Birther Control Blog#4

Leo Berman trying to pass a bill that requires presidents and vice presidents to show birth certificates to the Texas Secretary of State is completely idiotic. Why should it be the Texas Secretary of State that the certificates are shown to and no other Secretary of State? Most presidential candidates are usually senators or hold other office positions before running so would they need to show their birth certificates now? I can understand why this woman writing this blog is so upset, to have someone like Anderson Cooper, a well known public media figure go off about Texas is offensive enough but I think Anderson Cooper has a point too. The statement made by Anderson Cooper about seeing Bush’s transcript from college is foolish. Yes, he might have not made the best grades but he went and graduated from Harvard which is not the easiest school to get into or maintain. Some of our other presidents did not even go to academically changeling schools like Harvard. We were lucky to have a president that came from an Ivy League school, because nowhere in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a college degree is required to be president of this nation. Getting back to Anderson Cooper he was right in protecting President Obama and his citizenship status. We still do not know whether Obama is indeed a natural United States citizen but I believe it does not matter because he has done good and brought change to this country and I look forward to the solutions he has for issues of the future. On a side note I find it offensive that this woman who wrote this blog voted twice, as she disses the Texas Secretary of State for not catching on to this in the 2008 elections. This is wrong. This is a crime,voting twice is illegal, it is not fair. I believe suffrage is a very important right in this nation and to abuse it is very disrespectful to the United States.

“Politics Need to Get Social” Blog#8

I completely agree with my fellow classmate in her blog “Politics Need to Get Social”, she hit this issue right on the top of the nail. Our President Barack Obama was smart enough to know or maybe his team, but either way they knew that the fastest way to reach out to every voter in every way possible was by using the social media networks. These days more people read the newspaper through the internet rather than the actual paper so if politicians would put their views and beliefs on the internet and the social websites there would probably be more voters because we would easily have the information right in front of us to where we know what is going on and possibly even feel strongly enough to either support the idea or not support it by voting. I know that when President Obama was running in the election I was informed of most of his views through the internet and his Facebook fan page, and that is still were I go first when I want to look up what he is doing or what is his latest project he has going on. Now days it is easy to check up everything through our phone especially our Facebook pages and if we would have vital information on there that would let us know what is going on some people, maybe not all, but some would be interested in looking more in depth about what is going on and check it out. So the government should get up to date with the time and try to relate to all of the voters.

State lawmakers file anti-bullying legislation Blog#7

It’s clear that when you are in school many teachers have always told you that bullying was not allowed and that if it ever happened to you that you needed to tell an adult about the situation so they could handle the situation, but what about when it goes on through the internet and their cell phones?

Cyber bullying has been a big issue with all of these new cases of teens who were cyber bullied over their sexuality and race would not know what to do or who to turn too so they would listen to what the bullies were telling them and would either harm their bodies or commit suicide over the bullying.

"State legislation that gives and empowers schools with more authority to require training
and requires tracking of data and a comprehensive approach to handling this kind of growing epidemic is really important," Karen Gross with the Anti-Defamation League said. Two state lawmakers have filed similar bills that would do just that. The bills would give school boards the power to transfer a student who is being bullied to another school, and require teachers to contact parents when bullying occurs.

When and if this bill gets passed, I feel that students would feel comfortable knowing that they could turn in the bullies and know that what bully is doing to them is wrong and is actually an illegal act, not a joking matter that should be taken lightly.  But not only are students the victims, adults are and they should be able to go somewhere and talk about it, fortunately for  Canyon Vista Middle School in Northwest Austin have a place to report bullying through their school's website.

"Bring Books Not Guns" Blog#6

I completely agree with my fellow classmate in his blog "Bring Books Not Guns". He has stated some good facts and due to what happened just a couple of months ago at The University of Texas, I would not say that had a good light on this whole subject.

Some people can argue saying that if we would have allowed students to have guns they would have felt safe if they had a gun with them, but it would have probably caused an even bigger scene.

If carrying a gun would be legal on campuses then just anybody could have a gun and that would make me personally feel unsafe because we do have some people out there that aren't really that sane and could basically "crack" at anytime with any little thing. I would not want to be around one of them when they get a bad grade on their big test or anything of that nature.
He also makes a good argument saying that the campus police do respond in an orderly fashion and are trained to use guns when they are needed. Also if everybody was able to carry guns and the person didn't see the gunman’s face but said they had a gun, well they basically described a chunk full of people but not THE gunman.

He does bring up good suggestions as to having hotlines where people who need to talk but feel that they can't talk to anybody can call the hotline and keep them anonymous and hopefully solve the problem without using violence. I say that we should keep the ban to not allowing ANY weapons on campuses.

New flash: Dropping Medicaid would be bad Blog#5

So we all know that Texas is not in the best financial situation right now and one of the big “problems” that we might cut out would be Medicaid, which is not going to save us a lot or any money, but it is in fact going to cut back a lot of money the government gives us. Texas would “lose billions each year in federal funds; billions of dollars in indigent health care costs would shift from the state and federal levels to local governments, public hospital districts, medical providers, and the privately insured; and 2.6 million Texas residents could lose health insurance.”
Up to 2.6 million Texans would be uninsured because they are currently on Medicaid. Hospitals are not allowed to refuse anybody by the federal law because the person does not have insurance, the hospital would just cover the cost and “potentially add billions of dollars in annual uncompensated care costs funded at the local level.”
Even if Texas does go through with opting out of Medicaid we are still going to be required to pay our federal taxes for the other states who are still using Medicaid even though we would not use it anymore.
I do not think that the government should be allowed to do this because most of the people that are on Medicaid are children who are not able to go get a job and try to get health insurance, it is bad enough that their parents can’t afford it, but the kids should not be punished for what they cannot fix.

Eanes should not keep public in dark about expenses.

Since when did we as tax payers have to pay for our Superintendent’s food and travel expenses? Eanes school board took away the public right for them to know what and how their tax dollars were being spent on Superintendent Nola Wellman.

“The amended contract now pays Wellman $10,000 more a year to a tax-sheltered retirement plan in addition to her annual $231,000 salary; in exchange, she pays for her own business expenses. So Wellman no longer must submit receipts to the district for reimbursement for those expenses. And the public no longer can see receipts for those expenses unless Wellman chooses to make them public.”

Not only does Superintendent Nola Wellman get a pretty salary, but on top of that she gets an extra $10,000 so she doesn’t have to show her receipts anymore, which is unfair because she could have been spending less than $10,000 and it’s just like the tax dollars are going to waste  just so the school board can keep her. Wellman insists that there "is no conspiracy to try and hide information.” Yet she is the one that converted the public information into private information. Before the change was made these expenses were, “routinely available under the Texas Public Information Act.”

The reason that Wellman is getting treated like a “goddess,” is because she has truly affected the Eanes school district, this year the Eanes school district earned the highest grades on their report card and all of their schools were rated "exemplary."

In all honesty Wellman should not hide any school expenses from the public; if they’re paying for it then they have a right to know where their money is going. “Eanes trustee Clint Sayers recommended — label an expense an expense and treat it as such. Don't continue to hide those expenses from the public by calling them income.”

I personally think that since she is getting paid with Eanes school district’s money that her expenses should be able to be seen by the public. How would we not know if the money that she is spending is for “business expenses”, or just for pleasure? I would also want to know how $10,000 is a suitable number for her to get on top of her salary, and was this how much the school district was paying before all of this happened, or was it more?

Proposal gives voters a say on gas-tax increase

Do you really want to pay more for gas? Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden is giving you the opportunity to vote for the gas raise, if any? He's saying that he isn't proposing a "straight-ahead state gas-tax increase", but that he just wants to raise the gas tax a few cents a gallon to pay off debt for road bonds financed through the highway fund. For this to be passed it would require a two-thirds vote from lawmakers plus voter approval statewide. "The increase would apply only to Proposition 14 bonds, which are paid off by the highway fund. The Texas Department of Transportation has authority to issue $6 billion in such bonds; it has issued $4.6 billion." I don't know about everybody’s car, but I do know that my car drinks up gas like a drunk at last call and "a few extra cents" does make a difference.