Argument / Information Paper Proposal- So You Live on the Streets

So You Live on the Streets.

    Imagine living on the streets. You don’t have a warm bed, or possibly not even a shelter at all. You have to hunt for food and savor what little bit you do find because some days there may not be any food at all. If you get sick, you have to diagnose and treat yourself because healthcare is only a distant dream. Now think about your buddy who got arrested last week for murdering a man for his coat. He is in a prison facility that never gets too cold, or too hot for comfort. He has his own little area with his own bed and is open to free medical exams whenever he feels ill. His meals are prepared for him and his “room” is cleaned for him anytime it gets dirty. Thinking about it, despite the restrictions of prison, many inmates feel that they are doing much better in prison than they would be doing on the streets. Are prison facilities getting too soft? Taxpayers are paying to keep inmates in comfortable conditions. People should be wondering if the prison system is giving criminals more of a reason to want to be lock up rather than to do what’s right in society’s eyes.

    Donal Kelleher, an inmate in Europe boasts about the luxuries he has in prison. He spoke to The Telegraph about how he thoroughly enjoys prison life. Kelleher tells of how he is paid to study math programs and he is able to put that money towards cigarettes, chocolate, and other “luxury goods”. He also tells of how he enjoys the food and all the accommodations grated to him as an inmate of HMP Cardiff. Guards from this facility even talk about what all the inmates do with their time is play computer games, and watch TV. This inmate wasn’t convicted for theft crimes or for other small crimes, but for stabbing his wife multiple times in her chest and back. Kelleher clearly states that he is doing “better off inside”. Despite being convicted for such serious crimes, some inmates are look at prison as though it is a better life for them.

    Why shouldn’t inmates view prison as a blessing? They are not being hanged for their crimes, or shot by a lethal injection. Instead they are being given a rather clean environment, new clothes and hygiene products and healthy meals on a daily basis. A standard guideline for Tennessee correctional facilities states what seem to be luxuries to me. Prison facilities shall not have a temperature lower than 65 degrees and no higher than 80 degrees Fahrenheit and each cell has forced air ventilation systems. On hot summer days when working class America is fighting the heat to try not to have high utility bills, inmates are comfortable and content without paying a dime. Vending machines are even offered providing snacks that inmates can access by identification cards that are given out at some prisons according to Behind Bars. Prisoners are also offered one hour of physical exercise a day at least three times a week. That’s more than most of the law abiding citizens get within their own weeks. When an inmate’s cell gets dirty, it is sanitized immediately. How many citizens’ homes are kept constantly clean, cost and work free? Inmates also receive free medical exams and physicians can even require the prison facilities to allow special diets to specified prisoners. School is another aspect offered to inmates. They can obtain a high-school diploma as well as take college level classes. According to Prison Life in America, prisons are even viewed as communities or a small town. This doesn’t sound as harsh and intimidating as prisons should be.

    Being behind bars has its downfalls, and it is certainly not a cake walk, but compared to the lives some of the inmates had on the outside, it sure seems luxurious. Instead of fighting the harsh winters and praying for a dry place to sleep, people from the street could be thinking about how many privileges they would be given for committing a terrible crime. Taxpayers need to revise what exactly prison is and what they should be paying for.

Response #4- Workers and the Paradigm behind Them

Workers and the Paradigm behind Them

     American standards for pushing higher education has always been to encourage the concept that only the uneducated should fall victim to the labor class. People with high degrees in education belong on higher pedestals than those who choose not to further their knowledge through greater schooling. However, in the end, doesn’t everyone end up working for what they want? Whether they’re a doctor and they work in a hospital, or a server and they work in a restaurant, work is inevitable. Both Ken Robison who challenged education paradigms and the Kentucky Labor Institute advocate ideas that the labor class isn’t any more futile than the higher educated class is.

     People from the labor class have knowledge in different areas than people from the scholarly class. Isn’t that society’s reflection in the first place? Everyone is different. It is understandable that everyone’s form of knowledge would be too. There is a difference in “book smarts” and “street smarts”, but both are crucial and distinct. Ken Robison depicts how people with lower levels of education are made to feel guilty or just plain dumb for not having completed greater levels of schooling. The Kentucky Labor Institute teaches the history of the labor class and the positive aspects that have come about because of the accomplishments of the labor class.

     Every person has their own specialty in life. Some have the ability to finish school and attend college while some have the ability to work on farms and do hard labor to achieve their own goals. There is not any shame in the quality of work you do to achieve your goals. For some, physic laws, biochemistry research, and engineering rankings are meaningless compared to predicting cattle stock rates, fishing forecasts, and the productivity of crop rotation. However, an attorney with multiple college degrees would not even begin to understand the world and techniques of a cattle herder and vice versa.

     A person with limited levels of higher education are not any less intelligent than those who have dedicated most of their lives to going to school to get their name on stamped pieces of paper with their names on it known as diplomas. Ken Robison realized this and challenged the paradigm that the uneducated are inadequate and the Kentucky Labor Institute promotes learning more about how important and crucial the labor class is to America. Everyone must work to get where they want, and how they choose to get there, highly educated or not, is their decision. It’s not wrong; it is just society’s reflection. Everyone is different.

Response #3 In a Dark Financial World

In a Dark Financial World

     Homeless people walk along the streets and no longer fear losing their belongings, but fear that they have lost their independence. Our rigid economy pushed these people out of their jobs, out of their homes, and into lives foreign to them. Dale Maharidge, author of Someplace Like America, traveled across our country studying and walking in the shoes of the modern day labor class to question the effects of the economic downfall of their everyday lives. America is in a second depression but the working people will not let a broken economy take away their pride and strength.

     Dale Meharidge and photographer Michael S. Williamson witnessed an upper-class woman fall to accepting charity and working multiple jobs just to scrape by and care for her family. They also interviewed a legal Latino man that constantly fears being beaten, yet again, by police because they assume he’s undocumented. Both Meharidge and Williamson could see strength though the cobwebs of sleep-deprivation and dismay in the eyes of the working citizens they interviewed. Despite how harsh the economy is, people who have lost everything, find something to fight for. Hope. Those who are suffering from the economic downfall look forward to a brighter time of a better financial future.

     American companies are downsizing causing people to lose jobs. Many people in our country are losing jobs that they’ve depended on for many years which in turn are causing them to lose other important aspects of their lives. Families are forced to live together and pool their last bit of income to survive. Food prices are going up, taxes are rising, and jobs are diminishing. This is much like the depression of the 1930’s. Dale Meharidge emphasized “We are survivors. We emerged from the hard times in the 1930s. We will do it again…”
     America is in a depression. Experts won’t call it that, but the modern people know it. American people are optimistic for a better future despite all the losses the times are throwing at them. This economy is denying the majority of the people the structure and the foundation of a financially stable country. Dale Meharidge and Michael S. Williamson capture this in the story of the human lives in today’s economy. People of the labor class today feel this is a depression. Depression is merely a word, but it is a word that needs to be said. It is a word that is greatly felt.

Response #2 Behind Autopsy Doors

Behind Autopsy Doors

     When it comes to the sudden death of a baby, people turn to doctors and pathologists to determine what killed them. What if the doctors are wrong? People commonly feel that they can trust the final opinions of doctors and pathologists. Society encourages the thought that people with multiple college degrees and high levels of experience in their field could not possibly be wrong or make mistakes in their area of expertise. However, a video presented by FRONTLINE poses the question of whether or not the verdict that these doctors and pathologists come up with is the correct conclusion.

     A.C Thompson, a correspondent for ProPublica and FRONTLINE researched the case of Ernie Lopez who was convicted for sexually abusing and murdering Isis, a six month old child. Lacerations on the vaginal wall were found on Isis during the autopsy and multiple bruises on her legs and skull were also discovered. Ernie Lopez was alone and babysitting for her at the time of her death. This clearly points to homicide and rape right? Wrong. FRONTLINE spoke with a well-respected chief medical examiner, Ross Zumwalt, who clearly pointed out that the medical examiner that performed the autopsy on Isis didn’t even check her past medical records. In the line of performing autopsies, it is not required to view any medical records neither before nor after the autopsy is completed. Ross Zumwalt confirmed this in the interview with FRONTLINE. It is not even required in order to be a forensic pathologist on child death cases to be board-certified within the US. It was found that Isis’s hymen was still intact and that she had a rare blood disease that made her blood very thin causing it not to clot normally. This would explain the bruises as well as any bleeding of the vaginal wall. Despite the medical proof that would acquit Ernie Lopez, the doctor working on the case was convinced that he in fact did rape and murder Isis all because of the way Isis’s body looked from the outside.

     Multiple cases similar to Ernie Lopez’s were found spread out around the United States. Surprisingly enough, there was sufficient evidence to get the accused acquitted, but many medical examiners, coroners, doctors, and pathologists are not looking at the whole picture. When a child dies from what looks on the outside as homicide, many medical examiners let their anger and grief take over and automatically determine that the accused is guilty. FRONTLINE even researched a case in which a parent of a child was sent to prison because the medical examiner was convinced that the parent shook the baby to death causing bruising on the skull. However, other pathologists have stated that it is not possible to get bruising on the skull from simply shaking a baby. The parent was finally let free when past medical records of the child shown that the bruises were from past injections that doctors gave the child to save its life when it was born.
     The medical system is not questioned nearly enough as it should be. Doctors, pathologists, and medical examiners make mistakes and it should be only right if their final opinion was reevaluated a few times before they send innocent people to prison because they don’t take the time to examine all the possible conclusions.

Response #1 It's In the Art

It’s In the Art

     People frequently wonder how anyone in the right mindset could have the nerve to access peoples’ personal information online. The answer is simply in the power. Hacking into someone’s bank accounts, websites, and emails are not the limit to my power. My whole attitude is established by my success in the hacking world. I am a hactivist and quite proud. The ability to bypass security and passwords of total strangers takes skill, and should be considered an art.

     To begin, nothing online should remain private. Gathering peoples’ information is simply a problem that needs to be solved, and solved only once. Why should I attack a corporate network when it is as simple as coaxing employees of that agency to give away detailed and important information through a simple false email. The filesharing of confidential information between one colleague to another isn’t as safe as it should be anymore, which makes my job much easier. Every bit of information is passed through email, government websites, and some other form of World Wide Web application. If the general public decides to put their personal information online, then why should it be kept private? It’s much easier to pay with a credit card online than to go to the actual location of the object being purchased and use it there. However, then I can get access to your Social Security number and bank account information. If someone decides to grant the internet access to their confidential information, then it’s free to anyone that can maneuver the internet.

     It takes talent to appropriately learn to be a hactivist. Websites such as pavietnam.net teach you how to become a hacker, but it takes a little more practice than to read the steps word for word from a page. Hacking is a language in its own. It’s an attitude, and a way of life. A community even exists of hackers. Hactivists pull together and share tips and ideas that could advance their success in the hacking world. I spent hundreds of dollars on programs to help me hack into websites and programs, but now that I have the art of hacking down, I can simply enter into any web linked page and download any program for free to me simply by rerouting the programing. Then I can start creating HTML pages that will attract the unaware victim. Beginner hactivists create flashy pages with unnecessary context that become clear warning signs to those who enter the page. This is something that must be avoided and websites that tell you how to hack don’t necessarily tell you these details. The internet is tricky to work with, but it can be done if you have the practice and the skill to do so.

     Therefore, despite all the remarks regarding how destructive hactivists are, when someone puts something on the internet, private or not, it can and will be accessible. Anyone should have access to all the information, personal data, and confidential information if it’s exposed to the World Wide Web. Hactivists unite to indoctrinate and combine these beliefs and tactics in order to accomplish the concept that the internet is a free world. Hacking is an art and it takes practice and dedication in order to be successful at it. The only way to know if you are a true hactivist is to determine if you eat, sleep, and dream hacking. If you know how to maneuver the internet and break through the barriers and obstacles that stand in your way, anything that anyone places on the web can be visible to you.
  

Political Compass chart

Left Libertarian

1st day of class- questions

Where are you from?
   18 years ago on December 18th, I was born to my mom in the majestic state of Colorado.

What is your experience with writing?
   I don't really enjoy writing much, but when I do, I'm good at it. I've won poetry contest and essay contests in my past.

What do you believe in/care about?
   Believe is such a strong word. Most of the things I've cared about and believed in has gone away. However, I do believe in and care about my family!

What kind of popular culture do you consume?
   When i want to relax, I enjoy listening to soft rock bands similar to Dishwalla. I also enjoy a variety of movie in my free time.

Why are you in college?
   I'm a planner, I always have been. I set goals long ago to attend college and push myself to be what I want to be.