Kyle Brady: Blog » Government

LGBT Rights Are About More Than The Military [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:05:07 +0000

The concept of religious marriage should be explicitly divided from what the government recognizes as a legal union between two people, and yet the intertwining of church and state continues. Furthermore, the military has a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, curiously similar to many religious organizations' views on LGBT individuals, that expressly states their lack of interest in their personnel’s personal habits, so long as they do not interfere with the military lifestyle – but discovery of less-than-straight behavior often results in dismissal. President Obama has recently promised to end the policy, even as the so-called “marriage debate” rages on across the country.

What needs to be understood by so many is a simple fact: LGBT individuals are the only group in America that are still legally second class citizens. Both women and African Americans have long since been given the legal rights to which they are entitled, along with various other groups, and live without prohibitions on marriage, religion, military interests, or lifestyle. Yet it is still acceptable to tell said persons that they cannot be married, or even recognized as a legal union, in the eyes of the government, that they cannot participate in the military, and are explicitly barred from certain religions – in addition to the numerous illegal discrimination and hatred that are so often engendered.

In an era where a loudmouth public figure is scandalized over unintelligent comments about another race, and face the onus of federal-level fines and their employer, how is it legal for similar individuals to make comments about the “abhorrent” nature of gay marriage, LGBT’s are “unnatural”, or other offensive vitriol? This last front of civil rights is fundamentally no different than any of the past battles, and yet the actual rights in question are staunchly ignored by critics and commentators alike.

This is not a an issue that has opinions on one side or another – it is, very simply, ethical vs. unethical behaviors. Congressmen, Governors, or even the average citizen do not need to understand, condone, or even “agree with” the lifestyle of those in the LGBT community to legalize same-sex marriage and grant the same basic, American rights that run to the very core of the country’s foundation principles. The prohibition of same-sex marriage, along with current military policy, is akin to a public official claiming “blacks can’t be married” decades ago – this would not, and does not, stand in modern America.

The tone of this struggle will slowly change over time as younger, less judgmental generations grow into positions of power and mold the world into something closer to what it should be – the election of President Obama depended heavily on young, first-time voters that saw in him an embodiment of their own ideals, and is therefore proof-positive that LGBT rights and equality is, at this point, simply a waiting game. The aging, bigoted segments of the population can continue to rant and rave, write policy, and influence legislation, but their power will eventually wane. President Obama and California’s Governor Schwarzenegger have seen that the political power over the coming years truly rests with the vocal, politically-invested electorate, and fundamental rights will be restored for those who remain the final subjects of civil rights discrimination.

Separating Government Taxes From Marriage [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:05:33 +0000

Marriage, specifically so-called “gay marriage”, is a hot-button issue in America at the moment, with some states passing legislation to prohibit the unification of same-sex couples in the eyes of the government, while others embrace the idea. No where more vehement and virulent has the argument been than in the supposedly liberal state of California: once legal, gay marriage is now prohibited by an Amendment to the state’s Constitution – which was recently upheld in the State Supreme Court. There are many arguments to both sides - some rational, some not – but they all miss the central and most crucial piece of this legislative puzzle: the Separation of Church and State.

The United States of America was founded on many principles, not the least of which was the Separation of Church and State – one of the key reasons for many American immigrants to leave England (or nearby countries of origin such as Scotland or Wales) was religious persecution by their government, and was therefore embedded into the creation of this new country. But over the last two centuries, this idealism has been lost, or confused at best, in most sectors of government: a non-Christian President has never been elected let alone had a legitimate chance, phrases and actions based on the Christian belief system have been worked into everything from Federal currency to legal oaths, and religious ideas are worming their way slowly into both education and national legislation that is, once again, Christian.

Marriage has two sides in America: unions based in government and religion. The purpose of marriage from a government perspective is to provide legal benefits such as power of attorney, recognition of family, and tax simplifications – very different from the religious idea of religion, which is typically formed around the union of two opposite-sex people being unified for long-term commitment and some sort of spiritual benefit. It is unclear as to when the lines between these two separate entities were blurred, but the fact remains that they have been. It is required for a couple married under a religion to file for the government recognition of their union, which should have helped clarify the differences between the two very different definitions of the word “marriage”. Obviously, this has failed.

A very essential question when considering the legality of gay marriage is: why is it prohibited in the first place? Is there any legal definition stating the secular union of two people has to be of opposite sex? If so, why is that recognized as legal, given the Separation of Church and State? However, these issues are being addressed elsewhere, and a more worthwhile approach is to look at the arguments of gay marriage’s detractors: the unfailingly central argument around which all opposition is based includes words like “immoral”, “unethical”, “perverted”, and other such religiously tainted words of emotion.

These claims of immorality and perversion seem to stem from the misunderstanding that a government recognized union of two same sex individuals does not affect, in any way, the principles and beliefs of their chosen religion. Vicious opposition campaigns are funded by groups like the Mormon Church, spending millions of dollars to disseminate propaganda claiming a recognition of gay marriage would result in absurd situations such as elementary school children learning the definition of “gay”. Besides being patently untrue, such attacks ensure that religious individuals perceive any pro-gay legislation as an encroachment of their beliefs.

No matter an individual’s opinion on gay or lesbian couples, any intelligent citizen should be able to perceive how embarrassingly appalling it is for our secular nation to allow itself to become even more entwined with religious ideals – gay marriage should be allowed, in terms of secular recognition, on the simple principle that the government should not be concerned with any issues of religion. Perhaps marriage as a government entity should be abolished entirely, with civil unions established as the only choice for all citizens – such an action would very clearly define the differences between the two types of marriage, while still allowing a certain level of tolerance and recognition for the religious institution of marriage.

For a country founded on rather idealistic principles, ethical decline has indeed achieved great reach within both the state and federal levels of government – and it has nothing to do with gay marriage. The allowance of religion to influence, dictate, or otherwise encourage legislation and court rulings that discriminates against citizens for indeterminate and abstract reasons should sicken every single citizen within America’s borders. And yet it is not so – the vast majority are either too reliant on propaganda for information or allow their religious beliefs, of whatever kind and strength, to influence their personal political agenda.

It’s worth noting, however, that all such “religious legislation” has a Christian foundation: where are the angry Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu citizens? Stand up and be heard, minority religions, for you are the last hope of returning America to a secular and religiously unbiased nation.

The Failure of American Colleges [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:05:28 +0000

In the midst of a national crisis, equally financial and moral in nature, why has little thought been given to the educational system? True, there are more college graduates than ever before and enrollment is skyrocketing, but is this truly an appropriate marker of success when these are students coming from school systems with abysmal competency rates in reading/writing, math, and science? Simply put, no.

American elementary, middle, and highschools typically cater to the lowest common denominator, wanting the slowest of the class to understand material rather than challenging, or even educating, the others. They do this for funding purposes, and teach for standardized tests instead of endowing these children and teenagers with knowledge both required and useful for their futures. Private schools are different than the public system, and usually have higher numbers in all the metrics, while also producing graduates that are at least partially intelligent and knowledgeable. However, the sad truth is that private schools are often expensive, and a majority of the country is educated in the failing public school system.

One day, these public school experiment participants graduate from high school, and a portion go off to college – inflated GPAs, SAT preparation, and the mass-application process ensures that those who wish to attend college will. Some of these teenagers are intelligent and educated, more likely because of natural inclinations than the school system producing a diamond in the rough, and they do well in college, going on to even higher education, research institutions, or a key position within an influential company. But it’s not the fact that they graduated that matters – what matters is their intelligence and thirst for knowledge.

Modern colleges are largely degree factories, providing a laundry list of requirements for the students to complete – many of which are not only not a part of their field of choice, but irrelevant in the overall knowledge perspective. These requirements are filled in a mostly linear fashion, with teachers, tutors, other students, study guides, and “open note” tests there to help ease the way, producing graduates that have, on the whole, learned nothing except how to regurgitate information and manipulate those in control of your future (Professors), managing to coast through four years of higher education without an original thought or problem analysis. This goes for both private and state universities.

There are exceptions, as always: accredited engineering programs are necessarily rigorous, many scientific disciplines of study are inherently complex, and higher math is difficult to even comprehend. But these programs are not the issue; the business, communications, journalism, liberal studies, economics majors et. al are the culprits of degree devaluation. These same foci of study happen to be the most popular – coincidence? Unlikely.

When a Bachelor’s degree can be attained by drinking yourself into a stupor four or more nights a week, writing the occasional paper, and taking multiple choice exams, the credibility and value of such a so-called education becomes questionable. Computer Engineers and Biochemists like to party as much as the rest of them, but more often than not they can be found doing homework, studying, or participating in extracurricular learning activities along with the rest of their academic peers.

It is by this very process that America has reached its current position where a college degree is preferred, if not required, for even the most uncomplicated and simple jobs. “College is the new high school” is a phrase oft spoken without the realization that this is not a compliment, and is instead a criticism of both the job market and the entire education process. Regardless of the level of personal experience, actual knowledge, or demonstrable intelligence, many organizations are simply not interested in hiring candidates without degrees, as a matter of principle. Except, of course, for those that buck the broken system and found their own companies, only to be praised years later for not receiving a college degree – an odd compliment considering they were ignored and looked down on until reaching a stratospheric level of success. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world.

Many majors themselves are a joke, where the only real skills to be learned are slick talking and a few core life truths, in addition to some controversial and wholly fabricated rulesets – the graduates of business and economics schools caused the collapse of the entire financial system because of faux knowledge, inflated self-value, and a lack of basic intelligence. The universities, however, continue to pump out such gems of genius without much change to the programs, or even a recognition of their complicity in the issue, which is, in itself, an indictment of the very system.

The American education system is a disaster just short of an entire failure, and the universities which undereducated high school students graduate to are largely just as short-sighted and worthless as their lower education counterparts. Consistently providing easy ways to acquire supposed verification of intellectual and overall individual value is of no benefit to anyone, let alone the graduates themselves. True reform starts at the education level, which can’t be accomplished with budget cuts, lowered expectations, and ignoring the problem.

This situation needs to be addressed before it drives the country, and the world, further into the arms of coddled and misled overgrown children.

Healthcare Revisions: Why It’s Important [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:05:00 +0000

The topic du jour in American politics / media is a revision of the healthcare system, and depending on who is spinning the data, it’s easy to believe that the eradication of a private healthcare system is near, free government-funded healthcare is coming, and the poor, poor insurance companies are going to be forced out of business. Not only is this not true, but a revision of the healthcare system, provided it reaches a certain level of competence, is important and necessary.

Anyone who’s been to a hospital, a general practitioner doctor, or dealt with insurance policy billing knows that the system is broken – not just the insurance companies, but the system as a whole. Insurance companies undercut payments to doctors, so the doctors overcharge (and overbook) their services, which results in the uninsured being unable to make regular visits; patients wait three hours at a hospital Emergency Room, only to be told their insurance won’t cover what they need, or to see a specialist instead; insurance itself prevents many from getting the care (especially surgeries) they need, claiming treatments, medicines, and certain doctor specializations are unnecessary and not essential to the patient’s overall health. Not to mention many patients are removed from their insurance policies for actually using them when they get sick – cancer patients are a common example.

One of the central problems is the idea of a corporation itself – an organization that is more interested in its profits and shareholders than those providing it with profits is incapable of being the foundation of a healthcare system. Insurance companies are for-profit corporations, and hospitals, if not the same, are still pressed by investors for a level of financial stability. Doctors are understandably interested in their income, as many are independent and therefore necessarily profit-minded. But why are the insurance companies and hospitals for-profit? Why are they not, instead, non-profits or not-for-profit? “Breaking even” makes more financial sense in this situation.

President Obama is touting a details-still-unclear plan to provide a “public option” for insurance, which could be a smart move. In the current system, students, poor/underprivileged individuals, and many lower-middle class families can’t afford the insurance coverage they need, and instead settle for what’s financially possible – often, nothing. However, if there were a cheaper (subsidized?) public option, these people could have coverage – not enough to get braces or have elective surgeries, but enough to be healthy. Providing free healthcare for all people within our borders, including the homeless, illegal immigrants, and other similar categories of people, is an entirely different, and infeasible, option.

By creating a public option, capitalism is not being ignored or disrupted, because the insurance companies are not being forced out of business or otherwise unfairly disrupted – something many knee-jerk Republicans are failing to recognize. Advocating an additional option in a pre-existing system is not the same as replacing the said system, and, more explicitly, socialism is not rising from the ashes of our American capitalism.

While Obama moves legislation towards this public option insurance, consideration needs to be given to reforming the system as well – not just providing more options, but regulating the industry as a means of it becoming more stable, patient-dependent, and rational. If insurance companies and hospitals were forced to become non-profit or not-for-profit organizations, squabbling over “elective” procedures and “unnecessary” medicines would immediately lessen, as a simple byproduct of not being singularly interested in profit margins.

America needs healthcare reform, and soon. If the industry companies are closely examined, their ethics and operations are strikingly similar to those of the banks that recently failed – do the American people want to, once again, spend billions of dollars to support companies they never wanted to fund in the first place? Tax dollars can be better spent on reforming the system prior to its collapse, rather than irrationally fighting reforms and being forced into action a few years later.

American Media Coverage of Iran: Possible Blackout? [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:05:00 +0000

As is probably obvious to most Americans at this point, Iran has had a Presidential election, pitting incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against a “revolutionary” named Mir-Hossein Mousavi – initial results said Mousavi won the election, but later results claimed Ahmadinejad won by a landslide, with suspiciously quick (in comparison to previous elections) verification by the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader according to their political structure. There have been protests-turned-riots by a large number of the people since the events of June 13, 2009 – the ‘net has been awash with criticisms, support of the protesters, and pictures/video showing the worsening situation. Despite the drama, American media has been strangely silent on the issue until yesterday (6/16/2009), and is only covering the issue with the slightest of attention and realism – labeling videos and pictures as “unverified”, using loaded wording in describing the situation, and a number of other shocking journalistic faux paux’s that questions the independence of such media institutions. Even CNN fell prey to this.

American media, however slanted, is typically independent of the federal government and its wishes, often acting as a counterbalance to the government itself. However, the media occasionally subjects themselves to the will of the feds, and there's even a recent example: the media blackout of military coffins returning to the United States after foreign deaths during the Bush Administration. The ban was eventually leaked, and then lifted, but the fact remains that it existed within the last decade. The reasons for such a ban were the usual litany of patriotism, national security, and withholding fuel from terrorists. Who’s to say this couldn’t have happened in regards to the ongoing Iran election protests?

If there was a federal gag order to American mainstream media on the recent Iranian events, there would have to be good reasons – and many can be easily imagined.

The Evil You Know

Prior to the election, President Obama was concerned with Iran’s growing nuclear threat/program and alarming political choices, and this election could swing that issue in either direction. Replacing the current figurehead with an unknown could be highly dangerous, no matter how the “revolutionary” has presented himself to the world. Perhaps keeping Ahmadinejad in power, so long as he either wins or pretends to win, is a better decision for our future – small strides have been made since the change of power in America, and this progress could be quickly erased by a new leader wishing to start over. Or, maybe more relevant to modern political times, is the example of Afghanistan - America helped initiate a change in power many years ago, for a leadership that was deemed favorable to our interests. Only to have that same ruling body become a significant problem for our current military interests, and an abject lesson in political power struggles.

Becoming the Villain

Speaking in favor of a specific side in the election drama could backfire, depending on who succeeds – supporting the challenger for democracy is all well and good, until he is disposed of, leaving an angry and encouraged longtime enemy in his wake. Interfering with the elections, or even discussing them via what may be seen as national media organizations, could give an already skeptical leader a figure to vilify, prompting further ignorance of the international regulatory action. Even worse would be the reaction of Iran’s allies to such actions, making an already politically polarized region moreso.

Accelerated Middle Eastern Destabilization

If Iran collapses into civil war, or whatever the presiding political force of Iran would wish to call it, lines will be drawn – countries will take sides for and against the rebellion, not only creating further international animosity, but would provide just-another-in-a-long-list-of-reasons for countries that hate each other to fight. An arena already fraught with disaster, chaos, and unstable regimes does not need more reasons to launch all out war with each other.

New Foreign Policy

The most logical and politically charged reason for a mainstream media gag order could be the new Administration’s Foreign Policy. After the last eight years, America needs an image makeover – President Obama knows this. He has spent considerable amounts of time stating positions on international issues, as well as making it clear that we are not interested in imperialist military action wherever our whims take us – this was the basic premise of the recent speech in Cairo, Egypt. To vocally participate in a Middle Eastern country’s political drama, which could potentially be a surprising revolution, would be to undo what has already begun. Further, if military action, or even sanctions, were imposed on Iran based on America’s official position, most of the world would likely discount our future words and actions as disingenuous, creating an unsavory situation for the entire country. President Obama actually recognized this point in a comment on Iran yesterday.

Conclusion

There is no official, or even unofficial, word on a mainstream media gag order, but the actions of the media organizations may very well speak for themselves. Such a gag order is not necessarily un-American or even unintelligent, since the mere words of pundits could easily be interpreted by unfriendly countries as an official position, or the will of the people – creating a string of problems, both political and militaristic in nature, that would likely push America further into a hole that is increasingly difficult to climb out of.

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Update (6/17/2009 1:00am PST): Reprinted at The Inquisitr with permission.

The Decimation of a Generation’s Future [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:00:12 +0000

My generation, which I think of as children of the 80's and early 90's, is supposed to be the future. We're supposed to be the generation that guides computing and technology to the edge of physics; the generation that is widely thought to be the first to see civilian space travel and the beginning of the colonization of space; the generation that many are depending on to solve the many global problems like hunger, poverty, and inhuman regimes. Not to mention being heralded as the future conquerors of sickness and disease, along with a host of other issues we're told will be eradicated in our lifetimes.

But there's a problem: if current trends continue, all of this will be impossible. The even scarier fact is that we may be the first generation in decades (centuries?) to see a reversal of intellectual progress.

Take a look at the state of the Western world. Over the last two decades, at least, wheels have been set in motion that are all but impossible to stop, and the situation is only worsening. For the sake of familiarity and semi-simplicity, I'm going to focus on America - but the following applies just as easily to the state of the Western world as a whole.

Politics

One of the central, and continuing, problems is politics. Not the idea of politics, nor the institution, but the people that have come to infest the system over the long arms of Time: rich, old, white men are elected to Congress and abuse their powers; lobbyists for shady corporate interests largely control the discussions and decisions of said Congressionals; the only issues discussed or addressed properly, at every level of government, are those that will win a re-election or bring in campaign financing... the list goes on, and it's not news to those who pay attention. For the last twenty years, this has worked for most issues simply because there were no major crises or crucial decision points - besides the "war on terrorism", the country has only had to address trivial issues.

Within the last year we've seen crisis after crisis, a systemic failure of Old World industries and ideas that have caused cascading problems. But when the time comes for Congress to help the American people they claim to represent, they banter over party politics, point fingers, and go crusading over the most useless of points - every time. Even appointing a rather uninteresting and uncontroversial individual for a Supreme Court position takes months, thanks to the arbitrary opposition and accusation.

Furthermore, these same politicians spend government money on pet projects for their financial backers, the largest and most pervasive of which are so-called energy ("oil") companies, the healthcare industry, Big Tobacco, and copyright terrorists like the RIAA or MPAA. But the real issues get pushed around (as seen by the bailout process), or ignored completely. Education funding continues to be cut while salaries and benefits for many government employees rise, and specific educational programs are discontinued to make room for activities like hunting down marijuana growers or prosecuting 10 yr. old children for allegedly downloading a song or two off the internet.

Those that are elected to represent us do not resemble, at all, the demographics of our country or interests. In fact, they are more akin to the million-dollar executives of corporations than they are the average citizen, and their actions show this. Issue after issue proves to be another failure for the interests of the people, for which the only option seems to be waiting for the current set of politicians to be eventually replaced by the next generation - gay marriage is a perfect example of this. My generation is largely indifferent, at worst, about the issue, but it has yet to be legalized: the older generation, and a religious fanatic subset (more on them later) are preventing this.

But politics are just the beginning.

Intelligence

There was a time when it may not have been "cool" to be a nerd (unlike today), but intelligence as a whole was valued. Parents watched over their children to make sure homework was completed, school teachers pushed their students (instead of catering to the lowest common denominator), and graduating from college was actually an achievement (aka "difficult"). Books were read, theatre was intelligent, and issues were discussed among ordinary people.

No longer is this true.

The public school system caters to the dumbest of the class, aiming only to get more funding than the year previous - essentially teaching for the tests. A common topic of discussion among ordinary people is the previous night's episode of a reality TV show or brain-numbing "drama", rather than world news or even politics. Entertainment itself has degraded, with the majority of TV showcasing idiots and their adventures, and plays are no longer witty satire, instead choosing to produce stage versions of movies or books.

Even more frightening is that books are not considered a valid form of entertainment any longer - which shouldn't be a surprise, given the average reading level of today's people. Instead of reading news from the source via the Internet, newspapers, or slightly-biased publications like TIME or Newsweek, people choose to watch CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC, where the goal is not to inform you, but to make advertising money.

Semi-legitimate outlets like CNN or MSNBC focus largely on American politics, with a sidedish of celebrity news and the occasional sensationalized humanity piece - not exactly the real issues of our society. Considerably worse is the insult on intelligence known as Fox News, parading crazy and irrational opinion pieces as news and fact - with many people not able to differentiate. The BBC does a better job than American news outlets by an order of magnitude, but the real gem is NPR, where they provide both views/sides to a story and feature issues the American public typically don't even know exist.

Perhaps worse is the perception of intelligence - nerds may have been finally accepted by the general population, but any show of intelligence outside of a mob-ruled norm is seen as elitism. We don't need to crucify the intelligent members of our society, let alone force them to make excuses for their knowledge and insight. But this social perception has trickled-down for long enough that high school children no longer are interested in math and science (a problem seen during the beginning of the Cold War and the Apollo-era), and are instead interested in banking, business, lawyers, and sports. Need proof? Just look at college graduates - there has been a recent rise in sciences and engineering, but the net result is still negative. The majority of graduates from universities and four-year colleges are focused in areas of business, finance/economics, or pre-law. Not engineering, pre-med, or the sciences.

President Obama would like to fix this, and has made a few small babysteps towards funding such an educational retooling, but government spending is just the beginning. As Intel has so appropriately stated in their recent commercials, "rockstars" of the programming/engineering world are not like John Mayer or Axl Rose, but they're nonetheless important... something our society needs to quickly relearn. Instead of idolizing a mediocrely-talented female popstar that gained success via a series of TV-based exploitation, we should be idolizing, or at least recognizing the brilliance of, our scientists and engineers that continue to push us into the technological future.

But just being interested in science or engineering isn't enough... our economy needs to be organized to once again support such endeavours.

Economy

Countless American business icons have created small business ownership as part of the American Dream for many modern citizens, including the part where "small business" becomes "large conglomerate". This is not a bad thing, especially given that America is essentially a long string of innovators, inventors, and entrepreneurs over our short history. Where it takes a turn, however, is the recent focus on banking, retail, and food services as the industries of interest.

Most of our modern society is based on complex electronics, and yet many people seem to disregard this fact. Why should we care about being able to implement, maintain, and innovate the very basis of our lives? I hope you caught the sarcasm.

Silicon Valley used to be a bastion of computer and electronics excellence, as little as ten years ago. Nowadays, it's a mess of imported immigrants, manufacturing/production outsourcing, and short-sighted idealism, where profits, IPOs, and trendy acronyms are more important than true innovation. And it's not alone.

Billions of dollars have been spent in "saving" industries, only to have them fail at a slower pace - this is investing in the past, not the future. The stock market only facilitates the problem, punishing companies that dare to take risks and don't manage to post continual profit gains.

And, as companies continue to fall like dominoes, no-one thinks to question the system itself.

Capitalism

Capitalism is a brilliant idea in theory, but true laissez-faire capitalism is likely to never work - this is something we're discovering only now, after a century of work and a decade of deregulation. It is a mix of appropriate government regulation and capitalism that would be most likely to work (look to the era of FDR for a precedent), but the country is loathe to move in this direction.

Deregulation of industries has resulted in unadulterated chaos: telcos have free reign to largely operate as they wish; broadband providers of all types filter traffic, while claiming they don't, and operate de facto local monopolies; a privatized for-profit health care system refuses to provide the most basic of services to those that pay for them; a banking system built on trust and basic intelligence has collapsed on itself thanks to greed and tunnel-vision.

These are facts, and no-one will dispute that they have occurred. However, in all the discussion of our current state, people are reluctant to discuss the regulation of industries. President Obama has mentioned it in terms of healthcare, and the FCC has expressed interest in regulating broadband+telcos, but the conservatives are immediately lashing against it on principle - despite that it is an attempt to reverse our recent declines.

Regulation across all industries is neither appropriate nor feasible - our current stance on the precipice is a combination of deregulation and corporate greed, but uneven regulation is just as much to blame. The heavy regulation of certain industries, and the complete disregard of others by the federal government, causes a dangerous climate of government (non)intervention.

As an example, heavier regulation of manufacturing could bring untold jobs back to the United States in countless industries, where they currently reside in China, Japan, India, and South Korea. This would, almost overnight, solve the production outsourcing problem.

But the debt being accrued at an alarming rate to "fix" what is solidly broken is going to prevent this.

Debt

Count up the money spent within the last 10 years, look at the income of the country as a whole, and then take a look at American debt - both federal and personal. How are we supposed to repay this?

Personal debt is usually assumed to be paid off sometime before the debtor's death, despite the credit revolution being relatively new and having no precedent. But the reality is that children (my generation) are going to likely be stuck with their parents debt after they die, adding to our own personal debt accrued by going to school, living out of our means, or any number of other sources.

The federal debt isn't that different - it's not going to be paid back quickly, and it's going to require taxes staying as-is, if not increasing (rather than being cut) for a number of years. The money is being dispensed like candy to small children, and it's being done so by a group that may not even be alive 15 years from now - let alone be concerned about dealing with the debt.

By being in such massive debt, there are going to be consequences. We've already seen the beginnings of this at the state-level, as California goes broke and will not be able to operate independently for much longer. What happens when the federal government, the glue that holds the states together, falls into a faulty relationship and has to question its very existence?

Programs are going to be cut, funding to states lessened, and our dreams shattered, since all of history shows us the lawmakers will protect themselves and their interests first, and be concerned about the general welfare of the population at a later point. NASA, the ultimate embodiment of American frontierism, is already on the chopping block, with massive budget cuts and restrictions likely coming down the pipe - despite being a crucial part of our future, both in terms of space exploration and technological innovation.

And it will likely be a vicious cycle. Funding cuts results in less interest and progress, creating less gains in a given area, which, in turn, will result in more funding cuts.

However, money and intellectualism are not the only worries.

Religion

Religion is not an inherently bad concept, since it helps group people together (an evolutionary survival tactic) and gives hope/relief in some situations. But it can be a devastating force, as the Dark Ages have shown us.

For a time, it appeared that religion had peaked and was on the way out - as the previous century progressed, people became more concerned with themselves, rationality, and society than with the metaphysical. TIME Magazine even ran a feature on "the death of religion". Sadly, that period has passed, giving way to a recent resurgence in religion.

Christian, Muslim, Hindu... the classification and specifics are irrelevant, the important point is that religion can get in the way of intellectual pursuits, and, when encouraged, can eclipse it. As the need for political correctness grew through the last few decades, religious tolerance took on an extreme definition, where the mere criticism of religion was not allowed - even when the religious were allowed to criticize non-believers or those of competing faiths.

This has led us to our current situation where whole states, not just individuals, are attempting to pass off their beliefs as science, contradicting fact and solid theory with creation stories and a "we have a right to believe what we want" mentality. We've seen where this road leads before, and it needs to be stopped.

The Dark Ages was a period of extreme Christianity, and it discounted all but the most basic of scientific tenets. Islam has gone through such a period a few times in their own history, and has resulted in such extremes in portions of the modern Middle East - one needs only to examine the ideals of any Muslim-oriented extremist organization to discover this.

Islam and Christianity both laud values of selflessness and a number of other likable human qualities, but can quickly eschew their own value sets for extremist actions. Religion has a place, and that place is outside of politics, outside of science, and outside of a learning environment - especially for highly impressionable children.

Unless something changes, the Evangelical Christians, and other such high intensity believers, will win their war thanks to political correctness and an aversion to criticize another's beliefs. Their winning this war is not going to result in a good situation for any other than the ignorant, as science will quickly become pseudo-science where the "theory" ("we made it up") of Creationism sits alongside the theory ("we just don't want to call it fact yet") of Evolution. It will eventually bleed into politics and government, turning our mostly-agnostic government into a full blown theocracy.

Does this sound beneficial to our future? A future that is going to be science dependent? No. And any concessions to the hardcore religious, of any type, in a scientific, political, or government arena will ultimately be just one more step towards our imminent doom.

Division

The final major issue contributing to the decimation of our future is the gross divisions appearing in our country on a geographical basis. The reasons behind the divisions run the gamut from politics to religion to race, but the results are clear.

America has long had internal strife and division visible in specific locations, and as one crisis follows another, they are quickly reappearing. Even though the Civil War ended, much of the South has harbored feelings otherwise, and the concerns, interests, and divisions are strikingly similar to the ones Abraham Lincoln had to address.

We have successfully elected America's first black President, Barack Obama, much to the horror of the Southern states. The predominant Republican stronghold exists in the South, which was stringently anti-Obama... and has refused to let it go, continuing to attack with nonsense items, and encourage extremist behaviors, even violence.

And yet other portions of the country, like the West and the Northeast, are strongly Democrat and polar opposite to the Republicans on most issues. Only the Midwest isn't strongly in favor of one side or another, and merely from political party associations, lines can be drawn to divide the country into four distinct sections.

Now consider where the majority of the vocal Christians reside, along with the battle against Creationism, and a host of other issues. A unified country after 9/11 has quickly become an association of entities that are strikingly different, only a few years later, where many residents of one location do not like those from another, let alone want to exchange and discuss ideas in a civil and rational manner.

America is supposed to be a country grounded in freedoms and intelligence, but these divisions are working against us. Just as important as the other major issues, America needs to stay unified in order to not devolve into lesser, poorer states ... the former U.S.S.R. was an abject lesson in deunification.

Conclusion

The conclusion is this: America is facing a host of crushing issues, all of which have to be navigated carefully, appropriately, and properly in order for us to not only continue to exist as a free-thinking, independent, and powerful society, but to have a future at all for the younger generations that is not bleak and depressing.

President Obama, I believe, is intelligent enough to recognize this, and has already mentioned a few of these issues in terms of our future. But it will take more than the polices and appointments of our current President to do what needs to be done: corporations need to act appropriately; government needs to work for and with the people, instead of for the highest bidder; science needs to be once again emphasized and encouraged as the predominant, rational method of thinking.

I've made my case, America. Now step up.

U.S. Broadband – A Call to Arms [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:08:29 +0000

Broadband providers seem to be in the news every week for one reason or another, but an important issue is arising in New York: companies are finding they have to compete with each other for customers, which really just means they can't sell "we're going to screw you over" packages anymore, and they actually are being forced to deliver on their promises.

Despite the many hopefuls out there, I'm skeptical. I've had problems with AT&T and them lying before, and the situation isn't getting any better.

I'd love to have a blindingly-fast internet connection that's not filtered, shaped, or anything else... just a raw pipeline. Some people seem to think this is coming. I would willingly pay $99/mth for consistent 50Mbps download speeds, and I would jump on Verizon's FiOS bandwagon the minute it's available in my area (if ever). But keep in mind that lots of small and random countries, like Estonia or Japan, have much better connectivity than we (the U.S.) do - and they continue to stay one step ahead of the game.

There is really only one hurdle to achieving high connectivity: corporate reluctance and profit margins.

Until a few years ago, American ISPs were relatively normal companies- they provided a service that customers paid for, end of story. But wave after wave of corporate lies and greed [1] [2], copyright abuse [1] [2], and traffic filtering/shaping [1] [2] are quickly proving that these companies don't have the best interest of the customers in mind - they're interested in obtaining maximum profit for minimal work, usually via overloading their networks or blocking/filtering/slowing certain kinds of traffic.

Where are the regulators in all of this? Where is the heavy-hand of the government that is supposed to defend our freedoms and liberties? They spend huge amounts of time, money, and effort defending our physical freedoms, but what about our intellectual and digital freedoms?

The RIAA is breathing down the neck of copyright law, trying to use it in ever more creative ways for destruction, all while looking to have the terms of copyright (and punishment for violation) extended to new heights. Lobbyists in Washington, in tandem with their corporate sponsors, are in a frenzy to prevent any sort of telco regulation related to their activities - even if the point is to protect their customers. Large portions of Congress are even in the telco companies' pockets, and are defending them voraciously - which includes the takedown of competition via government friends.

If the Internet is going to survive in any freedom-having format, then a few key events need to occur: Net Neutrality needs to be established in the U.S., setting a standard for other countries to follow; the FCC needs to heavily regulate what telcos can and cannot do regarding their broadband services/customers; and inquiries into the delivery of said services (connectivity, downstream, upstream, persistence, filtering, etc.) need to begin within the highest levels of government possible.

We already have countries clearly violating their citizens' rights (like Sweden), but the problems in America stem from corporations, not the government - do you really imagine Time Warner or Comcast would refuse to collect data on their users for the government? They already participate in shady activities, what's one more?

America could be turned into a highly-dense checkerboard of fiber, creating massive pipes to every home, and it wouldn't matter. What good is a fast connection when you can't use it? Or when you do, it gets downgraded, blocked, filtered, or otherwise interfered with?

American citizens need to stop sitting quietly in the background, and make it widely known such practices are not only despicable, but need to be flat-out illegal. For far too long these companies have operated on a policy of "screw the customer, they have no control" and the situation continues to quickly degrade in the absence of action from a slow-to-care government.

When the Internet becomes only a small conglomeration of sites you're allowed to visit, then will you (both the American people and the Federal government) care? That day is fast approaching - but don't depend on the Internet to find out about it.

It's probably blocked.

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Update (5/9/2009 11:55pm PST): It appears the EU has beaten us to the punch. While I applaud this and wholeheartedly endorse the movement, it's embarrassing that we didn't approach the issue with legislation first.

Rush Limbaugh’s Idiocy [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:53:32 +0000

I was browsing Rush Limbaugh's page last night (because I sent him an email about my Obama post the other day, hoping to provoke a reaction, so I was looking for some sort of response), and came across this bunch of nonsense:

Essentially, he's attacking President Obama for the decisions he's made regarding Chrysler recently. I don't support the massive amounts of money that we've given the U.S. auto industry, to little effect, but I still respect Obama as our President. I like him, yes, but even if I didn't I would respect him and his office.

Limbaugh apparently doesn't feel the need to treat him with any modicum of respect. Here's the highlighted excerpts transcribed:

"Barack Peron", "Argentina-Style", "Left-wing fascism coming out for Chrysler", "I heard all about the enchanted question, and that's what happens with the feminization of our culture", "president Barack Peron", "What this means is that the laws of economics cannot be changed. Liberalism is a failure."

I honestly wonder why people pay him to spout such nonsense. What advertisers would want to be known for supporting him? He compares our President to a legitimately fascist regime (I wonder if Limbaugh can even properly define "fascism"), assaults the culture at large (Are we all supposed to be gigantic fatass idiots like him? Is that what being "male" is?), and then somehow associates the auto-industry's failure directly with economics and liberalism.

I could spend hours dissecting how wrong he is on almost every point (not to mention the horrible scare-tactic Photoshop job he included), but there's one flaw worth pointing out...

Ronald Reagan, the supposed darling of the GOP (including Limbaugh) at the moment, was a Republican. But by today's standards, he would be considered a Democrat, or at least a "liberal". If you want to scream and cry about this, consider what our party system's history looks like.

Chrysler's failure (along with the rest of the economy) is not a failure of our current President, nor is it a failure of a loose collection of ideas known as "liberalism" - it is, in fact, a direct result of deregulation, lack of oversight, and attempting to have a true free-market economy. Even disregarding that his party created this whole mess while in power in the first place, at the end of the day he's insulting (by indirect association) what he claims to believe in.

Obama Proves His Intelligence [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:04:05 +0000

Word comes down that Obama has intentions of committing 3% of our GDP to science, something along the lines of $15b into research and development. This follows one of the most anti-science Presidents America has ever had, which has helped to usher in the resurgence of idiocy and religion-knows-better-than-science "intelligent design" - albeit mostly in the Bible Belt.

I've spoken before on the horrible failure of the current incarnation GOP, as well as the main reasons I voted for Obama in the first place - his dedication to science, and intellectual pursuits in general. However, following his rise to the Presidency, "the auto bailout" had a bunch of money cut from science spending... this is a more direct attempt to return our country to a state of general intelligence, or at least competence.

As President Obama noted, our future lies in our continuing prowess in the realm of computers/computing and innovation... not in outsourcing these jobs to other countries. But this cannot be accomplished when the majority of people graduating high school, or even college to a lesser extent, don't understand the basic tenets of science, and have only a cursory grip on things like Algebra. And most of the country doesn't truly understand what "theory" means in the scientific world.

Obviously this is going to affect operations and organizations like NASA, the National Science Foundation, school systems, and public policies with a scientific tinge (abortion, stem cell research, global warming, deforestation, etc.). But there's something that isn't likely to be obvious to the already-ignorant: in the process of giving more money to school systems, they're going to set standards.

Numerous southern states have been battling evolution in recent history, to varying degrees of "success", and the evangelicals/Christian fanatics are feeling pretty good about themselves at the moment. We've finally defeated the "theory" of evolution! "Intelligent design" can be taught in schools! The Universe is only a few thousand years old! You can almost taste their elation. But it's not going to last.

Scientists all over are pushing back, and hard, against this, but the real power is about to step up... the Federal Government never hands out money to states without restrictions, qualifications, or kickbacks - they have a long history of "we'll give you money, as long as you do one thing for us...". This is how our highway system developed.

I, along with all of intelligent America, will applaud and support any movement by the Feds to lay down a more strict definition of what can and cannot be taught in the public school system as science. I'm not talking about Creationist pseudo-science, but the real kind that has evidence and no mentions of a superhero. I mean God.

President Obama, please keep this up. You're going to continue to outrage the GOP and their fanatical constituents, but America will be better off for all of this. Don't give in, don't cave to their whining or Rush Limbaugh's red-faced outrage.

They don't deserve even your consideration. And, thanks to both you and the GOP, I'm now a registered Democrat.

The New Era of Spacecleanup? [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:44:09 +0000

When you're a little, wideyed kid, you hear about space. You see pictures of the Earth from orbit. You see pictures from, and of, the Moon, and you're enamored. For some, life goes on, but for others space remains a thought in the back of your mind to one day show itself via a career in engineering or physics.

I'm somewhere between the two.

But what they don't tell you as a little kid is how cluttered both Low and High Earth Orbits are becoming. As we've seen, collisions in space are far too real, and the "space trash" problem is apparently becoming worse, as more and more people send up devices, sometimes only for testing purposes, that largely get left when their creators are done with them.

The official story is that the American satellite was a Motorola one, but I'm betting that's, at best, only part of the truth, since any number of government organizations have the option to piggyback on your space hardware. Put this together with the fact that the Russian satellite's collision came as a surprise, when we supposedly track "all objects larger than a football" in orbit...

And I think you have a recipe for a new era of spacecleanup. Maybe "cleanup" isn't the right word, but at a time when satellites are destroying each other and being shot down from Earth, I think our military agencies are going to suddenly care more about the spacetrash orbiting our planet.

The idea of an automated, or semiautomated, orbit debris cleanup system via robots with manuvering capabilities is not new. But the realization that we're fixing our own satellites, and, in all reality, disabling others, is new. If we can manage to fix and destroy satellites from orbit, then wouldn't creating a dumptruck-like manuverable robot be less difficult?

I can imagine this trash collector orbiting Earth, selecting which debris is trash (based on human-maintained lists), and scooping up the true trash. After compacting it, ala Wall-e, it could be sent in a proper trajectory to burn up in the atmosphere.

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Further Information: For some pictures and video check out the coverage on the Inquisitr [1] [2]