Senate Bill 376 - help resolve hunger issues in Texas among children

The poverty among families with children in Texas is substantially increasing. This means that children are becoming more malnourished which deprives their brain of important energy needed to learn during school.  Offering free breakfasts to all interested students in low-income areas, not just to those who qualify under federal guidelines, is a program that some state legislators are trying to expand to schools in poor neighborhoods across Texas. Under the School Breakfast Program, which began in 1966, children whose household income below 185 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for a low-cost school breakfast; those below 130 percent receive free breakfasts. The federal government reimburses the school for each meal served. The breakfast program, and a similar one for lunches, is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Senate Bill 376 would require schools to offer free breakfast to all students at public schools where 80 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced price meals. Research has shown that students who eat breakfast are better able to concentrate and do better in school. An estimate of the impact of the bill says that this bill could ensure a morning meal for as many as 731,000 children. Senator Lucio says “It has been shown that providing access to nutritious food increases students' concentration, and reduces students' absences and discipline problems." Celia Cole, CEO of Texas Food Bank Network, comments that with Senate Bill 376 “Children have better test scores, better attendance, better behavior. So, in addition to being a great tool for fighting hunger and ensuring that kids get the nutrition they need to stay healthy and learn, it’s a proven education policy to boost academic achievement.”

Passage of Senate Bill 376 would cost neither the state nor school districts additional money. In fact, under this bill, because schools are receiving additional funding per meal and are serving more meals, the program becomes more cost effective for schools. Now passed out of the Senate Committee on Education, the bill moves to the full Senate for consideration. This bill should be passed, as it would help lower hunger in poverty stricken areas and it would increase the mental health of children who would otherwise be struggling in school to focus and strive to do their best.

Sonogram Law

The Sonogram Law: critique

First of all this article is a very controversial topic. Since I am in nursing school, we have learned a lot about abortions and the embryonic development and why the Sonogram Law was passed. I also have personal experience with the effect of this law as my aunt recently went through this process.  Here is a little info about abortions: The baby’s heart starts beating 18 days after conception. This is before most women even know they are pregnant. The baby is now a person with a heartbeat (old people have heart beats and they are considered a person so why shouldn’t babies?). The sonogram helps the mom to be 100% informed of her options and what her options will do, which is a doctor’s job (to 100% inform a patient of their options and the consequences of their options). Second, most women don’t know what they are seeing on a sonogram so it is nice to have explained what is on there.

In the third paragraph it is said “why does the state think it is their right to tell any woman what they want to do with their own bodies or tell doctors who are intelligent, certified and qualified who are there to help women make sound decisions on medical treatment/care?”. The state isn’t telling women what they want to do the woman has the choice to opt for the abortion or not after seeing the sonogram. And some doctors are not intelligent or qualified, in medical school they give everyone their certificate, those who barely passed with all C’s and made the passing grade on their board exams and the students who made straight A’s. Just because they have their certificate does not mean they are qualified or educated in that area. And also to be able to make sound decisions a woman has to know ALL the information about her choices, this is just enforcing that. On the note that some families make a very hard decision to end a pregnancy because they learn the child will not make it to full term, my mother was told I had a 90% chance of having downs syndrome or another very crippling disease. When I was born I was completely healthy with no complications. The test that they do to see if the baby will have a disease or defect has a 50% or greater chance of being wrong. No one knows if the baby will come to full term until the baby is actually born or is miscarried. If someone does not want to care for a baby, they don’t have to, they can always give it up for adoption, which is what my aunt did.

“Typically when a woman goes in to have an abortion she is already pretty clear on what she is going in there to do”. Wrong. Many women go into abortions because they are pressured, they don’t go in there understanding that their baby is going to be ripped apart limb by limb or burned with sulfuric acid. Many of the women who go in to have abortions aren’t even women. Most of them are girls who accidentally got pregnant and are scared to have a baby. Second of all, hearing someone’s heartbeat is the most peaceful sound one can hear it is the most reassuring sound a family member can hear. Hearing someone’s heart beat that is close to you and is about to die is reassuring is it not? What about someone who is living? It’s still reassuring. Third, the procedure is not invasive. They rub jelly on your stomach and run a little computer thing over the jelly. It’s about as uninvasive as it gets, way less invasive than the actual abortion where they reach inside you and inject your baby with acid that burns them or tears their limbs off. 

The government is not telling women they can or can’t have an abortion; they are just making sure the woman is informed of her options. They are not telling the doctors how to do the abortion or what medicines to give the woman they are putting an extra step in place before the woman goes through with the abortion. Women need to understand that if they don’t want to get pregnant the only way to ensure that is through abstinence. Otherwise you take the risk of getting pregnant and if you don’t want to have to deal with the sonogram issue then just don’t get pregnant. It’s simple. Also, how have they made it impossible for women to seek medical attention who are either low income or without insurance? Almost 50% of people are on government insurance which means that they can get a lot of things paid for. And you can get financial plans and lots of options for paying for an abortion. So they haven’t made it almost impossible, where did you even see that?

To conclude, this law has been put into place because of good reasons. It should be kept in place. 

Please don't make my buy ANOTHER reusable bag because I forgot mine

A big issue in Austin today is the ban on retailers providing customers with plastic bags. There are mixed feelings as to if this ban is necessary, or if it is just another way of the government trying to take away our rights.  According to NACS, “retailers must only provide plastic bags thicker than 4 millimeters, paper bags made with 40% recycled content or reusable cloth bags”. Many customers have been surprised with the change and leave stores with loose groceries in their shopping carts and cars.

The ban has not been a good decision so far and should be repealed immediately. If not repealed then major changes need to be made to the ban. An issue that is concerning to some citizens is that the city of Austin wants us to use reusable bags, but they won’t supply them for free. People are already going to the store because they are purchasing products; they don’t want to have to now pay to buy bags to carry their products in. NACS says, “Walmart now charges 10 cents for paper bags with handles and 50 cents for reusable bags. At H-E-B, the first bag is now free, while additional bags cost 25 cents each”.

Shouldn’t individual citizens be able to decide if they want to use plastic bags or not? Isn’t it our right to decide that for ourselves? From The Austin American Statesman, Republican state Rep. Drew Springer declared “the ban a violation of every Texan’s basic right to carry home groceries and whatnot in a plastic bag”. He recently filed House Bill 2416 “The Shopping Bag Freedom Act”. Springer’s argument does not only come from the concern for citizen’s rights, but also concern for their health. Springer states, “Austin’s ban not only tramples on freedom but also threatens the public’s health, since bag bans force shoppers to rely on reusable bags, which they rarely wash. Dirty bags mean nasty and potentially deadly bacterial growth”.

I believe that the plastic bag ban should be repealed. Now I don’t know if the ban will be repealed or kept, but the government should look into the fact that they are requiring us citizens to do something we may not want to do which takes away our freedom. Also, they need to realize what using reusable bags will do for our health.