Minor Twerps

I found this article very interesting, since this is an issue that directly affects us even though little has been done about it in years. One of the biggest excuses citizens use for not voting is that they don’t believe their vote counts, and that may not be too far from the truth. Although we vote in popular elections for whom we want to be nominated, our vote isn’t individually counted. Rather, we vote to be represented by someone who promises to vote in our favor. Even then, in most states, majority vote rules who gets ALL of the electoral votes. If 40% of the population votes for a republican, and 60% votes for a democrat, the democrat receives all of the state’s votes. This doesn’t allow the individuals who voted for the republican to be represented. In contrast, Nebraska and Maine proportionally distribute their votes depending on citizen votes.

Pizza is the New Green

This past Tuesday, Congress passed The Spending Bill, which included an Agriculture Department provision that declared a slice of pizza a serving of vegetables. Congress was originally trying to subsidize governmental school lunches for school aged children in recognizing that they are dangerously obese. However, the American Frozen Food Institute spent $5 million convincing congress that the government-subsidized pizza was healthy.

Although Congress has set a regulation on proportion sizes and what kind of tomato paste and is included, it is still absurd to think that pizza has been declared a vegetable. I can just imagine pizzas growing in a garden, beginning with a personal pan size and growing into a 42’ pizza in its adult size. Shall we also include pizza when teaching children about vegetables? Rather than finding other nutritional sources of food to help with the growing obesity problem, Congress was swayed by the American Frozen Food Institute to avoid the issue, and just declare their product a vegetable.

I found a cartoon that portrays this situation:

http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/congress-reaps-pizza-harvest/

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68206.html

Away With Old Teachers, In With New TV's

I very much agree with Katy's argument about budget cuts in the education system.
Less teachers means bigger class sizes, smaller private attention, less discussion time in class, and a slowly weakening education system.
I was unaware of certain details, like the fact that her high school laid off employees, but proceeded to buying high-tech gadgets and spending money on renovations. Shouldn't education be more important? While the fence does provide for higher security and safety in the school, and the tardy system allows administrators to more effectively keep track of students, there could have been other alternatives which allowed teachers to keep their jobs.
Perhaps we could find an alternative for cuts. Also, the Texas Lottery was originally meant to raise funds for our education system, but in recent years this money income has not been substantial.

Down with Capital Punishment

The recent decision of Congress to not interfere with the sentencing and execution of Troy David arose many concerns among American citizens. Because each state creates it's own laws towards capital punishment, citizens are seeking regulations at the national level.

Since the beginning of the human race, various forms of murder have been socially acceptable to use as punishment in an attempt to deter criminals. I do not believe that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for grave criminal offenses because it is costly, hypocritical, and does not deter criminals.

            Many argue that keeping criminals in prison for many years is costly, but this is not always the case. In fact, since we now use different forms of execution, killing these criminals is more costly. We once used forms of hanging, stoning and lynching to perform the death penalty. However, these have now taken the definition of “cruel and unusual” punishment and have now become socially unacceptable. They have been replaced by electrocution and lethal injections. The cruelty of the electrocution chair process is that many criminals do not die the first time, and must keep repeating this process over and over again. The lethal injection is very expensive, and it would be more economically beneficial to keep these criminals incarcerated for years.

            Showing that killing people by killing people is wrong is extremely hypocritical. It turns into a constant cycle of, “I’m going to kill you because you killed them, and you killed them because they killed that person.” It is uncivilized and unnecessary.

            The death penalty does not effectively deter criminals. Often, many would rather be put to death than having to deal with the choices that they have made every day for the rest of their lives. Many criminals who are put to death do not regret their decisions, whereas those who have had to deal with the consequences and their conscience do regret.

            I do not agree with the death penalty and do not believe that it is effective as punishment because it is costly, hypocritical and does not deter criminals.

Check mate, checkpoint.

http://mydd.com/users/restore-fairness/posts/checkpoint-nation-building-community-across-borders

This blog discusses a recent video that illustrates the aftermath racism of 9/11. According to the author of this blog, the video explores how to achieve justice and fairness by illuminating racial profiling.
As a first generation Mexican American woman, I have experienced racial profiling and racism first hand. Living in south Texas while I grew up always provided comfort because there were so many people who shared my same culture and ideas. However, the ones that didn't made life miserable. My father was always a very hard working man, but was fired or laid off of jobs without reason. Strangers always question whether my light-skinned brother was my mother's child. Sometimes, even other Hispanics turned their noses down on us. This directly affected me and made me realize the cruelty of human being from a very young age.
This country that was founded on values of freedom and equality is not very tolerant of those coming to this country to pursue those dreams and ideas. Beginning with slavery and migrants who were anything except British, freedom and equality have always been the first things to be suppressed. After the attacks of 9/11, I witnessed how precautionary and offensive the entire country was to not only Muslims, but any Middle Eastern race who resembled Iranians or Iraqis.
I agree with the author's conclusion of asking us, as Americans, to set aside our differences and to unite to reaffirm the real American values.

Struggle for Separataion

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2011-10-05/Hosanna-Tabor-Supreme-Court/50673286/1

                I thought this article on the separation of church and state was very interesting, and reflected the same struggle that our founding fathers had. This particular case, which made it’s way to the Supreme Court, dealt with a Lutheran church’s decision to fire a disabled teacher, Cheryl Perich, who had been on leave for several months. The dispute took a turn for the worse when the teacher threatened to take legal action under the American with Disabilities Act, which resulted in the church firing her for “insubordination and disruptive behavior” and arguing that she had permanently damaged her relationship with the church.  However, because of the separation of church and state, the “ministerial exception” keeps the government from regulating a religion’s clergy. The problem is that before given the title of “commissioned minister,” Perich performed the same duties as a “lay teacher.” Because Perich wasn’t asking to be reinstated, courts were allowed to make a ruling without interfering with the church’s clergy composition.

                The author wrote this article very simply and described terms that the common reader would not know. It began by describing what the issue of the topic would be, and why it was significant and how it related to the audience. It also viewed the topic from all points, and argued and supported them. The author seems pretty credible, and uses direct quotes from the Constitution and other sources from the case for support.

                I found it very interesting to see that Americans are still facing the same issues, even after all these years. This country was founded upon the strive for independence, especially from ties of the government to religion. As open as our founding fathers were to this idea, they still maintained Christian religious ideals and embedded some of these into our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. However, because of this separation of church and state, the lines of what the church can and cannot do are blurred. In any other case, firing Perich would have been unlawful and immediate legal action would have ruled in her favor. However, because of the religious sanctions regarding the clergy, this was unattainable. I also thought it was interesting that the church was angered in her threat of taking legal action, and that in the end it was said that the case could be resolved “in a standard secular way without breaching the constitutional wall. 

Capital Punishment Silence

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/supreme-courts-silence-on-execution.html?scp=10&sq=supreme%20court&st=cse

This article talks about the silence of the Unites States Supreme Court in the execution case of Troy Davis last week. Capital punishment has always been viewed differently among different regions of America, and has mostly been left up to the discrimination of the states. This article discusses the influence that the Supreme Court could have had if it had simply made a court ruling decision that would establish guidelines throughout the entire country. Instead of making a statement, the court just chose to be silent. It did not agree, but it also did not disagree. This issue is of importance to me, because even though I live in south Texas (where most are in favor of the death penalty) I am against the death penalty. I do not believe that criminal behavior is deterred by proving that killing is wrong by killing criminals. We are also discovering new technology that counters previous methods of justifying criminals as guilty, and in the process we have realized that many have died innocently and unjustly.