1 in a 100 is way too many

http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23392251/

                If you read these you’ll see that in the United States there is now 1 person incarcerated for every 100 people.  That is an incredibly high number of people somewhere in he ballpark of 2 million.  The only other country in the world that comes close is China with 1.5 million but even then china has around 4 times as many people as the United States.  In third comes Russia which pales in comparison with 2nd and 1st place with around 890 thousand inmates.  The number of inmates in the united states penal system has more than tripled in the past 30 years.

                The ratios are even worse if you break down the people by racial group.  While the overall ratio of men in jail is 1 in 54 the ratio for white men is 1 in 106.  However on the other-side of that the ratio for Hispanic males is 1 in 36 and for black men the ratio is 1 in 15 and worst of all the ratio for black males ages 20 to 34 is 1 in nine meaning for every nine black men ages 20 to 34 one of them is in either jail or prison.  The number for women, while not as high as men are also skewed in a similar pattern.  The overall numbers being 1 in 265.  However the numbers for white women are as low as 1 in 355.  The Hispanic females while still above the average is higher than whites being 1 in 297.  The group that is seriously screwed however is black females with 1 in every 100 being incarcerated. 

                Another fact is that we are spending huge amounts of money to fun these prisons.  The costs to run these 24-7 facilities was 44 billion dollars last year and is estimated as rising another 25 billion by 2011.  When you look at the increase of cost that the states spend on higher education and corrections in the past 30 years higher education increased by 21 percent while corrections increased by as much as 127 percent.  There are now 5 states that spend as much or more on corrections as higher education with our own state Michigan being second only to Vermont with a rate of 1 to 1.19.

               The problem is that we are incarcerating many people that probably should be sent elsewhere.  There’s a big difference between a murderer and a person charged with possession.  When you look at the prison system many of those incarcerated are charged with simple possession and haven’t done much.  I think that we are using the prison system as a place to send everybody who defies the government in any way and unnecessarily throwing away tax dollars to keep people jailed who would probably be much better of in rehab.  We should do a major revamp of the prison system if we ever want to solve the problem of crime in our society we should be giving these people help and support instead of sending them to prison where they learn to be better criminals.

 

What exactly are we paying for ?

I recently saw a news story about the horrible conditions of Michigan roads that seem to have the whole state in a bad mood. It explained the extent of the damage and how much it would coast to fix . It then, went on to explain that Michigan is facing cuts that would take away from the funds needed to repair these roads. I asked my self“ isn’t that why we pay taxes?” and I got to wondering. Where exactly does all that money go? Do people even know? I certainly didn’t. This affects urban area especially because so much of the tax services (libraries, etc.), that we see everyday, are centered around big cities, but every one can relate to this. No like paying taxes and no one is happy when services get cutOn http://www.federalbudget.com/ I found some pretty clear cut information about federal tax spending for the last four years ( 2004- 2007) I was surprised at the distribution. The top three uses of taxes where treasury department (3), department of defense (2), and health an human evidence (1). Theses three expenditures far exceed any other, by 280- 580 billion dollars. What surprised me most was that department of defense took up that much money I always heard people talk about the billions of dollars we are spending on the war but I never really thought about how much it added up to. Is it doesn’t seem right for the government to spend our money on a country that we probably will never visit, in a war most of us don’t want any way. I guess that kind of getting in to a different topic, I’m talking about road conditions. Local taxes are a lot more relevant for this topic. statistics for local taxes vary from place to place, from year to year I was pleased to find out that education takes up 24 percent of property taxes, Michigan in 2006, and 14 percent goes to streets and sewers. In the past year, which many have call the worst for pothole for all of the Midwest, transportation departments and related officials have work hard to get more money to fix the still worsening road but that money isn’t being pick off trees. It is either coming out of your pocket or coming form another public service.Matters are not being help by the growing number of damage claim causes by the potholes. I thinks it’s sad that people take advantage of the situation like that. It is frustrating when your car damaged but it is not the government’s fault there is no way that every road is going to be clear all the time. When people sue the government it just being selfish and it not going to help any one but them, it’s certainly not going to make the roads get fix faster

 

…and whats your reason?

Laziness, carelessness, and malice. Unemployment rockets, but not because of inability to work but just deciding “work just isn’t for you and there is no need to work anymore”. These people or better called “Free loaders” are using the money that the citizens pay to the government. Guidelines were once in place for being capable of inheriting benefits form the Government but now it’s become on of the simpler things in life people can claim unemployment benefits with out due reason. The more and more this continues the faster and faster we are falling into a depression. The Government just seems to complain and complain about this issue but never seems to make a different. The easiest way to solve these issues?, is to input some laws, rule, and jurisdiction into our system.

I know that the government does have a deal in this but again we have to bring it back to the citizens. Using our system to their own desire and no consideration of the mass and effect. Each and every “Free loader” is another notch we have to place in our financial belt. So, how much longer is this going to go on? We complain and complain but it seems there just words.

 

 

If she’s her, then who is that?

 

We have all heard of identity theft, people using your identity to buy, sell, purchase and manage accounts, but now there is more to this travesty people are using this theft to benefit their health care and medical expenses. If that’s not all, this form of identity theft can kill you. The simplest change of your age, blood type, ect. could be fatal, but why hadn’t the insurance companies placed a larger protection label on this? In 1999 Identity theft was commercialized a lot and on since, so why hadn’t they started making it harder to obtain so much information on a person?

The blame I guess can’t be placed on the insurance right away; the owners have the obligation to “help” themselves. My biggest question is when and if ever will we be able to be ourselves and have this threat over our heads?, When will we have a government that provides us with what we need so we don’t resort to these kinds of behaviors?

 

http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/2733

 

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.idtheftfirstaid.com/images/identity_theft_statistics_clip_image001.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.idtheftfirstaid.com/statistics_identity_theft.php&h=246&w=382&sz=9&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=zsuHef7YKSufQM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Didentity%2Btheft%2Brates%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

 

Dorthy isn’t wishing she was home anymore.

“There’s no place like home!” exclaimed Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz. But for certain residents that’s a different story. Crime has risen higher than ever in the past few years, even though city leaders are stating they are seeing drops in violent crimes such as homicide, but burglaries and robberies are at their height.The numbers of crimes, such as home invasions, had started to increase nationally in the past two years. Most crimes such as robberies and drug related crimes seems to increase during an economic downfall. For some citizens they are fed up with the paranoia that someone might be breaking into their homes while they’re eating dinner. I agree the the citizens. Where are the police when you need them? Why aren’t they taking care of this crime rate rising? either its lack of police enforcement or no one seems be care. Michigan really doesn’t have the money now to hire anymore enforcement, but its not entirely the law enforcements fault, in due part its also that of the citizens deciding to burglarize and rob. That’s their moral conflict. Who knows why they do the things they do, some might be in a rut due to the economy others because they are to lazy to go get a job and buy the things they need. Where can you find a job nowadays anyways? Beats me. Either way crime rates are just going to keep rising unless someone does SOMETHING.

 

Urban Sprawl

Urban sprawl has been around since cars became popular, people wanted to get away from the city but still be near it and now we have suburbs. Urban sprawl has been amused to cause an increased in pollution, taxes, traffic, and obesity; and loss of farmland and wildlife habitat. In 15 years the us population increased by 17 percent; in that same amount of time urbanized land has increased by 47 percent. These suburbs or “sprawl areas” are built on rural farming communities and wilderness. As a result  farm land has dropped dramatically in the past 20 years, and we have all heard the problems with deforestation effecting the habitat of wildlife and causing the endangerment and extinction of many spices.

A big part of the problems with sprawl is the transportation. The sprawl areas are located anywhere from 5 to 20 miles from the nearest city. Some of them become cities in and of themselves with stores and parks and such, but other than that the resident of these areas drive several miles to go anywhere. This causes an increase carbon emissions, also the resident of these areas typically live relatively luxurious lifestyles which only adds to the pollution. If you’ve ever been in a big city at night you know that stars are not always very clear because of a haze of pollution hangs in the air I find it down right gross that the air so clogged that we can we can see the nasty things in it, that  we’re breathing, yet do very little about it. Obesity has recently become an issue associated with sprawl areas because walking and riding bikes in those areas is not practically because of the proximity of jobs, stores, and etc. The extensive amount of driving has been blamed for increased traffic. To conter the extra traffic jams,  highway constructions are on the rise. Who is paying for this construction? Well, if you pay taxes you are.

I have my own issues with urban sprawl, most of them have to do with neighborhoods completely of beige, but you can’t deny that there is some thing wrong with all that. As I think of the last time I drove 20 minutes to my friend’s house in Glen Acres Community with their riding mowers and underground sprinkler systems and serious lack of sidewalks, I realize just how real this stuff is. The thing is if we didn’t have suburbs we would have a lot of people packed into very dense areas. I wonder if that would be any better on society or the environment. Some people think we should have law against urban sprawl but that is nearly impossible because the lines of urban sprawl are not at all black and white. I say the government should at least make and attempt to fix the problem even if it doesn’t do the whole job we should at least make and effort.

 

Public schools.

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

http://social.jrank.org/pages/973/Trends-in-Educational-Funding.html 

Public schools here in Grand Rapids Michigan are not funded for the right reasons, students are mislead, and the staff is clueless the majority of the time. Our public schools do fund raising within the p.t.s.a and raises money for new bathrooms or new library books when in my 9th grade English class there is only one dictionary! Us students don’t need anymore library books or new bathrooms until the necessary school supplies and tools are given. In my 9th grade humanities history class we don’t have any maps or even one globe in the classroom because our school board says “we can’t afford it.” When we have carts full of elmos and brand new projectors in our media center. I think there is a conspiracy going on and some actions need to take place.

Also our student body is not informed once so ever where any of the money in our schools goes to. I believe that as students without us there wouldn’t be a need for the schools so there should be some sort of involvement with the student bodies and the school board so us students are more connected to the environment we have to be in 5 days out of 7 days of the week.

The staff in the public school buildings are clueless to what goes on around them! If you have a question about the school or any more of an authoritative figure most of the staff is unable to respond to your question simply because they do not know and why don’t they know? because they are not informed, our staff members aren’t even informed by their employers basically; now if that isn’t messed up enough in my 9th grade humanities history class has had three teachers and all of which who are thrown into a situation where they dont know what to do making the student just as lost.

In conclusion i believe that Grand Rapids Public Schools [and school board] need some real pulling together and more student involvement in order to set a good example and represent our district with more dignity.

 

Road Conditions

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/local/grmetro_article.aspx?storyid=88080

If  you drive around the city especially this time of year you’ll see that the road conditions are just horrible.  Now i know that we have a road budget but personally i dont think they do enough to repair the roads.  You cant drive anywhere without running over some kind of hole and i think that its gotten to a point where they need to do something about it.  These roads are a horrible danger to cars not only causing hundreds of dollars in damage to peoples cars but im sure that they also make driving conditions more dangerous especially in this icy weather.  Its my belief that if the city wants people to stop complaining about the roads they need to get out there and do some major construction work to give us safer longer lasting roads.

 

New College Prep School In GRPS

http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7909992

I am a current student City High School. Through this past year we have been on a roller-coaster with switching around our school.  This school, in the past has been respected for the course work, grades, and attendance rates we have.  To find that they are almost replacing what City has been considered, “college prep,” is a little disturbing. Focusing all the time and effort into this new school, shows where the school districts priorities exists. It seems that the current schools in this system are being a little neglected.  I can’t count how many issues we are facing due to money alone in this school. I believe he should be focusing on the current schools instead of adding more. 

I believe things like this have a great deal with the drop out rates in schools these days.  Administratrion expects the kids in the system to respect them, when in return they really show us 0 respect.  It’s common sense that to get respect you must give it first.  Issues like setting schools aside because they’re “old” to focus on creating un-necessary new schools is ruining education for the future of this world. The drop out rates aren’t completely based off of this, but I’m sure some kids would focus more on school if the school gave them a reason to.

http://www.michigan.gov/images/MIGrad_1260_7.pdf

 

 

Introduction

We are a group of City High School students writing about Urban Issues throughout the semester.  This group includes Jes, Kayla, Tino, Catherine, and Julie. We would like to discuss the issues of Urban Society today, which include: gang activity, homosexuality, pollution, homlessness, and many other topics.  We will be looking at Google reader, and be using sources such as BBC, NPR, New York Times, Encarta, Google News, and Newspapers. We will update the current events going on, with the next few posts being February 22, February 29, and March 7.