For
this assignment I picked the ‘Ocala Star Banner’. This is the local newspaper in
my home town. I thought it would be interesting to pick a place I was very
familiar with. I tried to stay away from crime articles, so I was left articles
like the ones bellow, some actually hit a very small part of larger issues, others
are just my local towns first world problems. (Not a lot of interesting things
happen where I’m from)
1.
As School Board backs
early-release days, Stacy scolds teachers at meeting
·
Marion County has 8 early release days per year, usually one
per month, usually on a Wednesday, where students are released from school 2
hours early. Teachers use that time for professional development and to catch up
on work. But about a week ago the Marion County school board started to look
into eliminating early release days and replacing them with 4 full days off
during the school year so teachers can use the whole day for training, and professional
development. The board also claims that it’s a burden for families to try and
find someone to take care of their kids when they get off early. There was a
huge miss understanding and over 50 teachers showed up to the Marion County
school board meeting on Thursday protesting to not get rid of early release
days. That’s when board member got mad and started saying that the teachers
should be at school teaching students instead of protesting the school board.
The board argues that their alternative plan will save the school board money
and that it’s all about the calendar and helping teachers. I grew up in Marion County
and this is what students call “half-a-days”, everyone loves half a days so I
personally don’t agree with the decision to get rid of them. The problem
involves every one with kids and involved with school. In one hand you have the
board trying to save money and eliminated a burden for parents. On the other
hand you have teachers who want/need half a days to cant up on work.
2.
Quit delaying: Pay the money,
test the rape kits
·
This article talks about all the rape kits in Florida that
haven’t been processes. There are over 200,000 rape kits across the U.S that
haven’t been processed and Florida has 13,000 of them. When the Florida
department of law enforcement was confronted on this matter 31% of employees
either said they don’t know how many rape kits they have or that they can’t
tell you because they can’t count that high. When they ask why they haven’t
processed them, the most frequent answer the journalist got was that it was too
expensive. It cost about $1,500 to test each kit or you can outsource them and
it will cost only $1,201. But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement says
that it actually cost $32 million to
test 6,661 kits, if you do the math it comes out at $2,233 per test, that
doesn’t make any sense. The reason why this article was actually written was
because in December of last year the president signed a bill giving $45 million
to the U.S. Department of Justice's specifically for a sexual assault response
initiative. So money really isn’t an excuse. The sad thing is that this problem
does not just involve the U.S Department of Justice, but all rape victims. How
do you expect for a rape victim to ask the police for help if they aren’t going
to even examine the victim’s kit? It takes 4 hours to test an individual, it
involves getting poked, prodded, swabbed and photographed in exactly the places
a rape victim would have been violated in the attack. Now imagine that years go
by, and all that evidence goes nowhere.
3.
Lawmakers want red-light camera
ban
·
Starting July of 2016 red light cameras will be banned in Florida.
Studies have shown a direct correlation between traffic accidents and the
cameras. The article goes on to say that ever sense the cameras have been
installed accidents in intersections have increased by 14.65% and over all
crashes have increased by 50%. The purpose of the red light cameras is to capture
vehicles who enter the intersection area regardless of the traffic light being
red. Supporters of the cameras claim that the reason crashes have increased is
because they are actually able to measure the amount of crashes with the
cameras. The issue with this bill is that cities and counties will lose $66
million in annual revenue. In turn supporters of the cameras are asking for
more studies to be conducted before any major changes are made.
4.
Woman bilked out of $8,000
·
This elderly women husband recently died and she’s been on
the phone with the bank for a while trying to sort out all the little details. During
this time period someone called her offering to get her a new credit card with
new terms. The women agreed and gave her social security number over the phone
and put the card in the mail because the person on the phone told her to do so.
After a couple of days she called the bank and she had $8,000 missing. Why is
this a problem? Stuff like this happens all the time. As a rule of thumb you
should never give your social security number over the phone. It’s not that
hard to steals someone’s identity now a days and this generations need to be
aware of that. Lastly take care of your elders, I know that my grandpa has done
some questionable things like this when my family wasn’t paying attention. I feel
like if this individual had family helping her out to charge her status and
what not, she wouldn’t have been as vulnerable to identity theft.
5.
Medicare now reimburses for 'The
Conversation
·
Starting this January of 2016 Medicare is making changes to
its hospice benefits for the first time sense 1983. This is a big deal for Marion
County considering 27% of residents are over the age of 65. The problem here is
re-educating our elders. Medicare
changed some of its reimbursement policies for hospice care, as well as
starting to reimburse "end-of-life" counseling. This in turn
is bringing changes to how they are billing their clients. This is also a step
into what the author claims to be “a new era in the way we think about the way
we die”. This to me is frankly depressing. I don’t think we should be planning
our deaths ahead of time, not everything in our life’s needs to have a plan and
a backup plan just in case. This new benefit is presenting a challenge for
doctors as well. Doctors claim it’s complicated to talk about death and that it
takes time to plan because this new benefit will require doctors to actually
discuss this in routine visits and will require documentation. In essence more paper
work.
I really liked some of the articles you chose some of which were very interesting. The one about the rape kits is very intriguing mainly due to the fact that all the resources are available yet the government isn’t doing anything about it. I also agree with your opinion on the changes to Medicare. With my dad being a doctor I understand a lot of the troubles that occur with things like this and talking to someone about their death is no laughing matter. Here is my blog if you would like to check it out.
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