250 Syrian kids killed by Syria's own government

I read an article about 250 kids in Syria who were tortured, sexually abused, and then killed.  The people in charge of this is Syria’s own government officials!  This is so wrong.  The reason the kids were killed was because they said the kids could be a future threat, “grow into a demonstrator”.   First off, killing anyone is wrong. Second, killing kids just makes it worse because they are innocent.  Third, they didn’t even kill them for a good reason.  They killed them thinking they could be a future threat.  How would they ever know if the kids were going got be a threat!?  They had no actual grounds to even think that.

Should America step in?  This is a difficult question, because, as you can obviously see, I am completely against having anyone be killed, specially for such ridiculous reasons, and them being children.  At the same time, is it are place to step in and tell another country, who is not even interfering with us, what to do and how to run their government?  But it does effect us even though we are not a part of their country.  Realistically America isn’t going to do anything about it, we’ll sit back and let “small” stuff like this slide on by.  I don’t know what we could do about it.  The people of Syria are already trying to get ride of President Bashar al Assad, so us stepping into Syria and trying to get rid of him too probably wouldn’t help.  They have their own rules.  Im not sure what role we play in this and what we could do if we did step in.  It makes me upset that this would happen to kids, really upset, but also I know that this is happening everywhere, just not to such extremes, and we can’t help everyone that this is happening to.  But sense this is an extreme case, and shows bad conduct on their country, I think we should do something about it.  What we would do, I don’t exactly know.  There is, to a certain extent, a line that we shouldn’t cross when getting to involved in areas and problems that are not our own.  Is it our place to step in?  Im not sure.  I would want to help them, I would like to know what we could realistically do about it because its important and this type of stuff shouldn't be happening.

In place of Missed one in Blog 3... about Bush-era tax cuts control debate

I read an article today about Bush-era tax cuts.  It was a debate between the Republicans and the Democrats about whether there should be tax cuts on the rich.  The tax cut was passed by George Bush when he was President.  The question was "whether to maintain the reduced tax rates for the wealthy Americans".  The Democrats  supported the idea of entitlement to all and supported high taxes on the rich.  The Republicans supported the idea that the rich should have a tax cut.  Their view behind this is, since its the wealthy (and wealthy corporations) that have the money and help keep our economy going, we should try to stimulate the economy by giving them a break by reducing their taxes.  Republicans want the  tax cuts on the rich to be on a  permanent basis.  They also argued that "spending, not revenue, is the root of the government's deficit problem."
On this issue, I stand mostly with the Republicans.  I agree with the democrats in that having higher taxes on the rich makes a difference with helping reduce our dept.  The article said that the upper income households "account for about $700 billion of the total $4 trillion impact that the Bush tax law would have if it were extended for the next 10 years".  I agree that it is good to tax the rich, but at the same time I think they could use a little slack because we shouldn't rely only on them for getting us out of debt, we should spend less and have a balanced budget.  It's not that I'm in favor of the rich but I think a much bigger problem is the way we, as a country and individually, spend on things that aren't necessary.  In America we are given so much that we feel we need it all, and this way of living is bad.  I think living more simply would make just as much of a difference as getting money to pay off our debt from taxes on the rich.  So instead of just focusing on taxes, I believe we should couple it with creating a budget cut.

Article

I read a newspaper article yesterday in THE FRESNO BEE called “Scalia surprises in conviction overturns”.  The article talks about Scalia, a supreme court member, who is very conservative and is not afraid to voice his opinions.  He believes in going strictly along with what the constitution says.  He insists “on following the ‘original’ constitution”.  An example of how he views the constitution is this: “The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution say the ‘accused shall enjoy the right to challenge actual witnesses, but also the right to bare testimony from all those ‘witnesses’ against him.’  To Scalia, this clause not only gives defendants the right to challenge actual ‘witnesses’ who did not or cannot testify in court.  He takes this view even if the witness is dead.”

There is more to the article of other examples and viewpoints and also more detail on Scalia’s Conservative viewpoint, but I’m now just going to share what I thought about the newspaper article.  When I first read the article I didn’t agree with Scalia’s view.  For me, I focused more on the fact of how when the constitution was first written the framers wrote it loosely because they didn’t know what sort of things the future people of America, living under the constitution, would face.  The Constitution can be easily debated over and sometimes the meaning is not clear.  And then there comes around issues such as abortion, and I wonder, how does that issue fit into the constitution?  Since abortion wasn’t an issue during the time of the framers its not included in the constitution, so if we made decisions only off of the constitution then where would abortion fit in because they didn’t write about it “originally”?  The judicial branch interpreted the constitution under the idea of right to privacy, they say that abortion falls under a “person’s right”.  With issues like this I think its right for the judicial branch to decide where these issues stand because its not found in the constitution.  I find it ok that the judicial branch interprets the constitution because there are some things you cant find in the constitution.  The constitution is the highest form of law and all other laws come under it, so judicial branch needs to examine the law before the judicial branch can make a decision on cases.  Cases should be compared to what the constitution says, ideas in it, since it is the highest form of law.  If there is something that isn’t really a topic in the constitution then the legislative branch should see if its big enough of a deal and make an amendment to the constitution.

SLO upgrading

SLO city counsel last week was deciding whether or not to continue to upgrade two streets in downtown SLO.  The initial price they thought would be around $11,000 but it grew to now cost $786,000!  That is waaaay to expensive.  I personally think that is too much money to be spent on just redoing and fixing up two blocks of downtown SLO.  I don't think that so much money should be spent on fixing up any part of downtown. Really downtown SLO doesn't need much repairing, In my opinion downtown SLO looked great, especially to other towns like parts in LA.  LA could use some cleaning up but SLO, not so much, at  least not for that much money.  If it was for earthquake retrofitting then thats a different story, but if its just for looks then I don't think the money would be worth it.  The article was not very clear on what the "improvements" were for, but my argument is for if its only for looks.  If its for safety precautions, then thats different, but either way I think spending that such money should be questioned on whether or not it should be used.

Italy

Italy is in a two year old debt crisis.  Investors are loosing faith in Italy's bond agreement and are uncertain whether or not to invest in Italy.  Italy needs help and is trying to get other countries into their bond agreement so they can get back up on their feet again.  The problem is no one really believes that they will end up paying the initial amount back, even though Italy is 3rd in production in Europe.
 Recently its Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, resigned from his position.  When he resigned he wanted parliament to have austerity measures, cuts to welfare, ect.  I agree with his idea about cutting down on how much the public of Italy and also the government of Italy spends.  The place they are at right now in the economy, the way they are only heading more downhill shows that if they don't act now, if they don't stop spending so much money, then they will never get out of debt and will have to be bailed out by the other parts of Europe.  I think that is not fair to the rest of Europe because everyone should be in charge of themselves, they shouldn't have to be in charge of paying for Italy's debt, they should just be in charge of their own country.  I do agree though that in situations like this where it is so extreme that they should get help from other countries.

food stamps

Today at Trick or Treat so Others Can Eat, one of the guys in the houses we went to asked us what we thought about food stamps.  He didn't have any food to give to us to put in our bags and jokingly said that if we have extra we should give some to him.  Thats when he asked us about what we thought about food stamps.  He started talking more about how it seems a lot of people are using food stamps, and how that doesn't make sense to him because everyone he knows is employed, and all his friends agree that everyone they know is also employed.  First off I thought, well yeah everyone you know is employed, your friends are probably all your coworkers.  I know that sounds judgmental, but the the point he was arguing off of just didn't seem very valid to me because of that.  When he asked me and Patrick what we thought about food stamps we both didn't really know what to say and told him that we didn't know much about food stamps.  So, because I don't know much about food stamps, I decided to look it up once I came home.  

  Pretty much anyone can apply for food stamps.  To receive them, you have to meet certain requirements.  First thing has to do with how much you own, you cant have more than $2,000 in resources, but that changes if you have someone over 60 living in your house, then it turns to $3,000.  Also, not everything you own counts, for example, your house and land do not count.  You also need to meet a certain income limit.  Income limits vary by how many people live in the house, and this changes every year.

Now knowing a little more about food stamps, I can somewhat answer the man's question about what I think of them.  As far as I can see, I think its good that there are food stamps because, it seems to me, those people might end up going hungry without them.  But I also heard that food stamps don't get you just any type of food, there is a limit on what you can use them for, and mainly its just junk food (at least thats what I heard).  Its good that they will have food in their stomachs, but what about malnutrition?  Thats a different topic though.  As far as I can see, I don't really see how food stamps could be abused because you have to meet a requirement in order to use them, so the people using them must need them.

Federal Funding- Where do our taxes go? p.301

       Looking at the chart on page 301 in the textbook, I found it interesting that the amount of our taxes going towards Interest on Public Debt decreased from 31.1% in 1800 to 8.6% in 2008.  I would think that it would be the opposite due to that our public debt is now over 10 trillion dollars.  Now we aren't paying as much attention to paying off our debt as much as before, but I think it should become more of a priority to do so.  The reason, it seems to me, why our taxes aren't focused on paying our interest on debt is because now we pay for other things too, such as social security.  The government wasn't in charge of taking care of social security and other things before, so there is a more range in what we need to cover.

       I know I have talked on the topic of debt and taxes already, but when I read this I found it really interesting and felt like discussing the chart.  Some other aspects of the chart other then the interest on public debt, is how much is put into our military, veterans benefits and other things.   What stood out to me was the differences in percentages of what taxes went into.  In the 1800's and 1900's there was no need to pay for health, social security and public welfare because these things weren't taken care of by the government in those days.  Now they are, so our taxes have to become more split between everything.  Education, scientific and medical research, transportation, and foreign aid are all now in the picture too.  This is because now we have the means to do these things, which before we didn't.  Its good that our taxes go to these things, which all together add to about 56% of our taxes.  But, as more of our taxes go to these things, our percent for the amount of taxes we have going to interest on our public debt decreases.  I think that our taxes going towards paying off our public debts should be increased so that we can get out of debt sooner, if we ever do get out.