Kayleigh Smerud Pd.1

Everyone knows that New York is an expensive place to live. But, I bet most people didn't know that it is expensive just to be an inmate. That's right, last year "the city's annual cost per inmate was $167,731," which is about how much tuition would cost to attend an Ivy League school for four years.  New York's most infamous facility, Rikers Island, could be to blame. It costs a tremendous amount of money to staff and maintain an island. New York's entire Department of Correction spent about $2 billion last year . Rikers Island spends $30.3 million annually just to cover the cost of transportation.
Wow! For me, this is hard to understand because $2 billion is such an enormous dollar amount and it is hard to wrap my mind over exactly how much money that is, and exact what you could buy with it. However, it does seem like too much money is being spent in New York to house inmates. Annually, it costs $167,731 per inmate. Some people, even families, don't even make that much in terms of their annual salary.  It probably isn't as easy as it seems, but to me it seems like New York could easily cut down their spending by a couple of thousand dollars a year. Imagine what else New York could do with that money. Let's pretend that a meal costs $5. If New York cut back their spending on inmates by $100,000 out of their $2 billion dollar annual spending. New York could buy 20,000 meals. By doing further math I calculated that they could feed almost 55 people a meal everyday of the year. New York could feed the homeless person that is on the street corner, or the 2 year old baby in a family that only makes $40,000 a year and has 3 other kids. It may not seem like such a huge change when you take into account the total population of New York, but making any change is still a change.

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350 Infants Possibly Exposed To Tuberculosis - Olivia Browne Period 6

Three hundred and fifty infants were possibly exposed to tuberculosis at a California hospital by a hospital employee. An additional 368 mothers or parents, and 308 employees were also potentially exposed, a spokeswoman told CNN. The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose said it was notified in mid-November that one of its employees was suspected of having active tuberculosis. That employee, who worked in the area of the newborn nursery, was placed on leave.

Analysis: The Author is Dana Ford and she appears to be a non-bias party. This article was created on December 12th, right after the incident had taken place, adding to the urgency. I had no prior knowledge of this event. The Audience is the concerned American public and this story has a negative effect on them. The reason for writing this article was to educate the American public on this terrible event. This directly relates to the reform movement around health care during the reform era. 

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/13/health/california-hospital-tuberculosis-exposure/index.html

GOP Preparing for Contested Convention by Caroline North 9th period

The 2016 Republican Party presidential candidates are preparing for their upcoming debate in Las Vegas as Donald Trump still maintains a strong lead with the primaries fast approaching.  Even as Trump continues to unleash incendiary comments which cause a great deal of unrest and fuels anger with immigrants and minority groups, he remains popular in early voting states and nationally.

With Trump running in the 2016 election, he has drawn a significant amount of attention and publicity to the Republican Party.  Although the other Republican candidates are threatened by the current lead of the political party, they also view Trump as a positive asset who has brought all Republicans into a new light, and many new viewers to the Republican debates.  If Trump was elected president, our nation would face significant changes most likely including a decrease in minorities and a halt in immigration.  Many fear if Trump were elected, the next four years would turn into a full Donald Trump reality show.  The media adores Trump because of the outrageous things he says, he would be able to veto things just because he can, and he would make the entire globe his own personal playground.  Many are skeptical of the impact Donald Trump being elected would have on this nation. 

http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/gop-preparing-for-contested-convention/

First women elected to office in Saudi Arabia - Erin O'Day

Saturday's election in Saudi Arabia marked the first time women could vote and run for office, and it saw 17 women get elected. Yet women voters in Saudi Arabia complained about the voter registration process and the segregation of male and female voters. Also, those women running spoke up about how difficult and restricted they were in campaigning. But this election is a significant step forward. The roles of women in the Saudi Arabian kingdom are changing: the amount of women in the workforce is increasing, and the King has been appointing more and more women to government positions.

While it is truly amazing that the rights of women in Saudi Arabia are improving, they still have a long way to go, just like the women of our nation. When American women fought for suffrage and achieved it with the 19th amendment, they knew they would still have to fight for equality and fair treatment, and in fact we still are doing that today.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/13/world/first-women-elected-to-office-in-saudi-arabia/index.html

Maid, 11, accuses cricket star of abuse: 'They used to beat me with sticks'-- Demi Tomsides

Mahfuza Akhter, "Happy", is an eleven year old girl that was the live in maid for cricket hero, Shahadat Hossain and his wife, Nritto Shahadat. Happy claims that she was abused by her former employers and that "They used to beat me with sticks, kitchen utensils, punch me, and scratch me. I would be slapped a lot,". Happy lived with her impoverished extended family. Since they often couldn't find a next meal, her grandmother sent her to work for this family. Happy would be locked in her room, forced to sleep in the bathroom, and given the scraps of spoiled food. She decided that she would rather beg on the streets than live in that house, so when the other maid was coming in Happy made a run for it. She was slow, limping, and trying to cover her hurting, swollen eye while she ran down the streets of Dhaka. When she stopped to rest, a local reporter found her and took her to the hospital. She was admitted with two swollen eyes, several dislocated body parts, and extensive bruises. The celebrity couple (who many used call a hero) was captured and sent to jail. The wife is on bail on humanitarian grounds (the irony) because she's going to have a baby. Many believe this trial is going down as one of the biggest celebrity trials in the country's history.

This was a disturbing article, but one that ended on a slightly hopeful note of Happy finally getting to be just that: happy. She was sent to a shelter and has made some friends. But taking it back a couple steps, this whole situation is absolutely horrendous. In 2006 Bangladesh's Labor Act forbade employing a child under the age of 14, but unfortunately looking in a home and finding an young girl is more common than not. One of the most influential books of all time has been A Chirstmas Carol by Charles Dickens. We know the story today to be a nice holiday tale about a cranky miser who is visited by three ghosts, and in the end is miraculously transformed into a "God bless us everyone" kind of guy. But in the time that the book was published, it was a political statement that challenged the current political ideals, especially of that revolving around child labor. Children working awful conditions for cheap labor was a problem back then (in the Industrial Revolution) and it is still a problem today. We all need to be aware of the problem and help the world fix it.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/10/asia/bangladesh-maid-abuse-child-labor/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obinsite

Emily Miller- Obama proposes "the best chance we have to save the planet"

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/12/world/global-climate-change-conference-vote/index.html

On Saturday, President Obama proposed a climate change agreement at a conference in Paris: countries must keep their greenhouse gas levels below 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The agreement has to be ratified by 55 countries to be put into effect. Obama says that this is our chance to save the planet, although others say that it is too late. The agreement has its faults- small countries who aren't as responsible for polluting the atmosphere as big-corporation, industrial countries, will have to pay for a problem that they didn't really cause.

I think any plan that helps the environment is a good plan. However, I also think that countries with higher greenhouse gas levels should have more restrictions to pay for the pollution they put into the atmosphere. For instance, China and the US account for 14% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. We should limit our pollution proportionally.

Gunman shot down -Avery Yoss

On Saturday night, a man holding a gun walked into a Walmart in Pennsylvania. He was threatening to shoot when policemen arrived. He refused to put his gun down so the police were forced to shoot him down. He was shot in the chest and was pronounced dead on Saturday night. The man still has not been identified and no one else in Walmart was harmed.

I feel like this gunman was all talk. Or he had been under the influence, because why an empty Walmart? On a late Saturday night? Its sad that this is what our world has come too, with shootings or attempted shootings happening all the time.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/13/us/pennsylvania-walmart-shooting/index.html