How to Get Mikel Hartsough's Vote: A Young Voter Manifesto

A candidate attempting to become an elected official needs to take a stand on several issues for me to even consider him to have potential. He or she must also be fairly sincere and  speak with unrehearsed rhetoric. A personal issue is the first one that comes to mind, one of the reasons I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton is her stand against video games. She compared them to tobacco and alcohol, and considered them to be extremely dangerous. A candidate needs to stay away from my music, movies, and videogames. There is already a rating system in place, Hillary just emulated Nancy Reagan to gain some press, not to defend something she believed in. A politician must endorse stem cell research, make no reference to his religion, and regard education as a top priority.  I like a candidate who doesn’t always side with his political party, it shows they care about the issue more than a win for their affiliation.

Then I get to the essentials, I don’t think we should be involved at all in the middle east, our healthcare system still needs to be reformed, and the economy can’t fix itself at this point.  Immigration needs to be regulated more fiercely, I feel that young adults and high-school kids take priority over illegal immigrants in the hard labor job market. Gay marriage is not a high topic of interest to me, but if a candidate is strongly against it I question his priorities. I don’t think that gay marriage should be a high priority in politics, the reason it gets so much attention in this country is because of the religious aspect, and how many religions consider it an abomination, it is not an issue that a government should be concerned with.

Education needs to be regulated more so than it is now, but carefully. Standardized testing can be effective, but not in all scenarios. I believe the ability of a teacher should be judged by their peers and students, not by government and parents. Privatized schools should not receive any kind of federal funding, public schools should take priority over them. The prep school I went to showed no signs of needing funds, the school expanded every year, and tuition increased with its popularity. Granting the school I went to extra funds would not be money well spent. School administrators should be given the same salary as teachers. Lastly when the government deems it necessary to make budget cuts, education should be the last thing that comes to mind.

When a candidate uses devil and god terms to win over an audience, he loses my vote. When the argument comes down to left or right wing agenda, I stop listening. I feel as if too many politicians treat their job as if it’s a win or lose scenario, and don’t concentrate on the people’s best interests.

Mikel Hartsough

Communication Studies 

Wilkes 2013

How to Get Bryan Calabro's Vote: A Young Voter Manifesto

Outsourcing 

By far the most important aspect I am looking for in any candidate running for the upcoming presidential election is the creation of jobs in the U.S.. It is time for the U.S. to stop outsourcing jobs to foreign nations, specifically China and India to produce goods. China has the world's second-largest nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$7.47 trillion according to the country's National Bureau of Statistics.

Granted, there are many problems associated with pulling jobs out of China and India. One being a consumer’s willingness to accept a price increase in the products they buy.  Fox example, the apple iPad. If it was produced in the U.S. alone, there would be a jump in the creation of jobs (nearly 67,000) but the price of the already expensive $500 iPad, would jump to $729. Are people willing to buy an iPad with that much of a price hike? There might be some, but most would pass. This needs to be addressed and addressed fast before China overtakes the success of our economy and we fall into a greater recession.

Education 

The next pressing matter I would like to address would be our need to reform education. Our education system is faltering in so many ways. Throughout my life, I have seen classmates flunk multiple tests, not show up for class and treat the teacher disrespectfully yet they still pass the class and eventually get their diploma. Half of your grade, for the most part, depends on your ability to show up for class. This is sad at best.

Teachers aren’t coming to work and students are let off with an easy grade. This needs to end. Even at my college, I have had multiple professors set a deadline for a class project or paper, just for four of the same people (out of the 20 people in my class) repeatedly not meet the deadline.

Granted, this is not everyone but when I ask my friends how hard their high school was, they consistently tell me it was a joke. Your education shouldn't be a joke. A student shouldn’t be saying their education is a joke. If more people were well educated, our economy wouldn't be in such a dire state.

New rules should be in place to govern over the success of each individual; individuals meaning teachers and students. The government needs to hold every learning environment to a higher standard and cut funding for organizations that repeatedly fail at preparing students for their career.

Censorship

And finally my last question to ask to a future president would be their view on censoring the Internet.

For the past 14 years of my life, I have taught myself everything I would ever need to succeed from the Internet.

The beauty of the Internet is that it is (was) censor free, information was endless and people connected sharing billions of gigabytes worth of data.

Stealing copyrighted work is wrong, but censoring the Internet because of the minute amount of people that pirate music/software/movies and books is totally preposterous.

It will only stifle growth and entrepreneurial spirit when it comes to online marketing and innovation. Would iTunes exist if Napster didn’t exist? Would NetFlix, Hulu or ONDEMAND exist if piracy didn't exist? I think not.

Take for example, Paulo Coehlo. Paulo Coehlo is a bestselling Brazilian novelist (The Alchemist) who is notorious for the promotion of his work through piracy. Ever since a pirated Russian edition of The Alchemist was posted online in 1999, he supported illegal downloading. Instead of damaging the sales of his book in Russia it sent them soaring to a million copies by 2002 and to more than 12 million today.

When the SOPA bill was up for review October 26, 2011, he promoted himself on the front page of the world’s most resilient torrenting website called thepiratebay.org based out of Sweden. The website hosted a picture of him hosting all his work for free across all operating platforms.

He concluded that the “pirates of the world need to unite and pirate everything I have ever written.”

He stated:

“The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever. First, because all anyone ever does is recycle the same four themes: a love story between two people, a love triangle, the struggle for power, and the story of a journey. Second, because all writers want what they write to be read, whether in a newspaper, blog, pamphlet, or on a wall,” he said. “The more often we hear a song on the radio, the keener we are to buy the CD. It’s the same with literature. The more people ‘pirate’ a book, the better. If they like the beginning, they’ll buy the whole book the next day, because there’s nothing more tiring than reading long screens of text on a computer screen.”

Bryan Calabro

Integrated Media/Communication Studies

Wilkes 2013