Crooks' aggressive take on the crooked.

Stage Eight: Comment on a colleague’s work #2 (POST TO BE GRADED)

After stumbling onto Ms. Misti Crooks blog, “Donkey Tails, Part II” for the first time, I am immediately impressed! Crooks gets right to the point when addressing the issue of corporal punishment for a admittedly guilty man named Cary Kerr, who has been long been through every stage of the court system and then some, in her recent post entitled “When Bad Things Happen to Bad People”. “Cary Kerr feels that his impending execution should be appealed (again) because he feels like his maltreatment in his youth caused him to brutally rape and murder a woman in Fort Worth.” Despite Crooks’ rather aggressive approach to the subject, she is by no means tackling this without enough proper knowledge, after proclaiming that she looked up the original 2003 murder case details of Kerr, she really brings forth a credible argument against the offender, even if a bit harsh.

One thing that really offset me about this article though, and it’s something I’ve seen going around to a few other blogs is that, she does not give any links to any of the articles she refers to, including the original one she is referring to, and she also does not provide a link to the case details, which I did end up finding myself, rather easily I may add, but being a blog, which only succeeds by viewer readership, turning the reader away from your blog to visit a search engine seems like a striking move, maybe it’s just me.

For my take on the situation, I’m totally for it, the man sounds dangerous, and is rather openly admitting he’s unstable. However as the law stands, he must pay for the crime he has committed, his ruthlessness of the murder is really upsetting, additionally, as Crooks pointed out, “there has to be some point in the appeals process where enough is enough, and tax dollar can be put to rest on a convicted, and confessed murderer.”

Perry tries to "indirectly address issues" in a direct phone call

Stage Seven: Original editorial or commentary #2(POST TO BE GRADED)

It’s always good to see a little political comic relief, and yesterday we got a little taste of that, after Gov. Rick Perry “left a voicemail for thousands of Texans calling for a conservative budget.” Over all, the Senate is very upset about this little phone call, because although Perry laid out that he was pointing out people in both the House and Senate, “The legislators that we elect, whether they serve in the House or the Senate, need to keep our state living by cutting spending, protecting the rainy day fund and saying no to any new taxes or revenue schemes.” In reality, Perry’s stance favors the recent legislation push of that of the House over the Senate, because the Senate is pushing to spend more than the House does.

Honestly, while it’s completely fine for Perry to side with one or the other, and ultimately he’ll see the finalized legislation, and have his choice to sign it off as law, let it be passed off as law without his signature, or veto it hoping to kill it off, but these phone calls seem far too direct and although his words express equal fault on both the House and Senate cushioning the impact of the phone call, he’s still expresses an overarching feeling, that there IS fault and to those that are more politically aware he wants changes to be made his way.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Steve Ogden, said his wife received one of Perry’s phone calls two nights ago, “I don’t appreciate it. It’s not helping. To have them calling my wife trashing me does not make me happy, no.”

I wish I could have heard and saw him say those words to see how it really sounded.

In the end, it’s just unsportsmanlike, instead of attempting to persuade, and give Texans a reason to follow his plan in a constructive manner, he chooses the destructive route, and “indirectly” points fingers at every single person in the legislative, and many see this is weakening both his stance, and the conservatives as a whole. Senator Ogden also had this to say, “What’s happening is this is dividing the Republican Party, I can’t imagine how that will help.

From my stance, I hope not to see the budget for education, and health services to be cut back, because they’re such critical aspects of the social backbone, I’m all for throwing in a few extra charges and raising a few rates like we’ve seen with the recent car parking rates, as well as the possibility of raising things such as license fees, which have long term affects on people over a period of years once they have to renew those licenses, and they don’t affect the average Texan on a daily basis.

Whatever happens, I’ll be keeping my eye on this as it develops.

My critical look on Ms. Rangel's critical look at a potential gun measure.

Stage Six: Comment on a colleague’s work #1 (POST TO BE GRADED)

Way back when on April 5^th, one of my fellow colleagues, Ms. Sandra Rangel, wrote a short editorial on an article she found in the Dallas Morning News.

The article details the effects of a new bill that was currently under consideration from the House, and Ms. Rangel does an excellent job of quickly summarizing what the article was about, and notes the important people. What was the best part about her editorial however, is as soon as she introduces a new part of the article, she immediately follows it up with her own opinion, and this really does a great job to help connect us the readers, to her, and get an idea on how she feels about every aspect of the bill. She feels very true and honest throughout this entire piece, and manages to conjure up some humor with some obvious sarcasm. She also did a great job of pointing out what she felt was a little weak in the article “Wayne Slater presents a good article for the purpose it was meant for but he should have talked about the bill and restrictions the bill has.”

However, despite her well written format and information, there is one notable part to it that I was really turned off after immediately reading, and that was the fact that she never used a hyperlink to allow the reader to directly connect to the article in discussion. While she did provide more than enough information for the reader to find the article themselves, including the newspaper that published it, and the title of the article, as well as who it was written by. A hyperlink somewhere in either the beginning or the end of her piece would have simplified the effort for the reader, which I feel you would always like to appeal to being a blogger.

In the end, great work Ms. Rangel, and good luck to you in the future.

Thousands rally in downtown Austin, TX to protest House's recent decisions.

Stage Five: Original editorial or commentary #1 (POST TO BE GRADED)

Today thousands led by union workers from across Texas rallied on the south steps of the Capital building here in downtown Austin in an effort to protest against the recently passed budgets cuts that the House has made. These cuts include heavy spending cuts to education, health care and state jobs.

The rally-goers organized and began with a march from Waterloo Park, unions and community organizers chartered buses to bring in supporters from areas like Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Rio Grande Valley, in total there were about 6-7 thousand in the rally.

Nearly filling the entire street, protestors shouted various things, “They say cut back, we say fight back”, and the humorous “It’s raining, it’s pouring, Rick Perry is snoring.” Many carried signs of similar nature, “Stop the war on workers”, and “Tax the rich, serve the poor.”

Judy Lugo president of the Texas State Employees Union told the cheering crowd “We are all in this together. “Every Texan now and for years to come will suffer the consequences if the Texas Legislature does not change course.” Lugo is pushing for the spending of the state’s $9.5 billion “rainy day fund” and asked legislators to find additional revenue to fix the problem they have caused. “Workers did not cause this problem, and we are not going to pick up the tab for it. She says this budget short fall is due to “decades of bad public policy” and a recession brought on by financiers, speculators and corporate leaders.

State senator Kirk Watson was on the scene and had some strong words to say as well stating that the house passed a bill that does not align with the priorities of Texas. “We’re all here today because the evolving catastrophe taking place in the building behind me, we are here because we are justifiably frustrated that those who worked to cause this disaster are doing so little to fix it.

Watson asked the crowd to hold the legislative leaders accountable for spending cuts. Saying that the current generation cannot allow their kids to be stuffed into overcrowded classrooms, or allow the dismantling of their parents and grandparents nursing homes, nor will we allow them to cut out teachers and public servants in order to reduce the spending problem.

I find this sort of news very interesting because these are things that I never really see, they always take place in another city in a whole other state but to see this kind of work being done here in our state makes me proud, however, it is indeed a shame that this rally had to occur because of such an awful situation.

I'd also like to say, thank you to everyone who attended, I don’t fully understand our entire economy or our system, but I do know that I’m a tax payer and I know I’d be happy to learn that my hard earn money went into education and to help out the elderly.

Straight "Off The Kuff"! Senate searching for $5 Billion!

While looking for a piece that I could write my critique on, I stumbled onto Mr. Charles Kuffner’s professional blog, Off The Kuff, which on its about page, claims to be “Texas’ longest running progressive political blog.”

In one of the editorials that Mr. Kuffner wrote today, he addresses an article published this past Monday by the Houston Chronicle giving details about the Texas Senate’s recent endeavors to try and find a way to raise $5 billion without simply raising taxes. The article discusses areas where the State could possibly cut back spending, Medic-aid and public school funding being the major ones, and a few target areas where they may try to raise prices in order to pull in a few extra dollars, such as driver’s license fees, or raises in college tuition.

Due to the nature of the topic, this topic really should only concern Texas inhabitants, but primarily addresses Texas’ taxpayers.

I was impressed with how well done Mr. Kuffner’s editorial was, and most importantly, he didn’t fail to back up anything he said.

He opens his writing up with a link to the article in discussion, and pulls a direct quote from it to help accentuate exactly what points he will be talking about and educating people on.

What impressed me is that he doesn’t seek to persuade anyone without giving the reader adequate information from a source other than his own fingertips, each reader is welcome to read the professionally published articles and make their judgments if they would prefer that over his summarized versions.

Another nice touch is that he addressed the reader to 3 previous editorials he had written in the past few weeks so the reader could learn more about the progress the Senate has been making, and thankfully, these writings contain the same respectable format.

Ultimately, the best part of his writing is in the end where he shows of his skills as an editor. In the ending of the last paragraph, he briefly states how he feels about the current situation “I’m not terribly optimistic, but I consider this one more step on the journey to the eventual realization that we can’t avoid talking about taxes forever.” Finally in his very last sentence he makes a reference to another blog, likely one that supports his opinion, but he does it with such ease, and by no means tells the reader to go there, he simply informs them that there is more on this topic on another blog.

In my response to his decision on the matter, I think it may be the only option we have. Texas doesn’t want to raise taxes, and citizens don’t want to pay higher taxes, these slight increases in different areas could pull in a few extra dollars, however I personally am not a big supporter of cutting school funding, but this plan may prove to benefit the state a bit before it is finally forced to address taxes as a whole.

Thank you for your well written piece Mr. Kuffner, it is likely I will be visiting your blog in the future for more assignments.