Press Conference 2

We are seeing a lot of coverage on the way people have been voting for the democrats and republicans. There is nothing on third party candidates on cnn.com. There are current poll leaders for each state, issue policies, and pod casts. There are also campaign trails for the two main parties.

As a committee member for a third party candidate, I am not happy. We can’t get into the debate, and we can’t even get on the major broadcast websites! Third party candidates are being ignored; Ralph Nader has great ideas, and should be included in the race for president. It isn’t fair that Ralph is being disregarded just because he isn’t part of a major party.

We love the way our election process is set up. There is no bias, and the third party candidates get a chance. It’s also hand counted twice, so there won’t be any hacking in to electronic ballots. This may not work on a larger scale though. It would take forever to hand count a country’s worth of ballots. But we still believe that this is the best system.

Foreign Issues Mock Debate Response

This was probably our most difficult debate yet. Finding information was hard especially, so I wasn't able to present my candidate with as many statistics as I did last time. Knowing the challenge of these topics, I think we were all as informed as any sophomores could be, and in all the candidates I saw better debate qualities. I think that my candidate's weakest response was to the question "Why aren't we considering what the troops want as far as the Iraq war goes?". The response was correct, but didn't have evidence to back it up, which I did have, but had forgotten to remind her of the statistics being that 72% of troops want to be home within the next six months.

Much like in my last blog on the domestic issues debate I have put some untrue quotes from candidates that I was able to catch:


"We're struggling to lower oil prices"
- John McCain

Since the heat of the election started to take place the gas prices have lowered. As of today the price of unleaded gasoline in the USA is $2.39.


"We would be able to take them out within a little over a year"
- Barack Obama

This is Barack speaking of the war in Iraq, and his actual withdrawal date is between six months and a year.


"There have been 3,000 civilian deaths"
-Cynthia McKinney

The actual approximate civilian death rate is in the low ninety thousands


"Abolish free trade agreement like Ralph Nader, but keep free trade like John McCain"
-Bob Barr

This doesn't quite add up. You either reform NAFTA, get rid of it, or keep it.


"We need to protect the border so it's closed but opened, we want it secure but not too secure"
-Bob Barr

How can it be closed and opened at the same time? Bob Barr's intentions are very unclear to me and my peers.

Mock Debate Blog 1

First off I would like to say that our candidate (Ralph Nader) did really great in the debate, and our whole team worked well to prep her. The only mistake that I found in her performance was false information which I mistakenly fed her. She said that Barack Obama's tax plan wasn't very good, and that we needed a flat tax rate, when in fact we believe in progressive taxation. This paragraph that I gave her was one of my rough draft for candidate talking points, and when Lori handed it back with that correction, I forgot to make it for her. Other than that, I found nothing else wrong with the way it went for the Independent Party.




"I think we should lower income taxes for people who make under $250,000"
-Obama

That is not his plan. He does not want to cut it for people making under $250,000 but for people making under $75,000 a year. For the people making in between $75,000 and $250,000 their taxes stay at the current rate.


"Unlike my opponent John McCain, I approve gay marriage."
-Obama

Obama does NOT approve gay marriage, but only civil unions.



"The law on gay marriage should be kept the way it is"
-John McCain

The current law (for California) is that gay marriage is legal. John McCain does not want gay marriage to be legal.


"Marijuana can contain over 400 different chemicals including chemicals found in Tabasco"
-John McCain

I think that the fact that I put this quote in my blog speaks for itself.


"I have the past experience needed for this job"
-Cynthia McKinney

Cynthia has been a state house district legislature, if that's what you call experience.


"800 billion dollars is being spent on Iraq"
-Bob Barr

Actually, American's have spent two trillion dollars on the war.




All of the candidates did a pretty decent job, in my opinion, but some of them need to check their facts.

Press Conference 1

To solve chronic absenteeism we need to find the root of the problem. 44.3 million Americans are uninsured and tens of millions of the people that do have health care are very poorly insured. We need to rethink our health care program. By reforming the health care problem, we can help families that are becoming ill so that children are at school more often. When a child gets ill, with something like mononucleosis or the flu, they assume it’s something like a head cold, which needs care from a doctor. They go to school with this assumption, and spread the virus, to people with and without health insurance, which begins a snowball effect, causing more and more children to be absent.

Ralph Nader plans to begin a single-payer health care insurance plan. He is going to enforce a 3.5% payroll tax on all of the working. This means that 3.5 of everybody’s yearly income will go towards the country’s health insurance. While the rich are spending their 3.5% on health care for the poor, they’re insuring their own family, but the poor are still making an effort, and it’s all fair. After all of this reform, there will be many more school attendances. In Canada, they have the same plan, now their government is able to pay for 70% of the populations’ health care.

We have a set plan for our future that we are eager to set in motion. This will set up a good foundation for our future leaders, because they have good health care, which leads to a good education. Under John McCain’s health insurance plan, most families still won’t be able to afford health insurance. He wants to give a $2,500 tax credit to individuals and a $5,000 tax credit to families. On average, a family spends $8,400 on health insurance, so an average family would still be forced to pay $3,400, which many even then can’t afford. When the families can’t afford health insurance because of John McCain’s poor health care plan, students won’t be attending school, and it goes right back to that snowball effect.

Campaign Fund Raising Simulation Response

We started off class by watching this fun political campaign video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adc3MSS5Ydc





We then did an activity on Campaign Fund Raising, and here is my reflection on how that went:

Today, we were numbered off into groups of two or three people, and each given a sheet of paper with positions on policies that we want in a candidate as well as either a number of votes or amount of money that we can bribe candidates with. There were two candidates, and all of the others were corporations or alliances like Women's Rights, Labor Union's, and Automobile Industries. The job of my partner and I was to bribe the candidates with two million votes and ten million dollars, to raise minimum wage, make it a law that businesses provide health care, and loosen environmental laws so that workers aren't laid off. After the candidates were able to talk to all of the groups, they wrote down their policies according to how much money and votes they got. There was a requirement of raising fifty million to even run.

I learned how difficult campaigning can be. You're making promises to the first few offers that come knocking on your door, while an even bigger one is coming in, with more money, and more votes that opposes the promise that you just made. So many people want you to swing their way, and it could get stressful for the candidate.

There is no way that this system doesn't impact our government. This is one of the most important part in how or government works. If it weren't for campaigning, we wouldn't have chosen a president. When the candidate campaigns, they advertise themselves, if it weren't for their advertisement, nobody would know about them, and nobody would vote for them. Some of the cons of this process is that the smaller groups, with less to offer go unnoticed, and the candidate that may have promised them their word, may go back on it to get more money or votes. One of the pros is that bribery is used for good, and I like our government, so if it weren't for this system we would be electing some person that we don't even know due to lack of advertisement.

Like I said earlier, the smaller groups lose, while the larger groups win.

Second Presidential Debate Review

This debate, I think was a tie. Both of them had faults in their facts, and in their timing. I also thing that both of them were great speakers, and that even though they danced around the questions a little, they both were able to answer questions to a certain extent. Because I'm only a high school student, some of the things they were talking about confused me. First of all, I had no idea that an officer in treasury would not be continuing, so that was one thing I learned aside from positions of the candidates. I knew that Barrack Obama had a plan for health care, but I had no idea the complexity. Nothing really surprised me about the debate. I was secretly hoping for a back and forth argument between the two, and i sort of got that. I did know most of the positions, and the things that I didn't know, weren't surprising. I think that both of them did very well, and although I have a preference in canditate, I can say that both are intelligent, and great public speakers.