Journal Nine

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/08/news/economy/Pennsylvania_Corbett_budget/index.htm

The topic of the crazy spending cuts proposed by PA’s governor really gets my attention because it directly affects me, as a full-tuition paying student at Penn State. Governor Corbett is looking for ways to cut spending to deal with PA’s atrocious $4 billion in debt, which I completely agree with, but I don’t agree with cutting so much from education. I agree that we could deal with some cuts to school budgets, but getting Penn State’s funding slashed in half is going to make tuition payment a lot more painful for me. People will still go to college, its almost a necessity now, but a lot more might have to chose community colleges. I think it would be better to examine the spending of individual schools and make cuts at that level. For example, my high school district is in major debt, but the school boards makes about $100,000 plus bonuses, and they get a pay raise every year. Cuts can be made there without affecting the students.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/19/60minutes/main4813571.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

This article deals with the issue of raising the drinking age to 18, the pros and cons and possible effects. College presidents signed a petition the other year saying that the 21 limit for drinking wasn’t working, it was just causing more teens to drink in an unsafe way, as under the radar as possible, and also causing more alcohol related deaths. Opposing arguments state that this would lead to a lot more incidents of drunk driving fatalities, as statistics prove. I agree with lowering the drinking age, but not because I’m a raging underage alcoholic. I think that once 21 comes around, people drink more responsibly because they are out in public doing it: in the bars with a lot of people, or out in clubs. An 18 drinking age would put more responsibility on kids, and would publicize their drinking more, therefore controlling it. 911 calls because of binge drinking might be more frequent, just because people wouldn’t be so terrified of getting an underage.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/10/eveningnews/main6666078.shtml

K2 is a scary new drug designed to give the effect of marijuana, but is in fact a lot more dangerous than it. It’s a legal substance, and has sent many many more people to the hospital than marijuana has. Overdosing on this drug is easy, while there is no real research on overdosing on marijuana. These dangerous replacement drugs are made as legal subsitutes of marijuana, meant for the true addict. I think that legalizing marijuana would take care of these untested sub drugs. I also think that legalizing marijuana and taxing the crap out of it would make the government a decent sum of money they could use to start paying off our trillions in debt. It would also save money and prison space.