Education Comment

In Adrienne’s blog she wrote about education, which is a huge issue that I repeatedly keep hearing about. Writing about such a big topic is good because it will capture the audiences attention. She does a good job introducing the topic of education, but it is hard to decipher what her main topic is. At first she writes about art being taken out of schools and then writes about how education is financed. Those two topics could work together, but she does not create a good transition between the two.
I really do like the topic she talks about because it is really important and she provides a good article for the audiences to reference. After she moves on to the financial part of education she becomes more clear with her point, using statistics and historical references. These references show how public education has been financed in the past to how it’s currently being financed. She also did a good job inserting her thoughts on the topic.
It is important to have a good transition between topics, but other than that I believe she chose a good topic. Just creating a transition and elaborating a little bit more would have made this an excellent blog.

Treason?

The Civil War took the lives of thousands of Americans. Abraham Lincoln took the chance of a Civil War in order to keep the Union together and now Governor Rick Perry of Texas is making comments about possibly seceding.

In a speech, where he was trying to stir up the right wing extremist he said that "the federal government has become oppressive, oppressive in size, and oppressive in intrusion in the lives of citizens." He is not happy with how the federal government is using our tax money, even though citizens in Texas receive 88 percent back in tax returns, which is more than other states. What is ironic about this, is that as soon as the Swine Flu started moving towards Texas, Perry decided that he needed federal assistance. This happened after he stated, " no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in Texas."

Rick Perry has become a sort of embarrassment, challenging the federal government about taxes while ignoring the Texas Constitution, which does not grant the state the right to secede from the country. He believes that he is sending a "clear message" that "we won't stand for our pockets to be picked, our children's future to be mortgaged and our rights to be taken away." He says, "we will not be ignored." Obviously, he is not being ignored, with everyone commenting on how ludicrous and extreme his idea of seceding is.

The ideas that Rick Perry is putting out there is similar to the ideas of Rick McLaren, who led a separatist group, which ended up in violence. Hopefully, something like that does not form out of Rick Perry's ideas. It's known that not everyone agrees with what our federal government is doing, but seceding is not the answer. If anything our states need to work together to make things better. And after our new presidential election, we should wait and see how Obama does with fixing things.