Wednesday, September 12, 2018

OpEd by Emily Zarate, Senior


A Broken Support System

By Emily Zarate


May 22, 2018

When a bridge lacks support, it is destined to fail. With no structure or base to support it, the bridge will ultimately collapse and no longer maintain its function. Why can’t the same be said of the citizens of this country?

Oh, SNAP!

After twenty years of no reform, it is time we take a look at our nation’s welfare system. As of 2016, more than 44.6 million Americans lived under the poverty line. As strikingly large as this number is, it would have been larger if programs such as Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and housing subsidies did not exist to lift an additional 48.3 million constituents out of their hardship. Such programs show the benefit of social aid, despite what the Trump administration may claim. As a midterm election nears at the end of this year, it is important to keep in mind that over 13 percent of our nation lives in impoverished conditions everyday.

Poverty rates among the elderly and the disabled are increasingly high due to their physical or mental limitations. Social Security is the most successful social program in American history, however, like all programs throughout American history, there are many—conservatives— who refute it. The lack of funding will significantly decrease the financial protection that many families rely on.

Donald Trump’s—our current president—proposed budget cuts to these federal social programs represent a serious threat to working-class and poor Americans who depend on those programs. Conservatives like Donald Trump, such as Paul Ryan, believe that government social services have only hurt the poor and that Republicans genuinely want to help them by diminishing of their dependence of welfare programs by getting rid of funding. Those in power, have a catastrophic effect on those who mostly depend on the government for assistance. Their role in the lives of others can be their downfall.

Many create an alternative to challenge Trump’s slogan, mentioning that before he can make “America great again” he must first make it humane. The reason for this being that people are forced to live a poor life with limited help. Increased poverty rates are not helped, only making the situation worse. The inhumane treatments caused by conservatives for their entertainment only weakens their support systems. They are given unfair chances to try to remake lives, giving them a “dead end” chance.

The Rich Gets Richer

Identifying the solution for ideal welfare reform, though, comes down to taking a look at the root of the problem. As renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz asserts in his book The Price of Inequality, America currently has the most inequality and least equality of opportunity among developed countries.

Yet, the most disturbing part of the book is the fact that we are very unlikely to follow the advice that is contained in it.

The standard of living of the top 1% continuously rises, while that of the lower 99% continues to fall. Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher income individuals consume a smaller portion of their income than do lower income individuals The opportunities for upward mobility are fewer in the United States than in many other countries. The reason is that the upper 1% have designed the economic, political, tax, and education systems to benefit themselves, to the detriment of everyone else. They do not realize that in the long term, their well-being is inextricably coupled to the well-being of society as a whole.

Against Welfare Programs

On August 22, President Clinton signed into law "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity” Reconciliation Act of 1996, a comprehensive welfare plan that dramatically changed the nation's welfare system into one that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. This new system will exclude many of those disabled who are faced with extreme challenges in the workplace. The author mentions that there are many for and against this welfare program. Those against it want to make it tougher to get financial support—such as Arizona giving a one year limit

Although some disapprove of the decreased funding in social welfare programs, there are many who, on the other hand, approve and even encourage it. With various citizens behind them, and many more becoming impoverished, the need for these social reforms increases. As a result, the broken support system negatively affects those who are in most need of it.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

OpEd by Xavier Olivia, Senior

A Third-World Within A First -- Rural America in Crisis
By Xavier Oliva May 21, 2018


It was two and a half millennia that the great storyteller Aesop resided in Ancient Greece and told of many tales such as that of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. The same sentiment of there being disparaging social identities, values between rural and urban are evidently not a new observation, nor do I believe Aesop himself even conjured up the revelation. However, the difference between ever present sectors of culture has--of late--become greater than nuanced opinions. The world views are not different, It is now the world themselves that the American rural population inhabits that differs from their urban counterparts

Ever since World War II, the United States has been the self-proclaimed “greatest country on earth” and has been at the forefront of technological milestones all the way through to present day. To many, it would be a gasp-inducing understatement to deem the United States simply a first-world country, however, through the veil of patriotism and borderline nationalism, it is easy to turn a blind eye to the hardships that American citizens live through on a daily basis. When one thinks of issues that plague society like lack of potable water one conjures up images of Sub-Saharan Africa, war-torn countries halfway around the world, everywhere but our own country. However, to the surprise of many, one needs not travel outside the borders of the United States to even come across a third-world country, they can be found in the rural communities that have been long forsaken.

Foremost, the status of health in these forsaken rural communities is among the most alarming of attributes that liken them to that of developing countries.

Given the privatization of our healthcare system, striving for the highest bidder has left Rural America sick and forgotten. Due to the low population density of these rural communities, it is not cost-effective for there to be a great presence of medical services for those living a far cry from a big city or even a bustling small-town. And with the recent proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act, an act generally beneficial to the poorest of Americans, those in rural areas may be struck with even greater economic burdens and less healthcare options.

In other words, it is not in the best interest of healthcare corporations to help those in need, especially those in rural areas. The statement itself is disgustingly ironic while also being representative of the rural situation surrounding healthcare.

Sadly, the perpetuation of this form of corporatism that seeks to find the only quantifiable success in this capitalistic nation is not limited to just conglomerates.

In western states like California and Colorado, rural communities have been given one more reason to despise big government. Due to rapid population growth in urban hubs and the lack of profitability of agriculture, water has been prioritized in urban areas leading to water transfers from rural areas based on tax revenue. Though water is necessary in these bustling cities, there are unintended consequences, such as the sudden removal of these small agrarian communities’ economic prospects as well as the degradation of said water when in contact with industrial pollutants. And once more the livelihood of Rural America takes a backseat to profits showing once more that human life may just be quantifiable in the form of currency and thus can be prioritized as that, a dollar sign.

However, the greatest issue that plagues the once great heartland of the United States is one that is a nationwide motif, that being drug abuse. With the rise of opioid prescriptions in the 1990s due to the back-breaking labor of both urban industry and rural agriculture, the country’s death toll to the once-unregulated drug has steadily increased to the point of it being impossible not to note by both the general population and the media. And though the problem of drug abuse has been at the forefront of national debate since the early Temperance movements, the urban facet of this plague on society has been given all of the attention with the rural aspect only being acknowledged as recently as this millennium. This urban bias is only made more observed when it is noted that “there were 300 times more seizures of meth labs in Iowa in 1999, for example, than in New York and New Jersey combined. (Egan).

As years have gone by, the heartland of America has quietly regressed to the days of the Dust Bowl, in many cases, as urbanization has pushed the rural lifestyle from being sustainable. It is difficult to tell the outcome of Rural America, however one thing is for sure--history repeats itself and this is just another instance.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

OpEd by Karina Delgado, Senior

DDE Literary Magazine
2018-2019

Our mission is to promote and share the creative endeavors of students at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School.

Welcome to Cardinal Voices 2018-19!  We are starting off the school year by featuring OpEd articles written in May by Mrs. McMillan's AP Language and Composition students.  In AP Lang, students learn how to write for a variety of purposes by mastering how to adjust their voice, tone, and strategy. This assignment highlights how these students combine research with their opinion.  All of the featured writers wrote these as juniors and are now seniors.



Environmental racism isn’t a myth.
By: Karina Delgado May 21, 2018
Why is it that when black and brown people voice their concerns on issues that directly pertain to them, officials turn a blind eye? Money. And why is it that minorities have a higher chance of living by a toxic waste dump than whites? Environmental racism.

These two answers go hand in hand.

Racism is as American as cherry pie. It has ran its course over centuries in America. So has capitalism. One cannot corner the market, but one can corner someone’s neighborhood until it is refined to nothing but factory smog and production lines.

Often defined as a toxic set of beliefs that one is superior to another based on race, racism has been systematically implemented through laws afforded by privileged whites. There are no more Jim Crow laws or segregated schools, but racism still persists with each factory placed in a minority-based neighborhood.

The term environmental racism was coined by Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. in a 1987 study conducted by the United Church of Christ that examined the location of hazardous waste dumps and found an “insidious form of racism." African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans were, and still are, disproportionately affected by hazardous fumes, environmental policies and dumpsites. They are targeted because companies know they lack resources and knowledge to fight back. This unnecessary intolerance of minorities makes minorities vulnerable in their own homes. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, minorities could feel a sense of safety knowing they would be surrounded by loved ones once in their homes even if the outside world hated them. Now, they have no one to turn to because their loved ones are dead from breathing in toxic fumes from the factory next door.
It is fact that minorities tend to be the ones to live in dangerous neighborhoodsnot because they want to, but because they do not have the means to move. The dispute over whether environmental racism is real or not is utterly ridiculous if you think about a rich white family’s decision to live next to a landfill that produces noxious smells.

Surprise, they wouldn’t.

So, what makes companies, who make up studies to take down claims of environmental discrimination, think that their placement of factories in poor neighborhoods is coincidental. Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics want to leave their toxic environments, but they were there first (sounds familiar). And companies know their dilemma which is why they prey on their economic status and inability to fight back.

Flint, Michigan.

A city name anyone in America is all too familiar with. Flint, Michigan first came to the nation’s attention not when its citizens started to become suspicious, but when a revelation over the high lead levels in water surfaced through a Virginia Tech study. City officials decided to switch over Flint’s source of water from Lake Huron to the local Flint River to cut costs. The hopes were to save money; however, instead, an impoverished neighborhood where over 50 percent of residents are African American and 41 percent are poor received toxic waste filtered through their water pipes.

When one citizen decided to see just how toxic her water was, test results revealed that water flowing into her home contained lead levels as high as 397 parts per billion. That level far exceeded the 15 parts per billion (ppb) level at which the EPA requires communities take action, such as replacing lead pipes, to control corrosion and prevent lead from leaching into the water.

How could this have happened? How could America, a revered nation known for leading the way in all kinds of reform, let its government, city and local officials get away with this? The answer lies in negligence. Flint’s mayor had his emails revealed and it showed that he knew there was a problem far before the Virginia Tech study that exposed the city’s lead levels in September of 2015 came out. If he knew then, he could have prevented the genetic link between Flint water and Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia caused by legionella bacteria. During the eighteen months that Flint residents received water from the Flint River, cases of Legionnaires’ disease increased and at least twelve deaths were confirmed in 2017.

America should be ashamed. In this day and age, everyone is entitled to clean water. Mere efforts have been made to fix cities like Flint, though none have made significant impact. Native American communities for years have endured waste dumps on their land. The Environmental Protection Agency has chosen not to do extensive research into why they are chosen or the effects on them later in life. This confirms how little they care about already impoverished neighborhoods once their money is secured. The EPA and Flint officials need to be held responsible for their inability to take action when needed.

Hopefully, now that environmental injustices like Flint have brought awareness to the exploitation of poor communities for financial gain, there can be more action taken to hold those in power accountable for both their actions and inactions.