Today’s Word of the Day Is:
Hiatus
n. -A break or interruption in the continuity of work.
Example: “Sorry about my hiatus from blogging lately.”
And really, I’ll try better to keep my posts up to date. 
Hey Guys,
Okay, I’ve finally moved into my dorm and have started final preparations for class in about three days. I’m sorry that I’ve been out of touch, but I’ve been busy getting everything together for my college experience.
Some cool things I’ve noticed about Northern:
-The toilets are set up so you can choose between solid and liquid waste… conserving water.
-There are people stationed at the garbage cans in the mess halls so they can make sure you dispose of plastic properly.
-The people are really nice up here.
-The Superior Dome is pretty amazing on the inside.
-The campus is small enough so that there isn’t a big problem getting around.
-Hanging bike racks keep your bike out of the snow in the winter.
All in all, I feel really welcome here and can’t wait to actually begin my education.
Until we meet again,
Corey
Well, It’s about time I start saying goodbye to my current surroundings and get used to the idea that I’m going to be living about 500 miles away from little old Muskegon. I checked my watch (because it severs as my clock, calender, and general reminder of where I am in time and space) and realized that my internal clock had been off by a day.
Instead of having 5 days to go… I only have 4.
That’s always a sobering experience…
Today, my fiance and I are having a going-away party and I’m going to be staying at my house packing all of my things from here on out. So, with that in mind, I’m going to do my best to keep up with my “word of the day” and try to keep on posting at least once a day… so, having said that, I heard something else regarding the public option and the White House.
It appears that, today, the White House has signaled that it’s ready to abandon the public option to save the rest of the
bill. This has, like everything else political, good and bad consequences.
The good is that the bill is, now, much more likely to pass through the senate and will place staggering new regulations on the insurance industry. Much of the opposition to the bill had been to the public option… but, without it, it looks like a healthy amount of opposition will die and the bill will pass.
The bad is that extreme liberals and progressives are going to be upset with a bill that doesn’t offer some kind of universal option. They claim that we are the only developed nation in the world without a single payer system and we should do our best to follow the global example. The truth is, there are many people who are going to turn away from Obama if he allows anything less than a public option to pass.
The truth is, trying to ride the middle line on this health care bill is going to cost Obama the support of his voters.
…That is what our politics have become. If you try to compromise… you lose your voting bases.
To see how deep this partisanship has become, check out this article and this article on partisanship in the United States. Also, check out this movie.
Finally, here’s some ideas of what posts are to come:
-I’m going to do one about pollution and global warming (thanks Cameron)
and
-I’m going to do one about special interests and the kind of money being spent to buy our politicians
To keep up on when I make a new post (since I probably wont do a full post every day anymore… now that college is starting) ask me to be a friend on facebook (ask for Corey Swanson) and follow me on twitter (diplopia7 or Corey Swanson).
That’s all I’ve got for today.
Thanks,
Corey
Today’s Word of the Day Is:
Convivial
adj. -friendly, amusing, fun
Example: “Jonas had a convivial attitude that went well with his hobby as a stand up comedian.”
A word I’m sure most of you have never heard before. This is a fun way to say something is fun.
Enjoy
Today’s Word of the Day is:
Exacerbate
vb. -To increase severity, to make worse
Example: “Her attempts to put the fire out with gasoline only exacerbated the situation.”
I don’t remember where I heard this word first, but I know it’s a really good way to say, “Hey, you’re only making this worse!”
Hey guys,
Hey guys, sorry about the lack of posting yesterday, but I had some stuff I had to do. As much as I love writing on this blog, I’ve realized that a new post everyday-especially during the college year-is going to be hard. But, I’m going to do my best.
To fill you in on the boring details of my daily life:
Yesterday I had to do some work on my car, and that took about an hour and a half. After that, I went to the doctors expecting to pick up my immunization records… unfortunately, they discovered I was short on a few of my shots and decided to get me up-to-date. Three shots later, I was ready to go home.
After that, I sat on my computer-playing a new game I bought-contemplating packing my things for college. Needless to say, procrastination won out and I didn’t get anything done.
All I got were a few extra holes in my body and a car that runs a little better.
That was my day, I just wanted to fill you in on my “not-so-exciting” life.
Also, unfortunately for those of us who write political blogs, as long as congress remains on recess, there’s going to be a paucity of really good news coming out of the political world besides the various gaffes of talking heads. So, until I come across something exceptional, I’m going to keep up on the word of the day and write about anything else cool I come across.
P.S: Oh yeah, 6 days until I leave for college.
Thanks,
Corey
Today’s Word of the Day is:
Conjecture
n. -The formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence or proof.
Example: “Jimmy’s claim that his friend could run faster than me was conjecture in it’s purest form… I mean, we all know I would win in a race.”
Fun word I used in my newest post about the Chevy Volt. When I can’t think of a word to use as my word of the day, sometimes I just scan some of my posts to see if a particularly cool word pops up.
So far, so good.
How many of you have see this television commercial:
A common house electrical plug sits in front of a plain green screen. Suddenly, a two and a three join the lonely plug creating the number 230.
What does this mean?
Well, it’s probably too much for most of us to comprehend (me included), but this advertisement is for the new and, until now, mysterious Chevy Volt… and that number (230) is it’s fuel economy…That’s right, the ad (and the website here) claims that America’s very first electric vehicle will get over 200 miles per gallon… and that’s only the beginning.
Upon reading the press release for the Volt, it became apparent that this vehicle was a ‘for keeps’ revolution for the auto industry and could prove to be (and, God, I hope I’m not jinxing this) the thing that puts American cars at the forefront of the automotive market once again.
The new car is designed to travel up to 40 miles on a single charge without using a drop of gas and producing zero, I repeat: zero emissions. After that, the car will transfer over to it’s ultra-modern hybrid engine propulsion system that uses gasoline and a lithium ion battery to propel a generator that provides further electricity.
Case in point… no matter what, this car uses electricity as it’s foremost energy source.
And, the truly brilliant thing is that the car’s primary power source (the battery that you charge via an electrical outlet) can transport over 70% of the US population without ever using gas… because most of us hardly ever exceed 40 miles in an average day.
So, if every American drove this vehicle… it would cut emission by more that 75%! And that’s not even counting the efficiency of it’s gas driven function.
So the question is, what will it cost?
Well, brand new, the car is expected to sell at $40,000, which is more than most of us care to spend on a car… but, believe it or not, the savings we see through the fuel economy of this beauty could pretty much void the monthly bills… because this car will almost pay for itself in fuel savings.
GM has based it’s cost estimates on an EPA study of how the car consumes power. The EPA estimates that the car will consume about 25 kilowatt hours per 100 miles… or roughly $2.75 for 100 miles of travel. If the average American is driving under 40 miles a day, you can expect about 280 miles a week… or about $7.70 a week in operation costs (and this varies depending on passengers, stuff crammed in the trunk or on the roof, and the use of air conditioning and other appliances).
That is about $31 a month…
… and $370 a year.
With the average American spending anywhere from $30 to $50 a week on gas-and sometimes even more than that-were spending close to $120-$200 a month…
… and $1440-$2400 a year.
That’s a savings of $1070-$2030 a year for the average American driver who drives no more than 40 miles a day.
This is all conjecture and theory right now, but road tests have proven that the car gets amazing economy…
All I can say is, “Wow! I really, really, really, really, really want one.”
The Chevy Volt is slated for full scale production in 2010 as a 2011 model.
Socialism… this is a word I’ve heard fly around lately and I wanted to look into it, its connotations, and what role it actually plays in today’s political reality.
Socialism is a dirty word. It is used to describe politicians that want to give too much power to the government and people who believe that everything should be handed to them without the working for it. But, I couldn’t help but feel like the word has more myth behind it than actual fact in today’s society. It is now enshrined in so much smoke, mystery, and fear that I have a sneaking suspicion that it has lost some of it’s original meaning… that it has suffered from historical inaccuracy and the “Boogie man” effect.
So, to judge this, we first have to find out what a text book definition of the word is. Is it a form of government? Is it an economic system? Both?
What does the word, in its bare bones form, actually mean?
Well, there are several definitions of the word… Dictionary.com has provided the following meanings:
Socialism
Noun
-A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
-Procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
- (In Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
Based on these definitions, we can draw the following conclusions about what socialism really is.
1. It is a government system where the distribution of capital is placed in the hands of the people or the government.
2. It is considered by Karl Marx to be a transitional system between capitalism (our system) and communism.
This is probably where the fear comes from. As Karl Marx wrote in the “Communist Manifesto”, a capitalist society is imperfect because of its abundant failures in equity… meaning that goods, capital, and money were not fairly distributed throughout the society. This leads to an improper distribution of power (because capitalism naturally favors a small group of wealthy over a much larger group of working class and poor) and the development of an oppressor versus the oppressed dynamic. As he wrote;
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
He postulated that, naturally, all capitalist societies would eventually fail because one of two scenarios would inevitably emerge: we would either have a revolution that remolded society as a whole, or the entire system would crumble and we would have the mutual destruction of the opposing parties.
America itself was a perfect example of the former during the Revolutionary War.
America, however, attempted to established a truly classless society… a society where everyone has the same opportunity to succeed. And, for the most part, we have been brilliantly successful.
But, Karl Marx pointed to the uneven distribution of goods in our society as a crippling flaw in our system and proposed that a new system be introduced to remedy what he saw to be the eventual downfall of all capitalist nations… this new system was the development of a Communist society where all people are given things based on their needs, paid according to their needs, and fed according to their needs… nothing more, nothing less.
All over the world, as young intellectuals began to grab a hold of this theory, there where Communist Revolutions. Within the pages of the Communist Manifesto itself where the instructions on how to establish a communist state by revolution. It placed the seed of a basic fact within the populace… that, quite simply, there are more poor than rich in a capitalist society. All one needed to do was follow these steps:
-Read the Manifesto, accept its theories.
-Begin educating the lower classes on the teachings of the Manifesto.
-Inspire them to become angry at the capitalists.
-Allow the proletariat to rise up and “break the chains of oppression”.
-Establish a new government system where everything is fairly distributed to the people.
The western world watched, in horror, as the USSR, Red China, Communist Korea, Red Vietnam, and Communist Cuba were born. We perceived the birth of a system that threatened to cause a violent revolution on our shores… and we wouldn’t allow it. We began using foreign policy to restrict the spread of communism and we launched a very powerful, very persuasive fear campaign against the red threat.
Thus, the Red Scare was born.
McCarthyism flourished as suspected communists were viciously hunted and persecuted, we staged constant nuclear drills as the USSR, our chief opponent, sparred with us in the dangerous game of brinkmanship, and we planted a deep, deep hate for communism in the American people.
And, though our means were questionable, we were ultimately correct about communism… it was a broken system.
As the communist societies evolved we saw a final step to Karl Marx’s theory that he never dreamed of… every single one of them developed into a dictatorship.
And Here’s why:
-A communist society ultimately places all of its power into a centralized government who is, then, supposed to fairly ration out and distribute goods that the society produces.
-The leaders of these centralized governments began to realize that they had complete control over the government.
And,
-They extended their power and gave themselves a huge amount of the nation’s wealth.
There were other flaws to the system too. There were no incentives for working harder and innovating, this lead to stagnation in the economic sector. Communist societies were quickly outpaced by the constant innovation, streamlining, and growth of capitalistic societies. New machines, new medicines, and new products were developed that greatly increased the standard of living for the people in the world of capitalism… and Communist societies were left in the dust.
Ultimately, because of these fatal flaws, communism never even saw full implementation…
That’s right… we, in the history of the world, have actually never seen an actual communist society. Much like a Utopian society, it fails because it forgets to factor in the flaws of mankind itself…
Only machines could exist in such a society.
So, how does this factor into today’s politics? Why have we seen it, suddenly, flare up all around President Obama’s current health care proposals? Are we headed towards socialism? Should we be afraid?
The Fear Against Obama
I believe the sudden fear flaring up around Obama has two halves to it. Firstly, I believe that opponents of the bill are playing on the fears of everyday Americans by evoking the specter of communism. Here I paraphrase what I imagine to be the defense of uninformed American opponent (politically manipulated by fear-mongers) to socialized medicine:
“We fear it because we know it’s bad… why? Well… we just know it is and we know it’s going to take away our freedoms.”
… Ultimately, casting Obama as a closet communist plays well for opponents of his plans because the machinery is already in place.
Secondly, I believe that people who know their history well are afraid that we are on our way to a socialist country bit by bit. Why do they believe this?
Well…
American Socialism
America is not a completely capitalistic society. We are a mixed economy and, therefore, we already have socialist-type programs in place. We have many, many, many well-fare programs, we have subsidized housing and health care, we have a minimum wage, and we have (the granddaddy of all of our socialist programs) social security. While these programs are, obviously, necessary to some extent, many people are terribly afraid that if we add too many more, we are going to inevitably see ourselves down the road to communism. Also, the many of the programs we do have in place are poorly run or going bankrupt.
On the flip side, we have these programs because people need them. Without welfare, we would have starving people in our country… which is ridiculous in the richest, most powerful nation on earth; without subsidized health care and housing we would have many more homeless and people dying from preventable and operable conditions; and without Social Security, many of our elderly, especially if they worked in a job that didn’t provide a good retirement, wouldn’t be able to survive.
The truth is we are caught between a need for socialist policy and a fear that it is going to lead to the downfall of our nation.
Once again, the American Dichotomy defines our struggles in this country.
Where Do We Go?
I guess the main reason for this post is to point out a few things. Firstly, many people don’t properly know the history of communism and why it didn’t work; secondly, communism and socialism, while closely related, are not the same; thirdly, concerns about our socialist policies eventually leading to communism, even according to Karl Marx’s own estimations, hold water because socialism is a natural waypoint between capitalism and communism; and fourthly, as much as we want to hate it and avoid it, socialist policy is necessary to make up for some of the short comings of our capitalistic society.
Both sides of the debate have merit… and to truly find a compromise we have to understand that. We need a truly free market, but allowing it to run unabated leaves too many people behind, creates a “have” and “have-not” society, and could ultimately lead to a revolution of some sort. So, we also need the tempering hand of welfare and safety-nets, but many of them are poorly run, overseen, and cost too much money.
Either way, an extreme leads to something bad… so we have to understand that we need a little bit of both and need to remain vigilant against leaning too far to one side.
So, before you attack those against health care reform, understand that, historically, their fears have been justified by the fall of the USSR and the near extinction of mankind during the Cold War… and before you attack those for reform, understand that millions of people are suffering without proper health care and allowing it to continue while insurance companies abuse their customers is contributing to, ultimately, a broken health care system.
As always, neither side is completely right. There is an American Dichotomy that we all have to remain aware of… that is, I believe, the one thing truly missing from our politics today.
Thank you,
C.J. Swanson
Today’s Word of the Day is:
Inane
Adj. -Lacking sense, significance, or ideas
Example: “Calling McDonalds a healthy part of an everyday diet is inane.”
A new way for you to mock the intelligence of those who don’t agree with you! This word actually sounds great and is a great replacement for the rather whiny… “You’re stupid!”
