Politics Within Wal-Mart

It has been constantly reported that Wal-Mart has tried its best to abolish any labor union within its company. From ruthlessly dismissing the member workers of the union to shutting down the union-centered stores, Wal-Mart has been on its endless dispute against the labor groups. Although there has been boundless censures toward Wal-Mart’s oppression towards the legal organizations, absence of labor union has allowed Wal-Mart to be saved from any unexpected strikes or demand for higher wages.

Though such worker-management policy of Wal-Mart looks unjustifiable with a cursory look, Wal-Mart’s such persecution of the labor organization is indeed legal. According to current labor law, it is up to the entrepreneur body’s decision to accept the existence of labor union or not.

However, as the union workers take huge proportion of the presidential election in each constituency, things will likely to change. Recognizing the huge potential popularity that can be gained by appealing to the labor union members, presidential candidates of both sides have proposed various bills to protect the rights of the unions. In addition, the current legislative body is already proposing the new bills to grab the attentions of the workers, such as making it easier for workers to unionize companies.

Labor union is the advanced form of democracy in today’s capitalist society in order to grant proper rudimentary rights and guarantee of basic living standard condition to all workers. In other words, the government’s approach to protect the existence of the labor union is inevitable in order to promise the improvement of the Wal-Mart workers’ working conditions. Nonetheless, it is also critical to draw the clear line on the level of power that unions can possess.

Despite the fact that union can provide the substantial power to the workers against the exploitation, chances are, the power of the union can be easily abused. From uncontrollable strikes to unfeasible demand for the working condition improvement, things can definitely go out of hands, considerably damaging the efficiency of the company. As the arbiter of the current situation, the government will need to be able to balance the power struggle between the company and the workers in order to provide both the maximum revenue to the company and the ameliorated living standards of the workers.

Counting on the Hope

One of the most effective ways to save the youngsters from the abyss of evil ocean of crime is to give them a little hand and guidline to show them the correct pathway of life as a society. If we neglect our innocent children’s need of help at the verge of the society, we might end up sending them to juvenile prisons instead of sending them off to service for our society. As a result, it is very critical for our community to establish numerous easily accessible juvenile support facilities and counseling service centers to salvage our hope for our next generation.

Despite the critial need of youth assistance proram, the reality is evidently falling behind. Normally, such helps are hundreds of miles away from the kids’ homes and the government budget to run such programs is cutting short every year.

As I mentioned from a previous blog post, juvenile prison indeed provides better environment to youths than ordinary adult prisons. However, it is still not a quite pleasantly optimistic place to grow in. According to research 80 percent of youngsters who are placed in the youth correction center end up committing further serious crimes after their release.

Although it costs almost the same to run a teenage counselling center and to manage juvenile prison, for some reason our society is prone to ruthlessly punish our troubled children instead of giving them warm words of wisdom.

There is an old saying that teenage is the period of the storm and stress. As teenagers go through dramatic mental and physical changes, they sometimes make unwise decisions in their lives. Instead of bawling out at their mistakes, what they truly need is a cordial hug.

Ridiculous Industry

It has been discovered that child prostitution has long been one of the major social problems of the U.S. Despite the fact that numerous people consider such heinous act as only an issue of undeveloped nations, this horrifying crime is substantially prevalent in this best representative of the first world, which is renowned for well established civil rights and humanitarian constitution.

According to various researches held by both government and nongovernment institutions, American tourist and convention cities have the most extreme level of the teenage sex trade industry, Atlanta for example.

Considering the enormouse size of this complexly well established outrageous business of the country, most people will argue for more efficacious legislation to resolve this ridiculous situation. Nevertheless, most states of the U.S already possess ruthless punishment measures to condemn the sickening act of crime. Georgia for instance, is widely known for its brutal sentences for child prostitutions.

What we need to end the disgraceful social phenomenon of America is not more strictly rectified regulations. Instead our society is demanding more comprehensively considered government policies that put all the aspects of the child prostitution into an account. For example, instead of chasing down the amoral adult customers of the business, the society should now attempt to stop our innocent children from selling their bodies on the street. Rehabilitation centers for current teenagers of the industry have to be built to suggest them the new pathway of life, and more youth clinic institutions will be required to bear the lost children, and teach them more morally acceptable methods to earn their livings.

Government legislation is not all about creating new criteria of punishment in the society. New government laws and policies should be able to comprehend the various aspects of our society, and try to attack the core cause of the social problems, instead of trying to resolve the situation superficially.

Source:       Prostitution and Prevention

Chaos of the Truth

With a firm opposition of the Bush administration, leadership of democrat in the Senate is pushing the new bill to provide journalist substantial level of protection to be able to publicize confidential information of the government. Proponents of this revolutionary legislation claims that the public has the right to know the truth about their elected government, while the opponents assert that such ridiculous policy can disrupt the national security, and interrupt the moderation of the society.

As our society is more deeply transforming into the world of democracy, equality, and freedom, we have demanded more extended level of rights and freedom. Everyday, numerous people advocate for stronger power of the public and at the same time demand limited power of our current seemingly-omnipotent government. However, the question is, by how much should the society be able to control the government.

There is no doubt that the citizens, the true owners of a nation, have every rights to know all the acts of the government. Nevertheless, such information provided to the public needs to have certain level of restriction indeed for various reasons. Especially considering the humble national security, which is always threatened by numerous external and internal forces such as terrorism, it is sometimes critical to keep variety of government information confidential. What kind of terrorist will be arrested while all the suspected terrorists know the entire progress of the terrorism investigation of the government?

Moreover, it has been historically proved that public opinion is very sensitive and vulnerable for distortion. In other words, even if the journalists have the granted ability to share all the truth with all the members of the society, it is surely possible that the crucial background story of the truth might not be revealed along with the publicized information, and belie the entire truth.

Under our democratic society we all surely possess inviolable rights to know what is going on with our government. We give the authority of power to our government with our own votes and regarding this fact, we are truly the owners of our country. However, we also need to keep in our mind that we choose our government with trust, and as a result, our elected government has our mandates to run our country for us. Therefore, in short, we don’t need to know every single details of our government as long as the government obeys the strict constitution of the nation without violating any law. If we undress our government naked and obtain access to all the government policies, our society will eventually fall into endless havoc and confusion. Needless to say, if this chaos actually becomse our reality, no one can guarantee the security of the 300 million Americans.

Source:  The Right to Know

What We were Supposed to Do Long Time Ago

Apartment rent prices these days are escalating ridiculously. Due to the long-lasting economic stagnation of the U.S mostly resulted from the Sub-prime effect, numerous people cannot afford to purchase shelters on their own as a result growing number of home-seekers are leaning towards rent apartments until they can create enough financial capacity.

However, even the renting apartment is not an easy strategy for numerous people considering the skyrocketing rent fees and constantly growing demands. Moreover, as the apartment owners are inclined to raise the rate through various excuses such as building renovation. In short, apartment rents these days are hard to get and even more difficult to maintain.

In order to relieve this rent crisis, government has come up with considerable number of solutions. For instance, rent-stabilized apartment is considered as one of the most effective government policy to make people’s dream of procuring homes more affordable. This apartments with the government controlled rent rate can be rented with the half the price of the market value.

Nevertheless, the greatly effective approach of the government is thwarted by the inconsiderate regulation. For example, Mr.Rangel, a democrat politicians who is chairing the House Ways and Means of committee, is currently enjoying his four stabilized-rent apartments, and it is found that he is planning on using some of these government granted benefit as his new office. In other words, it is evident that the rent stabilization policy of the government is not benefiting the desperate home-seekers but the wrong people.

In order to maximize the effect of the philanthropic government measure, it will be critical to straighten the priority list of people that will be benefited by such policy clearly and strictly limit the number of apartments that can be granted to each household in order to prevent any abuse of this beneficial policy.

Rent-stabilized apartment is indeed an efficacious break through to soothe the rent-shortage crisis. However, without proper regulations to back the ingenious policy up, such creative approach of the government may end up being labeled as a failure.

Don’t look at my laptop

The Department of Homeland Security of America has the authority to search people’s laptops consistently at the airport when Americans try to re-enter the country from aboard. The contents of the laptops are subject to be reviewed and even collected by the government officials, and the laptops can even be seized by the government officials. In addition to the laptops, cell phones, blackberrys, iphones, and any type of portable electronic devices can be the targets of this borderless search.

Although it is an evident invastion of passengers’ privacy, the government security experts say it is a necessary process to ensure the absolute national security from any threats. However, searching through one’s laptop is a different story from examining one’s luggage. It is not a hyperbole to say that a laptop can tell everything about its owner. From one’s political view to economic status, a laptop contains countless personal information which is priceless.

The government’s full ability to have the unrestricted access to people’s invaluable personal data is the anachronicstic concept of the totalitarian government. It is ironic to see the U.S, which has endlessly fought against the immorality of the totalitarian governments through out the history, to possess such culpable totalitarian policy.

Both the Congress and the Senate now need to push the bill to ban such apparent violation of people’s privacy. Though it might seem justifiable to search the electronics of suspects with reasonable suspicion, random view of people’s personal information cannot be justified with any excuse.

Conflagration starts from a small ash of fire. Though it might be only a search or seizure of people laptops, if we keep the government’s current invasive attitude towards people’s privacy, next time, it can be our house that will be searched by the Big Brother’s secret police.

When Our Government is Oblivious

For the past three months, almost 1000 people have been ill while the cause is still in the mystery. First the government officials predicted that such pendemic was caused by raw tomatoes, tainted with a unique form of salmonella. As a result, aversion towards tomatoes has risen consistantly and subsequently, numerous tomatoe farmers and tomatoe related companies have suffered greatly. For example, the McDonals refused to add any tomatoes in their hamburgers, leaving devastating impacts to major tomatoe dealers, relying on the one of the largest fast food companies.

However, recently, the American health officials reversed their opinions of the cause of the one thousand people’s illness and started to show uncertainty about the fact that contaminated tomatoes have caused this national crisis. Now the government experts have raised concerns about jalapeno peppers, cilantro, and some types of salsa. It seems that new “suspects” will also be added on the list near future if the growing number of patients does not seem to be decreasing.

This is almost a national crisis of America. Although the number of patients are continuously increasing, the government is not even sure of the cause of such sickness. Although the number is only one thousand right now, we cannot guarantee that the number is going to stop from now on if we cannot find an apparent evidence to prove the source of the disease.

In the case of contaminated food crisis, the food tracking system is the most convienient and effective solution to point out the actual origin of the entire problem. However, current food tracking system of America is not well established enough for F.D.A to track the sources of vegetables or meat in the market. In other words, chances are, our supermarkets are probably still displaying the salmonella infected vegetables as no one can exactly tell which food source is contaminated.

From salmonella to mad cow disease, our food sources are threatened with numerous invasive diseases. Reliability of our food source is directly related to the health of the entire national population and this salmonella crisis of America is an evident proof of the stumble position of F.D.A to guarantee the safety of the people. The U.S government needs to take the situation very seriously and start working on with its establishment of dependable food source tracking system and it has to be the top priority of government project. What’s the use of any government policy if everyone in the country is ill?

A Luxurious Tea Party?

One of the most influential global conferences, G8 conference has just begun in Tokyo. The group of eight, also known as the eight stars or superpowers are the heads of our world, which exert boundless influence on our international society. The constitutional purpose of this conference is to benefit our mankind by showing global leadership with the member nations’ great efficacious world aid, with their gargantuan financial, political and military power.

Though a cursory glance of this philanthropic organization seems solely aimed for the improvement of our world. However, numerous protesters around the world censure this seemingly-altruistic group as a luxurious tea party, where wealthy aristocrats gathered around to discuss the most profitable way to juggle our world around regardless of the impacts of the policies on other powerless individuals in the global community.

The leaders of G8 have made endless effort to recover from their dishonored reputation of being selfish or egocentric. From expanding foreign aids to pressuring warring zones with military pressure the Great Eights have publicly shown various humanitarian measures to improve our international well-being.

Nevertheless, if we take a closer look at the behaviors of the member countries of G8, everyone will start to question the true nature of the conference. Despite the growing pricelevel of the goods around the world, causing serious worldwide economic stagnation, the G8’s subsity towards the devloping nations has not risen much. Considering the fact that the global aid to poor countriy rose by $50 billion in 2005, this year, it only incresed by $11 while the pricelevel of resources around the world are sky rocketing.

Moreover, the oligopoly of these devloped nations in global market are destroying the small business of undeveloped countries through their countless trade restrictions, madates tariffs, and subsidies. For instance, the first world countries support the production of biofuels from crops in the United States and the European Union by creating the numerous legislations that are advantageous for their own industries, making the powerless third-world foreign products incompetent. Compared to the excessive subsidies provided to the domestic bio-fuel crops production, low conventional agricultural technology of developing countries with merely no government backup has no way to race with the products of the superpowers.

As a result, it looks like the members of G8 are rather using their opportunity of conference to collude with one another in order to guarantee their inviolatable power through various agreements during the conference, instead of showing the leadership for the benefit of humanity throughout the world.

If G8 fails to carry on with its constitutional objective, the improvement of our mankind, while only concentrates on fullfilling their own national interests, G8 will only be labeled as a luxurious tea party.

The Right Way

Whenever I read about the ridiculous or irrational government policies, I have always wondered the reason why our government cannot be run in logical ways. Although it seems like everyone in the country knows whats best for the nation, it feels like government officials and politicians are the only ones who are oblivious of the ideal solutions for the society. Why can’t the government work as it should be just like everyone is wishing for.

The rejection of new medical care bill by the Senate is another epitome of the incomprehensible act of the legislative body.

The new medical care bill proposed to the Senate recently was intended to benefit both doctors and patients. The pass of this beneficial bill would support the doctors by exempting a 10 percent cut in their reimbursement rates, and would present them with a small increase in wage next year. Moreover, the bill would also provide more financial support to improve preventive services, upgrade low-income assistance programs and make numerous other minor but significant changes in the current medical care system of America.

However, despite the countless advantages of this ingenious proposal, the Senate thwarted the bill prior to their dismissal of the fourth of July. In response to the Senate’s decision, political experts claim that the Senate is trying to protect the inefficient medical care insurance company by maintaining current ineffective medical insurance system. As the new medical care bill will reduce the level of subsidy towards the medical insurance companies and expand the range of individuals that can be benefited from more extensive medical insurance, the inefficient insurance companies of America are the only groups against this salutary new bill.

The Senate’s veto of the modification plan for medical care system is an evident indication that the members of the Senate’s predilection is on the lobbyists of the avaricious already-wealthy insurance companies rather than the powerless patients or doctors. Moreover, it is an apparent proof that once again the U.S government is not running in the “right way” but rather in inefficient and illogically.

As a result of globalization, our world is becoming more competitive everyday. Now the developing countries are gradually joining the race of the first world nations the longevity of the U.S’s superpower is now in doubts as its rivals, China for instance, is catching up in incredible speed. In other words, there is no room for the U.S government to waste precious time and finance on incompetent government operations. In addition, the members of the Senate have to realize whom they are working for: the lobbyists? or the voters?

Saving the hope of Innocence

A renowned philosophe, Jean Jacques Rousseau said “All man are born good and innocent by nature.” In other words, no person is born evil innately. It is the unhealthy environment that drives the people into the darkness of immorality.

As a result, it is critical to have positive surroundings around our daily lives as we are very susceptible to their impressions. Especially, what we see or hear are very crucial to our lives during our adolescence, when we are most vulnerable to external influences.

Such notable susceptivity during teenage towards environmental surroundings is the main reason why we protect under-aged criminals from adult prisoners through separate juvenile prison system.

If the teenage prisoners are imprisoned with serious adult criminals, what started from foolish mistakes or curiosity during their adolescence can lead them to more serious crime charges as our innocent children get to hear the amoral life stories of murderers or professional burglaries. As teenagers can hear the stories of such heinous acts everyday, they will eventually end up admiring the unforgivable conducts.

Adolescence is the period of instability and confusion. Therefore, some teenagers make ridiculous mistakes during this time including unjust crimes. However, there is always a grasp of hope in their innocent eyes. If we manage to revive that candlelight of innocence in their pure eyes juvenile criminals will eventually be successful in their return to morality and justice.

Nevertheless, treating the teenage criminals just like any other adult criminals will only demolish all the hope to allow our children to give a second shot in their lives as they will be exposed to nothing but another idea for their next misdemeanor.

The recent research shows that still a considerate number of teenage criminals in the U.S are treated in the adult prisons along with numerous malicious criminals because of the government’s budget deficit to afford expansion of juvenile prison service. However, the U.S government is spending millions and billions of dollars for its fight against the endless social crimes. Instead of boundlessly wasting all their money to stop already uncontrollable conflagration of crimes, it will be more helpful for the government as well as the society to prevent the fire in the first place in the beginning stage by preventing our innocent children from falling into the evil pathways of their lives by funding the juvenile prison system. Such invaluable system can support our children’s second attempt for their meaningful lives.