Lets find you a job response!

In one of my classmates blogs Texas In My Eyes she recently wrote about how it's become very hard for veterans who served in the military service to get jobs. There has been bills and movements trying to help veterans get jobs when they return but of course none of they are falling through.

My classmate said there is a post 9/11 bill that helps veterans get financial support and helps with their education. She says there's many places and programs available for returning soldiers but it still isn't enough because the veteran  unemployment rate is still extremely high!

 I feel that there should be some type of law or bill stating that when these soldiers soon to be veteran's return home they should be able to find a good source of income to help support themselves and their families. It's not fair that they spend months almost years at a time fighting for their country, making sure we're safe and can't even get a job when they return!

It's crazy to me because now days it's easier for an ex convict to get a job when they have committed terrible crimes but it takes someone who risk their lives for us and put their lives in dangers just so we as the country can continue working at our jobs to never get a job and then become homeless, I would rather go back to the army than to sit around with nothing to do no place to go.

Texas Homeless Population Delcines

Recently the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development released a report on how Texas has had one of the major homeless decreasing rates in the country since the year 2007. Texas was ranked in the top five over the last couple years for having the highest percentage of homeless people among those in New York, California, And Massachusetts.

Theirs different categories we put people in when talking about homelessness there's sheltered homeless people who are people who stay in emergency shelters or group homes, there's unsheltered homeless people who stay in cars. buses, parks, abandoned buildings etc. and then there's chronically homeless which are people who have a disability or has someone in the family with a disability who has either been continuously homeless for at least a year or experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.

Nearly 30,000 Americans among those of 610,000 were in fact "homeless" this year in Texas that’s a 13% decrease from the year 2012 and a huge 27% from the year 2007. Nationally homeless people have declined over the years, sadly about a quarter of homeless people were children and about 12% of the homeless are adults and veterans. since the year 2007 Austin itself has went from having almost 6000 homeless people to 2090 homeless people this year and that’s good in my eyes that means the government is actually trying to make a difference for once.

To me its good to see this declining because that means people are in fact getting back on their feet and finding jibs that qualify for and are able to support themselves and/or family and actually have a place to stay and call home. The government should actually have a thing to where they in fact try to help homeless people directly especially when a majority amount seems to be children, to help get care and be able to support and take care of themselves because after all it's not like people just wake up one day and decide they want to be homeless.

Abortion Response!

In one of my classmates articles Texas In My Eyes she talked about abortions in Texas and the House Bill 2 that requires the doctors that are performing the abortion surgery have hospital admitting privilege within 30 miles of the facility, and that doctors follows the FDA regimen, rather than commonly used evidence-based protocol, for drug-induced abortions and she agreed with that bill and I also agree with her.

 I feel that a woman needs to have the best care especially when getting a serious procedure like that done and it still allows women to get abortions safely and legally in Texas. The House Bill 2 may has also did a good thing and managed closed some facilities down because they didn't meet some of the requirements and to me that's a good thing because so many women could have gotten a procedure done illegally and things also would've went wrong because they didn't have the proper equipment or doctors etc.

I agree to leave the Bill because it allows women to have that option available and it doesn't take that away from them because yes some people may believe that abortion is bad and should just be illegal but some people don't have time for children or may not be financially stable to have children right now and the House Bill 2 saves them!

Texas Water Conservation

Texas government has a lot of things that should and should not be done by them, meaning handling local and government problems to the best of their abilities and I decided to choose something that is a major problem in the Texas right now and I don't think the government is doing a good job at handling it and people aren't really getting it and that happens to be the conservation of our water!

As you may know Texas is now in a stage 2 drought which means the combined level of Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan which happen to be our region’s water supply reservoirs have only a combined storage level of only 900,000 acres of water and that is only 35% full of the 100% we're supposed to have. Because of the low storage levels the Austin council members adopted a revised water conservation code on August 16, 2012 with different water restrictions including watering days and times.

I agree that they had to change the restrictions and get more specific about water conservation because people really didn't see the problem with watering your grass every day or washing your car at home because you didn't want to spend money at a car wash or taking hour long showers and because no one seen those everyday task being a problem we started losing tons and tons of water every day!

Some of the restrictions are you can only water your yard one day a week, no washing your cars at home because a study showed that washing your cars use three times the amount of water than an automatic car wash, they also have a water waste rule which is failure to repair a controllable leak which includes a broken sprinkler, a leaking valve, or a broken pipe you must fix it immediately and if you don't you'll be sent a warning and if you still fail to comply then you will receive a citation until you fix the leak.

All customers who use water other than reclaimed water must follow the drought stage 2 water restriction code and the only way to avoid it is to check were your water is coming from and see what area you fall in or if you have variances which is an acceptance from adherence water use regulations.

What the government fails to realize is not everyone is familiar with these water laws and what the drought really is and how it’s getting worse and worse every year and if they made more of an attempt to enforce these restrictions and actually fine people and knowledge the minds of their Texas residents about conserving water then maybe we could actually make a change and help with water conservation. 

If people knew that we're running low on water and it can and will affect their lives in a negative way maybe they'll take action. The government should have weekly water conservation checks and make sure everyone is using the amount of water their supposed to and if not they'll get fined, they need to be more aware and actually be more involved in this too because if they showed the public that they too themselves follow these water restriction laws then maybe they'll get a better turn out!

University of Texas Parent Study

On the American Independent website I found an article called The Goal Of UT parenting to Influence Decisions on Gay Marriages on how the supreme court conducted a study with the Witherspoon Institute to at The University of Texas that’s critical on gay parenting to see the outcome of children from their freshman year of college until graduation who were brought up in a same sex couple marriage.

The study was made to manipulate public policy and give them meaning the Supreme Court reasons on why same sex marriages should not be allowed on the state of Texas. When they studies it showed that children who were brought up in same sex couple households regardless if they lived with both parents or just one who was involved in a same sex relationship were more likely to experience negative social, physiological and economic outcomes than children who were raised in a heterosexual couple.

Religious groups have been challenging legality of same sex marriages for years and trying to use data to sway the public, lawmakers, and the courts to be on their side of the debate. Groups seeking to block gay marriage and also try to keep it from happening use this case study to show that their not just doing this to be cruel they have their "evidence" and some anti-same sex groups also came to the conclusion that "gay parents are inferior to straight parents".

The Catholic Bishops recently filed a friend of the court brief arguing that a mother and a father each bring something unique and irreplaceable when raising a child and that if the child is brought up in a same sex marriage that they will miss out on that "unique thing" from a mother and dad and will then grow up with some part that they never knew they could have missing which sounds very ridiculous to me!

Their intent for this article I think was to sway readers in believing that same sex couples do a terrible job at raising kids and since they can’t raise their children the "right way" to even say there is a right way they can't get married basically and that to me is not right. I feel that just because their children don’t have positive outcomes doesn't mean they can’t grant the right to get married because that has nothing to do with getting married.

Who’s to say just because they’re the same sex that means their children are going to have rough childhoods growing up, there is more to a child's upbringing than their parents you also have to focus on they friends they hang out with and what activities they partake in, their economic statuses, there are more than just the sex of someone’s parents to determine their lives in the future!

I also didn't agree with how they did the case study they used one school, first of all if you’re doing any type of study you need all the different types of subjects, they didn't do children of same sex couples who attend private schools, who were homed schooled, or who didn't even go to school and that could've most definitely changed or alter the results they did get.

No one should be denied rights to marry because of some unorganized, poorly put together study that portray same sex couples to be these terrible people who have no common sense on how to raise a child because it isn't right I mean there's people who grew in heterosexual households and came out with negative social problems and economic hardships and I doubt that was because their parents weren't a same sex couple!

My Starbucks Gun Rule Response!

In this article "Starbucks CEO ‘respectfully’ says guns not wanted" posted on  Star-Telegram.com, September 19th, the author talks about how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decided to make a request for the customers to please not bring their guns in or around the Starbucks businesses unless their authorized law enforcement personnel. He stated that Starbucks is a place where people come to enjoy coffee and community and when a customer decides to bring their weapon with them knowing it's visible to other customers it may anger some of the customers and/or make them feel unsafe and that's not the type of vibe Starbucks is supposed to give off.

 I agree with the CEO because he's taking a stand and is actually showing his customers that he does care about them and their safety and if that means no guns allowed then so be it. Howard isn't taking away their gun law or their right to carry a concealed weapon that they obviously have legally, he just doesn't want that type of environment.

 People have recently said in the reaction letter to this article that Starbucks is trying to fight their Second Amendment right and that's not at all true, Starbucks doesn't even have the RIGHT to do that! I would actually prefer all local businesses to partake in this request because all of these horrible crimes that have happened in the last couple of years involving shootings and guns make it really hard to trust people with firearms or any type of weapon really.

His request is a very legit request in my opinion, why not prohibit guns from businesses because I'm pretty sure if you ask any other place like McDonalds or Subway they wouldn't want any guns in their place of work because that can cause major controversy from people getting angry to people walking out and never come back.

Guns should really be in your home or vehicle and away from the public and especially children. No one wants their child around guns that's scary and yes children do drink coffee too because my sister is eight years old and is always at Starbucks so don't just think it's a mature audience your bringing your gun around. Starbucks also made their point by simply saying if you can't follow this very simple request go find your coffee somewhere else!

 I believe this article was intended for Starbuck customers obviously and I really hope they take in consideration for this request because I think it would make a big difference and maybe even become a global policy for local businesses to follow.

Immigration Reform Law

On September 16th The Texas Tribune published an article called Border Democrats See Immigration Window Closing and it was mainly stating how the deadline is coming closer and closer to its for the immigration reform law which is a law that helps immigrants getting citizenship in the United States from other countries much easier and how there's so many issues happening in the states right now like the conflict in Syria that's making it almost impossible for the house to sit down and discuss this immigration law. The fact that congress will meet for less than nine full weeks before the end of the year and there are many budget problems that are said to take weeks to be fixed makes immigrants lives that much harder just to become a citizen. I think this blog is worth reading because it shows that the goverment isn't leaving anyone behind like most of us think and that there are changes that are trying to be made to change and better the lives of citizens and soon-to-be citizens.