Critique on "Transportation network companies: Yes!"

I critiqued Myriam Cisses post "Transporation network companies: yes!" posted on April 26, 2016 here.

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Although I agree that, at the local level, the government has had some poor dealings with ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft, I disagree that Uber and Lyft are entirely without fault. The city of Austin has been guilty of allowing the taxi companies to influence them into pushing anti-competitive legislation, but, even though Uber and Lyft have both left Austin as of this week, ridesharing services are here to stay. Taxi companies will have to evolve in order to become competitive, however, that does not mean that companies such as Uber and Lyft should be exempt from all of the regulations that the taxi companies have had to abide by.

Perceived motive plays a big part in the way voters react to legislation, and the public perception amongst those that support ridesharing services has generally been that taxi companies are lobbying to place unreasonable regulations on companies such as Uber and Lyft in order to suppress competition. This is not an unfair assertion to make, but it is an idea that Uber and Lyft have both exploited in their $8 million campaign to pass Prop 1, the most expensive election in Austin's history. But this is not as simple as a backwards city council trying to impose excessively harsh laws on the ridesharing services to try and run them out of town: this is Uber and Lyft trying to set a precedent to allow them to regulate themselves as they see fit, and withholding their services as some sort of punishment after the people of Austin failed to vote in their favor.

Ridesharing services are a unique institution, and deserve thoughtful legislation that is focused first and foremost on safety. While it is true that the city has antagonized them and generally failed to cooperate, they have attempted to use this as leverage in order to coerce their customers to pressure the local government into allowing them to run wild. By ending operations in Austin, they have dishonestly presented a non-binary issue to the public as a binary one: as if the only options that exist are to pass Prop 1 or to lose Uber and Lyft's services. While it is well within their rights to withdraw themselves from the city, we must not forget that they have done so voluntarily. Uber and Lyft have a history of doing this, and generally the cities have cracked under public pressure and submitted to the demands of the companies. Uber and Lyft do not intend nor do they expect to lose their customer base in Austin. In fact, if enough cities call their bluff, they will be forced to adapt and accept the regulations that we as a city have decided on through an election. 

Uber Ride

I recently took an uber to meet my brother at a barbecue restaurant on Guadalupe Street. We honestly could have taken the bus, but we were under a time limit before my brother headed over to Dallas for an agriculture competition. So we took a $10 uber isntead.

My boyfriend and and I engaged the driver in a conversation concerning politics when we overheard the radio's broadcast on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The man immediately began rambling about his political views and how he believed Bernie Sanders should run independent. He spoke in conspiracies about Trump getting assassinated if he became president, about Hillary's lack of vote if she wasn't a woman, about the men in Wall Street being the "real people we need to worry about." A lot of it sounded interesting enough to entertain, so I did, but it also sounded incredibly predictable. I felt like I had seen a Refinery29 or Buzzfeed video detailing the exact same predicaments.

I kept the conversation going, but a lot of what I was saying, I wasn't even sure was true. I wasn't even sure if this guy I was talking to knew it was true. I've often times tried to do my own political research, but I find that the articles I attempt to read are completely riddled with words and phrases I can't understand even after I google them. For example, I don't know what it means when a political party "dies". Does it never come back? Is it like Buddhism where it's reincarnated into a weaker version of it's past self? Is that even how Buddhism works? Does Buddhism even need to be capitalized????

I don't really understand what checks and balances do or are or when they were created. I have no clue what a monopoly is or what oligarchy means. There are so many things that I just have no idea about. A part of me feels like I should stay in this blissful ignorance...another part makes me feel guilty for not engaging in politics and really working with my country to better it. And honestly, I can't be the only one that feels like this.

According to this article by Newsweek, "most experts agree that the relative complexity of the U.S. political system makes it hard for Americans to keep up." The article goes on to detail a judge's point of view on the situation, where he explains that our lack of knowledge makes us feel even worse about ourselves not knowing enough, so we give up entirely on doing any research.

The possibility of correcting this issue in modern America seems completely out of date. We have the internet...what else could we possibly need? High school and college students are required to take a government class to graduate, and everyone has a TV to watch the news on. So where is the point that everything just doesn't work? What is it that prevents me from fully understanding federalism and ideology?

I'd like to think I have the golden answer, but I don't. Neither does that Newsweek article. I guess every individual citizen decides what they care about most and what they care about least and all the stuff in the middle kind of blurs.

A Critique on "A Critique on the Social Elite"

I am critiquing Katrina Berthold's blog post "Phase Five: A Critique on the Social Elite", posted on April 1st, 2016 here.

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Although I agree that the healthcare system in the U.S. is skewed, I disagree with comparing America's healthcare to other countries, especially the countries mentioned in this post.

"As many of us already know, Germany, Sweden and Canada all offer free universal healthcare, and are among 11 nations who currently do the same." This is true. However, these countries are incredibly different than the United States. They can afford giving out free universal healthcare, because they don't have that many people that they are giving it out to. Out of these three examples, Germany has the largest population with 80.62 million people.

What is the United States' population?

318.9 million.

That's 318.9 million people that you want to give universal, free healthcare to.

Another country that has universal healthcare is the UK. My boyfriend is a European citizen that lived in England from 2013-14. He got hit in the head by a golf ball (his fault honestly, what's a person doing walking on a golf course?) and got a doctor's appointment about a week later to see if there was anything wrong with him. The doctor told him nothing was wrong and to check a health website if anything came up. The doctors have a set salary and also get paid much, much less than U.S. doctors, who are known to rack in the dough. (UK doctors make between 80-120,000 while U.S. doctors make between 130K-240K)(2)

I do agree, though. Our health system sucks. Having to wait up to eight hours just to get a check up is draining, but universal health care is not the shining answer we sometimes think it could be.

(1) http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/most-populous-countries.html

(2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/9300823/Most-doctors-are-not-paid-six-figure-sums-figures-show.html

The Bernie Bro Pandemic

He's bearded. He's bland. He's belligerent.

He's a "Bernie Bro".

"Bernie Bro" is a term used to describe upper middle class white males that overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders both on social media and in their day-to-day lives. We all know a Bernie Bro, and if we refuse the existence of them, we probably are the Bernie Bro. We go on Facebook, scroll through pictures of our cousin's dog and our acquaintances frequent Jesus memes and then, before we're even a minute into our Facebook timeline, we get to the Bernie posts.

A lot of the online dispute over Bernie Bros is either supporters of Sanders disputing the fact that a majority of them are white males or articles about how Hillary Clinton's press team created the term "Bernie Bros" to discredit her opponent and his ever growing posse.

However, the comment section of every article critiquing Sanders' supporters seems to help Clinton's agenda, even if the whole nickname wasn't her doing to begin with.

In this post by The Atlantic, published on October 17, 2015, author Robinson Meyer pokes fun at the pandemic that is the Bernie Bros. The comments are littered with offended statements and protests of inaccurate statements, some claiming that the majority support behind Sanders isn't even white, others stating that the post was simply unnecessary. 

I took it upon myself to go the extra inch for this blog post and asked the most frequent Bernie posters on my Facebook what they thought about all of this hullabaloo. Here are their answers, with their names censored out to protect their Bernie Bro identities:

Some really made an effort to explain their allegiance to Sanders, while others were a bit more nuanced with their replies.

What I gathered from this "experiment" was that "Bernie bros" are proud of their support for this presidential candidate. They want to not only explain the reasoning behind their support but also their opposition to other nominees.

However, when it comes to statistics, it seems as if The Atlantic was right. According to CNN primaries polls, the largest amount of voters for Sanders were white males. In fact, the most popular demographic was educated white males, between the ages of 17-29 that made over $50K a year.

These polls also showed that more than half of Bernie's voters were first time voters in a democratic presidential primary. Although it's possible that they voted before, a large majority of that number comes from legitimate first time voters. People are becoming politically motivated and learning more about their government because of the passion they have towards Bernie Sanders. Even if that passion is a bit distraught and chaotic, they're still going to vote and they're still learning more and more about the political process as they go.

After this election is over, it's assumed that most people will go back to their normal business: caring about recent tragedies or gun rights or whatever it is they care about and we'll all forget about the whole Bernie Bros thing. There will be a few though that will continue learning about politics and will really be able to redefine their positions on legitimate issues once they've gathered enough knowledge about the American political system and how it works. And, I think that's what's most important. People do take things too far sometimes like dressing "up as superheroes during Bernie rallies," but if they didn't do those things they probably wouldn't be involved in politics at all.

That being said, please stop oversharing your Bernie memes on my Facebook timeline. I know I could just unfollow your feed, but I do need to get out a couple eye rolls every day to keep me alive, just maybe not more than 100.

Swaying People Towards Trump

American journalist Howard Kurtz writes in this "Media warnings against Donald Trump shift from aggressive to apocalyptic" article for Fox News, published on March 8th, 2016, that the media is fighting so hard against Trump, that they are actually swaying voters to support him. His article samples quotations from a plethora of sources, including Fox's competitor CNN, The Washington Post, the New Yorker, and Salon, where other writers commentate on Trump's "threat to civilization." Kurtz's examples are bountiful when it comes to other news sources, but he fails to include a source from his own news site, of which a simple search in Fox news search bar would have possessed. It's unreliable to disinclude Fox news in a media article, when a large part of the nation's news comes from that specific source. In fact, Fox is still prime-time leader, beating out both CNN and MSNBC. It's understandable not to go against the company that pays you, but, in order to be even a smidgen of a reliable news source, you have to at least include the biggest one.

Meida outlets aside, Kurtz also claims that celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Louis C.K "have threatened to move to Canada if he's elected." Recent conservatives have consistently posted memes including celebrities movement to either Canada or elsewhere in the world if Trump gets elected. Both memes and this article have the same basis for their proof of media figures actually confirming their statements: none.

This last meme of Cyrus was posted on the official Fox News Facebook, with comments on the photo going from "Another reason to vote for Trump" from user Jeff Schreck to "I'm not a trump supporter. But is Miley Cyrus, whoopi Goldberg and Rosie o'donnel trying to turn me into one by promising to move to Canada if he wins?" from user Richard Warren. Coincidentally, Kurtz uses the example of Cyrus in his article, however, there is no actual, official, legitimate evidence cited towards her statement of moving to Canada. The most she's ever posted about it is on her Instagram where she also posts videos of herself wearing pimple cream and using Kim Kardashian "kimojis". Even then, she never cites Canada as her future home.

Although Kurtz article seems to have a bit of bias towards people that oppose Trump, he is correct when he states that certain opponents are actually convincing Americans to side with Trump. As is shown in the Facebook comments to Fox's Cyrus picture above, the vast majority of reactions to everyone's hatred towards the businessman seem to push more people towards him than against him.

Hillary Clinton & Black Voters

Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign was indeed responsible for circulating some of the earliest rumors questioning Barack Obama's citizenship. Her role in the Obama administration is now a major selling point in her campaign-one that James Rucker of this Salon article (How Can Black People Trust Hillary Clinton After 2008, published on February 25, 2016) claims she is exploiting in order to appeal with black voters. Whenever xenophobic statements about Obama resurface, either ones that she made herself during the 2008 primaries or simply stood by, detractors are quick to use them to portray Clinton as a hypocrite or an opportunist. The way she currently portrays herself as being a candidate who will carry on Obama's legacy is indeed undermined by some of these past statements, however, there is much more to consider when it comes to the impact of these statements on Clinton's popularity with the black community.

One of the most questionable assumptions that the author makes is that Clinton's past statements criticizing Obama will turn off black voters because of "Black folks' desire to defend the president," but this ignores the decades long relationship that the Clintons have cultivated with the black community. While the color of Obama's skin and Sanders' experiences with the civil rights movement during his youth may make them seem like ideal candidates for black voters to rally around, the Clintons have strong ties to the African American community, with writer Toni Morrison even famously referring to Bill Clinton as the "first black president." Hillary Clinton has dedicated support from the black community that rivals Obama's, and it is unlikely that years-old statements criticizing him on the campaign trail would do much to alienate black voters.

While the statements made by Clinton and her campaign quoted in the article are certainly xenophobic and offensive, they do not contain anything that directly attacks qualities of the majority of the African-American community. Obama's experience as a black man in America is a unique one, not only because his mother was white, but also because his father was from Kenya. The racially-charged attacks on Obama that have permeated the mainstream since his first campaign have been mostly reactions to his perceived "foreignness," rather than his identity as a black American. If Clinton had made statements denigrating Obama for qualities inherent to the African Americans who have been in this country for generations, she would no doubt lose a great deal of support from the black community and those sympathetic to them, but these criticisms against Obama question his nationality and his religion. The most prominent of these fear-mongering tactics used against Obama employ stereotypes that are not often levied against the black community at large: he is accused of being a Muslim (the fact that this is even considered a "smear" is inherently Islamophobic) or supporting terrorism. While such baseless criticisms of Obama coming from Clinton's camp could obviously cause her to lose credibility with voters, there is no reason to believe they would turn off black voters any more than they would voters of any other race.

Super Bowl Super Beyonce

Beyonce's halftime performance at SuperBowl 50 has been both praised and criticized by those who tuned in to see it. The Washington Post featured an article, written by Jesse J. Holland, who goes into detail about the political motive behind the performance.

While several people are chastising Beyonce for "outlandishly" promoting anti-cop sentiments, there are others that are seeing it as part of a larger movement in the black activism community. The article details what parts of her performance were politically motivated:  her back up dancers (all black) wore outfits that were similar to the outfits worn by the Black Panthers 50 years ago.

The dancers and Beyonce also raised their fists in the air, which is a well known symbol of the Black Power salute, made famous by John Carlos and Tommie Smith when they were at the Olympics.

I think this article is worth a read to get different opinions on the performance. There are those that think this politically motivated sentiment was entirely one sided and promoted anti-cop fallacies, while others believe that it is part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement. Most politicians have spoken out on the Black Lives Matter movement, while others have seemingly ignored it entirely. With the upcoming presidential election, it'll be interesting to see the final two candidates voice their point of view on the topic. With other events occurring that tie into this timeline of black rights (the Oscars boycott, recent gun tragedies), it feels as if this is only the beginning of a much larger sentiment in the United States.