Blog Assignment Eight-Blog Critique 2

I really appreciated what Skye had to offer in her blog, Skye's Government Blog, about desegregating schools. Like Skye I moved around quite a bit throughout my K-12 education and I came across huge differences at each of the schools I attended and even dropped out of high school because of it. I even attended private schools for a spell and found it drastically different from the public schools I later had to attend. It wasn't hard to cope until I had to change high schools. I came from Copperas Cove high school where I was a whiz in my AP classes, but when I moved to Austin the AP classes were unforgiving and education standards were not so lenient.
Her blog subject creates no bounds in her audience. I feel that anyone can see differences in the school systems even in the same district. I really would have loved to hear a little more in the differences between private and home schooling compared to public schooling as well. She was very thorough with her presentation of facts and solutions. Her personal experience really resonated with me and drew me into the subject. Skye's message was very clear and to the point and an important subject.

Blog Assignment Seven-Overpopulated Prisons

I feel like with all the current issues on human rights, such as the legality of abortions and gay marriage, that overpopulated prisons have fallen through the cracks. Prisons have become the Spartan pit of American, but a little less kicking in the chest. They are overpopulated, really only a partial solution to many problems for the people thrown in have, and not to mention a serious cost to the government. I figure if you are going to put that much money and effort into anything that it becomes a force that will produce and accomplish something other than a community for the unfortunate tossed in a jail cell on a daily basis. There are three main issues I have with prisons: overpopulation, cost, which kind of go hand in hand, and the barbaric solution it has yet to fully evolve from.
According to The Washington Post, the U.S. had more than 2.4 million people in prison last year. We are throwing people in jail to teach them they've done wrong, but what they get is sometimes much better than what they had outside of prison. States actually put more money towards prisons than they do for students education. And to top it all off the government has given private prisons incentive to have more people in prison because of quotas, of occupancy guarantees, or just have the tax payer pay for empty beds. So we are throwing all this money on this system that only seems to cause more trouble than good. It's this form of out of sight out of mind and the lack of compassion towards these human beings that shouldn't be swept under the rug. Now I know I'm getting a lot of grief about how these people deserved it, but I'm not entirely sure that's even true. If these "criminals" aren't throwing themselves back in the system so that they can take advantage of it they might not belong there at all. If I could compare an insane asylum to the prison there wouldn't be much of difference other than guards have nurse training the jail is now a hospital. The procedures are very similar except people in prison are put to work at $0.12-$0.40 an hour according to Prison Policy Initiative. According to an article in the New York Times, in 2010 prison held more than three times more mentally ill than a hospital. This ignorance only exacerbates the issue of overpopulation, creating a dangerous and inhuman cocktail. Now these situations don't apply to everyone, but I think the good majority of these people deserve more serious attention and more thorough solution. Luckily there are some states taking the time to see this problem through and have taken steps to completely better the system.
According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, states that were able to drop their occupancy count still had no increase in violence. Actually the prisons that lowered their occupancy had lower crime rates compared to the prisons that actually raised their occupancy, which increased their violence. So it would not be the end of the world to lower some of the outrageous sentence lengths given to some people, but that isn't the only thing because these states stopped focusing on prisons they were able to invest some time and money into things like treatment and diversion programs, actual solutions.
It's amazing what can be accomplished when you see the good in people. If we can realize that these people have made mistakes as do all humans and are shown a little sympathy, then we can start to better this world.

Blog Assignment Six-Blog Critique

Angela brings up an issue that is easy to relate to in her blog The Eagle's Nest. Almost everyone knows someone with kids or has kids of their own. I was never a professional nanny, but I usually am the first call when someone needs their kids watched for any amount of time. Unfortunately, not everyone has a friend or even family that is willing to drop their free day for someone else kids . Though her article was interesting, I wish there were more statistics and mathematical content. She also mentioned day cares that provided reduced pricing. I would have loved to know what that entailed, how a family qualifies and if that was unfair for other families that couldn't qualify that kind of assistance. It was a very good start and really peaked my interest in this issue.
Towards the end of her article she states,"The government should provide free child care to those around the poverty level because they struggle to pay for the necessities of life." I would have liked to know what steps could be taken to get that statement into action. Some detail on who would be offered this government help would have made this the perfect article. I look forward to her future blogs and I wish her luck.

Blog Assignment Five-Keeping it Green

There are a plethora of issues beating the head of the United States as we speak. The legalization of gay marriage, free contraception, redesigning the education system, and fixing the global warming epidemic are all issues I have huge opinions on, but I’d like to take the back road, so to speak, and touch on a controversial subject that isn’t really taking the leaps and bounds that the previously stated issues are currently making, the legalization of marijuana.  I think this issue is not taken very seriously and it’s understandable. People usually associate cannabis with kids that are up to no good or adults that aren’t taking life seriously. Some people even see this drug’s reputation as something linked to hard drugs such as cocaine. With shows like “Weeds” it’s been labeled as something that brings people down the wrong path, but I think that this is actually all very wrong information. I feel that legalizing marijuana would benefit the U.S. medically and economically.

Medically, marijuana has many benefits. In Canada, cannabis is medically prescribed to help with nausea, loss of appetite, chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, inflammation, muscle spasms, and some diseases like glaucoma. Now of course there are other alternatives to treating these kinds of medical issues. For example, for chronic pain some doctors will prescribe opioid. Well what is opioid? According to Dictionary.com opioid is “any opium like substance”. Last time I checked opium is really bad for you, but for some reason that is the preferred prescription over cannabis. If I could just point out a couple of interesting details in comparison, opioid is a habit-forming drug and can be easily overdosed on if not careful, but marijuana is non habit-forming and has absolutely no record of ever being overdosed on. I honestly can’t understand why anyone would prefer a drug that will not only kill you but also make you think you can’t live without it before it does.

Economically, I think cannabis would only boost the U.S. into a more advantageous situation.  Colorado alone expects to see a $1 billion made in the coming fiscal year. If that isn’t charming the pants off of anyone $134 million from taxes and fees are going to the state. If the government would jump on board they also would be receiving a good part of that 134 million as well. Now if we multiply that by 50 states the number comes out to 6.7 billion. Of course that’s a very loose estimation, but I’m fairly certain anything close to 6 billion dollars would be beneficial to the government. I also want to look at the fact that this would create jobs. Stores for selling marijuana would open anywhere they could.  Opening stores creates jobs for construction workers, designers and stores will also need people to help with the creating and selling of their product.  I’d also like to bring to light that Americans would not be the only ones to come running to buy up this product. With marijuana legalized there will be lots of money to be made from tourism. Like Amsterdam, which is now facing losing the luxury of selling cannabis and suffering for it, the United States could build an empire that could fix our problems with all the money they would gain from making marijuana legal.

If we could just break away from the stereotyping of marijuana and see past the Hollywood façade that has been cast upon it maybe we can see past the green of the plant see the green of money that it could bring.

Blog Assignment 4-Bad Endings Ruin Everything

There hasn’t been too much mention on the new “ag gag” law going down in Minnesota, so I was pleased to see that there was an article in the opinions tab talking about the ridiculous law helping the farmers get away with abusing the animals we eat. I’m by no means an extremist, but I care about animals and how they are treated. Kicking a dog is about as right as kicking a newborn baby in my eyes. 

Mark Bittman is on the right track in his article “Who Protects the Animals?”, talking about the case that started this whole movement and how it will only do more harm then good to activate this law, but like a great movie with a bad ending I feel the article goes down the drain with his quote, “What if my every meal has been an act of cruelty”. I feel he belittles his own article by turning it into a “let’s hold hands and be vegan” festival. I like my steak so this ending made me roll my eyes. This is a serious issue, but he limited his audience to the smaller group of people by mentioning the issue of eating meat, which is not the main issue! His group went from a huge audience of animal loving people to the tinier group of vegans and vegetarians. He could have very well included the meat loving people with information like adrenaline in animals will actually make the meat putrid, but no he decided to take the path of butterflies and pretty things. I agree that this “ag gag” law needs to be abolished and slung into a black hole, but I can see his background of food columnist in the New York times peeking through and that was overall disappointing. Heed this article and, if you can, skip the ending.

Blog Assignment 3-Y2Wage

I have been hearing "facts" here and there on how the new plan for the minimum wage increase is going the ruin or make us.  I wasn't sure who to believe from one extreme to the other. Luckily the New York Times article "The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage", written by the qualified and educated editorial board, made a clear, skeptical, and factual statement on what the minimum wage will, more or less, create in our already poor economy. The article seems to be directed towards the blue collar general public and extreme right and left wing political affiliations. The only thing I felt this article was missing was the more emotional and personal symptoms the current minimum wage is creating with people and families in this current financial crisis. I think it could have been easier to relate to with more real life situations such as parents having to work more than one job in order to make ends meet and the time they are missing with children and other family members. Despite this lack of emotion, I think this article did a great job with putting the extreme right and left wing's assumptions to rest with unbiased evidence fabricated from experts and history.  

The minimum wage issue has been a political debacle from the beginning, with twisted facts and exaggerations. I think it was important for this kind of article to come out and clear things up so that people can see what this kind of situation this political move will produce for our country.  This article definitely shows that this was a good call to make from the Democratic stand point and dumps on the resistance of the Republican party. I think the argument to increase minimum wage is a benefit to the economy comes across very clear and believable. I’m completely convinced that all this information is accurate and actually changed my mind on whether the minimum wage was a smart move or not. It made me reconsider and question what I heard and read previously and opened my eyes to being more skeptical in the future.

Blog Assignment 2-Changing the world one post at a time

Everywhere I go I see people trying to be “green” to help the environment, but I believe there needs to be a bigger wave of concern and change in order to fix all the damages that have been inflicted upon our beautiful planet. Though many people may not put government and saving the planet in the same category it really goes hand in hand. The news and government like to show the positive changes they are making, but there are still many limitations put up against environmental change because of political and personal views and influence. This article is just a small example of what concerns need to be voiced and problems that need to be addressed.

In "Diary of a Dying Country", William Rivers Pitt voices the problem he is seeing with drinking water in populated areas being polluted. He talks about how lax the issue is to the companies that are polluting and how serious the problem really is. 

This is an incredibly informative and easy read I hope you enjoy.