Tag Archives: politics
Pop Culture – Mayor Bloomberg’s Misguided Legislation against Obesity
In the latest government attempt to limit free will, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to pass a bill to limit the size of sodas sold in New York City to 16 ounces or less. If the legislation passes, the “Big Gulp” may fade into obscurity, but what’s to prevent customers from purchasing two slightly smaller “Gulps”? While obesity surely represents a problem both in America and abroad, does Mayor Bloomberg really think sinking money into ineffective, misguided legislation will curb the growth of New Yorkers’ waistlines? Rather than solve anything, this bill simply contributes to another well …
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Posted in Economy, Health, New York City, politics, Ryan Moran
Tagged new york, politics, Ryan Moran, Soda
Critiquing the Critics: New Election Year, Same Old Tactics
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.” – Samuel Johnson
We currently find ourselves in the thick of yet another election year, and while each candidate vows to enact a variety of social, economic, and general policy changes should he or she be voted into office, past experience suggests that any promise made by a politician -especially during an election campaign – should be taken with a grain of salt. Every year some politicians, apparently aware of the publics ever increasing skepticism regarding campaign promises, attempt to shift the subject away from …
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Posted in politics, Ryan Moran
Tagged criticism, politics, Ryan Moran
Bad Times are a Good Reason to be Better
As I browsed Facebook the other day, I saw that a friend had posted a link to an article about a certain fundraising effort to aid the victims of the devastating famine in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia. Such a story would normally be unremarkable, since it’s hardly news that communities worldwide are collecting funds and supplies to send to various relief organizations (think about contributing–get all kinds of information here). But the article wasn’t about some affluent or even middle-class people donating to the poor; the donors in this case were residents of the economically depressed …
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Job Killing Job Killers
Was I surprised when I learned the GOP had named their bill to repeal the health care reform law the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”? No, to quote my dear mother I was “simply disappointed”. This is what out political discourse has devolved to, and can it be described as anything other than childish? It can actually. Let’s see there’s; petty, tactless, manipulative, heavy-handed, immature, boorish, rude, and juvenile (though I suppose that’s redundant).
The sheer asininity (which today I learned was earliest defined as “Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of donkeys”) of the move shows the Republican’s …
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War Crimes and The Land of The Free
Last week the whistle blower website Wikileaks released 400,000 secret military reports from the Iraq war, the single largest military leak in human history. The reports show what so many of us already suspected, that torture was condoned, prisoner abuse including rape ignored, friendly fire was commonplace, and at least 15,000 civilian deaths went previously undocumented despite the military knowing about them.
Currently the Pentagon lists approximately 66,000 civilian deaths due to the occupation, but if this leak shows us anything it’s that the true number of innocent Iraqi’s murdered may not be known for many …
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