Proposal: Marijuana

Marijuana

    Some people ask why Marijuana should be legalized, but we should as why should marijuana be illegal? In my point of view individuals should be able to make their own choices for themselves, The government only has the right to limit those choices if one individuals actions endanger someone else. This should not apply to marijuana since the individual who chooses to use marijuana does so according to his or her own free will. Keeping marijuana illegal in expensive and prohibition doesn’t help.
    Keeping marijuana illegal is beyond expensive. If marijuana was legal it would save our government lots of money. In the united states all forms of government participate in the “war on drugs.” Billions of dollars every year are spent to chase the peaceful people who just really in joy getting high. These people get locked up in prison and the tax payers are the ones who have to foot the bill. We have to pay for all these expenses to lock these people up. Billions of dollars could be saved if we would stop locking people up for having marijuana on them. If the harmful plant was legal the government would be able to collect taxes on it, and would have a lot of money to pay for effective drug programs and maybe pay on so much of this debt they owe.
    Prohibition does not help, it just causes a lot of problems. There is no good evidence that’s proves the prohibition helps and decreases drug use. Marijuana is really easy for high school students to obtain, Why? Because it is illegal. You have to be a certain age to get alcohol unlike marijuana, dealers don’t care how old you are when buying marijuana as long as you have the money. If the goal is to reduce drug consumption then we should open honest youth programs to educate the youth. The current prohibition scheme does not allow these reasonable approaches to marijuana. We tried prohibition with alcohol and that failed terribly, why repeat the same mistakes?
    There are many reasons why marijuana should be legal. Medical use is a huge reason why it should be legal, marijuana can be used to stimulate appetite and relieve nausea in cancer and AIDS patients. The hemp plant is a very valuable and natural resource. Legalizing marijuana would help clear up a lot of confusion surrounding hemp and allow us to take advantage of hemps agricultural and industrial uses. Marijuana uses refuse to give up their long quest for justice because they believe in fundamental values of American society. Marijuana will be legalized because marijuana users will continue to fight for it until they succeed.

Response 4: Reforming Public Education

Reforming Public Education

    Public education is nowhere near, what it should be in today’s society; most of the public education system has denied funding for quite sometime. Most teachers are now spending the money out of their pockets on textbooks for their students. Many people now days believe that if you are not in school then you are not intelligent what so ever. Technology has taken over the world; kids have so many things that can distract them from focusing in school. School funds becoming more and more a problem and so is the way kids are being forced to learn
    In the article “Teachers wonder, why the scorn?” Mrs. Parker who was one of the teachers that went on strike said, “I love teaching, but I have 26,000 of student debt.” the debt is so bad that she can hardly afford to live where she lives today. Most people believe that school and teaching degrees are pointless to have in today’s economy.
     More and more college kids each day are going into debt because of the cost of school. Most teachers are already in debt because their job has yet to pay off their debt, and now the education system will not even pay for the books that students have to have. The teachers are becoming more in debt because of the money they are spending out of their pockets to get the students they education they need to succeed.
    Some schools have their own ways of how they think students should be taught, there are many different ways to teach students effectively but many are not concerned. The education system has been the same for years and I do not see any signs of change, it seems like it gets worse every year and there are more students that drop out of school each year. In my opinion the reason why students are dropping out if because they have seen people get jobs without a degree and that are making more money than what they would be making once they graduated. But its true. Some students just cannot stay focused because of the way they are being taught, it is completely boring to them and they have so much not heir mind that what’s going on in class is not their focus.
    To say the least students and teachers both are getting neglected in this situation. As a college student myself I feel that something needs to be done about all the problems the education system are causing. The economy is horrible right now and many people are suffering and being punished for something that they have no control over. Something needs to be done before things get a lot worse.

Response 3; Someplace Like America

Response to “Someplace Like America”

    In the article “Someplace like America” Maharidge study’s the lives of the homeless, Maharidge sets out on a journey to meet homeless people and he gets to know them on a personal level. In Santa Barbara, California on December 5, 1984 a hobo by the name Kenneth Burr was murdered. All the homeless people in that area were called “tree people” and at night the cops were “sweeping” the homeless to make their lives miserable.
    There were some homeless people that had so much in value and just lost everything do to the economy and the loss of jobs which made them become completely homeless. The way cops handled the situation by trying to make the homeless feel uncomfortable in my opinion is beyond wrong. Some of the people that were homeless couldn’t help the things that were going on in their lives at the time and I feel that they should not be punished any more than they already are. I can say that things were a lot worse in the 1980’s compared to now after reading this article.
    In the 1980’s most people who got laid off from work often lost their homes and were not able to bounce back to find a new job. All suffered depression and mentally gave up which made their lives quickly go down hill. Still today America faces huge problems dealing with the economy and there are more and more Americans becoming homeless each day. There are many people today struggling to survive, most are in need of immediate help. I’m not really sure if the cops are still “sweeping” in some places still today, but if so there should be a stop to it.
    When some people lose their jobs and everything they own they are not able to deal with the road that’s ahead of them so they just give up and mentally break down. But there are also some of us who are motivated and can over come almost anything. Even the ones who break down and don’t know what to do with their selves are still considered survivors in my mind.
    As a young American I have grown to learn that the world we live in is far from easy, yet we still stand strong and get through what’s needed to survive in this world of overwhelming obstacles. There has been many changes for the worse just in my generation that I know of, which is no where near as bad as most of the generations before me. Life is still hard at times but I’m sure it’s not meant to be easy. Even the homeless never give up on life they always find a way to survive.

My Political Compass

Reading List - Authoritarian Left

Response #1 The word "Hacker"

The Word Hacker

To my understanding the word “Hacker” is a contentious term used in computing for several types of person. Throughout the years there have been numerous crimes that have been committed, do to the hacking of computers. Also there have been numerous cases where hacking is used to solve crimes. The word “hacker” has two meanings to it, with programmers hacking is someone that can make a computer do whatever he or she wants.

The word hack has two different meanings, it can be used in a good sense as if someone does something so clever to beat the system it is called a hack. But also in a bad sense it is also called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. I think the word is used in an ugly sense more than a good sense. when I look on TV I often see people getting in trouble for fraud through the hacking of people’s bank accounts and hacking into system codes. According to an article in (whatis.com) People were first introduced to hacking when the movie “War Games” came out in 1983. The same year, six teenagers got arrested for breaking into about sixty computers some of which was government owned and operated machines (pcworld.com).

Today I have learned that hacking is pretty much frowned upon. There are so many people who make a great deal of money hacking, whether it’s in a good sense or bad. There are now skilled IT Technicians that work to keep the internet clear and clean from hackers. If a hacker is able to access a company’s database, the technicians will alert the company of the database.

A hackers are very diverse and have their own society that most people don’t know about or don’t understand. To become a hacker you should be skilled in a couple of things; most hackers are skilled in different categories with computers. Most hackers have to learn programs, be skilled with operating system and different languages. Effects that hacking is causing to the society can’t be ignored. Hacking these days are bringing more danger and causing people to lose almost everything they have. Nowadays you can find out anyone’s information through a computer causing many people to get money stole from them. But that’s only the small problem of hacking. When dealing with hacking into the government, that is just a very different type of crime. Because hackers are human beings, who have two sides; evil and good, evil individuals should be studied and given the highest priority in the war against hackers because since we put our hands on the cause, we can fix it to reach for better effects.

Response #2 "The true meaning of pictures"

Response to “The true meaning of pictures”

          In response to “The true meaning of pictures” Mario Mattei talks about how pictures can give off many different meanings according to the way you use them and classify them. Shelby Lee Adams set out on a pursuit to document the Appalachian lives. As I was reading the article I noticed that all of the pictures seemed to be poverty related. This could surely give off a negative example to some people and also offend people that may come from the surrounding areas.

          When stumbling upon this article I very quickly became interested considering I am from the Appalachian mountains. Some of the photos I saw can be disturbing to people that do not understand the lives of the people who were pictured in the photos. When dealing with photos that come from the hollers of the Appalachians most photographers give little reasoning behind the pictures and details, this leads people often in the wrong direction.

          Coming from Harlan Kentucky, I realize in most hollers there are people who are exactly like the people in the pictures that some people may call “Hillbillies” whose poverty may be their own fault. I come from the city of Harlan which is in the mountains but not in the hollers, most people believe that people from Harlan are the same as the people that live in the hollers which is not true at all. The photos that Adams displays can give off a bad stereotype for other surrounding areas. I do feel like the people in the photos should be able to voice their own images.

          Understanding that Adams was also from the Appalachians I believe he was trying to explain and show the world what has been poorly stereotyped when dealing with the people in the hollers. Shelby spent time with the people he photographed and made time to find out who they were and he got to know them on a personal level. By Adams making the effort to get to know them shows me that he had no intentions of I guess you could say advertising the people in a negative way.

          In conclusion I feel that was Adams did was very respectful and greatly appreciated by people that live in the Appalachian Mountains. When taking pictures of people I feel that you should give a great deal of background with the images, so that people don’t get the wrong example and twist things up for the worse. Unless of course the pictures are meant to give off a negative example do the circumstances. I have a lot of respect for Shelby Lee Adams.

The starting point.

Where are you from?
-Harlan Kentucky is where I am from. A very small town in southeastern kentucky.

What is my experience with writing?
-I must say I do not have that much experience with writing. I feel that this is because I do not enjoy writing for fun. Outside of school hardly ever write.

What do you believe in?
-I am a firm believer in respect. I believe in treating others the exact same way you would want someone to treat you.

What kind of culture do I consume?
-When I don't have anthing to do and even sometimes when I do have things to do, I find myself turning to basketball. I enjoy playing basketball and also watching it in my spare time.

Why am I in college?
-The reason I am in college is because i believe that it is the final step to where I need to be in life to be succeed.