2016 March
2016 March 1
What is Super Tuesday?
Primary elections need to be spread out more evenly so that there is no tendency for certain states to dominate the election.
2016 March 2
South Dakota governor vetoes transgender bathroom bill
Lots of misperceptions surround this issue, on both sides, so continued education of the public is obviously needed. This bill would not have required a person born a boy but who identifies as a girl to use the boy’s bathroom, but would have called for “reasonable accommodations”. However, it should be the case that anyone who legally and medically has been confirmed to identify with the opposite gender, should be allowed to use the restroom associated with their gender identity.
2016 March 3
NYC: Haitians Seek to Hold U.N. Responsible for Cholera Epidemic
This immunity should not be allowed to protect any party from a lawsuit and criminal charges. Any person found to be criminally negligent should be prosecuted. There is always room for someone to be found innocent due to ignorance or other factors beyond their control. But quality control should always exist, and this case seems to indicate that it was lacking. Somebody failed.
2016 March 4
Japan To Halt US Okinawa Base Relocation Work But Government Says Plan Intact
Though the US has every right to remain based in Japan, almost wherever it wants, it should be sensitive to residents’ concerns. The first thing it should do it have extremely harsh penalties (probably at least twice as severe) for any service members convicted of a crime off base. Also, as a general rule, individual countries should not have military bases within other countries. Such functions should be under the auspices of an international military organization. That is the only real way of
2016 March 5
China aims to maintain growth pace, fend off unemployment in five-year plan
How hard it is to look decades into the future and know that the decision to not correct policy regulations in China today will directly result in severe environmental damage that will be even more costly to correct in the future. If people would only understand how the world works and understand certain principles of governance, then so much time and resources could be better used.
2016 March 6
Search Called Off For Passenger Who Fell From Cruise Ship
If the man was ever found, naturally he should be questioned. If it turns out that he was drunk or somehow decided to jump overboard himself, he should be required to pay at least a significant portion of the bill for the search and rescue activities.
2016 March 7
In drills, U.S., South Korea practice striking North’s nuclear plants, leaders
If an international military organization were the ones doing these drills, North Korea would have less of a reason to complain. But the way it is now, North Korea thinks that South Korea, Japan and the US are biased against it. North Korea may still act irrationally even if an international military organization were in operation, but at least it would be North Korea against an internationally representative military force.
2016 March 8
Iran has sentenced one of its richest oil tycoons to death for corruption
Corruption is hard to fight, but a more transparent financial system would potentially allow for earlier detection of financial inconsistencies that would highlight possible corruption.
2016 March 9
Women Rally at United Nations to Demand Justice for Slain Honduran Environmentalist Berta Cáceres
Murderers need to be captured and assessed for rehabilitation. If they fail such assessments, they should be permanently removed from the population and made to work under supervised conditions to repay the costs of their crimes to the family members they have hurt. Then they should be executed. More video cameras would make it easier to capture the conclusive evidence needed to make large scale arrests possible with fewer resources.
2016 March 10
“Ultra-processed” foods a huge chunk of American diet
To encourage healthier eating, a junk food tax should be instituted and a business to business sales tax should be implemented for every sale. This would make foods with long commodity chains more expensive than more natural foods. Foods lower on the food chain may be cheaper than alternatives, as well.
2016 March 11
Japan tsunami remembered five years on
Nuclear power plants need to be constructed in a way that they are still relatively safe even with a catastrophic destruction of the reactor core. Nothing less than this standard needs to be implemented worldwide.
2016 March 12
Russia US: Former Putin aide Lesin died of ‘head injuries’
This crime should have had video evidence from the closed circuit TV monitors around the hotel that should be able to help narrow the suspect list.
2016 March 13
CBS News journalist caught in turmoil at canceled Donald Trump rally
It appears that the police should compensate this reporter for the time, frustration, humiliation, etc., of being arrested wrongly. It should be common practice and common knowledge that police will compensate people who have been wrongly arrested or detained. This would act somewhat as a restraint against arresting too many people.
2016 March 14
Ivory Coast: 16 Killed in Militant Attack on Beach Resort
African countries have the potential for very nice tourist destinations, but all this violence is hurting them severely. One way to help ‘level the playing field’ in this world where ‘free trade’ rules, is to create a one-sided trade policy in which tariffs are placed on all goods coming into their countries while tariffs are completely eliminated for all goods leaving the country. This would create an economic environment more conducive to better terms of trade from the perspective of these poorer countries. Economic development is a prerequisite for any meaningful peace to endure.
2016 March 15
Alabama prison riot: Warden, guard stabbed in uprising at Holman Correctional Facility
Prisons need to be rehabilitative institutions as well as punishing institutions. Currently, punishment is held as the priority. That is very short-sighted. The violent lesson learned in prison that are necessary for survival will inevitably come to menace the streets.
2016 March 16
All Three Networks Ignored Bernie Sanders’ Speech Tuesday Night, ‘Standing By For Trump’
This is why it is very necessary to have a far more diverse media presence in the United States and everywhere. When news events are filtered through too few outlets, accuracy of coverage suffers. We could increase diversity (and decrease dependence) by having a series of well-designed taxes directly on aspects of businesses that discourage excessive largess.
2016 March 17
Stocks rise as Fed scales back rate hike forecasts
The artificial market manipulation of the Fed is evidence of the unstable nature of the market–and this should instill fear in everybody. Our market (and most or all in the developed world) are mature enough that they should be perfectly capable of functioning without any artificial manipulations of any variable. Of course, it is necessary for the right regulations to be in place, first.
2016 March 18
Turkey And The EU Strike Controversial Migration Deal In Brussels
Instead of this money going to Turkey, all the cost of resettling these people instead should go to carving out a place from within Syria itself and building a city for these refugees. The refugees should be required to stay within Syria. An international military organization should be the governing authority for this refugee city.
2016 March 19
Next space station crew set for Friday launch, docking
Manned space flight isn’t all bad. As long as it doesn’t go beyond the Moon, it’s OK, within reason. But almost any experiments on long duration space flights are a waste of time because any goal of going to Mars is a waste of time. Robots could do the job at least 10 times more cost effective than any human mission could.
2016 March 20
Flight recorders badly damaged in Russia plane crash -regulator
This why we need live downloads of data during the flight of every aircraft. Otherwise, not only does it take to long to recover the data recorders, but the search is also sometimes expensive (it is crashes in deep waters, for example).
2016 March 21
U.S. Marine Killed in Iraq, Revealing Presence of New Base
The construction of new bases in Iraq needs to stop. We successfully broke that country apart, and we (as well as the rest of the world, apparently) don’t have the guts to do what is necessary to allow the peaceful coexistence of the various peoples there (namely divide that country into 3, Kurds, Shitte, and Sunni), we should just leave and cut our losses now.
2016 March 22
Surveillance footage, cab driver offer clues in investigation in Brussels attack
Of course, if airport numbers were reduced, terrorist attackers would find other targets. However, the psychological impact of this attack could have been reduced by having done a few long term policy changes. First, all subsidies for all industries should be phased out to elimination. This would automatically make air travel far less economically viable, at least over land routes. Then we could have built an intercity network of high-speed train or monorail system that would have taken the place of several air routes.
2016 March 23
Divided Supreme Court hears Obamacare birth control challenge
The government is the supreme authority of the land and to help keep civilized order within a country, it is imperative that all organizations operating within the country understand this. Of course, religious organizations who believe that God’s law is higher than government law, have a valid dilemma. The only civilized resolution would be for the government to allow the objecting organization to opt out of the offending activity. But in this case, this is not enough. It may still be reasonable to require this hospital to inform their patients on how to find the relevant alternative treatment for an abortion.
2016 March 24
Joe Biden to Make Case for a Full Supreme Court Bench
Supreme court justices should be replaced on a more automated basis. Sure, hearing should take place regarding their views, but time limits of several months should be instituted so that the process does not drag on and on
2016 March 25
Morocco firm on expulsion of UN staff from Western Sahara
This is another case in which an international military organization would be very helpful to determine and enforce the creation of new countries for people who have distinct histories. This problem could have been minimized or eliminated if a powerful organization justly determined the proper boundaries around countries.
2016 March 26
C.D.C. Offers Guidelines for Delaying Pregnancy After Zika Exposure
Some of the effects of this Zika virus offers what appear to be a very clear case in favor of abortion. Because the fetus or baby who is diagnosed to have microcephaly due to Zika is unlikely to live until adulthood, such a child should be aborted, whether it has or has not been born. Abortion of people should be conducted, if they meet certain conditions, regardless of age. Euthanasia may be a more palatable term.
2016 March 27
Robert De Niro Pulls Anti-Vaccine Documentary From Tribeca Film Festival
It would be difficult to determine when people or organizations should be fined for saying arguably false things, because often cause and effect are often not unambiguously related. In order to be able to institute a system whereby people are fined for saying false things, such things need to be unambiguously false. Otherwise, the credibility of any monitoring system will suffer to the point if making it irrelevant. Therefore, such an organization must restrict itself to only fining and punishing that blatantly false information that is disseminated. So this movie might not fit the bill for a hefty fine, but perhaps some elements (as will more movies) will be sufficiently strong to convict the authors about their falsehood.
2016 March 28
Syrian Forces Retake Ancient City of Palmyra From ISIS: State Media
The damage to this city will now be able to better ascertain. More funding should go towards archaeological and human history fields of science because, especially in this modern era, such historical information is being lost at an incredibly fast rate and once artifacts have been disturbed, much of their useful information has been lost.
2016 March 29
U.S. Says It Has Unlocked iPhone Without Apple
It is a good thing that the government has been able to find out what is stored on this phone. The ability to unlock phones is a necessary evil the government must have because no encryption should be too strong to prevent the government access, ideally. But since we live in a significantly fallen world with people being often untrustworthy for up to a lifetime, we must ensure that the penalties for breaking the public’s trust in these matters of privacy are so severe, that they would not even consider it. The death penalty should be a possibility and even perhaps a certainty for especially unusual crimes.
2016 March 30
Foxconn and Sharp Approve $3.5 Billion Takeover Deal
All these merger/acquisition deals should not need to be reviewed by any agency of the government. It the tax structures are set up correctly, the natural forces of the market will be enough to prevent the mega companies from unhealthy amounts of market share.
2016 March 31
Donald Trump reverses stance on ‘punishment’ for women who get illegal abortions
This confusion over what Trump said about abortion highlights the whole reason why people shouldn’t rely on the media’s often superficial reporting about sound bytes or fragmentary information. Instead, each candidate should be required to write out a 10,000 word or so position paper on virtually every relevant issue. This way voters would have less of an unbiased view on scientific and social issue in regards to the presidents; position.