Critique on James' commentary

I have quite a few number of gay friends. In fact, I used to live with one of them. I do not know if my past experience influenced my opinion towards gay marriage but I am pro gay marriage. I used to discuss about such matters with my gay friends since it was not a common experience back in Korea, which would be reflected in my opinions.

James brings up a few good points for supporting gay marriage in his article. From my past experience (I may not be old enough to talk like this, I guess) love is an emotion that one cannot resist or control. And as far as I know from my friends, being attracted to same sex is not something that they can control as well - they said it seems like it's in their biological gene, which agrees with James' bullet points. Therefore, not allowing gay marriage appears to be suppressing gays' natural emotion and giving them very hard time.

But why is America denying gay marriage? Probably one of the common reasons is that national religioun is Christianity, and the Bible is against homosexuality since it seems to be against the nature of God. Actually, a lot of religions are against homosexuality due to the same reason. However, James pointed out that it would be a violation of religious freedom. It seems contradicting - the states allow religious freedom but disallows love between the same gender since it is said so in the Bible. An interesting thing is that homosexuality is not something that happened recently. It even existed in ancient Rome and Greek as well!

Nevertheless, the only thing I am really considering as a problem in this subject is child problem. I do understand that gays want to marry when they love each other, and have children. Children are either adopted or via surrogacies. The problem comes when these children are grown up and realize that they are not living with real biological female mother but with two biological males. I can guarantee that this would not bring too much positive effects on children. To solve this problem, the only way seems to change everyone's perception on gay, which would require time and a lot of effort.

The budget crisis and the heat wave

Texas is facing a serious budget crisis at the moment, and unfortunately, Texas is not alone. Nationwide, most states are struggling with the budget shortfall. And at the same time, this ridiculous heat is all over the states. Of course, Texas has been always hot during summer sessions but not this bad.

This insane weather reminds me of the time back in Germany. I am not so sure when it was but probably around the freshman year in high school. During that summer, there was only blazing sun up and absolutely no rain for a while. This ended up with around 40,000 people dying due to the heat wave. This is not a different story in Texas at the moment. The only relief is that Texas does have a decent A/C system overall. The problem comes where there are some people who cannot use the A/C system as the others. Texas is holding on to 130 million dollars to help elderly and low-income families for their electricity bills. The government used only $28 million so far, and the lawmakers locked away the money in order to do something with the current budget shortfall.

I do understand that the government needs to cut down their spending and figure out a way to deal with the budget crisis, but I am afraid that holding on to that money would result a similar consequence to 2003 European heat wave. Saving $100 million to risk people’s lives does not seem to be an ideal choice.

Critique on Noah's commentary

I totally agree with the statement from Noah’s article, where it says “it is highly important for our grade-schools to do their part in encouraging and preparing the state’s youth for the rest of their lives.” However, the Noah’s definition of education seems to differ from mine. In his article, he infers that the actual studying with books and papers is more important than other things such as athletics. Here, I have a different perspective. Education is not only about studying books and writing essays but also about finding one’s specialty and interest, and developing it. One’s specialty could be athletics, arts, music, business or anything. Yes, all of these require some paper studying but cutting budgets for such things won’t improve education in Texas. It appears to be hindering the education in Texas.

Instead of destroying the variety choices in education, we should encourage it, so that students can actually find what they want to do and might be more interested. Therefore, we should find another way to cut the budget if it is needed. From my previous post (unfortunately, I was confused with another assignment and wrote a critique on another editorial), I mentioned that the administration eats up half of the budget. Maybe it would be not a bad way to find some budget cut there

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Moreover, he mentioned that motivation is important in the beginning of his article. Here, I am on his side. No motivation will end up with no fruition. Therefore, the Texas government should find a way to help students getting motivated by giving them broader concept of education and encouraging them, not discouraging by cutting budgets on athletics or others - I just wanted to emphasize that education could mean whole lot more than just empty studying.

When the bus costs so much, is it public education?

If we look back into 1900s, the world has changed incredibly. Laptops and iTouches are so common that every owns it now, but who would expect such things back in 1900s? Where do these come from? Natural resources? Partially, yes, but these didn't just pop up from natural resources. Mainly, all the development was achieved through human resources. Now, it comes to the question, "how do we get human resources?" It is not hard to point out that "education" is one of the most important fact.

The governments take care of a lot of things including public services such as education. All of these are done by the government budget, which means the taxes payed by people. The article , "When the bus costs so much, is it public education?" written by Star-Telegram editorial group, criticizes the idea of cutting the budget by putting burden on families who have children. $370 per year may look high or low. But if a family has 3 kids, that is already one grand for the bus per year. Of course, kids do not go to school for one year, which means it's going to go up to ten thousand dollars. It seems like it's not free public education anymore to me. I mean, I payed less than that for my private school back in Korea, which was mostly covered by a company. This problem definitely affects the low income families especially.

The writer gently points out that the voters against the tax raise should think again about who gets affected by the budget cut. He infers that the voters should have supported tax increase. However, I do not agree with his idea of raising tax just for this. Instead of raising taxes, the government should find another way to save some coins, such as reducing the pay for the administration. Some people argued that the administration eats up half of the incoming revenue, and James Veitenheimer gets payed $75000 more per year than the Texas Governor. And they are saying they are short on money so they need to make low income family's life harder. I am so sure that there is another way to reduce the budget.

It seems like the writer tries to convince the people against tax raise by touching the issue of public service, education. Despite the fact that I agree with the idea of not cutting the budget for education, I do not agree with his idea of raising tax.

Texas legislators Vs. Amazon

Where do you buy your textbooks? One of the best places to buy your textbooks would be Amazon.com - easy to find, various types of books in stocks, and cheap compared to regular bookstores. Personally, I've used it only once but my friends seem to use the website pretty often. Amazon doesn't only sell things online but offline as well. The article "Why Texas legislators should reject a special tax exemption for Amazon," written by Ronnie Volkening, talks about the dilemma that Texas legislators is facing.

According to the article, Amazon has operated a large distribution center with a significant amount of tax benefit in Irvine, Texas. They are willing to create 5000 more jobs from 119 jobs if their offer is accepted. The offer seems to be somewhat presumptuous. Amazon wants the legislators to exempt it from the sales tax collection laws.

Ronnie brings out some good points in his article. He points out that if the legislators accept their offer, it would set a bad precedent and harm the reputation of Texas for not being fair. Yes, I totally agree with this. Everyone wants to be special and enjoy benefits. If the legislators says yes to the offer, what about other companies?

Moreover, I like how he tries to convince the audience by repeating 'Texas.' He definitely knows who the audience would be - Texans - and tries to use this fact pretty well, especially when he argues that "Yet here comes an out-of-state company, which already has an unfair competitive advantage over Texas companies, seeking a carve-out that only applies to them."

He ends up his article by saying that the legislators should look at the bigger image, not small profit that might be earned by accepting the offer. It is a very clear, straight forward and convincing article (to me, at least). The fact that he is the president of the Texas Retailer Association tells the readers his credibility.

Texas should ban smoking

I am a heavy smoker. I’ve smoking since I was 16 (I lived in Germany and it was legal to smoke at the age of 16 back then). Smoking has been a problem for everyone, no matter if the person is a smoker or not. Despite all the problems that caused by smoking, it is surprisingly legal everywhere.

While I was going through a few editorials and commentaries with a cigarette on my left hand, the title, “Texas should ban smoking,” came up to me right away – it was quite ironic. The article was written by The Statesman’s editorial board. I was expecting some clever arguments. The writer started his introduction of the article with health issue and then quickly built on further with economic issue to support his idea of banning smoking in public places in Texas.

The writer did not give readers a solid evidence for health issue. He merely claimed that smoking is unhealthy and killed people. There are many other reasons for cause of deaths such as car accidents. Should vehicles be banned as well then? Not very convincing. However, I do totally agree with the idea of smoking being unhealthy – I mean, who doesn’t? Another question came to the next reason that the writer used. He put down the actual number of dollars that can be saved in health care by banning smoking, which was solid evidence apparently. But aren’t there other problems by banning smoking?

He mentioned the economic benefit and it might help balancing the budget without raising taxes. It was so naïve for the writer to neglect the tax revenue. In 2008, Texas’ tobacco tax revenue was $1446 million, and it has been increasing even more recently. (reference)

If a simple arithmetic is done (let’s say once the legislation is passed and tobacco sale has reduced by 3%, and this results over $40 million loss), banning smoking in public places will lose more than it can save in health care. Moreover, passing a legislation cannot just happen. There has to be a good number of reasons, and supports. As we know from the failed attempts to modify the Texas Constitution, reasons are not just enough.

I was not sure who the audience of the article was. Probably, it was aiming for both non-smokers and smokers. From my perspective, this article would fail to convince, especially smokers. It has contradicting and naïve reasons to back up the idea of banning smoking. Maybe suggesting separating non-smoking area and smoking area with some air-curtains would be a better idea.

Hmm.. T-Shirt?

While I was reading through articles in Juanita Jean's, I found this link "YOU NEED THIS THIS SHIRT."

O.o.....