Texas' money issues and education

After reading Olive's blog about Texas' money issues and hasty cuts from our education budget, I can agree wholeheartedly where she stands. Education, time and time again, has been claimed to be our number one priority yet we have slashed our budget by a significant amount and are seeing cuts in places that I find unnecessary. As taxpayers, isn't education what our money should be going to? We sit on a Rainy Day Fund that could solve the cut crisis and give back to schools who are now overpopulated and are cutting hundreds of jobs, but do we see anyone trying to do that? No.

As Olive states, it would be ideal to have an audience actually paying attention to the actions of politicians when it comes to our money and where it's being cut and pasted. However, that isn't the case. Maybe if we cut things from education like a few liberal arts classes or certain sport teams with little enrollment per school, we could churn that money to going towards political awareness courses and not only getting the students involved, but motivation to get their families involved and stop the future of our youth from being under-educated about government and the power we have if we utilize it.

For now, we see our money cast astray to other "priorities", but hopefully a politician who is true of his word for education being most important will come along and make sure Texas is in the best of hands.

Parenthood should stay planned

As most of you may be aware by now, Rick Perry is doing everything in his power to make sure Planned Parenthood is wiped from existence. Coming from a female college student in her mid-20s surrounded by friends and family who rely on such services, I find his pursuit to eliminate Planned Parenthood extremely ridiculous. Coming from a tax payer, I yet again find his pursuit to eliminate Planned Parenthood SUPER ridiculous. With the knowledge I have of the organization that is used to help low-income families and younger women afford cancer screenings, sexually transmitted disease tests and contraception that won't cost an arm and a leg, I find no reason to stop funding an organization that if absent, would leave our state in utter chaos.

The only reason Perry is all about wiping out PP is because they are able to perform abortions when requested, even though PP does not use their federal funds to perform them (when, if any of them are performed). If he can successfully see to it that these facilities are no longer open, our state is facing a future of higher taxes to support welfare, public education and there's definitely going to be an issue about paying in full for a doctor's visit to get contraceptives along with paying for the prescription at full price. Why jeopardize our economy when we have something to help sustain if not spare it from any more destruction? Without Planned Parenthood, we are looking at supporting more low-income families, having to open up a million schools and trying to cram more students in them along with leaving some people just pure at loss of everything.

I believe we should do everything we can to keep these facilities open. Maybe settle a deal or make the application process for abortions more difficult or something along the lines of that. Either way, we can only expect things to get worse as one by one, these clinics close and leave more and more women and families with little to no room to move for affordable help towards the best of their health.