War on Terrorism Essays - Human Rights, International Law, Law

Human Rights and the War on Terrorism Most of us can remember the day vividly when our nation became victim to an act of unspeakable terrorism. September 11, 2001, for our generation, will be our version of ?A date which will live in infamy.? (Franklin D. Roosevelt) As the years have passed and the war still continues over-seas, here in America, our lives were forever changed. From tightened security at all airports, to people arming themselves and blaming others for an event they had no control over and the rise of hate crimes. As our government tries to eradicate the war on terrorism, our human rights and civil liberties are being changed and, ?restricted in the name of security, justified by the administration as necessary to protect the American people, and the international community.? (Tabata, Alexis) The United States has supported human rights and civil liberties only when it did not conflict with security concerns. For an example, the Bush administration was willing to undermine the rights of the people as part of the war on terrorism. On October 26, 2001, a bill was introduced as the USA Patriotic Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) This allows the government and other such agencies to conduct searches and tap into things like phone calls, phone messages, and e-mails without a court order. This act also allows them to seize documents like financial records, medical records, business or any other documents if there is suspicion of terrorism or if they suspect a connection to terrorism. (The ?Global War? on Terror) Some individuals would view this as an invasion of privacy, not knowing that their phone conversations were being listened to by a third party, or having your financial statements clos ely looked at. On the other hand, this enables the government to closely monitor potential acts that could possibly lead to something similar to 9/11. Unless the government has a just cause or evidence, this ?invasion of privacy? is not a daily occurrence. On the contrary, this act directly interferes with Article 12 of the Declaration of Human Rights. Act 12 of this declaration is as follows: ?No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to their protection of the law against such interference or attacks.? (Declaration of Human Rights) In 2012, two bills were passed by President Obama. The Enemy Expartriation Act, which further elongates the list of things that will enable the government to take away an American citizen?s citizenship and the National Defense Authorization Act that allows the United States Military to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on U.S. soil and enables them to detain or hold a United States citizen without a proper trial. This directly defies our human rights as shown in article 11 of the Declaration of Human Rights: ?Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.? (Declaration of Human Rights) September 11th, 2001, is not the only example where human rights were affected. The rights were violated in World War II when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066. This order allowed the US to place anyone with Japanese heritage into internments camps that were set in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. (Siasoco, Ricco Villanueva). These internment camps were a violation of the basic rights put forth by our American government in our constitution. The 8th Amendment of the American Constitution prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. The conditions of the internment camps can be looked at as cruel and unusual punishment. They had no access to food, water, nowhere to sleep, over-crowded, and treated as criminals for the heritage they were born into. Just because they had the heritage, doesn?t mean they themselves condoned what happened and to put them into internment camps, being ripped away from their families and homes, it wa s a punishment that went against what was written in the American Constitution. What happened then, is happening

buy custom A Forecast for Medicare Reform essay

buy custom A Forecast for Medicare Reform essay In early December 2003, the then president of the United States George W.Bush won the approval of the Congress for the implementation of Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) and he signed it into law on 8th December the same year in order to extend the endangered life the countrys Medicare programming. MMA is a major reform of the government sponsored program for health insurance covering American citizens aged 65 years and above, those less than 65 years and are physically disabled, and other citizens having special needs(Marilyn 2006). Significant Parts of MMA legislation involved the passage of various Pay for Performance (P4P) incentives and implementation of Part D (Prescription Drug Insurance). This legislation is famous as a far-reaching and significant overhaul of United States Medicare program to date. In the future, the MMA legislation will have diverse impacts on the Medicare program life. First, this Act provided an expansion of the Medicare program through the creation of part D that include entire coverage of the outpatients prescription medicines. This expansion will have diverse and far-reaching impacts to the life of Medicare program. The seniors where almost all of them are very eligible for the new coverage and entire tax payers population will be greatly affected as the implementation costs of this legislation are quite prohibitive and continue on increasing. For instance, the Congress had initially pledged only $400 billion over a period of ten years to pay for the benefits costs of this legislation. This is merely a small down pament on the entire cost of this legislation cost, which could increase to trillions of US dollars. One study provides predictions that spending on health care in United States will increase to be 20% of the countrys GDP by 2015 ,growing from approximately $2 trillion in year 2005 to approximately $4 trillion by year 2015(Rick Robert , 2006).As a result, taxpayers will continue to experience increased premiums over the years. Thus, a lot of criticism for this legislation will be experienced which will halt the life of the Medicare program. Moreover, the MMA is showing very clear commitments to the entire private market to give solutions to various social problems, and this legislation will eventually shift all the costs from United States government and American employers to employees and individual citizens, particularly the elderly citizens. This is further affirmed by a recent study issue by actuaries and economists at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It estimated that by year 2014,spending by the public sector on the health care will eventually account for approximately 50% of entire health care spending in United States which is an increase from 45.7% in year 2004(McClellan 2006). The study further stated that, this shift from United States private sector to Public sector is as a resulted of MMA legislation .This will negatively impact the life of Medicare. The addition of prescription drugs benefits to the Medicare program that aids only one population segment, however deserving, leads to many qquestions about the intergenerational inequity and about the disproportionate allocation of resources. This will lead to a lot of criticism by the younger generation who will condemn the ever-growing deductions of their income being allocated to finance this Medicare program. Thus, the projected costs of this MMA program will be seen as life threatening to the working generations who have no access to this health care. They will try hard to condemn and remove this Medicare program thus affecting its life. The funding of the Medicare program will be greatly affected by the retirement of many baby boomers in United States over the coming thirty years .This is because the share of public sector in costs for health care will exacerbate due to massive retirement of most of the financiers (Berenson Bryan, 2004). Thus, MMA will affect the life of the Medicare program, as funding for the ever-increasing costs will experience a major blow in future which might extinct the Medicare program life. Thus, the MMA authorizes additional health care expenditures with minimal limitations. The changes to the current Medicare legislation that will extend the life of the program beyond 2026 include Improvement of Medicare financing through implementation of different means to mitigate high financing burden left to the taxpayers. In addition, Medicare budget should be aggressively controlled to eliminate any loopholes and expenditures, which are unnecessary thus reducing program costs. Finally, more awareness on the importance of Medicare program to the society members should be done through seminars and mass media. Buy custom A Forecast for Medicare Reform essay