Being Blue at PSU

By Kelsey Denny Today is the 46 th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and it has been a particularly painful time to be a woman. I know – when isn’t it a difficult time to be a female? I use the word particularly because there comes a dull ache with choosing to fight the fight that I have chosen to center my lifework around. The experience of pushing a boulder up a hill just to watch it tumble back down at the expense of the lives of women near and far is, to put frankly, heavy. Our President is a perpetrator of sexual harassment. Ohio just passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the country. Lawmakers at both the state and federal level believe that men have a right to sex, regardless of consent. Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the highest court despite numerous sexual assault allegations and a hearing for Dr. Ford (I believe her, by the way). So yes, it is a particularly difficult time to be a woman. Let’s stray far from sugarcoating and state the facts – there is a war on women...

By Josh Weisman The November 2018 midterms proved that health care now is a winning issue for Democrats if we consistently stick with talking about the issues on the campaign trail. Thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders, the idea of Medicare for All has become a component of nearly every Democrat running for Congress in 2018 or president in 2020. Although there is no single bill yet that the Democratic caucus has unified around, multiple bills in both chambers of Congress address one key issue: expanding access to health care. Where We Are Now Before I get into the future of healthcare in our country, we must discuss where we currently are at. The United States doesn’t have one health insurance plan, but rather different types of coverage for different demographics of people. Approximately half the country is on employer-sponsored health insurance meaning that through his/her employer the employee and his/her family have coverage. For low income Americans who qualify, these individua...

By Annmarie Sorensen When I think of the Democratic Party, I do not picture appeasement, I don't think that we should settle for anything less than the best, I do not think of groveling, and I most certainly do not think of power-hungry people on the ladder to success stepping on fingers wrapped around rungs beneath them. At least I don't want to think these things. It's becoming a real fear that Democratic Presidential candidates for the 2020 election might reach across the aisle so far that they let go of some of those on their side. What I mean by this is that there is a misconception that we need the votes belonging to avid Trump supporters in the Rust Belt. The actual solution to our problem is to continue to push young, old, and non-voters to register, to get to the polls and cast an educated vote. What we would sacrifice by compromising with those who hate in the Midwest and in rural America is far greater than what we would gain. We would be sacrific...

By Danny Muldowney "I think the problem is that neither party represents us, and they're both to blame for what were seeing right now." Ughh, really...? You'd be amazed how many times I hear something like this every time someone asks what my major is and decides they need to explain their entire worldview to me...on the bus. You're one of these people, aren't you? You know, one of the people who believe both sides are equally to blame for political problems like government shutdowns, polarization, gridlock, and violent, dangerous rhetoric? If you, as I suspect, are a “both parties suck" person, you love to say it as much as possible, especially during political debates so you look like the reasonable adult in the room. If you suffer from this horrendous disease of being an intellectually dishonest delinquent, then get off your high horse and come back to reality. Of course our government is broken, our elections are broken, our discourse...