Proposal

Title: Undecided
Date: September 30, 2012
Analysis of Argument
Exigence: On November 6, 2012 there will be a very important proposition on the ballot in California. The outcome of this proposition will determine next year’s schooling budget, and, in part, the future of California’s public educational system.
Intended Audience: Opposing potential voters of California in the year 2012.
Purpose: To persuade the intended audience to agree with my perspective on Prop 30, and encourage them to vote affirmatively towards Prop 30 on Nov. 6.
The logical reasoning that I will use in my op-ed paper will include various statistics expressing the effects that will be had on CA public schooling if Prop 30 does not pass. Statistics will include:

·         …the state will automatically cut $338-million from community colleges, and $250-million from the California State University system. Public schools would be hit with even bigger cuts

·         If Prop 30 or 38 were to not pass, 5 days would be cut for the 2012-2013 school year and appx. 10 days from the 2013-2014 year in the SF school districts.

·         …founders and employees of Facebook, along with company insiders, will have the first chance to cash in their stock options, following Facebook's May 17 initial public offering. The governor and legislators have built their budget on the assumption that the state could collect a $1.4-billion windfall in capital-gains taxes

It is my opinion that the most effective means of explaining my ideas, so as to persuade my audience, will be by expressing the extremity of the situation and the universality of the effects the situation that will had by all populations.

As a student at a community college, my argument will have an especially strong and unique ethos by giving me the advantage of being a person who would be directly affected by the passing of Proposition 30. As well as being a community college student, I think it would also be to my advantage, in terms of ethos for this assignment, to include that I am a community college student from a low income background, and it would be near impossible for me to attend college and strive for the future that I desire, without the amount of government funding that I’ve received and without the different abilities and resources the state has allowed me and other students through its federal funding.

For the pathos of this assignment, I will draw on the fact that it is the government and political society in which we live in that has allowed all and any peoples in this country to achieve any success and fortune that they’ve attained and it should not be in the desire of any citizen to make that something that’s only attainable for the few and scarce. I will evoke the emotions of the reader by displaying a story of a low income student whose only desire is to move up in society and not be confined to low-standard of living, the likes of which are the only way of living that his/her family has seen.

Formal Paper 1: Annotated Bibliography

Works Cited

Blumenstyk, Goldie. "If Prop 30 Fails, Then What?" Editorial. The Chronicle of Higher Education [Washington D.C.] 17 Aug. 2012: 31. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://0-web.ebscohost.com.library.cabrillo.edu/ehost/detail?sid=9210a729-1f3f-4358-9578-471c5b7fd39c%40sessionmgr15&vid=5&hid=11&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1cmwmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=a9h&AN=78857634>. "...new taxes are designed to fill what would otherwise be an $8-billion hole in the state's budget. If Prop 30 fails, under the terms of the 2013 budget, the state will automatically cut $338-million from community colleges, $375-million from the University of California system, and $250-million from the California State University system. Public schools would be hit with even bigger cuts....Mid-November is also when founders and employees of Facebook, along with company insiders, will have the first chance to cash in their stock options, following Facebook's May 17 initial public offering. The governor and legislators have built their budget on the assumption that the state could collect a $1.4-billion windfall in capital-gains taxes from all that option activity....But Facebook has been trading well below its IPO price, which could prompt many of those stockholders to hang on for a while longer, forcing the state to seek additional cuts to make up for that lost income...California has no shortage of advocates for finding new sources of state revenue to augment the traditional sources now under stress...the state could be collecting a lot more in revenues if it would broaden its tax base, close loopholes on corporate taxes, and exact a severance tax on its offshore oil..."

Garofoli, Joe. "Teacher Contract Tied to Tax Measure." Editorial. The San Fransisco Chronicle [San Fransisco] 3 Aug. 2012: PC1. Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://0-web.ebscohost.com.library.cabrillo.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=11&sid=072ac2eb-b458-457d-a5c8-e1255104a2b2%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWNvb2tpZSxpcCx1cmwmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=n5h&AN=78248093>. "'Our ability to keep schools open for our children completely hinges on the voters of California passing either or both tax initiatives,' district Superintendent Richard Carranza said in a statement Thursday." "Students will be in class 179.5 days in the 2012-13 school year...." (In the San Fransisco School District) due to an agreement between the San Francisco Unified School District and the executive board of the teachers union, the United Educators of San Francisco. The agreement involved cutting money for the arts, libraries and other enrichment programs, withdrawing $6.3 million dollars from the cities rainy day fund, and teachers agreeing to not take any paid sabbaticals, to not get funding for their professional development, and to not recieve any pay raises, all as a result of current cuts in educational funding and with the anticipation of Prop 30 or 38 passing. If Prop 30 or 38 were to not pass, 5 days would be cut for the 2012-2013 school year and appx. 10 days from the 2013-2014 year in the SF school districts.

Skelton, George. "Taxes Just Part of Picture; Voter Perceptions and Pensions Also Tie into Brown's Push for Prop. 30." Editorial. Los AngelesTimes [Los Angeles] 30 Aug. 2012: A.2. ProQuest Newspapers. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://http://0-search.proquest.com.library.cabrillo.edu/nationalnewscore/docview/1036835499/1391857C40328DE6F49/9?accountid=39584>. “…from a political perspective and looking into the minds of many voters, the question is about much more. It's(Prop 30) about whether they should send Sacramento more tax money… politicians have been spending what they've already got and …can be trusted with billions more ...part of that equation is the state parks department hoarding $54 million while planning to shutter parks, the governor embarking on an unpopular $68-billion bullet train project with only $13 billion in funding identified -- and seemingly uncontrolled state and local public pensions while private pensions have been practically eliminated…” This article takes the opposing view on Prop 30 and describes that Prop 30 is a proposition veered towards preventing more budget cuts from public/state-funded education, but the legislation does not specifically say that all the revenue brought in by Prop 30 will go directly towards public education, and brings into question whether or not state government will actually spend all of the tax revenue on the suffering public education system or whether some of it will be put towards other purposes like the building of the $68-billion dollar bullet train, or if it will be given to programs like the state parks where it will be misplaced or misused. It also brings into question the current pension system and how it needed to be revised before Prop 30 could be taken too seriously due to the systems costliness for government. 

RR #1

                In 2002 Michael Moore published a book entitled Stupid White Men… and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation. In this ridicule of the absolute cluelessness of the United States of America and the citizens that reside within it, there’s a section of the book that’s focused on the poor state of the American public education system and how said system is a very strong and pressing component of what is contributing to the American obliviousness that exists today and the lack of progress being made to remedy it. This section of the book draws on several different aspects of what’s taking place today in the modern educational system and how each of these ever increasingly deteriorating at the effectiveness and usefulness of what once could had been a successful and thriving system for education.

            One of the topics that Moore really tries to draw on in this exert is the ever increasing role that large corporations are taking on in the public schooling system. Moore references a variety of instances in which corporate America has infiltrated public schools using a variety of tactics, like giving incentives for academic achievements and by sponsoring various school events like sporting events or a geography bee. Some of the examples Moore uses in his writing include, “…’Book It!’ (a) program to encourage children to read. When students meet the monthly reading goal, they are rewarded with a certificate for a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza…” (140), Moore also refers to the General Mills’ “Box Tops for Education” in which schools can “…earn up to $10,000 a year. That’s 100,000 General Mills products sold…” (140). He didn’t go particularly into detail about how much advertising went along with each program, although he did mention that “Pizza Hut  suggests school principals place a “Pizza Hut Book-It!” honor roll list in the school for everyone to see…” (140). Moore continues on to describe the increased influence that soda companies have taken on the public education system and how “Two hundred and forty school districts in thirty-one states have sold exclusive rights to one of the big three soda companies” (140). In these incidences some schools are awarded “grants” by Coke for exceeding a certain number of sodas sold, others schools, who are sponsored by Pepsi, partake in a science course partially developed by Pepsi that’s called “The Carbonated Beverage Company” in which students taste test and analyze colas, watch a video tour of a Pepsi bottling plant, and also visit a local plant.

Given these examples it seems that, aside from Pizza Hut’s suggestion for an “honor’s list”, the initial corporations referenced don’t seem to be terribly invasive, they’ve merely set up programs that encourage education, while simultaneously giving them a potential tax write-off, allowing them improve their public standing, and while also giving themselves a competitive edge over other businesses through said reputation. On the other hand, in the instances of Pepsi and Cola, we see private organization act in a way that directly interacts with the school, the students and the classroom setting in more than just a suggestive way; schools are given incentives to sell products to their students, and to dedicate classroom time to the direct advertisement of companies all to receive added funding. When you think about it logically, it does make some sense that corporations would take part in the funding of the educational system, simply given that in our capitalist society it is been tradition for our economy and, in turn, our livelihood to be based on business and our ability to sell a good or service to better our own economic well being. Even with this said, it seems that the extent to which we have taken our capitalism and the influence we’ve allowed it to have, has toed the line between what is disruptive and what is simply “good business”, compromising the what integrity our school systems still have left.

Prop 30

http://0-search.proquest.com.library.cabrillo.edu/nationalnewscore/docview/1036835499/1391857C40328DE6F49/9?accountid=39584

In this op-ed article from The LA Times regarding Proposition 30, the author does a sufficient job of describing how Prop 30 is not strictly just tax hike for public education; the author tries profusely to convince his audience that, although most of what is circulating about Proposition 30 is that when it passes K-14 classes will continue to receive the government support that they are already getting, with the possibility of receiving of an increase in funding as well, or, if the prop doesn't pass, K-14 classes will have a dramatic decrease in funding, with a large amount of their state funding being cut. Although this is precisely what we've been told Prop 30 will do, this article in particular was trying to draw attention to the fact that what we the people were given an ultimatum; either Prop 30 passer or public education funding gets cut. The article then describes how the governor has just approved the building of the $68 billion bullet train (with only $13 billion of its funding being identified), and about the state parks department which withheld $54 million while planning to shut down parks, describing all of this to draw attention to the fact that the even if Prop 30 were to not pass, why is it that funding must be taken from schools? It also poses the question that why is the governor currently putting our taxpaying dollars into such ridiculous investments, and how can we expect him to not do similarly with this tax hike when it's not said, specifically, in the legislation that all of the revenue brought in from this tax hike is going to go directly towards public schooling, just that schooling budgets won't be cut. The article then goes on to describe Brown's plan for pensions and how his compromise to help scale them back to help lessen the stat deficit, but I couldn't tell if this portion of the article was meant to discredit Brown, or just to put in a little more info about what's going on. All and all, I think with the direct affronts to our Democratic governor, and the various quotations from well standing republican voters, it would be very safe to say that this article was a right-wing opinionated article, meant to suede voters away from voting yes on Proposition 30.

"I am..."

                I am Arianna Brown. I come from Arcata, CA in Humboldt County and have been living in Santa Cruz and going to Cabrillo College for the last year and a half…ish. I have a serious passion for nature and the outdoors, and to always have a good time in it. I was fortunate enough to move into a house here in Santa Cruz, first thing, with people who feel very similarly and have thus far made my time in Santa Cruz that much better. I consider myself to be a very proactive person, and very capable of making anything happen. That’s not to say that I always do; there are often occasions in which I feel prohibited in being fully proactive due to nerves and my inability to just relax and let things simply occur naturally without becoming overbearing and terse. Although this sometimes prohibits my ability to have fun, I find that I’m very capable of getting the things I need to get done, done, and when I separate myself from my “areas of production” or comfort zones I take on a whole new persona and I’m able to have that much more fun, and therefore take a lot of road trips and go to a lot of shows, festivals, and other events, along with a lot of camping and hiking to really seperate my productive life from my good times.  
 I suppose that, given all of this, I could say that one of my gifts/abilities is to really get things done, and make things happen, but I also have found that one of my other abilities that I really value is that I’m very able to see the good in all beings and find unconditional love for them. That’s not to say that I don’t also see the flaws and become annoyed with them, but I think that any of the annoyance that I find is due to the fact that I know that every person has the ability to live up to the best of their abilities and qualities, and I find it very difficult to see people not trying to live up to that. I’m also a hard worker, a judger of character, creative, spontaneous, energetic, an incredibly caring older sister, a vegetarian and animal lover, a cook, a runner,  an activist, the daughter of a single dad, and some other things that I’m sure I’m not including, but would rather not anyways, because I’m sure this is already TMI as it is. :)