23. February 2009 by Mr. Andoscia.

Only I can assign individual passwords.  If you change your password it changes the password for everyone.  The original password has been reset.

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16. February 2009 by student.

     Poverty in the United States is an ongoing epidemic that has plagued society for centuries.  Especially in a capitalistic society, such as the one present in our country, it is impossible to avoid poverty.  Along with poverty, another major issue is developed which was originally intended to help the poor, and that issue I called welfare.  The wealth will always be greater in an elite few and the remaining wealth will be spread among the population.  In the US we have a middle working class, an elite class, and a class that is labeled as the poor.  There are many causes of poverty in today’ society and many reasons why people may be forced to rely on welfare to help them survive.                  

      Cutbacks in health, education and other vital social services around the world have resulted from structural adjustment policies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as conditions for loans and repayment. In addition, developing nation governments are required to open their economies to compete with each other and with more powerful and established industrialized nations. To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources. This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.Welfare is a major effect of poverty, especially in the United States.  Welfare is any form of government aid that is given to the poor who don’t work or as a supplement to the working poor who have jobs but do not have enough economic or social resources in order to raise their family and support themselves. 

      After the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, for the first time a person who was not elderly or disabled could receive a living from the American government. This could be comprised of general welfare payments, health care through Medicaid, food stamps, special payments for pregnant women and young mothers, and federal and state housing benefits.  In 1968, 4.1% of families were headed by a woman on welfare; by 1980, this increased to 10%.  In the 1970s, California was the U.S. state with the most generous welfare system.  Virtually all food stamp costs are paid by the federal government.                        

          Browning reports that the federal government maintains 85 means tested programs targeted to the poor and low income families. In 2005, total Federal, state and local spending on these programs was $620 billion. This was 25% more than was spent that year on national defense.  The largest of these programs is Medicaid, which pays for essential health care for those who lack sufficient funds. The program pays for doctor’s bills, hospitals, and long-term care in nursing homes. Federal and state spending on this program alone this year is an estimated $330 billion. For food stamps and other food and nutrition assistance, the Federal government is spending $60 billion this year. For housing assistance programs, the Feds are currently spending another $40 billion. Federal spending on income security programs such as the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, now renamed Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, will total $130 billion this year.  Government spending overall this year for the 85 federal means tested welfare programs will total about $735 billion. That compares to the national defense budget for this year of just over $600 billion. We are still spending almost 25% more on welfare than national defense.  Moreover, this does not even include the major programs for seniors, Social Security and Medicare. Total spending for Social Security this year will be $615 billion. Another $400 billion will be spent on Medicare, for a total spent for senior citizens of over $1 trillion.  That leaves our total welfare state costing us about $1.7 trillion, almost 3 times national defense. Those are the funds spent for the poor, the sick, and the old. Our total Federal budget is about $2.9 trillion.                       

       Welfare and poverty go hand in hand and both are extremely prevalent in our society today and probably for generations to come.  Statistics on welfare show that it is decreasing, but these figures may be misleading because the individual states have their own welfare systems that are independent to that of the federal government.  This issue is one that sparks extreme emotion between people who need welfare and those who think that they should not have to pay for other people’s mistakes.  The question is not really if welfare should be in place but who should receive it and what methods should determine who should receive it.

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15. February 2009 by student.

As many people do, I think the health care system in this country has serious problems. There are a number of potential solutions to this problem. We could move either to a free market system or to a single-payer plan, i.e., a government health care system. Our current system is neither of these systems, but rather a restricted market. I consider our current health care system to be a restricted market. By this I mean that the insurance industry is a group of profit-seeking firms, but consumers do not have free choice to switch between the market alternatives. Many of the people who defend the current system claim that a free market is best. However our current system is not a free market. Many of the problems in our current health care system are a result of the restrictions in this market. Consumers cannot register their discontent with their insurance plans because it is difficult to switch plans. Because of this difficulty, plans can fail to provide quick resolution of claims, good information, or consistent policy because customers are tied in to their current plans through their employers and through the difficulty of switching plans.Considering our current system of a restricted market, one of the simplest solutions to this problem would be to have a free market for health insurance, so that people could “vote with their feet.” Making our system a free market would require forbidding insurance companies to give discounts to employers, making it easier for the employers to buy insurance than for their employees to do so. Health insurance should thus count as a tax deductible expense, even for people who take the standard deduction. It should also be illegal for insurance companies to discriminate based on a pre-existing condition when a person is switching plans (unless the condition is not covered by the original plan). Employers should not be allowed to force employees to accept “their” plan. They should be able to set price based on age, sex, weight (as compared to height), smoking, and other “controllable” risk factors.The government should require everyone to have insurance, and should give vouchers for the purchase of health insurance, good for a certain amount of money, which would be phased out with income. The government could also have a default plan into which people would be enrolled if they did not make any other choice. (National health insurance, however, seems to be politically unacceptable in this country, although it would probably be even better than any of the above solutions, although a very good free market system might be better than government health care.)A remaining question is how to handle people who try to cheat the system by switching plans when they become sick. It would be reasonable to allow plans not to cover preexisting conditions when the previous plan did not cover the condition, at least in a system where the state provided vouchers for a basic amount of health insurance and a default plan if the people did nothing. Such a default plan should choose to cover various treatments based on cost-benefit analyses of those treatments. Based on these analyses, it might determine that it would only pay up to a certain amount for a given treatment.

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15. February 2009 by student.

I don’t think I can recall a time I saw, or more clearly, observed society. Valentine’s Day in Naples. 5th Ave. At nineteen I can’t exactly say I was thrilled when I was told that I would spend the holiday with my grandparents. I figured since I live in their house and eat their food I couldn’t  really complain. Before we went out to eat this evening i distinctly remember my grandmother telling me that this was where I’d see all the “beautiful people” and that if I got a good education this is where I’d eat all the time. Now for some background, my grandparents own their own company and are what you would classify as white upper class. However, the night was unlike any other. We had reservations at a restaurant downtown with another couple, total five. We picked up the other two on the way downtown and the car ride seemed normal, we got dropped off, and the gentlemen parked the car while us three ( grandma, grandma’s friend and I ) looked about in the shops. That’s when I became aware of how quickly everything changed. It was like a competition the whole evening team one vs. team two. I swear to god; maybe it was me being two generations younger, maybe not. It got to the point where I wanted to hit my head against the wall. Here we are walking down fifth ave, all dressed up for the part, waiting for dinner. As soon as we got there the conversation between the men was competitive, each trying to be more politically correct, while my grandmother and her friend eyed women at the tables around us, complained about our seats, and rudely made fun of our waitress. I sat there for a total of two hours and thirty three minutes. With a sociologist’s mindset. I watched the waiters and the cooks. I watched the rich, and the richer. I watched for hours. I listened to the conversation, the way people were talking down to one another, the way the women in the restroom acted. It made me sick. When the bill came my grandfather thought the waitress messed, up his friend agreed and freaked out at the waitress. Turns out it was correct, and then the friend told my grandfather that he thought the bill was right all along and was just going on what my grandfather had assumed. ( my grandfathers friend all night long tried to make himself look better, by putting down others, trying to sound intelligent and so on…) But it wasn’t just the men, while my grandmother was trying on shoes, her friend pulled me aside, and told me they were hideous. ( seriously? who was she trying to gain approval from? why would you say that to your friends granddaughter?) I’m not sure if this post is going in the right direction, but I hope it’s kind of showing you what I saw. But so much happened it’s hard to put all the details, hopefully you’ve been somewhere like this and in a similar situation. The drive home was equally as bad, I sat there listening to them preach that all they needed was love, and money meant nothing. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking.  Why they were trying so hard to out spend one another. Outsmart the other, and have stronger morals. Who’s approval are they seeking? Mine? Society’s? Seriously… anyone have you seen this?

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 6 Comments »

14. February 2009 by student.

I got pulled over on my way home tonight from a narcotics anonymous meeting. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was using my signals, I was sober, clean, whatever you might call it; straight. I was with some guy listening to what he wanted to play for the dance that he was going to DJ tomorrow night when I saw the lights. I had one of those moments, you know, the one where your like ” can’t be me..” Clearly it was me, I switched lanes, and pulled off on some Juliet blvd in a white Lexus with Naval tags. I prayed for a warning. Surely enough it was me the cop wanted. He walked over, apparently bored, asked the normal questions and walked away. When he returned, the only thing he asked was why i had kept switching lanes. So I asked the officer if it was against the law to switch lanes frequently while using a signal. He took it as sarcasm and radio-ed me in. I wasn’t trying to be a smartass but seriously,  wasn’t speeding, there was no question of DUI and it was foggy out. Period, end of story. Was it the car? The end of the month ticket quota? He came back, after a long delay ( serioiusly ten minutes ) only to tell me to be more decisive on which lane I’d perfer. SERIOUSLY? Was he that bored? Are our tax dollars going to support his family? I just don’t get it.

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13. February 2009 by student.

Society is filled with people. White middle class men, nurses, teachers, doctors, therapists. However, there are also those that go unseen, while in your 9-5 job these people are out there”hustling”, “dealing”; it’s what they call the street life . Narcotics Anonymous is a fellowship that grew erratically and quickly spread throughout the US. It was formed in July of 1953 with the first meeting in Southern California, a place of redemption for all those that had lost hope. I’m not sure in which of my classes I heard it, but it was something among the lines of social structure. Something to do with the white male office holder, salesman, doctor, all the way down to the drug addict. But it’s this program I’ve discovered that gives the drug addict the hope, power, and willingness to achieve what the white male, BMW driver has. Because the reality in the rooms of NA is that. They were once lawyer’s who stumbled across a bottle of xanaz, or oxycotin. Some of the stories in the rooms are remarkable, breathtaking, unthinkable. Forget rags-to-riches,  these people have fallen, hit rock bottom, and found a home where they are accepted, and are taking steps to reinvent themselves. Although not all addicts are so willing, some are, to return to active society. I feel like society dehuminizes drug addicts, but when you take a closer look you see that these so called “drug addicts” were teachers, doctors, lawyers, they were rich, they were smart, they just took a wrong turn, and keep driving. I’m not here to praise drug addicted beings, or drug users, but rather to shed light on something else. If the drug addict is the lowest in society, and the drug addict was once a doctor is there still hope if he gets clean? If he works his program? You tell me. Society tell me.

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13. February 2009 by student.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) recently announced that violent crime in Florida has decreased by 2.4 percent for the first half of 2008, down from the same time period in 2007. The FDLE report includes data obtained from over 400 law enforcement agencies regarding violent crimes reported between January and June of this year. The numbers for four categories of violent crime, murder, robbery, aggravated assault and forcible sex offenses, all decreased this year compared to the same period in 2007. The number of crimes reported overall in Florida however increased by 1.6% compared to the same time period last year.

“The first half of the year is typically a good indicator as to what is ahead in the remaining months,” said FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey. “Arrests are up and we applaud the hard work of Florida law enforcement in aggressively combating crime.”

The number of domestic violence offenses reported decreased by 3.0 percent from last year while the number of total arrests made increased by 3.9 percent. Juvenile arrests increased 0.9 percent, while adult arrests increased 4.3 percent. Car theft is down 10.1 percent over the same period last year.

The complete 2008 Semi-Annual Crime in Florida, Uniform Crime Report, including county-by-county breakdowns, can be found on FDLE’s Web site: www.fdle.state.fl.us/fsac/ucr.

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12. February 2009 by student.

Prozac, Zoloft, Lamictal; Society today is obsessed with handing out medications. In the past week society has openly confirmed this. As I traveled for my personal reasons from treatment center to treatment center I was offered and told repeatedly these three words. Is it because I’m 5′5” between the ages of 17 and 21? Last year a physician, the one that prescribed me birth control, the same one that took my vitals, and gave my my physical diagnosed me with depression and started me off on 100mg of Prozac, something in hindsight I realize could of been lethal in my condition. Pharmaceutical companies are paying doctors to push their products, she’s no therapist, and the starting dose is 10mg on average. This world is being influenced by corruption.  And we’re letting it. We let the big company pay off the doctor and watch the innocent teen go get a prescription filled for something they probably don’t need. It’s dangerous.  I know it’s not always a concern but I really started to notice how upset it got me this week, after visiting David Lawrence, more then once. I give them credit, they at least have the degree to suggest these things to me, however how much is truth and how much of it is for my benefit? Can I trust their diagnosis? As it is they tried to get me to do inpatient care, intense out patient all for a suspicion of bipolar disorder. Is this how society has become, where is the line drawn, where does it stop? Where should my loyalties lie, who can we trust, who can’t we, what doctors are being paid, which one’s aren’t, who’s looking out for my benefits?

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10. February 2009 by student.

Racism has

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10. February 2009 by student.

     After viewing the video online of the United States soldier throwing an innocent puppy off a cliff I thought to myself, why would any normal minded human do a thing like this. but then i thought back to this indivudals situation. He is constantly surrounded by death, he’s in a war that no one back home supports anymore, and his friends are dying every day for absoultly no reason. So why should he care about one dogs life? This issue is being addressed as a social change, from a family man in the United States, to a heartless soldier surrounded by death. The values of this soldier has decreassed immensely. There was a social friendship between the two soldiers in the video. The power arangements in the situation was clear that the soldiers in this video were low ranked foot soldiers, whom because of their actios have given the high ranked American generals and captains a bad name. The Inequality is tward the dog. If someone were to do something like this in America, law enforcement would be involved. The inequality is also for the soldier. What ever he has gone through in iraq to make him so heartless. The soldier made a very irational choice in this video. He killed a small dog for nothing but the fun of watching an innocent dog die.

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