24. April 2010 by student.

Everyone is society makes snide and sarcastic jokes about Priests victimizing little boys with molestation. Although these jokes may be funny, it is a serious situation that is happening all around the world that needs to be delt with. This happens not only in the Vatican, but Austria, Ireland, and the United States. I’m sure it’s happening in other countries, but we just havn’t heard about it yet. But my question is, IS it socially acceptable for Priests to still work in their church after they have molested children? “An alleged victim of a priest accused of molesting up to 200 boys at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin sued the Vatican and the pope on Thursday in an attempt to open secret files on internal investigations into sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.” (AFP) This is something that should not be overlooked in society! This man was sexually molested by a priest, and now he’s a sexual molester too! He molested Children that, because they are deaf, have a disadvantage when defending themselves towards a molester. Which also brings another question: Are these people being screened before they are given a job as a Priest at the church? WHY is it such a common thing for priests to do this to children that it’s become the butt of societies’ jokes? Perhaps to Catholic Priests, they can’t have a realtionship or sexual acts with a woman, so they turn to children? Either way you look at it, it is disturbing to society. But many people see this on the news and say, “wow thats horrible,” then they just continue on with their lives. Where is the action? Are people too busy to pay attention to Child Molesting Priests who have perfect access to their victims?

“Earlier this month Georg Mueller, a German-born former Catholic bishop in Norway, admitted sexually abusing a minor 20 years ago.”

Yet, all they do is apologize, repent, and then move on with their life as a priest. But most likely it keeps happening. These men are ill. At least if your Priest has been caught molesting a child and you continue to let him work in your church, each member of the church should be notified so they can take precautions against the priest.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 2 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

In the 1800s the term “Corporate Personhood” was established.  This doctrine says that corporations have full legal status and protections that were created for human beings by the Bill of Rights.  These rights are the rights that our nation’s creators fought to secure for citizens when gaining independence from England. For corporations to enforce their “freedom of speech,” they need money.  This “money equals speech” implication just keeps adding to the corruption and fraud of politics in this country.  According to the 1976 landmark case, Buckley v. Valeo, spending millions of dollars to get elected is a protected form of political speech.  This practically ensures that the rich will succeed. Is it this kind of thinking that is leading to the ever expanding gap between our nations’s rich and poor?  As Joshua Holland, author of the article Corporations Aren’t People, stated, as long as ideas such as corporate personhood are instilled in our legal systems, “talk of cleaning up our government is just that: talk.”        

Posted in Social Problems | 2 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

I personally grew up in New York my entire life, I have an older sister and she smokes cigarettes and to my knowledge the legal age to buy them has always been 18. In the recent past couple of years the legal age to buy cigarettes has changed from 18 to 19 in both Nassau and Suffolk counties of New York, Alabama, Alaska, Utah and New Jersey. Wondering what the major difference between an 18 year old and a 19 year old I did some research on this topic. Every single website and article that I came across said the exact same this in different words. “The intended effect of this is to prevent upper class high school students from purchasing cigarettes for their younger peers” [NY times]. I personally find it unfair of the reasoning’s chosen to explain why the age has gone up one year. I don’t find any scientific study or any experiments done on the different affects of tobacco products on an 18 year old versus a 19 year old showing serious and major differences, all I see is a study of the government trying to keep cigarettes out of lower class-men in high-school. I personally know from being in high school myself at one point that if a student wants a cigarette they’re going to get one.. whether it’s from a senior who’s 18 or from a random person they find outside of a store which sells cigarettes. I personally feel like the changing of the age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 19 is only bringing in less revenue for the economy and the country as a whole because cigarettes are extremely bad for the health of all individuals but at the same time, cigarettes are not free they are actually really expensive and those who are 18 and older are considered adults and should be able to make their own decision to smoke or not, and if they choose to why not make some money off it. According to the NY Times 18 year old’s hold the highest category percentage of people who smoke in both 2008 and 2009. So in conclusion I feel that the age to buy cigarettes should have never changed to begin with and that 18 is a sufficient age to be making the purchase of tobacco products.

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/food-stores/4488430-1.html

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/food-stores/4485559-1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1D8173EF93BA15752C1A9629C8B63

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

   With the rise of feminism we have come to venerate the image of the empowered, cunning, domineering woman. Although we strive for equality this has often resulted in the emasculation and neglect of young men. Sociological statistics around the world tell us that the suicide rate amongst men is nearly three times that of women. Many will tell you this is the result of the male’s inherent nature. Furthering the stereotype presented by the radical feminist. That stereotype being that the male is naturally destructive and violent. Making her or his excuses (not all are women) so as to further propagate her or his fanatical march towards matriarchy. Shouldn’t we wonder what is really causing this? Is there something going on? Why do so many men across the globe feel so hopeless that they decide to end their own lives? Have we seen so many men taking their own lives at any other time in history?

   Of course we can look at the spectrum of human history and conclude that women have in many instances been dehumanized and enslaved. Especially with the introduction of agriculture for some reason. But one must also consider the course of human development and the nature of the environments humans developed in. For the most part science will tell you that generally the male kept the tribe safe and fed. The women primarily taking care of and raising the children. It would be interesting to see if this would be the case again if the technological infrastructure of human society were to somehow collapse. Is it right to raise young men to be either effeminate sissies or illiterate shopping cart collectors? Do the radical feminists in the universities (male and female) long for the day when man’s only purpose is to do his grunt work and then go praise his local Venus statue? To become the personal jackass of his matriarch?

　 A University of Georgia study concluded that there was a sentencing disparity between men and women. Especially when it came to prison time. One could easily conclude that there is a discriminatory process in place aimed at incarcerating men, especially young men. Is this a coincidence considering it has always been young men throughout history that have overthrown arrogant and tyrannical power structures? Perhaps it is preferable to make the young man passive and flabby? Frighten some conformity into him. Allow him to drown in his own decadence. Let his only aspirations be sex, shiny toys, and intoxicants. And if he raises his voice or objects to what we offer him, we will let him share a cell with Bubba. And we all know how funny we find it when he gets thrown in a cell with Bubba……

Posted in Social Problems | 2 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

The health care bill that just passed is one of the worst crafted and implemented bills our Congress has ever passed.  To start, our law makers made it with the wrong thinking.  Healthcare is not a right, it is a good.  A right is something given to us from God, a good is all other things.  Our founders were exactly right when they listed our God given unalienable rights in the constitution, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” because everyone has the ability to do so.  Goods are everything else, like education, home ownership, health care, among countless other things.  If rights are given to us by Government, they have the power to take them away from us, which means they control our lives.  That is the problem with Washington these days; they have rights and goods confused.  They think that if we could get more freebies, with the rich paying, then it would increase their reelection chances. 

                The health care bill will increase costs by the simple theory of supply and demand.  According to a survey in the New England Journal of Medicine, 29 percent of doctors would quit/retire early if the government passed the bill without the public option, and 45 percent if there was a public option.  So, if you increase patients by 34 million people, and reduce (or even keep the same amount) the supply of doctors, costs will go up because of the increased demand.  Allen Greenspan recently said this:

In other words, in the case now, where our buffer between our
capacity to borrow and our actual debt is narrowing, for the first time,
I think, in the American history, there’s a question, supposing we are
wrong on the cost estimates, and, indeed, they are actually much higher
than the best estimates can generate, the consequences are very severe,
whereas if they are too high, it’s very easy to adjust.

So even if there is a slight risk, in any bill that we pass, especially this, why would we risk collapsing the economy and starting another Depression?  The politicians are in a mentality of “it can’t happen to us.”  Well why not?  What makes us the only outlier?

Obama argued, during his push for healthcare, that comprehensive reform was necessary because it would bankrupt the federal budget and be disastrous for our economy.  Well it turns out that it will not decrease the amount of money our Government pays, but rather increase the tab.  This survey, which was done by the Centers for Medicare and Medicade Services, found that costs would increase by at least 1% over the projected spending for the next ten years, had the bill not have passed.  It would be much higher if Congress does not enact the projected 500 billion in medicare cuts, which is unlikely because to do so because they must cut Medicare services, which will result in lost votes.  The Obama administration responded to it by saying that the CBO analysis should carry more weight.  Should it?  The CBO formulated their analysis not on the actual bill.  They are required to put in what the congressmen tell them to, thus they did not count the double counting with the medicare cut among many other things.  Basically shit in, shit out.  This group that conducted the survey hired neutral analysts, and used the actual bill itself, therefore is the most credible survey to date.   

Another problem with this bill is that it will destroy the healthcare industry.  Because nobody with preexisting conditions can be rejected from getting insurance, it will bankrupt the industry.  Who would pay for insurance when if they contract a serious medical problem, get covered the day they go to apply?  Why would they pay at least $5000 a year, when they would only have to pay a $750 dollar fine to the Government?  Insurance companies will start dropping like flies because they will have little income and massive expenditures, thus leading to the single payer system the Democrats wanted all along. 

The Government should have solved our healthcare problem in a radically different way.  They should have made it like auto insurance.  Consumers would have to pay for the little things, like prescriptions and doctors visits, but be covered should something severe happen.  That is why auto insurance is so low.  It does not pay for when you need new tires, or go in for scheduled services, but rather pays should an accident happen, you damage somebody’s property, or harm somebody.  That along with TORT reform and opening up state lines will catastrophically lower costs. 

The Democrats who crafted this bill pretty much followed what Massachusetts did.  Their system is bankrupting the state.  Had it not been for money the federal Government is giving Massachusetts every year it would be insolvent.  Officials in that state have repeated countless times that if the Government passed the bill they did, our nation would become bankrupt. 

As a result of our ignorant Government, our country is, for lack of a better word, fucked.  I pray to God that the CBO’s scoring is correct; however I believe it not to be.  Just look at how much they expected medicare to cost when it was passed in 1975.  By 1990 it was expected to cost only 12 billion.  By 1990 it cost the Government 110 billion, nearly 10 times more than their initial projection.  Imagine if they are off of that by the same amount.  Healthcare would cost 10 trillion!  Even if it ‘only’ ends up being twice as expensive, that means the bill would cost 2 trillion! They were also off about when Social Security would begin to lose money.  They predicted in 2016, but it happened last year.  7 years off!  The CBO is highly inaccurate and should never be trusted until you get outside groups to review the bill.

I am frightful for our future.  There is no way we come out of this unscathed.  There is a glimmer of hope though.  There is a chance this bill will get repealed on account of it being unconstitutional.  For starters this would greatly increase the federal Government’s power.  Never before has the federal Government forced you to buy a good against your will, especially a private one.  Liberals would argue that the Government forces you to buy auto insurance, so what’s different?  States, not the federal Government, force you to buy auto insurance, but you drive on public roads (a five year old could drive on his/or anybody else’s property if he has their permission).  If the individual mandate gets struck down, the whole bill will fall because they are counting on young people buying insurance in order to share the burden for all the high risk people getting insurance too.  If that doesn’t work, the only other option is when the Republicans get control of the House, they could defund the law.  While the future is still up in the air, I can guarantee you one thing: If the law stands, as is, nothing short of chaos will ensue. 

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

In today’s time we are all familiar with the sites of Facebook and Myspace. These sites have become so extremely popular in such a short amount of time and now millions of people throughout the world have one. It almost seems like these sites are now becoming too popular and all people think about is updating their Facebook or Myspace status. There is now a new issue with businesses starting to make rules against Facebook and Myspace in the work place. There are two main categories that stood out to me when looking through the information. There are the everyday businesses that are saying no to these sites, and now the United States Marines are also banning facebook and Myspace.

First, let’s talk about the everyday businsses. They are banning these sites because there are huge amounts of employees who are on these sites during the workday. They are checking their profiles on these sites when they should be working on the tasks that they have been assigned. More than 70 percent of businesses have now banned these sites from the work place. These businesses include law firms and banks, and several other companies have warned the work people to not use these certain cites. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1558630/Facebook-banned-by-City-firms.html)

Then there are the marines. They are banning Facebook and Myspace from their troops.  This ban has actually been in effect for almost a year, which started August 2009. This happened because of the concern of web 2.0 sites due to the network security concerns. Scams on these web sites can spread extremely quick and the organizations, such as the military, can not take a chance on somthing like that happening. (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/marines-ban-twitter-myspace-facebook/)

Overall, these websites such as Facebook and Myspace are starting to become very unpopular for businesses. People need to go back to concentrating on the task at hand instead of what to say on their Facebook or Myspace. After this problem clears up businesses will once again run more efficiently.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

24. April 2010 by student.

Violence has always played a role in entertainment, but there’s a growing consensus that, in recent years, something about media violence has changed. For one thing there is a lot more of it. Violence in the media was portrayed originally to show good verses bad. Yet now we see a different message behind violence. Television, video games, and movies have been transformed into showing violence in a ‘cool’ demeanor, which is giving children the wrong impression about violence. Businesses should be held responsible for the products and the by products of their business. Violence in the media has been taken to an all time high in our society, which is detrimental to children and their futures. Violent TV, video games, and movies cause children to act out in aggressive and violent ways, and produces anti-social behavior in young children.As Americans good and bad media surrounds us all the time. Media does not affect adults as much as it affects children. Children are like sponges; they soak up any information that they are exposed to. This is mostly due to the fact that children are innocent and very impressionable. The perfect example is that it is much easier to learn a second language at a young age, whereas the older you become the more difficult it is to learn a language. These are great qualities for learning, but media that surrounds children today is mostly violent. In 2005 a study was conducted by pediatric and adolescent medicine, and the results found that violent content was readily available to children in 61% of all television programming, and violence was in 66% of children’s programming, weather it be a video game, television show or a movies (369). This is alarming because the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine reported that once activities such as eating, sleeping, and self-care are accounted for children have roughly 51 hours of discretionary time each week. Recent studies found that on average a school-aged American child spends approximately 27 hours a week watching TV (368). Children as learn by observation, and then mimic the action; therefore as the violence in the media increases, the amount of aggression the child shows is increased as well. Watching these violent examples make children view violence as an acceptable way to settle conflicts. Which is not a quality we want in the future generations that will be running this country. We are a democratic country, and violence used to settle conflicts does not fit in with the democratic way.The aggressive behavior that these violent video games produce in children also inhibits their ability to make and keep friends. The media has gone overboard with violence, the novel Lost children says, “Today’s video games display even more horrific violence, with sharper images and more realistic graphics. American children spend a daily average of six hours and thirty-two minutes consuming visual electronic media. Images of brutality fill up much of their leisure time” (89). Video games such as halo, call of duty, and mortal combat all have become increasingly graphic over the years. These video games primary objective is shooting, stabbing, and bombing there ‘enemies’, which are in fact other people. These games have grown in popularity over the past decade, and have even begun to grab the interest of younger children ages 9-12. These are very sensitive ages because these children are beginning to come into they’re own and stray away from families and develop their own social lives. These games are affecting children in negative ways by promoting anti-social behavior. Children are spending less time outside and socializing with friends and more time sitting inside, becoming couch potatoes, by playing these video games.Violence in the media affects everyone that comes in contact with it, but the most affected are children without a doubt. The younger the children are the more they are affected by violence in the media. Children are more vulnerable to violence in the media because they’re major method of learning is observation and imitation. Businesses that are producing and promoting this type of violent media should be required to reduce the violence in all programming and eliminate violence from children’s programming before children are corrupted by violence and have less options for their future .Bibliography:

1)    David S Bickham, and Michael Rich. ”Is Television Viewing Associated With Social Isolation?: Roles of Exposure Time, Viewing Context, and Violent Content. ” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine  160.4 (2006): 387-392.  Research Library, ProQuest. Web.  21 Apr. 2010

2)    Olfman, Sharna. Childhood Lost: How American Culture Is failing Our Kids. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. Print.

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