Abu Gharib

In the Spring of 2004, the public became aware of inhumane actions which US soldiers took against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Gharib.  Abu Gharib prisoners were subject to torture along with sexual and physical abuse.  It was found through the American Civil Liberties Union that there was internal authorization for the use of "extraordinary interrogation tactics", including from Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

As the public became aware of the action taken by US soldiers against Iraqi prisoners, President Bush came forth with a statement essentially stating that these actions were not representative of the United States as a whole, rather, they were actions taken by selective individuals who disregarded the values of the US.  

Photographs released by the media in 2004 were a shock to the American population and most of the world alike.  The cruelty of the torture methods used to attempt to extract information out of prisoners contradicted America's fundamentals to the core.  Globally, this made the United States look even worse after the failure to get authorized to invade Iraq by the UN along with the chaotic state of Iraq with the absence of Hussein.  These images sparked even more hate from certain Iraqi people and added to the mess of the Iraq war.

Changes to Company Accounting

In July of 2002, the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act was enacted by the US Congress. At that time in history, there had been many scandals, one of the more well-known ones being Enron. This act brought new rules and regulations among companies and their accounting.

1. Corporate leaders were required to personally certify how accurate their company's financials were
2. There were reinforced auditor reporting duties
3. Restrictions were made preventing auditing firms from providing non-audit related services to companies that their audit
4. Provisions were also put in place to prevent corporate analysts from benefiting from conflicts of interest
5. Public disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest was not allowed

Mortgages in the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008

The American housing market crisis began with mortgage dealers who issued mortgages with terms unfavorable to borrowers, who were often families that did not quality for ordinary home loans. At this point in time, home-owning was like every American's dream. Some of these mortgages carried low interest rates in the early years that increased hugely to double-digit rates in later years. This made it easy for first-time home buyers, no matter their income or their ability to make a down payment, to own a home. 

Mortgage lenders sold these loans to a bank or government-chartered institutions created to buy up mortgages and provide mortgage lenders with more money to lend. This meant that the loans were getting chopped up and sold, split apart until they were widely distributed across many different banks. As long as housing prices kept rising, everyone profited. Mortgage holders with inadequate sources of regular income could borrow against their rising home equity. When the housing bubble burst, more and more mortgage holders defaulted on their loans. At the end of September, 7% of homeowners with a mortgage were at least one month past due on their payments, up from 5.6% form the previous year. By 2008, the mild slump in housing prices that had begun in 2006 had become a free fall in some places.

ENRON Employee Lifestyles

After ENRON collapsed, many of the employees who had been unknowingly led to buy more and more stock of the failing company were now displaced without a job, and more importantly, without money for their future. Many employees had saved up stock for their retirement, or for other big financial events, and saw all their savings diminish.

George Maddox was one of the employees who saw their savings disappear.



After his retirement money disappeared, he and his wife had to lease their own house and move to an old family farmhouse. They turned to work lower-wage jobs and ultimately weren't able to make up for the huge amounts of money they lost from ENRON's collapse. His wife died from liver cancer, and he could only pay her medical bills by using some money he had gotten from a lawsuit with some of his coworkers as they tried to get their retirement money back. He was forced to raise his young grandson on his own and find a way to get by.

While many see the collapse of ENRON as something that greatly affected the stock market and other companies, there were countless families that saw their futures destroyed because of this tragedy.

The Presidential Election of 2000

The presidential election of the 2000s came down to George H. Bush, the republican candidate, and Al Gore, the democratic candidate. With 270 votes electoral votes needed to win the election, it was an extremely close vote, and, as a result, came down to only one state: Florida. Based on exit polls in Florida, the news media declared Gore the winner, but as the actual votes were tallied, Bush appeared to command the lead. When 85 percent of the vote had been counted, news networks declared Bush the winner, though election results in a few heavily Democratic counties had yet to be tallied. Disputes erupted over the accuracy and reliability of election technology in the state, with confusion over “butterfly ballots” (ballots that have names on both the left and right sides of the paper), punch card voting machines, and “hanging chads” (punch card ballots that were only partially punched). The issue brought attention to how unclear the ballots were and how there were many votes going unregistered. These convoluted ballot designs led to calls for election and voting reforms.
     The result in Florida was so close as to trigger a statewide mandatory machine recount according to the Florida Election Code. The Gore campaign then requested that the disputed ballots in four counties be recounted by hand. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline for the recount and ordered a manual recount. The Bush campaign appealed the decision, and as a result, the US Supreme Court ordered that the recount be stopped. The incomplete recount was therefore halted, and Bush was declared to be President-elect. 
     As a result, this election has been one of the closest and most controversial elections in US history. It has kept us wondering, "What if they had finished the recount? Then, who would have won?" but we will never know. 

The Cost of the War on Terror

The war on Terror began on September 11th, 2001, right after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The war on terror encompasses both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. The war on terror has claimed the lives of 6,951 military deaths. 4,550 of these deaths occurred in Afghanistan and 2,401 of them occurred in Iraq. Additionally, 362 American journalists have been killed so far. In terms of financial costs, the war on terror added 2.3 trillion dollars to the US national debt so far. in 2008, the budget for that year alone was estimated at a total of 235.6 billion dollars. In 2020, the budget is expected to be 109 billion. This dramatic cost for the war has severely affected the US economy in many ways. First off, the immense spending actually reduced the number of jobs in the US, because a billion dollars spent as a tax cut creates approximately 2000 more jobs than a billion dollars spent on the military. To put that into perspective, the 2.4 trillion dollars spent on the military created 20 million jobs, but if that money went towards education then it would've created almost 42 million jobs. This ultimately would've helped end sooner the recession that started in 2008 which makes people reevaluate the decision of whether the United States should've been involved in the war on terror as much as it was. In conclusion, it is best to hope that the war on terror ends as soon as possible before it plunges the US into unpayable debt. 

United States presidential election of 2000

The United States presidential election of 2000 was between Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, and  George W. Bush, the Republican candidate. Gore was the vice president to Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. Bush was the governor of Texas and the son of the former president George H. W. Bush. Gore ran with Senator Joe Lieberman, while Bush chose former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

Vice President Gore was able to get the Democratic nomination and appeared to be very favorable, despite Bush's early lead. Bush was seen as the early favorite and was popular among the Republican party members. The major theme of both candidates' campaigns was domestic issues, such as taxes, the national budget, and social insurance and healthcare programs. Despite his extensive experience in the white house, Gore decided to campaign largely without Clinton. This choice was made because Clinton's presidency was associated with the Lewinsky scandal, especially towards its end.

In the weeks leading up to the election, it became clear that the election would be a very tight race. As predicted, it was a narrow win, with Bush earning 271 electoral votes against Gore's 266. In fact, this result was down to a difference of a few thousand votes in a single state: Florida. The election's outcome was very controversial due to ballot confusion and Supreme Court interference in the recount. The Court announced on December 12, 2000, that the recounts had to immediately end, automatically giving Florida's votes and the presidency to Bush. It was also a controversial election because Gore won the popular vote by a margin of over 500,000 votes.