Keep Texans' Civil Liberties

I will be critiquing Carleen’s article “Keep Texans Safe” about a proposition for a bill that would allow sobriety check points to be established all over Texas. I personally think a sobriety check points are a waste of time and money. It might be a little daring to say, but Darwin was right about natural selection. However, Carleen is right that innocent people do die, so I do like the idea of more funding for safe ride programs. If we are going to have sobriety check points we might as well have theft searches every time you leave a store because you MIGHT steal, or drug check points throughout the state costing millions of dollars because you MIGHT have drugs. Sure Texas does have the highest number of drunk driving fatalities out of all 50 states, but by percentage of population South Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Hawaii, and Rhode Island all are way above Texas.  I wish Carleen was right that we could carelessly give up our civil liberties’ in the name of public safety, but sadly politicians take advantage of citizens. George Bush made it legal for the government to view your “financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records which can be searched without your knowledge or consent, provided the government says it's trying to protect against terrorism”. Bush called these bashings of citizen’s civil liberties the “Patriot Act”, and the government is allowed to do much more than just view records, they can search your home, tap your phones, and place you under surveillance without your knowledge or consent. 

So I will keep my civil liberties thank you very much.

Links:

Drunk Driving Statistics

Patriot Act

Wait, Hutchinson For OR Against Earmarking?

Sadly most politicians use anything and everything for personal gain, so it’s really no surprise for Kay Bailey Hutchinson or most politicians to flip flop on earmarking. In recent news Hutchinson made a complete flip on her stance on earmarks, and as of currently she is opposed to it. In my opinion earmarking is never a good thing, just last year on a single bill, the omnibus spending bill, that Obama signed totaling $410 billion, $8.2 billion was spent elsewhere due to 9,000 earmarks added to the bill. In order for a democracy to function properly the people need to be able to have an open and apparent process of law making, yet earmarks seem to go against this basic rule. These so called pork barrel projects use federal money and allocate the money to local spending. Earmarks are a gateway drug to corruption. In a perfect world there is nothing wrong with earmarking but when there are corrupt and self serving individuals doing the earmarking it does more harm than good. To further prove my point, Democratic Representative Jim Oberstar said that earmarks are a way to get money to people who need it when "the state isn't doing its job." How is it okay to ignore the stases obvious problem of “not doing its job” by taking money away from its intended purpose? This article does a good job of pointing out how Hutchison and dare I say Perry are jumping on the band wagon…”come on everyone is doing it.” Luckily for us the band wagon is headed in the right direction. 

Seriously?

I had no idea Martindale was a dry town. I drive through there all the time to get to my in-laws house and I was warned long ago that Martindale was a speed trap and your article explains why that is. I completely agree that having a dry town in this day and age is just silly and is a waste of perfectly good taxable money. Maybe they figure that if they make residence of Martindale drive farther to get drunk than they will have a lot more drunk drivers and therefore more tickets will be administered giving the town more money. The taxes on alcohol in Texas are pretty low, ($2.40spirits, $0.204wine, $0.20beer per gallon) but it would still help out the community a lot. Considering that the residence in Martindale make below the average income for the state of Texas, you would think they would like more of taxes they are spending to go into their community.

What Texas Government Needs

I believe that the only way for anything related to Texas government, politics, and voting to improve Texas MUST raise the education standards.

It is appalling how little Texas high school students know about the local and state government and unless they go to college they will never know. Typically a student in a Texas high schools spends only two weeks learning about Local and State government, this adds up to only 6 hours on this topic in their whole high school education. Speaking only for myself I must admit that fresh out of high school I would never have thought that voting for anyone other than the president of the United States should have any priority in my life. The most important way to get your voice heard is by voting locally for candidates who will represent your opinions and your needs on a national level. How will any change occur if no one understands this basic principle? How do you expect anyone with an infinitesimal amount of knowledge of our political system to go out and vote, to understand what “tricks” the politicians are playing, to understand the importance of taking part in our local and state government.

Raising the bar for high school government classes will increase voting, involvement in government, and political understanding in Texas. The lone star state seems to be all about immediate gratification, so will young citizens educations ever improve? It might not help at this very moment, but by increasing teaching material for high school government courses it will increase awareness of many Texas’s government issues. The younger citizens of the lone star state if better educated would learn where to find reliable, truthful sources on politics and as a result would have a better foundation for making well informed decisions. Texas will have higher educated people interested in government and politics and therefore resulting in more qualified candidates being elected for any government position.

Everyone needs to take part in the political system in order for there to be order and honesty within that system. It behooves candidates to reach out and inform the younger populous in order to get their party additional votes. Being informed and having basic knowledge of politics and government will get rid of narrow minded decisions, will broaden an individual’s involvement, and will help create a healthier political culture.

Dirty Tricks in District 47

I went to the Austin Chronicle’s website to find an informative blog on the political news in Texas, and what I found was a piece written by Richard Whittaker about dirty tricks Paul Workman’s campaign has done to try to insult Valinda Bolton. Richard Whittaker has written for the Austin Chronicle for quite some time. When researching his older articles I found over eighty pages of his writings. He has written about a large variety of things including, reviews, elections, festivals, surveys, education, and politics. As with many of the political bloggers in Austin at the moment Richard Whittaker has been focusing a lot on the upcoming elections. This blog was intended to appeal to anyone in district 47 which includes Austin; I base this on the fact that Workman and Bolton are both candidates for house district 47. I love how Whittaker states that “politicians are trying to recreate reality in the way that fits their world view” and he gives an example of how Paul Workman tries to do this by altering a picture of his opponent to include a picture of Barrack Obama, then in bright red Workman writes that Bolton is an “ultra-liberal”. The funny thing about this fiasco is that under that picture it confirmed that the picture was added because of the perception that Bolton is aligned with Obama. What is next…Whittaker claiming Bolton is a so called ultra-liberal because she wears blue? This blog really points out how low politicians will go to make their opponent look bad, and anyone with any kind of standards would see how dirty this tactic is. Whatever happened to just making yourself look good as a representative of the people? When did politics become trying to slander your opponent better than they can slander you? I would suggest anyone to read this blog post as it is informative and humorous.

Why Won't Perry Sign?

    The article, Perry’s Latest Temper Tantrum, by Brooke Breitling is about the governor refusing to sign an application to receive 830 million dollars for Texas education because he does not want to fork up the required amount to receive these funds. Brooke writes that last year alone Perry received 3.2 billion dollars in stimulus funds and now he is avoiding meeting a measly 830 million dollar requirement to receive the available funds, and to make himself look blameless he points the finger at the department of education. The author wants everyone to know that the department of education has stated that they have guaranteed this money to Texas education, and that Rick Perry’s press release and law suit is just a smoke screen that is wasting time and tax payers’ money.

    Brooke Breitling wants voters to know exactly what Rick Perry has been up to regarding educational funding. I believe that she intends to not only have this article appeal to parents but to everyone.  Who is Brooke Breitling, patriotic journalist or communist saboteur? Only the future will tell, but what we do know that Brooke is an intern at the Texas Observer and her focus is on the stimulus watch in Texas. In this particular article she uses a statement from the Department of Education and the special requirements for Texas to receive additional funds to further prove her point.  She also uses humor comparing politicians to six years olds to clearly demonstrate the antics of Perry and his party to the reader. I believe this article to be accurate, however she does not give any reason as to why Rick Perry would refuse to meet the requirements to receive the stimulus funding, which makes the article very confusing. Also Breitling fails to inform the reader of last year’s requirements for Texas to receive the 3.2 billion dollar stimulus. In my opinion the article was very informative and had some good points that were well supported, but there seemed to be too much researching on my part to understand it.

The Claws are Out!

“If the Horseshoe Fits” is an article written by Richard Whittaker about the bitter feud between Bill White and Rick Perry. Bill White is finally coming at Rick Perry with his claws out by drawing attention to Rick Perry advancing his career through the advancement of his friends careers as unethical and dishonest. He keeps rubbing his friends back and they keep rubbing his…back ;). This article is a must read, it gives great incite to the inner workings of our governor. This article hits on many issues such as Rick Perry’s land holding, rewriting compliance terms on grants making it easier for big businesses, a $9000 a month mansion, avoiding debate, and last but not least his ethics. Hopefully we will see in the near future an actual debate between these two politicians, where we can finally judge for ourselves who is the better governor of Texas.