Valentine's Day

Whether you are in the Italian city of Verona and writing one of the one thousand letters addressed to Juliet, or one of the twenty two hundred thousand people who are popping the question of marriage, Valentine’s Day is going to cost you a lot of many if you are planning to buy a gift for that special someone.

The most popular theory about Valentine’s Day origin was when the emperor Claudius II did not want his Roman men to marry during a time of war. Therefore, Bishop Valentine took action, went against the wishes of the emperor and performed wedding ceremonies in secret. After the emperor discovered this betrayal, Bishop Valentine was jailed and executed. During his time in jail, Bishop Valentine wrote a note to the jailer's daughter and signed it “from your valentine”.

How do we celebrate Valentines? By buying expensive gifts that they would not buy themselves such as candy hearts, roses which die in two weeks after purchasing them, tacky Valentine’s day cards which would hold a deeper meaning if you made one yourself, and diamond jewelry in the shape of a heart.

According to Weau: Fun Valentine's Day Facts more than thirty six million boxes of candy are sold during Valentine’s Day and on average men spend 130 dollars on Valentine’s Day. About eight billion candy hearts will be produced, one billion Valentine’s Day cards will be bought, and 50 million roses will be given on Valentine’s Day.

A day to remind your partner and yourself that you both love each other is a waste of money economically; unless you are single then you can buy all the candy you want after Valentine’s Day when everything is half off because the stores need to get rid of their merchandise.

The Japanese Journalist beheaded by Isis

The beheading of the freelance veteran reporter, Kenji Goto by Isis is one of the many killed by the terrorist group. The United States of America reporter, James Foley and American-Israeli Journalist Steven Sotloff were among the various Westerners who have been murdered by Isis. Goto would often work with other filmmakers and Japanese television producers.

Freelance reporter, Kenji Goto

Isis, the Islamic Terror Organization, clams it has beheaded Japanese reporter, Kenji Goto weeks after they had behaded another Japanese hostage. The forty-seven year old journalist left Japan last fall when his youngest daughter was three weeks old. His wife, Rinko Jogo first heard from his Isis captors on December 2^nd. According to Rinko and others who had spoken to Kenji Goto, he had gone to Syria to try to save the other Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.   When Isis first captured Kenji Goto, they demanded ransom money for his release. They demanded that the Japanese government pay two hundred million dollars within 72 hours of the video for the release of Kenji Goto.  However, negations changed when the Japanese government did not comply with Isis’s demands. An audio recording of Kenji Goto was released soon after.

The audio recording, which has surfaced online, was the voice of a person who claims to be Kenji Goto speaking in English. In the recording Goto stated that Haruna Yukawa had already been murdered by Isis and blames Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for not preventing Yukawa’s death. Goto also says that Isis has changed their demands instead of money; Isis wants the release of an attempted suicide bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi. Sajida al-Rishawi failed to detonate in a string of deadly terror attacks at Jordanian hotels in 2005. When Shinzo Abe said Japan would not give into terrorism and would not give into Isis demands, Kenji Goto was beheaded on Saturday.

Like many other cases where civilians are held hostage by terrorist extremists groups, the negotiations between terrorists depend on morals. Is it right to give into the terrorists and give them something they want such as money so they can gather more resources to become stronger and cause more chaos? Is it right to let an innocent civilian die when you know you can save him? When we all know that a life is precious, what’s the right thing to do?

The mother of Kenji Goto, Junko Ishido

Resources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2924582/Have-ISIS-beheaded-Japanese-hostage-Country-expresses-outrage-new-video-emerges-appearing-captive-holding-picture-fellow-captive.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31075769

http://nypost.com/2015/02/01/japan-mourns-journalist-beheaded-killed-by-islamic-state/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/world/middleeast/islamic-state-militants-japanese-hostage.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/31/middleeast/isis-japan-jordan-hostages/

American Health Care System

Many people do not have health care and if they do it is usually privately funded by an employer. Some citizens do, however, have government funded health care.  

According to Heath Triage, in 2012 47,000,000 American citizens were uninsured in health care. In fact, the United States of America is one of the few industrialized countries in the world that does not provide universal health care to its citizens. However, many countries such as India, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Portugal and Spain do provide universal health care. Many people believe the citizens of these countries have free health care because they pay more taxes for universal health care; however, that is not the case.

John Green explains in his video the United States of America spends more tax money per capita than many of the countries that have universal health care, and most of the people who have health care do so privately. Only about 28 percent of American citizens receive health care by government funding. The United States of America, like many other industrialized countries should be providing universal health care.

According to What makes the United States health care system so expensive- Introduction by Aston Carroll health care spending can be explained by wealth. When countries become wealthier, they begin to spend more on health care. However, the more money that is spent, the more you exhaust your resources such as the United States. 

The picture below depicts the large sums of money that is spent in the United States of America for health care compared to other industrialized countries.

 

Working on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family. A time to spend with friends. Black Friday is a time of capitalism and consumerism. However, lately stores have been opening their doors earlier and earlier for the past years; meaning that more employees must spend their Thanksgiving Day away from family to deal with enraged shoppers.

According to USA Today a number of retails chains such as Target, Walmart, Macy’s, Best Buy, and Toys R Us are opening on Thanksgiving Day. Other retailers have decided to open on Friday (The Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, Hobby Lobby and Costco).

Everyone deserves quality time with friends and family, especially for those who work in retail with unpredictable hours. One Kmart daughter of a Kmart employee, Jillian Fisher, asked Kmart to allow workers to take the day off for Thanksgiving if they wanted to. However, one Kmart employee stated their manger told them, “Everyone must work Thanksgiving and Black Friday. No time off.” Employees have no choice and no say in the matter. International Business Times stated that in a report done by an Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll more than fifty five percent of employees working on Thanksgiving are being forced to work shifts.

We as consumers do not understand how much retailers and other workers sacrifice in order for us to enjoy buying luxury products that are on sale.  However, retail employees are not the only ones who must work on Thanksgiving Day. Jacob Davidson recently posted on article with statistics from an Allstate/National Journal poll stated one in four Americans who will work on either Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or New Years Day. The twenty five percent of people who work on holidays make it possible for us to enjoy our time off. These workers included doctors, firefighters, policemen, and a retail techie.

We as consumers take Thanksgiving lightly. We’ll be standing in line for cheap electronics and other merchandise; stealing time away from the employees who work on Thanksgiving Day but want to be at home with their families. We should spend time with our friends and families creating memories which last a lifetime instead of purchasing material objects we’ll use for a couple of years and throw away after getting the latest model.  

Common Core

Common core was adopted in 2010, and was created without the input of educators. It is sweeping the nation, almost as if it were a zombie apocalypse, with many states agreeing to enforce this new method of teaching in their schools. According to The Common Core State Standards, common core is suppose to "clearly demonstrate what students are expected to learn at each grade level…" with " …the best elements of standards-related work in all states and other countries to date."

However, in some states common core showed no sign of improvement in test scores what so ever. In fact the scores of students decreased. The statistics in the US News shows the second round of test based on Common Core teachings. In New York thirty-one percent of students gained the title of proficient in English language arts. Before Common core was set in motion, there was a three percentage point difference between whites and Hispanic eight graders on the English proportions of the tests. When Common Core was introduced to students the gap grew to be twenty two points. Why should Common Core continue if the test scores of students do not improve, but decrease dramatically?

Its not just New York which has faced problems of decreasing test scores after they instituted Common Core. Each time a state has given its students one of the two Common Core tests, students' scores were below their average.  The Common Core standard is not fair because it requires critical thinking and mastery of topics. You cannot expect an English learner to analyze a passage with depth and understanding like a native speaker.

This picture above shows the traditional mathematical way of solving a problem, and below shows the Common Core way.

When Common Core first began forty-five states and the District of Columbia agreed to test this new method of learning which the government provided money for. However, according to CNN, 10 states have already dropped Common Core, with more states likely to follow in their example.

Capital Punishment

I never agreed with the death penalty. I have always seen it as a cruel and inhumane process of bloodshed, creating an everlasting cycle of murder, especially after I have done research on this particular topic.

It absolutely horrified me when I read a CNN article online. The article states that the most executions in 2012 were done in China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United States of America. This makes America the only nation out of the top five counties with the most executions to be in the developed world. The article also stated that since capital punishment was reinstated by the United States Supreme Court in 1976, 1,386 people have been executed and as of January 2014 there are 3,070 people in prison waiting to be executed. However, out of these 3,070 people four percent of them are innocent according to The Guardian.

Another continuous problem with capital punishment in the United States of America is racism. An article by the New York Times found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to be executed than a white person and murderers of white people were 4.3 times more likely to be executed. Statistics show whites make up 56 percent of the executions, blacks make up 34 percent of the executions, Hispanics make up eight percent and other ethnicities make up two percent of people executed in the United States.

However, the methods of execution is the most evident and major problem with the death penalty. There are many ways of executing a death row inmate, lethal injects are used the most- in 87 percent of executions, electrocution is used in 11 percent of executions, gas chamber in 1 percent, hanging in 0.5 percent, and a firing squad in 0.5 percent of executions. From these five different methods of execution, a lot can go wrong. 

According to The New Yorker, in July of this year a man named Joseph Wood was administered a lethal injection that was supposed to kill him. However, shortly after he was given the drugs, witnesses heard Wood grasp for air and he continued to gasp for air for two hours until he died.

The death penalty violated the eighth amendment of Wood and many other inmates who had problems with their execution. It puts the lives of innocent  people at risk and is affected by racism. Capital punishment is supposed to bring justice; not bring a "cruel and unusual punishment".  

Incarceration in America

The incarceration of people in the United States has skyrocketed with approximately one percent of Americans in either a state or federal prison. According to the Washington Post the prison population in America alone is 2.4 million, quadrupling since 1980. The United States is the second highest when it comes to people in jail per capita. In 2012 there were 707 people in prison for every 100,000 residents in America. This means that one out of every 100 American adults is in jail. The issue has gotten so bad that it’s now affecting children. Sesame Street recently created an episode to explain Incarceration with a new character named Alex whose dad is in jail. As they describe why adults go to prison, the friends on Sesame Street try to comfort Alex. 

However, parents being incarcerated isn't the only problem with the criminal justice system. The racial inequality in the system is still evident today. The statistics of Learn Liberty states that whites make up 64 percent of the population in the United States and 31 percent of them in incarcerated.  Hispanics comprise 16 percent of the population and 24 percent are incarcerated. African Americans make up 14 percent of the population and 36 percent are incarcerated, and according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men go to prison in the United States. African Americans are also three times more likely to searched during a traffic stop, and police are four times more likely to use violence against an African American. 

The Bureau of Justice also conducted a study of sexual harassment in prison. The results were overwhelming. Nearly 10 percent of prisoners are sexually abused, and of the 8,763 victims of sexual harassment between 2009 and 2011, 49 percent of them involved prison staff members. Sexual abuse and other problems with the criminal justice system brings thoughts of suicides in the minds of many prisoner, making suicide the leading causes of death. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 185 prisoners committed suicide in 2011.  

The United States is supposed to be a land where all people no matter their ethnicity, race, religion, or gender are equal. The statistics of incarceration prove there is a biased in the criminal justice system, and based on the information the inequality of  prisoners today, this biased will not disappear. Prisons are meant to a give criminals a  deserving punishment. Prisons  are supposed to affect the lives of inmates in a positive manner. Prisons aren't supposed to end lives. 

Learn more about the Mass Incarceration in the US here.