Comment on a colleague’s work #2

In response to the National Journal's post, Hello! they discussed Nation Prayer Day. This is my response to what they said:

I respect your argument and your right to believe in whatever god you choose, but not everyone believes in a god and I think clearly if you think about the idea of National Prayer Day and it being encouraged by the government, Jefferson would flip in his grave because clearly church and state are not separate. And just because National Prayer Day has been around since 1952 doesn't mean that it is appropriate for this day in age. Do you know what was also around in 1952? Segregation. We have progressed as a society since then, for the better.
Furthermore, not everyone prays to "the man above" and people are thankful in their own way. If everyone would stop wasting their time closing their eyes and clasping their hands together talking to an imaginary person praying for change and actually get up off their knees and physically do something about what they are praying for this world would be a much better place.

note: I did not capitalize god because I do not feel it is appropriate whether that is grammatically correct or not.

Original editorial or commentary #2

The No Child Left Behind bill needs some help in the US and Obama is the one to help. It was first passed in the Johnson administration and took on a major change when Bush took over in 2001. Now it is Obama’s turn to try and find a better way to make sure that kids in America are being educated and retaining the knowledge they are being taught.

George W. Bush changed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make it focus on standardized test scores in school. This became know as the No Child Left Behind bill. They focused specifically on the minority students and how they were doing on these test. They test children in 3rd grade through 8th grade and each year every school is expected to show improvements until they get all the way to 100% of students passing. If they fail to beat last year’s score they missed the government’s goal and they are marked down as failing and the government doesn’t do much to change that.

Teachers are frustrated with emphasis on these standardized tests that aren’t helping to prepare students for the future. “Teaching” for these tests often takes away from teachers actually trying to teach their students. Standardized tests are a great idea but in actuality it doesn’t work. When it comes down to it, schools are trying to get all their kids to pass them and they end up have to teach students different list and have them just memorize the information they are given. A lot of the time it doesn’t expand much beyond applying what they are learning and students usually forget the information right away.

Obama plans to wipe the slate clean and stop identifying schools as failing and instead focuses on how to help improve those schools. Obama wants to focus more on the teachers and how they are teaching the students. He needs to step up and follow though with his ideas and find a way that is going to help students learn and keep them from failing, not just classify them as failing as Bush’s “No child Left Behind,” ended up doing and got mocked for it.

Comment on a colleague’s work #1

U.S. Government Blog is right in their post, “Ignorance That Lead to The Death of 25 Innocent Lives.” In West Virginia 25 mine workers were killed mainly due to people looking the other way when there were issues about safety. Safety is number one and shouldn’t ever be ignored.

When lives are at stake everything that is possible to prevent accidents from happening. There were plenty of violations that had been reported and no one had taken care of them, as they should have. That isn’t acceptable at all. These workers have families and they are just trying to pay their bills. They should know that going to work each day will end with them going back home to their families. It’s not too much to ask for.

There are safety rules and ways to go about reporting concerns; the problem is that workers are discouraged from reporting problems. They don’t want to be “that guy” and a majority of the time they will lose their job for reporting something that looks unsafe or that could potentially be a problem. They need the job and they can’t afford to be let go, so they keep their mouths shut and go to work even when they know it isn’t safe.

They’re right, “Coal can be produced economically and safely using industry and government standards.” Safety is the number one concern and workers need to feel safe and know they are still going to have a job after stating a safety concern. They shouldn’t ignore safety violations just because they don’t want to close down in order to look into the problem.

Original editorial or commentary #1

Why we need government run health insurance.

It's about time the government has done something about our health care system. Its ridiculous as the richest nation in the world that we rank so low on health care performance. According to an evaluation of health care systems done by the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th out of the 191 nations that were included. Also, the United States spends more of its gross domestic product (16.5 percent) on its National Health Expenditure. That's 61% more than Canada spends, of its GDP, on health care which is the second highest nation in terms of the percentage of GDP spent on health care.

I also don't understand why people are so afraid of the term "socialism". We should all know from basics civics class and just being alive that a lot of central services are already government run, or socialized. Do you think water treatment, police, fire, postal service, coast guard, all the things that are there for us everyday arent run by the government? We all pay our taxes and the government uses that money to pay for these services. Health care is just as essential as any of these services. Besides it being essential, there's another reason that health insurance is just like these other socialized services. Reason being is that very few people can afford to pay all on their own the cost of health care when disaster strikes or they or their loved ones get sick. So we all need insurance which basically means we all need to pool our money together so that when someone does get sick, there's enough money in the pool to pay for that person to get better.

So who should we choose to manage that pool of money? Well, private insurance companies do that now. But there's a problem, on average, these companies take out 10 to 20 cents out of every dollar we put into that pool. Some of that money goes to administrative fees and advertising, but some they use for things that are not even remotely connected to caring for people's health. Like paying for political campaigns against socialized health care. And of course, some of that 10 to 20 cents taken from every dollar is taken as pure profit. Who gets that profit? Investors, generally wealthier people who have money to invest. Ultimately insurance companies are held accountable to their investors. The more profit the executives make, the bigger their bonuses are and as it turns out, one of the best ways of increasing profit is denying people coverage for their health problems. Thats why these insurance companies do this as much as they think they can get away with it. This brings us to the biggest reason why we need socialized health care reform. The government would not take a portion of the pool for profit. That means the government would spend more money on actually caring for people's health.

Blog Stage Four: Substantial commentary or criticism #2

According to Crooks and Liars blogger Heather, something must be done to improve the current situation of safety in mining. In her post, What Can Be Done to Improve Mining Safety While Ignoring Unionization, she points out that from 2002-2006 there were 19,282 injuries and only 27.8% of them occurred in union mines. Also during the same five-year period there were 109 deaths but only 20.2% of them occurred in union mines. Then in 2007-2009 there were 45 deaths and just six were in unions. Union mines consistently have fewer deaths and injuries of mine workers.

According to Heather the reason for that because the union watches out for the safety issues rather than looking the other way like other mining companies do. Mining companies’ priority is getting the job done fast and efficiently. They don’t want to have to shut done for inspections or to fix problems. Workers are discouraged from speaking up about potential hazards. According to Meteor Blades’ article Want Safer Mines? Unionize Them,” Anyone who talks too much about them not only gets fired, they also can be blackballed by the whole industry… There is a grin-and-bear-it culture. Miners have no one to turn to and see no options in their lives.”

Heather believes that the solution is simple; miners need unions that care about them. Miners need to be properly educated and they need to be comfortable to speak up about safety concerns and potential hazards the notice. They need to know that they won’t be fired for it. Unions would help with that, that’s the reason unions were invented in the first place, to look out for the people. Heather says, “When a company does not care about the safety of its workers, a union is the only other organization that's going to fill that gap in a manner that truly protects their workforce."

It’s hard to argue with her logic, she makes too much sense. There are too many deaths and injuries to miners each year, and for years the numbers has been much smaller among union miners. Safety issues and injuries are ignored because workers need to work and they don’t want to lose their job. If you are going to be fired for saying something and you need the job, you learn to keep your mouth shut but it doesn’t make it right. Unions were created to protect workers from issues exactly like it yet there are too few unions out the protecting them. We need to create more unions to look out for our miners so that when they go to work they come home at the end of the day.

Everybody needs to understand the problem surrounding these miners because they need the help of unions. It’s important for everyone to know what unions are because they can help everyone.

Commentary/Criticism #1: Editorial:Season for Caring campaign touches many lives

Health reform has become one of the top issues in politics today. In an editorial in the USA Today, Health summit exposes irreconcilable differences, The issue was explained and addressed in a way for an average citizen could understand. According to editors of the USA Today, this past Tuesday there was a debate about our nations heath policy and what the best solution is.
It was long and there were disputes between the parties, “Republicans and Democrats are still too far apart to make a deal on anything beyond minor matters (USA Today).” These disputes are keeping decisions from being made. Obama and his party have three options and they must come to an agreement. Government is the major key, how big of a role should it play in the matter? Democrats currently are working with a mandate that requires everyone to have health insurance and taxes would be required to pay for it, “The biggest of those differences boils down to the role of government generally and, more specifically, the mandate that everyone be required to buy health insurance (USA Today)”
Republicans at one time had supported this mandate which would cover about 30 million people as opposed to the just over 3 million under the GOP alternative. Now Republicans claim that it is an “unconstitutional intrusion” to personal freedom.
USA Today editors and Democrats believe that this mandate is a movement towards universal coverage, and that’s a good thing. With the mandate come raises to taxes and other costs in order to pay for itself and make it affordable to the needy. “The mandate is also the reason the Democrats' bill is so complex and controversial… And you have to raise taxes or curb benefits to pay for those subsidies (USA Today).”
The US is the only power country to not a universal heath care and we should have one, or something very close to it. Every citizen should be able to go to the doctor get care when they’re sick or go to well visits to stay healthy without having to worry about paying. We shouldn’t neglect ourselves. The USA Today is right, both parties are conflicted but they both agree something needs to be done about our current health policy. Democrats have the right idea; coverage for 30 million is a must. We need to decide on a credible and reasonable plan and put into action. We need to just see how it goes and stop worrying about it in theory.

Article: The Tea Party

Where does the Tea Party go from here?

In class two weeks ago, the Tea Party was mentioned. I’ve never heard of it and I had no idea what it was or what it did. Apparently the Tea Party is some kind of political party; it’s not exactly a political party. Some think it could be on its way of becoming a third party while others just see it as continuing on to a revolution in our country.

At the moment the Tea Party is more of a populist movement. There have been issues, issues with both parties, spending too much and taxing citizens too much as a result. This past weekend there was a convention that ended up being more of a conference for the Tea Party. The group was split and didn’t reach nearly as many people as it had the last time they had a big event on tax day last year. It was only 600 as opposed to 300,000. Numbers are dropping and the group is splitting about their take about Obama. There are some who hate him and attack him and they need to stop. They also need to focus they’re anger on fixing the issue they claim to be the problem, not bashing the man they are currently blaming for it. They need to come up with proposals to keep the movement going and to make changes happen. If not the Tea Party will cease to exist.

The Tea Party has made a huge surge and is the first to make a third party an actual possibility but it is losing power. It has the potential to cause another revolution in our nation and it is important for us as citizens to be aware of how the Tea Party could affect us.
The article is titled Analysis: Where does the Tea Party go from here? And can be found at CNN. Here’s a link to the article.