mr. middle class on jobs.

Hello everyone,

I am mr. middle class.  I make 50,000 dollars a year and have a wife and 2 kids.  I studied economics in college at a state university.  I have been following the news and I have been hearing a lot about "job creators".  Supposedly the people making millions of dollars a year are "job creators".  We have a free market, right?  So these guys really aren't job creators.  It's people like me, mr. middle class.

Some of the Facts on Issue 2

Its Election time again and everything I see is about Issue 2 in Ohio.  If you are not aware about it (and if you're from Ohio, you should at least know it exists by now), its a bill that addresses the rights and wages of public employees such as schoolteachers, firemen, and police officers.  There has been a lot of misinformation on both sides of the issue which makes it harder to find the facts.  Fortunately, you can find a copy of the bill (Senate Bill 5) that is up for debate.  Its nowhere near as bad as its being made out to be but there are some stipulations that make me wary, especially after witnessing years of incompetent and corrupt Ohio government.

Troy Davis: An Examination on Capital Punishment

Troy Davis was executed on the 21st.  There was a lot of talk around his case and a lot of people defending him.  To counter that, there were those who said he got what he deserved.  I don't think he got what he deserved because I don't believe anyone truly "deserves" the death penalty.  If I was on a jury for the case of Stalin or Hitler, I would have serious trouble morally saying that these people should be executed by the state.  That's just me and a majority of people in the U.S. favor death penalty over life in prison for very serious crimes, though it is only a slight majority.  To me, the issue of capital punishment is too messy.  Not everyone who has ever been executed is guilty and many execution we have carried out have been botched and the botching makes these executions seem very inhumane.  There are three main areas to address when it comes to the death penalty, a pragmatic approach, a moral/ethical approach, and the approach of how humane/inhumane it is.

New Rant: People are Too Sentitive and we are Desensitizing society.

Ok, so I have had the desensitization of society on my mind for a while, but it pairs nicely of how sensitive people are.  Even if a person wasn't directly involved with something if it is referenced in a joke, they are still very liable to blow their lid and take it as a personal affront.  I think it goes to the sentiment that we are coddling everyone in society and people are extremely thin skinned.  I have been taking those joke/insults for years (half insult but half joke) because that's my friends' style of humor.  Its helped so that I am thick skinned but a lot of us are coddled and can't take a joke.  I think this is why people don't like Gilbert Gottfried anymore.  He always makes politically incorrect jokes and it ruins his career even though objectively as a person who enjoys comedy, they are often hilarious.

The media Dictating the story and its coverage

This is a phenomenon I witness a lot when observing the media and how some members in the media will try to dictate what is said in a story.  Instead of showing the people what the story is, they will sometimes pick and choose facts to present a story more in line with their own or their company's (or network's) own agenda.  While the two examples of trying to control and dictate a story are from the right, it happens just as much on the left with organizations such as msnbc and Huffington Post, I just don't have good recent examples on hand,

Infatuations with Train Wrecks

Americans are infatuated with train wrecks of any kind.  Whether it be an actual wreck (not having to be of a train) or a metaphorical wreck, controversy, insanity, and failure capture the American viewer.  For many of the things I have found in the news on here, this is a crucial topic.  Whether its the insanity surrounding the Casey Anthony trial or the controversy around Anthony Wiener, the "news of the weird" is what gets us to turn on.  Sometimes when controversy isn't there, the media creates it and actively finds train wrecks to shove into the viewer's face.

Happy Meals and Sad Politicians: Its a Good Week in the News

There is finally some good news in the news. Happy Meals will be getting healthier and the Congress solved the budget problem (well, kinda...).  Happy Meals now have reduced the serving of fries and a serving of apples.  There are also more choices on healthy drinks.  This is a good thing, brought on by community and political pressure.  the Happy Meals have been banned in San Francisco and a few other cities had proposed laws.

In many situations, the customers should be free to choose thing, but the problem is here children don't understand their choices or the consequences of those choices.  Children don't understand fries are bad for their health, they only understand they are tasty.  Yes, the parents can choose to tell them they are bad or not let them get Happy Meals, but then you are putting the pressure on the parent.  They either disappoint their child (which no parent wants to do) or let them eat bad food.  The pressure should be on the provider of the food, not on the parents to put them in a lose-lose parenting situation.