April 2010 Volume 6 • Issue 7

Chari tDelivering Gunn’s Culture and Politics

T H E

2 Health Care Bill4 Is the Quality of Music

Deteriorating?6 Not in Our Schools

12 US Debt14 News Moving Online

15 Extremist Politics16 Foursquare

DO CORPORATIONS have free speech?

Celine Nguyen

8

2 April 2010

The Chariot

Marijuana LegalizationMarijuana, when used responsibly

and in low doses, is proven to be less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes. That is why I am glad to see that an initiative to legalize marijuana has been put on the California’s November bal-lot. This initiative will allow for anyone over 21 to possess marijuana for per-sonal use. If the initiative passes, not only will the government stop spending millions combating an estimated 15 billion dollar illegal trade, the revenue from taxing the crop will help fill California’s budget shortfall. It is past time that we deal with the real problems in our state; marijuana simply isn’t one of them. —Aaron Guggenheim

Don’t Pay to Help the EnemyAlthough many people know that the Afghan govern-

ment is corrupt, only a recent Newsweek cover shows how deep the corruption really is: despite the $6 billion the US has funneled into a program to train Afghan police forces since 2002, only 12 percent of the country’s police units can oper-ate on their own in 2010. $336 million went unaccounted for. This is worrisome not only because much of the $6 billion has effectively fallen flat, but more importantly because the Afghan National Police (ANP) is supposed to keep the peace once US-led NATO forces leave Afghanistan. Yet the same ANP that is supposed to represent the sustainable hope and confidence of an inde-pendent Afghanistan is plagued with poor oversight, indiscrimi-nate hiring, and un-disciplined policemen who can’t even shoot straight, both literally and figuratively.

The worst is that some of the $6 billion has even helped our en-emy, the Taliban. Some crooked Afghan cops supply a large portion of the ammunition used by the Taliban, using money intended

for “police equipment” to buy enemy weapons that shoot at US troops and innocent civilians.

President Obama needs to revise our police-training strategy immediately. First of all, he needs to shift the police training program to focus on quality, not quantity. The current eight week training timeframe, man-dated by the Department of Defense in a mad rush to create a massive police force, is churning out thousands of unquali-fied cops who have only earned the distrust of the populace. Secondly, he needs to make every part of the training pro-gram accountable by ending the bureaucratic wars between the Departments of State and Defense, adequately staffing a team to oversee the contracts, and holding private contrac-tors liable for failure. But finally, he needs to hold the Afghan cops themselves to higher expectations and fire the ones that don’t contribute to, but instead hurt, the Afghan cause for independence. —Andrew Liu

It’s Good Enough!Yes, there are problems with the health care bill. Some

of the important provisions don’t take effect immediately or even for a few years. But several other vital ones take effect within 6 months. Furthermore, it isn’t just a matter of mak-ing something law, but having the means to enforce it, which involves hiring and training qualified individuals and creating or reinforcing the necessary agencies for aspects of the bill to not just be law, but be enforced effectively. Other contro-versies remain, but it is still a fairly good bill, considering that the vote was close. Be content! —Ben Bendor

The World in a Blurb

Afghan National Police

Afghan Army supported by US forces

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3Volume 6 • Issue 7

WHAT’S IN THE HealthCareBill?

Robert ChenCo-Editor-in-Chief

How is it paid for?

Tax on high-premium insurance plans, equal to 40% of plans costing more than $27,500 annually for a family

Increased Medicare payroll taxes for couples with incomes of more than $250,000 per year

Taxes on medical devices, pharmaceutical and health insurance companies

Effective 9/21/10

Effective 1/1/2014 Subsidize premiums for individuals and families with income between 133% and 400% (those with up to 133% will be covered by Medicaid) of the poverty line

Lifetime caps on the amount of insurance a holder can have will be banned

$695 fine on individuals who do not obtain insurance

(those below poverty line are exempt)

All existing health insurance plans must cover checkups and preventative care without co-pay

Effective 2018 Insurance companies will pay a 40 percent excise tax on high-end insurance plans worth over $27,500 for families ($10,200 for individuals)

New plans must cover checkups and all pre-

ventative care without co-pay

$

The Chariot

4 April 2010

Different Tunes to a Different Era

Yoyo TsaiContributing Writer

As technology begins to invade our lives, people begin to believe

that the emotional aspects of our lives are gradually disappearing. Some would even argue that there is a trend towards an in-ability to express emotions and thoughts as people simply stare at a screen for hours on end. Many people have begun to criticize current music in particular as less valuable and less important than music created centuries ago.

However, they fail to realize that the creation of music is a form of art. It is the art of expressing ideas and emotions. The emotions, ideas, and music will change with time. But the creation of music itself can never be a deteriorating process. The thoughts and feelings behind a piece make music what it is.

The creation of music is an abstract form of art, to say the least. There are no guidelines under which music must be made. It is simply an expression of a mo-

ment in someone’s life and thoughts. Our feelings are in the present, not in the past, and the music being created today reflects the time in which we live.

Even if there is a trend towards me-chanical and superficial sound in music, it simply shows how music reflects an era. We cannot deny that we are becoming increasingly dependent upon technology and machines. Technology has become part of our lives and to remove its charac-teristics from our music would be a poor portrayal of who we are today.

In the Renaissance era, we had Renais-sance music; in the romantic era, we had romantic music. Each era has different styles and trends. It only makes sense that in our era of mechanization, some element of technology shows up in our music.

However, to say that our music, the music of our era, is deteriorating can only mean that our lifestyles and thoughts are deteriorating too. Are we deteriorating? I would hope not.

Even as today’s technology makes life

simpler and more efficient, we still unrea-sonably cling to outdated, romantic stan-dards of music quality. We’re applying old standards to contemporary music. To compare Beethoven or Mozart to music today is ridiculous. They lived in a classi-cal era and their music reflected that. We aren’t living in a classical era; we’re living in a new era very different from the late 1700’s.

Yet, why do we keep comparing our-selves to composers in a time long past? We automatically think that modern music is deteriorating because it’s new and dif-ferent; it’s “foreign.” But in reality, it isn’t deteriorating. It’s simply progressing on-ward, just like us, for better or for worse.

The shift in our musical tastes does not make the music less important than that of the renowned composers. The music may not last centuries from now and may be soon forgotten, but longevity is not the measure of a quality composition.

A quality composition is something that can connect to its listeners and evoke feel-

IS THE QUALITY OF mu•sic (myoo-zik) n. An art of sound in time that ex-presses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color

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5Volume 6 • Issue 7

ings of joy, fear, sorrow and anger from its audience. Like any form of art, the ef-fect will vary from person to person and there can never be a set standard for what is good or bad.

In our own attempt to classify music as something that can either progress for-ward or deteriorate backwards, we forget that music can’t be quantified in that way. Music is simply a reflection of its com-poser. When given a standard that it must meet, music is no longer music.

The word “deterioration” can never apply to music. Music is a flowing move-ment of sounds and tunes. It is a reflec-tion of who we are. If we change, music will change and we must accept that.

It’s time to think in the present and let go of standards that applied to those com-posers long gone.

The Deterioration of PopEthan Yung

Contributing Writer

The quality of music is its capacity for expression. It should be able to

mirror the full range of human experienc-es: anger, love, depression, humor, irony, and pleasure. To accomplish this, it needs complexity and variance. It needs mean-ingful, full-bodied lyrics. It should tell sto-ries about our generation as one slice of humanity. Our pop music is losing its abil-ity to serve that function.

To review contemporary music, we have to look at what makes up the mainstream selection. Modern music has spread out in enough directions and niches that a per-son can hide in any one of them and never know what’s happening at the other end of the music industry. Mainstream pop is made up of singers, often with hip hop backgrounds. It’s necessary to look there to analyze our generation’s music.

The contemporary pop music industry obsesses over technology and studio pro-duction. Emphasis is placed on perfectly timed beat, perfect pitch, and perfect studio effects. In particular, Auto-Tune has been abused endlessly since its intro-duction in 1996. It allows singers to discreetly cor-rect vocal mistakes with exactly perfect pitch. Today, al-most every popular singer’s production studio resorts to Auto-Tune. In ad-dition, many hip hop artists abuse Auto-Tune further to create a blatant war-bling effect. Thanks for your contribution to music, T-Pain.

The problem is that a large majority of pop artists have jumped on the bandwagon of creating uniform, perfect, Auto-Tuned songs. This leaves us with an abundance of music sounding increasingly similar, es-pecially when dealing with techno pop mu-sic with similar drum machine beats, syn-thesizers, and computer effects. There is a place for perfection in music, but there’s also room for imperfection, for personal-ity. Bob Dylan hardly sings in key, but we love him for his distinct drawl of a voice. Imagine if production studios decided they needed to set him on Auto-Tune.

With studio perfection, we don’t need

the artist for the music anymore. While the studio churns out perfect songs, the art-ist becomes a brand name. The artist only needs to be attractive and self-marketing. A musician’s image has always been impor-tant, but now it’s become a central duty.

For references, see Ke$ha’s carefully composed party-trash appearance (I’ve yet to hear her sing one note without us-ing Auto-Tune), Lady Gaga’s bizarre fash-ion statements and music videos, Justin Bieber’s humiliating middle-school cute-ness at sixteen years of age, etc. These contemporary obsessions with fashion, music videos, dance moves, and musician-celebrity lives distract from the quality of

the music itself.When an image

is all one needs to become an artist, musical hacks slip right into the pop industry. Any at-tractive person can be transposed into the music industry as long as he or she

can become a brand. Remember Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff ’s albums? Artists like these can be poor musicians and their target audience still eats their songs up. They crowd out the genuine artists who aren’t as popular immediately, and the in-dustry loses valuable talent.

Lyrical content has also dropped in quality. As these pop songs are written for vocalists, there should be definite empha-sis on lyrical content. Yet, all the songs revolve around the same subject matters: partying, drinking, sex, and the woes of fame. It’s the mindlessness of hit singles like the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow,” Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.,” and Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” that’s irritating. It’s as if we’re all monkeys that don’t pay attention to words anymore.

MUSIC DETERIORATING?

From vinyl to polycarbonate to digital

Ke$ha’s carefully

composed party-trash appearance

The Chariot

6 April 2010

Technology does not inherently corrupt music. Music has been moving forward throughout the decades on the strength of technological innovation: the electric guitar, the synthesizer, music sampling, etc. Likewise, Auto-Tune does not inherently corrupt music. Our problem is the widespread, excessive abuse of technology. With the technology we have today, nearly any-one can produce a hit pop single with a catchy dance beat and perfect pitch Auto-Tuning. As a result, we have an excess of artists who produce the same songs on the strength of their personal marketability.

The pop music of past decades has had a natural, progressive history: from the classic pop rock of The Beatles and The Roll-ing Stones, to hard rock with Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, to the soul and funk of classic Motown Records albums, to angry punk rock and cheerful power pop, to the pop dominance of Michael Jackson and Madonna in the 1980s, to early New York hip hop, and consequently to all the alternative rock genres caught in between.

In light of our music history, it would be ignorant to say pop music has been deteriorating since Led Zeppelin. I can appreci-ate an artist like Michael Jackson because he was an entrepre-neur who told his own story in a fresh, unique way. I object to our trend of heavy studio production because of the lemming stampede of “artists” that are following it for the profit that comes with becoming a music brand name.

And perhaps I’m outdated, but I think of a musician as some-one who can hop on stage and produce music right on the spot. Music should flow at a moment’s notice; it shouldn’t depend on pre-recordings or computer processing. I think of a musician as someone who had to grind his way up by entertaining bel-ligerent bar crowds. I think of those artists with such amazingly written songs that you can’t comprehend someone sitting down and writing them out.

Our contemporary pop scene lacks that musicianship; artists don’t necessarily need training, experience, a live singing voice, or a real grasp of any instrument. One can argue that this is the way of modernity: perfect songs written by production teams, the superfluousness of pure talent. But that represents a step backward when the artist is not the creative force, but a puppet.

This monotone, commercial pop should not be the epitome of our generation’s music; it does not tell a complete story of what we are. Music should be fun and light-hearted and dance-able, but there’s a problem when that’s all there is to it.

Unless the current obsession with perfection, technology, and artist image is dropped, music will continue to degrade.

Not in Our SchoolsRobert Chen and

Aaron GuggenheimEditors-in-Chief

To put it simply, I believe that Not in Our Schools weeks is incredibly necessary for Gunn. Many don’t

believe this. They think that this weeklong activity is a waste of time. After all, they don’t bear a fear of or hatred towards the groups that typically face prejudice. Heck, they don’t hate or discriminate against anyone; everyone is equal in their minds.

That might not be al-together so true. There is still is academic discrimi-nation in our school. This discrimination comes from comments that are both race based (you’re Asian, so you must be good at math) and lane-based (you’re only in Chem 1?)

This is sadly tied to an atmosphere that rewards academic excellence and punishes anything else. It is an atmosphere where a person’s self-worth is equated with their classes and grades. To deal with this, the academic environment of our school must change, though not necessarily at the cost of academic excellence.

In conclusion, Not In Our Schools week shines a light on key issues like this and more blatant ones like homopho-bia and racism. This week is a chance to bring them out and show our stance. Even if you still claim to unbiased and un-touched by this omnipresent phenomenon in our commu-nity, allow for Not In Our Schools week to be a celebration of that freedom from hatred and discrimination.

Don’t just dismiss it, but acknowledge it and help others work towards a hate-free school.

The iconic Abbey Road album cover

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7Volume 6 • Issue 7

BEST-SELLING ALBUMS WORLDWIDEThriller/MichaelJackson

Sales: 110 million

mostlyfromthe70s&80s?

Whyarethe

1973

wordle.netRelease Dates of Top 65 Albums

19821980

Back in Black/ACDCSales: 49 million

The Dark Side of the Moon/PinkFloydSales: 45 million

Bat out of Hell/MeatloafSales: 43 million

1976 19991977Their Greatest Hits/TheEagles

Sales: 42 million

1987

Dirty Dancing/VariousArtistsSales: 42 million

The Bodyguard/WhitneyHoustonSales: 44 million

1992

Millenium/BackstreetBoysSales: 40 million

19771977

Saturday Night Fever/BeeGeesSales: 40 million

Rumours/FleetwoodMacSales: 40 million

Brittany ChengGraphics/Layout

DO CORPORATIONS HAVE FREE SPEECH?The Chariot

8 March 2009 9Volume 6 • Issue 6

www.gunnchariot.com

The First AmendmentCongressshallmakenolawrespectinganestablishmentofreligion,orprohib-itingthefreeexercisethereof;orabridgingthefreedomofspeech,orofthepress;ortherightofthepeoplepeaceablytoassemble,andtopetitiontheGovernmentforaredressofgrievances.“

Citizens United v. Federal Election CommissionDisputeoverwhethercampaignfinancelawsappliedtoCitizensUnited’sshowingofafilmcriticalofHillary: The Movie

5-4infavorofCitizensUnited

DecidedonJanuary21,2010

Robert ChenCo-Editor-in-Chief

YES, theydo NO, theydon’t

Reactions

Corporationsareaggregationsofpeople,sotheyshouldrecieverightspeoplerecieve

Corporationsarelegalentities,notpeople(theyliveforever)

Corporationsdonothavethesameinterestsaspeopledo •Theygenerallyonlycareforprofits •Theygenerallylackmoralconscience •Theyareoftenunwillingtosacrificefor thegoodofthewhole

This decision was a Terrible misTake. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. —Russ Feingold (Wisconsin Democratic senator)

Corporationshaveotherlegalrights,sowhynotfreespeech?

There’s going to be, over time, a backlash ... when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that's going to go into political campaigns. —John McCain (Arizona Republican senator)

Opinion by Affiliation

Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Citizens United to air its documentary films and advertisements is a Tremen-

dous vicTory, not only for Citizens United but for every american who desires to participate in the political process.

—Citizens United

[It] gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington – while undermining The influence of

average americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.

—President Obama

$$$

Governmentcannotprohibitindependentexpendituresbycorporationsandunions

The Chariot

10 April 2010

Repairing the Damage

Sam NeffContributing Writer

The roberts supreme court man-aged to alienate a vast, bipartisan

majority of the population of the United States in its recent ruling on corporate per-sonhood in Citizens United vs FEC, declar-ing McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws unconstitutional due to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

While the majority of the country may not agree on a lot of things, they certainly agree that corporations, unions, and spe-cial interests should not have the right to spend an unlimited amount of money on campaign contributions and buy out our government.

Rights, once given, are not easily re-scinded, even when given on pieces of pa-per in a registrar’s office. Dealing with the constitutional and popular fallout of Citi-zens United and corporate personhood in the US court system will take decades, decades that we do not have if we want to take back our government now. The Rob-erts Court has effectively barred regulation of contributions, ripping the McCain-Fe-ingold band-aid off of the gaping wound of the campaign finance problem, and a majority of the US population says that we need a real solution, now.

One such solution is public finance for elections, known as Clean Money. It’s already been tested for over a decade in Maine and Arizona with positive results, and five other states have already adopted public campaign finance. Not only have Clean Money laws leveled the playing field between moneyed corporations and citizen interests, but they have also increased vot-

er turnout and provided a launching pad for more women and minority candidates to take office. States with Clean Money laws have passed bipartisan, groundbreak-ing legislation, defeating opposition from the same corporate interests that bank-rolled Citizens United in their case at the Supreme Court.

Public finance is an opt-in system, in which potential candidates are required to collect a reasonable number of signatures and five dollar donations to prove their vi-ability (the only private funding they will ever collect) before acquiring funding for their campaigns.

If one candidate chooses private fund-ing, a Clean Money opponent will get matching funds, up to five times the base amount in most cases. Why the cap? The Meg Whitman effect: throwing more mon-ey at a campaign will not win the election.

On June 8th, Proposition 15 (the Cali-fornia Fair Elections Act) is on the ballot to start a pilot program for the election of Secretary of State, which will be paid for by raising lobbyist registration fees from $12.50 to $350 a year. The Secretary of State’s job description includes oversee-ing all California elections and regulating Sacramento lobbyists; it sounds like a good place for a Clean Money politician.

I sincerely encourage you to go out on June 8th and vote yes on Prop 15, to en-courage your parents to vote yes on Prop 15, and to help fix our electoral system be-fore it’s too late.

Life at Incorporation: The Widespread Effects of Corporate Free Speech

Max LipscombContributing Writer

While free speech for corpora-tions may appear an extremely

distant issue to anyone here at Gunn, it plays an important role in shaping our opinions, for example, through the fund-ing of television commercials and other advertisements.

Though many have expressed their dis-content at such enterprise, I support cor-porate free speech because it is only fair.

Part of the reason I support these mul-tibillion dollar corporations in their quest to spend and finagle their way to change public opinions is because of the nature of their political opposition.

Unfortunately, restrictions are generally only levied against corporations accused of “unjust” free speech when the rheto-ric employed by said corporations hurts political officials. It’s unreasonable for the elected officials of our nation to only play the “unfair” card when they are the ones who stand to lose.

The most recent example of this is the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Before the last election, Citizens United, a conservative, non-profit organization, financed the mockumen-tary Hillary: The Movie, which the Federal Election Commission banned from airing because it constituted “political speech.” Citizens United argued that it was unfairly prevented from airing the movie.

Before I continue, I’ll explicitly state that while I disagree with much of the content expressed in Hillary: The Movie, I still agree with the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to eliminate the restrictions on

DO CORPORATIONS

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11Volume 6 • Issue 7

political speech by corporations. To clarify, this doesn’t mean that Citi-

zens United, Chevron or Citibank can now donate billions of dollars to a political can-didate. They still can’t, and I’m not saying they should be able to. Instead, it means that should Chevron so desire, it can fi-nance commercials regarding the ways a candidate’s policies might negatively affect the auto industry.

The reasoning behind such a decision hinges on the principle of corporate per-sonhood, which states that rights granted to United States citizens under the 14th Amendment can be extended to corpora-tions in a constitutional manner, as these corporations represent composites of citi-zens.

In this case, the impact of the Court’s decision has additional ramifications ex-tending beyond the explicit world of cor-porations. Labor unions, which have been historically restricted in political speech as many major companies have been, will now have the same rights and abilities as the corporations they are often at political odds with.

The loosening of restrictions around corporate free speech will allow increased influence on public opinion from multiple sides of the political spectrum, thus allow-ing corporate freedoms in their fullest ex-pression while preventing extreme bias.

Because these freedoms do not endan-ger the United States, I see no reason to deny them to corporations and stand firm-ly behind our highest court in its recent decision.

We The People, Not We The Corporations

Jacob GuggenheimCirculation

In a recent case, the Supreme Court overturned a hundred-year legal

precedent saying that corporations should not have free speech. This sounds all well and good considering that this country is built upon freedom for all, but this deci-sion will actually harm the individual’s right of expression.

The very crux of this issue is the dif-ference between a corporation and an individual. Are they the same thing? The obvious answer is no. And, as is so often the case, the obvious answer is the correct one. Why then should a corporation have the same legal rights as an individual? We as a country gain nothing by giving cor-porations free speech, and risk losing our own voices.

Let me paint a picture for you. Bob grew up in a rundown shack on the Up-per West Side of Chicago. The living con-ditions were bad, and the education was worse. Bob grew up and, despite all odds, has become a successful doctor. He re-members the hard time he had as a child and decides that he will donate a large sum of money, $200,000, to Joe Smith, who is running for governor of Illinois because Joe Smith says he will help education in Il-linois.

However, the corporations do not like

Joe Smith because he plans on paying for the new education by taxing the corpora-tions. The corporations turn to Joe Smith’s opponent, Jack LeMan, who plans on low-ering taxes for the corporations at the ex-pense of education. The corporations give what they consider a relatively small sum of money to LeMan, $20 million. The cor-poration’s gift to LeMan is one hundred times as big as Bob’s. I’m sorry, but Bob loses big.

Money wins elections and the corpora-tions have money. By allowing the corpo-rations to give money to candidates, which is an essential part of free speech, we elim-inate the individual in the democratic pro-cess. The corporation’s candidate, instead of the people’s candidate, will be elected.

Corporations do not represent the indi-vidual; they represent themselves with one purpose in mind: to make more money. So, instead of giving the corporations the right to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars to whomever they see fit, why don’t we take a leaf out of our ancestors’ book and stop this once and for all?

If the CEO truly cares, then let him shovel his own money to the candidate rather than the corporation’s money. And when this does not happen (and I am sure it won’t), we will have proven that the cor-poration’s gifts do not represent the will of the individual but rather the will of the corporation.

And, last time I checked, this country was for the people by the people, not for the corporation by the corporations.

HAVE FREE SPEECH?Corporations do not represent the individual;

they represent themselves with one purpose in mind: to make more money

The Roberts court

The Chariot

12 April 2010

Doomed to Be Forever in Debt

Roxanne RahnamaContributing Writer

It might be cynical to say that the United States is destined for unend-

ing economic troubles. But at the same time, this assertion is ultimately true.

Recent history has provided substan-tial evidence that the growth rate of our national debt increases every year. Nearly every president to have taken office has always ended his term with a greater debt than before.

For example, when President Carter took office in 1977, the national debt stood at around $650 million. On the last day of his term, the debt was close to $930 mil-lion. Within the span of four years, Carter had increased the national debt by almost 50 percent.

This considerable increase in debt is by no means the largest. Almost each sub-sequent president from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush has increased the an-nual deficit by a far greater amount. The continual increase of national debt has be-come a familiar concept in our country’s development.

The current national debt stands at nearly $13 trillion. President Obama is pre-dicted to increase this national debt more than any other president with a suggested increase of $9.7 trillion in ten years.

Such a buildup of debt throughout the course of our history only reinforces the argument for endless international debt. With ever- increasingly costly problems that need to be addressed in our world, an end to our national debt is not in near fu-ture.

The United States’ main problem is that

it does not save enough money. During an economic recession, low-income families get tax breaks. While tax breaks appeal to many, they come with an enormous cost to our nation’s treasury. Annually, the trea-sury loses over a trillion dollars as a result of tax breaks. Thus, the government’s need to borrow money increases, and the United States plummets further into debt.

In contrast, when we are in an econom-ic boom, the government spends money incessantly and raises the debt to a higher level. Over the course of the century, there have been multiple cycles of economic boom and bust resulting in a net increase of debt.

In addition to these contributors to debt, there are several underlying causes, that do not get factored into many budget analyses. For instance, the current govern-ment debt to trust funds, such as Medicare and Social Security, is nearly $5 trillion.

Over the years, the government has used revenue from these programs to cov-er other expenses. Another underlying fac-tor is the amount of losses to mortgage gi-ants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were private companies funded by the government. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the total loss on the mortgages backed by the two companies could come to nearly $370 billion by 2020. Such hidden factors further exacerbate the current $13 trillion debt.

Eliminating our national debt is ex-tremely improbable. The process would

take years. In the end, it is much more likely that the nation will remain in debt, at least through our lifetime.

Debt Solutions in SightAndrew Liu

Senior Editor

Looking at the United States National Debt Clock, one would think that our gov-ernment’s debt–$12.6 trillion and growing by an average of $4.04 billion a day–is in-surmountable. Politicians and pundits al-ways talk about our country’s “imminent fiscal crisis.” Budget projections paralyze voters with fear. However, these nega-tive messages, in their effort to shock the public, miss one truth: the debt problem is solvable.

It is true that the debt is serious. For example, the Peterson Institute projects $44 trillion more in future debt from the upcoming entitlement spending for Social Security and Medicare. More debt means less borrowing room and higher interest rates, which both cause economic stagna-tion. But the debt picture will brighten if we take the right steps.

First, as the recession comes to a close, income and sales tax revenues will rise substantially while spending on programs for recession-coping measures, like unem-ployment insurance and welfare relief, can be cut.

Secondly, President Obama’s bipartisan commission on debt announced a spend-ing freeze, which reflects the beginnings of political cooperation on the debt.

But most importantly, the government can pay off this national debt just as the homeowner pays off a mortgage–in bite-sized chunks–and still reap long-term benefits, such as steadier or lower inter-est rates, easier borrowing and increased confidence that all of the debt will be paid

IS THE U.S. DOOMED

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13Volume 6 • Issue 7

back eventually. In other words, making even small

dents in the debt is a worthy, achievable goal. We shouldn’t just wring our hands because we can’t pay off every cent imme-diately. As economic and political condi-tions improve, we need to stop pretend-ing that we can’t lower the debt, especially with our $14.2 trillion national GDP, and enact three solution: entitlement reform, subsidy cuts, and a value-added tax.

Entitlement ReformEntitlement reform has to be part of

the solution because entitlements are the biggest driver of government spending. Of course politicians will cry that we can-not afford to deny benefits to Social Secu-rity and Medicare recipients, but the reality is that we cannot afford to pay for these benefits, especially as the baby boom gen-eration begins to age. Today we are paying the political costs of unrealistic promises that were made years ago.

There are three ways we can reform en-titlement. Congress should repeal a 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill that is pro-jected to cost over $1 trillion in its first decade and was described as “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s” by the Government Ac-countability Office. Nicola Moore of the Thomas Roe Institute proposes a com-mission to monitor long-term entitlement budgets and to prevent current autopilot spending increases.

A more subtle reform is to tie benefits to inflation instead of wages, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars, ac-cording to Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria.

The third reform is to raise the retire-ment age and link it to growing life expec-tancy. European countries, for example, have enacted this reform to keep their pension systems solvent.

End Subsidies We should end the exorbitant, market-

distorting subsidies that not only drain the government of money, but also encourage the debt that drove us into this monetary crisis. Specifically, the government spends $250 billion a year on agriculture, health care and home ownership subsidies that fail to achieve their goals of farmer re-lief, increased health quality and increased home ownership, respectively.

The Washington Post identified at least $15 billion of unnecessary agriculture subsidies in 2006, of which $1.3 billion went to landowners who planted noth-ing. Economists agree that tax exemptions for employer-based health plans promote overconsumption of health services.

The homeowner subsidies, instead of increasing home ownership, have encour-aged debt through interest deduction on mortgages. If we stop these subsidies, we can save the government the face value of this spending and prevent future debt-rid-den behavior.

Value-Added Tax The last part of the solution should

be the value-added tax (VAT) to increase government revenue and reduce overcon-sumption. The VAT is a national sales tax that is spread over each stage of produc-tion instead of one tax collected at the final sale. By spreading the burden over multiple businesses and consumers, the VAT has been proven to reduce fraud in the 150 other nations that use it.

For example, France gets 52 percent of its revenue from the VAT while spending little on its administrative costs. Because the cost of tax fraud in the U.S. is $40 to $70 billion a year, a VAT would bring in much more revenue to counter our yearly budget deficits.

According to Leonard Burman of the University of Virginia Tax Review, a high-end 25 percent VAT would raise enough revenue “to balance the federal budget, pay for health-care expansion, eliminate the income tax for all those earning less than $100,000 (90 percent of households), and cut the top tax rate to 25 percent.”

A more palatable form of the 25 per-cent VAT, while scary at first, is not unre-alistic–many Scandinavian countries have used it for three decades, and their econo-mies have grown just as fast as America’s. A more important boon of the VAT is less spending and more saving, which is the most important behavioral change we can make to prevent debt.

These three proposals would probably hit a brick wall in Congress–nowadays, it seems that legislators refuse even the slightest political pain, even when this sac-rifice is the only way to enact a compre-hensive solution to severe crises like the national debt. But the solutions here are real and make the debt less menacing. But if we fail to get over political scruples and the inaction of fear, then the debt problem will truly become insurmountable.

TO STAY IN DEBT?

We shouldn’t just wring our hands because we can’t pay off every cent immediately

As of January 2009

The Chariot

14 April 2010

Jeff MaContributing Writer

What most people consider the main-stream media are actually just five com-

panies: Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, Disney and NBC Universal. Furthermore, most of these cor-porations are headed by older Caucasian men and an average of 70 percent of their employees are registered Democrats. It is apparent that there is not a lot of diversity.

In recent years, many new Web sites known as the “new media” have sprung up. Sites like these include Politico.com and Newser. However, many of these new sites are unreliable sources of infor-mation. But, with the mainstream media’s falling markets, many Americans have shifted their atten-tion from traditional sources to this new media.

This shift also has many consequences. For ex-ample, most of the new Web sites are not only un-profitable, but they are actually losing money. For example, Politico.com employs over one hundred people and has a grant from a private donor of $ 10 million per year for three years. But one has to question the fate of such Web sites when their funding and investments run out. People often turn to online news sources because it is free, but when these Web sites need funds and advertis-ing is not enough, they will inevitably start charging for their services.

Furthermore, this lack of funds also prevents the new media entities from defending their re-porters in courts of law. News corporations like The New York Times have been involved in nu-merous lawsuits to defend their free press rights from corporations and the government alike, but smaller new media outlets simply do not have the funding to do the same.

This new media shift has also forced most tra-ditional news sources to start a hybrid approach. Almost all news sources, such as The Washington Post, now have Web sites with their content (al-though some do charge a subscription fee). One benefit of the mainstream media is their unques-tionable accountability. But there are many un-accountable Web sites on the Internet, and with the shift to the new media, these people have a greater access to the public opinion.

The shift to a new type of media is inevitable, but the old media will also still be around. There are many flaws with the new media, but in time, they will be forced to find some way of making a profit, for investors do expect a return. And with the questionable accountability the new media brings with it, it will also require an increasingly intelligent and skeptical consumer base.

A NEW SOURCE OF NEWSEditors-in-Chief

Robert Chen Aaron Guggenheim

Senior EditorsBen Bendor Andrew Liu Sarah Zubair

Copy EditorsAndre Garrett Tommy Huang

Graphics/LayoutBrittany Cheng Celine Nguyen

Scott Wey Alexandra Yesian

CirculationJacob Guggenheim

PublicityPriya Ghose

Contributing WritersRon Ackner Yoni Alon

Arjun Bharadwaj Neil Bhateja Corey Breier

Will Cromarty Naor Deleanu Henry Gens Tara Golshan James Gupta Anish Johri Ryan Lee Alice Li

Max Lipscomb Jeff Ma

Sam Neff Susan Nitta

Saurabh Radhakrishnan Roxanne Rahnama

Hina Sakazaki Yoyo Tsai

Daljeet Virdi Ian Wilkes Kevin Yang Stanley Yu

Ethan Yung Omer Zach

Kevin Zhang

Foundation/Group Sponsors

Adobe Systems Daughters of the American

Revolution Palo Alto Lions Club

Patrons ($100+) Lauren Michals and Vinod

Bharadwaj Patricia Bruegger

Steven Guggenheim Shirley Zeng and Yajun Liu

Sponsors ($50-99)Mark and Rhonda BreierContributors ($21-50)

Special thanks to Advisor, Marc Igler

About UsThe Chariot is intended to create and promote political discussion at Gunn and make people aware of issues that matter. We ask

that you respect all opinions which are reflected in our publication, and write letters to the editors if you wish to voice your opinion. The views expressed do not reflect that of The Chariot, but rather those of the individual writers.

The Chariot was originally founded in 2004 as the Partisan Review by Gunn alumni Ilan Wurman (‘06), Channing Hancock (‘06), and Sarah McDermott (‘05).

Visit our website, www.gunnchariot.com if you wish to view any issues from previous years or for more information about us. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or requests to join can be sent to gunnchariot@gmail.com

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Newser and Politico frontpages

www.gunnchariot.com

15Volume 6 • Issue 7

The American Tea Party

Stanley YuContributing Writer

As obama begins his second year as president and the recession con-

tinues to drag on, many Americans have flocked to a new grass-roots organization known as the American Tea Party.

Like its namesake, the American Tea Party seeks to evoke the images of the Boston Tea Party to “secure public poli-cy consistent with… three core values of “Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.”

While these are indeed values that all Americans should adhere to, it would seem that the American Tea Party is exacerbating these issues more than need be and are simply feeding off of the frustration of pan-icked Americans and di-recting it against liberals and moderates in a purely reactionary manner all but devoid of any rational thought. This in turn con-tradicts the party’s claim as a “non-parti-san” movement, even though it clearly ad-heres to far-right ideals.

Fiscal responsibility in itself is a great thing. Everyone wants a government that utilizes the money wisely in order to maxi-mize its effectiveness in running the gov-ernment and its welfare programs. But the nation’s debt has been growing for years. So why did the Tea Party wait until Demo-crats had gained majority control to finally come out claim that the government was being irresponsible in its spending?

In their mission statement, the Tea Par-ty states that “such runaway deficit spend-ing as we now see in … D.C. … compels us to take action.” If that were true, how come no one saw any of this during the last administration?

Furthermore, the Party claims that the

United States’ increasing deficit is a threat to our sovereignty and personal and eco-nomic liberties, although it’s very clear that we still live in a free society. In fact, very little of this has any factual basis, and it poses a major question regarding whether or not the party is doing this because it is ignorant, or if it’s reacting in frustration and impatience with the government’s ef-forts to reach out in the financial crisis.

Furthermore, the American Tea Party’s mission statement calls for a “return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded.” Firstly, it’s been over two centuries since this nation was founded. To imply a complete return to the ways of old seems very much like a step backwards.

Secondly, a major cause of the recession was a lack of government control in the first place. Things change over time, and the nation from over two centuries ago is clearly different from to-day’s society in regard to its complexity.

Although the American Tea Party claims to being a non-partisan movement, there are many instances in which the party contra-dicts itself. For example, the Party’s call to return to

a complete free market is something that conservatives argue for, not liberals.

Another example of this is their ten-dency to call for a strict, word-for-word in-terpretation of historical documents such as the Federalist Papers, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is archetypal of conservatives, not liberals.

Finally, there’s Sarah Palin, a staunch Republican herself, acting as a figurehead for the party. If one wants to portray themselves as non-partisan, wouldn’t it be better to select a moderate candidate as opposed to someone as polarized as Palin?

In short, it is clear that the American Tea Party stands purely as a reactionary movement formed from the impatience and frustration of Americans who believe drastic changes should come now instead of later.

Far Too ExtremeRyan Lee

Contributing Writer

You’ve seen them yelling and rant-ing. You have seen them spouting

their beliefs on television, radio and the Internet. Before, they would just be dis-missed as the fringe. Their rantings about government intrusion, wild accusations against the president and overall heavy-handed bias would have been dismissed as crazy. But, over the course of 2009, things have changed dramatically. With the rise of the Tea Party Movement, these “extrem-ist” political pundits, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, have lent a voice and outlet to those campaigning against Presi-dent Obama. They have now been pro-pelled into the mainstream media.

But why now? Even before Obama’s election in November 2008 there has al-ways been a powerful backlash against him. Many on the right consider him not just a president unfit for office, but also an evil, power-hungry socialist determined to tax Americans to death.

As a result of these views, the Tea Par-ty movement was born. While extremist groups such as these, were once written off as fringe, radical groups that would have no part in democracy in America, the Tea Party movement has been gifted with strong support from powerful media fig-

Far from the truth

Glenn Beck

The Chariot

16 April 2010

ures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Glenn Beck stands out from the pack as an extremely far right conservative; he may even considered a little off the deep end. Watching his show for an entire week illustrates why: his predictions of our im-pending doom and so-called “hour of fear” are really just that. When you watch his show, you are bombarded with images of Nazis, the Soviets, militaries marching through small towns accompanied by Beck screaming for less government intrusion, no unions and no Obama.

The truth is that little to none of Beck’s program has basis in fact, but that’s not what his program is about, or even pre-tends to be about. Glenn Beck is a televi-sion pundit version of the man who stands at street corners with a sign that says “THE END IS NEAR.” His own gath-ering of “Tea Partiers”, the 9/12 move-ment back in March 2009, demonstrated that a man who spends a couple of hours a day screaming into a camera can garner enough loyal followers to march on D.C.

What is Beck’s motive, exactly? The same as Rush Limbaugh’s. They both want to create fear and distrust in the govern-ment. Their shows are pure propaganda.

While Beck claims to be more of a lib-ertarian than a conservative, he certainly seems happy enough to yell out extreme conservative beliefs. Both Beck and Lim-baugh have been criticized for dumbing down the conservative base to name-call-ing and angry accusations of the left end of the political spectrum.

Yet Beck and Limbaugh don’t seem worried–they pander to a base that prefers a folksy hockey mom to a Harvard-educat-ed lawyer, an everyman instead of a smart man. They know whom exactly they are trying to appeal to and whom they are try-ing to alienate.

Beck’s certainly doing his job. His rat-ings are as high as ever, the dough keeps rolling in, and he shows no sign of going silent any time soon.

Foursquare: The Next Twitter?

Omer ZachContributing Writer

Although cell phones have been capable of locating users through

GPS or triangulation for years, location-based applications have only just begun gaining traction. Companies like Google tried implementing social networks that take advantage of your location in the past, but never saw any success because of major privacy concerns—no one wanted their location broadcast to the world all the time.

But the New York City-based company Foursquare has found a way around the privacy issues caused by location-aware applications. Instead of tracking users’ whereabouts, Foursquare allows them to manually “check in” wherever they go, but only when they want to.

Users then “friend” their real-life friends on the service just like they would on Facebook and are able to get notifica-tions or simply pull up a list on their phone of where all their friends are at any time.

Foursquare makes checking in to ven-ues fun and rewarding, too. Each check-in earns users points. The user with the most check-ins at a venue over a two month pe-riod is crowned the mayor of that specific place.

At first this was only worth bragging rights. But many stores have begun offer-ing “mayor deals” such as giving free food or discounts to their mayors.

Over the last few months, Foursquare has struck business development deals with companies like Bravo and MTV, of-fering users guides to locations relevant to Bravo fans and soon the ability to “follow” where their favorite celebrities check in.

Nearly 100,000 people are joining Foursquare every week, and the service is now seeing hundreds of thousands of check-ins per day. Foursquare has only been around for a year and is growing far faster than Twitter was a year into its life. It was featured in a soap opera this week, but when will Foursquare be getting its Oprah moment?

I’d put my money on soon if I were you.

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