Blue Wave in Texas?

Texas has the potential to elect a Democratic Senator for the first time in 24 years. Texas has the longest losing streak in the entire country. The last Democratic Senator, Bob Krueger, was defeated in 1993. Since then it has been straight Republican, all the way to our current Senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is up for re-election this November where he will be facing off against U.S Representative Beto O'Rourke.

There has been a lot of talk about a blue wave in America and specifically Texas. Over 40 state legislators have lost their seats to Republicans since Trump has taken office, with historic elections such as Doug Jones' election in Alabama to the Senate and Danica Roem to the statehouse in Virginia.  With surprising results like these, even some Republicans such as Brendan Steinhauser are saying "this could very well be a good year for Democrats".

This wave can become a real possibility when you look at the Latino's rising population in Texas and how sharply the candidates' platforms differ.  Beto O'Rourke is bilingual, and he is very supportive of immigrants, especially the Dreamers. He wants to join the rest of the industrialized world and implement universal healthcare. O'Rourke has also pledged to take no money from PACs or any interest groups.  Even with that pledge, he has out raised Ted Cruz who relies on traditional sources of campaign money.  Beto's grassroots campaign has raised over $6.7 million, which is more than double than Cruz has raised.

Ted Cruz is most famous for the 2013 government shutdown and his 21-hour filibuster to defund the Affordable Care Act, where he read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham. Cruz is for a strong border and supports the President's idea of a wall along the Mexico/US border. He has received $1 million from Wall Street, $360,000 from the NRA, and is backed by the billionaire Mercers. Ted Cruz is not the most popular Senator. Senator Lindsey Graham noted "if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you".

Beto and Cruz both won their parties primaries in 2018. The Democratic primary vote was a huge breakthrough.  The Democrats had twice the number of voters than in 2014, with over 1 million voters showing up to the polls. This was the highest amount in 16 years, but the Democrats were still outnumbered by the Republicans who had 1.5 million voters. Ted Cruz also had twice as many votes as O'Rourke did. However, this can largely be attributed to Cruz being the incumbent and many Texans not knowing O'Rourke. The race for the seat is now extremely close, as Quinnipiac University published a poll that had Cruz beating O'Rourke by only 3%, which is in the margin of error. Beto accomplished all this without any TV ads. Instead, he has been traveling Texas, meeting as many of his (possibly) future constituents as possible in person.

The 2018 senatorial race is up in the air at this point. Beto's challenge is to get enough people to know him and want him in the Senate more so than Cruz convincing Texans that he is still right for the job. It is far too close to predict a winner at this time but whichever candidate gets more of its voters out will emerge victorious.

Free college tuition is a touchy subject to many. With so many people having very firm opinions, it is often hard to have a civil discussion about tuition. However, with the increasing amount of student loan debt and the numerous ways the Country and its citizens could benefit from extremely affordable college, free college tuition is worth talking about.

In 2015, the total estimated amount of student loan debt was over 1.3 trillion dollars
and this amount increases every year. This staggering debt cripples America’s
middle and lower class. Students often are not being able to purchase a home, marry,
or have children. All are things that people, especially ones with degrees,
should be able to experience. All are things that our society values and should
incentivize.  This counters the argument against
free college: If college is tuition free, taxes will go up, middle- and lower-class
families will spend less and hurt the economy. Actually, taxes would not
increase much at all if we paid for the tuition in the way several government
officials have already proposed: closing the loopholes that allow large
companies to avoid their fair share of taxes, or cracking down and implementing
new taxes on wall Street transactions.
We could also decrease military spending. As radical of an idea as that
may sound to some Americans, we are living in the most peaceful time in all
recorded human history. The amount we spend on the world’s ridiculously large
military is extreme to say the least.

Even with the benefits to society and the available funds, many people still believe free
college tuition to be a fantasy. However, several of the most well-educated
countries in the world have made it a reality, such as Finland, Netherlands,
Denmark, Germany, and Norway. When you compare how much of the GDP each country
spends on higher education you might be surprised. The United States spends
about 1.36 on post-secondary education, while Finland only spends 2.08 percent,
Norway only spends 1.96, and Germany only spends 1.35 percent. There are even
alternatives to more affordable college, such as the HELP program in Australia
that has been working incredibly well. In Australia, college is not free but
the way the loan program is efficient. During college you do not have to pay
anything, allowing students to fully invest their time to their education
instead of trying to pay for it. Then after students graduate, the loan
payments are based on their current income. If the income is low enough, graduates
do not have to pay back anything. Australia provides for a fixed time as to
when the former students will cease having to make payments, mostly 20 to 25
years. The former students have the peace of mind knowing that the loan
obligations will eventually expire.

However we decide to make college more affordable, I am for it. A better educated
population is better for everyone and the Country as a whole. The income disparity
in the United States is at record levels.
Giving everyone the opportunity for higher education would level the
playing field and allow all a chance at achieving the American dream. The
wealth of your family would no longer be the deciding factor of striving for
greatness. With a more educated population America could once again lead the world
in science and new innovation, really making the economy boom. The lower class
would shrink.   The population would be
more happy which could lead to a more prosperous nation. We would be better
equipped to make decisions at every level of society, even extraordinarily
controversial ones such as free college. If I end up becoming wealthy in
whatever field I end up going in, I would have absolutely no issue with a few
more of my dollars going to a kid that was not given all the opportunities that
I had, so that he might be able to get an education that I was blessed enough
to get. I believe every American, regardless of income, should have equal
opportunity to reach his or her potential.

In my fellow classmates blog Politically inept? Not For Long, He talks about how all forms of Gun Control are not only illegal but Unconstitutional. He had a very strong argument, saying the founding fathers envisioned the evolution of weaponry and therefore all weaponry is our given right thanks to the Second Amendment. Honestly it took me a while to think of a rebuttal for his argument as my main argument for gun control is the founding fathers, as brilliant and far thinking as they were, didn't foresee the amount of death that the Second Amendment is causing.  However, there are already gun regulations currently in the United states and the branch of government that is in charge of deciding whether or not a law is unconstitutional or not, the Judicial branch, has supported several laws that limit Americans ability to "bear arms". The second amendment was implemented to protect American citizens and I would argue it does more harm than good at this point in time. I cannot see our founding fathers being okay with there being more mass shootings in a year then there are days. I do believe his argument that they knew weaponry would advance but it is impossible to know how much or to what extent they would evolve to.   

America by far, pays more for healthcare than any other country in the world and it’s citizens receive less on average than all other citizens. In 2015 the United states spent $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person, which accounts for about 18 percent of our GDP. The average country spends around half of that. In belgium a hip replacement cost on average $13,000 while in U.S. it’s over $100,000. A Colonoscopy in Switzerland cost $650 and $1,100 in U.S.. Some of the reasons healthcare is so expensive in America is we spend far more on administration and doctors are paid more than other countries. Suppliers also charge more for drugs and other medical expenditures than any other country. The main reason for this is America does not negotiate with healthcare providers and drug manufacturers near as hard as other countries.  The United States also suffers from performing a lot of unnecessary medical procedures. A way we can fix this is expand the single payer system already in America. Medicare is extremely successful and they often receive better deals than the rest of the population. Our current healthcare system works very well for people working for the government or large organizations, as they are provided with health care. However, if someone does not have health care, their options are often the most expensive and can rarely afford it. My uncle is a good example of this; he is a self employed plumber and a couple years ago his wife fell ill and required a 13,000 and without health insurance he was forced to declare bankruptcy, which he has still not recovered from. The United states is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and I believe it can take care of its citizens just as well if not better than other countries. We must not allow so few to benefit at the expense of so many americans. We should take out the middleman for health care and not allow pharmaceutical and other health related companies to be screwing America over with outrageous prices. With this issue being the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S., it is an issue worth fixing. Medicare is not the only answer and it may not even be the best answer,  but my argument is if we pay the most for healthcare services we should at least get as much back if not more than every other country in the world.

Blog stage 4

The Huffington Post posted an article titled "Gold Star Father Khizr Khan On Trump: ‘He Has Embarrassed The Nation’". I thought it was a decent article, the author used multiple different examples of Donald Trump disrespecting military and their families.  He also got a personal word from the gold star father himself saying "he doesn't have hope the 71 year old president will change. Although he did not have any counter arguments making him appear even more bias. Even though there is not a whole lot to be bias about, it was a relative short article consisting of mostly facts. Still it has the same style the majority of the media has, which is to only say the things that push their specific agenda instead of giving all the facts. This specific article may be a bad example of that because I am not aware of how many other sides to the story there can be. All I know is we were only given facts that hurt Donald Trump's image. Its intended audience is anyone who dislikes trump or wants to see more negative things about him, and active military members and veterans. The author is as credible as the website he posted on and the sources he used, and he is on the front page of the Huffington Post, which is a fairly large news organization.   However, I am aware of every example he used and they are all accurate to my knowledge.  

This Tuesday on October 3rd  Leah Libresco published an article titled "I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise." In this piece she attempts to give us a solid argument of why gun control is not the answer. I believe her intended audience is anyone interested in the gun control matter. She starts off not too terribly, she introduces herself as a member of fivethirtyeight and speaks of the three months that her and her colleagues have been doing research for all of America's past shootings over the years.
 However she begins to talk about Britain and Australia and how their gun regulation would not be effective in the United states; saying " Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans". Which is extremely cherry picked or just flat out false. So far the most extensive studies by the most groups in the most countries come down to a simple conclusion; "The less number of firearms in a country the less number of gun-related deaths according to Epidemiologic Reviews. Hard to get your mind around right? although in her example of Australia, it is harder to calculate, because their homicide rate was already fairly low. This is greatly contributed to several previously existing, strict gun control regulations. Another reason Australia is difficult to study according to Jerry Ratcliffe, is around the same time that the gun laws were passed, non gun-related deaths dropped even more quickly than gun-related incidents. I believe she did not represent the research properly.
 She then goes to point out that mass shootings are not the number one cause for gun-related deaths, saying that suicides are the predominant cause; asking how banning assault weapons will prevent her neighbor from killing himself. Next, she states how teenagers and other young adults mixed in with gang disputes are killed; and finally she brings up abusive relationships and how we should further help those people than worry about mass shootings. The issues she brings up are all despicable and should be exterminated. I Just do not see how any of those things are a justifiable reason to NOT do anything about the inconceivable amounts of gun-related homicides. Simply because a certain problem isn't the biggest does NOT mean that we should hold off on a solution. The number one cause of death heart-related disease so should we not do anything at all about related to gun-related deaths? I see her point about other issues and to be honest I was unaware of those statistics but I can not for the life of me get around the idea that because it is not the dominating issue so we should do nothing about it.

On Friday the 22 The New York Times published an article titled

Kim’s Rejoinder to Trump’s Rocket Man: ‘Mentally Deranged U.S. Dotard. 

I recommend this reading because not only is the article title slightly comical, but the effects of what is happening could be detrimental. Two of the most powerful Egocentric people in the world are calling each other names and what makes it extremely dangerous is they are both leaders of countries containing nuclear arsenals, with neither one of them having the slightest bit of thick skin. I have high hopes that congress and our other implications of checks and balances will prevent anything from coming out of President Trump and Kim jung-un's predicament; primarily making sure any and all nuclear warheads stay dormant. The thought of nuclear warfare is frightening enough, we should take all measures possible to prevent another cold war-like standoff.