American Needs a New Way to Vote

A couple of weeks ago, one of my classmates, Joshua Pena, posted a blog article written about the electoral college. The article, which was very well-written, argued for the termination of our beloved, or not so beloved, Electoral College. Joshua states this this kind of voting system is outdated, confusing, and unfair and I must say that I do agree.

The first, of many, problems that the electoral college has is that it does not accurately represent the general population, aka those of which whom matter the most. The whole point behind the way our government is structured is to include the people's wants and needs, not to have a fixed system where citizens don't get either of those things. Another problem Joshua mentioned is that the number of states per vote are not equally dispersed between the states. Although size and and population can and should  determine the number of votes, this still is not an accurate way to determine what we, as citizens, need. The reasoning behind this is that states are different sizes - meaning that in small states compared to larger states, votes matter more. This changes the value behind each vote, which completely throws off the system. Because of this, if you want your vote to contain more value, you must move to a smaller state. This obviously was not properly thought out by the creators of the Electoral College. Yet another flaw of this voting system is merely that this is a winner-tale-all system. A potential president can absolutely win the popular vote, but then lose in the Electoral College and thus lose their presidency for that term. How is this fair at all? This has happened on a couple of occasions, most notably with Al Gore. How can we let someone be president when they lost the vote of actual citizens? The popular vote, as Joshua mentioned, is undeniably a better representation of what the general population wants.

Although there hasn't exactly been a new system in place to replace the current one, I think that America should really start looking for one. We need a voting system where US Citizens, those who pay taxes and abide by the laws, are accurately represented when voting for their president.

How Trump Withholding His Tax Return is Affecting Tax Reform

Since his campaign, President Trump has refused to release his tax return documents to the public. He is the first president in four decades to not release those documents. By doing this, most of us have assumed that the (hard-hitting and nonstop) criticism he's receiving for not releasing those documents is more tolerable than the criticism he'd receive for whatever is actually on those documents. So what does this have to do with the new tax reform policy?

Well, this lasting criticism has undermined the unity of the Republican party and jeopardized their chances of successfully passing a tax reform. Democrats have used this dilemma as their main argument for voting against whatever tax reform the Republicans are going to have drawn up. Trump's complete unwillingness to release his tax documents puts the Republicans in a bind. Republicans want to talk openly about the bill they've planned and why the American people should get behind it - but they will not be able to do this without revealing how their own President would be affected by it. The goal of the Republican party regarding tax reform is to make a big tax cut, regardless of how big of a repair the reform is for the system, and this will be difficult with a strong opposing argument from the Democrats.

Trump withholding his personal taxes offers the Democrats a way to create a great debate - one that captures the attentions of many. The longer he withholds them, the more attention he draws and the more important each politician's vote for the tax reform bill becomes. With this ongoing dilemma, it's going to be difficult to find a solution that pleases one side. I believe that our President should absolutely release his tax documents to the public, no matter what the consequences to follow are. We cannot build a tax reform bill that Americans are supposed to abide by if our President doesn't do the same. I definitely anticipate the release (or the further withholding) of these documents.

Deny, Deny, Deny

While looking through my classmate's blogs, I stumbled upon Caleb Walters' blog, Washington Unfiltered, and was immediately intrigued by his argument in his post, Russia and U.S. Elections. I agree that cyber security is a big issue in the United States, due to the high volume of technological advances that are being made every day. However, I have to say I disagree with your statement on the Trump-Russia allegations.

The hacking scandal has been slowly unfolding since the first accusation in May of 2016. Although it was never 100% confirmed, US intelligence officials did say that they believed with "high confidence" that the hacking could be traced back to Russia. This is a huge accusation from the United States and I do not think they would have suggested such a thing if they truly didn't believe Russia was at fault. I definitely believe this could be considered, as Caleb says, "substantial evidence." The Trump administration denied these findings. After this allegation, President Trump's then campaign manager was accused of taking money from the Russians for representing their interests in the Ukraine and US. Not long after this accusation, Mr. Paul Manafort was investigated by the FBI and then soon resigned from his position. In October of 2016, US Intelligence officials released a statement formally accusing Russia of the hacking allegations. Trump's response? "Could be Russia, but it could also be China, it could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." This in itself just suggests that President Trump is making light of a serious situation. He is avoiding any real confrontation and continues to "tip-toe" around all evidence. Just because our President doesn't want to come to terms with the truth (most likely because he's involved himself), doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't either. Although there's more evidence that has come to light in the past months, I will stop there.

Furthermore, every time this topic comes up in press conferences, President Trump will avoid answering the question in any way that he can. Most often times, he will distract them by referring them to the Hillary Clinton scandal, the Obama phone tapping or just brush it off like no one ever asked in the first place.

This puts the citizens of the United States in an awkward position-  they continually have evidence put in front of them, but their national leader keeps refusing to accept it. Ultimately, it is up to every person individually to believe what they want - however, the truth always comes out and I look forward to hearing about it in the months to come.

Trump Being Trump

The United States is merely about 11 weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency and at this point, I believe it’s safe to say that the U.S. government is a mess. Trump has been making terrible decisions, signing over outrageous executive orders and racking up enemies left and right. His biggest mistake so far, though – signing an executive order on energy and climate.

This executive order takes a step toward undoing much of what President Obama had in place for the United State’s climate change. It is no doubt biased and based on Trump’s own opinions, without any science to support it. The order calls for an initial review of the Clean Power plan, removes the ban on coal leases on federal land (which was a huge win for Trump supporters), repealed a number of small Obama orders on how the government is supposed to deal with climate change, and a few other minor, but not so minor, things.

Throughout Trump’s campaign, he expressed his opinion and made it very clear that climate change is not on his mind – he once even called it a “hoax.” The Trump administration has constantly showed that climate change is not a priority to America. However, I believe that our government should be in the fight against climate change and make it a priority. Trump must come to his senses and realize that there are scientific facts to back all allegations of climate change.

Trump is stripping down climate regulations that Obama put in place and is putting American jobs above this imminent situation. Although America does need jobs, there will be no jobs for anyone unless America joins the fight against climate change. The environment is what allows us to be and by signing this executive order, Trump is loosening regulations that should be getting stricter.

We, as Americans, play a huge role in this, and we must continue to voice our opinion to the Trump administration. Trump cannot neglect the fact that the global temperature is rising, sea levels are rising and the oceans are warming. These things do not just happen for no good reason – there is a cause behind this and Trump needs to get behind it, also.

Travel Ban 2.0: No Better Than 1.0

In an article posted on March 7th, Erwin Chemerinsky of the LA Times posted this opinion article that discussed President Trump's new travel ban, which to no surprise, is just as bad as his first one. The article, most likely directed at supporters of Trump and the travel ban, discusses the differences between 1.0 and 2.0, but doesn't hesitate to mention that it's still blatantly wrong.

For those uniformed on this issue, Trump placed a travel ban which suspends the entire refugee program for 4 months - it cuts the number of refugees admitted in this fiscal year down to less than half (only 50,000 instead of 110,000). It doesn't allow immigrants from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen for 3 months (the first travel ban included Iraq on the list, the new one does not).

Chemerinsky voices his loud and proud opinion and states that the new ban is "wrong, illegal and irrational." I must say that I have to agree with him. Chemerinsky states what everyone else seems to be thinking: it is wrong to assume that a person is dangerous because of their religion, origin, race or ethnicity and it's irrational to believe refugees fleeing persecution are a threat to our national security.

He goes on to state the specific differences between ban 1.0 and 2.0, clearly pointing out that Iraq was oddly not included in the new ban, when Trump administration goes out of their way to say they are "worried about countries compromised by terrorism" (Iraq being the home of Islamic State). Chemerinsky calls this nonsensical.

Chemerinsky has high hopes that courts across the country will soon find this unconstitutional. He goes on to state that "the president clearly isn’t versed in the Bill of Rights, he should at least consider reading the 1st Amendment. It’s just a few lines so a long attention span isn’t necessary," which I found to be comically true, since it really is unconstitutional to authorize religious discrimination and as the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Trump should know this.

To close this article, Chemerinsky states one good thing about the new ban: it "respects" those who already have a lawful right to entry - aka those who have visas and citizenships won't be banned from entering the United States.

A Wall to Keep Immigrants... IN

On Tuesday, February 22nd, Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba of the LA Times posted an article with an interesting title - What the U.S. really needs is a wall to keep the immigrants in.  I was immediately intrigued and decided this is the article I would write about.

In this article, Sciubba voices her opinion on Trump's alleged "wall" between the United States and Mexico to keep immigrants out. She starts the article off by stating that it's been proven that there aren't nearly as many immigrants coming in as there once was. She states that to "deliver the economic growth Trump has promised, the U.S. will need producers and consumers, and there won't be enough of them without immigration." I whole-heartedly agree with her.

Assuming she wrote this article towards supporters of the wall/Trump, she continues to state all the positive benefits that the immigrants bring to the U.S. - for one, they will take jobs in the agricultural field of work and in the construction field that Americans don't want to do. This affects the economy as a whole. Not to mention the cost of the wall. It's going to cost America greatly to build this border and even then, who is going to build it? If immigrants aren't going to be allowed in the U.S. and they are the only ones who take those kinds of jobs, Trump will have to overpay people to get them to build it.

Personally, I think the wall is a completely unnecessary waste of money. Surely the United States of America doesn't need to actually build a wall. I believe the U.S. needs immigrants and there are other ways to go about illegal/legal immigration issues. This country is known for attracting all kinds of immigrants for all kinds of reasons and as Sciubba states, they "benefit the country in a demographic, economic and social way."

Let's Talk About DeVos...

In this article, written by Emmarie Huetteman and Yamiche Alcindor of The New York Times, the new education secretary is discussed... Betsey DeVos. There is a substantial amount of controversy centered around this woman, mainly because of her complete lack of experience in public education. However, this wasn't the only issue surrounding her confirmation by the Senate - the votes were tied, until Vice President Mike Pence broke the tie, and confirmed her appointment. As students in the public education system, I'm sure why you can all see why this is significantly important. To summarize, DeVos knows nothing about how a public school runs. Neither her or her children have ever attended a public school. Nor have they ever had to take out student loans for higher education. All around America, DeVos was protested against by many. To make you more interested in reading this, I will leave you with this quote from the article... According to the New York times, DeVos plans to "dismantle" things Obama did, such as creating a rule that "denies federal student aid money to for-profit colleges whose graduates struggle to get jobs, as well as an aggressive effort to investigate and adjudicate campus sexual assault claims."

I encourage you all to read this article and educate yourself on what is happening in our government system. Public education is a HUGE issue and by electing DeVos as our education secretary, I think we are taking one giant leap backwards.