It’s been said that you are bound to nothing but your dreams. They are what define you as an individual and set the course for your future.

If this is the case, illegal immigrants are at odds with this ideal. Instead of taking on their lives’ goals, they are tied to a piece of legislation.

Two ASU graduate students showed their disdain for this fact by protesting in Washington, D.C.

According to The Arizona Republic, grad students Erika Andiola and Dulce Matuz were arrested Tuesday while expressing their support of the DREAM Act, an immigration bill that aims to help illegal immigrant minors earn citizenship status.

Both Andiola and Matuz were involved in a sit-in that took place in the offices of several U.S. senators. Andiola sat in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office while Matuz sat in Arizona Sen. John McCain’s office.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would offer children brought into the country before the age of 16 a path to citizenship. Attending college or serving in the armed forces for a minimum of two years would earn them legal status.

These two ASU students deserve our admiration for standing up for their beliefs. Andiola and Matuz believed in their cause so much that they not only traveled across the country but also ended up being detained by Capitol police.

What these students stood for does not amount to amnesty. Yes, it provides illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, but the group that the bill is tailored to committed no wrongdoings. Rather, they are reeling from the actions of their parents, who decided to immigrate illegally to the United States.

These students affected by the DREAM Act would prove they are contributing members of society, as the bill requires them to attend college or serve in the military and maintain “good moral standing” with the law. They would not get a free pass; rather, the citizenship would be earned.

Also, passage of this bill would help our economy. In 2007, the then-head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie Myers, told a Senate committee that it would cost $94 billion to find and remove all 12 million illegal immigrants, according to CNN. A new study from the Center for American Progress reports that cost would now be $285 billion.

Ninety-four billion dollars or $285 billion, take your pick.

Either way, it is a lot of money that could be used in more productive ways.

What if we were to offer tax cuts to small businesses to encourage them to hire? Perhaps the money could be used to fund education or aid to cash-strapped states.

Not only would we be losing this money if we relied on mass deportation, but we would lose all the talent that exists within this group of students that would otherwise be deported.

Entrepreneurs exist in this pool of students who will start businesses that will provide jobs and help the economy get back on its feet. Doctors can be found among those affected by the legislation as well.

Though time is dwindling down in this congressional session, the DREAM Act can still be passed. It has broad bipartisan support in both houses, something that is rare in the current partisan atmosphere. Though comprehensive immigration reform has been ruled out for this congressional session, there is still time to pass the DREAM Act.

Senate Forecast, 7/18: Republican Outlook Improves with Focus on Likely Voter Polls
New info on senate races.

House Majority Tipping Point
A look at the house races.

Income Inequality in America
The divide between rich and poor just keeps getting worse.

GOP lawmakers optimistic about ‘no’ votes
Republicans are expecting that being the party of no will pay off.

One of the more disturbing things that I have had a chance to read about in the news recently is the GOP’s strange opposition to the new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). Nuclear nonproliferation is not an issue to take lightly or to oppose just because it is politically helpful to the republicans to give President Obama a defeat as often as they can. Of course the same could be said about Health Insurance Reform, Climate change legislation, immigration reform, and so on, all of which used to be supported in some form by a number of republicans, but unfortunately the moderate allies of those initiatives have all lost their interest.

The Absurdity and political opportunism demonstrated by the GOP here on the new START is much worse than any of the other issues that they have flip flopped on recently. The last START was negotiated by President Reagan, signed by the first President Bush and confirmed by the senate with more than 90 members supporting it. At some point since that time republicans apparently decided that they no longer supported restricting the spread and amount of nuclear weapons. This is possibly the most blatant example of republicans forming positions based on politics only. At least in the past there was some misguided justification for conservative voting, and while democrats might disagree, both parties had the intention of help the country.

Now the only guiding principle behind republicans seems to be gaining and preserving their own power and nothing more. I would hate to imagine what it would be like if they regained power and we had people running this country who have demonstrated a strong lack of interest in it’s well being.

As of late, this country has seen only the bad side of a bad market – bankers and their record bonuses as well as thousands of foreclosures. If the ingenuity and innovation it takes to succeed is harnessed and put to good use great things can happen.

An excellent example was the approach President George H.W. Bush took to reduce acid rain emissions and toxic air quality. Passed with towering, bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by a Republican president, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 was a cap-and-trade system that provided economic incentives to companies to cut down smog emissions and instituted an acid rain allowance-trading program.

Cap and trade, which is an idea based around the free market, is not a radical, left wing idea. Rather, it is something both parties have historically embraced. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 was passed with near unanimous support in both chambers of Congress.

The bill passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 401-25 and cleared the Senate with a comfortable margin of 89-10. Achieving monstrous majorities such as these is near impossible today given the polarized electorate.

What’s more is that this program achieved results. The acid rain cap-and-trade program achieved 100 percent compliance in its goal of reducing sulfur dioxide emissions. And for fiscal conservatives, the net result of this legislation was a dream come true. It was estimated to cost $6 billion, but only ended up costing a fraction of that, between $1.1 and $1.8 billion.

The passage of the legislation was hailed by then EPA administrator, William K. Reilly. In a press release he said, “The final result is a law which will undoubtedly serve as a model for regulatory reform across the board, leading to the widespread use of market approaches here and abroad.”

Now we must use this successful program as a means to bring down carbon emissions. It has a bipartisan appeal – aspects of it align with both the conservatism and liberalism ideologies.

Cap and trade appeals to one of the cornerstones of conservatism, where the private sector acts as the engine that drives this country’s economy and provides the innovation that America has become known for. It also appeals to the liberal ideal of protecting the environment.

Such a successful program should not be shunned as a job-killing, radical idea. On the contrary, a cap-and-trade program that has the authority necessary to regulate carbon emissions has the potential to revolutionize the green energy industry and produce millions of jobs in the areas such as research, construction and installation.

Though the media and fringes of both parties like to pretend this country has a one-way ticket to Doomsday, this is not the case. If we approach the negotiating table with an open mind, this country’s best days lay ahead of it.

However, if the partisan bickering continues, many of the issues that need to be addressed will not be solved, rather rifts of mistrust and hard feelings will develop that could take years to mend.

It is our duty to leave this Earth better for our children and grandchildren and we can do this by pursuing policy that works. History has shown that cap and trade can be successful. Let’s put policy before politics and institute a program that caps greenhouse gases. In doing so, we will rely on the free market and the American entrepreneurial spirit to revolutionize an industry and show to the world once again why America is home to some of the most creative minds in the world.

Five practical ways and one impractical way Congress could improve the economy by November
A few suggestions on how to improve the economy as well as democratic chances in the midterm election.

How facts backfire
A very scary article about how most people are not persuaded by hard facts. A must read.

Deficits of Mass Destruction
Some people are starting to see a parallel in the current talk about deficits and the mythical WMDs that led us into a war in Iraq.

When 256 Doesn’t Equal 256
538 compares the geographical make up of the US House going into the ‘94 election and the one we are now approaching.

Before we start I just wanted to mention that this new segment is going to be different from the Electoral Fortune articles that I usually write. Instead of focusing on the news or other political matters, YD Organizing will focus on ideas for how to run a chapter of the Young Democrats in order to get the best results. Since I am a member of a college chapter the focus will mostly be on issue specific to college chapters.

Anyways, let’s move on to the importance of showmanship in hosting meetings as a college chapter leader. This is one area where I feel leaders can really improve on once the focus on it. Often I have seen the room filled up with more than 100 people at the first YD meeting of a new semester, when many new freshmen and other students are looking for a new group to be apart of, but in recent years there are a few more than 20 individuals that show up to the next meeting and that includes members that have been around for years. In my opinion one of the ways that this high drop off rate can be fixed is by making sure that the meetings are more enjoyable to attend. It’s only logical to assume that the reason that someone who came to the first meeting doesn’t attend the second is because the meeting wasn’t enjoyable.

I think that all chapter leaders should take feed back and look for ways themselves to improve meeting quality. Some suggestions that I have heard for years but have never been tried include keeping meetings short. By short I mean less than an hour, because it’s hard to listen to someone monologue for that long, especially so for people at their first meeting. Another suggestion is to filter the speakers that attend so that the super wonkish types aren’t speaking to the room on the first day. It’s all about thinking about the meeting you are leading as a performance and you need to entertain the audience.  Hopefully taking this approach will help chapter leaders improve their retention in the upcoming school year.

So recently two high ranking Republicans have made some very disturbing comments about the economy that have me very worried about the state of the nation overall going forward. The first was Arizona’s Senator Jon Kyl who said that he supported extending the Bush tax cuts that expanded the deficit in order to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans. He said that he is fine with tax expenditures for the rich that will expand the deficit but he opposes unemployment benefits because they will expand the deficit. He seems to only advocate for positions that increase income inequality in America. His position is based on helping a select group of people and no one else.

The next was Minority leader Mitch McConnell who claimed that the Bush tax expenditures on the wealthiest Americans did not increase the deficits. He used the same logic that Reagan used during the eighties that decreased taxes would not effect the budget because of increased GDP growth from the lower taxes. The historical record shows his thinking to be false; the deficits under Reagan and the second Bush administrations were huge despite the economic voodoo they used to justify their acts.

The reasons this concerns me is that it is very troubling that one of the two major parties on America are either completely uninformed on economic matters or the more cynical version, they knowing choose to advocate for an economic position they know is false for political gain. Either way this country is in enormous danger if people like these two are writing policy because they do not work based on facts or the best interested of the people.

The Fourth of July has come and gone. Our great nation is another year older and while all the hot dogs have been eaten, beer consumed, and fireworks blown up, there is one thing that remains.

What lingers is the uniquely American feeling of patriotism and the desire to ensure that our country’s best days lay ahead.

Unfortunately, June’s job numbers don’t appeal to either of these ever-present notions. We must reevaluate our approach to guarantee our economy recovers.

June’s dismal employment figures – the country lost 125,000 nonfarm jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – raise questions concerning the state of the economy.

These numbers came after five straight months of job creation, not job loss.

This is why the need for a second stimulus is so pressing. Now is not the time for fiscal austerity. Many people are uncomfortable with the size of our national debt, but they are also uncomfortable with the state of the employment market.

Choosing between the lesser of two evils, creating jobs seems to be the best choice. It is the most pressing matter, as the national unemployment rate still hovers just under 10 percent.

Enacting a second stimulus would not be fiscally irresponsible as many on the right maintain.

The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan institute in charge of tracking congressional budgets, gave a testimony in front of President Barack Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission charged with addressing the nation’s deficit.

In the testimony, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf used prepared PowerPoint slides to aid him. One of the last slides read, “There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.”

According to The Washington Post, Elmendorf also said, “Enacting cuts in spending or increases in taxes now would probably slow the recovery.”

Such an example would be the extension of unemployment benefits. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting by on next to nothing while a bill to extend the benefits they rely on is stalled in the Senate due to the eternal filibuster by the minority party.

It seems the hallowed halls of Washington made our state’s senators forget their constituents. Both Arizona Sens. John Kyl and John McCain voted against the extension of unemployment benefits.

We can ensure the lingering feelings of patriotism and altruism toward our country last by enacting a second stimulus and aiding the unemployed. By helping the American people with these legislative initiatives, the economy can continue to recover.

Without support, our citizens will be left in the ruins of the financial crisis and wonder why the country they love so much has deserted them.

To our elected officials, do the patriotic thing and help the American people. Pass a second stimulus and extend unemployment benefits now.

Arizona’s Long Reach
How SB1070 is effecting the politics of states all across the country.

Michael Mann exonerated; will the media issue a retraction and apology? (of course not)
The researcher that was the focus of “climategate” is vindicated.

Why Isn’t Investment Higher?
Krugman points out how businesses are just sitting on money instead of investing it in the economy and explains why.

Yes, The Government Creates Jobs
Despite what conservatives say, the government can and does create jobs.

I cam across a very interesting idea from a conservative friend recently. He was talking about getting businesses in Arizona to manufacture and sell firearms on within the boundaries of the state in order to get around the regulations that the federal government has placed on them. This idea seemed ridiculous to me that some company would think that it would be a profitable idea to make sure that all steps in the manufacturing of the firearm, it’s distribution to retail, and eventual sale to a consumer were conducted only in the state in order to avoid the weak and easily avoided regulations on guns we have in this country. The gun show loophole alone makes it extremely easy to get a gun despite having felony convictions or a documented mental imbalance all without a waiting period. Still for some that loose level of regulation on guns is still too much.

America has had a gun fetish for a long time, something that can be traced back to when the nation was first founded and most people lived miles from their closest neighbor and there were few public safety officers to speak of, which made the idea of having a firearm for defense practical, but in 21^st century America those things are no longer true. We see our neighbors everyday since they are right next to us, there are police that will respond to criminal activity, and the violent crime rate in the country is at a historic low. Considering all of that why do American’s still feel this attraction to guns that other nations have been able to grow out of? I don’t expect a rational gun control policy to come from our government anytime soon despite it being desperately needed, but hopefully someday the majority of American’s will grow out of this weird fetish they have for dangerous weapons.