Review of Blog: Budget Sequester

This is a review of the blog Budget Sequester written by Shaneka Hill.

There was a bit of confusion on trying to understand your thoughts on this topic. I wasn’t quite sure what your stand on this was; you stated a few times that the budget sequester has pros and cons; however, you only provided what the negative effects would be with a focus on the impact to the Republican party and its image in the public. After reading your blog I was left with a few questions. What are the pros of the sequester? What does an increase in taxes have to do with initiating the sequester?  Where do you get the facts that you quote in your blog? I would recommend in the future that you explain you reasoning a little more to make it flow together and make it easier for the reader to follow your thoughts.

Another area to focus on in the future is the structure of your blog post. There are several misspelled words such as “Umited States” and there were several “I’s” that were not capitalized. This is an area I struggle with since I’m more used to texting. You might have another person edit your post, if possible. Also be aware of using “this” and it not being clear what you are referring to. For example in the last paragraph you state, “Younger adults and lower/middle income earners tend to be in more support of this decision.” It is not clear what the “this decision” refers to when there is no “decision” mentioned in the previous sentence.

My understanding of the sequester issue its purpose is to force them to take action to make budget cuts on their own instead of taking their time like before. From an article on CNN explaining sequestration they said congress has known about this until 2011 yet they’ve waited until the last minute to take action. The two days mentioned in the article you provided referred to the time congress had to implement their own budget cuts to replace the sequester. A third point to clarify is the issue of taxes; if the sequester is initiated it will not trigger an increase in taxes. However, any deals that the Democrats purpose for a substitute budget cut would include some sort of tax increase.

Overall it seemed like you had more of a neutral stand point on the topic. In an editorial you need to make a stand and make it clear what your point of view is.

 

Be Smart About New Gun Regulations!!

Due to recent tragic mass shootings, there have been multiple proposals to add new regulations on the use and ownership of firearms. Gun-right advocates fear that this will result in arduous limitations on their right to bear arms or even the elimination of the second amendment all together. However, their desire to keep things how they are now is out of the question. Not only has the current gun regulations proven to be ineffective, keeping things as they are would be asking for more tragedies. That said, we must find a balance between public safety and the second amendment rights.  

While there are many ideas being thrown around on this issue there have been a few that are at  the top of the list. Many are arguing for a ban on assault weapons all together believing that with these types of guns off the market it will result in a major reduction of  mass shootings. However, this is not the most effective solution. While there have been plenty of times when assault weapons were used in mass murders, statistics show that high capacity magazines where used more than assault weapons to carry out these horrific actions. Even if one was to use assault weapons to kill people, what really made them effective was the size of the magazine. Taking away assault weapons would not solve the problem or make it harder for one to commit a crime or kill someone. With only 10 or 15 capacity cartridges, future gunman will have to switch magazines multiple times during a shooting, providing an opportunity for civilians to escape or do something to stop them. No matter what we do, crazy people will still get their hands on guns, and we will never be able to completely prevent future mass shootings. If we were to instead put a ban on high capacity magazines for all firearms rather than assault weapons, it would have a greater effect on lessening the number of casualties in future public shootings. While it may not provide an immediate reduction on criminals who obtain their firearms illegally, in cases like the one in Newtown the guns were purchased legally and therefore would of come with smaller magazines under the proposed regulation. A quote from Senator Murphy in a New York Times article sums it up perfectly; “if Lanza had to switch cartridges nine times versus two times there would still be little boys and girls alive in Newtown today.”

 As we move forward, we need to keep in mind that who we are regulating are the supposedly law abiding citizens. Very little of what we change will have little impact on criminal activity as they usually go outside of the system anyway. For those who buy guns legally the regulation that would have the biggest impact would be reducing the capacity of magazines. Whatever we do we need to make sure that these new laws are not too drastic and do not directly affect the second amendment.

 

Review of Immigration: Where to Start?

This is a review of the Blog posted by Caren Lee titled Immigration: Where to Start?

I am a litle confused about the first statemet you made about the borders. Where did you read that illegal immirgrants that are caught don't get sent home? Today, law enforcement has the authority to send aliens back to their home country. According an artical in the Las Angeles Times, the U.S. deported a record breaking number,392,862, of illegal aliens in 2010. Heres the link to the artical http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/06/nation/la-na-illegal-immigration-20101007. The problem is that they just keep coming back.

Another interesting stat from the LA Times article is that illegals crossing the boarders have decreased from 850,000 annually prior to 2005 to roughly 300,000 in recent years. In the research I did for my blog posting reviewing an editorial on immigration, the author stated that the recession had done more to reduce the number of immigrants trying to cross illegally than any bills that congress has passed on border control.
Here is a link to my blog: http://majorityofthepeople.blogspot.com/2013/01/immigration-reform-editorial.html.

However, I do agree with your statement about how unrealistic it would be to have all illegal immigrants in the U.S. to get in line for citizenship. It already takes a long time for many people. If they are already here and settled they would be better off hiding away and staying as illegals rather than paying a lot of money and having to wait years to become citizens.
I also agree with your statement that "even work visas are cumbersome to obtain". As I covered in my editorial review the source of the problem is how the US government distribute the visas between countries. Neighboring countries get the same number of visas as countries in Europe; yet they have 4 times the number of people applying for visas.

Republican Arrogance

From what I could comprehend out of Ann Coulter’s editorial “AmericaNears El Tipping Pointo,” she argues that the ‘whites’ are losing their control over government because the candidates they support are not winning election due to the large amount of Hispanic immigrants that mainly vote democratic. I found her editorial to be nothing more than a discriminating rant with very little information to support her claims.

In the posting she insinuates that because the majority of the Hispanic population is unskilled and uneducated, they are incapable of making an informed decision when picking their candidates.  In her statement, “…if nothing is done to reverse the deluge of unskilled immigrants pouring into the country…” the republic party will continue to lose elections.

She also implies that a large portion of the Hispanic population vote democrat because many of them are dependent on welfare, food stamps, and other government funded programs that the democratic party supports. She states, “That’s a lot of government dependents coming down the pike. No amount of ‘reaching out’ to the Hispanic community, effective ‘message’ or Reagan’s ‘optimism’ is going to turn Mexico’s underclass into Republicans.” This gives the impression that Hispanics in the United States are a lost cause.

The majority of the content in her commentary was full of blatant statements and unsupported statistics that make it appear she is stretching the truth. The tone of her writing gives an impression she feels superior over minorities in general. To me this shows her close mindedness and that she is basing her opinions on limited knowledge and experience.

 I found her arrogance to be so irritating it was difficult to focus on the content of the article. All of this made it even harder to find her work credible and respect her point of view. Her writing style and the content of her work is crude and very one sided, unwilling to be open to any alternative point of view on the topic and lacking any contrasting statement to compare to her perspective.  The article seems to be a lot of trying to find where to lay the blame for the Republican Party’s loss of the presidential election rather than really exploring the issues within the party.

Immigration Reform Editorial

I recently read an interesting editorial in the new york times, "Reforming Immigration for Good" by Mae M. Ngai. In the article Ngai expresses his take on Obama plan to deal with immigration; allowing some 11 million immigrants citizenship in exchange for tougher border control. While he agrees with Obama's proposed plan to provide easier access to citizenship for immigrants to the United States; he argues that the rest of the plan will not help solve the problem.

Ngai agrues that many of these ideas have already been tried and have failed in the past and will do so again. For example spending billions of dollars on strengthening boarder control only reduced illegal immigration but did not stop it entirely. As Ngai puts it, border control made for "good politics" misleading the general population into thinking it was making a difference. When in fact "...only the Great Recession was able to reduce the net flow of Mexican illegal immigration to effectively zero."

Ngai states the solution to the problem isn't in strengthening border control but rather in how we distribute visas between immigrants from different countries. The author believes we should change the way we allocate visas based on the ideas "introduced by Senator Philip A. Hart, a Michigan Democrat, in the early 1960s." Hart's proposal of distributing the visas was based on the populations of the countries and the percentage of their population that want to immigrate.

I believe the purpose Ngai's argument was to better inform policy makers and voters on the inadequacies of the current system in place today. 

I agree with the author's logic in why he believes the distribution of visas is the source of the problem and how taking the "flexibility and fairness" from Hart's original plan and applying it to today's world could provide a better outcome than what is currently in place today and what Obama has proposed for immigration "reform". It seems ridiculous to me that small countries in Europe are given the same number of visas as Mexico or China where the number of people allowed to immigrate compared to their total population is a mere fraction of a percent.

Politics and me

I don't have any political experiance or any strong views on politics. I'm taking the class because I need a government credit. I also hope to gain more knowledge on how our government works and to formulate my own political views. I think its important as I become an adult to take an active role in making sure our system works. When I vote for the first time I want to be able to make my decisions knowing what is important and what to look for in a candidate.
I find politics to be themost difficult and boring above all other social studies classes. I much prefer to study world cultures rather than politics. However, I'm intrested in findng out how politics influences the culture of the United States and how the culture influences politics.