VIII: Comment on a colleague's work #2

Comment on Our Texan World's publication

Health care as part of the social responsibility  seems been a taboo in America, since the topic is so divided between people who think that the government should care about the health of their citizens and, the people who don’t want to have any governmental intervention into their medical bills or visits.

Part of the taboo, in my opinion, comes from the lack of information from the people with resources, who think that if the government is involved in health care, they “have” to go to the governmental medical services, when actually they can still spend the same amount of money in their private services. Another misinterpretation from people who is disagree with the government providing medical services is that individual taxes would go to pay the health of others. It might sound logical for some people and, for others it can sound very individualistic and selfish. However, for good or bad, the taxes that every individual pays benefit many other things to that ‘other people.’

I understand that many people also would recalls religious values to be opposed to some services that Plan Parenthood provides. But I think that data and numbers talk by themselves when we refer to domestic violence, rape, teen pregnancy.  We should add that for the same religious reason, the adoption of the policy of “abstinence-plus” is not intended as best option for teens, but to avoid the uncomfortable talk of sex education and responsibility.

The fight against Plan Parenthood also blocks the access to contraception for poor people, who are the most affected in the case of a supernumerous families. Sadly, these actions have a chain effect on poverty, medium and high-level education access, quality of parenting, and jobs. I think that this fight is also part of a fight with women empowerment and their capacity to plan for better life.

Health should be a right to access for everybody and it should be part of the social responsibility of the government as part of alleviating the poverty and segregation. People with economic resources would always go to better services, but, it is fair for poor people to have health care too. 

HB 1656 : More about transportation

Following the same topic of my first article, I would like to write about massive transportation in Austin, and, specifically about a bill that has been presented to the House Representatives by the Democratic House Representive of El Paso Celia Israel.

During her presentation in the Capitol on April 21st,  she mentioned a bill proposed called “Bus on Shoulders”, which proposes the ‘operation of a public transit motor bus by certain mass transit entities on an improved shoulder’ or HB 1656 during the 85th Legislative Session. Capital Metro Transit Authority (CMTA) also supports this bill in their report denominated ‘Peak Period Shoulder Use of UrbanExpressways’. This report explains how cities like Minneapolis, St Paul, San Diego, Ohio, Miami and others deal with traffic. It makes an analysis about cost-safety-benefit for the city and the people who would use the buses running through the main corridors like I-35, Loop 1 or US-183.

Rep. Israel proposed the same project during the 84th legislation under the HB 1324, but it died in the Senate. The project of the HB 1656 tries to benefit five counties and it plans to take effect on September1, 2017. Per the presentation of the representative Israel, this project is looking forward to alleviate the traffic in Austin, create a mass transportation culture for the locals and the new residents and, a very important point; it does not represent extra cost for the government because the highways shoulders already exist.

I totally support this initiative that provides solutions instead of create a positive environment where the city, citizens, residents and the environment can be helped at the same time.  Right now, this bill is left pending in committee, but I hope that can be passed to the Senate and approved soon.

VI: Color critique

The post of Keep Texas Red, is a post very interesting since the point of view of how related we are as humans with a party identification. This post talks about Texas as an example of success in administration and economy making a comparison with California.

In my first participation topic for the class I mentioned that exceptionalism “should be copied in many other cities or countries: The positivism and the pride about the place where you are from and what you have where you live”, but on the other hand “It blocks the ability of respect differences of points of view, different customs, different kind of living and different beliefs. It creates the confusion between “exceptional” and “perfect,” which is not true. And, finally makes it hard to value other exceptional places and learn from them”.

The comments before in this post mine explain very well the points of comparison with California´s corruption, expenses and cost of life.  And, I agree with Echo Noelani that “taking personal responsibility” in helping poor people is not enough. Taking personal responsibility for your environment and the people who share it with you is a good step. But, a government should have social responsibility on helping to mitigate the differences and creating more opportunities for the people, that´s why they`re public employees. What would be a good motivation for leaving the comfort zone of the elite class to change their community?  

It´s very easy to talk about the Texas success when it is based on natural resources and a free market that puts high value on them. What would be the exemplary success of Texas if the oil price in the international market plums more?  Right now, we are seeing that the price of oil went down to $45/barrel, this situation made that companies like Shell, Exxon, Schlumberger, and others laid off more than 10,000 employees the past 2 years. But, the executives of these companies generally didn´t reduce their salary. What would be the economic history in Texas without the energy resources?

My final point is that the discussion shouldn´t go focused on parties, because history showed us that they change too, according to what they need. We should focus on improving the life style for the community not only individual success. The individual success creates differences and segregate people, where rich communities don´t even mix or realize that there are poor or middle class around them, living in a different way. I think that it doesn´t matter if someone is blue or red or purple or green, it´s necessary to pop our bubbles of comfort zone and take responsibility for others, but also demand that government takes responsibility for us as citizens. That´s why we pay taxes, to improve the life of the community, not just to close ourselves in a car and ask for roads that only we will use.