Opinion

The United States is known for its generally apathetic electorate and low voter turnout. Compared to other democracies, we just don’t seem to care all that much about self-governance. To counteract this, some advocate compulsory voting.

Like education, medical care in the U.S. has been enduring cuts after cuts in the budget, and consequently hospitals are struggling to survive in this time of hardship. Nevertheless, hospitals are still able to provide the one thing they are designed for: efficient and quality medical care to the patients of the community. But with a new rule proposed by the Affordable Care Act that will allow patients’ reviews to influence the way hospitals are funded by Medicare, hospitals across the nation have to start worrying about providing quality and decent care to their patients.

Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus once wrote, “You must spend money to make money.” Growing up we have all been encouraged to be innovators and entrepreneurs, to invest time and money into promising businesses and careers, but it seems that lately this idea is a little too old-fashioned. With the economy at one of its all time lows, America is experiencing its lowest rate of U.S. mobility since World War II. Everyone from the young to the old is refraining from moving out. College students are no longer chasing their elusive dream job in New York, and the older are not able to seek refuge in their luxurious lakeside retirement homes anymore.

Here at UC Irvine, we are truly lucky not only to study and work at an eminent university campus, but also to have the opportunity to actively participate in many of the local democratic processes that help to govern this country as a whole. News media’s relationship to government is one of the most fundamental of these democratic processes, dating back to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which helped to light the fires of revolution in Colonial America.

There is not much worse than looking forward to a much-deserved weekend free of school, only to look down at your class schedule and realize that you have hundreds of pages to read before the next class meeting — only three days to get it all done.

Apparently, we took the words Go forth and multiply” really, really seriously, because the world just got a little bit smaller last week. A baby was born on Halloween morning, bringing the total world’s population to 7 billion people.

If you have access to the Internet and haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past week, you have probably heard that Ms. Reality-star socialite herself, Kim Kardashian, filed for divorce from her NBA “star” husband Kris Humphries the morning of Monday, Oct. 31. After merely 72 days of marriage, the wedding that cost $10 million to produce reportedly earned Kim millions in return. The wedding that produced so much commotion in the entertainment world, and was even compared to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal wedding came to a screeching halt.

With the Occupy movement taking place across the country, American political and financial ideology is currently being challenged in a way that it has not been in a very long time. President Obama hoped to cash in on this groundswell a couple of weeks ago when he announced his student financial loans plan at a college campus in Denver.

According to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, 36 percent of Americans would, if they could pick from a selection of past presidents, want Ronald Reagan to run the country today. Support for Reagan even topped the 29 percent for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who led the United States through the Great Depression and most of World War II.

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study revealed that the richest 1 percent of Americans has gotten richer in the last 30 years while everyone else has only seen modest improvement, but anyone who has been paying attention to Occupy Wall Street probably already knew that.

Everyone keeps talking about how awful having a phobia is. This includes how a fear of eating too many calories (cibophobia) leads to health problems, how a fear of open spaces and being outside (agoraphobia) is crippling their social life, and how being terrified of being financially responsible is turning them into Republicans (corruptophobia). The news is blowing all of these out of proportion. In my opinion, this is all nonsense.

I was driving home one evening and lined along the sidewalk were about 25 protestors. As I stopped at the red light I caught a glimpse of their signs. “Help the Coptic Christians of Egypt” was written on one banner held by a young woman. “Call Congress” was written on another as a girl chimed a triangle instrument.