February 16, 2014

Holder Calls for Restoring Ex-Cons’ Voting Rights

            

     Democratic Attorney General Eric Holder is teaming up with Republican’s Rand Paul and Mike Lee to help give voting rights back to some former convicts. According to Holder, there are currently around 5.8 million people who do not have the right to vote because of a former crime they committed. In fact, Holder says that one out of every five black adults in Florida, Virginia, and Kentucky cannot vote because of past crimes. In my opinion, people that committed crimes but served their time in prison for their actions should be allowed to vote. I think that prison should be the only punishment that they receive. Also, after serving in prison, they are sometimes seen in a worse way by society. It also does not make sense to me what reason they have to take away their votes. I do not think that committing a crime would impact the way that they vote. Overall, I agree with Eric Holder, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee on this issue.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/11/holder-calls-for-restoring-ex-cons-voting-rights/

February 5th, 2014

State of the Union address

President Obama gave his annual State of the Union address last Tuesday, January 28^th. Although the speech usually tends to be very controversial, it received more positive remarks than usual. After the speech, many republicans were not as critical of the speech as usual. They were also seen shaking hands with the President, which sometimes does not happen at all after the speech. This is however partially because the President gave a significant amount of credit to republicans and republican based ideas.

          During the speech, Obama mentioned the severe gridlock that congress is in, and how we need a way to end it. A plan of his is to issue an executive order to raise minimum wage for government contract workers to $10.10, compared to the current $7.25. While I do believe that it may be necessary to issue executive orders due to how unproductive congress is, I do not agree with raising minimum wage this significantly. I believe a smaller increase would be appropriate, but almost 3 dollars more per hour may be too steep a change at just one time. Also, while it may work for government contract workers, I do not think that it could work for all Americans. This is because business’s do not have the money that the government does to pay all of its workers.

Article: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/28/politics/2014-state-of-the-union/