Book Report #3

The government is also in charge of funding, for example the Obama Energy Department. Politicians will give loans and grants to these larger businesses causing the financial stake in the company to be upheld. If a company is relying on a loan to expand to new customers, politicians will make sure that company receives the loan thus securing there investment into the company. “Four companies in which Westly had a major financial stake just happened to receive loans, grants, or stimulus money from the Obama Energy Department: Tesla, Recyclebank, Edeniq, and Armirys Biotechnology” (85). This is another issue that is very hard to avoid, but it ties very closely to politicians trading stocks to begin with. If politicians were not allowed to invest in companies, there would no reason for them to help companies for the wrong reasons. Politicians could be restricted from purchasing investments in a company. Would there be as many politicians though if they were restricted in saving their investments? It would be interesting to see I this would help reduce some of the fraud within our government. 

Book Report #2

The stock market is not the only place where government officials are able to make a profit. Also in the development of land politicians are able to make a better bang for their buck. Politian’s are able to pass bills and spend money to improve the land, whether this is through gardening or building a nearby train station. “On the house floor, Lewis explained that he was a firm supporter of beautifying that area. What he never mentioned was that he and his wife owned a $1 million house four blacks away” (66). This would be a very hard issue to avoid. Even if you prevented politicians from buying houses in certain areas where they have jurisdiction it would be hard to monitor that. Politicians could tell a friend or a family member to purchase a house somewhere knowing the value of the house will increase. Knowing this the profit made from the sale of the house could than find its way back to the politician. This would be very hard to avoid though also due to the reasoning most politicians live where they have jurisdiction. 

Book Post #1

I recently started reading the book Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer. This book talks a lot about the corruption that is currently taking place inside the United States government. The current scandal is within the stock market, and is one of the main reasons why politicians leave their seat with so much more money than they actually earn on a yearly basis. In the first part of the book Peter talks about the various bills and how these have influenced the stock market. The most notable is the health care bill and the effect that it had on the company Teva Pharmaceuticals. “When the Kerrys first began buying shares, the stock was trading at around $50. After health care reform passed, it surged to $62" (5). The majority of Congressmen know when a bill will be passed and can buy the stock low, knowing for sure the stock will go up to a much higher price. After reading this I was shocked. This is essentially insider trading which is highly illegal, yet these government officials are doing it on a daily basis.  It just seems wrong. There must be rules and regulations in place to help stop this activity by government officials. It is hard to say that these people, once elected, are not able to trade stocks, but I am interested to see what options Peter will offer throughout the rest of the book. 

Marketplace of Ideas

This past week in issues we completed our marketplace of ideas projects. The event itself, I believe, had a very good turnout. Many people stopped by the various presentations to see what that person was “selling” on their poster.  I was surprised at the total number of people who actually stopped by the posters to take a look. Several of the sellers had petitions out for the people who “bought” their views to sign, if they agreed with the views presented.  I was expecting the majority of people to just look over the poster and sign without taking a closer look, but most people wanted to know more about the various issues. One issue I personally found very interesting was the Invisible Children Charity. This issue was presented by Ryan Kunzi who talked about the flaws discovered in the charity. I found this issue so interesting because our school raised and donated $100,000 to the charity. Ryan brought up a variety of points, but the most notable was how the founder of the charity said it must be run as a business. This was surprising because it implies that the founders of the charity are looking to make a profit based on the donations. If it were not for having the marketplace of ideas, many such issues would not have come to my attention. Focusing on my issue of alternative fuels, I found quite a number of people were surprised how far technologies for alternative sources had come. People were especially surprised by the fact that hydrogen cars are already being sold in California. To raise awareness, instead of having a petition for signatures, I handed out bumper stickers. This way while people are driving, one bumper sticker could reach an unlimited number of other drivers, thus spreading the word. As people look further into the use of alternative fuels, more and more of them will want to make the switch to using a more efficient fuel. 

Video Game Violence

This past weekend was just another typical weekend in Deerfield. While visiting a friend’s house, we decided to remember our childhood and play games like Mario Party 2 and Super Smash Bros on the N64. While playing these games were fun, I realized the change in video games we grew up with compared to today’s generation. Today there are game like Madden and FIFA where the graphics are so realistic, you feel like you are there. The graphics on a N64 are very pixelated, and the frame rate is much slower. If we look at fighting games though, Super Smash Bros would be a game to play where fictional characters had super powers and you tried to get other characters off the map. Today’s generation plays games like Modern Warfare. These shooter games try to be as realistic as possible. These games show death with blood and shooting a gun at other soldiers. The objective of Modern Warfare is to eliminate the other team. The technology is there to support these types of games having faster processors and discs that can hold more content. I’m sure if the technology today was available ten years ago these same games would be created, but the difference is that there is a large demand today with shooting games. Today there are midnight releases of games, and companies are barely keeping up with demand of the release of their games. Focusing on the N64 the top two selling games for the system were Super Mario 64 at 11.62 million copies. Mario Kart sold a total of 9 million copies. In 2001 the Xbox was released 5 years after the Nintendo N64. The number 1 game sold on the Xbox was Halo Combat Evolved. This is a shooter game selling a record number of games at 5 million copies. The top nine games for Xbox sold were all shooter games. The tenth game, while not a shooter, was still a underground racing game. It was not until the eleventh top game sold that Madden NFL 2005 is noted. I think it is interesting that in five years the change in game styles that were purchased. It wasn’t that these games were not offered for the N64. There were still shooting games like Golden Eye and Contra but they did not sell as many games as the Mario franchise did.