By: Max Cisneros

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Compromises from both sides are needed to avoid fiscal cliff

As we finish up what’s left of our Thanksgiving leftovers and adjust our belts—by which I mean we take them off—we look forward to Christmas, New Years and the fiscal cliff. President Barack Obama and budget experts have congregated at Capitol Hill and have made a resolution for New Years to finalize a plan that will put a stop to our deficit and set us on the right course to recovery. With the federal debt approaching the $16 trillion milestone, the freshly re-elected president has decided to take action and promised to have a decisive economic plan etched in stone by the first of January.

The Electoral College, although unpopular, still serves a valuable purpose

The race is over; the ads are gone; the smoke has cleared. Obama has come out on top with 332 electoral votes and over half of the popular vote to boot. I thought the election was going to be much closer than it was but I guess that the general public is still capable of separating the nuts from the berries; my belief in the people is restored. While this election was a clean call there have been years when the statistics did not line up. In the presidential election between former President George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, the results were decidedly split. The race had been close, with Gore winning the popular vote but Bush winning the presidency through a victory in the Electoral College. How is that right? How is that democratic? HOW IS THAT AMERICAN?

Welfare enables able-bodied to avoid the workforce

Republicans’ use of religion in government is inappropriate

We have all heard so much politics these last few months that if political slander were a currency we would be able to pay off the national debt twice and sponsor research for sharper bayonets and taller horses. Even so, I need to squeeze one more article out of this election. While economics has taken the center role in the platforms of both candidates, it is necessary to take social policies of these candidates into consideration. At first, I was going to rant about how Republicans are all old, cranky, white people. I reconsidered my topic and considered writing on gay rights, then I took it back and started writing about abortion. I couldn’t find anything worth writing about until this weekend. It wasn’t until I was walking around campus in my chicken suit, cape and glow sticks that an idea hit me, like a vision! The separation between church and state!

U.S. health care system broken, unethical

In the painting by Sir Luke Fildes of 1887, appropriately named “The Doctor,” we are shown a man brooding over a sick child while parents stand by in anguish looking towards the greying man for reassurance. Apart from being an expensive oil painting it is the standard by which contemporary medical professionals are compared to. As medicine has improved and capitalism reigned supreme, the image of the doctor has been slowly, but surely, moving away from the gentleman that cares about your wellbeing towards the stranger that tells you to pull your pants down and bend over. Why is this? There are several reasons, but one of the biggest would have to be the use of private health insurance companies.

Rules for Halloween are way too strict

Alright, well with the elections so near you can smell the eggs it ate this morning on its breath, it’s a good time to take a step back and scrutinize something much simpler and down to earth: Halloween restrictions. There is nothing better than being able to blow some steam off after the first half of the semester by putting on a skin-tight jumpsuit, cape and bat mask, calling up some friends from off-campus and going out to prowl the streets of the capital on the lookout for crime and pirate booty. Sadly, the administration on campus has, to our distress, continually cut our fun short year after year with restrictions in the dorms and apartment buildings.

Obama's concrete economic plan better than Romney's vague one

The bomb that hit the economy in 2008 left everyone with lighter pockets. The government took action and it appeared as though the worst of it was over; the situation soon took a turn for the worst.

BREAKING NEWS: Man linked with two campus-area sexual assaults found guilty today

Antonio Pope - the man accused of two attacks on UW-Madison students near campus last semester - was found guilty of two felony counts of first degree sexual assault and kidnapping Friday, after pleading no contest to the charges.