Campaign Funding

A few days ago, The Supreme Court lead by Chief Justice Roberts, declared the restriction on donations to Political Parties, and PACs are unconstitutional. Now, it is entirely legal for people to dump as much money as they want into a parties' campaign ads, and support. Acts like this have been restricted by the BCRA (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act e.i. McCain-Feingold Act) an Act highly supported by Senator John McCain, restricting the amount of "hard money" that could be donated to Parties, PACs, and individual candidates during an election cycle, and also completely restricted "soft money", or cash-in-hand. This has caused an uproar among many liberals.The fear is that this will give the rich too much influence on the decisions of elections. If a candidate is given a lot of money, there may be some exchanges of favors for that money. This is a large worry, since the decision makes the offense of corruption a very limited and restricted definition. This could also be somewhat of a good thing, being that an underdog candidate could find some good connections and become heard throughout the mass media, which could heavily influence elections.

Though this decision is rather favorable towards the wealthy, and can be seen as a stunt to muzzle the less fortunate, there could be some good done here. Do the ends justify the means? I guess we'll have to wait for the next couple elections to see what happens.

BP: Oil Spills

   On the evening of April 20, 2010, an underwater oil line ruptured spilling over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico making it the biggest oil spill in US history. This calamity took 11 lives and inured 17 others lasting roughly 87 days and affecting the coastline for about 16,000 miles. 8,000 animals were reported dead within the first 6 months of the spill into the Gulf. Who was to blame for this tragedy? The globally known oil and gas company known as BP or "British Petroleum". As of 2012, BP was also known as the 5th largest company in the world based on consolidated revenue and the 6th largest oil and gas company. BP was fined $40 billion in cleanup costs and an additional $16 billion dollars to the Clean Water Act. Was this the end of the BP tragedy? No. Almost 4 years later on March 24, 2014 a refinery malfunction in Indiana caused yet another spill, this time into Lake Michigan. As of March 28, 2014 an estimated 15-39 barrels (about 630-1,638 gallons) of oil was spilled spreading about 2 miles and contaminating the drinking water supply in North West Indiana. Many people such as the Lake County surveyor, Bill Emerson, Jr., are demanding data from BP about the spill such as how much and what type of oil was spilled as well as physical and chemical properties of the oil. Emerson also went on to write, "Also when completed, please forward my office a copy of your internal investigation and any external investigations into this matter including your detailed plans to avoid discharges in the future". A good point made by Emerson. How will BP stop further oil spills? Will it happen again? What are some precautions BP can take as well as the citizens of the US oil spills to stop further pollution into the fine waters of America?

           -Ryan