Archive for Blog

The Soda Tax in CA?

Author: Admin

For the past three summers, Mayor Gavin Newsom encouraged San Francisco citizens to go “Soda Free.”  Earlier this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for a penny-per-ounce tax on soda and other high-sugar beverages in New York City. The State Legislature of Hawaii just killed a soda tax bill this last week. Countless other mayors and [...]

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Rising inequality in India: prosperity has a price

Author: Maxim

Home to a rich culture, delicious food, a thriving economy, and over a billion people, India, the world’s largest democracy, is by far one of the most fascinating places on the globe. However, on my recent trip there this winter, one thing caught my eye, and it was that above all else, India is a [...]

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The Republican Re-Definition of Rape

Author: Admin

Republicans have once again made their true priorities clear. They’re here to muck up the political waters by introducing incredibly divisive legislation designed to restrict a woman’s access to abortion.  Over the last few days, there’s been a media firestorm around what many have been calling a “redefinition” of rape. Under the GOP definition, only [...]

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Living in the Shadows: The Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Author: Jeremy

When I arrived at work last Friday, I could immediately tell that something was amiss. The blaring music and jovial voices that usually filled the kitchen at my restaurant were strangely muted that afternoon, the movements of my co-workers slowed as they battled the thick, warm air above the gas range. “What’s wrong?” I asked [...]

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An Ode to Saudi Arabia: Breaking sterotypes and barriers

Author: Christy Stanker

Saudi Arabia is easily one of the most misunderstood and least known about countries in the United States. The images of desert, camels, and most of all, women covered entirely in black dominate the image Americans conjure of the gulf nation. As someone who has been studying the Middle East and Arabic for the last [...]

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State of “Our” Union

Author: Anais

A few words on exclusion President Obama addressed “one American family” on Tuesday night: a family he insisted includes American Muslims, undocumented immigrants, and America’s most vulnerable populations.  While I am grateful for these words, America has never been a unified family.  Nor have we been, as President Obama patriotically claimed, the world’s “moral example” [...]

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Politics and the Internet

Author: Klein

For the past several semesters, I have explored how politics can leverage the use of the Internet to mobolize communities. This interest in how computers and politics collide has led me on a course to explore different political communities on campus: from student groups to political campaigns to even protest politics, all in addition to [...]

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What the attempted assassination of Congresswomen Giffords means for women in politics

Author: Molly

As we all know by now, sexism still exists in the US. While last Saturday’s tragic shooting was likely not connected to Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s gender, her attempted assassination underscores a problem in this country that we have been fighting for generations to cure: the limited role of women in the political process. When I [...]

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A Bill in Support of Standing Against Violence: A Candlelight Vigil for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Author: Anais

(Passed by the ASUC Senate, January 11, 2010.) Authored by: Anais LaVoie, Jonathan Uriarte and Senator McDonald Sponsored by:  Senator Alabastro, Senator Bach, Senator Del Rosso, Senator Freeman, Senator Gong, Senator Horning, Senator Loomba, Senator McDonald, Senator Montouth, Senator Pham, Senator Salahi, Senator Youm, Senator Zhang, and Executive VP Nanxi Liu WHEREAS, on Saturday, January [...]

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Rhetoric and Violence

Author: Tom

I think it’s important that we draw a distinction between the negative effects of destructive political rhetoric in America and the terrible tragedy in Tucson. Clearly, this gunman, Jared Lee Laughner, was deeply disturbed and committed an atrocious act that no sane American could possibly condone. It is unlikely that Loughner would have targeted a [...]

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