I always hate doing this. It makes me feel so guilty! I would give our class a.... 4/10? We get SO distracted, it's absolutely ridiculous. Thanks Mr. Humphrey for putting up with us! I know that when I have a side conversation, it's usually about what we're talking about. Or something equally smart. I think one of the reasons for our distraction is that it's a little bit of a culture shock. I've never had a class that I was given so many opportunities to share my opinion, and it's weird. I don't know what to do.
Personally, I give myself a 5/10. I'm always listening (even when all you can see is the back of my head) but I should be better at facing forward.
On a totally different note, at dinner tonight, we talked about 3 things, and I want to hear everyone else's opinions on it.
1. Back story: 16 year old boy dies because of a urinary tract infection, because his parents didn't take him to the doctor because their religion told them not to. They were charged with murder or something. So the state is trying to pass a law that says that they can go into peoples houses and if they aren't "healthy" then they can take them and perform tests on them, etc. Is it fair for them to do this?
2. Lawmakers are banning plastic bags in grocery stores, because they were clogging our landfills. Don't we have bigger things to worry about? Is this what we should do?
3. Last one! Oregon wants to have health care for everyone, so they're going to add a 7% sales tax. Washington has a 7.5% sales tax, and they do just fine! We'd still have to pay income taxes. Do you agree? Is this the way to go? And on a sort of related plane, Americans are spending 11% more than we pay our government. We are in SUCH big debt! How do we fix this?
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Well stop that.
ReplyDeleteStop what?
ReplyDeleteOh at first it just said "I always feel guilty about this" and I was like. What? Don't feel guilty about posting headlines!
ReplyDeleteAlso on that first one there, about coming into people's homes, that's pretty messed up. They shouldn't be able to do that, if someone's family chooses to die in filth, why not let them? We're just wasting time and effort trying to change their mind.
ReplyDeleteTony's right; don't feel guilty about giving out grades. So long as you realize that grading is no easier for me -- and when I grade you folks, it isn't personal (It's just business) -- then there shouldn't be any guilt at all.
ReplyDeleteAs for your topics: the state should be allowed to come into a home and perform medical examinations only if the subject requests it, or someone qualified recommends it. In this particular case, the point is that the parents should not have been allowed to require their son to avoid medical attention, since he died because of it; as a minor, he had no choice in the matter. Perhaps if he had been given the opportunity to seek medical attention, he would have chosen to do so, against his parents wishes, and he would have lived. So if the child, or, say, a school nurse or something, makes a request for a medical exam, maybe the state should be allowed to do this over the parents' objection. Maybe parents shouldn't be allowed to kill their kids.
For the plastic bad one: on one level, sure we have bigger things to worry about -- but this also isn't a big deal. Why not do this while we are also working on the big things? And on another level, there isn't really anything more important than making sure the Earth will still be livable in ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years. The longer we ignore the environment, the greater the chance becomes that the entire human race will die out.
For the third: hell yes we should have a sales tax, and HELL YES we should have universal health care. Though over time, the income taxes in Oregon should be lowered to offset the sales tax.
Okay, that makes sense. I think that for the health one, usually, the child believes what the parent belives. It's a biased opinion. Alot of people believe that all that religion is, is mindless brainwashing. Most likely, the kid wasn't going to want help. Granted, giving them the choice would be a good, but if they haven't looked into it, or gone to talk to someone like a nurse, then why would they want to get help from anyone else?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with that.
Why not worry about universal healthcare as soon as we're out of debt? That would make more sense to me. When we have the money to spare, we'll be able to put it towards something that is a great idea. Last night, we added up the numbers, and it ends up that Oregonians pay, around 30-40% of what they earn to the government(with the added tax) That's absolutely stupid!
Now calculate how much Oregonians pay for health insurance. And how much we pay to emergency rooms when we don't have health insurance -- and with 12% of the state out of work, there are a lot of people that don't have health insurance. If the government could give us health insurance at a lower cost than what we currently spend -- either by providing it themselves or by forcing the insurance companies to lower their prices in some manner -- then it would help us get out of debt. If we wait until we are out of debt first, we will lose quite a lot of money paying out the nose for health insurance, and then nobody wins except the health insurance companies -- and in the meantime, maybe some people die for lack of health coverage.
ReplyDeleteNow, could the government lower our insurance costs without providing insurance to everyone themselves? Yeah, maybe. But it isn't something that should just wait until we have all the money we need; that time will never, ever come. It's like the Republicans in Congress saying they just want to start over with the health care reform bill: now that we have spent a year trying to draft a bill that makes everyone happy, they want to start the process at square one? That isn't trying to accomplish the goal, that's trying to waste so much time that everyone gives up and stops trying to reform health care -- which is what they really want, in my opinion. Again, if that happens, we all lose. We have to do something, and we have to do it NOW.