I Agree With A Gee Statement

I agree with A Gee Statement. I don’t think that families should be able to get assistance over and over again throughout the years. This is unfair to everybody that is paying into the system, just to let people that are to lazy to work take all the money that hard workers put in. By the government letting people take advantage of a good thing, the government is not helping Americans they are crippling them for life. The government is sending a message that if you don’t want to work, its ok, we will take care of you and your five children. I never understood people that have five kids and are on welfare. If you were on welfare with the first kid and couldn’t take care of that child, what makes people think that they will be able to take care of four more. I think that the government should put a stop to people having five and six kids, when they can’t even take care of one. If the government keeps letting people use the system, it will become an on going cycle until the government is taped dry.

UT Raising Money Money Money!

In the Austin American Statesman has an article called "UT seeking to raise more than $2 billion." This article is about UT following in the steps of many other colleges to raise money for their school and some of the student’s attending UT. Although an amount has not yet been set, it's said that UT will try to raise between two and four billion dollars. UT is checking with donors and other sources that the school gets money from to see what a reasonable goal is. The school's last drive raised about 1.6 billion dollars last year and the money went to research, athletic buildings, and scholarships and ect. This year most of the money that UT raises is said to go towards scholarships. Many ask why UT would need to raise more money when they have a 7.2 billion dollars endowment, a 4.2 billion dollar share of the state’s permanent University fund and about 3 billion dollars in private gifts. UT Says that they are giving the money for scholarships to soften the blow of a 7.8 percent tuition increase next year and a 6.9 percent increase the following. I don’t understand this concept if the school wants to help so much with paying some of the students tuition , why don’t they just not raise tuition then they want have to try to raise money for scholarships and everyone can be happy. That's if UT really wants to help. UT plans on getting about one third to one half of the money that the school plans on raising during their quit phrase so that they can be certain that they will be able to achieve what every money amount that is set as the goal for UT.

My thoughts

A country of my own, I agree with you on the article talk about racism I also think that the man that stole the candy bar should have been punished, because if not America would be sending the signal that it’s ok to steal, if its under $2 and I agree that for doing drugs he should be punished for the same reason, but it comes a point that punishment is to harsh. How will a man learn anything if the court system put him away for life just for stealing candy and doing drugs. The only thing he would learn is just how “free” you really are as a black man in America. As for the case were the white man only got probation for murder I think that this judgment is a crock and that the judge should have been thrown off the bench. When the same judge gives a man that was on probation for stealing a candy bar, life because he is found with drugs in his body and a white man that has been in trouble with the law in the past murders someone and only gets probation, that decision screams racism.

Too much money

In the Austin American Statesman an article titled, “Youth Prisons halt overtime” is about the Texas Youth Commission spending more then half of their budget for the year in one month, September. The commission only has 1.3 million dollars to spend this year, but already in September alone have managed to spend $735,933 of it in overtime. As a result of this a team has been put together to look into why so much overtime was need in September. Some of the problems were that people were required to have 300 hours of training and another was that the computers for overtime had problems. So as of Wednesday Dimitria Pope the acting executive director of the Youth Commission has suspended overtime payments until this problem has been further looked into. Worker still work overtime, but their payments will be banked until November.
I think that this is a good article to read, because everyone in Texas would like to know were some of their money is going and when you see hear about an agency spending so much money in a small amount of time it makes you wonder what’s going on. So by reading this article you will become a little bit more informed about the Youth Commission. The one think that I didn’t like about what the Commission is doing is to have workers work overtime and then bank their money until a nothing month is not fare and it’s no right. What if the workers decided to “bank” their work time for a month, then there would be no guards and kids would be running loose everywhere.

Auditors and fraud

In the Austin American Statesman an article titled, “Austin’s delayed audit comes back clean. This article was about Austin being audit for financial flaws. It had been a seven month delay on Austin’s audit given by an outside auditor, but on Tuesday the report was out. KPMG LLP reported that Austin was good, but they didn’t let Austin get completely off. The auditors found many flaws with Austin’s Convention Center dealing with the money department. In this former department Director Korbert Hodge was allowed to make purchases and do other things without oversight. I feel that this is wrong. By giving anyone this much power it makes it much easier to have fraud and no one would no about it until it was too late. Then the tax payers would be the ones to suffer. Hodge was fired and is now under investigation for his miss use of money as a Department Director, which proves my point of too much power to one person is never good. Now an internal auditor position has sense been added to watch contract compliance, purchasing ext. I think that this position was a much needed and a very good idea and should have been in place to prevent a problem in the first place. The Auditor also found that in 2006 a purchase was made that went against the city charter, because it was made without the city counsels approval; and went over the amount that city manager Toby Futrell could sign off on without the city counsel. I feel that this is really bad, because how does Austin expect the citizens to follow the rules and laws if the leaders don’t. I definitely feel that something needs to be done about this fraud to make sure this never happens again.

Teen Poll

In the Austin American Statesman one articles titled, "Let teens work at poll, former Texas secretary of state suggests." The articles was about Roger Williams, which was the state's former chief election officer saying that in Texas 16 and 17 year old kids should be able to help in the election polls. The problem that I have with this suggestion is that when you get people that are 16 and 17 they tend to be immature and you can't have immaturity work in a state position. This proposal went through the senate, and died even before it got to the House floor. Williams’s things by allowing young people to participate in the part of an election at 16 and 17 years of age, when they reach the age of 18 the students will be more likely to come out and vote. However I think that this proposal will have a small if any effect on the voting turn out of young people. The students that will want to participate in the election polls are probably the ones that would have voted when they became of age anyway so that would not help the problem. So it would leave Texas in the same spot that they started. Williams also said that teens 16 to 17 can work 12 hour days. Where are you going to find a 16 or 17 year old willing to devote 12 hours of their day to the election, its not likely to happen. Even if their were kid that were willing to spend that much time at age 16 an 17 you are still in school therefore you don't have the time to spend 12 hours at a poll when you could be studying for your classes or doing homework. In the legislative session 2007 senator Robert Duncan and R-Lubbock had a proposal that would have allowed kids 16 year of age or older to be an election clerk. This bill cleared the senate but didn't reach the House floor in time. If this is something that the legislator that would really have benefited the youth then it was very unreasonable of them not to make sure that this bill reached the House so that it could go in effect as soon as possible. A Representative named Trey Martinez Fischer filed a proposal that would make it mandatory for high school students to work as assistant election clerks to graduate. What does being an election clerk have to do with school. I don't recall their being any question on a test in school or even on the SAT that ask what you do as an election clerk or in Texas how are the election polls ran. I think that the election polls should be ran by adults 18 years or older and for a representative to even think of making it mandatory for student to have been an assistant election clerk to graduate is ludicrous. I guess that’s going to be one of the TAKs test essays. How was it to be an assistant election clerk?

Capital Metro board backs away from fare increase plan

On Thursday September 20th 2007 Capital Metro decided not to go through with the fare increase proposal set for January. Board members ask that the transit agency look at many different options for capital Metro. Also the chairman felt that consideration for increasing bus fair should be thought out based on a long-term financial plan, and better marker research. Monday the board was going to vote on this increase in bus fare that would have just about doubled the price to ride. However because of a public hearing on Tuesday, where this plan received a lot of criticism; the board decided it would be best to go another route. Then at Thursday’s board meeting, the board discussed other options that they had. One of those options was to gradually increase the bus fare over a two to three year span. Another was to start to charge people to ride the Dillo downtown, which is now free.
After hearing many different opinions the board will still adopt its budget based on the fare increase proposal on Monday, but will revise it later in the year.
This articles is worth reading, because you never know when you will have to ride a Capital Metro bus and when you do you want it to be as cost efficient as possible.

To read this article click Statesman.