Book Report #3

The government is also in charge of funding, for example the Obama Energy Department. Politicians will give loans and grants to these larger businesses causing the financial stake in the company to be upheld. If a company is relying on a loan to expand to new customers, politicians will make sure that company receives the loan thus securing there investment into the company. “Four companies in which Westly had a major financial stake just happened to receive loans, grants, or stimulus money from the Obama Energy Department: Tesla, Recyclebank, Edeniq, and Armirys Biotechnology” (85). This is another issue that is very hard to avoid, but it ties very closely to politicians trading stocks to begin with. If politicians were not allowed to invest in companies, there would no reason for them to help companies for the wrong reasons. Politicians could be restricted from purchasing investments in a company. Would there be as many politicians though if they were restricted in saving their investments? It would be interesting to see I this would help reduce some of the fraud within our government. 

Book Report #2

The stock market is not the only place where government officials are able to make a profit. Also in the development of land politicians are able to make a better bang for their buck. Politian’s are able to pass bills and spend money to improve the land, whether this is through gardening or building a nearby train station. “On the house floor, Lewis explained that he was a firm supporter of beautifying that area. What he never mentioned was that he and his wife owned a $1 million house four blacks away” (66). This would be a very hard issue to avoid. Even if you prevented politicians from buying houses in certain areas where they have jurisdiction it would be hard to monitor that. Politicians could tell a friend or a family member to purchase a house somewhere knowing the value of the house will increase. Knowing this the profit made from the sale of the house could than find its way back to the politician. This would be very hard to avoid though also due to the reasoning most politicians live where they have jurisdiction. 

Book Post #1

I recently started reading the book Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer. This book talks a lot about the corruption that is currently taking place inside the United States government. The current scandal is within the stock market, and is one of the main reasons why politicians leave their seat with so much more money than they actually earn on a yearly basis. In the first part of the book Peter talks about the various bills and how these have influenced the stock market. The most notable is the health care bill and the effect that it had on the company Teva Pharmaceuticals. “When the Kerrys first began buying shares, the stock was trading at around $50. After health care reform passed, it surged to $62" (5). The majority of Congressmen know when a bill will be passed and can buy the stock low, knowing for sure the stock will go up to a much higher price. After reading this I was shocked. This is essentially insider trading which is highly illegal, yet these government officials are doing it on a daily basis.  It just seems wrong. There must be rules and regulations in place to help stop this activity by government officials. It is hard to say that these people, once elected, are not able to trade stocks, but I am interested to see what options Peter will offer throughout the rest of the book. 

Marketplace of Ideas

This past week in issues we completed our marketplace of ideas projects. The event itself, I believe, had a very good turnout. Many people stopped by the various presentations to see what that person was “selling” on their poster.  I was surprised at the total number of people who actually stopped by the posters to take a look. Several of the sellers had petitions out for the people who “bought” their views to sign, if they agreed with the views presented.  I was expecting the majority of people to just look over the poster and sign without taking a closer look, but most people wanted to know more about the various issues. One issue I personally found very interesting was the Invisible Children Charity. This issue was presented by Ryan Kunzi who talked about the flaws discovered in the charity. I found this issue so interesting because our school raised and donated $100,000 to the charity. Ryan brought up a variety of points, but the most notable was how the founder of the charity said it must be run as a business. This was surprising because it implies that the founders of the charity are looking to make a profit based on the donations. If it were not for having the marketplace of ideas, many such issues would not have come to my attention. Focusing on my issue of alternative fuels, I found quite a number of people were surprised how far technologies for alternative sources had come. People were especially surprised by the fact that hydrogen cars are already being sold in California. To raise awareness, instead of having a petition for signatures, I handed out bumper stickers. This way while people are driving, one bumper sticker could reach an unlimited number of other drivers, thus spreading the word. As people look further into the use of alternative fuels, more and more of them will want to make the switch to using a more efficient fuel. 

Video Game Violence

This past weekend was just another typical weekend in Deerfield. While visiting a friend’s house, we decided to remember our childhood and play games like Mario Party 2 and Super Smash Bros on the N64. While playing these games were fun, I realized the change in video games we grew up with compared to today’s generation. Today there are game like Madden and FIFA where the graphics are so realistic, you feel like you are there. The graphics on a N64 are very pixelated, and the frame rate is much slower. If we look at fighting games though, Super Smash Bros would be a game to play where fictional characters had super powers and you tried to get other characters off the map. Today’s generation plays games like Modern Warfare. These shooter games try to be as realistic as possible. These games show death with blood and shooting a gun at other soldiers. The objective of Modern Warfare is to eliminate the other team. The technology is there to support these types of games having faster processors and discs that can hold more content. I’m sure if the technology today was available ten years ago these same games would be created, but the difference is that there is a large demand today with shooting games. Today there are midnight releases of games, and companies are barely keeping up with demand of the release of their games. Focusing on the N64 the top two selling games for the system were Super Mario 64 at 11.62 million copies. Mario Kart sold a total of 9 million copies. In 2001 the Xbox was released 5 years after the Nintendo N64. The number 1 game sold on the Xbox was Halo Combat Evolved. This is a shooter game selling a record number of games at 5 million copies. The top nine games for Xbox sold were all shooter games. The tenth game, while not a shooter, was still a underground racing game. It was not until the eleventh top game sold that Madden NFL 2005 is noted. I think it is interesting that in five years the change in game styles that were purchased. It wasn’t that these games were not offered for the N64. There were still shooting games like Golden Eye and Contra but they did not sell as many games as the Mario franchise did. 

College Drinking

At the start of this week we began a new unit on underage drinking and hazing at colleges. While the short videos that were shown throughout the clip, some more horrific then others, they all showed how college students drinking underage makes poor decisions. In this video they focus on one Colorado Boulder student who was found dead after hazing from his fraternity brothers. This student died from an over consumption of alcohol. Colleges try to prevent these cases from reoccurring, but with an entering freshman class looking forward to the “college experience,” it is harder to crack down on underage drinking. Currently colleges have a three-strike policy, if you are caught three times then there is a substantial penalty. A policy more colleges should try would be to create mandatory educational classes, along with the fine, in order to punish these young adults breaking the law. Educating these college students should cause college students to be more responsible when consuming alcohol. College students will pay a fine either way, but by adding the educational course may cause these over drinking problems to decrease. This brings up another point. Should classes be mandatory for freshman in college on the dangers of alcohol, and also over consumption of alcohol? These way students who are not caught will still know the dangers and be informed on what may happen to them if they over consume on alcohol. On one last note, something I was very surprised by was how the University of Colorado Boulder handled the death of one of their students. The University did not call the parents of the dead students parents, instead the parent’s found out from the Dallas police four hours after the death of their son. This is an unacceptable amount of time, especially when dealing with a death of one of their students. The university should be contacting the parents within an hour. If these changes were to take place, I believe we would start to see a change in how much some students drink.

Interesting Video About my Book

This was a really interesting video I found on YouTube (Link Below). The video is a 60 minute video clip. The video clip actually focuses not only on the subject of the book I am planning on doing for my 2nd semester book, but it also interviews the author of my book, Through Them All Out. Off the bat, the amount of research that went into the book amazed me. The fact that Peter had a team of eight people, not including himself, working on this book shows how motivated Peter is by the subject. All of this research comes together and shows how congress is able to trade on daily information that is unable to the public. The example given is with medical stocks and if congress is working on a law or viewing this medical drug, they are able to trade the stock on information that the public is unaware of. This is why members of congress leave with so much more money then they are supposed to make off the salary. While members of congress are serving the public, some join in order to be a part of this "legalized" form of insider trading. Initial public offerings are also a way for corporations to give a senator money, rather then giving that person cash. This is because giving a senator an option to an IPO is legal, where as giving that senator cash is not. These IPO's are very valuable and can make these senators more money than the corporation would have offered them, yet it is not illegal to do so. Land is also another concern when talking about congress. Congress is able to put money into various areas, but these areas usually help benefit their housing value. There is a lot of controversy over this issue, and it makes me more intrigued to learn about what Peter is trying to explain to the public. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3DZh1109W8

2nd Semester Book Finding

While trying to find a book to blog about for my issues class, I stumbled upon an interesting title. A lot of the books showing controversy, were focused around war and the economy. I was able to find another book on computer hacking, but I wanted to blog about a new subject. After spending a good half hour, wandering the book store, I was able to come across a book titled, Throw Them All Out. This book is written by Peter Scheizer. The books main focus is how politicians and their friends are able to make money off things that would send the rest of us to prison. When Peter is trying to explain to the reader on why these politicians are able to invest money so confidently Peter uses a word called cronyism. Cronyism is a shorter form of crony capitalism. Members of congress are able to trade stocks based on privileged information. Already after reading the short summary I was intrigued on learning more. Do people know about what is going on? Should this be allowed? I was very interested in what Peter had to say about this topic. It didn't stop there though. Cronyism is also members of congress inserting earmarks into bills, which helps improve their real estate holdings. Presidential campaigns are able to receive billions in federal grants yet no punishment is given to these people. Peter digs deeper into the issue and offers ways to overcome this problem. I look forward to starting this book for my second semester blog.

Wrongful Convictions

Based on the information given, Terrill Swift had a powerful influence upon my view of the justice system. Also, the power the police officers may have over an innocent person took me by surprise. I personally do not believe it is right for a person in power to convince a frightened teen or young adult to admit to a crime they did not commit. Possibly even going as far as, in Terrill’s case, to trick that same scared person into signing a confession in hopes to let themselves go back home. Part of the blame is to be put on Terrill for not reading what was presented to him before signing off, but at the age of 17, my current age, I could not say I would do things differently. Being scared and wanting to go home, I would take the police officer's word when he presented me with information that would set me free. The fact that these cases are not rare surprises me even more. I could understand if, once in a while due to inevitable flaws within the justice system, someone is prosecuted who should not be. This does not give any right, though, for officers to force people to sign wrongful confessions against that person’s will. From what Terrill was saying, this has happened many times and will continue to happen. While blame should be placed on the person signing but not reading what is being presented, it is very easy to take the word of someone whose purpose should be to protect you.