End the Dumbing Down

What annoys me most about the presidential campaign is how every candidate and surrogate dumbs down everything to a few campaign talking points. The very intelligent candidates and highly accomplished surrogates never answer real questions and always choose to revert to their stump speeches. That would be acceptable in a Third World nation with a literacy rate of 50%, but not in America. The dumbing down is an insult to the highly engaged and worried public that is looking for solutions.

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Distribution of Wealth in the US

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I heard this statement quite a bit lately particularly in light of the sub-prime mortgage and general housing crisis in the US. The country has enjoyed significant economic prosperity and both Clinton and Bush boasted economic growth under their reign. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of the economic boom are not people from all economic backgrounds, but rather the top 10%. To make things worse, Bush gave tax cuts mainly targeting the top 10%. Being more of a numbers guy, I always wanted showing the validity of the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer statement. Thanks to Wikipedia , I have finally found it!! Both the mean and median net worth of families for the bottom 50% of the population has remained absolutely flat while the 75th-90th percentile see a decent growth and the top 10% enjoy the most appreciation on their net worth. So, if you factor in inflation, the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer probably holds true. The g...

An Exercise in Obstinacy, Deception, and Self-Destruction

There is no other way to describe the policies of the current leadership in Eritrea. Please watch this appalling interview of the Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki with Riz Khan of Aljazeera and come up with your own series of adjectives to describe that incredible exchange. The fact that Eritreans are dying under the oppressive and misguided dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki frightens and saddens me very much. The fact that there is no immediate hope is downright depressing.

Victim of Asylum Roulette

Not too many stories resonate with me as much as the plight of legitimate asylum seekers whose desperate plea to find refuge in the US is ultimately decided by the questionable preference, judgment and mood of a single asylum officer (with some oversight from a regional asylum director) on one fateful day. That decision, according to numerous credible and through studies, depends largely on the location of the regional asylum center, the legal representation of the the applicant, the gender of the asylum officer just as much as the merit of the asylum case, while in fact the legitimacy of the asylum case should be the only relevant factor. This phenomenon has become so real that researchers at the Georgetown University law school have dubbed it the Refugee Roulette . Why am I so sensitive about this subject? My most devastating tragedy of late has been the denial of my legitimate and honest application for political asylum at the Chicago Asylum Office. When I applied believing the ...

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