On Transparency and the EPA: Being Right
Paul Smyth, Maroon-News Staff
May 3, 2018
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new regulation that would limit the scientific studies that the agency could consider when developing new environmental and public health policies. Essentially, despite stating their desire to be more transparent in future environmental legislation, the EPA is see...
On Paul Ryan’s Decision to Not Seek Re-election: Being Right
Ryan Zoellner, Maroon-News Staff
April 19, 2018
On Wednesday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he would not be seeking re-election to Congress in his home state of Wisconsin. In his press conference, Speaker Ryan insisted that the move was neither necessitated by the GOP’s looming November primary nor his tumultuous relationship with the p...
On the Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria: Being Right
Max Goldenberg, Maroon-News Staff
April 12, 2018
Almost exactly one month ago, on February 7, 2018, American and Russian-aligned forces directly skirmished for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. Don’t let the term “skirmish” fool you; the fighting involved a supposed sabotage of U.S. artillery positions by Russian mercenary un...
Being Right: On President Trump and Stormy Daniels
Connor Madalo, Maroon-News Staff
April 5, 2018
President Trump has a long history of being a disgusting pig when it comes to women. Everyone knows this and has known this for years. He has said and done too many ridiculous and immoral things to count. However, Trump has astoundingly turned his outrageousness into his brand, and people either love...
Being Right: On President Trump’s Proposed Tariffs
Ryan Zoellner, Maroon-News Staff
March 8, 2018
Last Thursday, President Trump made the weighty announcement (expect this column to be saturated with metallic metaphor) via Twitter that he and his administration would be pursuing a 25 percent steel import tax and a 10 percent aluminum import tax. This predictably came at the suggestion of Trump’s...
Direction of the Gun Control Movement: Being Right – Don’t Gift Murderers with Celebrity Status
Max Goldenberg, Maroon-News Staff
March 1, 2018
Imagine, if you will, being completelysocially cut off. I don’t mean a period of falling out with your closest friends. I mean months, even years, of not receiving a single text, going on a date, hanging out with friends or having any human contact except for mocking comments hurled your way between c...
Being Right: The Release of the GOP-Nunes Intelligence Memo
Connor Madolo
February 8, 2018
Giving Up Putin’s GhostIt has been almost a year since Robert Mueller’s probe into Donald Trump’s election campaign started. The investigation has had comprehensive support from the highest echelons of governmental and media agencies, to the point of extensive bipartisan corruption, secretive meetings and nonstop drumming up of any scrap related to our neighbors in the east. A year into this laser-sharp focus on the President and Russia, there are exactly two serious leads. The first is the claim that a variety of incriminating emails on Hillary Clinton were released to WikiLeaks by a Russian source (contrary to WikiLeaks’ own claims). The second is that Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer to discuss incriminating information on Clinton (which, ironically, was specifically to discuss a few high-profile Russian political figures who were funding the Clinton campaign). Any figure in the Trump administration who is even remotely associated with Russia has been put under intense examination already. This led to the beneficial effect of removing a few generally corrupt individuals in the vein of Paul Manafort. But for the most part, this investigation has spent far more time and resources on connections that lead nowhere and trails that point to nothing. And despite all the furious rhetoric and expensive investigations, there’s not a single shred of conclusive evidence on the table. To hide something as extensive as an international conspiracy for political sabotage, under the campaign of someone as notoriously loudmouthed as Donald Trump, so well that a year-long investigation is still operating on hearsay and unfounded claims, is the stuff of conspiracy theories.It’s frankly hard to see Donald Trump as a mastermind capable of concealing such a massive conspiracy for so long, particularly when cross-examined with the claims of DNC sabotage of the Sanders campaign in 2015-2016. Under the Democratic primaries of the last presidential election, the DNC, headed by Debbie Wasserman Schulz – Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008 – made a long string of undemocratic decisions in favor of Clinton, culminating with the decision to completely ban the Sanders campaign from access to democratic voter information after a database breach was accessed by a single campaign intern. The resulting lawsuit, which received almost no media coverage, was dismissed not on the grounds that the DNC had been impartial in any way, but rather that the DNC, as an organization, had no obligation to be impartial in its administration towards primary candidates. This incident paints a much clearer picture of what ‘top-level political sabotage’ looks like – and it’s certainly not the highly covert and organized cover-up that the Trump administration would have to be continually maintaining to have colluded with Russia.In the light of the recent memo on the probe rejected by Trump, it seems the relentless hunt for a Russian specter has become more of a game of political agitation than any actual pursuit of truth. It’s become increasingly clear that the Russian investigation as a whole is a red herring. As we have become obsessed with this investigation, we have ignored the reality of an increasingly corrupt and unjust political system as a result. It’s easy to pretend that only one party or one candidate is corrupt in modern America; we, as a species, have a natural tendency to group things in black-and-white “good” and “bad.” But corruption is not and has never been a partisan issue, and focusing on conspiracy theories and dead ends means that the truly corrupt in modern politics get a free pass. Could Donald Trump, or key elements of his administration, be corrupt? Almost certainly. The entire foundation of republican democracy is the ability to lie with a smile, after all – nobody likes to hear the truth, and it’s harder to find an honest politician than a modern Jesus. But the likelihood of there being a serious collaboration between the Russian government and the Trump campaign decreases with each day passed without a single solid piece of evidence. It’s time to refocus on reality.Contact Max Goldenberg at [email protected]
The 2018 Government Shutdown and Who is to Blame: Being Right
Ryan Zoellner, Maroon-News Staff
February 1, 2018
Calling a Loss a LossOn January 19, after narrowly achieving approval in the House, bill H.R. 195, The Extension of Continuing Appropriations Act of 2018, failed to meet cloture in the Senate. The failure of this vote meant that the United States government would be without funding until another bill ...
The GOP Tax Bill and What it Means for Healthcare: Being Right
Ryan Zoellner, Maroon-News Staff
December 7, 2017
On Saturday, the GOP tax overhaul was passed in the Senate by a strictly partisan 51-49 vote from Republicans. In an undeniable stroke of irony, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandate for individual health insurance – constitutionally justifiable only when defined as a “tax” and even then stil...
Being Right: On Jeff Flake: Is Retirement the Right Move to Make?
Paul Smyth, Maroon-News Staff
November 2, 2017
Helping or Hurting His Cause?Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake announced last Tuesday that he would not be seeking re-election in 2018. An emotional Flake cited his inability to support a President who cannot honorably and effectively push the Conservative ideology. Choosing not to hide behind the R...
The Colgate Maroon-News Editorial Board
June 5, 2020
We stand in solidarity with our Black classmates, professors, administrators, staff and greater Colgate community of color. As a predominantly white staff, we acknowledge...
Veritati: Let Us All Reconvene
April 7, 2020
Veritati: Continuing Coverage and Maintaining Momentum During COVID-19 Pandemic
March 20, 2020