Greenwich Conneticuit- a town prized for its wealth and quality of life.Recently labled as one of the richest communities in America, Greenwich is not in need of extra titles. In a place where people drive home to their 8 room mansions in chunky SUV cars people seem pretty satisfied with life. Yet how satisfied will they be when there is not enough gas to heat their houses or fuel their cars?
I suggest that the town seriously looks into environmental solutions to many of these emerging problems. Instead of using money to create a new high school auditorim (something the school really does not need) I suggest they buy solar pannells and wind turbines and other forms of reusable energy.
Solar power is one of the newest and easiest methods to supply energy.
Photovoltaic cells power many of the small calculators and wrist watches in use every day. More complex systems provide electricity to pump water, power communications equipment light homes, and run appliances. Beyond the utility power line, PV is often the lowest-cost means to provide electricity, and almost always simplest and cleanest to operate.
I admit that the avenue does look pretty this season with its glaring shop windows and sparkling trees yet has anyone ever wondered where that energy comes from. Unlike the lower class, who count each penny, each heater etc a few fairy lights on Greenwich Ave seems to be no biggie. Although solar panels might be slightly costly, they pay for themselves in the energy they produce. I advise the Government to put money into making environmental solutions more appealing to the citizens of people.
This concept has already been effective in other towns, like London, who uses solar powered boats and solar heated houses. Greenwich has no excuse for an inability to conform to the ideas of the future and so they should do something now.
link
It is all too obvious that the president is less than original. He has proposed little in new plans to aid our future and has instead chosen to finish what his father started in invading Iraq. It will come to no surprise then that Bush’s economic plan imitates Reagan’s greatly. Here are some of the similarities:
- Both have taken money out of welfare like healthcare and education to provide better “defence”
- Reagan increased domestic security to protect the US from the Russian threat
- Bush put money into domestic security to protect the US from “terrorists”.
Spending more money than it takes in is easy whenever a nation gets into a war. No President has to justify war expenses and a rising deficit when the country is at war. The Bush Administration was able to get us into two wars because of 9/11. The Iraq war is now costing the taxpayers and debt buyers about $2 billion a week.
- Both have lowered taxes
- To appeal to possible voters
- They only really help the rich buissness and upperclass due to the wealfare cuts that enable them.
Although there are many other similarities these are the main two. They focus to aid the country economically; not the people. It seems in many ways that Bush read Reagan’s biography but got bored and left out the last few chapters. He read the positive outcome of Reagan’s policy but did not read the negative. Our economy is already plumeting as we sink ourselves into further and furthe debt. I advise Bush to read his own biography and contemplate his future if he does not change the policy.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/berlau200504150800.asp
It’s good logic that, if you are not succeeding at something, you either try harder or quit. Which alternative you take depends on the value of victory (or cost of defeat) vs. the extra cost; sunk costs don’t matter. When the costs are measured in lives, it’s all the more important that the right decision be made.
With the year almost up and a new year dawning we begin to analyse our last year. We look at our successes and failures with the hope that we can use them to create a pleasant 2007. It is because of this that criticism of the Iraqi War is inevitable. Recently the criticism has escalated. The public has begun to see the facts plastered in newspapers, articles and tv screens. Statistics like death rate, cost, impact have lead many americans to understand that this is not a game where the loser feels bad, this is a war where the loser gets shot.
Although it is all too easy to demand troops be pulled out, this will not satisfy as a solution. If the troops are pulled out then the past years and lives will have been wasted. Just like Vietnam, the country will fall back to its original state, boasting victory. What needs to be proposed is a plan, a plan in which the troops can be removed yet the country still be maintained. Iraq does not need any more war. The past years have left the country in a dilapedated state; and at what cost? This unlike Vietnam is not a battle of sides but a battle for will. If the Iraqis don’t have faith in the country thats “trying to protect them” then what is the point of fighting still.
The Iraqi Study Group has puzzled this question for a while. They have proposed a way to end the war although it is all but efficient. They rely a lot on the will of the Iraqi people something that would be a lot easier at the begining of the war before we killed their people, blew up their houses and stole their oil.
How do we actually get our troops out? According to the Study Committee, the exit lies through embedding them in Iraqi units. The idea is that we train an Iraqi army; it takes over; and then we leave . . . Embedded training troops would be under the command of and at the mercy of this army. Do our trainers share whatever sectarian orientation their Iraqi unit has? Do they participate in revenge killings when the unit they’re embedded in does? Are they somehow able to veto actions we don’t think Iraqi army units should take? How do isolated pockets of American soldiers protect themselves? Maybe there are answers but they’re not in the study group report.
The Iraqi study group seems like a pipe dream. It would work in the Iraq of the past but perhaps not the Iraq of the future. We know that we’ve made mistakes over the past few years but instead of disregarding them let’s use them to make the right decision and formulate a future plan that will actually work.
Link- Fractuals of Change- The problem with Mccaines Plan
This winter our televisions will be plastered in advertisements boasting the newest material necessities: a new I-pod nano, the new Honda car, the newest DVD release. We see these items and begin to feel incomplete without them. We can live without these material comforts yet we feel obliged to acquire them. Yet what about that many can’t live without-food, shelter, education and medical care- the things we take for granted.
Big-screen TVs are blowing out the doors of retailers, but 34 million Americans still live below the poverty line. The US GDP is roaring ahead, but the nation still has the worst child-poverty rate in the industrialized world. link
When we think of poverty, we think of distant third world places like Uganda, India and
Iran. Yet the issue is a lot closer than they think.
America, in fact, never really recovered from the so called “gilded age”. Under the glossy coat which boasts commercial gain, world power and one of the richest nations the foundations of the U.S.A are crumbling away.
Although poverty levels have shrunk over the past years the issue is still present, capable of growing under the right conditions. With American attention being drawn to foreign issues like
Iraq and the hubbub of the holiday season we are forgetting that our nation has yet to be cured.
The poverty rate in 2005 for children under 18 (17.6 percent) remained higher than that of 18-to-64-year-olds (11.1 percent) and that of people 65 and older (10.1 percent)—all were not statistically different from 2004. link
I don’t believe that we should not aid other nations but I think that the President should finish tasks before making new ones. What is the point of destroying another nation and escalating religious and terrorist tension? We have poured billions into this war, money which could have been used to grant a senior medical help, give a school a new computer, give someone a car, and give a drug addict a chance to change through rehab.
The war has become a truth that many have finally awakened to, whether you agree with it or not. The similarities between our stay in Iraq and Vietnam, especially the death total to date, has become nothing more than a striking and complete coincidence that one could find rather eerie. Hopefully, the war will end before anymore similarities may pop up. However, old mistakes seem to be a way for healing the future.
I think that Kayla and I have two very similar stances. She has effectivly proven how the mistakes of Vietnam were not considered in Iraq and how this aided the failure in Iraq. She leaves on a very real note-stating that if we don’t stop to realize what Iraq is becoming there is no hope for the future. We need to learn our lessons well- and stop wasting expensive mistakes on things the past has already proved to be successless.
kayla
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
John Powell
No one should condemn another for making a mistake. We are taught this in school to encourage ourselves to take risks and learn from these chances we take. They main lesson we are taught is that mistakes are not bad; they’re just expensive. We are given this knowledge in the hope that we will learn to economize and avoid them when at all posible.Along with basic ethics we are taught math, history, science etc. so that we can face the world with knowledge. Knowledge that will prevent us from making mistakes. Facts like how to multiply easily, how to speak clearly and most importantly the history of mistakes. We are taught history so we can avoid the mistakes our predecesors already took and use it to construct a better future.How is it then that with facts like the following have no impact on our rulers of today.
Since the war’s start on March 19, 2003 no weapons of mass destruction have been found
Since the war’s start on March 19, 2003 over $346,000,000,000 have been spent
Since the war’s start on March 19, 2003 there have been over 2870 deaths and 21778 casualties
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After America unoccupied Vietnam it became communist
Vietnam’s death toll totalled 2,122,244 and 3,650,946 wounded
Vietnams cost was $5.1bn
They seem ignore the fact that Iraq is starting to resemble Vietnam in many ways. Both wars went through a phase of ambiguity. This was a period in which no one really knew what to do. The war had not made any outstanding progress and yet they still concluded to send in more troops. Both Iraq and Vietnam also faced similar opposition by the citizens whose country was supporting it. Ralleys, marches and protests were used in both to show opposition yet still had little effect.
Iraq has its own individual flaws as well, some that even Vietnam can’t share. For at least in Vietnam America was fighting for an apparent cause: anticommunism. In Iraq, on the other hand, America has no side but is simply fighting for its own democracy and liberty. The ambiguous task of destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction has long since been dismissed. Both oppositions had similar guerilla tactics but at leas those in Vietnam had a name. In Iraq Troops have not been used effectively because there is no apparent task to accomplish. American forces are basically babysitting the country until its leader, some patriotic official with good intentions, arises. Their opposition has responded like any rebellious child would - renouncing false authority and doing anything to stop it.
How is it that we are still at war with Iraq? Even with the knowledge of the failure in Vietnam, and the growing failure that is proven by the statistics of Iraq nothing has been done. Is it today’s culture that has held victory in such high esteem? Why is it that no one can step down and accept defeat anymore? Perhaps if Bush and Blair accept the title of defeat we could finally learn from these mistakes not suffer from them.
The Vietnam War that I saw, first from my seat in Congress and then as secretary of defense, cannot be wrapped in a tidy package and tagged “bad idea.” It was far more complex than that: a mixture of good and evil from which there are many valuable lessons to be learned. Yet the only lesson that seems to have endured is the one that begins and ends with “Don’t go there.” The war in Iraq is not “another Vietnam.” But it could become one if we continue to use Vietnam as a sound bite while ignoring its true lessons. LINK
interesting article– Seeing Bagdad, Thinking Saigon
Equality of oppertunity- the American Ideal. Yet how true is this statement. If we grabbed two familys of diferent ethnicities of the street would we be able to conclude that they had equal oppertunity. The answer to this question would most likely be no. Yet what factors constitute equal oppertunity? Unbias attitudes, persona, location of birth, appearance, intellegence are all known answers yet who would have thought that tax assessment would be worthy of recognition aswell.
Because tax is only based on income the lack of assets plays a particulally strong role in limiting this oppertunity. Assets basically consist of acumilated wealth such as ones house or other possetions. Ethnic minorities tend to have a lesser assets than whites per say, because they have had less time to acumilate them. Many immigrated families have only lived in the country for a short while and have found that even though they have a lot less accessable finance (due to rent, previous unemployment etc) than their neighbor (who has bought a house and can deduct their mortgage from their taxes) they are still giving more to the government because they are getting a slightly higher income.
Among the report’s findings:
- Blacks have more than double the unemployment rate of whites.
- Less than half of blacks own homes, compared with more than three-fourths of whites.
- Black youth are more likely than whites to have poorly trained teachers, live in poverty and not have health insurance.
Other ethnic minorities who may have lived in the country for their lives still find that they are poorer than whites because they have had less inherited assets. The civil rights movement is not old, and the fact that blacks have only had a few centuries to accumilate anything has greatly contributed to the lack of rich black families. Some of the predjudices history has formed are still present today which contribute to the some people’s inability to aquire wealth today. For example real Estaters and job agents tend to favor a white couple than a black couple according to Conley.
There is only one way to aid this problem. Although society can help by being more accepting, it is the governments job to assist its people. If the government would model its tax off other nations like France, who recognize wealth in their taxation aswell, government could help protect ”freedom of oppertunity” and actually do its job for once in preserving
“life, liberty and persuit of happiness” -Thomas Jefferson.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7397962
Why is America so obsessed with explicit material. It is impossible to find a program that doesn’t contain some form of violence, bad language or sexual referances. Yet it is not the majority of the audience but the minority. All too often are the newspapers plastered with criminal offences made by youths. Smoking, drug abuse, and violent attacks are just a few examples.
Most children plug into the world of television long before they enter school: 70% of child-care centers use TV during a typical day. In a year, the average child spends 900 hours in school and nearly 1,023 hours in front of a TV.
Because television plays such a huge part in children’s lives we must question what content is being put on it. Years ago this was not a problem. The sitcoms of the 1950s, although perhaps a tad politically incorrect, posed no worse material than that shown today. The only threat the simple cheesy programs of yesterday posed is that its viewers may end up humming the themetune of the “brady bunch”. Their soppy storylines might even have the phenominal power to encourage children to turn off the television completely and seek out more rewarding activities.
I am not suggesting that we bring back “Leave it to Beaver” or the “Brady Bunch” but instead think about diluting many of todays programs to yesterday’s standards.
How tv effects your child article
Further reading
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~John F. Kennedy
O.k. So the only true way to determine which television extreme is the better is to assess both more thouroughly. We’ll start with anti-censorship.
America should represent freedom. After all, American history has been based off this struggle for freedom and equality. The American history course may have been a lot shorter if America had never strived for freedom from Britain. I am not saying this struggle made a negative impact on America but I am declaring that bringing back censorship to television programs would technically a back-step in America’s conquest to aquire this concept of freedom. If America truely wants to obtain freedom, freedom of speech must be considered aswell.
The 1950s brought an era of television which supressed this freedom. Television producers decided that its viewers would only want to watch programs portraying the American Dream or at least their perception of it. Coontz criticises the lack of realism in the television sit-coms popular to the times. It seems impossible, that anyone could relate to television. There was little portrayal of the ethnic and economic minorities of the time and because they failed to show the “ugly side” of family life even those who weren’t in the two groups previously mentioned had trouble relating. In many ways one could say that the censorship of 1950s television encouraged personal censorship. It encouraged people to keep problems such as alcoholism, abuse etc to themselves because they feared that everyone else had ideal families with no troubles at all. Most people can say that due to this reason censorship over television had a worse effect on kids than television that wasn’t
It is all to easy to criticize the shallowness of 1950s sit-coms. In a nation where its freedom of speech is boasted on television it is almost impossible not to brandish the TV of the 1950s as being naive. The television of the 1950s was indeed conservative. At the time television was fairly new and they had to consider greatly what shows they broadcasted to the public. They tried to portray their idea of the average American family; a family who were living the American dream with little or no real hardships in order to make the shows they were producing acceptable to the majority of viewers. Yet the fact is that this was an oxymoron in itself. The sit-coms of the 1950s created a world of white, upper-class, happy-go-lucky people which did little to display the extreme racial and economical diversity of the time. As we all know media is a powerful weapon and in many ways watching these programs intensified the difference between these classes in the struggle to obtain these TV utopias.
Yet can one say that censorship is a crime? About a hundred years after its creation and fifty-six years after the sit-coms of the 50s were released, television has developed a lot. With over 1000 obtainable channels and the ability to rewind pause and record live programs television is no longer limited to a few programs. If you think of each of those 1000 channels having 30 minute shows for 24 hours each day, there would be a total of 48000 television programs to choose from. If we subtract half of them in considering longer programs, advertisements and repeats it still leaves 24000, a huge number. No longer can American television be restricted to portraying the pleasant upper-class American family. With almost every American family owning at least one TV the television industry is now one of the most powerful in the world. TV producers no longer needs to live up too high standards to satisfy the nations hunger for television. The censorship band is being stretched more and more to supply addictive programming at the cost of what? Can a nation that has strived throughout its history for freedom of expression now condemn TVs. for possessing too much. Modern television has stolen our naivety at what cost. No longer can we apply
“standards included in the Television Code [of 1954] pertaining to the portrayal of crime, horror, sex, and law enforcement, and to the industry’s responsibility to provide “wholesome entertainment”
for children” to the material children are watching today. Should we blame television for exposing our youth to drugs, sex, violence and bad language or should we thank them?
All in all can we truly choose one extreme over the other or is it possible to find a medium between the two?
further reading
