Blog Stage 3

The article that I read was "army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks" The author Drew Griffin has been an experienced reporter for more than 20 years and in 2007 was the recipient of the prestigious Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting. The Drew’s main point is that congress is bullying the taxpayers into wasting our money while congresses pockets increase. The Author is speaking to conservatives saying that we need less government involvement. It urges congress to stop buying and repairing tanks that we don't need and get out of our tax dollars. He especially addresses the general population of taxpayers, by starting off the story saying that the “Army's chief of staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told Congress earlier this year to hold off with these repairs, so congress can save taxpayers as much as $3 billion. “Odierno explained to the committee that it would be cheaper to shut down the tank plant and then restart it in 2017.” But his plea was ignored and Congress set aside $181 million dollars to refurbish and make new tanks even though our Army's chief of staff Gen says that our tanks are fine.” The reason these tanks have been in production non-stop since World War 2 is that the tanks provide 16,000 jobs and involve 882 suppliers. But the Army says that they have enough tanks to keep our country safe. The real argument is that congress says if we stop the tank production it will hurt the country’s economy. If the economy is the problem why can’t we relocate the tank employees to another reform that would help our country instead of making tanks that we don’t need. It’s because General Dynamics is the main manufacturing of the tanks and has a lot to lose if we stop the production of tanks and they are making sure their investments are protected. General Dynamics contributed $120,000 to congress in campaign contributions since 2001 to vote for tank production. It’s pretty apparent that until congress starts thinking about someone besides themselves we are going to be in an expensive and sticky situation.

BLog stage 2

The article that I read was “Being American Is Bad for Your Health” by Marty Kaplan. This article explains how our health-care is declining, even though we spend more on our health care than any other country, we are still one of the worst countries in the world due to our poor health care. Too show how bad our health care system is, Kaplan even goes so far as to say “if you are born in the US then it’s detrimental to your health” However, according to the Guinness World Records there are five Americans out of the top ten people worldwide to hold the record for living the longest. The article uses a study from"U.S. health disadvantage" recently issued by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, which was conducted over 18 months by experts in medicine and public health, demography, social science, political science, economics, behavioral science and epidemiology. Based on all of these studies Kaplan concludes how bad American are but this study uses issue outside the realm of health-care. The article also states the problems about how we are dying so young such as, horrible diseases, car accidents and homicides, which health care handles once it happened but what about prevention for these problems. I enjoyed that Kaplan tells you what Americans are doing wrong such as drinking and smoking too much, plus, having very bad food habits and not exercising enough. The main problem that can be seen with this article is that it doesn’t offer us any solutions, to our health care crisis. It great that it makes you feel something and you get all excited to go out and change the world but he doesn’t offer a solution on how do to it. Another problem is that it’s a one sided argument t by not showing the other sides of Americans who are choosing to make good decision with their lives, and what there statistics are on longevity, happiness and life fulfillment are, it shows that this is a very bias argument and I would have like to see more solution and an example of people in or out of America who are making better life choices.

Kaplan, marty. Being American Is Bad for Your Health. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2013 http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/marty-kaplan/47940/being-american-is-bad-for-your-health