This article starts off rather quickly. The first line reading, "America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace." Senator Jim Webb argues that we are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing million of lives. In comparison to other Nations such as Japan, our prison population is soaring. In 1985, The United States was incarcerating 580,000 sentenced offenders, as oppose to Japan's 40,000. Almost two and a half decades later however, Japan's number have increased to 71,00, while the U.S. prison population has quadrupled to 2.3 million. This all comes at a very high price to taxpayers: Local, state, and federal spending on corrections adds up to about $68 billion a year. And with these numbers, Webb's article reads, "With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter." It goes on to explain that most of the arrests and imprisonments made are due to drug offenders, most of which have no illegal history, and are arrested for possession, not selling.
He finishes the article with a huge problem in the United States today: Mexican drug cartels, whose combined profits are estimated at $25 billion a year. Mexican cartels are now reported to be running operations in some 230 American cities. "In short, we are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail."
I'm very happy to be reading an aticle like this finally. I read all about the Mexican drug trafficking and I'm wondering why it's lasted so long. I knew that our prison population was a problem but 2.3 million? That is an outrageous figure. With all the capital the Mexican are pulling in, and all the weapon they can so very easily aquire, and on top of that now I know they don't only exist in Mexico but in 230 American cities; I fear for the safety of a lot of innocent Americans. I'm very afriad this who operation will go haywire and turn into an ugly mess, I just wish we had a little more room in our prisons for those that deserve to be there. I read an article the other day about two juvenile judges who were arrested because they were throwing kids in jail without listening to their stories or really doing their job. They realized they can make some more money by doing this and our economy is bad-so, what the heck, right?
Wrong. I'm so sick of society. Imbiciles. We have all this potential and I feel the more we are selfish the more it hurts us in the end and from my point of view or justice system has been very selfish. Fizing this problem is very very easy to say and talk about but doing it and going through with whatever it takes will be a huge challenge. For everyone.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Recycling the Suburbs
The American suburb as we know it is dying. Shopping mals and big-box retail stores are going dark. An estimated 148,000 stores closed last year, the most since 2001. Kaid Benfield a director of the smart-growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council says, "as much as possible, we need to redirect development to existing communities and infrastructure, otherwise we're just eating up more land and natural resources." People want to balance the privacy of the suburbs with more public and social areas, but the result will be a U.S. that is more sustainable-environmentally and economically.
Jobs Are the New Assests
Remember when job weren't worth your small talk? This article explains that no one ever use to be excited about their steady paycheck because no one ever worried. Most people were obsessed with their homes or their portfolios in the stock market to even notice that they can create wealth by there income. People are starting to relearn all of this because of this recession and thanks to credit cards and other source of debt, our saving accounts went negative in the year 2005. People were actually saving negative. Which is why we are in such a pickle today because savings accounts are good for the holder of that account- not the economy as a whole because no money is being shot into the system. And now that Jobs are scarce and people don't have the money to spend, how do we fix this?
Human capital is how we can solve this. Our education and all of our traning-it's worth something. People want to figure out who they are as a person and what they want out of life. I think this will all take a huge amount of time but with people being obsessed with their income rather than what they have right now, and when people start to think about the future as oppose to right now, we will have a steady economy. But never anything perfect.
Human capital is how we can solve this. Our education and all of our traning-it's worth something. People want to figure out who they are as a person and what they want out of life. I think this will all take a huge amount of time but with people being obsessed with their income rather than what they have right now, and when people start to think about the future as oppose to right now, we will have a steady economy. But never anything perfect.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
TIME 'Are The Wrong Kids Taking Multivitamins?'
This article was about most of the poor children in the United States who actually need vitamins, don't get them because of the cost. However the children whose families usually have a higher income are the ones taking the vitamins. These children have enough money to to have a regular diet and enough exercise. "Children who face poverty, food insecurity and lack regular balanced meals have a high likelihood of benefiting from supplements," says Shaikh, but they typically don't have access to them because of cost. Families whose children get well-balanced meals should know that vitamin supplements won't make their kids any healthier. But parents who struggle to feed their children may need better access to vitamins and minerals to supplement daily meals.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Merchants of Cool
(1)In the movie there is a theme called "cool hunting." This, as Malcom Gladwell explains is, "The search for a certain kind of personality, and a certain kind of player in a given social network," or finding the influence held by those who have the respect and admiration of their friends. "Cool hunters" look for the kid who have the most influence on their peers. One woman describes it as searching for the 20% of teenagers who influence the other 80%. They consider themselves "culture spies" who penetrate the region of the teen landscape where corporate operations aren't welcome. "Searching for trendssetters or leaderswithin their own group." However by discovering cool, major companies then ruin cool.(2)One professor in the documentry puts his perspective on the relationshipbetween big companies and teens in a very interesting way. He compares the teen nation to an actual armada, with weaponary ranging from clothes to music to films. All of this to make money in the market war. (3)MTV excutives consider the bond with teenagers to be completely run by the teens. The videos on TRL are completely requested by the group and is played for everyone. Human research is the same but the goal is completely different, focusing on the human, as, well, a human. Minus the profit from the market.(4)When talking to a teenager to determine what they are in to simply for research, they don't consider the teenager as a person at all, but rather a customer. A market researcher's goal is to project what this teen says is cool and to make money off of it.(5)I believe that the best description of teen culture is given by "The Merchants of Cool," because they already know where teens are going. The critics and rebels are along for the ride. The excutive producer of Dawson's Creek said it best during the documentry by saying "Why put another finger in the dam, when it's going to bust anyway?" You cannot stop what what will and will not be popular or cool, no matter what the critics say, they are critisizing the "merchants of cool," who already know where the profit is at.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Nickel and Dimed. Serving in Florida.
Enrenreich begins her journey of living life in poverty in Key West, Florida. She has mainly one goal in this experiment: to see if someone can pay one month’s rent on nothing but minimum wage. Filling out applications for dozens of employers, she fails to mention her education level, saying she is limited to a few years in college. I found it interesting in the introduction on the fifth page she writes, “No one ever questioned my background, as it turned out, and only one employer out of several dozen bothered to check references.” The standards are quite high for an upper class job rather than a minimum wage job where an illiterate individual could perform the tasks perfectly well.
She finally lands a job at The Hearthside restaurant working from 2:00 till 10:00 P.M. for $2.43 and hour plus tips. She gives great detail about the actual job letting the reader know that the hardest part about being a waitress is the “side-work.” And a fellow co-worker by the name of Gail who we learn has recently lived in her car and did her business in a bottle. Something that I’m sure the writer isn’t use to being around people who can afford a roof over their heads or at least some protection. Gail even says, “You can’t live in a truck in the summer, since you need to have the windows down, which means anything can get in, from mosquito’s on up.” This really puts you in the mind’s eye of one who struggles with life every single day. But Gail isn’t the only one, the author talks about co-worker Joan, whom she admires for standing up for her when she is overpowered. In return, Barbara gives her a chunk of her tips.
This brings us to the notion in this book about the rivalry between the employees and the employers. Page 22 she explains, “Not that managers and especially ‘assistant managers’ in low-wage settings like this are exactly the class enemy. Mostly, in the restaurant business, they are former cooks still capable of pinch-hitting in the kitchen, just as in hotels they are likely to be former clerks, and paid a salary of only about $400 a week. But everyone knows they have crossed over to the other side, which is, crudely put, corporate as opposed to human.” She talks about the complications she’s had with the employers, such as being caught glancing at a USA Today, in which case her consequence was vacuuming the entire floor with a broken vacuum cleaner. Another instance is when they are called for a meeting because of how “disgusting” the break-room is. Or, my favorite, the fact that basically talking to any other employee is considered “gossip.” Stu, one of the managers began to speak rudely about some of the Haitian immigrants working there.
One of the more interesting things about someone living in poverty is their lack of health. Gail, for instance is paying $9 a pop for estrogen pills. But what can really put you into perspective is a co-worker Marianne, whose boyfriend lost his job as a roofer because he missed so much time after getting a cut on his foot. Furthermore about the health issue, on page 35 when she is now working at Jerry’s she mentions that, “Rising stress levels reflect a new system of ‘management by stress’ in which workers in a variety of industries are being squeezed to extract maximum productivity, to the detriment of their health.”
While working at Jerry’s, Barbara meets a cook from the Czech Republic. I found it really interesting that he isn’t even paid by the management there at Jerry’s, but by the “agent” who shipped him over. He gets about $5 an hour minus a dollar or two for the “agent.”
Barbara then decides to walk to the adjoining building and get a job as a housekeeper. She keeps this job one day, quitting Jerry's and leaving Key West.
She finally lands a job at The Hearthside restaurant working from 2:00 till 10:00 P.M. for $2.43 and hour plus tips. She gives great detail about the actual job letting the reader know that the hardest part about being a waitress is the “side-work.” And a fellow co-worker by the name of Gail who we learn has recently lived in her car and did her business in a bottle. Something that I’m sure the writer isn’t use to being around people who can afford a roof over their heads or at least some protection. Gail even says, “You can’t live in a truck in the summer, since you need to have the windows down, which means anything can get in, from mosquito’s on up.” This really puts you in the mind’s eye of one who struggles with life every single day. But Gail isn’t the only one, the author talks about co-worker Joan, whom she admires for standing up for her when she is overpowered. In return, Barbara gives her a chunk of her tips.
This brings us to the notion in this book about the rivalry between the employees and the employers. Page 22 she explains, “Not that managers and especially ‘assistant managers’ in low-wage settings like this are exactly the class enemy. Mostly, in the restaurant business, they are former cooks still capable of pinch-hitting in the kitchen, just as in hotels they are likely to be former clerks, and paid a salary of only about $400 a week. But everyone knows they have crossed over to the other side, which is, crudely put, corporate as opposed to human.” She talks about the complications she’s had with the employers, such as being caught glancing at a USA Today, in which case her consequence was vacuuming the entire floor with a broken vacuum cleaner. Another instance is when they are called for a meeting because of how “disgusting” the break-room is. Or, my favorite, the fact that basically talking to any other employee is considered “gossip.” Stu, one of the managers began to speak rudely about some of the Haitian immigrants working there.
One of the more interesting things about someone living in poverty is their lack of health. Gail, for instance is paying $9 a pop for estrogen pills. But what can really put you into perspective is a co-worker Marianne, whose boyfriend lost his job as a roofer because he missed so much time after getting a cut on his foot. Furthermore about the health issue, on page 35 when she is now working at Jerry’s she mentions that, “Rising stress levels reflect a new system of ‘management by stress’ in which workers in a variety of industries are being squeezed to extract maximum productivity, to the detriment of their health.”
While working at Jerry’s, Barbara meets a cook from the Czech Republic. I found it really interesting that he isn’t even paid by the management there at Jerry’s, but by the “agent” who shipped him over. He gets about $5 an hour minus a dollar or two for the “agent.”
Barbara then decides to walk to the adjoining building and get a job as a housekeeper. She keeps this job one day, quitting Jerry's and leaving Key West.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Running While Black
Running While Black
By Bob Herbert
I really liked this article from the New York Times. His idea overall is how the Republicans choose to play the race card during this race. The party chooses to "run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually proactive white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates." Also at the start of the race, John McCain's campaign stated "The American president Americans have been waiting for." The made me laugh out loud actually because of how crude the party was assuming that a person running for president was some un-American who decides to burn the Ameircan flag in his fire place during his free time. How Herbeert has written this clearly states what it;s like to be running while blac; exteremely difficult. Reading this actually makes me like Barack Obama a little bit more. Mr. Obama endures all of those outrageous accusations about him with a smile and comes back at McCain with less... What's a good word...? I'm not sure but Barack keeps his smile and his cool, while McCain and the Republicans play the Race Card in a game of uno.
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