(assignment #4) Blog Critique

As stated in class, the blog selections were pretty poor, however, I did find a great article that got my wheels turning. Author Emily Cadik wrote an article on her blog titled, "Race to the Bottom: A Round-Up of Pre-Abortion Torment Legislation Nationwide." I do not agree with her every point, but I enjoy the prospect of dissecting her post.

One of Cadik’s points is that in Tennessee they have a proposed bill that would make public a lot of information about the doctors performing abortions and quite a bit of individual information about the women getting them. At first glance, I felt this possible bill would be great for tracking information related to abortions. However, Cadik makes an extremely valid point that in smaller cities or towns you might as well be writing down the woman's name and address and asking for confrontations. The information could be misused. I really enjoyed her point on this tidbit of information.

Cadik also stated that, "the sponsor of Alabama's ultrasound bill is actually the vice president of an ultrasound equipment company." The way she noted this fact was with a negative connotation. However, if you think logically, there is nothing for the sonogram company to gain from this legislation, their company is not directly affected if women choose to keep their babies or choose to abort them. Also logically, the people who make sonogram machines have their own individual feelings and thoughts about life, death and babies. It is easy to assume that people who are truly passionate about their work in this field most likely value life and it would make sense that they would likely use their funds to support the pro-life side of the argument. I feel Cadik is reaching too far and trying too hard to make an innocent fact appear sinister.

On the other hand, I did appreciate Cadik's last comment about the amendment that has been introduced in Virginia about men's health and Viagra. This brings up the whole argument that has been ongoing lately about how the Legislature and Congress are hyper focusing on women's health (Abortions, contraception, etc) and their lack of focus on men's health. It really is becoming a sexist issue and it has taken quite a turn from where I thought the abortion topic would ever have ventured.

As for Cadiks audience, obviously she is writing to a more liberal crowd that is clearly against abortion. Though I agree with her stance for the most part, I feel her argument was weak and could have been more clearly defined with other examples. I would say that Cadik is pretty credible. It appears the blog itself is written by a staff that is potentially more journalistic in nature and not just some person with opinions writing a personal blog. She also did a great job at linking to outside articles to back up her points. Overall, good article, but she could have used more hard examples instead of soft 'finger pointing' type stuff. It almost read like a frustrated teenager who just found out some 'tasty tidbits' but what they really found pointless scraps.

(Assignment #3) The STAAR Test is Put on Hold

In the Austin American Statesman there is a great article about how Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott has pushed back against the lobbyist group Texas Association of Business and others about the STAAR test. He strongly feels that testing schools to see how well they are performing has gone far off course from what it was intended to accomplish and now teachers are having to teach students to take the tests instead of teaching students to educate them for life. He feels the testing has gone from a means to evaluate to becoming the main focus in schools. The Editorial Board feels that Robert Scott pushing back and postponing the effects of the STAAR test on students grades until next year was an absolute win, and I have to say I agree. The move to push it back a year is absolutely strategic as it coincides with the Legislature convening in 2013 when they can re-evaluate how effective accountability legislation actually is.

I agree on all accounts with this article. I feel teaching kids to do well on a test instead of focusing on teaching them material so they can advance farther is a huge loss. In other countries they expect their youth to speak two or three languages. I feel we expect much too little from our students and I feel taking out a fourth of a year to teach the test just teaches our kids the wrong lessons about life and takes away from other things our teachers could be educating them about. I am excited that they are pushing it back a year so the Legislature can take appropriate measures to see if accountability legislation is helping or hurting as we try desperately just to keep our schools above board.

(Assignment #2) Texas and the Death Penalty

In The Texas Tribune they have a fantastic article discussing the death penalty. I found it very interesting that in America we did not have the death penalty in use for many years and what started us using it again was an execution in Utah thirty years ago by firing squad. I would have thought that type of execution would not have occurred as recently as thirty years ago.I am also astonished that the current use of the death penalty has only been around since I was born.

In Texas, the death penalty is a hot item of conversation. I would love to see if use of the death penalty is decreasing due to the death penalty "doing it's job" and persuading people not to commit crimes or is it due to the fact that, as a culture, we are less likely to hand out that punishment. If I were pressed to choose which is the reason, I would certainly lean more towards our culture being less likely to use the death penalty then anything else.

Assignment #1 for Texas Govt.

Just setting up the blog.














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A Response to "Has Government Sold Out?"

I believe Christa Vargo hit the nail on the head when she wrote her blog post "Has Government Sold Out?". She feels that there should be a cap on political contributions to limit the need for politicians to sell their votes for donations and to enable them to start focusing on what the people really want.

I agree completely. I also agree that if we place a limit on total contributions it will allow more people into the field that previously would have no chance at winning because they could not raise the same level of funds. Our politicians are so focused on money and so many of the top "1%" of money makers are running the government that it is hard for them to objectively makes laws and run our country in a way that really benefits the majority instead of running it in a way that benefits mostly the rich (themselves).

In the link she shared that shows that money really does win elections, I was appalled to find out that Obama declined the use the public financing that is offered to top ticket candidates and still significantly beat out McCain on money for his election. It is virtually like buying a seat in congress or buying a presidency. This has got to stop. There is no reason why they need to spend a million or more to be elected and with each candidate that raises more, it raises the price it takes to win. This link she shared was perfect for her points. It spells out everything that she was saying. Overall, this was a great opinion piece and I really enjoyed reading it.

Red and Blue

I have been mulling over the differences between Republican and Democrats. I find both of them valid and at the same time flawed.

If Republicans truly want more state oversight and regulation and less government interaction, then where are all the state laws that we need to protect the citizens from money hungry corporations? Why do we not see more Republicans swarming state capitals and influencing more state government issues? If they truly believe in less national government and more state government, they can't expect to walk up to Washington D.C., strip away all of the big government and say "We've fixed all our problems." If the first thing they do is strip away big government then they have effectively left the public at a huge disadvantage. I find it compelling that Texas, being such a Red state, has effectively dismantled our state level government instead of making it bigger. The true idea would be to build up strong state governments and then seek to dismantle the national laws that are redundant. Then as a nation we could ease off expecting the national government to take care of our needs and trust in the states to take care of us.

As for Democrats, I personally am leaving my Republican roots and leaning left more regularly because I feel businesses will not regulate themselves. It has been proven repeatedly that businesses will cheat, lie, steal and abuse their consumers and workers. The states have not protected us well enough and an incident with an insurance company proves the point. In 2008 Conesco had to pay around $32 million because their subsidiaries wrongfully denied claims, delayed claims and misled their elderly costumers. We feel like the states are not protecting us, so the government should step up to the plate. The flaw here is that this is exactly opposite of what the founders of the constitution wanted for us. The Bill of Rights wasn't even supposed to be applied to the states. It was truly only to be applied at a federal level and was almost left out entirely because many of the founders believed the states would be responsible for regulation. We were truly supposed to be independent states where each state could have completely different laws, united only for minimal purposes. I guess I lean more to the left because our 200+ year track record of states regulating things doesn't bode well for the future.

I don't know if there is a better way than what we have going for us now. Sometimes I wonder if we had more options, multiple parties, if that would help address these issues, but right now it seems that any third party (on a presidential level) only serves to detract votes from the only two parties that obtain anywhere close to enough votes to win. However protests and taking test cases before the Supreme Court does seem to have an impact on how laws are seen and used. I guess time will only tell what can make a definite change.

The War on Drugs

My fellow classmate, Caroline Bassett's, wrote an article titled, "The War On Drugs - Where Tax Dollars Go to Die." I would have to say I agree with her for the most part. She notes that we began the "war on drugs" in '71 and we have little to nothing to show for the 40 years worth of fighting. It got me thinking and if you compare that to the 9 year war we have waged in Iraq, Americans are fed up with the battle and crying out to have our troops returned, yet no one is tired of the 40 years of battle against drugs where we have gained little to nothing.

If we range farther back in history, we can even ask the question, when has prohibiting a specific drug ever ended well? We had the opium wars, alcohol prohibition and now the war on drugs. The sad thing is that the ban on drugs only gives jobs to cartels and mob bosses and propagates killing sprees, terror and fear. If we legalize drugs, then it becomes common place and the drug cartels and mob bosses have actually lost their foothold on the market. At least, so the theory goes.

Personally I am against drug use, but it is evident that to stop the increase in crime over drugs we actually have to allow it. The same holds true with Alcohol. We legalized it because the ban on it caused more problems than the actual substance ever did on it's own. As a citizen, spending $1700 on tuition for one semester of classes gives me pause. It is hard to write that check, and our government should have pause when writing that check basically every second of every day, especially when they have to realize that money goes towards making a bad problem worse.