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Opinion
 

Friday Forum

The past 12 months have been so packed with news — tsunamis, hurricanes, deaths of eminent public figures — it's been difficult to decide which stories to follow. Even some of the most important ones have fallen through the cracks. It's time to catch up.
 

Corruption gets swept under the rug

Josh Delano

The notion of political corruption has become so cliche in our culture that we often just let it go like water off of a duck's back. Jack Abramoff cheated Native American casinos and pitted them against each other while he supposedly represented their interests. Meanwhile, many of the politicians involved, especially Sen. David Vitter, R-La, flew under the radar. Vitter should not have been hidden under the wings of the Republican Party since he is supposedly a staunch anti-gambling advocate in Louisiana, yet he took money from political action committees and candidates who took money from the Coushattas and Choctaws. It's kind of neat how we can launder what we consider dirty money by taking it from our friends. Abramoff and his cast of politicians were all puppets in a grand play -- one that resulted in ripping off clients who thought they were paying for expert lobbying muscle. It's great how we can help our friends get elected and they, in turn, help us drag out a government investigation in hopes of making a smooth getaway. Abramoff should be sentenced to a lifetime of community service on a Native American reservation picking up garbage.

Obsession with the rich robs attention from the poor

David Salinas

The topic I wish were discussed more every year is poverty. For a moment, it seemed like people cared about the subject after Hurricane Katrina hit, but apparently, everyone is content to watch a couple of telethons and donate a few bucks to charity for a quick fix. According to Columbia University's school of public health, 12 million children in the United States live below the poverty level. That's 17 percent of all American children. Some people do seem to care about this matter, but not enough to have any effect on state and national policies. As much as we ignore the poor, we seem to love celebrating wealth and materialism. From Paris Hilton and Laguna Beach to the Xbox 360, this country is more obsessed with luxury than at any other time in history. It's disturbing, shallow and stupid. Besides poverty, though, I think we could have spent more time talking about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. 

Prison reform issues locked away from public eye

Henry Darragh

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice needs your help. I say this to you because with all that we as Cougars, as Texans, as humans living in the United States, have seen this year, I look at all of the change and see the people. When the storms came through, they scared even me, a felon who made it back from the other side. My lady-friend Gwen wanted to split when one of the hurricanes was coming. She was born in Louisiana and was pretty freaked out after Katrina. Her home over by the Astrodome allowed me to be close and see the actual human results of the storm. But there is another storm in Texas, and you don't hear about it so much. Who gets the money from the convict work force? Is prison like they portray it in films? Do the inmates get paid when they make it out? Yes for the first two questions, and no on that last one. Convicts get $50 when they leave the walls in Huntsville. My penitentiary tattoo is the $3 dental work I had done.

Real news swamped by fluff pieces 

Blake Whitaker

Journalistic ethics take a backseat to profits for the entertainment conglomerates that control the media. As a result, there's a plethora of important stories annually that don't receive the coverage they deserve. Instead of focusing on one of those, let's take a look at a prominent story that dominated the United States' consciousness for weeks: the kidnapping of Natalee Holloway, a high school senior from Alabama who disappeared in Aruba in May. The story is tragic, no doubt, but hardly deserving of the massive amount of coverage it received. I wish Holloway would have turned up safe, but the fact is, thousands of minors are abducted in this country every year. Holloway is not any more important than any of them, and her story should never have been given the status it was by national news outlets. We need more real news, like what Scott Peterson had for breakfast this morning and how eating cranberries can make you a cancer-free sex god.

Some of the most overlooked problems are the closest to home

Zach Lee

One of the biggest stories to break in this roller coaster of a year was just on the other side of the Rio Grande: rapid escalation of drug-related violence in Mexico. As the mouth of the funnel that feeds all the United States' bad habits, Mexico has had its political dignity assaulted by the rapid ascent to power of drug cartels. Drug cartels are widely known to be more profitable employers than law enforcement agencies, and the increasing number of murdered police officers is a testament to the lopsided nature of Mexico's war on drugs. Media outlets and politicians here in these United States have largely ignored the problem and the issues accompanying it, often choosing instead to condemn illegal immigration without looking to underlying causes like the stranglehold drug cartels have on many of Mexico's small towns.
 

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