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Three Senators and “Zero Dark Thirty”
The senators shouldn’t edit the movie; they can, and should, increase transparency about torture…
Amy Davidson on the government’s reaction to “Zero Dark Thirty”: http://nyr.kr/ZUavGH
It’s often said that libertarianism is the philosophy of “I’ve got mine and f’ off.” That philosophy works fine for the individual until the individual actually needs help. Human beings don’t live in insular pods. When our neighbor’s house burns, there’s a good chance ours could. When our coworker gets sick, there’s a good chance we will. At some point in the very near future, voters have to stop seeing themselves only as individuals and start thinking as a community. As much as I weep for my home state of Colorado, I hope these fires wake the voters up to realize that sometimes government is necessary and that someone needs to pay for the protections that everyone takes for granted. Perhaps then, people will be more amenable to the conversation about global warming and its short and long-term dangers.
— Wendy Gittleson (via azspot)
American Students Need to Copy Canada’s Tuition Protests
In the past four months, the Canadian province of Quebec has become a hotbed of Occupy Wall Street-style protests—marches with hundreds of thousands of protesters, and battles with tear gas throwing, pepper-spraying police. And it all started over proposed tuition increases at Quebec’s public universities.
Indeed the Quebec Spring first blossomed in February when the government proposed hiking tuition from $2,168 to $3,793 over the next five years. Thousands of students went on strike and the government, led by Premier Jean Charest, decided to play hardball and crack down with the now-infamous Bill 78, a law that limits protest rights.
Since then the protests and student boycotts have only grown. Nearly 200,000 students across the province have gone on strike. And the situation has revealed deeper frustrations with the government’s willingness to bail out businesses but not help the average student—or citizen. On May 22nd nearly 400,000 people—a full quarter of Montreal’s residents—participated in a protest march.
Yep, Canadian students are outraged because each will have to pay $325 more per year, for a grand total of $1,625 for five years of higher education. Meanwhile, in the United States we don’t bat an eye over that kind of tuition jump. In-state students attending the University of Michigan saw their tuition rise to $12,590 for 2011-12 school year—$753 higher than the year before. We certainly didn’t see 27,000 undergraduates marching through Ann Arbor in protest.
Good to see an American perspective on our protests. And a positive one at that.
