Column: Obama, McCain Leave Important Groups In The Dark
This story was written by Kyle Schmidlin, The BG News
With this being my last opportunity to reach the students at Bowling Green State University before the 2008 election on Nov. 4, I thought it might be a good idea to look at the election from a different angle that has been covered before. Much has been said about how an Obama or McCain administration might help or harm "insert occupation here," but there are a handful of groups who are entirely voiceless this election cycle.
The Drug Community
Obama, who admitted to use of cocaine and marijuana in his "Dreams of My Father" memoir, is certainly a step above McCain with regard to his War on Drugs policy. However, he has demonstrated no interest in ending it, taking a moderate approach to the drug war and using tactics such as eliminating the punishment discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine and offering rehab instead of jail time for first-time offenders.
McCain is very much the same on this issue. While both candidates have different methods of fighting the War on Drugs, neither come close to advocacy groups like the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). The fact that both of them view drug use as a scourge of society rather than an unfortunate by-product of various societal mechanisms is disappointing.
Under neither McCain nor Obama would non-violent marijuana offenders, which comprise a startling percentage of the inmate population, be released and pardoned for what America has wrongly deemed a criminal activity. The American people should begin demanding politicians demonstrate real courage, and take stands that may affect some real change.
The Uninsured
Those in this country who still lack health insurance are presented few options this time around. Both candidates have plans they are proposing, but neither offer the kind of adequate coverage the citizens need. What has yet to be proposed in the mainstream is possibly the simplest solution yet to the health care crisis: an expansion of Medicaid- and Medicare-style programs to cover all Americans.
The money to pay for such a program can be recovered from cutting the merest fraction of the military's incredible budget. Neither Obama, hailed as a super-progressive, nor McCain have proposed anything like this.
The Environmental Community
Both candidates may use some green rhetoric, but neither really demonstrates any great concern for the environment. They'd each rather search for cleaner methods of using coal or some other short-sighted solution, ignoring perfectly viable alternatives such as hydrogen energy or wind energy, exemplified by the Bowling Green community.
Also, both candidates are welcoming to the idea of nuclear energy. The problem, of course, with nuclear energy is the same as it has been for decades -- there is no way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Reactors capable of recycling the plutonium into new, usable energy are at the forefront of nuclear engineering today; still, they will never be able to convert 100 percent of any element into energy.
According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear waste is dealt with by separating it into Low-Level Waste, Medium-Level Waste and High-Level Waste. LLW and MLW is buried a little ways below the surface, and HLW is "safely contained and managed in interim storage facilities," with the possibility of burying it deep underground at a later date. Essentially, it just keeps piling up, and no real solution has been developed. Neither major party candidate has come out in opposition to nuclear energy, but the environmental community should accept nothing less than for both to do so with vehemence.
The Peace Community
Perhaps more crucially than any other movement, anybody who regardsthemselves as a pacifist should be horrified by the prospect of a McCain or Obama administration.
Obama has been painted generally as the anti-war candidate, because he has opposed the conflict in Iraq. But his rhetoric tells of a different candidate, with talk of shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan (in ways which need entire articles to adequately explore, more immoral than our Iraq invasion) and blanket threats made against a powerful, and potential nuclear power, in Iran. I needn't even elaborate on McCain's foreign policy stance.
Neither Obama nor McCain are precisely what this country needs. Other groups I lack the space to cover, such as the gay community which is still fighting for equal marriage rights, have yet to find a major candidate with the political courage to back their causes fully.
Meaningful change, the kind not yet presented by McCain or Obama, must be fought for at the grassroots, from below, because it won't be handed down from above. Regardless of who walks away from Nov. 4 a winner, the groups listed above still have some fighting to do.