ith the current political climate characterized by tax cuts, federal funding for faith-based charities, and the abject failure of campaign finance reform, it is difficult to get excited about the achievements of our government. But there is some cause for celebration, though it does not emanate from the lawmaking branches of the federal government. The Supreme Court, in a recent decision, rebuked congressional attempts to curtail the rights of detained immigrants.

The statutes in question were made law in ’96, in the afterglow of the Republican takeover of Congress in ’94. With their backs to the wall and hoping to extend an olive branch to the conservative majority, Democrats united with Republicans to crack down on a population with virtually no political capital: immigrants convicted of crimes. Together, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) totally reshaped the immigration landscape.

Prior to the enactment of these laws, the government still maintained a policy of deporting immigrants convicted of heinous crimes, but for aliens convicted of many crimes, Immigration Judges could waive deportation if they felt that the particular circumstance of the alien merited it. This practice, known as section 212(c) discretionary relief was ended by the IIRIRA. What’s more, the list of crimes for which the decision is automatic removal with no chance of relief, was greatly expanded.

This legislation gave immigrants convicted of even some of the pettiest crimes no hope of relief from removal. Immigration Judge Craig Zerbe of the Chicago Immigration Court said that, under the ’96 laws “‘aggravated felony’ has been extended to a new group of crimes most people do not consider aggravated and they may not even be felonies.

The Board [of Immigration Appeals] has held that convictions of simple drug possession, if felonies under state law, somebody can be barred from the US permanently if he has two drug convictions and serves no jail time…That is an extraordinarily harsh consequence that ignores the rest of the person’s life and the decision by the sentencing judge who did not impose a jail term and did not see the person as a danger to the community.”

The application of these laws, too, is cause for concern. When Immigration Judges had to apply the law, the issue arose of whether immigrants who had been convicted before the passage of the IIRIRA and AEDPA, yet whose removal proceedings commenced after the enactment of these statues should be tried under the old laws, where discretionary relief is available, or under the ’96 laws. The way that Immigration Judges and the body to which they are accountable, the Board of Immigration Appeals, resolved this issue was by finding that respondent aliens could be punished for crimes committed before ’96 under standards enacted in ’96.

One of the aliens to whom these laws were retroactively applied was Enrico St. Cyr. A Haitian and legal permanent resident, St. Cyr was accused of a narcotics offense and accepted a plea bargain in early ’96 that made him eligible for discretionary relief to avoid deportation.

By the time of his removal proceedings, though, in ’97, the relief he sought was gone and an Immigration Judge found him removable with no relief from removal available because he had committed one of the many crimes that now makes one automatically removable.

He appealed his case to a higher court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and also with the Attorney General. They concurred with the first ruling, so his case moved into the federal court system, where he won his case. The INS, however, appealed, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision reflecting the ideological divisions that characterize the current Court, sided with St. Cyr. Specifically, the Court found that the IIRIRA had unfairly been applied retroactively because the Congress had not specifically intended for the law to apply in this fashion.

In the majority opinion, Justice Stevens argued, “Because respondent, and other aliens like him, almost certainly relied upon that likelihood [of discretionary relief] in deciding whether to forgo their right to a trial, the elimination of 212(c) [discretionary] relief by IIRIRA has an obvious and severe retroactive effect.”

There is no question that this decision is a huge victory for champions of immigrant rights; the IIRIRA and AEDPA have been interpreted in a way that blindsided aliens who thought they were following the right course to maintain legal permanent resident status by plea bargaining. “It was a positive development and Congress will ultimately support it and will ultimately go further than it. It is consistent with due process. An Immigration Judge makes a decision considering the totality of an immigrant’s record,” said Judge Zerbe.

The importance of the St. Cyr decision extends beyond the immigration context, as well. By dismissing an argument put forth by the INS that the IIRIRA law repeals the ability of the federal courts to review EOIR decisions, the Court reassured the viability of judicial review and the right of the imprisoned to have their grievances addressed by a court.

Because EOIR is part of an executive agency and not the judicial system, there is no statutory mechanism for a detained alien to bring his or her case to a higher court once it has been decided by the highest court in the EOIR, the Board of Immigration Appeals. Therefore, these aliens must file a habeas corpus petition, asking that they be brought before a judge. In this case, the detained individual would appear in federal court. The ability of the immigrant to bring his or her case into the federal court system is what the INS objected to.

The attorneys for St. Cyr argued that the Suspension Clause of the Constitution provides that St. Cyr’s petition for habeas corpus cannot be denied. The Court agreed with St. Cyr, with Justice Stevens commenting in the majority opinion that “a serious Suspension Clause issue would be presented if we were to accept the INS’s submission that the ’96 statues have withdrawn that power from federal judges and provided no adequate substitute for its exercise.”

A ruling in favor of the INS on this issue would have been a disaster for the rights of the imprisoned, as well as the independence of the judiciary. If the ’96 statutes had forbade the courts from hearing habeas petitions, Congress would have effectively stripped the court system of one of its most crucial functions: assuring that the accused can refute charges brought against him or her. Were Congress to take this function from the courts, it would shut a minority group off from protection of the court system.

The right to have a habeas petition heard in court is especially crucial for immigrants. In criminal cases, the writ of habeas corpus is often considered just another way to challenge a criminal conviction. Habeas petitions in immigration are a crucial part of the system of checks and balances within the federal government. As Columbia Law professor Lucas Guttentag wrote for the ACLU, in immigration law, “we are returning to the core function of habeas: judicial review to determine whether the executive is holding someone in custody in violation of law.”

There are still fights to be won against the rights-denying effect of the IIRIRA/AEDPA. Its inflexibility and singular remedy run contrary to the purpose of the American judicial system. “[Under IIRIRA/AEDPA] you’ve made violation of law the end result of the process and made the [legal] process a complete formality and nothing which the judge has any choice in. You’ve undermined the judicial function and this is not a healthy development. Our judicial system is set up to provide remedies for individual acts, not universal rules. To dr
aw an analogy to criminal law, we do not sentence everyone accused of murder to execution. We don’t give everyone accused of a crime the highest punishment,” commented Judge Zerbe.

Equally frightening is one of the means used to refute the decision in the dissenting opinion. To his credit, the body of Justice Scalia’s dissent is purely on legal grounds. In both the introduction and conclusion, though, a more specious justification arises. Scalia argues that the decision “brings forth a version of the statue that affords criminal aliens more opportunities for delay-inducing judicial review than are afforded to non-criminal aliens.”

It seems almost comical that a person whose life is devoted to the law, ostensibly so that justice can be served, would refer to judicial review as “delay-inducing.” Judge Zerbe agreed, remarking that “the highest goal of the judicial process is not expediency. It should be due process. If expediency were the goal, you could make anyone in violation of the law deportable automatically by police officers or INS agents who pick them up on the street.”

The fact that federal courts may be clogged with immigrants’ habeas petitions is immaterial to the fact that they have a right to have their grievances heard in court.

The Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. St. Cyr is a resounding victory for the rights of immigrants and the health of the legal system. Despite the looming risk that “delay-inducing judicial review” melts down the legal system, this is an action by our government of which we can be proud.

n current brouhaha about the future of the Greek system, none of the factions seems to have taken into account something that Dean Larimore and President Wright clearly spelled out in their letters last month after the College’s derecognition of Zeta Psi fraternity: the Principle of Community.

The College does not exist to ensure that each individual who consents to be a member of its community has the ability to do whatever he or she wants. It is a private institution that can exclude members based upon whatever criterion it deems valid. This is the central feature of the Principle of Community: if the College deems something that a member of its community does detrimental to the community as a whole, the College can and should ask members to cease that behavior.

Defenders of the Greek system argue that the College should be held to the same standards as the federal government. They argue that the College cannot ban students from belonging to same-sex organizations because it would abridge their freedom of association, a constitutionally guaranteed right. What these people misunderstand or ignore is the fact that the College is not the federal government; it is a private organization that can create its community by whatever standards it chooses. If an individual disagrees with the community’s principles, they have the right to forfeit their membership. Dean Larimore verbalizes this idea in his May 11 letter to the community: “Dartmouth has the right and the obligation to remove from its residential life system an organization that will not conform to the standards of that system.”

The necessity and legitimacy of the College’s ability to enforce a Principle of Community is all the more clear given the freedom of association doublespeak employed by pro-Greek people. They vehemently argue that frats and sororities should be able to do whatever they want because they are private groups of individuals, yet they fail to see or refuse to accept that the College, too, is a private group that can do whatever it wants. The converse is also true: if there is such a big problem with the College saying that it can do whatever it wants, then maybe we should be more suspicious of the claim made by Greeks that they should be able to do whatever they want.

The Greek system’s detrimental effect on campus gender relations also illustrates why it should not be able to do whatever it wants. Recent public displays of Greek-related sexism are but the tip of the iceberg; most sexism within the Greek system is far more insidious. Sexist remarks and degrading stares are but a few of the symptoms of the unhealthy gender relations encouraged and perpetuated by the Greek system at Dartmouth. The notion that a house can be a place for social interaction on equal ground, while it is used primarily as a single sex forum and the rules are set entirely by people of one sex, is laughable.

My argument is not some essentialist notion that women need to be members of fraternities to "emasculate" or "neuter" those "rowdy frat boys." On the contrary, I feel that the same thing happens or has the potential to happen in sororities. Whenever people exist disconnected from those different from them, a gap is created between those groups. It becomes much easier to make degrading jokes about someone or an entire group of people when they are far away, doing the same thing in their own basement. People can become objects to joke about when they are far away. The division of the sexes in the existing Greek system invites a "herd mentality" to develop in and overrun the mind and conscience of otherwise respectful, well-intentioned people.

This is not to say that the Greek system is without merit or that I agree in totality with those who protest it. In fact, I agree that there is something to be said for forming a close-knit group of friends to share one’s most intimate experiences and feelings with. This group should not, however, necessarily be comprised only of members of one sex, nor should it be a forum to degrade others; I feel that the single sex Greek system turns close friendships into such an institution.

The polarized gender relations that exist on Dartmouth’s campus are not simply a problem that results from social relations; the Zetemouth is not the norm of social interaction between men and women in almost any other community I am aware of. When the ability of members of the Dartmouth community to interact on an equal plane in a civil, respectful manner is abridged, as I feel it is by the existence of a single sex Greek system, institutional action is justified. In this case, the Administration must put an end to sex-based exclusion. By living coed, we can begin turning relationships with members of the opposite sex into productive ones characterized by mutual respect and friendship.

"Trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences–all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances."

"If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of all blacks in the world. Where is the acknowledgement of black America and its leaders for those gifts?"

These outlandish claims are not excerpted from a racist treatise of ages past. In fact, they are taken from a recent advertisement. The ad that has caused this uproar is an editorial advertisement submitted to fifty campus newspapers by former Marxist and Black Panther adviser turned conservative crusader David Horowitz. In this advertisement, entitled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea – and Racist Too," he argues polemically that there is no justification for (who would have guessed?) reparations to descendants of slaves.

As soon as the ad was printed in UC-Berkeley’s main student newspaper, the Daily Californian, the controversy began. Protesters stormed the Daily Cal’s office, destroyed papers, and demanded the paper take drastic measures to atone for printing Horowitz’ article. The next day, on the front page of the Daily Cal was a formal apology. The uproar caught on and spread to other campuses like wildfire. Many papers turned Horowitz down outright, fearing backlash at and feeling offended by the inflammatory statement. Others chose to print the ad, and many produced their papers containing this ad. But on some campuses, this process was short-circuited, notably at Brown University. Both the Brown Daily Herald and the Daily Cal faced a firestorm of criticism from their peers. At Brown, papers were seized and destroyed before distribution by angry protesters.

The tactics used by protesters at other campuses—burning papers, storming offices, making physical threats—are a manifestation of a strong impulse that I am inclined to agree with, but a misguided reaction to that impulse. There is definitely something stinging and inflammatory in what Horowitz wrote. I, too, am angered that he would suggest that welfare payments, a service given to anyone of any race in economic troubles, are a form of reparations to a specific group for slavery. There is something about Horowitz’s argument that could be construed in a bad way and is deliberately inflammatory. But I am not sure to what extent I am offended by his statement, so I hesitate to call Horowitz’ argument racist.

The problem I have with calling something or someone "racist" is the ambiguity that surrounds the term. Racism is far too broadly defined by many liberals, but the definition proposed by some conservatives, that racism is only manifest when one racial group is identified as biologically inferior to another, is too narrow. There must be some middle ground that allows us to intelligently evaluate statements that seem offensive. Rather than intellectually countering potentially racist claims, there has been a tendency by some liberals and leftists to label any notion counter to their beliefs as "racist."

This creates a rigid binary between arguments that are "racist" and those that are not. When we think in this manner, we obscure the important issues at stake and the truly grave issues of racism to which we make comparisons to rally our cause. This distortion is harmful in its own right, because it impairs our ability to conceive of the true degree to which people can suffer from abject racism. If, instead, we think of racism as a phenomenon that has a substantial gray area (versus being simply a black and white issue), we can accurately discuss, identify, and combat inequality and its proponents.

Another troubling dimension of discussing someone as a "racist" is the discursive baggage that comes with it. Often in our society, to deem something racist is to place it outside of the realm of things that can be discussed. In fact, many on the political left, whether consciously or inadvertently, capitalize on this convention to shut down discourse and consideration of an issue they’d rather not discuss. In many cases, I feel that the Horowitz incident is a good example, the case of supposed "racism" should be a talking point that stimulates discourse and facilitates understanding through careful examination of ideas. Instead, those statements that fall into the gray area of racism often become springboards for some on the left to recycle dogma and inflame existing ideological enmities.

Conservatives are not exonerated for their participation in the binary wars, either. Their use of the term "political correctness" is just as damaging to discourse. The accusation "you’re just being PC" carries the same stigma and shuts down discussion just the same. The end to which this rhetorical device is used is very different from the way that "racism" is used, but the means it uses are not dissimilar. By dismissing critics as defenders of political correctness, conservatives deny that there is any merit behind the real offense someone might take at their position, equally foreclosing a productive dialogue. These situations require that we carefully dissect what’s really being said to understand and refute it, not just yell back things that could be construed as equally intolerant.

Another interesting aspect of the Horowitz controversy is the way that conservatives used the events to show how liberals are abridging their freedom of speech. In newspapers all over the country, conservative students and columnists decried the behavior of the incensed students and the papers who refused to print the Horowitz ad or issued an apology for doing so. Horowitz himself plays the role of the victim especially well. On the recent chain of events surrounding him, he commented in the Daily Princetonian, "The tactics of this hate campaign are as underhanded as any Joseph McCarthy ever used and if successful would silence not only me, but anyone attempting to express a viewpoint on racial matters that is at odds with the politically correct orthodoxy of the left." The irony of this whole predicament is that conservatives have adopted the role of the marginalized victim they criticize. While on one hand, they tell those who wish to obtain reparations to stop whining and focus on bettering themselves, they decry their own subordinated position and lament they way that they are treated given this position.

The events at Princeton surrounding precisely this phenomenon and Horowitz are almost amusing. The Daily Princetonian printed the ad, but ran it up against an editorial that denounced the ad as racist and promised to give the proceeds from the ad to a local group aimed at "promoting racial understanding." Horowitz used this action as a platform to take his victim act to a new level. In response, he refused to pay the Daily Princetonian for the advertisement. He wrote to this paper and demanded that they apologize for their actions.

While I am not totally comfortable with the ethics of blasting a paid advertiser–in the same issue, no less–it’s fitting that the Daily Princetonian give Horowitz a taste of his own medicine. Additionally, it showed his true colors. He does the same things he criticizes, and worse, he whines while doing it.

Another irony of this situation is that many conservatives ardently defend both the right to make blatantly offensive arguments in public discourse and claim that Horowitz’ argument was not offensive. This effort to cover their bases on two fronts seems to undercut itself. Why are they defending the fact that none of the points Horowitz puts forward are potentially hurtful? If one were, would they admit that it makes their speech less acceptable?

My purpose is not solely to expose the shortcomings of the conservative position, though. I am certainly not g
oing to defend the actions of those that stormed offices or destroyed papers. Conservatives and the people who agree with them in this case, of which there are many, are correct; storming offices and burning printed material are tactics more suited to a police state than a democratic forum such as a college.

The claim that newspapers have an obligation to print any and all editorial advertisements sent to them, though, is absurd. Freedom of speech means that the government cannot stop any individual from speaking his or her mind. A newspaper is not a governmental organization; it is a group of individuals voicing their opinion. The free speech of an individual is as much what he or she is free to not say as what he or she does say. If a newspaper were forced to include articles, or advertisements, for that matter, claiming that the Holocaust is a Zionist fabrication, in addition to all of the other things it was free to print, few would say that its speech was totally free. The ability of private groups to carefully select their speech gives liberals the ability to influence the official discourse that they decry when people like Horowitz make inflammatory statements By voicing their indignation through protest, be it financial or rallying in the streets, liberals can affect the "privileged" speech of media outlets without abridging anyone’s rights. If anything, refusal to print certain material is akin to keeping a controversial opinion to oneself in a potentially hostile conversation, which is a far cry from restricting the First Amendment rights of an individual uninvolved in the paper.

Simply throwing up stock ideological arguments does no one any good.

When the term "racist" is used to silence critics, intentionally or not, it causes and gives cause for conservatives to do the exact same thing with "PC" to justify their insensitive remarks. The ridiculous protests, an overreaction that is a manifestation of the tendency to cry "racism" and pigeonhole those who disagree, caused leftists to bring criticism upon themselves. They walked right into Horowitz’s trap and set him up to play the victim. The best strategy one can take in dealing with intolerant arguments is to think beyond the stark black and white that alienates so many.

he narrow margin of the 2000 U.S. presidential election has spawned a great deal of debate about how to make the voting process more fair and accurate. All the talk about hanging chads and partially impregnated dimples might be necessary to streamline the process, but it glosses over one of the greatest injustices in our electoral system: over 1.4 million people nationwide were not allowed to vote because they have served time in prison for a felony.

The United States is almost alone among developed nations in allowing these archaic restrictions. No federal statute denies felons the right to vote, but fifteen states still have these laws on the books. Ten states disenfranchise all ex-felons, five states restrict only some from voting, and Texas requires that ex-felons go through a two-year waiting period before they can vote again.

The reasons for retaining such laws are suspect. If ex-felons are prohibited from voting, the implication is that they are incapable of rehabilitation, and thus, should never be fully recognized and incorporated into society. Such an implication is not only morally objectionable, but runs counter to a central tenet of the American prison system, specifically, that criminals are released from prison only when they have paid their debt to society and have been rehabilitated. While a number of ex-felons are prone to recidivism, to restrict the rights of all released convicts is unjustified and unfair. American concepts of freedom and equality discourage the creation of castes of citizens, and a group deprived of the ability to vote is, in effect, a permanent underclass.

Abstract ethical questions are not the only considerations, though. A disturbing real-life consequence of denying ex-felons the right to vote has been the widespread political repression of racial minorities. In states such as Iowa and Wyoming, a quarter of all black men are permanently disenfranchised. In Alabama, the number is as high as one third. Nationwide, about one in seven black men will never again have the opportunity to vote as long as these laws stay on the books.

It should come as no surprise that these laws have such a racially disproportionate effect. Many states adopted the so-called "civil death" laws (which put an end to an individual’s "political life" by prohibiting all future participation in the political process) in the wake of the Civil War. In this lamentable era in United States history a myriad of restrictive measures were aimed at keeping blacks out of the voting booth.

The disproportionate impact these laws have on minorities is indefensible, and in fact, had a tangible impact on the recent presidential election. Florida, a state that maintains one of the most stringent bans on ex-felon voting, had over 500,000 potential voters who were disenfranchised.

The law in Florida disproportionately affects blacks, acting to exclude 31% of eligible black men in Florida from being able to vote. Considering that black Floridians voted for Gore an overwhelming 93% of the time, if voters had not been denied their constitiutional right, Gore would have won. This is not just an issue of who liberals wanted to see as president. The institutionalized discrimination in Florida and elsewhere threatens the legitimacy of our democracy.

The ex-felons are not the only group disenfranchised by the ban either. Because of the enormous number of ex-felons that must be monitored by a state in order to keep them off of eligible voter lists, inaccuracies can and do prevent people legally allowed to vote from doing so. The state of Florida hired a private company to find dead and ineligible voters and excise them from their records. But mistakes were made. For example, a county elections supervisor was on the list, even though she says she is not a felon. Given the hundreds of people being turned away at the polls, it seems certain that many legitimate, legal voters were turned away because of human error; a direct result of civil death laws.

The most frightening element of the Florida scenario is the potential for corruption in the maintenance of ex-felon "restrict" lists. The company that was supposed to help Florida clean up its voter rolls, ChoicePoint, has strong ties to the Republican Party, providing possible incentive to gloss over mistakes that would leave legitimate Democratic voters disenfranchised. According to Salon.com, this company now admits that of the 173,000 people they listed on a preliminary list of ineligible voters, at least 8,000 people had only committed misdemeanors (not felonies) and were therefore legal voters.

The reason for the errors? Lists provided by the state of Texas had wrongly claimed the people were convicted of felonies. Even assuming the state bureaucracy is nonpartisan, attempts to weed out ineligible voters are bound to result in some errors. This is unacceptable because it denies innocent people their basic civil rights. The whole process could be streamlined by simply repealing civil death laws.

Some people might object that convicted ex-felons should lose their right to vote because they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy members of society. But how will convicts as a group have a negative effect on our democracy? It is unlikely that ex-convicts will form a voting bloc or that politicians will pander to their interests, whatever common interests such a heterogeneous group as ex-felons might possess.

There is simply no justification for such a restriction. Like the poll taxes and literary tests of the Old South, civil death laws do not benefit democracy, but merely serve as another method for repressing the views of minorities.

Another argument that many proponents of these laws make is that ex-felons can vote – thanks to an appeal process. Even after the arduous process involved, many people are not even granted appeals especially in the stringent state of Florida. Another hoop through which ex-felons must jump to regain their ability to vote is paying off their monetary debts to the state.

These often include the cost of their public defender. These hurdles make the impact of civil death laws even more racially discriminatory because the people most likely to have needed a public defender are poor minorities.

But attempting to fix the appeal process is not the solution. Ex-felons should not have to go through these steps at all. It is unreasonable to make full-fledged American citizens appeal to the government to regain a right as fundamental as voting. A two-year waiting period is not much better. After felons have served their time, they should be allowed to rejoin society and civil life. They should not have to wait to enjoy the benefits of being out of prison.

Civil death laws have disenfranchised millions and dealt a major blow to our democracy. They waste taxpayer dollars and discriminate against minority citizens. Like the rest of the Jim Crow laws, they should be relegated to the dustbins of history.

The health care agenda that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore espouses is a far cry from the idealistic vision he unveiled toward the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration. His earlier push for universal health care is nowhere to be found in this election cycle.

Instead, Gore is catering to the elderly, using catchphrases like creating a "lock box" for Medicare. While this is certainly a more desirable usage of Medicare funds than the tax cuts proposed by the Bush campaign, it obscures the most pressing issue in the health care debate: providing medical coverage to all Americans.

It is not difficult to understand why this point has been lost, however. The most powerful lobbying group on Capitol Hill is the one representing those who have the most at stake when Medicare issues are on the table. The American Association of Retired People represents a rapidly growing segment of the population, which also happens to have the highest voter turnout of any age group in the United States.

Their main concerns seem to be the only ones that Vice President Gore’s health care plan addresses. Gore proposes to pump $356 billion into Medicare over the next ten years. He also wants to give a $3000 tax credit to retirees to compensate for other costs and allow people between the ages of 55 and 65 to buy into Medicare.

These changes exclusively benefit the elderly and are some of the only ones that Gore has proposed to reform a failing health care system. He wants to extend the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to all children of working-poor families with incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level.

But this is less significant than it may seem; most states are already offering similar or even more generous benefits to these groups. This minor repair, which insures a group with a relatively low risk of problems necessitating major health care, does not address millions who are in dire need of medical insurance and have no way to obtain it.

The policies of greater HMO liability and increased funding for research on diseases that Gore proposes do not offer much aid to those most in need of coverage, either. Incidentally, much of the research is targeted toward diseases that affect the elderly.

This is not to say that the proposals offered by the Bush camp are desirable. In fact, Bush proposes a privatization scheme that would waste enormous amounts of money and an HMO reform policy that would allow private insurers to draw up "benefits packages" which better suit their economic needs than the interests of their patients.

Both major presidential candidates have ignored the problem at the heart of the health care debate. Neither Bush nor Gore has addressed the fact that 44 million Americans are currently without health care insurance.

Many of these people are at the low end of the labor market and do not have employer-provided health care packages, yet earn too much to qualify for Medicare insurance. They cannot afford to buy individual policies. This number is growing and could spiral out of control if a recession were to hit.

Additionally, individuals without health insurance are much more likely to contract preventable diseases and are more frequently hospitalized than those with coverage — costing them unnecessarily large hospital bills and lost work time.

The plight of the uninsured is especially heartbreaking considering the recent economic boom and record U.S. budget surpluses, which could go so far to assist struggling families and individuals with easily curable ailments.

One might think that such a widespread problem would be high on the agenda of any politician aspiring to win the presidency. When one looks at the voting bloc that suffers the most from lack of insurance, however, the relatively low priority that both major party candidates have given it is unsurprising.

Low-paid, uninsured workers tend to have lower levels of political organization, less time and resources to organize, and hence, less access to the political system. As a result, the political process is dominated by a highly organized group of people with a large amount of resources and time.

It is a tragedy that Al Gore has missed such an historic opportunity to seize on this issue and initiate real change in the way things are run in the health care world. The New Democrat side of him has caved in to the politics of the minute and sacrificed ideals that are integral to the realization of the liberal vision.