Response to “Armed Teachers”

This article by my colleague Juliet makes the case that teachers should be allowed to have guns in their classrooms to protect themselves and their students from the dangers of school shooters. Although Juliet’s argument is somewhat misinformed, she brings attention to a large issue that needs to be fixed.

Juliet’s argument in full is that many school shootings could be averted if teachers had the right to keep firearms in their classrooms. Her suggestion is that all teachers would have to have a rigorous mental health screening before being allowed to have a weapon.  This brings a few questions to mind. Would you have to go through a mental health test to become a teacher? This would decrease the wish for people to attempt to get this already underpaid job. How would screening be done? How can you safely keep the weapons, in a way so that the children cannot access them, but it be readily accessible?

Based on the number of schools in the U.S., the average number of school days in a year, and the average number of shootings per year, there is a 1 in 1.8 million chance of a school shooting on any given day. With 3.6 million teachers in the U.S., unless we make arming teacher mandatory, that is low odds that a teacher with a firearm will be at the right place at the right time to avert the school shooting. The risk, however, outweighs the reward substantially. Children under age 12 die from gun accidents in the United States about once a week, on average, so it would not make sense to bring a gun into the classroom. To add to that, suicide is the leading cause of death among teens, and firearm suicide accounts for 51% of attempted suicide. Why put a suicide tool in a classroom?

There are two ways to improve the problem of school shootings. The first way is to make guns harder to get/keep hold of. Wills are public documents, so we can track who gets the firearms of the deceased. That way we can screen the inheritor to make sure that they can have a firearm. All licenced gun dealers are required keep sales records forever, and because of that, we can make sure that we know who has ever purchased a gun legally. We can tighten security for who can buy a new gun, and take the new security to inheritors of firearms. If we tighten security on who can have a gun, and instead of it being give the firearm dealer a reason why a person shouldn’t have a firearm, make it give them a reason why a person should. We would also probably have a database for all firearm dealers to check identities so that we can see how many firearms a person has.

The other solution is to give more counseling funds to schools, and funding to have therapists on call.  This would attempt to fix not only the problem of school shootings, but it would also decrease the number of suicides by young people. By giving young people access to therapy and counseling, we will give them ways to fix their problems without going off the deep end and attempting to kill people.

Although arming teachers might decrease the likelihood of school shootings, there are better and less dangerous ways to keep school shootings from happening. If we do our best, we can fix the problems without making more problems for ourselves.

Should Presidents be able to issue Executive Orders?

The Presidential “Executive Order” has been used since George Washington, but no mention of it has been found in the constitution. An Executive Order is a Presidential rule that stands in place until it is overturned or rescinded by a President. The idea came from Article II of the Constitution under an umbrella statement of Presidential power and so congress should make it legal, using precise words not an umbrella statement, but put some form of control on it. I believe that the privilege of the Executive Order has been abused by using it to skirt around laws.

Executive Orders were a way for Presidents to get things done quickly, so they didn’t have to go through Congress’ burocasies. Some Executive Orders have worked wonders, like the emancipation proclamation. Some were just bad, as proved by the Japanese-American Incarceration. Only one President, William Henry Harrison, did not issue any. It is uncommon for an Executive Order to be overturned by another branch of the government, although Presidents can revoke or alter orders made by any President.  Modern Presidents, though have been using them as laws they can make.

Many recent Presidents have made more Executive Orders than the way that it was originally used, as a tool for whenever the President needed something done quickly.  Although it is true that President Franklin D Roosevelt used over 3700, George Washington only used eight. Because George H. W. Bush signed 166, Bill Clinton signed 308, George W. Bush signed 291, Barack Obama signed 276, and thus far, Donald Trump has signed 88.  U.S. Presidents are overstepping their bounds, getting as close to making a law as they legally can as President. For example, an Executive Order can remove the budget of a congress-passed initiative.

Because the bounds have never been clearly defined, Presidents have nothing to stop them, from using Executive Orders to effectively make laws. The solution to this is for Congress to write in an amendment that Executive Orders are allowed, BUT, there needs to be a cap on the scope of what they can do. The cap would probably be an Executive Order can only stay an Executive Order for 100 days, unless it is validated by the Supreme Court as not in opposition to the intent of any laws.

The world looks up to the President of the United States like the police chief of the world, whether we like it or not. It does not look good to nations that don’t trust us to have a President signing Executive Orders every day. This is the reason we should limit the power of Executive Orders.

Should We Change National Voting Day To Monday

This editorial by my classmate Javonnie is about low voter turnout in the United States, and how we could fix it. He believes that this is caused by people not being able to get time off of work.  Voting was originally scheduled on a Tuesday because that would help farmers - the largest occupation in the United States at the time. Javonnie’s argument is that in order to get people to vote, we should change when we vote to a Monday national holiday, such as Presidents’ Day.

            The claim put forth in this post is that if we change when we vote to a national holiday, people will already have time off so it will be more convenient to vote. National holidays are a chance for most people to get the day off, and often schools aren’t in session, allowing parents to expose their children to voting. That is a good argument, but it is incomplete. For starters, two thirds of states offer early voting, often including weekends. That gives ample opportunity to arrange a time to vote.  Also, not all employers give national holidays off, especially those with hourly jobs (such as food service and retail) which not only have the most unforgiving schedules but are often held by those in the 18-25 year old range – the highest demographic of non-voters. Finally, employers are already legally obligated to give their employees two hours off to vote, but often people either aren’t aware of this law or don’t take advantage of it.

                         

The idea of changing when we vote is a very good idea but it’s not enough. A much bigger problem is hiding behind the scenes - voter apathy. Choosing the leader of the United States – or any elected official - is not to be taken lightly. A voting education class should be a solid part of our nation’s curriculum. When people don’t know the importance of voting, they usually don’t vote. Most states already have government classes that we can insert voting education into. Make sure that kids know how and why to vote from first grade and teach them more and more and by the time they are 18, they can be educated voters.

Voting education could be one or two week each November, teaching major concepts about voting. Some things that should be taught include teaching first graders the importance of voting, and as you get older: how to vote using a digital voting machine, how to research a political campaign, how vote for the option you want - not strictly party lines, and how to read the legal “fine print” of propositions on the ballot.

In order for changing when we vote to help, citizens need to know why we vote.  Decreasing voter apathy could be solved by teaching school aged children why we vote. Between moving when we vote, and teaching our nation’s children how to vote, we will have more involved citizens in ten years.

Should we turn to a three party government system?

In President Washington’s Farewell Address to the United States, he warns us about the dangers of a two party system, even any form of a multi-party system. Party loyalty is likely to get in the way of a voter forming his/her own opinion. To make it worse, if there are only two options, you will pick the candidate you dislike the least, not an option that you actually want. When there are two parties, you will choose the “lesser of two evils,” or, if you are party affiliated, your party. The United States would be a better nation if we chose to stop being a two party country.

The United States has a history of always having two parties. Always two, never three. One can take the place of another,  as in the 1850s, when the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party. There is occasionally a third party or independent candidate who has gotten a large amount votes  - we have several independent senators right now. In presidential races, Ross Perot got nearly 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election (but no electoral college votes) and George Wallace got 13.5% of the popular vote, receiving 45 electoral votes, and winning five states in 1968.

One of the biggest advantages of having three parties is removing the false dichotomy of “I hate the Democrats, therefore, I must vote for the Republican.” or vice versa.  This false dichotomy allows for the divination of the political party. Each party’s media outlets will support their members to the end, and because the government helps fund both the media and the campaigns, it seems that the political parties resemble more and more the all-powerful Party in George Orwell’s 1984.

With only two parties there is a pendulum of power, and control will go from one side of the political spectrum to the other. With three parties, there is the advantage of the government not flipping back and forth from Republicans to Democrats and having to deal with the whiplash going from Left to Right to Left to Right. Because we have turned rival political parties into enemies, there is no interest in helping everyone involved, because you will be seen as a traitor to your party if you work for a bipartisan compromise.

Because we have never tried having more than two parties, we have never seen the benefits. If a new party were to arise, we would not have the pattern we have “enjoyed” for more than two hundred years. We would finally actually have what the people want, as opposed to the binary choice that they have been making. This is the way to get past the problems that have plagued American politics for years.

Is the President of the United States on his way to creating a second cold war?

In this editorial in the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel makes the argument that Donald Trump, President of the United States, is drawing the world nearer to the second Cold War, by pulling out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty that was signed 31 years ago.

The I.N.F., signed by President Reagan and (then president of the USSR) Mikhail Gorbachev, was a treaty that was essential to the thaw in relations between the Soviets and Americans. Because President Donald Trump is withdrawing from the I.N.F., we are jeopardizing the world.  President Trump says we are leaving this treaty because: “We have more money than anybody else by far. We’ll build [our nuclear arsenal] up until [China and Russia] come to their senses.”

“There will be no winner in a “war of all against all”  — particularly if it ends in a nuclear war.” says Gorbachev. Vandon Heuvel reasons that pulling out of one treaty makes it that much easier to pull out of another, then another. With no restraints on the United States’ nuclear arsenal, the second Cold War is almost a given, because other countries with slightly frostier relationships with us will want to protect themselves.

Vandon Heuvel has been writing for 40 years. She was the USSR correspondent for The Nation from 1984 to 1995 that includes when the USSR fell. Her opinion on this matter is well informed and credible, Because of her extensive knowledge of the USSR, including her reporting on this. She is the current owner of The Nation, and she writes op-eds regularly for the Washington Post. She has also worked with other liberal-leaning media platforms, such as the New York Times, ABC's This Week, MSNBC, CNN and PBS.

Vandon Heuvel has a vested interest in keeping her base happy, proven by the fact that she always works for left-center through left wing media. From this snippet of her work, it seems that she habitually uses words and phrases that seem meant to inflame people. She has credibility as an author, but not necessarily 100% trustworthy, because this is an article focused around a right wing president written by a left-wing writer. Take this with a grain of salt, but it is worth reading to try and get this side of the story.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Self-Corruption?

Do our courts have too much power? In this editorial in the L.A. Times, the author, Ilya Shapiro, tries to warn us about the dangers of the U.S. Supreme Court’s self corruption - continuing a cycle that gives the other two branches of our government more power than they need or should have. 

The argument is that because we as a nation politicize everything, we have courts that have “Liberal Judges”, and “Conservative Judges”, and no real Judges.  In considering the Supreme Court, Shapiro claims that, because Democrats will only vote for a liberal Judge, those Justices will then typically hand down judgments along the Democratic Party line, not the Law as it is written. The Supreme Court then gives more power to “their” members of Congress - continuing to nullify Checks and Balances - as long as it gives benefit to “their” party. This turns into a parasitic relationship for the country which then takes power from the people and the states, leaving it all in the hands of the federal government. This is bad for the nation and contradicts the views of the Founding Fathers.

 Shapiro points out that until the early twentieth century, Congress did not make many laws that required Supreme Court interference.  This is for two reasons:  at that point Congress generally acted within the confines of their rights and the Law;  also, the President was willing to use his presidential veto if he believed it was outside the Law.  The current situation is opposite that.  The Supreme Court Justices have been voting more based on political opinion. 

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) recently referred to the continual  5-4 split in the Supreme Court as her reason for voting for Justice Kavanaugh.  This agrees with Shapiro’s argument that our courts vote along party lines.  It also proves his point that Congress doesn’t want to solve the problem, but only to solidify the wins of their party. 

Ilya Shapiro writes for many newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. The fact that he writes for both liberal and conservative news sources indicates that he is not simply a political writer trying to please his base audience.  He is currently a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. 

Tax loopholes and a self serving government.

What is better than being able to avoid tax? According to The Christian Science Monitor that is what our president is thinking with all the hoped for tax cuts, particularly because he has to come up with a way to make his family's history of shady tax manipulation legal. President Donald Trump is trying to change tax laws, in the middle of “fire and fury”, especially the drama surrounding Justice Kavanaugh, and the uncertainty of the midterms in a few weeks. Our president has been trying to pass everything quickly before he possibly loses Congress to the Democrats. One thing that he is trying to do is solidify the legality of his dubious tax evasion- a seemingly time honored Trump family tradition- while his party still can. If this passes, the top 1% of people will be getting the most tax benefits.  This tax reform seems to be doing our president a whole lot of good, with the side benefit of helping the country a bit - particularly businessmen in situations like his. You should read this article before the midterms, and see if your mind has changed about voting for that Republican.