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(11/23/14 9:57pm)
In a moment of absolute ignorance, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence declared in an interview with Fox News that he plans to "ennoble" approximately 65,000 people by denying them food stamps.To provide a Reader's Digest version of the issue, which Pence seems to find adequate: The federal government mandates that after three months on food stamps, able-bodied childless adults must work for at least 20 hours a week or attend some sort of job training program to receive their food stamps. In cases of recession, with high rates of unemployment the government allows people to get their stamps for more than three months. As of now the economy hasn’t fully recovered, but Pence believes the benefits should be stripped away, despite explaining to Fox News that he’s “someone who believes there’s nothing more ennobling to a person than a job.” It’s fairly easy to see Pence’s logic: the legislation would pressure people who are simply trying to reap the benefits of the program to actually work.The problem with his ideology is that he oversimplifies a very complicated issue. That’s most likely due to the fact that Pence, the epitome of the “privileged white male” archetype, never actually had to live in poverty.Unfortunately for Pence, food stamp fraud is not even an issue. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, such fraud is down to about 1.3 percent. That’s right, it’s a nonexistent problem. About 99 percent of people who utilize food stamps genuinely need them. Sure there’s going to be that tiny percentage to takes advantage of that kind of stuff, but what the proposed legislation would really be doing would be apply pressure on the wrong people.Even then, the Indiana unemployment rate is around 5.8 percent so there really there aren’t even enough jobs to “ennoble” the poorer population with in the first place. Maybe Pence should get on that before he decides it’s a good idea to take away major necessities. I too believe that there nothing more ennobling than to starve due to a politician’s obvious ignorance. I mean, what drives you to frantically search for jobs more than starvation? Probably nothing. Unfortunately Indiana isn’t the only one jumping in on these cuts. Previous states such as New Mexico, Maine and Kansas also cut tens of thousands of people’s access to food stamps. And if we’re talking about ennobling people and freeing them from government aid, maybe we should talk about Pence’s relationship with corporations. In March, Pence signed a law slashing corporate income taxes from 6.5 percent to 4.9 percent by 2021, making Indiana taxes the second-lowest in the country. It would certainly be a generous thing to free them from the burden of government aid. Wouldn’t it be ennobling to allow corporations to stand on their own two feet just like the people who, due to their own life situations, find themselves unemployed and in poverty?Perhaps we should readjust our focus and see what the real problem is here. Food stamps actually provide a needed service: helping people get back on their feet. Cutting these programs isn’t combating the problem, it’s creating it. Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetskyEditor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(11/16/14 9:41pm)
An almost obtuse amount of explosions, 45-minute action sequences and characters as flat as a piece of printer paper — these three traits seem to be consistent in most major movies today. One thing they're lacking? An actual story.Take recent big-bucks space odyssey "Interstellar" for instance. The movie possessed the roots for success with an interesting concept, an epic cast and a solid amount of intrigue, but it never actually let them grow. And while the movie might cause a thrill in theaters, it didn’t have that stick that made it memorable. Describe any character in that movie and they'll be reminiscent of some other Christopher Nolan character. Really the only spectacular thing about it was the special effects, and that’s just not enough.But, it doesn’t take a Michael Bay-grade budget to make a great movie— what it takes is a sense of originality, humanity and a plot that isn’t completely dependent on the multi-million dollar budget it has. Granted, action movies tend to require a bigger budget, but if we learned anything from last summer’s spectacular crash-and-burn, "The Lone Ranger," it’s that deeper pockets don’t necessarily make for better movies.Here's the problem: Hollywood is getting lazy. With an already established idea of what works and what doesn’t and modern-day technologies allowing companies to virtually build a movie out of thin air and blow up basically whatever they want to, directors are taking the alternative to a good plot — dazzling and stereotyping the audience out of their money.You can throw as much money as you want at a pile of garbage, but in the end, it’s just a pile of garbage. Granted, it may rake in a epic profit, but look back in 10 years and it will be forgotten.That’s not to say that all major movies today are garbage, but a movie's quality depends where the creative energy feeding the film is geared. For instance, "Avatar," the highest-grossing movie to this day and arguably one of the most creative and epic big-budget movies, cost approximately $230 million. It was a hit primarily because the money put into the movie was not used to create car chases or flashy effects used to distract the viewer into forgetting the lack of complexity, but rather to fuel the film's creative energy and develop a thoroughly well-thought-out world. Basically, they put actual substance first and used the the stunning effects to back it up.This “money over everything” mentality used by movie-makers is slowly leeching the excellence out of Hollywood. Instead of developing unique stories, Hollywood is riddled with over-used tropes, explosions, remakes and sequels.Five copycats seem to rush in to take every successful movie's place and profit off its success. And yet, despite the fact that every Nicholas Sparks movie actually look and feel virtually the same, movies like this still keep pulling in the cash. It poses the question: Is creativity dead?Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetskyEditor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(11/10/14 11:41pm)
"One of the police officers said, 'Drop that plate right now,' as if I were carrying a weapon,” 90-year-old veteran Arnold Abbot said to a Florida news station as he described being arrested for, of all the shameful things in the world, feeding the homeless.
(11/02/14 9:48pm)
From progressive stances on homosexual rights and evolution to an actual Twitter account, things under Pope Francis seem to run a bit differently.
(10/26/14 9:36pm)
It’s a sea of pink. Cheerleaders, football players, National Football League logos and fans sporting their Breast Cancer Awareness Month paraphernalia; so much pink it looks like it came straight out of the bedroom of a 6-year-old girl.
(10/21/14 10:00pm)
Ebola: an airborne, apocalyptic plague that has slowly oozed its way into the bodies of Americans.
(10/15/14 11:44pm)
When most people think of YouTube, they think of viral videos of cute animals doing equally cute things or some hilarious example of human stupidity documented forever on a blurry iPhone video. However, YouTube is becoming more and more prominent as something very few people associate it with: a business platform. In recent years, YouTube pumped out some staggering statistics. It has more than a billion unique viewers every month, outranking Facebook. Users upload 100 hours of footage every minute. And it's the No. 2 search engine on the Internet, second only to Google itself. While many social media sites tend to get stale after a year or two, YouTube seems to gain value with age.It’s clear that YouTube has some serious muscles to flex, so why is the website still primarily associated with funny videos of finger-biting babies?Perhaps because the sheer creativity and level of eccentricity present in the website is what allowed it to become what it is and what continues to keep it thriving.The platform originated as simply as this: a bunch of random videos that random people posted for no particular reason. However, over the years, it developed into a multi-million dollar industry, allowing for elaborate business models and even celebrity to come into play with content creators like PewDiePie, a gaming channel, earning nearly $5.5 million annually.Through its progress, YouTube became a diverse, innovative ground on which multiple different — and very successful — ideas have been built. Take the Vlogbrothers, Hank and John Green, for instance. The Greens launched their channel in 2007, each creating video blogs as means of communication between the two. Seven years later the brothers together launched a total of 27 channels with more than 8.3 million subscribers and 956 million views. Due to its fan interaction along with the brother’s inventive natures, they became the heart of the YouTube community. Hank Green created an Emmy-winning channel creating fictional vlog series following the plot of "Pride and Prejudice" and other classic works and formed an annual YouTube convention, VidCon, to bring the community together. John Green, author of "The Fault in our Stars" and "Looking For Alaska," recently partnered with Bill Gates to provide water in Ethiopia, raising a total of about $440,000. That doesn’t sound like something to be condescended to. In fact, their ventures on the website were more successful that most modern-day businesses in general. The craziest thing about the Vlogbrother’s success stories is that it is one out of hundreds to be found on the site. YouTube, in a way, epitomizes the almost completely distinct idea of the “American Dream.” Its platform is nondiscriminatory. It allows for individuals to go head to head with corporations and major artists and succeed. The most successful channel, PewDiePie, is one of a Swedish guy playing video games. A YouTube-based news broadcasting channel, The Young Turks, is outranking giant news sources like ABC and CNN. YouTube is a big fan of the “little guys,” and that’s working for it. Ventures people cannot make in a normal business climate, they make on YouTube, which provides them with a potential audience and a creative network.Due to its vast opportunity for interactivity and creativity along with its relatively low cost of failure, the website as a whole, simply put, is a business phenomenon, one that will play a crucial part in an increasingly digital future — one that still hasn’t fully been recognized as a legitimate field despite that fact that hundreds of creators on the site make a living off of “making videos.”With stars like Troye Sivan and Bethany Mota, two YouTubers recently placed on TIME’s 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014 list along with icons like Lorde and Malala Yousafzai, and many others slowly rising into the major role of “celebrity,” it seems imminent that the platform be taken more seriously. Granted, they’re no Jennifer Lawrence or Ben Affleck, but their increasing popularity is vast.It’s time that professionals stop condescending toward YouTubers and the platform itself, like they have many times before, and start considering it what it really is: the future of social media and marketing. With television, radio and print news slowly dying out, the Internet will soon take the main stage, and while the website is still home to plenty of viral videos, it has grown with its audience becoming a tool just waiting to be used.Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetskyEditor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(10/05/14 8:58pm)
Apparently the Obama administration doesn’t take innocent deaths as seriously as they used to. The White House acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Barack Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq. The Obama administration’s acknowledgment came as a response to questions posed about reports that a U.S. Tomahawk missile potentially killed almost 12 Syrian villagers on September 23, including both women and children.The old policy, announced by Obama in May 2013, barred any lethal drone strikes without a “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” It was fairly explicit, mostly formed with the intention to gain approval of military involvement by both U.S. as well as Syrian and Iraqi civilians.However, the new policy, named “Proportionality and Distinction," prohibits the “deliberate targeting of civilian areas” and requires the U.S. to try to prevent as many civilian deaths as possible during such strikes. Essentially, this policy drastically loosens the binding restrictions of our older policy and allows for what’s most easily characterized as collateral damage. Who needs double-checking anyway?Civilian death is an unfortunate inevitability in war. It would be, simply put, naïve not to admit that. However, the U.S. consistently prides itself on being the bigger person, one better and more ethical than the enemy. It should at least strive to reduce those deaths so as to not appear incredibly hypocritical when it doesn’t achieve those goals. “They seem to be creating this gray zone. If we’re not applying the strict rules to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value,” Harold Koh, the State Department’s lawyer in Obama’s first term in office, explained.In instances of war like this, especially when our efforts are divided in different directions, some things are bound to slip through the cracks. However, in cases where innocent lives are on the line, we need to ensure that such cracks are sealed as tight as possible. If the administration can’t live up to the strict policies it proposed a mere five months ago, perhaps it had no business entering the conflict in the first place. Evidently, it doesn't know enough about the situation to handle it adequately or, in that sense, realistically.The U.S. military needs to form a policy in this war and stick to it. It’s important to stop making exceptions when thrust into difficult situations and stand firm. After all, it’s one thing to take into our consideration ineffective policies and modify them in a way they will fit, a whole other to say one thing and then a year later introduce a policy that discounts completely avoidable civilian deaths.Not only that, but these deaths spurred major anti-U.S. protests in northern Syria. On Sept. 26, protesters denounced the drone strikes and demanded for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, chanting, “Our first enemy is America and its allies.”If we expect to take down Islamic militants terrorizing innocents, then we need to not become the villain in the people’s eyes. It’s crucial, if we expect to try to ease tensions in this conflict, that we keep tighter standards and take into consideration the social and political standings and values in the countries.The U.S. obviously is in over its head in this conflict. Seeking to fight Jihadist groups in the Middle East is a noble goal. However, in order to ease tensions and not make them worse, the military needs to approach with caution, re-implementing the strict guidelines and further educating itself on the people in these countries and their outlook on the conflict before making major strikes.U.S. foreign policy throughout this Middle Eastern conflict has been riddled with an underlying tone of hypocrisy, but now more than ever it’s essential that the U.S. eliminate indecisiveness that is taking innocent lives and find steady ground to stand on. It's an incredibly complex conflict, one that delves into both social and political issues in the Middle East; as a result, the military needs to proceed with incredible caution.Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetskyEditor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(09/24/14 10:51pm)
We’re all familiar with that signature "Mean Girls" sex-ed class line: “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die.”
(09/14/14 10:41pm)
Apple is amazingly revolutionary in one respect: the way they over-hype their products. Their new smart watch possesses a mile-long list of features. You can share your heartbeat, for some incredibly creepy reason. You can check the time, just like a $5 watch you can buy at Target. You can text just like on the phone you already have sitting in your pocket. You can try to look at pictures on a tiny two-inch screen. You can even spend $349 minimum on a flashy, yet basically absurd piece of technology.When it comes down to it the watch, or at least the first generation, will easily become a very expensive paper weight. Granted, many the features seem cool, but one thing they failed to advertise is that the majority of the apps on the watch itself are sitting in your pocket, on the phone for which you paid exponentially less money.It may be a different story if users didn’t actually have to own an iPhone 5 or above to use the device, but that’s not the case. Instead, by buying a watch you’re essentially buying an iPhone 5 and a mini iPhone strapped to your wrist and using both. Truly, the only feature different from old iPhone models that anyone would actually use on a regular basis is the heart-rate monitor. If that’s one of the major selling points, buy a Fitbit instead. It costs about $250 less and it doesn’t require an iPhone to use. Despite the “unparalleled level of innovation” that Apple flaunted, they failed to mention one other minor detail: the battery life. Mechanical and digital watches use very little power, so charging them is never an issue, but the Apple Watch works pretty similarly to the iPhone. The fact that they haven’t advertised the battery points to the fact that it may not be as “revolutionary” as everyone hopes. Older, not-so-successful models of smart watches like the Pebble generally had a battery span of about 4 days. The catch? They had black and white displays, much like digital watches. With the level of modernization and portability that the device is supposed to possess, you’re most likely going to be rushing for a charger cable on a regular basis.In fact, there’s a good chance that your over-priced and way over-hyped “smart watch” probably only has an overall lifespan of about 5 to 10 years, while a $50 “dumb watch” could probably outlive your great-grandchildren. Or you could do what nearly everyone else does today and simply check the time displayed in giant bold numbers on the home screen of you phone.It’s an interesting idea, a smart watch. However, Apple jumped into this field a little early in the game. Their other successful products, like the iPhone, launched into the market and made a splash after watching other smart phone brands work out all the kinks. They found out what worked and then amped up all those qualities on their own products.This is a fairly new market, one where previous products have had a high history of failure and a very low rate of success. In this sense, the biggest piece of advice for anyone actually interested in buying this product: wait until the second generation.Along with their notoriety for innovation, they’re known for their second generation successes. The iPhone went from a toy to a device with GPS. The second generation iPad was about half as thick as the original. In terms of technology, Apple is a second-generation superstar.When it comes down to it, the Apple Watch is more of a component of nerd-fashion than anything else. After the hype dies down it will probably end up similar to the Google Glass: an innovative failure.While the products launch video, ridden an obscene amount of slow-motion pan over shots, makes it almost impossible to not crave the device, the smart watch is best left for the future.Reach the columnist at mjanetsk@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @meganjanetskyEditor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(09/09/14 11:12pm)
You know something's wrong when corporations and activists are actually working together.
(09/03/14 1:21am)
Actor Kevin Sorbo is on a roll. The former "Hercules" actor made the news twice in the past few weeks for saying offensive and racist statements about Ferguson protestors. His next target? Atheists.
(08/28/14 12:21am)
We’re all familiar with the June 2013 “affluenza teen” case. Teenager Ethan Couch got off with a 10-year probation period after driving drunk, killing four people and severely injuring two others. The reason? Couch got off by claiming he was too rich and coddled to know right from wrong.
(08/25/14 10:30pm)
Society these days seems to have picked up the innate ability to pick out vulgarity in even the most innocent circumstances. Its most recent target? Taylor Swift's recent single, “Shake It Off,” which rather ironically focuses on “shaking off” the criticism of her work, her personal life and her role in society as a whole.