Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Comment on a colleague’s work #1

The Lone Star State blog makes a good point in their post, “Census is the answer for the prays of How to get the government to allocate money to the states.” They claim that the census is an important factor, the most important factor, to come up with a reasonable way to allocate, or give, money to each state. The census allows the government to count the population and make a assessment on how much money each state should get according how many people it is to cover.

As The Lone Star State blog says, this money would go towards building and up keeping highways and schools and improve medical care. We have a census every 10 years so that as population changes the government can change in order to accommodate these changes.

The Lone Star State blog is right in saying that ideally the census is great, but in actuality it falls short due to the fact that people don’t turn in their census papers and therefore many people go uncounted. These uncounted people not only skew our numbers but they skew them enough to effect the money the state gets. As they said, Travis County is behind the nations average, and it is right to assume a lot of this has to do with the fact that there are a large number of college students. College students, especially freshmen and sophomores, go back home during breaks and aren’t there all year long. They are also more preoccupied with school and don’t care enough to turn their papers in. There are also a lot of homeless people that are unaccounted for, and illegal immigrants who fear being exported.

Nationwide we miss a large number of people; we just need to try our best to find other ways to count as many people as we can. Everyone needs to be aware of this issue and to understand that the government just wants to count us for our own benefit.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Original editorial or commentary #1

Perry to Republicans: "Just say no"
Me to Perry: "Go Fuck yourself"

Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry at a three-day Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans tells GOP presidential candidates to just say no to President Barack Obama and no to anything that makes Washington relevant to the American People.

Now there's a true leader for you, just say NO. Obviously he learned that from Nancy Regan but what he failed to realize is that she was talking about drugs and not governing the country. The GOP is lost in a sea of democracy without a captain. The GOP needs to realize that to get anything done, you first have to have an idea and then you need to actually need to participate in governing all the people and not merely a select few. They also need to realize that they lost this past presidential election because the majority said so, and due to the fact that the first eight years of this decade, while a Republican was in office, they lied cheated and deceived the people of this country, so why should we believe they have an answer for anything when all they know is "No".

Its time we put a Democrat back in office as Texas Governor. According to the USAToday 2008 presidential election results. Barack Obama received over a million more votes than Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. If Texans keep that trend up in 2012, we'll have a Democrat back in office. First time since Carter in 1976.

Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas blog

Off the Kuff blogger Charles Kuffner discusses the current debates surrounding the new health care and how Texas is being effected by it in his post: More arguing over health care costs. The issue at hand is how much this health care reform is going to sot us Texans. Tom Suehs estimated that it’s going to cost Texans more than $27 billion. That’s more than $20 billion that the expected cost fro all the states combined. That number is outrageously high and much higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate by Henry Waxman of $1.4 billion. Suehs says that Texas has “a higher population of uninsured than most states have total population.”

Kuffner says that it is pretty early to begin to predict the budget when it won’t even begin until another five years from now and it is something that is going to be going for about 15 yrs. Plans can change, there are likely to be changes in how our country is going to be dealing some of the costs ten years down the road or so. Kuffner even argees that’s it’s possible for Medicaid to have been reversed by then.

Kuffner say that the cost is high and Texans are going to have to pay but what we’re paying for is health. This will allow citizens to be healthier and live a longer and better life. It is definitely something worth paying for.

Kuffner’s last agreement about these costs is that this is even thought the states haven’t been the ones paying for these health expenses someone else has been paying. This is just going to give a lot more people coverage and it will be spreading out the expenses and burdens much more equally. This is a good thing and it is much needed according to Kuffner.

Kuffner’s right, there is no way to predict how much it is going to cost right now but is most likely not going to be as much as Suehs is estimating. It is gong to bring coverage to many more people and it is something that is worth the cost. We need to have health care, and we need to take care of that. His reasoning is simple and hard to argue with.

Texans have the right to know what this health care is going to cost them and what it’s going to do for them. This is going to provide better and healthier lives for them and everyone should know and understand what they’re paying.