Blog stage 7 - Climate leadership

In 2015 A major milestone towards renewable energy was achieved. An agreement known as the Paris agreement was signed which set the standard between 175 countries on how the path of renewable investment is going to occur. However with the new Trump administration we can no longer expect the U.S to take the leadership role in perusing renewable energy. So who will rise to that position? In the past several years china has been investing heavily on renewable's in order to reduce the dangerous levels of air pollution throughout the country. Although it still relies on fossil fuels, the country invested 102.9 billion in renewable energy in 2015 and plans to spend 360 billion to 2020. This investment will also create an approximately 13 million jobs in green energy which would eventually put china in a major competitive advantage for the manufacturing towards this growing industry. What we should take away from this is that we should be electing leaders that will support the change towards renewables so that we could in the long run remain competitive in the growing renewable industry. However one of the major setbacks is the huge influence oil companies have in our government which buy out congressmen to instead make laws that benefit them. I personally believe that interest groups should not be able to "donate" money to politicians in order to benefit their companies or there should be a restriction on the amount so that other competitive interest groups could also have a equal influence in our congressmen.

Blog stage 6

In my colleague's blog, "Free country" by Jessica pham, she talks about the reasons why we need free college. I personally agree with her on the issue, but giving free college to everyone won't come with the direct benifits most people think it will bring. For example if college was free to everyone the value of a degree will drop even more, requiring people to get even more advanced degrees in order to stay competitive on the job market. The main benifit of having a system with free college is to have a more knowledgeable society that's cable of understanding larger socioeconomic and govermental issues that currently face us today, and being able to make better progress to those issues like in most other first world countries with free higher education.

Concern for climate change

The author Joe Romm from the blog Think Progress wrote an article discussing trumps disapproval rates hitting a record high while concerns for climate have spiked. The author establishes his claims by using graphs and survey research from GALLUP. The article begins by stating Donald's Trumps disapproval rating has hit a high of 58 percent and those who actually approve of of trumps job performance is a mere 37 percent. In correlation (contrary) with trumps disapproval ratings 45 percent of Americans now have strong concerns for climate change. According to the author this is because of Trump's environmental stance on global warming. Trump claims that global warming is simply a "hoax" and therefore many believe he will do a poor job of protecting the environment. Trump claims that for every new environmental restriction he plans on removing two old ones which is a clear indicator that preserving the earth such as the air and water we consume is not his top priority. This claim can be further backed up by a graph shown from GALLUP which shows a rise in worries on climate change from 30 percent to 45 percent of independents and from 56 to 66 percent democrats from 2016 to 2017. Republican concerns on the other hand have stayed the same with a brief 18 percent worrying about climate change.

The authors intended audience is simply those who are concerned with climate change and worry about the future of our planet not just because of rising temperatures but also because of pollution to our water and air that trumps policies will bring. The article itself doesn't present a bias but rather simply provides information in forms of graphs showing the trends of different stances on climate change.

Stage 3 Article

An author from the New York Times editorial board wrote an article about Trump's immigration policy's called "Mr. Trump’s ‘Deportation Force’ Prepares an Assault on American Values". Because the author starts off the editorial by calling Trump's policy's an "Assault on American Values" you can already presume a bias in place against President Trump. The reasoning behind this bold title is because Trump's homeland security secretary, John Kelly, is making "practically every deportable person a deportation priority". In-fact, targets don't even have to have charges simply having a ICE agent or police officer believe you might face charges is enough to get you deported. This is different from the Obama administration which recognized that "millions of unauthorized immigrants  especially those with citizen children and strong ties to their communities and this country, deserved a chance to stay and get right with the law". The author states that this opens up a door for untrained and unspecialized police officers to increase abuse and racial profiling and ultimately creating profound injustice in the justice department. However this is not everything that John Kelly plans to do, he also plans on publishing data on crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants.

By only publishing crimes committed by illegal immigrants he's clearly influencing the negative biases towards immigrants as a whole, regardless if they're allowed to be in this country or not, with fear. Because of all the "backlash" against these policy's it's obvious that the authors intended audience for this article is those who seek to better understand the new policies of the trump administration and how they will regress our progress on civil rights.

A nation of immigrants

Yesterday on February 9 the federal appeals court voted to maintain the freeze on the immigration order put by President Donald Trump which put a ban on refugees from seven majority-Muslim counties from entering the United States. The ruling was made by three judges which "flatly rejected the government’s argument that suspension of the order should be lifted immediately for national security reasons" The ban itself was considered controversial by many and a “contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.” 

Something interesting during the ruling however was the fact that the judges "forcefully asserted their ability to serve as a check on the president’s power", something that in my opinion seems like President Trump has a hard time grasping since he went on a rant on Twitter questioning the judiciary branch's power after the initial ruling. 

This article is important to many because its viewed as a direct discrimination against a particular religion which would go against the first amendment. Although some argue its a necessary security issue, there is no evidence that any terrorist came from the 7 countries listed on the ban.

first post!

This is also the first blog iv'e ever created