Ten Huge Issues Being Ignored in the Presidential Campaign

[orphanedhawk]

The media focus on political minutiae in the presidential campaign can often crowd out the substantive issues that the winner will have to deal with once taking office. And while the candidates themselves occasionally talk about these issues, there’s a number of critical concerns that get no attention, including some of the worst problems (in terms of the harm they cause to people’s lives) in the United States and the world. To address this lamentable state of affairs, ThinkProgress has compiled a list of eight of the most significant problems being severely underserved by the campaign and American political discourse more broadly. In no particular order:

MASS INCARCERATION AND THE DRUG WAR

Writing in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik termed “mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history…perhaps the fundamental fact [of American society], as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.” Indeed, as Gopnik notes, there are more black men are in prison today than were enslaved then and more total people in prison than there were in Stalin’s gulags at their largest. The result of this wave of imprisonment was structural inequality so severe that it was called “the new Jim Crow” by a famous book of the same title, as the strict limitations placed on convicted felons have rendered millions black Americans second-class citizens. One of the principal causes of the rise of mass incarceration is the War on Drugs, which has failed abysmally at limiting the use of dangerous drugs but succeeded wildly at aiding and abetting racial inequality in the United States and the murderous drug trade abroad. The Justice Department recently doubled down on these policies by initiating a massive crackdown on medical marijuana in states that have legalized the drug’s medicinal use.

THE HOUSING MARKET

Though it’s well-known that the housing bubble collapse precipitated the financial collapse, the subsequent woes of the housing market have received comparatively little attention. John Griffith, Julia Gordon, and David Sanchez, in a recent report for the Center for American Progress, call the current housing market “one of the biggest drags on our recovery,” writing that “The historic decline in home prices since 2006 has cost Americans more than $7 trillion in household wealth, forced millions of families out of their homes, and left nearly one in four homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Private investment in housing is a fraction of its historic norm, translating to billions in lost economic output and millions of missing jobs. And more than five years into the crisis, the U.S. mortgage market remains on life support as the federal government guaranteed more than 95 percent of home loans made last year.”

THE INDIA/PAKISTAN CONFLICT

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As the United States exits Afghanistan, tensions are likely to flare up again between the two nuclear-armed states over concerns about terrorism and relative influence in the country. The status of the contested Jammu-Kashmir province also remains unresolved. Former Pakistani director of Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs, Feroz Hassan Khan, concluded in a paper published by the US Army War College that “this region seems to be the one place in the world most likely to suffer nuclear warfare due to the seemingly undiminished national, religious, and ethnic animosities between these two countries.”

OVERFISHING

Fish stocks have been in free-fall since 1989, and the reason for that is clear: humans are killing fish so quickly that “large ocean fish” stocks have been reduced to ten percent of their pre-industrial peak. This pace, which could destroy every fishery in the world by 2048, isn’t just of interest to animal rights activists, as the fishing industry plays a critical role in both feeding the world’s poor and the American economy. Marine ecologist Daniel Pauly goes further, worrying that the effects of the “end of fish” on the ocean ecosystem could imperil its stability altogether, undermining one of the central bases of life on earth.

INTERNET PRIVACY

We routinely put our vital information online without thinking, but it’s becoming increasingly unclear that such information is protected from government and corporate spying. As products like Facebook become essential services, tech companies are employing shady privacy and security procedures that make it very easy for data to be leaked to third-party sources without your consent. Moreover, FBI and similar government agents can gain access to private electronic information through national security surveillance powers.

AMERICA’S SECURITY STATE AND SHADOW WARS

Though Guantanamo Bay, the PATRIOT Act, and warrantless wiretapping were thought to be vestiges of the Bush Administration in 2009, the Obama Administration hasn’t rolled them back, threatening to make the supposedly emergency-only national security state a permanent institution. In recent years, the the security state at home has been supplemented by an escalating shadow war against terrorist organizations in several countries around the world, waged principally by Special Forces and a secretive drone program. These stepped-up counterterrorism policies may be weakening al-Qaeda and associated movements, but it’s not clear if the potential costs in terms of privacy violations, blowback, and deaths of innocent civilians are well understood, let alone worth it.

FACTORY FARMING

Several billion animals live and get killed on factory farms, concentrated animal-raising plants where sentient creatures are forced to live their entire lives in tiny, often poorly maintained pens. The treatment of the pigs, cows, and chickens on factory farms is horrific — the pens are so tight that animals develop sores, the stress of confinement produces psychiatric disorders that result in self-harming behaviors like gnawing on metal bars, and proprietors conduct painful, medically unnecessary tail amputations simply because they want to. Factory farming also hurts humans; the “farms” are ideal breeding grounds for infectious diseases and do serious damage to the local and global environment.

SEGREGATION BY RACE AND CLASS IN EDUCATION

Despite Brown v. Board of Education, there is a pronounced trend toward resegregation by race and class in American schools. Poor students, especially black and Latino ones, are being shunted into a separate-but-unequal school system while wealthy students attend parallel, superior institutions. The effect of this, as Chris Hayes documents in his book Twilight of the Elites, is to create a self-perpetuating class cycle where the wealthy use their advantage to secure that their children get access to the best possible schooling, making it significantly easier for said children to become wealthy and successful and do the same for their kids. The less well off, by contrast, have only very limited ability to break into the upper echelons of American society through education, helping to cement broader trends toward inequality in the United States.

http://www.nationofchange.org/ten-huge-issues-being-ignored-presidential-campaign-1348067863

[Vance2335]

I'll take a stab also:
Drug War
Ever see the movie Clear and Present Danger? Well what they did to conduct special ops raids and disrupt cartels ability to harvest crop makes a lot of sense. The Criminal justice system in America needs to focus more on treatment for addiction then just hard time.

Housing Market:
Need a stronger economy to get more people to buy houses. But people and lenders need to know that if you can't afford it then don't buy it.

India/Pakistain:
Don't see this as a huge issue at the moment. Both hate each other and both have nuclear weapons. Think this will stay this way unless Pakistain gets a leader who is hell bent on destruction.

Over fishing:
Not enough knowledge to comment

Internet Privacy:
Don't see the "public" internet as a privacy issue.

Security:
The program that took calls from oversees and intercepted them coming into America before it reached American waters was a program that started under Clinton. So who ever wrote thie above article got it wrong. Bush continued it and so has Obama. But we need to fight terror where it starts so drone attacks, special forces and CIA work is needed.

Farming:
No knowledge

Schoolling:
If wealthy parents send kids to a private school then where is the issue? In my hometown and the town I live in, blacks and whites have to go to the same public schools. No choice about it. Never heard of blacks going to one school and whites going to another school. I have heard of problem kids having a special school, but that is for all races.

[brice1967]

I'll take a poke at these issues.  Some I don't see as huge issues....
Drug War:
Can't win in with the current strategy.  There are a few ways to move forward and make a dent in what the cartels are doing.  Legalizing some drugs might be the answer, but incarcerating a kid with a dime bag of weed is ridiculous.

Housing Market:
It is what it is....  People need to do a bit of homework before getting locked in on a bad loan.  Banks need to not get people to lock themselves into bad loans.  Actually, that should be the banks primary concern.  If you only qualify for a $150k loan, that's all you should be able to get.  Talking someone into $250k for a bigger and nicer home is ridiculous and irresponsible.  Bankers sell this possibility to perspective buyers and then end up screwing the buyer and themselves in the long run.  Banking needs to change here and just about everywhere else banking is concerned.  Too many questionable practices.

India/Pakistan conflict:
Screw Pakistan... they are nobody's friend.  (Afghanistan maybe, potentially Iran and Iraq)  Let that thing play itself out.  Too much of a cost if we get/stay engaged there.  We know who we are playing with.  Time to sit back and let the cards fall where they may.

Over Fishing:
I'd imagine there is a market for all of the fish being over fished.  Rules are in place to prevent this over fishing, but its happening anyway.  Enforcement....

Internet Privacy:
BE smart....

America's State and shadow wars:
India/Pakistan come to mind.  Libya does as well.  We need to take care of our own house for a while.  We've turned our back on ourselves for too long.  WE have to take care of ourselves if we are going to take care of anything else.  It's time we quit playing the worlds police.

Factory Farming:
Some of the practices stink.  There is a giant demand for food in this country and meeting this demand has led to this.  If you know of a way to produce as much food in a more humane way, I'm all ears.

Segregation by race and class in education:
I don't get it.  Perhaps I am blind, but I just don't see this happening.  Racism exists, I'm not saying that.  I think education is there for pretty much everyone.  By no stretch of the imagination are we (my family) rich.  We struggle to make ends meet at the end of the month more often than not.  We have a kid in college... just started this year.  Grants and loans... my kid had no prior work experience and mediocre grades and somehow received loans and grants all the while having "no credit".  (I don't know if this is a wise thing for people to loan this way.  Sounds a bit like the housing situation.)  

Students need to be realistic in their goals.  I've got as many black and hispanic friends that have gone to college as white friends.... not seeing race as an issue.