Austin’s Plastic Bag Ban-Classmate Commentary

The lift on the ban of single-use plastic bags, as Lizzie said in her commentary, is an unfortunate setback in our state’s goal to become fully sustainable. It is sad that we went back on a plan that reduced the use of almost 200 thousand plastic bags annually. I agree with you that the ban helped reduce the littering of many unnecessary plastic bags. The City of Austin helped to clean up the surrounding environment by implementing this plan. It helped remove bags from many streams and general litter around the city. The move we made was in the right direction to make the city overall cleaner. The ban also convinced many people to switch over to reusable bags which are better for the environment. So even after the ban has been lifted, many people have continued to use reusable bags like they did during the ban. I agree that is pointless to keep spending money on plastic bags which are made of non renewable resources like petroleum and natural gas. Also like you said, many plastic bags are recyclable, but most do not end up being recycled due to one reason or another. The cities ban on plastic bags was a great step forward, and even though it was repealed, citizens can keep working on making its impacts last for a long time to come.

The Democratic Resurgence in Texas

Texas has been a dominantly Republican state since 1980, which has meant that the democratic party has spent little effort or money in Democrat’s elections. This disregard of the Texas democrats has started to shift especially with the momentum around Beto O’Rourke in 2018. Texas new young and minority voter base is starting to expand and become invigorated in Texas State and National politics.

Many 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates are starting to visit Texas, showing its growing importance. Texas is typically a state that is ignored by many democrats due to it being a heavily red state, but this presence of 2020 Democrats is showing that Texas’ changing demographics might play a big role in our next Presidential election. The Democratic party seems to be investing more in Texas state and local politics too. More prominent democrats are also being elected and having very close races at the state level. Many Democrats are being to state office positions for districts surrounding many of Texas’ large liberal cities which did not used to happen. Texas is being setup to be considered more of a battleground state in 2020. Democrats are preparing for another Beto O’Rourke style campaign to run against John Cornyn. They are ready to see if we can start getting Democrats in office to represent Texans.

Many Democrats see that Texas is going to become an increasingly important state as the population shifts to minority voters becoming the majority in the state. The change was clearly seen in how close the vote was between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke was in 2018. You could tell how much Texans wanted change by the extremely high level of turnout for a midterm election. Texas is shaping up to become an important battleground state between Republicans and Democrats due to its large size and influence in politics. It is becoming more likely than ever we are going to see Democrats in Texas state and local government offices in 2020.

Blog Stage 6 Response

I agree with you Ignacio, Texas politicians have too much of an obsession with the border wall even though all it would do is take away money from Texas. Texas politicians need to concentrate on things that would benefit the citizens of Texas. Spending billions on a wall that would do nothing since most illegal immigrants come through legal ports of entry, is a giant waste of money. The false narrative being conveyed of a mass migration evading our borders is creating an unnecessary fear from many Americans. Dan Patrick needs to be working on things that Texans need like better health care, Hurricane Harvey recovery, and better public schools. Stroking fear from a threat that does not exist does not help anyone. The whole border wall being pushed by many Texas republicans and the President just seem like a way to save face in the election. They don’t want to irritate their voting base, so they are trying to keep good on their campaign promises. Also, as a republican in Texas, disagreeing with the Presidents’ policies is like a death wish for their reelection. Therefore, many republicans just blindly follow the president, they don’t want to lose their chance for reelection. Your point of calling the state of emergency political ploy of the administration and Texas officials is a completely accurate description. I agree that Texan officials need to work on things that will actually benefit Texas.

Charter Schools in Texas

Charter schools are a controversial means of education that are currently being discussed in Texas State politics. Many people have arguments against and in support of this controversial means of educating our children. This issue has exploded to the forefront of our current state political talks due to current presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke. He and his wife have launched a charter school in their home city of El Paso. But he now must walk a line of trying to figure out his policy on the very hostile issue.

Texans must decide whether the money allocated to educating their kids is going to go to a public school or a charter school. Many sides have very valid arguments to the support of their mode of education. Charter schools are usually very good at supporting very specific local needs. Amy O’Rourke, Beto O’Rourke’s wife, founded a charter school in a Hispanic neighborhood of El Paso that was designed to familiarize many Mexican immigrants, that recently arrived into the country, to English and American lifestyles. She believed that the current public-school system in El Paso was at giving these new Americans a chance at succeeding, by not giving them the proper English education. In an interview she said, "The local school district has failed to create an educational system that can generate true success for all students in the community." It was the first school in the area to take a dual language approach and caused it to catch on at many of the public schools in the area later on.

There is also the other valid argument that charter schools drain money from the public-school system and will eventually cause it to collapse. In many areas in Texas, if charter schools start to take away too many students from the public schools, it will start to cause the public-schools to become more underfunded than they already are. It could also lead to increased racial segregation in many cities in Texas. These arguments provide a good reason of why charter schools could be harmful to the majority of students that go to public schools.

The Importance of Vaccinating your Kids

When it comes to health care crisis’s, Texas is usually one of the worst affected due to our lack of importance we place on health care topics.  Bernice Johnson’s editorial argues the importance of vaccinating your kids. A very important issue we need to address is the protection of our children through vaccines. Travis County in Texas has one of the highest vaccines exemption rates in the country. The number of unvaccinated children has drastically increased since 2003 which is scary. Our state legislature has expanded the ability for our kids to have exemptions for non-medical reasons.

The author of this editorial is Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson who was the first nurse elected to the U.S. Congress. She represents the 30^th district of Texas. She has also worked on numerous bills supporting American’s health in Congress. This means she is very credible to talk about vaccine exemptions in Texas. The author’s intended audience is anyone who she can help convince the importance of vaccines. She is trying to convince the people of Texas the importance of vaccinating your kids to protect their health.

Bernice Johnson’s argument is that anti-vaccine paranoia is contributing to a worsening health crisis in Texas and people need to vaccinate their kids to protect them. She uses facts and research done by independent scientists to justify her point that vaccines are safe and should be gotten by anyone who doesn’t have a medical exemption. She justifies her claim with research from the centers of disease control to help show the facts around her point. She also uses the logic that people would want to protect their children as another reason to try to get people to vaccinate their kids. She also brings up the outbreaks in Texas of diseases that we thought were eliminated to help show that the lack of people getting vaccines is having serious consequences.

I agree with all of Bernice Johnson’s points about the importance of children getting vaccines. The only way to properly protect children is to require them to get vaccines. There is no reason that diseases that we believed were eliminated should be coming back in this modern age. As a society we need to help limit the spread of false information on social media that is causing people to believe it is okay to not vaccinate their kids. Texas needs to eliminate exemptions for religious and non-medical reasons. There is no reason that anyone should be able to not get a vaccine due to the false information they believe from online. These parents that are not vaccinating their kids are creating a real health hazard for people in school. You should not be able to make a decision that will affect the health of other people’s kids.

Bernice Johnson writers and effective article that argues the advantages of getting vaccines with the help of many sources and research. Her article explains why it is important for Texas to require people to get vaccines to protect their health and the health of their kids. Texas needs to work its way to the front of protecting people’s health and should not have some of the counties with the highest exemption rates in the nation.

The Fake Security Crisis on the U.S. Border

The article “Castillo: Securitycrisis? That’s not the McAllen I know” evaluates the authors opinion if there is really a crisis going on in his home town of McAllen Texas. The author uses facts and his own beliefs about the city to evaluate if McAllen and the border in general are experiencing a crisis.

              The author writes his editorial for people that want to have a greater local understanding of what is going on in a border town without watching the sensationalist national news. The way the article is written helps the audience understand what is going on locally without all the unhelpful arguments that are going on in national politics. The author’s credibility comes from growing up in McAllen and using my facts in the piece to help support his claims of the city. While the author writes this work as an opinion piece, he heavily routes his experiences within facts to give the piece credibility. He was inspired to write this after seeing Trump in McAllen arguing that they need a border fence.

              The author argues that there is not a crisis going on at the McAllen border. The author uses many pieces of evidence to support the fact that the city is not within crisis. McAllen had no murders last year which is incredible for a city of 142,000 people. This makes McAllen one of the safest cities in the U.S., a sharp contradiction to the picture that Trump paints in national politics of murderers and drug dealers running along the street all day. The author argues that the presidents wild press conference of him being flanked by drugs, weapons, and stacks of cash is just s scare tactic and does not really represent what is going on in border towns.

              I agree with the author that a border fence is and ineffective way to protect the U.S. and that there is much better way to complete the task. The author successfully argues his point with evidence and his expenses of living on the border. The author uses his personal evidence and knowledge from friends who currency live on the border to craft his arguments in very specific evidence. He gives a great, local perspective of what is going on in a city on the border. He creates a point of view that locally focuses on the issues without all the arguing happening in national politics.

Informal Citation:

Opinion Article Title: “Castillo: Security crisis? That’s not the McAllen I know”

Author: Juan Castillo

Written: January 25^th, 2019

The Proposed Texan Wall

The article ‘Bracing for the wall in South Texas’ describes how the federal and state government are starting to slowly build a southern border wall along the Texas border with Mexico. The Texas border with Mexico is currently the largest part of the border without any fence. There is basically no fence from El Paso all the way down to McAllen. The major problem with the fence is that it ends up diving historic lands owned by many Texan families. Due to the flood plain of the Rio Grande river the fence has to be placed significantly far back from the actual border. The net cause of this is that many families that live in Texas will end up on the south side of the border wall. The federal government already owns some land along the border, where they can build the fence without the process of eminent domain. They are starting to build the fence in these areas as they work on acquiring the land many Texans own along the border to build the fence. The current politicians and some media outlets are also creating a false narrative of what is happening on the border. They make it seem like there are stampedes of hundreds of migrants just waltzing into the country, which is not true. They also haven’t even answered the question if building walls in these rural parts of Texas would stop migration and drugs since most of them come through legal points of entry. The government of Texas and the United States are going to have to decide whether they should build the wall on the state and federal land along the border. This issue of the border wall is also very decisive in Texas politics with two sharply different sides on the issue. This article is worth reading because it gives you major insight on an issue that could affect the immigration policy in Texas for a long time to come. It also gives you insight on how the Texas and Federal government are trying to divide up the beautiful land along the Texas border.