Honors History Blog #4

1. What did you gain from your experiences as an honors student in the first semester (please consider novels, leadership opportunities, writing, history, projects, etc.)?

Something I gained as an honors student this year was how to prioritize my time better. With all of the assignments we have to do I’ve learned how to get my work done to its best ability and as efficiently as possible.

2. Discuss what you might have done differently if you could do this past semester of honors over again.

If I could redo anything about this last semester I would have spent more time on projects. Certain things I felt I could have improved on more in some of my final essays for projects.

3. Discuss your goals for honors in the second semester.

My goals for next semester is too work harder on making sure that my final project meets my standards and expectations

4. If you could choose any specific parts of literature and.or history for our honors work next semester, what would you pick and why?

I would pick more broad history topics, I know that we must learn about American history but it seems that we really focused a lot on government and laws instead of more famous battles, art, literature, just basically time changing events. This is something I would like to do more of next semester.

Honors History Blog #3

If I were to choose one program from the New Deal to help us in our recession I would choose the Civilian Conservation Corps program. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created this program in 1933. Civilian Conservation Corps was a program that sent 250,000 young men to work camps to perform reforestation and conservation tasks. This program removed the men from cities, provided healthy conditions for boys, and overall provided money for families. When I read about this program it made me think about the hard times we are in now and how we could use this to benefit us. If I were to reuse this program I would change a few things but keep the overall purpose the same. I would focus on teaching young men and women, while giving them jobs, more about the environment and ways that we can make differences. Maybe even give them jobs where that’s all they do, help try and make the world a more eco- friendly place. This program would then give citizens more jobs and also be improving our world. It could really save our economy, many family’s lives, and the Earth. This is why I chose the Civilian Conservation Corps program.

Honors History Blog #2

Dear Mr. President Obama,

There are many pressures that come with your job, you learn how to handle these issues everyday, something I am sure I would never be able to do. The years that you are and will be now running our country in is a very difficult time, a recession. Not just anyone could do this, so I would please like to share my suggestions on how I would handle and help fix this "rut" our country is in.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said "But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." This proves to me that we as a country got to where we are now and only us, The United States of America, can fix our issue. We should not be depending on you alone to fix our problems but we should all as individual countries come up with one idea on how we can all help to stop this recession and restore our country back to the way it was.

I know this is more of an anti federalist approach on a solution, but I feel that if we all put in input we could get more done quicker and more efficiently. This has worked for many other things through out life, just like if you are in a classroom and everyone should come up with an idea you can have more input and help on making the final decision.

This would take more pressure off of you and also make the country feel as if they are apart of the outcome of important issues in our country. If would give you more respect and get more done efficiently.

I know that there are many other issues you are dealing with such as the war, gay marriage, health care, and much more but with the more respect you can get with this solution I feel you will have more help in completing these tasks as well.

Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Maira Vierheller

Blog #20: Fed vs AntiFed Interview Response

Choose an issue from American History that we have discussed in class recently. Write a brief (one to three paragraph) history of the issue and the Federalist vs. Antifederalist issues involved. In this brief history, be sure to cite relevant sources and make specific, clear references to major historical events:

Something that stood out to me while we were discussing certain historical events that changed history, was when Abraham Lincoln assassinated and the switch it caused from a strong federalist run nation to an Antifederalist nation. This caught my attention because it made our government and nation seem weaker, it also proved to me how big of a difference is between these two factions.
When Lincoln was alive the nation ran under more of a federalist view. Lincoln had created a strong central government that had overcome the South’s more Antifederalist views. It seemed as though Lincoln was going to lead a big change in the nation and unify all of the states, until the night he was assassinated.
This change in government made the change from segregation to no segregation took way too long. Segregation finally ended on “April 10, 1968” when the “Civil Rights Bill banned discrimination in housing”. This took (1865- 1968) one hundred and three years too long, and just again proves how different federalism and antifederalism really are.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080406180625AA4S8hb
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln

Then....

Choose at least one person not in this class whose opinion you respect. Interview this person to seek their ideas and opinions about the issues inherent in the element of history you have chosen.


Me: What do you know about the switch from Federalism to Antifederalism after Lincoln was assassinated?

Bruce: That the government made a switch from two different presidents with different views, this switch ended up taking too long for us to fix many issues our nation was in.

Me: Which faction do you think was best for the government back in 1865 (Lincolns Death)?

Bruce: I think a more federalist president (like Lincoln) would have been better. It would have allowed the reconstruction of the south to go smoother, they wouldn’t have rebelled as much, and we would have got a lot more done.

Me: Which faction do you think would be suit our government now?

Bruce: I can see both sides and how they both could be good but I still would say federalism would be better. I have always thought that a strong central government will keep people in line, and it also depends on the president and congress that would be running the country.

Me: What do you think about how long it took for segregation to end? (Around 103 years)

Bruce: It was ridiculous, a shame, and horrific it should have never taken that long. And I still think that today there is lingering resentment to what happened back then.

Me: How do you think the government could have handled it better?

Bruce: I think they (all of the presidents through out the 103 years) should have addressed the issue head on and taken care of it immediately. They have made many mistakes just like this, I feel that America hasn’t been unified until the interstate was created. This allowed people to go and travel around the nation, this is an example of how our government has an issue of not addressing things head on and its been holding us back from progress as a nation.

Honors History Blog #1

Medicaid is the most significant element of health care legislation in American history because of its positive effect on the less fortunate of society. Medicaid is a government run program that was created in 1965; its purpose is to “provide essential medical and medically related services to the most vulnerable populations in society”. This has led me to think that Medicaid is one of the most significant elements of health care legislation, in American history. Medicaid has helped many different individuals that are suffering and not able to pay for their own treatments. And although this program is very important and is helping millions of people the government, because of the recession America is in, is planning on making a “21 percent scheduled cut in Medicare payments.” This is affecting people everywhere and is causing them to worry that there may be the possibility of not getting their treatments or surgeries. Tiffany Tate is one of those people; Tate is a twenty seven year old who was born with cystic fibrosis. In April Tiffany had gotten a letter confirming that she would be getting a double lung transplant, she was ecstatic. ”Four months later she got a different letter. Tate reads from it, ‘You cannot get this service because state law eliminated this type of transplant.’ ” She was now scared because she knew that if she didn’t get this transplant she would die. But as it turns out “as of October, Arizona's version of Medicaid no longer pays for certain organ transplants for low income patients. They cost more than $200,000 and the state says too often they aren't successful. The cuts will save Arizona $1.4 million, one-tenth of one percent of its $825 million budget deficit.” Tiffany Tate is still trying to get her transplant. This is just one example of why Medicaid is one of the most significant elements of health care legislation in American history. If it were not available many people would lose their lives or go bankrupt from trying to pay the costs of their bills to fight for their lives. Medicaid has helped those people for forty five years and is one of the more respected and important government run programs, this is why I chose it as one of the most significant elements of health care legislation, and overall in American history.

Websites Used:
http://www.policyalmanac.org/health/medicaid.shtml

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2010/April/06/Medicaid-Expansion-And-Payment-Increase-Causes-Mixed-Feelings-For-MDs.aspx

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/07/eveningnews/main7127730.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;1

Role in Trial

What are your character's main goals for the Senate Health Care Hearings?
My character is a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical companies so won’t have a role really in the Senate Health Care hearings, but what I will have a big role in will be before the trail even starts. My main goals will be to convince and talk to different senators to try and get my companies goals into the bills.

What do you want to accomplish?
Specifically my goals are anyway to set and name the prices on the pharmaceutical drugs, make the patents longer on brand name drugs, money for research, tax break for shipping, and to have health care available to more people.

How do you plan to accomplish it?
By talking to and negotiating with different senators, I will also try to talking to different people from both sides of the trial.

Who are you working with to get this done?
Well I am mainly working with Jeff who is the CEO of the Pharmaceutical Companies. But there will also be different senators that I am just going to have a quick discussion about my goals with.

More Opposing Viewpoints Response

Well both of these articles have strong points that kept me bouncing back and forth between which viewpoint I believed in. Some strong points that the health care is to expensive side brought up were how even now we are paying and tremendous amount of money for health care now so how would Obama’s health care bill that is adding millions more not raise up those prices. Something else was how the authors mentioned that if this bill passes then think of all the doctors and nurses who went to that schooling for years only to be paid less and have their hospitals overflowing with patients. The hospitals would be way to crowded because people would go to the doctors more frequently if they had health care to cover their payments.
While some points made by the other authors really changed my mind and they did that by making me think morally. One of the main points having to do with the morally correct thing to do, if you don’t think about the money aspect of this business you know that everyone should have the right to their health and have a chance to do everything possible to live. Some thing else that really changed my mind was the statistics shown in this article, they proved that the United States is paying way too much on our health care. I also liked how they compared it to other countries, this showed me that a working and fully functional health care system in other countries can work and be less expensive.
Both of these relate to my subject because I’m going to be writing about one little girl and her challenges facing Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Something that struck me when I was researching this subject is how families are able to pay for the medication, physical therapy, etc. All of these things cost a great amount of money and could easily put a family in debt, that’s where these subjects come into play. Both of these subjects could and would change the way that family could function, get treatments and make their payments.
Well overall I personally believe that we should find a medium, health care should be more easily available and our government should take control of the insurance companies. This will help make the payments lower and allow more people to purchase health care. But this will also allow the doctors to not be too underpaid and it won’t raise the taxes too much as well.