A Change of Pace

Looking back on my blog, I realized that I never really wrote an About Me/Introductory entry to explain what Outspoken is all about, so this post will serve as a very belated explanation post, as well as the start of a new direction for Outspoken.

I started this blog to express my opinions on different issues, mainly political and sports-related. I'm really opinionated so I thought it would be a good idea to have an outlet for my viewpoints. This isn't really a blog about my life. I don't want to make it one because, first of all, I don't really want everyone with an internet connection to be able to know what's going on with my life, and secondly, because I don't think anyone would want to read about the daily minutiae of my life. That said, I do want to try to use things that have happened in my life to illustrate my points and opinions. This is something I haven't really been doing lately but hope to do more of in the future.

When I started this blog my goal was to try to write one entry a week. I have obviously fallen quite a bit behind on that schedule. For a while I was posting just once a month; now I've gotten it up to once every two weeks, but I'm really going to try to get it up to once a week from here on out. One way I plan to do that is by changing the type of blog posts I write from long, well-researched manifestos to shorter, more off-the-top-of-my-head musings. I've probably been writing too much about politics lately and not enough about everyday stuff so that's something I'm also going to try to change, since everyday stuff lends itself to shorter posts anyways.

The other way I plan to increase my production is by having a lot more time to write. For the past five weeks I've either been on vacation, or interning (full time) on weekdays and taking an SAT prep class on weekends (and Friday nights). Before that I had to go through Junior year and all the work that ensued. None of that left much time for writing my blog, although that's not really an excuse for my dismal output. Next week, however, my internship will end, and my SAT prep class has already ended. The only work that's going to be left for the rest of summer is college stuff (visits, essays, etc.), this blog, and doing a little volunteering for Gerry Connolly. In addition, the coming school year is going to be my senior year, which means less work than junior year (I hope). So next week I hope to be back with a more substantive, though not too-substantive, entry.

Concerned Citizens of Utah's holy crusade against the Illegals

A little less than two weeks ago an upstanding anti-Illegals group from Utah mailed multiple government and news organizations a list of 2,300 Illegals that they had been secretly watching for the past year and demanded that these Illegals be deported back to Mexico immediately (if you have no idea what I'm talking about I suggest you click on this link). The list included the names of the Illegals, their birth dates, workplaces, home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, names of their children, and the due dates of pregnant women on the list. The group, humble as they are, decided to remained anonymous, as they had no desire to bask in the glory of their righteous crusade (not to avoid prosecution for what some insignificantly say was a criminal act). I'd like to spend this blog post hailing these men for their brave actions and defending them from their misguided critics.

Everyone knows that we have a problem with illegal immigration here in America. By coming here illegally, Illegals unfairly take the jobs meant for hardworking white Americans, causing mass unemployment. If town halls are any guide, and they are, it was the Illegals who caused this recession, along with 9/11 and the dot-com crash. Some inconsequentially argue that the U.S. economy is actually dependent on Illegals, since the Illegals take the thankless but necessary jobs that no one else would take and since they work at such a cheap price that businesses are thus able to lower their prices and compete in the world market. However, these people are missing the much larger point that Illegals are destroying our country.

Luckily, action is being taken to stem the Illegals tide. The brave state of Arizona recently passed a tough new measure requiring police officers to ask all Mexican-looking-people for proper ID whenever they stop these people for any crime or violation whatsoever. Since this essentially means that all Mexicans who aren't US citizens have to carry their green cards with them wherever they go, this law will also have the positive unintended side effect of driving many legal immigrants out of the state, allowing more jobs for real American citizens. Ridiculously, the federal government is suing Arizona to stop this law from taking effect because they claim that the US Constitution gives the federal government absolute authority when dealing with foreign relations, of which immigration is a part. As one who has strenuously opposed many of the federal government's actions because of their unconstitutionality, I would never support an unconstitutional law, otherwise I'd be a hypocrite, right?

But this post is about the actions of the brave group in Utah, not of Arizona, of which I'll say no more. Outrageously, rather than immediately deport all the Illegals on the list sent by the group, the state of Utah has tried, and it seems succeeded, to find and arrest the brave men who created the group in the first place! What part of illegal do these people not understand? When the Illegals stepped foot in this country without proper papers, they forfeited all their rights, and that is what this brave group in Utah has realized. Yes, normally what these people did would be wrong and against the law, but whenever dealing with a situation like this we can't forget: these are Illegals we're talking about.

Why we need a climate-change bill now

The recent oil-spill disaster, while heart-rending, has had one positive effect. It has focused the nation's attention on the danger of offshore oil drilling and the importance of getting rid of our dependence on oil by changing the way we get energy. It has also convinced President Obama to take a firmer stand in favor of a climate change bill getting passed this year.

There are multiple reasons why a climate change bill needs to be passed. But the most important, by far, is that global warming is happening right now and will ruin our ecosystem (and by extension, our economy) if we don't do something soon. There is no disputing the reality of global warming. Even Sarah Palin, tea-party extraoardinare, agrees that global warming is occurring, although she has been vague about whether it's caused by humans or not. If you don't believe in global warming, I'm not even going to argue with you because, for one, I'm not a big science buff, and two, there's no point arguing with people who just won't accept facts.

The only way to stop global warming is to convince people to stop polluting. What is the best way to do this? By making it more expensive to pollute, of course. That is the core of what the Senate's American Power Act (APA) and the House of Representative's American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) would do. It would charge the 7,500 biggest power plants and factories between $12 and $25 per ton of carbon emitted. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 80% by 2050, something an Environmental Protection Agency analysis says this bill will do.

Now energy producers will probably pass the extra money they have to pay in taxes on to consumers in the form of higher energy bills. Luckily, the climate change bill under consideration in the Senate sends 75% of the profits received from the carbon tax back to consumers. As a result, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the APA would only cost consumers $146 a year. That's only $12 a month, or one Starbucks coffee a week. And with the increase in energy efficiency mandated and incentivized by the two climate change bills under consideration, this bill would actually significantly lower energy prices in the long run. In addition, because of the progressive element of the energy rebates, those who could least afford higher energy prices, the poor, actually will have to pay less on energy bills (by about $40 annually) than they normall would.

All of this runs contrary to Republican claims that a climate change bill will result in massive price shocks running through our economy. This myth has been perpetuated most significantly by the Heritage Foundation, which issued a report last year saying that the House of Representatives-passed climate change bill would cost the average household $1,500 a year. The CBO, which is much more trustworthy than the very conservative Heritage Foundation, tells a much different story, and due to its nonpartisanship should be trusted much more than the flawed Heritage Foundation report. Most likely, when you hear an opponent of the climate change bills quoting a study showing the damaging effects of this climate change bill, they will be talking about the thoroughly untrue Heritage Foundation study and any comments they make should be viewed through this filter.

Another major goal of the two climate change bills under discussion is to greatly increase the amount of energy Americans get from renewable energy sources. The APA would do this by taking 25% of the profits received from the carbon tax and using that to subsidize renewable energy and encourage renewable energy research. No one can say that increasing renewable energy production is a bad thing, and this bill does a good, although not great, job of achieving this goal.

All of these clean energy power sources would need to be built and managed by someone, and as a result both the House and the Senate climate change bill would create a significant number of jobs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute, the American Power Act would create 203,000 new jobs per year between 2012 and 2020. The slightly-more-partisan Climate Works estimates that the bill will create 440,000 more jobs per year in the same time period. That's a lot of jobs, and completely disproves doomsday scenarios predicting that this bill would cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

The final, and in my mind, least important, reason we need a climate change bill passed is to protect our national security. Currently we spend billions of dollars on oil coming from unstable Middle Eastern countries. A lot of this money is funneled into terrorist organizations that are actively engaged in trying to kill Americans. If we could stop this indirect funding, why wouldn't we? Now there is a caveat. Renewable-energy sources such as solar cells and wind turbines also need natural resources to function, and some of these resources are found mostly or only in unfriendly countries. For example, the mineral lanthanum, which is necessary for solar cells and wind turbines, is only available in China. However, the amount of lanthanum and other minerals we'd need to import for renewable energy sources pales in comparison to the amount of oil we import right now, so on balance a switch to clean energy would still significantly improve our national security.

All of this, by the way, doesn't take into account the huge benefits of stopping global warming. None of the studies conducted can quantify how much money or how many jobs climate change would destroy (even in just the next 10-20 years), and thus how much money would be saved by a climate change bill. But isn't that the main point of the bill, to stop climate change? Almost this entire blog post has been trying to disprove the perceived problems a climate change bill would cause, without touching on the benefits. Speculation says that we'd be saving hundreds of billions of dollars if we were able to stop climate change. We'd be averting mass casualties, the loss of entire cities and industries, and who knows what else. My point is, both the House of Representatives and the Senate bill would still accomplish all the goals that a strong climate-change bill should, while also turning the perceived drawbacks of such a bill into benefits. So what's with all the outrage?

So did I misrepresent something in this post? Am I completely off the mark in my analysis? Comments would be appreciated.

Gilbert Arenas and the Wizards

I know I've already talked about Gilbert Arenas' future with the Wizards, but a lot has changed in the past two and a half months since that last blog post. Specifically, the Wizards got the 1st pick in the NBA draft, aka John Wall. With Wall, also a point guard, set to join the team, some critics are now saying that Arenas is expendable and should be traded as soon as possible. Now, let's just pretend that Gilbert Arenas is no longer a useful player for the Wizards and is in fact a used up husk, which I would like to emphasize is not true at all. Going down this line of thinking, lets say the Wizards shopped around for a player to trade Gilbert Arenas for.

Numerous sources are saying that with his huge contract, legal trouble, and the vast amount of time he's missed over the past three years, the best the Wizards would be able to get for him would be to swap him for someone like Eddy Curry or Hedo Turkoglu, both of whom have very bad contracts. Now, no one can argue that this would be a good trade. The Wizards would essentially be trading Arenas for nothing. So why not just keep Arenas for now and wait until at least the trade deadline next year for a better deal? Playing Arenas next year will result in his trade value going up dramatically as people realize that this guy can still play pretty well. Even if you are one of those guys who thinks Arenas stinks now, you can't argue that he'd hurt his trade value by playing next year. So instead of getting an Eddy Curry for Arenas, you could be getting a high draft pick or a Carlos Boozer. Doesn't this make sense?

Other people are saying that since the Wizards wouldn't be able to get anyone worthwhile in a trade, they should buy out Gilbert Arenas' contract now and let him become a free agent. They say he needs to go now because the Wizards need to start rebuilding as soon as possible and can't wait until next year to get rid of him. The thing is though, building a championship team takes time. It's not going to be done in 1-2 years. So what's the problem of delaying by a couple of months? It's more important to get it right than to do it fast. Besides, getting rid of Arenas wouldn't even speed up the team's rebuilding at all because the only thing his leaving would free up is more money, which they have plenty of already. In addition, to buy out Arenas the team would have to pay him the $80 million he's still owed to essentially go away. $80 million is a lot of money. People (even rich owners) don't just have that kind of money laying around. If Ted Leonsis wasted $80 million on Arenas then he would have lot less money to do more important stuff, like signing free agents to help the team out or buying another draft pick. Luckily, Leonsis has already stated firmly that there's no way he's buying out Arenas' contract.

The most ludicrous reason that people are saying Arenas should be shipped out for is that he is a cancer who cannot be allowed to interact with John Wall, as he would corrupt Wall and turn him to the dark side. Lets get this straight- Arenas is not a thug or a Sith lord. He's stupid and immature, yes, but not a cancer. This is the guy who wakes up at 2 AM to go to the gym to shoot hoops. He dribbles a basketball as he's walking in his house. He sleeps with his basketball. He doesn't go out to clubs and bars, instead staying at his hotel to watch infomercials (no joke- Arenas actually claimed he does this in an interview, although some claim he made it up). Arenas would not corrupt Wall. Just because he's immature doesn't mean that Wall should be kept as far from him as possible. I'd also venture that this whole gun situation has caused Arenas to realize that he needs to get his act together and that we will see a changed Gilbert Arenas next year.

The point is, even if you look at Arenas as an over-the-hill bad contract, there is absolutely no reason to trade him right now. So can any of you think of a reason he should be traded this summer? Comments would be appreciated.

Texas' High-Minded, Principled Stand

I'm sure many of you have heard of the changes that Texas is making to their high school history curriculum, changes that will be voted on on May 21. I would like to spend this blog post commending the upstanding gentleman from Texas' Board of Education for their brave quest to uphold our common American beliefs. As principled conservative and Texas school board member Don McLeroy (who tragically has been voted off the board because of what his critics incorrectly call "a far-right indoctrination campaign") pointed out, "academia is skewed too far to the left", and these reforms put Texas schoolbooks back in the center of American politics. Some of the changes include deemphasizing Thomas Jefferson from Texas's curriculum because of his radical views on religion (he was a deist) and on the separation of church and state. Here in America (or at least in Texas) we know that government is essentially run by the Christian church and any non Christian politician is someone who should be watched closely for terroristic leanings and should probably be waterboarded just in case.

Other wonderful changes the school board is making include less references to Latino culture, the removal of hip-hop as an important cultural movement, and an explanation of how affirmative action has hurt the country. I have always decried affirmative action, as I decried the 14th and 15th amendments, as attempts to subjugate the white race. These gentlemen from Texas understand that African-Americans and Mexicans have contributed nothing to American society and thus should not be honored. Why, if they could, I'm sure these gentlemen would have tried to repeal the mistake that was the Civil Rights Act and return blacks to semi-servitude.

Another long-overdue fix that Texas has proposed is the changing of the word "imperialism" to "expansionism" in all textbooks due to imperialism's negative connotation. I have often thought that the U.S. army's attempt to kill all of-age male Filipinos in the early 1900's to stop the uprising there was overblown due to its necessity to win that war and subjugate that inferior race, and this change adopted by Texas will fix that and other problems.

Finally, the wonderful men from Texas are also turning their watchful eye on more recent history. Textbooks will now be required to explain how Title IX (the program that requires all girls and boys school sports to be equal) and other liberal programs had "unintended consequences" such as giving funding to any girls sports at all, which most (in Texas at least) find to be overstepping the bounds a woman should stay in. Also, conservative activists such as Phyllis Schlafly will be getting a bigger role in new textbooks. Shlafly, as you know, opposes equal rights for women, something that would be an abomination under god.

How does this affect us? Well since Texas is the largest buyer of textbooks in the country, many companies make their textbooks to Texas' standards, and other counties are forced to buy those. Just think, Texas' strong conservatism influencing textbooks here in Vienna, Virginia! I can't wait!

Oklahoma's despotic new abortion law

A couple of days ago Oklahoma passed two laws that force all women who want an abortion in the state to listen to an ultrasound of their fetus before the abortion is performed, and even more egregiously, allow doctors to lie to their patients about the state of the patient's pregnancy if they believed that the information would lead to the patient performing an abortion. How anyone can defend this, especially the second part, I have no idea. I'm not going to get into the abortion debate in this post, but the illegality and immorality of these laws is amazing. Starting with the second law, Oklahoma is, in essence, telling doctors that they should perform their jobs wrong. Am I the only one who recognizes how ridiculous that is? The effects this law would have are chilling. Patients could no longer trust their doctors at all to tell the truth about their pregnancy. Every Oklahoman woman will now, for the entire length of their pregnancy, have a little doubt in the back of their mind about the health of their baby. There will be no peace of mind for an Oklahoman mother. Furthermore, if it turns out that a couple is going to have a deformed baby, they will now not know about this until the baby is actually born. The emotional maelstrom that this will cause for thousands of Oklahoman families is wrong and unfair. And what if the baby is so deformed that it does not survive outside the woman's body? Is it okay to allow doctors to not inform families of this devastating possibility? This law could have broad-reaching economic effects as well. Many who live close enough to Oklahoma's border might decide to go to special pregnancy clinics outside of Oklahoma because they cannot have peace of mind with an Oklahoma doctor. That's tens of millions of dollars that could be leaving the state.

Moving on to the first law, it's hard to dispute this part without getting into the whole abortion debate, which I refuse to do. But I will say this; this sounds an awful lot like what the southern states did to get around the 15th amendment (giving blacks the right to vote) back in the early 1900s. In fact, it's the exact same strategy. Both groups were saying 'The act itself cannot now be taken away, so we'll make it as hard as possible to commit the act, while still allowing it to be legal.' It has changed from poll taxes to ultrasound hearings, but the spirit is the same. Furthermore, do the wonderful congressman of Oklahoma realize the scarring effect this could have on a family? Abortion is not an easy decision to make, and to require the parents to listen to the babies heartbeat right before performing the procedure is grotesque and macabre (I can't wait for the comments saying that this is why the procedure shouldn't be performed in the first place).

Luckily, there is no real way this law will pass muster in a court when it is sued for its illegality. The law requires a woman to have an operation performed on her body (the ultrasound) that she does not want. The government has no power to do that. It also requires the doctor to perform the procedure, which it also doesn't have the power to do. Furthermore, I'm unsure, but I bet there are federal laws requiring doctors to disclose all information to their patients. This law would go against that, and federal law always supersedes state laws. The number of ways this law is unconstitutional make it highly improbable that it will stay on the books for long.

So can any of you find any way to defend this law? I will not engage in any debates about abortion, but you're free to comment whatever you want.

Jason Campbell: the franchise QB who was never given a fair chance

     Unlike most people, I was sad to hear that Donovan McNabb had been traded to the Redskins. While I agree that McNabb is an upgrade over Campbell right now, he is clearly not the team's franchise quarterback (he has probably three good years left in the league). The Redskins had a franchise quarterback in Campbell. With the worst offensive line in football (he was sacked 3rd most in the league), some of the worst receivers, and a revolving door of different offensive systems, Campbell played pretty darn well. He had a 64.5% completion percentage, which was 10th best in the NFL and better than Tony Romo, Eli Manning, Carson Palmer, and Donovan McNabb, among others. His overall passer rating was 86.4, not great, but good enough for 15th best in the NFL (out of 32 QBs) and better than, among others, Carson Palmer, Vince Young, and Matt Ryan. While he didn't have amazing stats, Campbell did increase his statistics every year in every major category, showing room for further improvement. The point is that Campbell was a good quarterback who had a chance to get a lot better and turn into a real franchise cornerstone for the Redskins and the Redskins blew it.
      When examining any trade the main question has to be, 'how will this help the team compete for a Super Bowl'? Even with McNabb the Redskins will still suck next year. Those who say they can make the playoffs next year just because of McNabb are crazy. They will still have one of the worst offensive lines in football, regardless of who they draft. Their running backs are the best running backs in the league three years ago, but today all are over the hill.While their young wide receivers showed progress last year, overall their receiving corps still sucks. Their defense is pretty good, but their cornerbacks are all fairly bad. So McNabb won't be any use this year. While the Redskins could legitimately become serious contenders three years from now, there are significant doubts to that as well. After that it's unsure how good McNabb will be. McNabb seems to be a stopover until the Redskins draft a "real" franchise QB, despite the fact that they already had one in the first place in Jason Campbell.

      So did I misrepresent some of the facts in my post? Am I overestimating Campbell's skill? Comments would be appreciated.