Assignment 16 - Erin Caudill

Creativity and imagination are skills that are sought after by employers looking for the perfect candidate for a job. Employers want someone who is capable of thinking of original ideas and throwing themselves out there to pursue bigger possibilities. These are the people that can push a company further and turn something small into something that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. But, why are these people so hard to find? Surely, there has to more than a handful of people who are capable of being creative and imaginative to reach previously unthinkable places. In theory, that’s correct. In fact, everyone that was once a child is capable of the same creative thought process that many infamous people are known for. And that’s, well, everyone. Now, I’m not saying that the people who have carried this thought process into their adult lives and made a career out of it aren’t few in number, because they are. These people have managed to preserve their childlike wonder and imagination through the harshest of circumstances. That circumstance being, the education system. The current education system teaches the skill of critical thinking, which is a great skill to have. But in doing this, it manages to destroy the creative thinking that children already possess before they even begin going to preschool.

The way the education system works is that it slowly replaces the process of creative thinking with critical thinking. Kids are quickly taught that there is only one right answer to problems and that they have to approach everything logically. This has turned creativity and imagination into childish characteristics because they are most often present in children. In school, the main focus is on math, science, English and history, without any strong emphasis on subjects that promote creativity and originality. By creating a system that puts every single kid on the same path there is no existing originality. This system, additionally, alienates the kids that are still capable of creative thinking after years of going to school has been trying to teach them to stop thinking creatively and start thinking critically. Those kids are labelled as dumb or lazy and pushed to the side to let the “real” geniuses shine. I’m not suggesting that we flip this system and let the kids who think critically be stuck in the shadow of creative thinking, I’m merely suggesting that we consider that not everyone is meant to think in the exact same way. The way our education system is now treats kids like computers that you can program to do exactly what you want, and ignores the fact that this is destroying great minds.

It’s recommended that students pile on more “impressive” classes that require “actual” intelligence. It’s this kind of system that leads to some sort of weird intelligence hierarchy that creates entitled students. These students demand their teachers to raise their grade to an A. They cringe at a 90% on a test. The students who repeatedly mock someone who has a C in a class as if that somehow makes them a lesser student because they’re in a program for smart kids and “all smart kids get all A’s”. In their defense, they are determined to get into great colleges so they can get a great job. However, they seem to ignore the fact that they can only get so far in a career without creative thinking. This system is a never-ending cycle of ripping creativity away from kids and then teaching these kids to do the same to the next generation. We need to develop a system that acknowledges different learning and thinking processes without alienating one in favor of another.

When I talk about creativity, I’m not specifically referring to artistic ability. People don’t put creativity on their resume to tell the employer that they can play the piano or that they can draw a REALLY realistic tree. I’m referring to a much coveted thinking process when going into today’s work force. We have a rapidly developing society. Technology is advancing at an incredible rate and, like Ken Robinson says, it’s going to be impossible to keep progressing if we continue to push creative thinkers to the side. Sure, the education system we have now has managed to produce some prominent creative thinkers, but that’s by pure luck. These people have managed to preserve their creative thinking process against all odds. If there have only been a handful of creative thinkers that made incredible contributions to our society, then maybe we should start thinking of a system that would increase the amount of creative thinkers that are heading into the work force. Our society can’t continue to develop and advance when we are purposely advocating a system that teaches everyone to think the same way. We can’t sit back and not think of a solution because there doesn’t seem to be one because if you ask someone who thinks creatively they could give you countless solutions to our education system problem. Creative thinkers have made advancements to our society and culture that people now couldn’t live without. It’s time to return the favor and change our education system to support the creative thinking process.

Robinson, Ken. “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” TED. TED, Feb. 2006. Web. 19 June 2016.

Batey, Mark. “The Key Skill for the 21^st Century is Creativity.” YouTube. YouTube, 04 Aug.       2011. Web. 25 June 2016.

Robinson, Ken. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Oxford: Capstone, 2011. Print.

Zak, Rebekah. “Raising Creativity.” Raising Creativity. YouTube, 29 July 2014. Web. 25 June      2016

Assignment 16 - Haley Drake

Everyone loves music. Sure, maybe some people have different tastes than others. Maybe one person loves Taylor Swift and the other loves Kanye West. Maybe you're obsessed with the Hamilton soundtrack. Or maybe you just really love listening to whale noises and Bach remixes and it helps you focus on your work... Whatever you're into, music has an extensive role in shaping who you are. 

Fortunately, everyone in this classroom has access to pretty much any music ever published with streaming sites like Youtube and Spotify. Probably all of us have attempted to learn how to play an instrument - or at least had the option to. And a good number of us still make music now - and love it. On a low note, there are millions of under-privileged children that never had the option to explore music like we have, and I think that's a real problem that needs to be addressed.  

Learning how to understand and perform music from a young age has innumerable benefits to growing minds. It has been said that even a brief exposure to music can stimulate mathematical, verbal and reading abilities in children. Studies from Stanford University have confirmed that children with a single year of musical training have increased linguistic competence compared to children with no training. Anyone who has seriously studied music knows that performance requires a kind of focus and persistence that would otherwise go unchecked with "traditional" education. So why is it that music is less respected than other academic subjects? 

As a society we value music and the arts. From music to movies to TV shows to books, our culture revolves around the creativity of intellectual people, but when school budgets shrink, the arts are the first to go. In 2016, public schools in U.S. cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. still faced elimination of music programs. This is a problem because it means kids in these cities don't have the option of band, orchestra, or choir at school. When programs like this are ignored, children don't explore their possible musical talent, and the problem crescendos when they become adults - ignorant to the qualities of music. 

I'm pretty sure that if we didn't have a music class when I was in elementary school, I wouldn't have ever gotten involved in the subject. It was the same elementary music class that taught me the lyrics to nursery rhymes an how to play "Hot Cross Buns" on the recorder that inspired to later join choir and orchestra, which led to my passion for music today. Music class has always been one of my main reasons for getting up and going to school in the morning, and I can't imagine education without it. This is why music programs are an absolute necessity - especially in New York and cities where school budgets are shrinking and youth music organizations are suffering. 

In New York City, for example, there is a program called Harmony that is gaining recognition for the success it's had in musically training students who would otherwise have difficulties affording a private teacher. While it would be amazing to have tuition-free music programs like this across the country, there is an even larger problem of a lack of music education in other countries across the globe.

International programs like El Sistema - the national system of orchestras in Venezuela - have also been incredibly successful in inspiring young musicians who would otherwise not be able to explore their creative talent. It is organizations like this that should serve as a model for the widespread acceptance of music education. 

Yes, everyone loves music. No matter what kind of music you love, it's an invaluable part of our global culture. But unfortunately, many public schools have made attempts to scale back the aspect of music education in their curriculum,which harms many children's ability to express themselves creatively. We need to make music education as accessible as possible, not just in the larger communities of the United States, but internationally as well. 

Understanding music and helping others to understand music will genuinely improve children's excitement for learning, as well as opening the global cultural aspect of music to a whole new generation of people. 

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks 

Crescendo: The Power of Music http://www.crescendofilmdoc.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-heymont/more-funding-for-school-a_b_757558.html

http://www.elsistemausa.org/

http://harmonyprogram.org/

Assignment 16 - Joseph Cook

You’re a freshman in college, you’re taking a full college load, you’re working 2 part time jobs, and you’re behind on rent. You have bad credit and can’t get a loan. What do you do now? If you don’t pay the rent, you get kicked out. Well, there are a couple options. You could ask a friend for a hundred dollars, and pay it back when you can, the interest rate there can vary from 0% to 50% depending on the quality of the friend. You could rob a convenience store, and make a couple hundred bucks, but there are other consequences associated with that route, or you could get a title loan on your car from your friendly neighborhood TitleMax. Because according to their website, “When you’re a customer of TitleMax, we’re working together… as a team.” Nothing could ever go wrong, right? Well, no. What happens is, you get a loan based off of the value of your car for say, $1000, you agree to pay this in installments of $100 a week for 25 weeks, if you miss a payment, they come and take your car. If you manage to pay it off, then you’ve just bought $1000 for $2500. Sounds like another great deal from the friendly staff of TitleMax!

Similar situations trap people every day with title loans, buy here pay here car lots, payday advance locations, checks to cash shops, and hundreds of other fiscally ferocious fiends. These industries make millions, by taking that money from those who are living paycheck to paycheck. This predatory lending needs to be stopped. 18 states have legislation banning high cost payday lending, and more are on the way. Throughout this speech I’m gonna focus on what payday loans and title loans can do, how easy it is to start a similar business, buy here pay here car lots, and how you can prevent this from ruining your own life.

Payday loans seem like a quick and easy way to get cash, before your paycheck. All you have to do is walk in and say, I need cash. This is the lender’s trigger word. Once they know that you’re open to the idea, the lender will do anything to drag you under. One NPR researcher decided to sign up with fake credentials, but they put in their real phone number. They got approved for a $750 loan. With $225 interest for one week. That adds up to a yearly interest of 1300%. They declined the offer. But soon they started receiving phone calls from all over the globe, saying that they had been approved for loans of $1000, $1500, $2000, all the way up to $5000. They had only asked for $500. Their information was sold out to hundreds of lenders, even though the site said that the info was “secure.” To someone actually looking for a loan, this is an easy way to get trapped in the cycle of interest, retaking loans, and signing on with new loaners. This is nearly the same thing with title loans. You get a loan on your car, and you can’t pay it off because of the insanely high interest rate. Then, so your car doesn’t get repossessed, you take out a payday loan, and then you take another and another. This ruse has taken grasp upon millions of people down on their luck, and is a disgrace to America.

Some people, however don’t mind being a disgrace to America, if it means making a quick buck. Say you’ve got $1000 dollars, and a small storefront. That’s all you need to make all the dirty cash you want in the form of a buy here, pay here car lot. First you go out and buy an older car, that’s reliable enough. You sell it to somebody for $2000 in biweekly installments of $200. If they pay off the car, you’ve made $1000 dollars. But, if they miss even one payment, then you come and repossess the car. Now you’ve made around $500 dollars, you still have a car, and you didn’t have to do anything but wait. After doing this some more, you can afford a second car, and a third, and a fourth, slowly growing. Next thing you know, you’re selling and repossessing cars like crazy and you are getting thousands of dollars every week in payments. Bang. Free money. All you need is a car and no soul. You can also add cleaning fees for people who smoke in the car, making even more money off of those poor unfortunate souls.

These businesses are the reason that legislation needs to be put forth. Payday loans would be much more reliable and less of a scourge if they charged lower interest rates. Already several states have limits on the interest rates that can be charged. These industries can be made good. With lower interest rates, less strict policies, and less corporate greed, what once caused the downfall of many lower income families, can now boost them out of a rough spot. The Christmas season is when less fortunate families struggle the most. Heating costs more, with our crazy Kentucky weather, you never know what’s gonna happen to your car or house, and getting presents for children to keep the magic of Christmas alive for them. All of these put financial strain on families. The traps that everyone can fall into with these predatory industries can cause thousands of wasted dollars, and months of financial and emotional grief. Despite the “friendly staff who will work with you during your time of need,” the costs outweigh the rewards by 1000% annually. So next time you, your family, or a friend or loved one, is down on their luck, remember, Qwiki Ca$h is not the place to be. There are many financial support groups run by churches, charities, and other well-doers, who will really work with you in your time of need

In closing, I’d like to remind all of you that payday loans are not there for you, and that anybody with an old car and some sleazy sale techniques can fool you out of your hard earned money, and that there are many other ways to get through rough times, including friends, charities and churches. So next time you’re strapped for cash, and your friends are all just as broke as you are, rob a convenience store. You’ll be doing yourself a favor by not being caught in the web of debt spun by these malicious corporations. At least bail’s interest rate is 0 percent per year.

Assignment 16

One of our worlds greatest known minds, Albert Einstein, once said, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four. years. to live.”
I want you to picture this… A world where the vibrant colors you see on your hikes or even in your backyard, no longer exist. A world where, the cute colors of fall on the trees, are nothing more than an sight full of brown, lifeless, sticks, and forever will be nothing more that just that. Not only that, but even worse, imagine a world where even the top 1% is battling to find a meal because it’s just that scarce. If they can't even find food, where will you find it? That's an image that absolutely none of us should be okay with.

The documentary “Silence of the Bees,” dives into how this disturbing world we've imagined could easily become a reality due to the deterioration of the bee species.
This rapid decline has been due to what environmentalists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder, or, CCD. CCD has affected many areas around the country and the world, and has crucial consequences. For example, some areas of the United States have experienced an 80% loss of honeybees that have seemed to practically vanish, all within a mere 6 month period in 2009. Frighteningly, ⅓ of all the food we eat has been pollinated by bees. Not only that, but nearly almost all 100 of human food crops which supply around 90% of the world's nutrition is pollinated by, you guessed it, bees. This human food crop industry for the U.S. has a value that well exceeds $15 billion. So if you won't do it for the life threatening environmental circumstances, you'll at least do it for the economy, won't you?

So what is causing this in the first place? Well, for a while it remained a mystery, but biologists at the University of California have narrowed it down to two major reasonings. The first being pesticides that we use on our crops, and the second being the lack of nutrition bees are becoming exposed to.
These same biologists at the University of California have found traces of over 150 different chemicals in some bees pollen. These pesticides may be harmless to us, but are lethal to bees and other insects. When you have a “pesticide cocktail” as biologist Eric Mussen puts it, it creates a recipe for disaster. We use things called neonicotinoids on our plants because they are not toxic to mammals and birds, but they are to insects. Neonicotinoids hold the seven largest and most common pesticides, including imidacloprid, which is the most commonly used insecticide in the world. If we're spraying majority of our plants worldwide with a pesticide intended to kill insects such as bees, how can we even begin to question why they are all dying out?

It's not enough that bees are being attacked by toxins, but they're becoming more and more malnourished as well. Dr. Heather Mattila, a honeybee biologist at Wellesley College states that, “Bees need a varied diet of different pollens in order to grow into strong, healthy workers.” It may be true that we are not a country that has been completely overrun by urbanization, but that doesn't mean there is a lot of nature for the bee to feed off of. She adds that, “A space can be a green dessert if it doesn't have flowering plants that are bee-friendly.” Meaning, that even though yes we do have lots of farms and are still rich in agriculture, we are crop ridden. We are a land full of crop culture, leaving acres and acres of land full of the same plants, which means the same pollen. The fields we don't use for crops are mown down,
leaving no pollen for the bees, and our yards manicured, also staying pollen free. Humans cannot survive off of just one single item of food, so why do we expect the insects that carry our foods future in our hands, to do just that?

So the question now is, how do we solve it? Some options are simple and some more harder to execute, but still possible. First, we need to stop killing off the bees with toxins. This can be done by following the example shown to us by Europe, where they banned the main seven neonicotinoids. There are other means of keeping agriculture growing than dousing them with insect poison. Our oranges may not be perfect spheres, but they will taste same, and can be guaranteed to last to sustain human lives rather than dying off along with the bees. The second option is just as simple as planting flowers. If a farmer just planted some wild or even domestic flowers around their crops or plants, then that alone will boost the nutrition of the honey bees and even attract more. It's just as simple as planting a few flowers in places that are normally mown down like in fields, or even just by telephone poles in rural areas. Even simpler, setting out a potted plant on your front porch.That is all it takes to vary a bees diet and to keep it healthy and full of nutrition. Such simple ideas have such an immense impact on the lives of one of the world's most precious species. All I ask is that you don't let them die out. Don't let US die out. Save the bees.

Sources:
   Markham Heid. "You Asked: Are the Honeybees Still Disappearing?" Time. Time, 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.
   "What Is a Neonicotinoid? - Insects in the City." Insects in the City. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.
   @greenpeaceusa. "Research." Greenpeace USA. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

   Silence of the Bees. Dir. Nature. Nature, 2011.

Assignment 16 - Claire Thompson

I’m here to make the case for art. Why you should care about art. Why I care about art. And, most importantly, why you should make art. It seems that many people, in their perspective of art and the power and meaning of art, are very narrow minded, provincial, and even ignorant. People think it’s just a pretty picture, period. And they don’t care. I can’t really blame people though; our art education largely ends after elementary school and when we do have art education, we aren’t truly taught about the multitude and magnitude of the power and the impact of art. This societal infliction is large setback to people’s understanding of not just art, but the world around them and themselves.
The painting behind me is a Mark Rothko, an abstract expressionist. Abstract expressionism was one of the first purely abstract and non-objective movements in art history. People who don’t have a background in art or art history often find art of this nature pretentious, shallow, even stupid. People think “oh I could do that.” They think it lacks any actual artistic skill. But little do people understand, art like this is powerful and has so much depth; this kind of art has multitudes. It is perfect synthetization of human emotion and the human condition onto canvas. Jackson Pollock—the artist who did the splatter paint—is probably the most famous abstract expressionist, and, much like Mark Rothko, was a depressed drunk whose art is indicative of this. Rothko’s art attacks the audience visually with such bold composition: the bold colors, the imperfection and chaos of it, and just the sheer size of these paintings are so imposing. Your guttural reaction to it, which is often of discomfort, anger, sadness, disgust, confusion, despair, or hopelessness are exactly the emotions Rothko wants you to feel. When you see a Rothko painting in person, it’s like staring into the void and it stares right back at you.
Ad Reinhardt, another abstract expressionist, once wrote, in a comic about how to understand art: “An abstract painting will react to you if you react to it. You get from it what you bring to it. It will meet you halfway but no further. It is alive if you are. It represents something and so do you. YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE TOO.”
Rothko wrote a manuscript about how modern artists, as artists from about the 1940s-1960s, borrowed from primitive human art. If you think about cave paintings, they are not realistic. Rather, they are symbolic; they are meant to tell a story. Abstract paintings, like Rothko’s, do the same thing: they tell us about humanity and life and feeling. Realism is not the goal of art, and people need to break free of this binding concept. In this manuscript, Rothko also wrote about how children’s art is reactionary. They are mimicking the world around them. If you think about the nature of children’s art, it is so bizarre. Kids make art intuitively; they don’t think about it, they just do. They are not worried about how pretty it is, because, in their eyes, their art is incredible; it is their own world view perfectly synthesized on paper. We lose the ability to make art naturally and intuitively around the time we begin having formal art education, in which we are given rules and regulations and perimeters on how we should make art and what our subject matter should be.  We begin worrying about the realism of our art, how “good” it is. And when people don’t excel at this, they give up art almost completely for good.
But I believe that we have the ability to tap into this childhood capability.
Next time you are incredibly angry or sad or depressed, maybe you want to cry and scream or throw something, or maybe you’re really nervous because you have to give a speech as a final for your English class and you feel like you could vomit your guts out, sit down and pull out a piece of paper and just make lines. Don’t think about it, just draw. Scribble. I don’t mean just draw a girl crying because you’re sad, make something guttural and reactionary. Make something ugly! Hideous! Cry on the paper! Sneeze on it! Spit on it! Put your exact emotions onto paper! Do this every time you feel really deep or upsetting emotions. You will find, with practice, that this exercise can help you be better in touch with your emotions and with yourself. You will better be able to control and understand your emotions. Use art, not to make something necessarily pretty, but to help yourself.
Understanding art, and making it, will make you a more realized and full person. It will change your world.

Assignment 16- Reagan Smith

Water- on the most basic level, only comes in one variety; two hydrogen atoms smashed together with one oxygen atom, and we have this natural resource: water. There’s ice, rain, sleet, snow, hail, steam, but it’s all water. But Americans don’t just look at the basic level- there’s high pH water, flavored water, infused water, spring water, mountain water, valley water, glacial water, bottled water, tap water, filtered water. But it all starts with two hydrogens and one oxygen bonded together. I’m sure we’ve all heard the facts about H₂O- our body is 60 percent water, our planet is 75 percent water and only 3 percent is fresh, and that only 1 percent of the water is drinkable. But what does this mean for people like us?

We use water like it grows on trees, the people with some of the best water in the world are dehydrated, and spare change, literally pennies can make a difference for people across the globe. While some things may be as simple as ABC, water is as simple as CDE: Conservation, Dehydration, and Expansion.

According to the Thirst Project, Americans use an average of 150 gallons of water a day for bathing, cooking, cleaning, drinking, etc. We need to stop the overusing and start over-conserving. Well, we probably shouldn’t do that, but stop overusing water. It’s unbelievable that in 2016, people still leave the water on while they are brushing their teeth! Maybe it’s the sound or the visual stimulation that helps you to brush better. Try pulling up a video of a waterfall and it will fix both problems, I can guarantee you it will have the same, if not better effect on your brushing efficacy. Well, I actually can’t guarantee you that, but that’s beside the point. But in all seriousness, we need to turn off the tap while brushing. This can shave a gallon or two off of our daily usage, up to 730 gallons a year. Next, we need to move on from our beloved bottled water, which should really be called the beloved water enemy. Millions of Americans buy bottled water, despite it not being safer than tap water, and a lot of the time, it comes from tap water anyway. Bottled water is detrimental to water conservation. For every bottle of water, it takes three times that to produce the plastic and run the manufacturing processes to make it. And if that isn’t enough, according to Kentucky American tap water costs less than a penny a gallon, where bottled water costs exponentially more.

Dehydration- according to one medical dictionary, is defined by “the loss of water and salts essential for normal body function.” This loss of water and salts can cause a chemical imbalance in your body ranging from mild symptoms such as headache, dry mouth, and nausea, to critical life threatening ones including organ failure and even death. All of these issues are preventable by simply drinking water. While the actual amount of water needed varies depending on who you talk to- 8 glasses, 10 glasses, a gallon, etc., there’s no doubt we need more of it. Now is the time to move forward from sugary soft drinks (which is another layer of the issue entirely) and hydrating with pure water.

Finally, we need to expand the world’s access to water. According to the United Nations, 780 million people do not have access to clean drinking water. This is simply unacceptable. People argue that people in Africa should just boil their water, or that we have bigger issues to face. Those two statements raise three problems. This isn’t an issue that just affects African Nations- according to the world resources institute, all continents, except Antarctica, experience at least a high level of water stress in at least one area or country. To address boiling, wood resources are scarce in these areas, as they are used sparingly to build homes, and they couldn’t afford to burn them. Finally, water is a starting point for treating world diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Yellow and Dengue Fever, Hepatitis, and so on. Because without clean water, people can’t stay hydrated. Without hydration, there is no clean water for sanitation, which continues on the cycle of unsanitary living.

So let’s step back and think about this: we have access to water at a low cost and abuse it by leaving the tap on while brushing, but aren’t hydrated. We live our lives not thinking about the water we drink and millions of people in the world worry about the water they drink, where they’ll find it, or what it will do to them. We- as in not just the twenty people in the room, not just the United States, but the entire population of our planet has three issues to deal with: C, D, ad E: Conservation, Dehydration, and Expansion. So let’s act on it. Do your part and give to organizations like Thirst Project and be a water advocate: start conserving, stop dehydration, and challenge others to expand the world’s access to water.

Assignment 16- Brianna Scott

Educational Reform

By living in the United States, we are all given the right to public schooling, and for that we should be grateful. However, it is not the quality of an education that was intended, or that is expected by parents of the children in our country. If we lived in an imaginary place where every child has equal opportunities and is set up to be successful and has the resources to go to college and get a job and provide for their family then, and only then, we might be able to fix whatever our education system has turned in to. So many people and organizations have tried to come up with ways to fix it and turn it into the great system that it was meant to be, but for the most part they have failed.

One of the ways that the issues have tried to be fixed is what is called the “Common Core.” It was created by privately funded groups in Washington D.C. to set hard-lined standards that would objectively lead every child that went through the public school system to college, or at least the entry level of a community college. This is only the beginning of the problems. If the only standards that are to be met by public schools are enough to get someone to the point of being able to be accepted into a community college, which is a great goal to have, what does it mean for someone aspiring to get into an Ivy League school? Are they not to be pushed to their own limits and have their abilities tested even though the standards of their classes are well below what they are capable of?

By labeling a successful student by what they’ve scored on a test, the common core ignores the many qualities of a human being that cannot be tested. Standardized learning targets lead to standardized testing, which leads to standardized learning. As a junior in high school, I’ve taken more than my fair share of standardized tests. If the goal of a classroom turns into passing a test, that’s just not the way that it should be. You can learn a test all you want, but that isn’t all that a child should get out of their public education. I feel like this concept creates an unhealthy benchmark for both teachers and parents.

Before anyone tries to argue about the fact that this is not required by the federal government, and that you can’t call it an encroachment on state’s rights I need to say that I agree with you. Without looking at the situation and everything that comes with the program, you can say that if there were so many problems with it that it shouldn’t be implemented in the first place. Saying any of these things are just excuses to ignore what this system is doing to the children that live here and are put into the schools that try to validate these policies.

The federal government is not putting these standards into law. Instead, Race To The Top funds have been created by the U.S. Department of Education. These grants offer money to the states that are willing to abide by their standards. Any state that cares about the education of their students is going to want, and need the money that would be provided by such grants. It is said in the requirements that by complying with such requirements they will be granted the money. One of the first listed says “Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.” Sounds familiar, right? Contrary to my own opinion, with all of the technicalities and loopholes included, these actions do not violate the constitution. Basically, if you disagree and don’t do what the government is strongly encouraging you to do, you don’t get money that could be used to improve the resources and materials that are already being used to teach students the way that they already are being taught. I am in no way “against” students being provided with the education that will get them into college and succeed in the professional world, but I don’t feel that this initiative will have a positive effect on that.

One of the members of the committee that was to validate Common Core is Sandra Stotsky, a professor at the University of Arkansas. She has been a leader in the opposition of the Common Core, and actually gave a testimony explaining why she isn’t compelled to sign off on these standards. The basis of her stance is just that these standards aren’t enough. They aren’t developed by the experts on the actual material, and they reduce the level of learning that many schools already have in place.

I’ve been thinking about teaching when I get older. If I can make a positive impact on anyone, especially younger people, then I would do whatever it takes. With the common core, the organic nature of a classroom is taken away. The teaching style of a teacher who has been successful in his or her ways for 30 years has to make a change that has the possibility to lower his or her scores. A teacher’s focus changes to the stress of getting his or her students to certain bench marks in the way that these policies say that they should. Teachers have less mobility in that they lose the flexibility that they had to cater individually to students who might be struggling. It’s almost like they are giving out shirts that are “one-size-fits-all” to every child in America. How could all of those children have shirts that fit them? It’s impossible.

Not directly related to the Common Core, but affected, is the increasing appeal of private schools. The documentary “Waiting for Superman”, released in 2010, follows the stories of parents fighting to get their kids a quality education. Those who are born into the areas that aren’t as wealthy as others often are left in the districts with the lowest ranked schools. These are the families that don’t have the funds to send their kids to better schools. They are forced to gamble their child’s education on the luck of a drawing, raffle or lottery to be able to afford tuition to a charter or private school.

A remarkable person who influences much of the debate in educational reform is Ken Robinson. I really enjoy listening to his TED talks and just feeling the passion that he has for kids and their future. My favorite TED talk of his is called “How to escape Education’s Death Valley.” He compares the fight for education to Death Valley. While it is constantly dry and looks as if it has no possibility of ever showing life, it rained almost 7 inches one time. Because of that, it was filled with flowers in the spring. People thought that it was impossible for life to come out of such a dark place. Successful educational reform IS possible. Even when something looks as dead as it possibly could be, you can change the conditions and make life possible in he darkest of times.

Works Cited

Speech/Lecture

Ken Robinson- “How to escape Education’s Death Valley”

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley

Documentary

“Waiting for ‘Superman” 2010

https://vimeo.com/69353438

Internet Sources

Race To The Top Federal Grants

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html

A transcript of the testimony from Sandra Stotsky on the Common Core  

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/sandra-stotsky-on-the-mediocrity-of-the-common-core-ela-standards/

Assignment 16- Sippy

It's all too easy to divorce the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s from the events that occur today. we're inclined to believe that somehow this nation has matured from the bigotry and racism of that era and entered a new one:  one of peace, prosperity, and pluralism. The epitome of which is when some claim to be “colorblind.”

This movement is lead by people like Tomi Lahren who have said that “To me true diversity is diversity of thought, not diversity of color. I don't see color.”

For lack of a better term: this is bullshit. The history of America, is the history of injustice and subjugation that people of color, religious minorities, gay and queer people (just to mention a few) are subject to.

It is easy to overlook this if you’re white. It's the power of privileged thinking.

Very few people in American society, are openly bigots, who publically disdain anyone who isn’t white, christian, cis-gendered, and straight.

But that doesn’t mean that we have become color-blind, rather it just means that racism in America today is more societal, institutionalized, and subconscious.

There is not a more perfect example of the abuse that people of color endure than their right to vote than the struggle to access the ballot box.  While African Americans would be officially enfranchised by the 15th Amendment, and granted “equal protection under the law” by the 14th. This was and still has not been achieved.

Like the promise of forty-acres and a mule, America has defaulted on many of its most central promises to people of color, especially African Americans.  

There is no better example of this than the right to vote. From 1870 to 1965, the denial of access to the ballot box was the official public policy of the American South, and many other states. As President Johnson once explain to a resistant joint-session of Congress: ““The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”

But  this inequity, with respect to gaining access to ballot box, was supposed to end  with the stroke of President Johnson’s pen in 1965 to the Voting Rights Act, this was all supposed to change. And in many respects it did.

As Ari Berman, the author of GIVE US THE BALLOT, explains: “Well if you look at the history of the Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was meant to end decades of discrimination against African Americans in the South and it was a transformative piece of legislation. It outlawed literacy tests and poll taxes, it sent federal officials to the South to register black voters in segregationist strong-holds like Selma, Alabama. It kept federal officials in the South to monitor elections to make sure they weren’t stolen. It forced those states with the worst histories of voting discrimination to actually have to approve their voting changes with the federal government to prevent discrimination in the future. All of these things were transformative and they led to a revolution in American politics it made America a truly multi-racial integrated democracy.”

This is not to say that America became some post-racial society, as Tomi Lahren and her alt-right goons might claim it is. But, rather that things improved, slowly, that it until Shelby County v. Holder.

The Voting Rights Act provided that any significant change to voting policies had to get the sign off from the Department of Justice, protecting black Americans from having the vote stipped away form them. But the 2013 ruling according to Berman: “We have a Supreme Court that has struck down one of the centerpieces of the Voting Right Act in 2013. We have state legislatures all across the country that are passing laws making it harder to vote and we have a congress that has done nothing about this problem. And so, for all of those reasons I believe there has been a counter-revolution against the Voting Rights Act and we’re seeing that play out today. I see it as an attempt to deprive certain people of their right to vote. I think that’s what it’s always been about. If you look at the history of the Voting Rights Act, days after it was passed you had Southern officials who wanted to challenge the constitutionality of that law to prevent, uh, newly registered African American from participating in the political process. This was done all across the South. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, they all challenged the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and even after that failed the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act a year after Bloody Sunday in Selma.”

This led to two main manifestations of injustice when it comes to the ballot box.

Excessive gerrymandering enabling the politicians to pick their voters, instead of the way it should be. And voter ID and other unnecessary restrictive laws.  

Assignment 16 - Ethan MacGillivray

The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. Every four years, people from across the globe come together for a summer of soccer. The final alone had a viewership totaling 1.013 billion in 2014 (ESPN FC). No matter what country it is played in, the tournament is always a grand affair with every single country participating receiving between 8 million and 35 million dollars (USA Today). But what happens behind the scenes is a sharp contrast to what the public eye sees on TV. The tournament has been ridden by controversy and scandal in recent years, which need to come to an end, preferably without affecting the upcoming tournaments. We need to create a pure organization, through the election of past players, or the tighter supervision of the entire process.

         The International Federation of Association Football, or FIFA, the organization that hosts the event, has been plagued with scandal in recent years. They are a group of elected officials from every country with a soccer federation that presides over all things to do with international soccer competition. Sepp Blatter was elected the president of FIFA in 1998, becoming one of the most powerful men in sports. To choose which country is to host future World Cups, a committee made up of 24 officials votes on each country that has placed a bid, based on their ability to host a successful tournament (BBC). In 2010, the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were chosen, and they were Russia and Qatar respectively. The 2018 selection surprised everyone, given that Russia was up against England, the favorite to win, given their rich history and abundance of stadiums, but England ended up getting only two votes. Even more surprising was the 2022 selection, where Qatar was chosen. During the tournament, temperatures will reach at least 120 degrees; they have absolutely no history in soccer, and no infrastructure to host the tournament. Furthermore, over four thousand people have already died building stadiums in Qatar.

         In response to these selections, a few investigations were launched to see how Russia and Qatar won the right to host the tournament. One of these was conducted by the United States, who eventually got to talk to a member of the Qatar 2022 bid committee. This woman told us that she witnessed the exchange of massive sums of money in return for the official voting for Qatar. After this investigation, and one conducted by the Swiss, where FIFA is based, there was a lot of information uncovered about federations bribing officials for votes, rigging the elections.

         Since then, at least 40 officials have been charged with being involved in one of the biggest scandals in sports history. Over 150 million dollars has been allegedly dished out to various officials on the committee in the years leading up to the selections (Rosenberg). Although Sepp Blatter was suspended for six years, this kind of behavior can’t be allowed to continue once he gets back, or ever.

         The US and the rest of FIFA needs to come together to aggressively attack the system of bribes and cheating that has plagued the sport of soccer in the past years. We need to establish a system where everyone involved has to be truthful and choose what is best going forward. This won’t be easy by any means, many officials have become accustomed to receiving millions of dollars in exchange for their vote, and it will be hard to break the cycle that the officials and soccer federations are used to.

         The real question isn’t why, but how we should go about doing this. Sepp Blatter has innumerable connections throughout the world of soccer, and many still give their unwavering support to him through his suspension. There is not a doubt in anyone’s mind that he will try to reclaim the FIFA presidency once he has served his suspension, and he could easily do it. Because every country is even in FIFA voting, small countries can heavily outweigh big countries, like the US. During his tenure, Sepp Blatter brought money into many of the poorer countries in FIFA, establishing relationships with their governments and soccer federations (Morlidge). Because of this, he has the undying support of many officials that are still in FIFA, enabling him to immediately regain the presidency, and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

         To prevent this, we must take precautionary measures to make sure that bribes and rigging can never be brought back into FIFA again. Even though eliminating all of the current officials from the organization and starting from scratch would be nothing but beneficial, it is completely unfathomable if you think about it realistically. No country would ever agree to that, and it would be unfair to the officials that didn’t do anything wrong.

         No matter what else we do, the most important thing is to have much tighter control over the voting system. To do this, one thing we should do is create an anonymous system, so the voters don’t know which countries are placing a bid, and the countries that are placing a bid don’t know who the voters are. This way, the voters find out which countries have placed a bid right before they vote on the subject, eliminating all chance for soccer federations to bribe the officials.

         A more radical, but not completely unimaginable way to go about fixing FIFA is by electing former payers to the committee. They possess years of personal insight on what it takes to play in a World Cup, and what is best for the players along the road leading up to the tournament. This would greatly reduce the problems with distributing money to players, which hurt three African teams in the 2014 tournament. These players would also be much less likely to ever take bribes, given they have invested their entire lives in the game.

         Overall, the world of soccer needs to come together, before Sepp Blatter’s suspension ends. We should reform the FIFA voting system, either by changing the process, or by changing the people involved. The system of cheating and lying your way to personal benefit needs to stop, in FIFA and the world.

Assignment 16 - Maddie Klumb

Whether or not we all like studying it, we can agree science has a major impact on our lives. For example, the field of embryonic stem cell research is quickly advancing and making new discoveries. Substantial progress is being made toward finding the cure to cancer, or to growing new organs to use for transplants and testing, or to finding the solution to diabetes. Cures to such ailments would save many lives, and end the suffering of many others. However, such research is expensive to conduct and restrictions on the allocation of federal funds can make it hard for research institutions to focus on finding these cures. Federal funding to embryonic stem cell research in America must be expanded to allow for discoveries to continue improving the lives of the public.

Embryonic stem cells are the grouping of cells in the blastocyst that forms a few days after fertilization of an egg.  They possess the unique ability to divide exponentially without forming tumors. When properly studied, this trait could lead researchers to the long awaited cure to cancer. These cells are also extremely useful to the scientific community because they don't have restrictions on the types of cells they can become. Able to differentiate into any cell type in the human body, scientists have begun looking at ways to use these cells to grow organs in the lab.

With the aid of federal funding, scientists in the United Kingdom successfully created a layer of heart tissue in a petri dish with embryonic stem cells. Beyond the specialization of these cells, the scientists were able to make the cells beat resembling a slow heartbeat. This breakthrough has the potential to revolutionize the testing of medicines. Using this new technology, scientists can now directly observe the effects of multiple medicines on the heart without doing invasive animal or human trials. Producing whole organs is becoming closer to a scientific reality than science fiction. Organs made in the lab could one day be used in life-saving transplants.

Researchers like Dr. Jack Kessler of Northwestern University are using embryonic stem cells to find cures to spinal chord injuries. Dr. Kessler entered this field of research after his daughter suffered a neck injury and was paralyzed from the waist down. He turned to his research to find a way to cure her injuries and the injuries of others like her. Dr. Kessler and the Northwestern team conducted an experiment to reconstruct the spinal chord of a mouse. Mice with spinal injuries impairing the use of their hind legs were given a treatment of embryonic stem cells created in the lab. The hope was the stem cells would transform into those of the spinal chord and reconstruct the damaged chord. After several weeks of treatment, the injured mice showed improved and recovered motor skills. In the future, this technology may be used to allow people suffering from spinal injuries to regain use of their bodies and walk again.

However, scientists must do more than focus on discoveries. As the public becomes more informed of scientific advancements, their opinions have grown more pronounced. These opinions are voiced not only by the general public but also by politicians and prominent social figures. Often falling on opposing sides, the discussions surrounding controversial research, like that of embryonic stem cells, is becoming toxic.

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because of the source of the cells. Stem cells are collected from blastocysts that are only a few days old. The source of most of these cells is donations of embryos leftover from in-vitro fertilization. If these cells aren't donated they would die in storage or be destroyed.  Unfortunately, the collection process of stem cells means the blastocyst is unable to continue developing. Many people dislike this process because of that outcome, as they see it as a needless destruction of life. The other side argues that the potential discovery of cures outweighs the costs.

In 2001, President Bush decided the public discussions warranted a change to the means of funding embryonic stem cell research. There is an American law preventing the use of federal funds to create or destroy a human embryo. Before 2001, the scientific community widely accepted stem cell research was eligible for federal funds because the cells are not embryos. Bush changed this by extending the Congressional ban on funding to include stem cell research. In addition to federal restrictions, every publicly funded institution is subject to restrictions by their state and local governments.

The federal restriction prohibits the use of laboratory equipment (microscopes, petri dishes, beakers, etc.), supplies, or facilities to conduct research involving embryonic stem cells. As a compromise, Bush allowed funded research of 22 lines of cells to continue. While federal funds can be used on these lines, they cannot be used to create new lines of stem cells. Because the same lines have been used since 2001, they are becoming diluted and less useful. With worn out cell lines, public and federal institutions like the National Institutes of Health are unable to fully explore the promising future of embryonic stem cells.

Because of the restrictions on funding and political and public anger, researchers are making tough decisions. According to National Geographic, many scientists with promising research involving embryonic stem cells are relocating. But they're not just moving out of town or to a different state - they are moving to other countries. Countries that provide better funding programs than America. Countries where the public is more accepting of embryonic stem cell research. The new environment allows the scientists to receive the support they require to find cures to ailments like cancer and organ failure.

I ask you, if you could cure someone's cancer, or give someone a life-saving organ transplant, or allow them to walk again, would you? I believe the cures to cancer, organ failures, spinal injuries, and diabetes will be found in the next few decades through embryonic stem cell research. However, if we don't make funding for this research more accessible in the United States, and with less strings attached, that time estimate will only continue to lengthen. Lifting the ban on federal funding and changing public discussions of embryonic stem cells can improve the lives of those currently suffering. America is missing out, and if we don't make a change soon we might lose a lot more than opportunity.

Works Cited

Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita. Public Broadcasting service. PBS, Arlington. Oct. 2007. Chicago International Film Festival.

“What are Embryonic Stem Cells.” Stem Cell Information. National Institutes of Health, 17 June 2015. Web. 20 June 2016.

Bjo ̈rn Behr, M.D. Sae Hee Ko, M.D. Victor W. Wong, M.D. Geoffrey C. Gurtner, M.D. Michael T. Longaker, M.D., M.B.A. “Stem Cells.” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Oct. 2010: 1163-1171. Print.

Dunn, Kyla. “The Politics of Stem Cells.” NOVA. PBS, 1 Apr. 2005. Web. 20 June 2016.

McKie, Robin. "Heart Cells Beating in a Petri Dish Offer New Hope to Heart Patients." The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 01 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 June 2016.

SciShow. “Stem Cells.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 20 June 2016.

Solomon, Susan. “The Promise of Research with Stem Cells.” TED. Edinburgh, Scotland. 27 June 2012. TED Talk.

Weiss, Rick. “The Stem Cell Divide.” National Geographic. July 2005. Print.

Assignment 16 - Benjamin Givens

If you have some money—whether it be from a job, an investment, or inheritance—you put that money in a bank. It would be extremely cumbersome to keep the cash around. It almost seems ridiculous to us. But what happens to that money when you put in a bank? It doesn’t stay in the bank vault and most people know that. It gets invested in a way that is useful to society. Much more useful than keeping money. Because money sitting somewhere doesn’t get us anywhere. It just sits. It has no velocity. If someone holds on to money, then nothing happens. It doesn’t change in value and it doesn’t provide a service—you can’t eat money, you can’t live in money, you can’t do anything with money that sits. Money is useful when it's spent. This is where the bank comes in and the idea of “Fractional Reserve Banking.”

The bank gives that money to people in the form of a loan. However, it doesn’t give out money without purpose, but instead puts it to specific projects. For instance, to buy a house, to start a business, to make a park. In return for the cash that is used to pay workers and buy capital, the bank gets a lien against the purpose of the investment. This is a legal piece of paper that says, “They owe us money for that project, and if they can’t pay it back, that item becomes ours.” The bank is not giving away money. It still has the same amount of assets. But now that money is in a form that is useful to society. A park being built is much more useful than money sitting in a vault. This is the “banking” part of fractional reserve banking.

The “fractional reserve” part is that while this movement of money is great for the economy, it’s not so great for you personally. You want to be able to go to the bank and withdraw your money. If it is all in the form of an asset like a lien against someone’s house, it doesn’t do you any good. Thus, the federal government mandates that the bank keep a certain fraction of the money they owe people’s accounts “in reserve.” What happens is that if you put 100 dollars into a bank and there is a 10% reserve requirement, 90 dollars get loaned out. That money is also put into a bank, with 9 dollars reserved and 81 loaned out. This process keeps happening and this case will eventually mean that around 100 dollars of deposit results in around 1000 dollars in the money supply.

Under this system, putting money in the bank allows for a lot of commerce to occur and in a way that is very easily controlled by the federal government. Printing more money and setting the reserve percentage allows you to calculate what the value of money will be.

Many people heard “printing money” just then and thought “bad.” This is the general reaction. When people think of printing money, they think of hyperinflation in 1920’s germany or 2009 Zimbabwe. This is one of the central argument for the gold standard. It puts a hard limit on inflation. How does it do that exactly?

Well, in the gold standard, dollars are worth a set amount of gold when they are issued. You could, theoretically, exchange those dollars for gold at any time. Of course, this system makes the same assumption that the modern fractional reserve system makes: people are going to demand vast quantities of gold at once. In this way, the size of the economy is limited by how much gold is being used to back dollars and the percentage of that gold that is physically held.

This system is effective at limiting inflation. You are guaranteed a certain value that your supply has that is equal to the gold that is backing it. You even see a deflationary effect. Because the size of your economy will grow, while the size of your money supply does not. For certain individuals this is a fantastic development. Simply by holding to your money at essentially no risk, the value of your money will increase.

This sounds great, but of course there is cost. In the “saver’s economy” that deflation creates, the optimum play is not to invest money, but to keep it in piles. I hope have impressed on you the crucial fact that money sitting around is worthless. It doesn’t allow people to access goods. It doesn’t allow people to buy houses. It doesn’t allow people to build businesses. Money on its own does us no good, and backing it by gold does not give it any more value. Gold sitting around doing nothing is just as worthless as any other representation of wealth sitting around doing nothing.

Some amount of inflation is a good thing to motivate people to invest money. To motivate banks to loan out money for projects. Hyperinflation is the fear in a currency that is not backed by a limited resource like gold. However, it has not materialized in our modern U.S. dollar that is not backed by gold.

The costs continue to grow when you consider the fact that the U.S. runs at a trade deficit. It exports more money that it imports. If we relied on the gold standard, we would run into the problem of our gold supply shrinking.

Some proponents of the gold standard claim it is a more stable asset, but in reality it is just as worthless on its own as any other item. There is no particular reason that a house is worth a thousands ounces of gold as it is worth a thousand dollars. It is simply a value that we all have agreed upon. Thus regressing back to the gold standard is silly. We have all agreed that dollars have value, so they serve the purpose of gold without its supply limitations.

Despite the clear evidence that the gold standard would hurt the economy, there still remains those who would pull as back to a system developed in the 17th century. Investment agencies that handle large sums of cash advocate for the advantages of deflation—and why wouldn’t they with their large sums of money that would stand to gain value in such a system. f the efforts of these large money holders were successful, it would be an affront to Democrats and Republicans alike. the problems of deflation hurt the economy as a whole and disproportionately affects the poor that don’t have the ability to capitalize off savings making money. The standard also prevents any semblance of trickle down economics, since the wealthy have no incentive to invest into the economy.

Works Cited

Allie, Eric. "Political Cartoon on "Fool's Gold"" Townhall. N.p., 9 Nov. 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Khan, Salman. "Khan Academy." Khan Academy. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

"Merk Insights - Bernanke's Problem with the Gold Standard." MERK Funds. Merk Investments, 27 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Status Report of U.S. Treasury-Owned Gold. Rep. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service, 30 Sept. 2016. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.

Assignment 16-Kathleen Gibbs

          Have you ever looked at the person on the airplane with the seat belt extender and thought to yourself, “oh gosh, please don’t sit next to me,”? Have you ever seen the obese person ordering at McDonalds and thought “gee, if you want to lose weight, just don’t supersize,”? Or the overweight person who drinks 5 sodas a day, “just don’t drink soda… easy as that.” Or, is it not. After neglecting the obesity epidemic for years, discounting it as an issue of eating too much and not exercising enough, it is time to take a closer look at obesity and stamp it out once and for all.  If it was really as easy as eating less and exercising more, we wouldn’t be in the midst of the largest epidemic the world has ever faced. Obesity.

          “Diet and exercise.” We have all heard these words, the way to lose weight and achieve the “perfect body”. There are thousands of different plans, books, and other aids that all claim to be the way to lose weight. But, Americans have been trying for decades and nothing seems to work. Yet we still sink hard-earned money into these empty promises hoping this next product will change our lives. But what if there is a missing piece to the puzzle? Why haven’t we stepped back and realized that eating less and working out more isn’t the answer and that there must be another culprit?

          In order to find the root of obesity, we need to understand that obesity is NOT an issue of weak wills or lazy bones, it is more complex than that. These people are sick with no end in sight. Obesity doesn’t just make people weigh more, it can give them heart disease, heat attacks, strokes, osteoarthritis, diabetes, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and a plethora of mental disorders. Sadly, diet and exercise won’t undo this monster. Now that we have accumulated more research on the effects of obesity and conditions and sicknesses that correlate with it, we can begin to search for the real villain.  

          Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrineologist, obesity researcher, and advocate for the removal of unnecessary sugar from our diets, points his finger at sugar when evaluating the cause of obesity. His data shows that our diets today, compared with the diets from thirty years ago, contain exponentially sugar. Sounds innocent enough but when looking at how sugar works in our bodies we find that it drives appetite while stimulating fat storage. Thus creating the vicious cycle, we now know as obesity.

          The two most common sugars are regular table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, both are composed of fructose, the worst type of sugar. If you read the labels of the food you eat, chances are, high-fructose corn syrup is one of the main ingredients. We find this nasty element in almost all processed food and sodas. High-fructose Corn syrup is a sweeter and, get this, cheaper additive than natural cane sugar and that’s what leads us farther into this mess.

          Besides the fact that high-fructose corn syrup has been proven to cause cancer, liver failure, dementia, and, of course, obesity, the corn industry has spent billions of dollars on false information campaigns to discount the hard science that displays the negative effects of high-fructose corn syrup. When you google search “high-fructose corn syrup”, the first listing is to a website called “corn.org” a website sanctioned by the Corn Refiners Association. It takes you to “corn.org’s” page discussing high-fructose corn syrup. This tab refutes the negative facts about high-fructose corn syrup claiming it’s “natural” even though when Michael Pollan was trying to write his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, they wouldn’t even allow him to watch the process of refining the toxic sweetener. Below “corn.org”, there is an entire page of links explaining the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup.  

          It is frustrating enough to know that most food in the grocery store is laced with the obesity causing high-fructose corn syrup but, the reason it’s there is even worse. Remember when I said high-fructose corn syrup was cheaper than cane sugar? That’s because of

 government subsidies. The New Farm Bill passed in 2014, appears to be ending some of the subsidies and moving to something called “crop insurance” which sounds privatized but, according to corpinsuranceinamerica.org, in reality, taxpayers will still be paying due to the government’s role in the system. Due to these subsidies, the farmers produce copious amounts of corn, so much that it can’t even be exported. And that is when high-fructose corn syrup was created, out of cheap, over produced corn. And it all started with subsidies.

          One of the main components in the obesity epidemic was created because of cheap corn due to taxpayer paid government subsidies. And because it is so cheap, major food companies started buying this addictive sweetener and injecting it into all their food products. The reason we can’t seem to get rid of this poison is because every time someone attempts to push for a change within the government and outside it, almost all the responses are negative. The refuters claim that removing the obesity-causing sweetener is unconstitutional because it is your right to eat what you want. That is true, the government shouldn’t tell you what to eat, but removing even half of the added sugar in processed foods and sodas would shrink America’s waistline.

          The biggest example is Michelle Obama. When President Obama was elected, she took on being a healthy living advocate. She has drastically changed the way many American’s think about nutrition and healthy lifestyle. She changed the food pyramid, made calorie counts more visible, and started her campaign “Lets Move!” to promote healthy lifestyles. But when it came to transforming the lunchroom, her plan received so much pushback, she was forced to greatly relax its regulations and focus her attention more on being active. A sad testament to the way the government’s connection with the food industry inhibits change in America’s diet.

          When are we going to stand up to the big food company bullies and revolutionize the way America eats? I don’t know the answer, but we can start to change the way we eat and look at food and help our family and friends as well. Integrating more fresh fruits and vegetables into our diets and less foods that come premade in shiny wrappers is a great start! Reading the labels of the foods we eat for added sugar and words like dextrose, sucrose, and fructose and reducing our intake of those foods will pay in dividends. Understanding the obesity epidemic and having compassion for those struggling is paramount. It is time to quit pushing the obesity epidemic under the rug and make right decisions regarding the health of our nation that will save lives.