Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, B of A, Credit Suisse

Just following up my last post regarding campaign donations. I think contributions to political campaigns are usually self-interested endeavours. We support a political party because we want them to represent us.

That being said, here are the top 5 contributors for Obama and Romney. I wouldn't identify as someone who entirely distrusts big banks, but having 5 big banks as Romney's top campaign donators is not confidence inspiring.

*stats taken from: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php

Campaign finances

The campaigns of people running for office, whether locally or nationally, are usually funded by their supporters in the form of donations. If a candidate has more money to spend on their campaign, they will have more opportunities to spread their message, become well-known, and increase their proportion of the vote. Political scientist Gary Jacobson has noted that increased campaign financing results in larger and more pervasive campaigns and increases a voter's recognition of a candidate. Greater voter recognition of a candidate allows a voter to more easily present an evaluation of a candidate. More evaluations usually means more positive evaluations in total, and therefore more votes. I made a splendidly diagram:

If you're interested in how the campaign finances of Romney compare against Obama, check out the screen capture below from www.opensecrets.org

The cost of university tuition, opportunity cost, rationalizing university, and cleaning puke.

Hello blog readers,

As a self-loathing university student struggling with the cost/benefit ratio of attending university, I found this video particularly interesting. In the video below a past university graduate rationalizes the positive effects of attending university against the costs; keep in mind, he is located in the United States where tuition costs are much higher than Canada. University is still a worthy pursuit despite the over-commidification of university degree programs and the exceeding commercialization of quickly turning out over educated people with undergraduate degrees :) Yippeeee!

Bring your gun to the Republican National Convention. Why? Because you can!

On August 28th-30th The Republicans are having their National Convention in Tampa Bay, Florida. With such a large collection of political leaders and the Presidential hopeful himself, Mitt Romney, you can bet security will be at a maximum. All the standard potentially hazardous things will be banned from entering the convention; like knives, machetes, aerosol cans, long pieces of rope, mysterious liquids, and dynamite. But don't dismay: if you were planning on bringing your concealed weapon you can still attend. After all, thanks to the second amendment, it is your right to bear arms. The second amendment slowly blurs the line between idiot and ideologue, allowing any sane American to carry a concealed weapon if they have the corresponding permit in the State of Florida.

If you think this is stupid, picture this: the convention is going along cordially when the Queen of England herself comes in and starts bossing everyone around. We must expect, nay demand, Americans to defend themselves against tyranny accordingly... right?