I first heard about the Tea Party movement in the Spring of 2009 when it was still young. It was in the media a lot during the lead-up to tax day that year.

As a social libertarian, I must admit I was excited. Here was a grassroots effort to protest the bailouts and the stimulus package.

It seemed to be a sign that there were people in this country willing to stand up and protest for what they believed in. I was idealistic enough to think that this movement meant that great changes could take place. I thought perhaps this was a start of a great change in America.

Yet as the Tea Party movement grew, it never really centralized to become a vibrant political force. As a result, the phrase “Tea Party” has lost its meaning and the protests have lost their way.

The more I hear about the Tea Party, the more I wish the word “libertarian” wasn’t associated with it. They’re doing more damage to that word than anything else ever could.

If one looks at the previous month alone, there’s a long list of terrible events associated with the phrase.

For example, on March 16, 2010, at a protest outside of the office of Representative Mary Jo Kilroy, a protestor mocked a man with Parkinson’s Disease and threw dollar bills at him. Several other protestors joined in. The protestor later apologized for his actions.

On March 20, protestors of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Washington, D.C., were accused of shouting racial slurs at several black lawmakers.

Though many at the protest deny these accusations, so far there seems to be no evidence that these allegations did not happen.

A Tea Party protester in Lynchburg attempted to post the home address of Congressman Tom Perriello on a local blog, encouraging readers to “drop by” his address and express their anger at him for his vote for the heath care bill.

Instead, the protester accidentally posted the address of Periello’s brother.

The next day, a severed gas line was found in Periello’s brother’s yard and it was determined that it was intentionally cut.

None of these occurrences are necessarily endorsed by any official Tea Party organization. Yet they all seem to have happened as a result of Tea Party fervor.

When I tell people I’m a social libertarian, I’m immediately associated with these people because we share a similar ideology. I find these sort of acts deplorable. It’s insulting to be lumped in with these people.

Even if one were to look at all of this as isolated incidents, there is trouble with the Tea Party movement even at the very top levels of the various organizations behind it.

Near the time of the start of the Tea Parties, claims that the movement was actually made to look like a spontaneous movement from average citizens by national organizations surfaced separately in a New York Times editorial and a Playboy article in February of 2009.

Due to libel claims, the articles were removed, yet no lawsuit ever actually occurred.

These allegations didn’t stop there. They continued in a variety of editorials and articles throughout 2009.

Conservative groups Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and dontGO are the three main groups who have provided funding for the Tea Party protests and events, as well as guidance and organization.

All three deny the allegations of astroturfing. The problem, though, is that when a protest is organized by a corporation and that corporation hires public relations firms to help promote the event, it is no longer a grassroots phenomenon.

By being organized by these groups, rather than from the ground up as a true grassroots protest would be, Tea Party events have become a smokescreen for the agendas of basically anyone who feels like they want to call themselves a Tea Party activist.

Now, every time I hear the phrase “Tea Party” in the news, I cringe. I always think to myself, “Oh, no. What have they done this time?”

Just like Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol (and then back to Prince), many students around the country are changing their names on Facebook. They are doing so to avoid future employers looking at their profiles before hiring them.

To hide pictures and other content that might affect the employers’ decision, some students replace their last name with their middle name or use a nickname that would be recognized only by friends.

“People add two crazy middle names or something so it’s hard to search for them,” said Christopher Medeiros, a Nova Southeastern U. freshman.

Regardless of what is on the Web, employers may look online before hiring to see a potential job candidate’s social life or behavior.

Diane Klein, assistant director of internships in the NSU Office of Career Development, said, “Employers want to say ‘no’ before they want to say ‘yes’. When they do these searches, they are looking for a reason to cut you out.”

Some students believe employers have the right to look at the profiles of the people who will work for their companies and get to know them before deciding whether to hire them.

Medeiros said, “Employers should be able to see the kind of person they are employing. It’s like a background check but not as intense.”

On the opposite side, Charmi Patel, NSU sophomore, said that what students do on Facebook should not be used by employers’ to judge the students.

“It’s a matter of privacy. These are their personal lives. It’s not like they’re doing it at work,” said Patel.

Another downside students find in companies doing these searches is that the information is not always reliable.

O’Neal said, “People create a different persona on these sites. For example, I had this friend who put up a bunch of pictures to make himself look a certain way. These sites don’t give you an accurate depiction of the way people are 100 percent of the time.”

While students have different opinions on whether employers should use the content of these sites to make their decisions, they seem to agree that they would not change their names to hide information from employers.

Medeiros said, “I don’t have anything out there that would cause employers to judge me or anything.”

NSU sophomore Master O’Neal said, “Facebook is a public way of communication. If you have something to hide, Facebook is not the right place.”

However, Klein recommends students are careful with the information they put online even after they have been hired, not only pictures and status updates but also comments and wall postings.

“You have to be very cautious and make sure your personal and professional lives are kept separate,” she said.

Do you know when the Kool-Aid guy jumps through a wall yelling “OOOHHHH YEEAAHHH,” in his dark, creamy, sexual chocolate voice?

I hear that exact thing in my head every time I think about it; the disaster in the Gulf just keeps getting better and better. If the problem climaxes in the Gulf and actually catches fire, making it the world’s largest oil fire, my head might explode.

It’s not that I’m being malicious, or that I actually think what’s happening in that region of the world with the oil spill is a good thing. It’s just that after years of saying going green doesn’t matter or that using reusable shopping bags and holding your nose in the air doesn’t change anything, I can’t help but gloat.

By all means, don’t call your government representatives and demand to know why we haven’t started a viable alternative to petrol fuel. Instead, you should make a show of how much you care by using a cloth grocery sack. Get a sticker that says how green you are and put it on the back of your car; hell, paint yourself green. Completely neglect to think about how much that doesn’t matter if we keep using gasoline.

Oh, but that problem’s too big, isn’t it? Just like the national debt, just like world peace, just like gun control, abortion and any other issue that matters ad nauseum. It’s just too big, why bother caring. You just can’t figure it out, it’s too complicated. Besides, you could be too busy, going to the bar to get smashed, watching TV, or gossiping about things that don’t matter. No way no how are you about to think about anything that’s relevant.

I get a real, “I told you so” rush out of some things. I know it’s kind of weird. Maybe I should see someone about it. The more upset people get about something, the more I like it. It gives me this warm fuzzy feeling that’s somewhere between opening a fight with a headbutt or holding the trigger down on an automatic, belt-fed weapon. You didn’t care when you should have, and now it’s time to reap what grew from the seeds of your apathy.

Maybe that’s why I can’t help but crack a smile at the Gulf disaster. Now it’s being found that the leak is substantially worse than the government and BP led us to first believe, according to the New York Times.

Not only that, but as reported by the New York Times, BP representative Tom Mueller said, “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Listen to that wise corporate man. How he points out obviously that knowing anything about the current situation at the actually sight of the flow of oil would be a bad thing. Not only would being equipped with more knowledge be bad, it would hinder the response effort. Orwell said it best when he wrote, “Ignorance is strength.”

Why wouldn’t BP blatantly lie to us though? If I were BP, I’d lie to us. I’d tell us that the oil spill is a good thing. That it’s actually helping the environment. Even if it’s laughably obvious what’s actually going on, the American public isn’t going to say anything. We’re just going to keep going to the mall, watching TV and caring way too much about sports. Relevant things don’t matter to us.

Remember when everyone cared about Haiti? How it was a huge deal? How we were going return Haiti to its former glory of third world country by texting $10 to them? Why aren’t people texting money to oil clean up bank accounts at something to the tune of $100 a pop? Because we feel entitled to that oil, and if something goes wrong others will pick up the pieces.

So you’ll have to grant me my moments of dark humor, because in the end the humor is the only thing that makes me feel better about horrible things that are beyond my control. Until the American collective, the silent majority, decides that they are going to pick up their phones and call their representatives, nothing is going to change.

The President’s Office of California State U.-Stanislaus, complying with a Public Records Act request in connection with Sarah Palin’s upcoming speaking engagement, announced that it has assembled, as of May 6, more than 800-900 pages of pertinent documents and that it is still searching for more.

Palin will be the guest of honor speaker on June 25th for the CSU Stanislaus 50th anniversary gala. A Public Records Act request for documents related to Palin’s appearance was subsequently jointly filed by Senator Leland Yee (D, San Francisco) and Californians Aware.

The May 6th announcement by President Shirvani’s office prompted Senator Yee to demand that CSU Chancellor Charles Reed hold the campus administration at Stanislaus accountable.

On April 9th, a portion of her contract was produced, along with other shredded documents allegedly pertaining to the Gala, by two CSU Stanislaus students, Ashli Briggs and Alicia Lewis. Briggs and Lewis claim they found the material in a dumpster outside the Mary Stuart Rogers building on campus, on what was a campus furlough day.

Earlier that week Senator Yee and Californians Aware were denied those documents on the grounds that they did not exist. Later, after Yee released evidence to the contrary, the CSU Stanislaus Foundation claimed that it could not release the documents due to a confidentiality stipulation in Palin’s contract.

However, a 2001 court case involving a foundation at Fresno State U. may contradict this claim. The Superior Court ruling specifically requires foundation documents to be made public when they are in the possession of the university itself.

On April 6th, Yee called for an investigation to be conducted for misappropriation of state funds. The investigation was headed by Attorney General Jerry Brown.

The investigation was being conducted to ensure that no taxpayer money was being used to fund the event. Shirvani’s office released a statement on April 16th stating that both the university and gala organizers are complying with the suit filed by Californians Aware.

On April 19th, Yee stated that he believed that millions of dollars in public funds are being used to run the foundation that is hosting the Turlock U.’s 50th anniversary gala.

Yee said that in 2009, more than $1.5 million in taxpayer money went to salaries of staff and board members of the foundation.

When Cal Poly architectural engineering associate professor James Mwangi was chosen for a sponsored relief trip to Haiti after the 7.0 earthquake, he expected to assess buildings for two weeks, but ended up educating Haitian builders.

Mwangi is a licensed structural engineer and a volunteer certified disaster safety worker through the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA), the agency that deploys structural engineers in California during natural disasters to inspect damage.

The Structural Engineers Association of California manages the deployments for CalEMA; after the earthquake hit it advised members not to self-deploy for security reasons. Mwangi, still interested, contacted Engineers Without Borders and was then contacted by the Mennonite Central Committee.

Mwangi is registered as a structural engineer and certification by the CalEMA made him the perfect fit to decide whether the buildings should stay. Mwangi had been inspecting buildings in Haiti for three days when he attended a meeting conducted by United Nations Operations and the Haiti Government’s Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications (MTPTC), which changed his itinerary altogether.

When asked what to do to prevent the severe damage to the buildings from reoccurring, he said the architects, engineers and contractors of Haiti should be taught how to build differently to withstand natural disasters.

“Over 230,000 people lost their lives, clearly indicating that earthquakes do not kill people, but buildings kill people during earthquakes,” he said.

Mwangi explained the materials used in construction of the buildings had weak structure and very poor construction methods.

“Virtually all of the buildings are not designed by a structural engineer or architect, there is no construction code or practice to follow and hence no quality assurance in form of inspections on materials or during construction,” he said.

Mwangi was asked if he could teach the Haitian architects, engineers and contractors starting the following day. He immediately agreed and started organizing his lesson plans and set up sessions for the Haitians for the remainder of his trip.

“I gave six three-hour workshops in different cities: two in Desarmes, two in Kenscoff, one if Port-au-Prince and one in Dleudon,” he said. “By the time it was time for me to come back, the workshops had been attended by close to 150 professionals.”

Mwangi’s workshops aimed at educating architects, engineers and contractors about simple changes they could make to build earthquake-resistant buildings without acquiring extra cost. He also taught the Haitians basics on the causes of earthquakes, aftershocks, what to do during and after earthquakes, what materials to use and how to build one or two-family, two-story dwellings.

Tracee de Hahn, who works for the College of Architecture and is a coworker of Mwangi, explained how his background and personality made Mwangi a great teacher for these Haitian people.

“James, being originally from Kenya, really understands different cultures,” she said. “He is such a humble person.”

Coming back to Cal Poly, Mwangi said, “I was amazed how eager the construction professionals are for information and knowledge on how to construct better earthquake resistant buildings.” He added, “I believe that the first way forward in the reconstruction of Haiti infrastructure is the education and re-education of the Haitian construction professionals.”

The late economist John Maynard Keynes famously noted that “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

As if Mr. Keynes were looking through a crystal ball into our present-day economy, this theory has been proven disastrously true. Although he was speaking from the perspective of an investor, nations globally are bearing the brunt of a fierce and unpredictable market as they attempt to climb out of fiscal holes that, on occasion, they themselves dug.

Now partway through 2010, it’s time to update our economic outlook for the next few months.

Though not an expert in the subject, I have the advantage of understanding the opinions of Main Street, whose human resources have been instrumental in the mending of this nation following a dreadful market downturn. I also study Wall Street, whose behavior throughout the recovery has been maddening to both citizens and federal agencies alike.

That being said, it will be interesting to see how financial regulation reform pans out this summer and into the November elections, as well as the size of the lasso that Washington hurls around our nation’s largest banks.

Previously I wrote about the impending regulation and its potential ability to curtail institutional fiscal irresponsibility in the U.S. and around the globe, but these laws cannot hope to govern the saving and investment of private citizens. The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported that, for the month of March, personal income climbed $36 billion while consumption swelled nearly $59 billion.

In other words, Americans are spending more than they are earning, even after a horrific recession that should’ve taught them otherwise. What Congress does anticipate, though, is the ability to stop firms such as AIG from exploiting taxpayer money and the capacity to keep Goldman Sachs and others out of fraud.

The revitalization of the U.S. economy is still apparent with the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching ten and even eleven thousand points within the past few months, but this is overshadowed by the dark cloud that hovers over the world’s financial markets. In particular, Europe is experiencing an inability to pay its debts, specifically Greece and even Spain and Portugal. Greece exclusively has been given a $145 billion loan by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in order to stave off mass defaults on financial instruments, which has hurt its currency, the euro, tremendously. The euro of late has fallen to an annual low compared to the U.S. dollar.

The financial television network CNBC stated that gold could, in a sense, become the world’s new reserve currency. This could be a product of inflationary expectations pertaining to the U.S. dollar and weakening euro as a consequence of financial crises. The reasoning behind gold’s new found prominence is the fact that gold cannot be printed like currency: there is a finite amount. Therefore, it is a stable commodity and a safe haven for investors.

A recent article in The Economist explains “a cheaper euro hurts America, which will feel it is owed a chance for export-led growth after almost ruining itself as the world’s main consumer,” and earlier stating “the case for a further drop in the euro against the dollar has more than just momentum to back it. Business cycles favor it: the euro-area economy is picking up speed again, but America’s recovery is more advanced.”

Here at home, a weaker U.S. dollar–the euro aside–is not necessarily a bad thing. As referenced earlier, this makes us more attractive to foreign purchasers, thus reducing the trade deficit.

Moving forward, it may be prudent for countries around the world to heed the theory of Mr. Keynes and remember that the market doesn’t always play nice, and while conservative policy won’t make them a quick billion, it could just save them from collapse.

Strongmen ran rampant in Bowling Green, Ohio this past Saturday, lifting people, throwing weights and pulling fire trucks with their hair.

The fourth annual Atomic Athletic Great Black Swamp Olde Time Strongman Picnic featured feats of strength and spectacle, as well as educational clinics on strength training. The picnic has become more popular in recent years by an increased interest in both functional strength training and strongman performances, which were once a staple of circus sideshows.

“I brought it back to show all the different manifestations of strength that are out there,” Roger LaPointe, president and founder of Atomic Athletic, said. “Trying to show some of the best of the best doing it for everybody else.”

The performances began with truck pulls followed by atlas stone lifting, an event where heavy stone spheres are picked up from the ground, popularized by the World’s Strongest Man competition. Competitive and amateur strongmen participated, lifting stones up to 290 pounds.

Brothers Nick and Stewart Rosendaul showcased their strength by bending horseshoes, frying pans and metal bars, along with ripping decks of cards. A highlight of the performance was a balancing act where Stewart hoisted his daughter Brianna above his head.

Later performances emphasized showmanship, with displays by professional strongmen Andrew Durniat and Logan Christopher. Under the name Andrew Durniat and his Flying Dumbells, Durniat juggled metal weights and performed stunts with barbells weighing over 100 pounds. Christopher pulled a classic fire truck across a parking lot using just his hair.

The two also participated in a juggling competition with rules similar to the basketball game, H-O-R-S-E, but using large weights. Durniat worked with LaPointe to develop a throwback to circus strongmen that would combine power and showmanship.

“I did a single arm snatch with a bar he made, and he said, ‘Hey, what else can you do?,'” Durniat said.

LaPointe suggested they work together to replicate a routine that had been popular in the ”30s but not practiced since.

“I went into the gym and started toying around with it, and right now I’m the only one around that is doing this routine,” Durniat said.

The inspiration for Christopher’s hair pulling truck act came from a similar source.

“I read about an old time strongman by the name of the Mighty Adam, and he did many feats of strength, one of which was pulling vehicles by his hair,” Christopher said.

“On two separate occasions he stopped a small airplane from taking off with his hair. After reading that and getting into the strongman thing I decided to give it a try. Its just been bigger vehicles each time.”

The picnic was about more than spectacle with several educational lectures on lifting and martial arts. Special attention was given to Olympic lifting, with demonstrations given by three-time Olympian Fred Lowe and Todd Baden, owner of Synergy Sports and Performance in Toledo. Olympic lifting is focused on a few specific lifts that emphasize athleticism and speed, as well as power.

“There’s more and more of the functional craze of trying to mimic movement in sports,” Baden said. “The quest to make something more explosive or powerful has brought to the forefront focus on movements.”

Circus Vera, a Bowling Green-based circus troupe filled in the spaces between strongmen acts, including performances such as walking on a staircase made of machetes, fire eating and glass walking. Circus Vera contributed to the carnival atmosphere, bringing a side-show of preserved animal mutations. The group was founded in December 2008 by BGSU student Logan Jacot.

Other shows at the event were martial arts demonstrations and a performance by Bob Nickerson. Nickerson is a comedic juggler who goes by the name the Jock-ular Juggler.

The picnic has increased in length each year since its inception, and performers from as far as Russia have contacted LaPointe about getting involved. LaPointe has already found strongmen to be involved for next year, and is focused on growth and improvement in the future.

“It just keeps getting bigger every year. We have constant mini-clinics and performances that will easily take up to six hours today,” he said. “It’s very possible that this could end up being a multi-day event at some point, because we keep going a little bit earlier and a little bit later for the start and finish.”

After several surrounding states’ Ash trees have been demolished, the culprit has finally landed in Iowa.

The Emerald Ash Borer is a metallic-green beetle about half an inch long. It burrows under the bark of Ash Trees, or the Fraxinus species, and eats away at the growing layers, according to a press release from the Iowa Emerald Ash Borer Team.

The Iowa Emerald Ash Borer Team has confirmed an infestation in Allamakee County, two miles south of the Minnesota border along the Mississippi river.

The Emerald Ash Borer is native to eastern Asia, and was first discovered in Michigan in 2002, according to the press release.

The infestation of the Borer has since spread to southeast Minnesota and into nearby Victory Wisconsin, according to a press release.

After the discovery of the beetle, the states did set up quarantines, but the bugs made their way over the Mississippi river.

“More than likely it flew in, it can fly two to five miles,” said Mark Shour.

Shour works for the Iowa State Department of Entomology, and has been publishing articles about the Emerald Ash Borer since 2009.

Shour said that the state doesn’t definitively know how the Borer crossed state lines, but flying is the best guess.

Shour said the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship will quarantine wood and nursery stock from Allamakee County first, rather than the whole state.

If the whole state were to be quarantined, Ash wood could move anywhere inside the state borders, and make the situation worse.

A quarantine of wood can affect the economy of a county quite distinctly, especially in heavily wooded counties such as Allamakee and Clayton, Shour said.

Shour said that there is a saw mill and a wood processing plant in Allamakee County that are working with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Department of Agriculture.

The companies are taking off the bark of Ash wood, and heat treating it in order to make sure it is safe.

There are some preventative measures that Iowa can still take to prevent the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer.

The Emerald Ash Borer Team members are planting 1800 purple traps in high risk areas including a 1.5 trail along the Mississippi River, according to the press release.

“The best thing the public can do is buy their firewood when they get to the campsite,” Shour said.

Shour said the fine for going against the quarantine can range from $100 to $1,000, “buying a $5 bundle of firewood is much cheaper.”

While traveling, there are few concepts that I believe with more justified reasoning than the idea of “traveler’s karma.”

Exploring foreign lands with all of your possessions on your back and all of your money in your pocket has the potential to wreak havoc upon your mind and can open the ugly door of paranoia.

One way I walk into the unknown with more confidence is by having the belief that, if I make small efforts to help people and not take advantage of anyone I encounter, then my positive actions will come back to me when I may need it most.

Karma is a noble person’s way of displaying selfishness – and selfish priority number one while traveling abroad is to stay safe.

Of course, this method is not foolproof and may sound absurd to a logical person. But I ask that fact-based person if they have ever listened to their gut feeling or made decisions based on love? Where is the logic in that?

There are a few instances of traveler’s karma when I have made an effort to pay back what I owe, or even taken a step ahead in the game. The most recent example happened a few months ago in the polluted and congested Indian city of Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal.

From the school I was working at, a German friend and I took the 100-mile trip to Agra. This five-hour trip cost our taxi five tires, and as I was a new entrant in India, a lot of lip from me.

At the time, I did not understand how common flat tires were, and we made the best of the situation by talking to locals in each small town we stopped in. When the car was getting serviced, my friend and I waited outside in the blistering sun.

Before we knew it, 18 people surrounded us just to get a closer look and maybe practice their few words of English on real Westerners.

We eventually made it to our guesthouse in Agra, the Shanti Lounge. For the expensive price of 11 dollars a night, we were given a small room with a perfect window view (with jail cell-style bars) of the Taj Mahal, which was only a few hundred yards away.

This room had a rickety, circa 1960s fan that raced to “high” for 30 seconds in between every power outage – not a comfortable scenario for a hot and humid Indian summer night. There was no chance of sleeping during those sweltering hours.

It was warm enough outside that I, like all of the locals in the city, decided to sleep on the flat cement rooftop.

Before dealing with the comfort of an unrelenting bed, I knew it would be best to grab a mosquito coil to reduce the chance of itchy bites and possible malaria.

I did not have my money on me, but I told the wandering shop owner that I would pay the 50 rupees (1 dollar) for the coil the following day. I gave him my word that I would pay him back, but with a visit to the Taj in the following morning’s plans, I simply forgot.

I did not recall the midnight promise for a couple of weeks, and knew that I had to reconcile the weight I had placed upon the wrong side of the karma scale.

Months later, when my mom visited me in India, we stayed in a place that accommodated Western needs (like any Holiday Inn, but with bell boys boasting cheek-spanning moustaches) instead of the Shanti Lounge.

I did, however, make a special trip to the shop owner of the Shanti Lounge and reminded him of my debt. I paid him the 50 rupees and an extra 50 to tip the karma scale in the positive direction.

I understand that most Westerners will not subscribe to the idea of karma; it is not common in our culture. Most of us in the Western world have absolute freedom of religion, and, in the majority of these religions, the concept is absent or different.

You don’t have to believe in it, but I find that when I do good deeds, I experience better outcomes in my life. Perhaps those fortunate outcomes have other sources, perhaps it is just luck, or something bigger, but there is nothing that will convince me that acting with karma in mind is a bad idea.

When you find yourself abroad, talk to other travelers, and you will hear this exact concept from many of the people who span the globe. I believe that when you purposely tip the karma scale in the positive direction, life feels better.

When you board the plane in America and exit the same plane in a foreign land, be sure to leave that place in a better condition than it was in when you arrived.

When you enter a land and have no concept of what is right or wrong, safe or stupid, normal or offensive and you do not know anybody for a thousand miles, you walk along a thin layer of ice that can crack at any step.

Even the sole feeling of doing a good deed or covering your tracks will enhance your confidence and lighten your step while walking the unknown voyage of discovery.

– Brad Hurvitz is an Oregon State U. graduate student in business administration.