Blog Stage 6

Give Youth A Voice is an article posted on Young Minded Perspective of the U.S. that argues that the voting age should be lowered to 16 or 17. The article's main argument is that teenagers around that age are already given enough adult responsibilities that they should also be responsible enough to vote. Along with the article also points out that voting turnout may increase and that it is important to engage the youth as they are the ones that will inherit our future. 

I would have to agree with the author on the reduction of the voting age, although for different reasons. I think that while it is true that we already give many 16 year olds some responsibilities of an adult, I still feel that at that age they are not really given the full freedom and responsibilities that turning 18 can bring. The most prominent change being at 16 most teens are still in school, while most 18 year olds are now out of the public school system. This by itself is quite a massive change that can lead to differences in responsibility at those two ages. I believe it is because of this lack of responsibility that the voting age should be lowered. This is because at the age of 18 a person may feel overwhelmed at what needs to be done as a legal adult, and without guidance voting may just seem like a nuisance. On the other hand, because 16 year olds are still in school they have less adult responsibilities while having the guidance of the school to encourage them to vote and as the original article said, people are much more likely to continue voting if they have already voted once before, making these younger voters much more likely to vote in the future. 

Blog Stage 5

One of the most pressing issues in today’s government is the continuously rising healthcare costs. Recently, healthcare has risen to one of the most hotly debated topics in politics, as is evident by the debate around Obamacare and its repeal. With these changes in healthcare recently, the goal has always been to make healthcare more available to those that need it without making those that support them pay a ridiculous amount of money. They try to achieve this by doing things like expanding Medicaid and offloading the extra expenses onto the higher-income tax payers in the case of Obamacare. While the goal of making healthcare more available is a noble goal, the way that politicians have been going about it is like putting a bandage on a wound instead of healing the wound. Instead of finding ways to help people pay off their healthcare expenses we should work to find ways to reduce the costs of healthcare directly.

In every hospital there is something called a chargemaster, which is just a collection of the costs of their services and any items that may contribute to those services. This may sound completely harmless until one actually looks inside the chargemaster and sees that something as small and cheap as a Tylenol pill can cost as much as 40 dollars, while normally costing around fifty cents. All the prices in those chargemasters are similarly insane, leading to the question of how this even happened in the first place. One’s first instinct may be to blame the hospitals for jacking up prices on purpose for the sole reason of getting more profit. However, only around 20 percent of hospitals are for-profit, the majority being non-profit, which means that they do not operate to seek the greatest profit. The reason for these massively jacked up prices are the result of insurance companies asking for discounts when negotiating bills, meaning that insurance companies only pay a fraction of the costs that hospitals deem as the actual price. The issue this causes for the average person is that it forces people to go through insurance companies and pay their premium to get fair prices, leaving anyone who cannot afford insurance to pay exorbitant amounts of money for something as small as a Tylenol pill.

The government is currently going through more changes in the healthcare system with the trump administration attempting to repeal Obamacare, however they are again focusing on the wrong aspect of healthcare that needs changing. Instead of finding ways to help people pay of their healthcare bills they need to moderate the actual prices that are being charged. 

Blog Stage 4

On July 21, Jared Kushner, Senior advisor to the president and Trump’s son-in-law revised his financial disclosure forms, adding on 77 additional items that were not included in the previous forms. Catherine Rampell, in her opinion paper expresses her disdain for Kushner and his behavior in dealing with his financial disclosure forms.

Financial disclosure forms are forms where government officials disclose their assets in order to confirm that they would not have any conflicts of interest when working in the government. Rampell’s concern stems from the fact that not filling out these forms could imply either a lack of due diligence or corruption on Kushner’s part. She is discontent with the current system as even though it is illegal to hide information from the financial disclosure forms, all Kushner needs to do when any inconsistencies show up is plead ignorance and add them back in. Instead of our current system, she proposes that we adapt a “Banana Republic Rule” where if “you forget it, you forfeit it” in order to combat abuse of the system. Her idea stems from Arnold Harberger’s tax proposals to various countries struggling with corruption, any assets registered to a certain value could potentially be forced to sell at that value, encouraging greater honesty.

Rampell’s article was definitely targeted at those that disapprove of Kushner’s actions as well as those that disapprove of Trump’s administration as a whole, as can be seen by her various references to Trump’s shady practices in the past. Along with this, she is also writing this for those that disapprove of the current system of disclosing finances as can be seen by her suggestions for alternate policies. These target audiences both align with her political ideology as she is a staunch Democrat that has many criticisms towards the republican party as can be seen in her past articles.

Blog stage 3

On July 20 David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson posted an opinion page on the New York Times titled Trump’s Lies. From the title alone it can already be inferred what this entire article will be about, but more specifically it goes into listing every single lie that Trump has said up to this point in tie during his presidency. The concern here is obvious, lies will influence most of the public who don’t really have time to fact check anything and take everything as the truth. Going through the list of lies myself, most don’t really seem too grievous in terms of the impact they can have, most being slight changes to show Trump’s administration in a better light. The problem that they also address with these small lies is that they build up and pick away at Trump’s credibility with the public.

The reason this article was written was to convince those that still believe Trump that his words are not to be taken at face value and to even stir further mistrust in the president. These both align perfectly with the two authors agendas as David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson both have a more liberal background. As such some of these lies may just be a simple slip of the tongue or lapse of memory that just happened to be in front of the media, however, they still make a good point that even if some were just lapses in memory, the total amount off lies and half-truths are entirely unacceptable from our own president.

Blog stage 2

On July 12 the Washington Post published an article about the net neutrality day of action. Net neutrality is the idea that the internet is open and equal to all users, meaning that ISPs or internet service providers such as Comcast can not discriminate between websites being visited and must load all sites at the same speed. This issue was first looked at in 2015, where the FCC declared that net neutrality was to be followed however, right now the FCC is trying to repeal their previous declaration. By repealing net neutrality ISPs would be able to throttle websites that refuse to pay them a premium, which while earning them more profits is universally bad for all consumers. The net neutrality day of action is a way to inform the users of the internet about the consequences of this. This article really highlights the importance of net neutrality and also helps spread awareness along with the other initiatives.

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