State Incom Tax in Texas?

Oh so you want state income tax? My fellow class mate thinks that sales tax isn't fair to everyone. Sure it is when you buy something atleast you have the choice to pick and choose what you want and you know before if that iteam has tax or not. If you don't have alot of money and are trying to buy a car, can I suggest getting a used car! Why is it that people with not as much money always want big expensive stuff they can not afford? No one said you have to buy a brand new car and no one said you need a huge flat screen TV. Maybe this notion that the wealthy people get it better than poor people could encourage people to get a better job so they are not affected as badly. If we had a state income tax then we would have more money taken out of our checks, and I don't know about you but I couldn't take another tax to my pay checks. What about the people who do make alot of money because they have a good job through hard work they don't get their money back when taxes come around, and most of the time they have to pay a little more. Sure they can afford it, but nobody wants to just give their money away. My view is that we go through school and we go to college and having a high paying job is the goal in most cases. So when we buy a new car the tax will not hurt us finantually. Atleast you have the decision do we want to buy this product and pay the taxes on it or not. Lets keep being wealthy the way to go not being poor and getting free midicare and aid because there are people out there who accept that and are happy with being poor and getting every thing everyone else gets!

Discipline in Schools

Texas schools K-12 are allowed to paddle kids for disciplinary actions with written consent from guardians of the kids. This is very fair to the parents decision on how they want their kids disciplined at school and at home. A month ago a parent in west Texas filed a suit to the police on his kid's school principal for assualt. The parent gave consent to the school to go ahead and use paddle fource if needed on his kid for disciplinary actions. Now I have to ask why is this parent mad at this pricipal for paddling his kid? The kid said he was out of dress code and that the paddles were too hard for his actions. The parent also asks why is his kid getting punished for dress code when other kids are violating dress code clearly in pictures. The principal wasn't able to defend himself to these charges, but I am going to attempt to. The parents also said they have had meeting before with the principal over the kids behavior and lack of regard to the school rules. The dress code violation doesn't seem like a paddle offense, but when things add up you say to yourself or maybe even the rules say the fifth or sixth violation will require the paddle if your parents signed the form at the begining of the year. Maybe the principal was a mighty big guy and what the kid thought was hard wasnt but a normal paddle from the princpal. Never the less the parents signed the paper that gave consent and their parent shouldn't have any case to defend their own signature. The parent shouldn't of signed the paper and paddled their kid themselves. No charges should be filed according to me. To stop this from happening in the future maybe the suggestion that any kid that is going to get paddled, the guardians should get called before the paddling happens.

Death Penalty is Justice

This is my response to Connecting With The Heart of Texas view that the death penalty is cruel. I would have to ask how would you penalize someone who murdered someone close to you for no good reason? Anyone who has ever got murdered has someone who loves and cares about them. How could the judge look into the victem's loved ones eyes and say you have to pay for this criminal to breath and eat and live. That is what happens if we sentence people to long terms up to life in prison. Why should somebody be able to kill and not have the consequense to be killed for their act? They should not be able to hurt someone and not get punished equally. I'm not saying every convicted murder should get the death penalty, that is for the judge to listen to the facts and decide if this criminal deserves the death penalty or not. Atleast the murder got the respect to have someone hear his views through his defense case. The victem on the other hand just fot their life taken with no defense or reason. Its not just the victems life the murder has taken it is somebody's son or daughter, family member, and friend. So I think for Texas to use the death penlty so much makes Texas a little better of a state. All states should join us and stop paying for these cruel murders to live.

Rural Student Driving Less Safe Than Urban

Texas students living in rural areas in Texas are more accident pron than students living in the busy urban areas. The recent study of the 2006 road fatalities by the Texas A&M University System says that 65 percent of the road fatalities happened in rural areas. Wow! Less people on the road and more accidents!
I grew up in pflugerville, Tx. which was half rural (east side) and half urban (west side) . I lived in about the middle and most of my friends and I would drive over to the rural side when we wanted to drink alcohol. We knew the "country roads" wouldn't have any police men on them. Usually four to five kids in one truck with music loud and about a six or twelve pack per person. All we needed was a full tank of gas to keep the party going. The roads are dark, bumpy, and curvy. It is very easy to understand how rural areas and roads could be more dangerous for student drivers than the highly populated, and a lot of stop light urban roads have to offer. Young students just getting their drivers license tend to believe that the worst thing that could happen to them is getting a traffic ticket, with no regard that they could die if they are not fully attentive to the road and driving well. Drinking and driving is a obvious reason for accidents, but even if someone isn't drinking accidents are more likely to occur on rural roads because of the dark, narrow, and terribly maintained roads with ditches on each side. There really isn't any room for error for young drivers that tend to like to drive fast.
Placing officers on the rural roads could reduce the amount of drinking and driving but that would require more police officers which most cities don't want to pay for. I suggest we take some of our road maintenance money and add more lighting and more signs that tell the inexperienced country driver what is coming up ahead of them

Recess Safe?

Recess has been labeled as an injury ground for young children. Kids are no longer allowed to play traditional games like tag or red rover, and swing sets are being taken off school grounds. Why? Well school nurses are complaining about too many visits to them because of these games! The story says that tag and red rover and swinging are all too rough and we should all just do away with these games on the better behalf of the children. New equipment is being brought in and only monkey bars and plastic slides are allowed. I think this more safe new recess is pretty funny! Kids are rough with each other by nature and when they are in elementary school definitely! If tag is too rough then slides are definitely too rough think of kids pushing each other down a slide. A slide usually starts at least five feet in the air, and there isn't enough teachers to be watching every kid to make sure there isn't any rough house going on. Tag is one of the more safe games I can think of. If we do away with tag then we shouldn't even have recess at all then think how much energy kids will have in the class. Then ask teachers and principals what they think about tag and red rover and other games at recess. I bet the school nurse would love the day when there is no recess. Then what do they get paid for? I think let kids be kids and let them play any game they can think of and if they get hurt they get hurt. Live and Learn! That is what life is about right! Nurses should be glad for minor rough house injuries. That is why they have a job! Play on Tag and Red Rover! Kids have fun!

Public vs. Private

In this article a family has a daughter who wants to go to a local public school, but her parents have found bad environments in previous public schools. These parents have found much higher education and a safer environment is found in private schools. They moved to Dallas and came to the same question private or public? They chose public school in the end due to cost of private schools, and satisfactory of her safety in public schools; although the parents thought their daughter would be lacking in educational skills. I was not sold that the parents thought this was a good decision, was it? Sure it was, public schools are easy on parents pockets while getting a degree (GED). Kids in pubic schools might not get the one on one teachings as much as a private schools could offer, but private schools can not offer the diversity any public school can offer. Kids encounter situations when they get into the real world that I believe public schooling prepares you for or at least a similar situations occur. Such as race and religion exposure, poverty and wealth. Kids have to know how to speak about these subjects, and how to deal with people who are not exactly like them or who don't have the same views. I think its healthy for kids to hear different views on subjects even if their views are completely wrong in most peoples eyes. So, the argument that public schools do not provide the same level of education could be right when it comes to tests with books, but the every day tests with enter action a kid encounters in public schools is incomparable! This family made the right decision for their daughter!

scedule equals party?

Friday classes cut from schedules, and is that promoting drinking on thursday nights? Education Columnist Holly K. Hacker suggests Yes, that with no classes on fridays students are drinking too much on thursday nights after classes. She did her homework stating that with class on fridays students were consuming one drink per night, and with no class on fridays students were consuming on average two and a half drinks per night. This colume also suggests that our professors are not having to work five days a week like a normal full-time working american. Well anytime a student doesn't have class the next day they could potentially drink more. Fridays are also be used well by students and professors. Professors for the most part leave their fridays open for office hours, grading, and preperation for the next week. The more prepared and organized the teacher is the better they can teach the students. Sudents also have these fridays for traveling to see families and friends or jobs to pay for school. Thursday nights is college night everywhere in america so people will go have some drinks. The amount of drinking will not change to any significant extent weather they have class on fridays or not. Students and professors both benifit with this new scheduling. This schedule might just help our problem with people staying in college way too long while giving everyone more time to have the best chance in making goog grades.