity, which is particularly true of Obama. He made many bold promises during his first run for president, and while he has finished or at least is underway for some (Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously reforming healthcare, etc.), it has taken nearly 5 years for the ball to get rolling on a lot of these.

What is your opinion for Presidential second terms? Do you think Obama is going to regain the popularity he once held? Or at least get some stuff done despite the grilling he has gotten?

Let us know what you think below!

Election Results

Check out the 2013 Election results!

America's Political Scene

Here’s a brief overview of all of the results from yesterday’s election from Politico: 2013 Election Results. Congratulations to the new governor of VA, Terry McAuliffe! 

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Sarah Palin: Is She Still Relevant?

Sarah Palin campaigning in Des Moines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After her unsuccessful run as John McCain’s Vice Presidential choice in 2008, Sarah Palin has bounced back and forth between political superstar and irrelevance. She has sold literally millions of books, been a political commentator on Fox, and has even had a reality TV show about herself and her family life in Alaska. Yet why is it, compared to all the multitudes of forgotten vice presidential candidates who weren’t on the winning tickets in the past,  that people continue to care so much about Sarah Palin? Does Sarah Palin still matter?

That is the central question of a recent post on CNN regarding the “Return of Palin.” With support from Tea Party goers, facepalms from Republicans, and a guaranteed spot on the evening news every time she opens her mouth, is it possible that the very media complaining about her pseudo-relevance are the cause of the power she seems to still hold?

Check out the article to read up on all of the recent shenanigans of our favorite Alaskan, and what people have to say about that!

Not Sugarcoating the Problems

CNN (Crossfire-Health Care.gov)

Though Obama still defends his signature healthcare bill, ObamaCare, he has no qualms discussing the host of issues people have experienced with the accompanying website. According to the CNN article, the 15% of Americans who currently lack healthcare coverage and must sign up for the Affordable Care Act have experienced login difficulties, long waits, repeated failures, and more.

“Nobody’s madder than me about the website not working as well as it should,” Obama exclaimed, “which means it’s going to get fixed.”

Discussing his support for the Affordable Care Act, Obama noted the tactics used by the right to attempt shutting down the bill, such as the recent Government Shutdown. “It’s time for folks to stop rooting for its failure, because hardworking middle class families are rooting for its success.

According to the BBC, almost half a million people have already applied for ObamaCare through federal and state-run websites since the first of October, despite the design flaws of the software. This number, however, is fairly small compared to the nearly 20 million people who have actually visited the website.

“Precisely because the product is good, I want the cash registers to work; I want the checkout lines to be smooth,” Obama went on, “And there’s no excuse for the problems. These problems are getting fixed.”

Personally I’m surprised more wasn’t done to prepare for the roll out of ObamaCare’s website. With the thousands of talented computer and programming guys all around Washington, you would think someone would make sure the software would work before allowing it to go live. Websites are bound to crash when too many people get on at once, that’s to be expected. The problems with HealthCare.gov seem to run far deeper than bandwidth issues, though.

Luckily for those who intend to utilize Obama’s new plan, Obama has rolled out the Tech Troops to get this thing fixed. According to CNET, Obama has hired “experts from some of America’s top private-sector tech companies” to come and fix the myriad of problems.