The UWIRE Forum

By Matthew Albright, guest columnist

There’s no way to get around it –  swine flu is spreading, making its mark on campuses all over the nation. As students, staff, faculty and administration come to grips with this harsh fact, it’s important that panic not set in.

H1N1 is gathering a rather nasty reputation through widespread media coverage and rampant word-of-mouth. But the disease has so far been less deadly than the standard flu that wreaks havoc on a fairly regular basis.

There’s a huge difference between caution and paranoia. The simple fact is swine flu shouldn’t interrupt anybody’s life in any meaningful way. This applies to academic life as well as simple personal interactions.

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By Josh Green, progressive guest columnist

I’m a free-marketer. I believe the free market is great for business growth, strong economies and innovation, but not so great for self-regulating and preventing abuses.

And I thought all my favorite conservatives out there favored free markets, too, until we got into the nitty gritty of health care reform. Then I learned that conservatives actually want to protect monopolies, the antithesis of the free market.

Monopolies, or oligopolies, are systems in which one or a few companies dominate a market to the point where competition is kept from flourishing. Companies with a dominant market share (think Microsoft or Google) can’t help themselves — they want to maintain that dominance, set pricing on their products that ensures large profits and basically keep any upstarts from ruining their good deal. This is why we have anti-trust laws — monopolies, we’ve found throughout history, kill competition, hurt consumer choice and are about as un-American and anti-capitalist as an institution can be.

Then why are conservatives defending the monopolies that health insurance companies enjoy throughout the United States?

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Chris Burks

Somewhere there is a city in a kingdom whose prince is now smiling down upon the land. High above this city towers a Great Colossus with a tablet, inscribed with the immortal “Bring me your tired, your poor….”  The Colossus’ raised hand emanates a great light that shines for all to see.  The light shines above the darkness, above the dark water.

The Senator, like the city and the country, was sometimes mired in that dark water.  His ideals, indeed his imagined inauguration became only a dream that he drove into the dark water.

The Senator had struggled. He had struggled his whole life. He had trouble, not the struggle of those trying to make a living in this great City, in the Great County, but he had battled every day of his life for those striving to survive, and for himself.

That battle, the struggle for health care, and education, and minimum wages, and humane immigration policies, and common-sense solutions for everyday people, and the private and family struggles, was, and ever remains, the story of his life.

United States Senator Ted Kennedy, now deceased at 77, fought for others to live the regal life many saw in his own family.  Eulogized as the “liberal lion of the North” or the “Lion King,” Kennedy remains more simply our American Prince, a man whose familiarity with tragedy and shortcoming could be described as nothing short of American.

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Chris Burks

America is in the midst of one of the greatest public policy battles in years and, perhaps lost among the beautiful wreckage of public comments at the town hall forums so necessary to sustaining our Republic, two telling rhetorical developments happened this week.

First, in direct response to losing control of the media narrative over a public option and other rhetorical catchphrases that often have a nebulous connection to the actual public policy up for debate, the White House, through several named and unnamed Senior administration officials signaled it may work to pass a health care bill with only the support of the Democratic majority.

Such a strategic reminder to Congressional Republicans, of the Democrats’ power to pass legislation, was more of an attempt to mollify the liberal-activist left.  However, senior administration officials went on to be quoted as saying that they wanted the focus of the health care discussion to not be on the public option, but instead on all the other great access enabling mechanisms that this health care reform package will provide.  A senior administration official stated that the “left of the left” had made the debate over the public option their “Waterloo.”

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Matt Cavedon

According to Newsweek, polyamory may be the next sexual revolution.

As its name suggests, polyamory is the practice of having multiple committed sexual partners with the knowledge and consent of all of the other partners. Approximately 500,000 Americans are believed to be in polyamorous relationships.

With America’s changing attitudes about sex over the past 50 years, we may come to the point where polyamory becomes a political issue. With the traditional definition of marriage giving way in the mindset of many young Americans, what comes next?

The same-sex marriage movement shows that an increasing number of Americans no longer associate marriage with having children, or at least having children with conceiving them. This is an extremely radical break with most conceptions of marriage, and it shifts the focus of marital union to sexual intimacy and commitment rather than procreation. It is fair to ask why polyamorous people should be excluded from the capacity for such commitment. Emotion, after all, is a terribly subjective thing. It is difficult to judge one person’s love for another person against one person’s love for several other people and to proclaim one clearly better than the other. Why not let polyamorous groups get married?

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Zach Lahn, a senior at the University of Colorado, made news Saturday by challenging President Barack Obama to an “Oxford-style” debate over the health care bill during a town hall meeting. This is Lahn’s response to Obama’s answer, which touted the merits of a system with a public option.

While my faith in the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s town hall meetings has been fully restored, my confidence in the president’s agenda has not.

The question I asked was simple: How can a public and private entity compete given the advantages held by the public sector. I asked for no generalities or philosophical arguments — that’s all we seem to get out of Washington anymore.

What the president gave me was a combination of generalities, inconsistent comparisons and, yes, philosophical arguments. All of these I expected. what I didn’t see coming was a comparison of the health care plan to the competition between USPS and UPS and FedEx.

This comparison is absurd.

First of all, USPS is still losing money despite having an unchallengeable monopoly on first- and third-class mail. Or rather the public is losing money since we have no choice but to subsidize yet another failing government business venture. Further, the post office is not trying to set the rates for the entire postal industry, and they are not attempting to coach FedEx and UPS on how to run their business.

FedEx and UPS are doing amazingly because, in part, their main goal is to make a profit. They allow the rules of competition to guide their strategies. Equally relevant is the fact that they are allowed to operate free of any major business altering regulations. This would not be the case with the health insurance industry if America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is to be passed.

How do I know this? If you want to do something that’s unpopular with Congress I suggest you read the health care bill. I did, and I was surprised. Here some key points:

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By Joseph Bui, guest columnist

The House is expected to pass a bill that ends a policy barring students convicted of possessing illegal drugs from receiving federal financial aid in addition to to serving their court-mandated sentence.

In the status quo, students who violate drug possession laws cannot receive federal aid for one year after a first offense, two years after a second offense and permanently after three offenses. Those convicted of selling are barred for two years for first offenses and forever for second offenses.

As can be expected, this knee-jerk response from the Republican Party, turned into the party of “no” after the 2008 election, is that of stiff resistance. Republicans in the House have unanimously opposed the bill so far.

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Alex Knepper

The Republican Party is not, in contemporary politics, typically identified as being the party of ‘diversity’ or ‘tolerance.’ But why is this? The contemporary wisdom says that it’s because they refuse to play the “outreach” game, or because they cater to discriminatory policies. The national orthodoxy says that any person who isn’t a white, Christian heterosexual who still chooses to belong to the GOP must be woefully confused.

This brief outline is a strike back at that sadly misguided thought.

1. We reject the notion that identities formed by accidents of birth matter more than ideas.

2. We reject the notion that one’s skin color, sexual orientation, or ethnic heritage should determine one’s personal philosophy.

3. We reject the notion that anything but reason should guide our political views — should darker skin lead to support of higher taxes? Should a same-sex attraction lead to support for abortion rights? Should a Jewish heritage lead to support for protectionism?

4. We reject the notion that government necessarily holds the answers to overcoming discrimination. Discrimination certianly exists and is quite often problematic, but unenlightened people are as sure to eternally exist as the sun is to set. We refuse to allow ignorant people to hold power over us.

5. We reject the notion that we are victims: we are, in stark contrast, self-empowered. We do not need the federal government to validate our existence, for we are made strong by our virtues and strength of mind.

6. We reject the notion that we should be defined by our minority status. We do not agree with the Republican Party on every issue — but what Republican does? Issues corresponding to a coincidental part of our identities may simply not matter. Why should a gay man necessarily care more about marriage than about the Iraq War? Why should a Hispanic man care more about immigration issues than about the federal deficit?

7. We reject the intimidation tactics of the identity elite: those whose careers thrive on keeping us feeling oppressed, victimized, and downtrodden. It may keep them in power, but it does nothing but harm to our communities.

8. We reject the notion that “diversity” necessarily lies in skin color, ethnic heritage, sexual orientation, or nationality. True diversity comes from a variety of opinions — from freethinking men and women who choose to use their minds and engage in a vigorous examination of life.

9. We reject the notion that the Democratic Party has ever been a party of tolerance. In the 1960’s, it was the party of Southern bigots who wanted us lynched, beaten, or assaulted. In the 2000’s, it patronizes us and seeks to instill us with a sense of victimhood. The GOP is not without its obvious shortcomings, but we can and do work to change the party from within.

10. Finally, we reject the notion that we are “self-hating,” deluded, or confused: these are labels attached to us by people who are afraid of an open debate. Open debate is the cornerstone of the classically liberal society, and we have engaged in it and have found our home in the Republican Party.

By Dave Player, guest columnist

They call them “$30,000 millionaires.” Young people, usually in their mid-20’s to early 30’s, who live an exorbitant “millionaire” lifestyle beyond their modest post-college financial means. In a in-depth analysis, Dallas Observer writer Andrea Grimes describes them as having a “distinctive behavioral pattern of spending more money than they make in an attempt to appear wealthy and desirable.” Such individuals can be found peacocking around trendy neighborhood hot spots in leased luxury cars and designer clothes as the “$30k millionaire” is fixated on maintaining a personal image that conveys their fictitious wealth to any passersby. The concept is simple; if you don’t have it, fake it.

There is of course a flip-side to the “$30k millionaire’s” opulence; it’s completely unsustainable. Practitioners routinely lease, rent and buy on credit in an effort to maintain their image. When their bills finally catch up to them, the offending party is left grasping for air. Grimes points to a 667 average credit score for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, 25 points below the national average of 692. However, the true issue at hand is ingrained far deeper into the national psyche than Dallas yuppies overpaying for bottle service. Nationwide, 21 percent of students have credit card balances between $3,000 and $7,000, and the average debt is $3,173 — the highest ever recorded, according to a Sallie Mae study from April 2009.

Most young people, while they may dream of the same extravagant lifestyle, don’t actually seek immediately to indulge those carnal impulses. The safest bet for an eventual high-level salary is embarking on a steady career track equipped with a college degree.

But despite being a recipe for future financial stability, college is also the place with the “$30k millionaires” learn their bad habits.
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