commentary on "Legalization of Cannabis"

In this commentary, Legalization of Cannabis, the author comments about the legalization of cannabis in Washington, Colorado and the U.S. in  general. The federal government bans it, but some states have legalized it for medical purposes, which goes against federal law.

Cannabis should be legalized in the U.S. because there are drugs that are legal and don’t have no medical purposes like alcohol. The prohibition of alcohol only led to underground lucrative money making schemes for famous gangsters like Al Capone. This underground market also leads to violence since this drug isn’t controlled by the government. Alcohol and tobacco are taxed and controlled. Why can’t marijuana be taxed and controlled too? Marijuana is considered a gateway drug and also considered the most harmful drug which is a schedule one drug. Cocaine is a schedule two drug. This doesn’t make sense. This makes cocaine less dangerous and more useful marijuana. In general the drug on wars should be stopped. This has been the most costly war and has no end in sight. Prisons are packed with non violent inmates because of drug related cases. Let’s put these drug dealers out of business and stop the war on drugs.

Where does the GOP go from here?

Is there a party realignment in the near future? Is the Democratic Party going to be the powerful party? Is the Republican Party declining? I strongly believe there is. These are some of the questions asked in the commentary called Republicans Soul Searching Probably Mostly Pointless.

Since the 1960’s, when the New Deal Era ended and with that the Democratic stronghold ended. The U.S. government has been in a divided government meaning that neither party has been overwhelming strong. There has been various times in that period that the President was either a Republican or Democrat. For example, there is the Republican Presidency of former President Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each holding two terms and sandwiched in between is former President Bill Clinton. Now there is the two term Presidency of President Obama. This Reelection of President Obama during a down economic signifies that more Democrats are staying loyal regardless of hard times. The GOP is going more and more to the right and minorities, urban areas and now some upper income white males are leaning more and more to the left.  Minorities and urban populations are only going to go up and this is going to lead to a party realignment where the Democratic Party is dominant.

The Democratic Party found a perfect recipe for success for a presidential candidate. President Obama, a young black male that represents the changing demographics in this nation, which has a steady increase of minorities in the past few years. Being raised by a single mother and being biracial also tremendously helped. This gave him a down to earth personality, like a neighbor next door. Someone that came from a modest up bringing to became the President of the most powerful nation. On the other hand Mitt Romney seemed more distant to the average American especially minorities. He was raised in a high social class. How many people can relate to that?  The ultimate downfall of the GOP in the Presidential election was two things. First, his vice president candidate, Paul Ryan and the most critical downfall was his comment about 47% of Americans being dependant on the government. This makes him seem arrogant and distant to Americans suffering in this economic downturn.

Times are changes where minorities are growing and American society is becoming more socially liberal. This will make the GOP a minority and the Democratic Party dominant in the future unless the GOP starts becoming more moderate. A good place to start next election for the GOP would be having a minority as a Presidential or Vice Presidential Candidate. Marco Rubio would make a great candidate. He is a young Cuban American in a swing state of Florida. This is a must win state for the GOP.  He would not be the typical candidate that would lure  conservatives but they wouldn’t haven’t no other choice, so they would vote for him and he would lure minorities especially young Cuban Americans  that are voting more and more Democrat in recent years in contrast to older Cuban Americans that lean more to the right.

Commentary on the post "Is the GOP "War on Women" a reality"

This is a commentary on the post called, Is the GOP “War on Women” a reality?  On the student blog called “Shades of Gray”. Abortion has been a polarizing topic for decades. Conservatives think a fetus is a human therefore an abortion is murder and Liberals think that women  have the right to make the decision for an abortion. Even Libertarians, which are individuals that favor  individual freedom to make choices as long these choices don’t impede on someone else’s rights. Well some Conservative Libertarians argue that abortion does impede on someone’s rights since a fetus is a human being. One prime example of a pro-life Libertarian is Ron Paul.

I agree with all the points the author brought up in the post. GOP tries to oppose upon us things that are morally right for us. How do they know what is right for us? We are individuals and only an individual knows what is right for themselves. Don’t The Bill of Rights focus on individual liberties? And it seems the GOP tries to limit freedom of choice. Women just like Men have the right to choose what’s best for  their bodies. The GOP says that a fetus is a human and an abortion is a killing of innocent life, but on the other hand they strongly are in favor of the death penalty. You might be thinking, but yeah there is a difference between an innocent fetus getting murdered and a death row inmate that is a vicious killer. Like it says in the bible, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Well, there are few executed inmates like.  Carlos Deluna, that evidences points towards their innocence, but since defense attorneys rather spend time defending death row inmates that could be saved not finding the innocence of ones that were executed. We will probably never know if they are truly innocent.

Another point brought up is birth control. One of the things this country is lacking in general is individual responsibility. It’s the individual’s responsibility to plan when to have a child and raise that child. Not the GOP telling women what’s morally right and what beliefs well should impose on our children. Celibacy or some kind of birth control are signs of responsibility.

What does GOP think about a woman’s role? To me it seems like they think that all women should be stay at home moms with no say what so ever about the household. This is a step back. I’m pro-choice regardless of any factor such as race, gender or social status just to name a few.

A Student Loan Crisis

We all know about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or to some known as “Obama care” passed in 2010, but few of us know about the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) that was passed at the sometime. SAFRA was replaced by the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). SAFRA is suppose to redirected all loans through the Department of Education, which is suppose to save money to the borrower.

SAFRA shouldn’t have been signed into law and FFELP should have been repealed. Student loans that are backed by the Federal Government are causing a financial crisis that could happen at any time in the future. Just like it happened in the housing market a few years back.  People where approved for loans that they shouldn’t have been approved for in the first place because their income was too low for the amount of house that was being bought or the subprime loans where the interest rate was high. The government would also make new programs for homeownership to become reality for the lower income class. While the government had good intentions when these programs were made the reality is this would put families in homes which they couldn’t afford and they would eventually get foreclosed. Well, these federally backed student loans are doing the same thing. Since they are backed by the government meaning the government would pay back the loan to the bank if the borrower was in default. This leaves the banks with no risk and a small amount of interest to gain. These loans are fairly easy to get. Students going to 4-year schools, especially a private one could be left with tens of thousands in student loan and aren’t guaranteed a job in the field they studied after they graduate or even worst they might not even graduate, but still are obligated to pay the loan. 

When someone defaults on a student loan this hurts both the individual as well as the over economy. Individual’s wages could be automatically garnished without any judgment and the government also has other means to collect money it is owed. This hurts the economy over all because if a large group of people start defaulting this means the government would have to pay out more money to banks.

While the overall intention of federally back student loans is to help education be accessible to everyone. These federally backed loans in debts students with loans for years to come and some which are outrageous. Someone might owe over a $100,000 in student loans and picked a profession that averages $40,000 a year.

Romney Medicaid plan

Not Fully American is a commentary written by the author Ed Kilgore. He seems like he has a genuinely good intention in helping lower income people. This commentary is a liberal blog, so obliviously he is a liberal focusing on the Medicaid issue in the conservative platform for 2012 election. The Romney/Paul campaign wants to give the states the authority for Medicaid instead of the federal government. The government would just give grants to states. He is worried that Republican strong states would reject these grants and more lower income people would suffer. This makes the conservatives seem not caring. The audience intended for this would be of a left wing liberal nature. The ones sympathetic to the lower income people.  I agree with what the author is claiming that if strong hold Republican states are allowed to decide how to use federal grants for social programs then a lot of lower income people are going to suffer. Conservatives in general have an ideology of limited social programs. He doesn’t even have to provide facts to have a strong argument for that.  There is a strong point he made when he said that poverty stricken areas of the South will be hit the hardest. This puts in my mind the time before the civil rights movement when segregation was a common practice in the South. A bad era in U.S. history, but one we must learn from.

Will red states be hit hard if states are authorized to provide or not provide Medicaid? That’s a definite yes.