Matt's Current Event

I know you all have probably been really looking forward to hearing my current event last week (Yeah, probably). But I was unable to present it due to unfortunate conflicts. So I apologize to those who were deeply upset with the delay of my presentation. I did it today if it makes you feel any better. And as you can probably tell, my article is "old". If you don't like it, there's always another more current current event you can respond to. You have freedom of choice, so that's nice.

My article was about how Russia is important for future foreign policies for the U.S. President Obama has goals of stopping Iran's nuclear program, stopping the situation in Syria, and reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia is an important factor if these goals are to be achieved or not. The U.S. and Russia did sign a pact two years ago to reduce each side's number of nuclear arms. The Russian President at the time was Dmitry Medvedev, and now it is Vladimir Putin.
The article also mentioned that China has been a problem for the U.N. when they tried to place sanctions on Iran. They just found ways to trade with them without violating the sanctions. China is also Iran's top trading partner and they have many economic and security reasons to be doing this. China, along with Russia, has also rejected measures that would have dealt diplomatic blows to Syria. Experts have said that if Russia continues to back Syria, it will hurt them in the long run in that area. They have also said that Russia would not like to see a "nuclear Iran".
(Here's the article --> http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/05/16/putins-russia-is-pivotal-for-future-us-foreign-policy)
My question is: Do you think Russia will eventually go along with the U.N.'s actions and what should the U.S. do to sort of nudge them in that direction?

Kevin's Current Event

Massacre in Syria In February 1994, a crowded marketplace in Bosnia was attacked by a 120mm mortar, killing 68 and wounding over 200 others. In July 1995, over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were gathered and executed. Yet it wasn't until a third attack by Bosnian Serbs in August 1995, which used mortars again, that killed another 37 did NATO get involved and end the conflict. Last Friday, the Syrian government launched mortars at civilian homes and had people with knives execute people who survived the bombing. Over 100 people died, a third of which were children. People around the world are outraged that the world is letting the Syrian government continue these killings, as the death toll climbs over 10,000. One of the main reasons that the UN and NATO won't get involved is that Russia's last middle-eastern ally is Syria, and the last time the UN got involved, in Libya, there was a total regime change. Russia would lose a lot of money in weapons sales if the Syrian government is overthrown. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/29/world/meast/syria-sarajevo-and-srebrenica/index.html?iref=allsearch My probing question is: Do you think US involvement in Syria fits into the "Just War Theory"? If not, what foreign policy tool should be used to handle the situation?

Greg's Current Event

My current event was about the nuclear threat opposed by Iran and Pakistan. United States poll states that American citizens are in fear of a nuclear attack from Iran and Pakistan, but the United States government ensures that the real nuclear threat is not on being on American soil; instead on ally countries surrounding the opposed countries. The United States and Isreal are currently concerned of stablizing Pakistan and Iran so that the countries will not go into a corrupted state and use nuclear weapons while avoiding war and other countries to aquire nuclear weapons in case for defense of Iran and Pakistan.
Article:  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/24/are_we_focusing_on_the_wrong_nuclear_threat
Question: Do you think it is necessary for the United States to be involved with the Middle Easts nuclear threat on allies? Is it supported by the Just War Theory?

Kayla's Current Event

My current event was on if a war in Iran would be justifiable. The article explains a recent accusation made by U.S. that Iran was planning to assassinate a U.S. ambassador. Iran denied the allegations but this added fuel to the already started fire. The U.S. fears Iran's nuclear power as it could be very dangerous and unpredictable. Critics of the idea about going to war say that it is not justifiable. They think the U.S. should try nonmilitary action such as diplomacy, sanctions, or covert operations. They also argue that we would lose the war and it would hurt the economy.
Article: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136917/matthew-kroenig/time-to-attack-iran
Question: Do you think the war in Iran is justifiable or should the U.S. try to use different nonmilitary actions?

Kailey's Current Event

Title: A New Era in U.S. Foreign Policy 
By: Fareed Zakaria 


http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/23/a-new-era-in-u-s-foreign-policy/


In this article, it talks about how the neoconservatives,(someone presented as a conservative but actually favors liberal ideas) were upset with how Obama handled things in Libya. Creating two new models of the foreign policy. One being, that there has to be a local alliance committed to the same goals. The other being, that the burden is being shared so that the U.S. doesn't get left owing tons of money.

Do you guys think that we should add these two models to the foreign policy or keep it the way that it is?

Alyssa's Current Event

Title: White House: Middle class jobs are trickling back
By: Annalyn Censky
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/26/news/economy/middle-class-jobs/index.htm

In the article that I read it discussed the U.S economy and how more jobs are being created. The American economy lost 4.5 million jobs in President George W. Bush's last year in office. When Obama took office the economy the economy still sunk loosing another 4.3 million jobs. Although  the economy is still bad it is slowly improving, as of March the economy has gained back 3.6 million job My probing question is, do you feel  that the economy is improving?  Is so why? If not why not?

Marcus Altman's Current Event

My current event was about how job rates have been on the rise, again, in the last few weeks. Many experts on the economy have said that 2012 will be inconsistent. Although one recent week had the largest week-to-week jump since April of 2011, experts predict that unemployment rates will go down for next month.

Probing Question: Do you feel that studying employment rates in small time periods is important, or is the only important statistic the yearly employment rate?

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/26/news/economy/unemployment-benefits/index.htm?iid=SF_E_River

Laura Young's Current Event: The Danger of Twitter, Facebook politics

I read an article that talks about how social media is important, but can be a bad thing.  The things we have gained from media are that it has created a world where people can easily find information about what it going on and that people can research complicated ideas.  However, politicians are now making decisions based on what they think the public wants to hear.  The article says, "politicians aren't voting their conscience, they're voting to placate blog commenters, and that's no way to run government."  Also, when people are putting things in the media, they are sometimes twisting the words of the politicians.  The example I gave in class was that if a politician says a program should not get fundimg anymore, it can be twisted slightly to say that the politician is trying to eliminate that program.  The article says that everyone involved in the political process should make sure media is being used for the benefit.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/24/opinion/donehue-social-media-politics/index.html

My probing question: Do you think there is a way to make sure that media is being used effectively?  If yes, what do you think can be done? If no, why do you think this and also do you think there may be something in the future that can be done?

Crystal's Current Event About the U.S. Economy

In the United States, the corporate profits have hit record levels, but our economy isn't getting much better. Only ten times have corporate profits exceeded 13% since the beginning of economy records. This means that the higher percent of corporate profits, the lower the unemployment rate is. Recently the corporate profits have dropped to 8.6%, which gives way to a higher unemployment rate.
Some reasons why our economy hasn't been as prosperous as it should be would be due to holding cash and stock destruction. Holding cash is when financial institutions haven't been lending money due to fear of investments in new products and viewing of other countries economies failing. One reason that the article states as a part of the destruction of our stock market was high frequencing trading. High frequency trading is when major wall street stock holders find potential inefficiencies in stock prices, and then they trade to prosper from these inefficiencies.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/business/finance/x987650949/Why-company-profits-aren-t-creating-economic-gains?zc_p=2

Probing Question: In your own opinion, what do you think the government can do to make our economy better in the next five years?

Michaela's Current Event

Title:Obama's Buffett Rule

The article i read talked about Obama’s tax-proposal as part of his re-election campaign and how it would affect citizens of the United States, as well as different opinions on the proposal.This proposal (the Buffet Rule) was named after Warren Buffett, a wealthy american investor who publicly stated that he disagreed with the fact that the rich pay a lower percentage of taxes on their annual income than the middle class do.Obama’s Buffet Rule would specifically target anyone who has an annual income of over $1 million and says that they should pay at least 30% in replacement of the AMT. If this law is put into effect, it is said to raise $47 billion.

In the past, the AMT also known as the Alternative Minimum Tax has been reformed and changed many times for many different reasons, but in this case president Obama is looking to reform this tax in order to level out the playing field between wealthy and middle class citizens. He recently stated "When it comes to paying down the deficit and investing in our future, should we ask middle-class Americans to pay even more at a time when their budgets are already stretched to the breaking point? Or should we ask some of the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share?"

There is some controversy over this tax reform and many say it will not advance because $47 billion won't reduce federal deficits at all. One of the critics even argues that a tax reform done right won't require a buffet rule.

Probing Question: Do you think the Buffet Rule would help our economy? Why or why not?

Link:http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/09/pf/taxes/buffett-rule/index.htm?iid=Lead

Allie's Current Event

Title: Obama Signs Bill to Help Companies Go Public
Source: CNN Money
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/05/smallbusiness/ipo-bill/index.htm?iid=SF_E_River

The topic of the article was about President Obama's recent act of signing into law a bill that is intended to make it easier for companies to come publicly traded through allowing audits to be bypassed and requiring disclosures for investors.  The new bill is called Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “This bill is far from perfect, but it’s a good bill”.  Unfortunately the majority of all consumer groups disagree with this new bill. Some of the controversy relates to the fact that the bill disregards the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). SEC enforces all size, new, business to hold an Initial Public Offering (IPO) - where the first sale of stock is sold to other companies. This new bill is accused with the potential of failed IPOs and investor fraud because of the advertisement online. However, Obama disagrees and says: “For start-up businesses, this bill is a game changer. Because of this bill, startups and small businesses will have access to a bigger pool of investors”.

Probing Question: What type of businesses do you think will benefit from this newly passed bill, Jumpstart Our Business Startups? 

Sydney's Current Event

Title: Unemployment Rate: How Low Can it Go?

Scource: CNN Money

Article: http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/04/news/economy/unemployment-rate/index.htm

In this article, it discusses the two opposing views of if the unemployment rate will ever return to its normal rate at about 5%. Back in 2008, the American Economy took a sudden dive into what we now call "the Great Recession." Stock Markets around the world were effected by this, the housing market went down, and the unemployment rate soared from 5% to 10%. In February of this year, the rate decreased 8.3%. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke believes that the sudden rise in the unemployment rate was only due to the regular business cycle, and that by 2014, the rate will return to its normal numbers. On the other hand, Nobel Prize winning economist Edmund Phelps believes that due to permanent shifts in the job market, the return to a 5% unemployment rate is a "pipe-dream."

Based on the two viewpoints, do you think that the unemployment rate will return to its normal 5%, or do you think it will stay up at 8.3%?

Bobby's Current Event

There is No Student Loan Crisis

http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/30/news/economy/student-loans/index.htm?iid=SF_E_LN

This article talks about how the student loan "crisis" is really just a myth. There is no denying that the amount of student debt has gone up in the past few years however it is not and economic disaster like some make it out to be. Since 2007 student loans have increased from $600 billion to over $1 trillion. Also the amount of undergraduate students have risen from 19 million in 2007 to 22 million in 2010. This increase in students has had a great effect on the amount of student loans which explains the large jump in overall debt. Individuals' debt was averaged at $27,200 per student for the 2010-2011 school year. This may seem like a high average but only 10% of borrowers owe more than $45,000 this large outlier has brought the average way up. About 90% of students owe less than $31,000. Most Students are also able to pay there debt after graduation. In 2009 the default rate on student loans is only 8.8% most of which comes from for-profit schools whose default rate is 15% nationwide. Because of this, the government has begun to place new rules and schools with high default rates can loose federal loan programs.

My probing question is how do you feel about college debt? Does it worry you or do you think that it will be manageable?

Alexis's Current Event

If Only Palin Had Run...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/opinion/stanley-sarah-palin/index.html

This article was about the current running for president. The author believes that if Sarah Palin was in this election then she would have a fighting chance. Sarah Palin was said to know that faith should have a limited role in politics and that she would attract low-income voters, women and younger voters. Most of Romney's votes were from mid-old age males who were comfortable in their finances.

"Polls suggest that many voters agree with Romney's approach to the economy but think he lacks empathy for the struggles facing the middle-class. Were she in the race, you can bet your bottom dollar that Palin wouldn't score so low on compassion and authenticity." - Timothy Stanley, author of article

Romney is an American business man and politician and is said to be a money elitism which means he believes the country should be run by a group of people with a decent amount of money. Santorum is an American Republican politician and has made gaffes, or social mistakes. The article states that Palin has the reputation necessary to break out of the Republican Party's demographic prison.

What do you think? Should Sarah Palin have run for president? Why or why not?

Jurn's Current Event - Teen Unemployment

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/03/15/high-teen-unemployment-could-hurt-future-job-growth

The percent of teen unemployment has risen from 23.2% to 23.8% with an overall unemployment rate at 8.3% in America. The amount of teen unemployment, through historical analysis, has shown to be increasing. Before the 2000's and in the mid 2000'sthe teen unemployment rate was below 15%. During the mid 2000's the rate was between 14-18%. Unemployment in teens is a problem because it reflects our economic issues on a larger scale. It also reflects a future job opportunities. First time jobs for teens teach skills for having and maintaining a job. A 1995 study showed that teens who worked 20 hours a week for 6-9 years earned annually 11% more than those who did not. One way America is trying to tackle this issue is through lowering minimum wage.

What are possible factors to teen unemployment? (Possible reasons as to why teens do not have jobs)

Trevor's Current Event

Article: Report: Facebook bought 750 patents from IBM

Source: CNN

Recently Facebook had stolen patents from Yahoo and is currently being sued. To stay away from being sued Facebook decided to buy patents for a semantic social network from IBM. With buying these they have been able to keep a "stockpile" and this discourages other social networks from rising up.

URL:http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/23/tech/social-media/facebook-ibm-patents/index.html

Question: Do you believe that Facebook is rising up, and will soon become the only social network that people visit. A legal "Monopoly"? why?

Alex's Current Event 3/23/12

Sorry for the lateness,

To sum up from earlier, Smart Drive is a company that makes technology for cars that help their customers (mostly transportation companies) cut down on cost and improve their driving skills and time. Smart Drive is claiming that DriveCam illegally stole their patents and charged them yesterday with patent infringement.

URL: http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20120322006104/en/Smartdrive/Drivecam/Event-Video-Recorders

Probing Question:

Do you think that technology has helped people to infringe on patents and in the future, will it be any worse as our digital age advances?

Article: A Groupon Alternative Aims to Offer Small Businesses a Better Deal

Source: New York Times

Constant Contact, an online business that has been around for over 14 years and specializes in serving small businesses, has recently released a new product called SaveLocal. SaveLocal is kind of a playoff of the popular website Groupon on which people buy coupon for group discount rates. During an interview with the chief executive of Constant Contact, the new service of SaveLocal was described as coupon-based deal marketing. This coupon based deal marketing was said to be very beneficial to the economy because it promoted consumerism, but also let the businesses control the price of their coupons to ensure that they were not losing money off of it. Also during this interview, it was made clear that Constant Contact had interviewed people about their experiences with Groupon in order to use their feedback and criticism to make SaveLocal the better version of Groupon. This way, SaveLocal would be able to compete with Groupon in the market. As we learned in class, competition is good for the consumers because it allows for lower prices due to the companies attempt to make their products better and more affordable. Also, competition between businesses ensures that there are no monopolies, when one business is in charge of everything in has a particular service.

As I said during my presentation, competition between businesses is good for the CONSUMERS because it allows for lower prices due to the companies attempt to make their products better and more affordable. Do you think that competition between businesses is good for the ECONOMY as well as the consumer? Why or why not?

Is Google’s new search site illegal?

Google is a very popular search engine. Recently, Google created a new search engine that gathers information from Google+, a social media site similar to that of Facebook. But the problem lies not with the creation of the new site, but with how it searches.

This new site, titled, Search Plus Your World, is Google's latest innovation. The site is designed to filter the results that it gives you so that it fits exactly what you are searching for. The problem, however, is that Google is only gathering information from Google+. That means if you search a persons name, you will not find their Facebook profile, Twitter account, or any other website that links that person to a social media website. This all seems fine to an average person, but Google+'s main competitors (Facebook, Twitter, ect.) are not happy with this at all. They feel that Google is essentially monopolizing the search engine industry and is preventing information from such sites to be shown to the masses. The only way that a Facebook or Twitter account could be found using this new search site would be if those companies were to join forces with Google+ (Horizontal integration (Brownie points?)).

A quote from comScore states, “Is Google a monopoly? With control of two-thirds of the U.S. search market, it is legally within the realm.” With this said, Google may be defined as a monopoly in this particular situation. The question is , however, whether this can be definitively proven in a court of law.

More information can be found here:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/18/technology/google_search/index.htm

My question to you is: Because Google is such a popular search engine, do you think that the site could actually be deemed a monopoly? If so, what do you think would come of the site?

Should Capitalism Play A Role In Democracy?

Article Title: Sean Parker and Al Gore discuss 'Occupy' Democracy' and the 'hacking' of U.S. politics at South by Southwest

Author: Melissa Bell

Website: www.washingtonpost.com

My current event was about how Al Gore and Napster co-founder Sean Parker believe that big businesses and corporations play too large of a role in the democratic process. Many thing that politicians, especially presidential candidates, are spending too much money on advertising and not on major political decisions, which leads people to believe that our democratic system is corrupted. Some politicians will spend any amount of money to get a vote, and Parker and Gore discussed how to try and remove money from the election process. A new website has emerged called Votizen, which tries to bring candidates and voters closer and spread more information without the use of advertisement or the complications of money. A Supreme Court case called Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission occurred in early 2010 when the organization Citizens United wanted to show a critical movie of Hillary Clinton in the days leading up to an election, in the hopes people would not vote for her. They argue that the First Amendment stops the government from limiting political-related spendings by businesses and corporations. It was found that corporations have the same rights as people under the First Amendment and stated that they can use their money for political based ventures.

Article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sean-parker-and-al-gore-discuss-occupy-democracy-and-the-hacking-of-us-politics-at-south-by-southwest/2012/03/12/gIQAp04S8R_story.html

Probing Question:

Do you think that money should play as large of a role in presidential campaigns/elections and politics in general as it does today?

Ms. McMurray's Post

Hi everybody,

John has posted, so you have the option to respond to his prompt if you want. Alternatively, you can respond to mine, which follows. There is no kiss-up extra credit for choosing mine, so go ahead and choose the one you prefer!

Okay, here goes...

Why is wealth so important to Americans, and what role should the government play in a capitalist society such as ours? (It may be helpful to consider the concepts of capitalism, democracy, and individualism that we discussed in class today.)

Why are black and Latino kids punished more in school?

The article had a lot of information and statistics about how many black and Latino students are punished more frequently in school. For instance 35 percent of students who were suspended once and 39 percent of students expelled, yet they only represented 18 percent of the students from schools that were studied.

It has also been reported that students who are black and Latino and disabled are more likely to be restrained - and with more force.

To read more about this issue refer to http://multiamerican.scpr.org/2012/03/why-are-black-and-latino-kids-punished-more-in-school/

Probing Question: From what you have seen at our school, and any other school you've been to, do you think that these statistics represent what you have seen?

My article was about a CIA hired group of non-CIA agents to moniter American-Muslim groups around the northern area Universities. These group groups are looking to gain intel on any possible terrorism, however these American Muslim groups have no known connection to past terrism, or are terror related groups on the domestic front or internationaly. These unnamed CIA hired groups are fallowing these groups at their meetings and on groupd fieldtrips, with their only motive, being that these groups are Muslim.
My question to you is, Do you think it is okay to be racialy prejudice in a time of war, for public safety; or is recism never justified?

I'll post the link in a coment soon, sorry for my computer trouble.

Laura F's Current Event: Civil Rights

Colleges and universities, public and privatte alike, have been requiring all potentital appliacants to record their race on their appliacations. In most cases. the potential studen'ts race is a determining factor in whether or not that applicant gets accepted to these coleges. In a case, Fisher v. The University of Texas, a white female student claimed that she wa not accepted to the University of texas solely on her race. It was ruled in a another similar case, Grutter v. Bollinger that colleges may use the race of the applicant to determine their acceptance or not. This was passed to ensure Equal Opportunity for women and people of color.

Probing question: Do you think it is right for colleges and universitites to determine someone's accaptance into their school by their race? Why or why not?

Original link: Here

Ending Black History Month

Back in 1926, scholar Carter G Woodson began Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month in 1976.

A few years ago Morgan Freeman stated that Black History Month was " ridiculous" on live TV. After hearing this a film maker by the name of Shukree Hassan Tilghman had an idea of producing a documentary that would capture different peoples opinions about possibly ending Black History Month. The film was produced and is called "More Than a Month." His strongest opinion began with why is February the month of honoring their history, it is the shortest and one of the coldest months of the year.

Many petitioners agreed with Tilghman and had many things to say about ending Black History Month, such as an unknown petitioner "We exist 24-7, 365, and in a leap year, 366. So should our history." while others completely disagreed with Tilghman like a professor Daryl Michael Scott, called Tilghman naive and asked him to "stop playing post-racial identity games."

Being African-American, Tilghman had grown up with celebrating this month as one of the greatest things, so this came as a shock to everyone.

In your opinion would you agree with Tilghman or would you want to keep Black History Month? Why or why not?

http://whtc.com/news/articles/2012/feb/15/documentary-explores-ending-black-history-month/

Resisting Race Labels in the 2010 Census

In 2010 21.7 million people went deeper than just labeling themselves as "Arab", "Haitian", "Mexican", and "multiracial" on the census. Along with their checked boxes for "other", about half a million black people wrote in more specific answers such as African-American, Afro-American, African, Negro, mulatto, brown and coffee. These people feel that they did not fit white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native, government-defined labels. This news is said to be the cause of a more "diversified America". Carolyn Lieber, a Sociologist professor at the University of Minnesota stated, "It's a continual problem to measure such a personal concept using a check box .The world is changing, and more people today feel free to identify themselves however they want.."

What do you think made so many people go above the expectations to specify their race? Do you agree that it's the result of a more diversified America?

Police Demographics Unit Casts Shadows From Past

New York City was attacked by a terrorist group on September 11, 2001. Ever since then a lot of people have associated the Islamic group with terrorists throughout the country. Recently it has been noticed the the NYPD (New York Police Department) has been targeting people that they believe are Muslim, on a case of suspicion. In the early 1900's the NYPD had the city mapped out by where different ethnic groups had lived. The historians of New York City claim that nothing has changed over the course of history in the NYPD.

To find more view the article, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/police-demographics-unit-casts-shadows-from-past/?scp=3&sq=racial%20profiling&st=cse

How can the Police Department stop targeting the Islamic groups in the city for suspicion? Why is it that still the Muslim community is still being targeted when we know they aren't a terrorist group?

Asian-American Soldier Commits Suicide After Being Forced To Crawl Across Gravel

Private Danny Chen committed suicide after being abused and forced to go threw more extensive labor at a military boot camp. He was pressured to crawl one hundred meters along gravel dressed in full gear and then had to endure people yelling derogatory insults at him such as "dragon lady, Jackie Chen" and he was told to "go back to China."

Private Chen was also the only Asian American solider at this particular boot camp and investigations have showed that he was targeted from the start of his time at the boot camp.

To read the article go to: http://www.jdjournal.com/2012/01/16/asian-american-soldier-commits-suicide-after-being-forced-to-crawl-across-gravel/

Do you think that at these types of boot camps they should be more integrated as far as who is in them, so an equal number of one race and an equal number of the other and why? Do you think that Private Chen's suicide should even be considered a racial issue?

Barbie Goes Natural

Women from an organization called Afro-lific from Columbus, GA visited a school and spoke to a classroom full of African-American girls. In this presentation they talked about how Barbies are only white and also how they only had long and blond hair. This is s a bad thing because when you only give a little black girl white dolls and tell them that this is beauty and they do not look like them they will strive to look like them when in the end it is futile. This is not only tiring for the girls striving towards this "perfection" but also it can cause depression and eventually maybe even suicide.

In your opinion what is the perfect Barbie and what are the reprocussions of this Barbie, if there are any?

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/21/barbie-gets-a-natural-hair-makeover/

Racial Profiling and Discrimination

In recent news, there was a black male (Danroy Henry[age 20]) Pace University student shot and killed by a police officer outside of a local bar. Officers were patroling the area, having broken up a fight close by when a policemen shot and killed Danroy. The police report written by the policemen on site states, the student sat in a car in the fire lane with the car parked. When a police officer approached the car and knocked on the window Danroy drove off and hit 3 police officers trying to shot Danroy. The student stopped driving and raised his hands, when the police officer shot him repeatedly and killed him. The police officer justifies that, he thought that when the student raised his hands he was raising a gun, and shot and killed him.

Modern day crime statistic support that African American's are 13x more likely to commit a violent crime.Black people account for 66% of all violent crimes commited today, 80% of shootings and 70% of robberies. Hispanics are 9x more likely to commit a violent crime. In fact: 98% of all shootings are commited by black and hispanic people. Asian people account for 5% of all police stops. White people account for 5% of all violent crime, 1.8% of shooting ands 5% of robberies.

A connecting article I found, was the hirings of firefighters in New York. Black firefighters makeup 3.4% of the force. People of New York are saying that this is racist to have a majority of white firefighters and recently made a public outcry. The NYFD responded by saying the only hire people who meet their requirement of testing, and will accept people of any race who meet those requirements.

Was the student shot, because the cop assumed that because he was black that he had a weapon and would shoot? Does the NYFD hire white people more, because black people commit more crimes are less likely to assist the community as firemen and are seen as less potential than white firefighters?
Or is racism less of an issue today and the policemen shot the student because he injured four cops with his car and NYFD stay true to their statement, and hire people the believe will do the job regradless of race.

My question is: Is racism instituationalized and unavoidable misfortune, or were these people acting appropriately, and the situation would be the same if the people who weren't hired at the NYFD or the Pace Student were white?

here are my resources:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/10/massachusetts_m_2.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14fire.html
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0514hm.html

Clinic Fire In Florida

Last Sunday in Pensacola, Florida a fire burned the American Family Planning clinic. The fire was started in a suspicious manner. This lead to other discoveries such as the history of bomings , fires, and violence in general that this abortion clinic has endured. But, also the discovery of the doctor that gave a woman a last abortion in Maryland. Clinic bombings and violence has been going on for years and in fact about 20% of all abortion clinics will have some sort of violence done to them. The violence is mainly done by people who are angry about abortion and want it to stop.

The laws about abortion in America was decided through the Roe v. Wade case. Although there are national laws states can still make their own laws on the subject of abortion.

UPDATE: The police in Florida have made an arrest. They are accusing Bobby Joe Rogers for the fire which caused $300,000 in damages.
(http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/05/justice/florida-clinic-fire/index.html?iref=allsearch)

If you were to draft a law regaurding abortion, what would the law be and why?

Artical

Sofia's Current Event

After being hassled by Target employees for nursing her baby in the corner of the woman's clothing department, Michelle Hickman had enough, along with about 3,000 other women nationwide.

Hickman brought the attention to this event by sharing her story with a group called Best for Babes Foundation, who later shared it over Facebook, which started the campaigning. They created a "nurse-in" where all these woman would breastfeed in public Targets across the country to hope get their message out that they should not be frowned upon for nursing in public. They protested in about 240 Targets among the US and made sure to focus on Connecticut because of its past with public breast feeding.

Back in 2001 Connecticut past a law saying that woman have the right to breastfeed anywhere they want no matter what public area, but even with laws woman are still getting kicked out of paces or being hassled for doing so. Although during the "nurse-in" Connecticut stores seemed to react positively towards this protest, but many other stores did not. Even with the chain store’s official policy permitting women to nurse anywhere they want in the store, managers still seemed to dislike this and not allow woman to nurse their children.

This has also been brought up to the L&M Hospital to try and make their hospital more baby friendly, by promoting breastfeeding towards new mothers with their newborns. Also The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that it is the healthiest for mothers to breastfeed for the first six months of the baby’s life. The problem is with employees and business owners not allowing woman to nurse in their public stores it is not giving the mother the option to nurse their child as long as the wish or is recommended.

So in your opinion were these woman right to hold this “nurse-in” or do you believe that mothers should keep their breastfeeding in their homes and not in public? Why? If you believe that they should have the right to nurse in pubic what are some actions to make it not as frowned upon as it is right now?

http://newscanaan.patch.com