We are all friends of P!!!

Hello students. Some of our students here at SCCS are off to a conference for Global Issues Network. The idea is getting people and students together to try to solve 20 global issues in 20 years based off of this book High Noon. They will be meeting in Lima, Peru with schools from all over Latin America. They will be commenting on this blog about the experiences that they are having. Hope to hear some great news and stories. Here is a link about more info from the conference.GIN Confernece

Public lands, governments and profits.

It was great hearing from both classes. I saw that both Hayden football and volleyball got some big wins for homecoming! That is good to see. I will have to get a Skype going some time to say hello in the real time. Maybe with both classes present so we can see who we are typing too. In other current news, all schools in Santa Cruz have been closed for the week due to a H1N1 scare and my students will be doing this from home.

Now on to the current events. This week we will be talking again about government and economics. There are events going on in both Hayden and here in Bolivia were the government wants to use public lands to try and create revenue for their respective governments and boost the economy. In Hayden we have the issue of drilling for natural gas and oil. Here in Bolivia we know about that for sure. The current topic that has been hot here is that the Government and President Evo Morales is making a highway through a National Park to the Pacific coast in the name of bring revenue to Bolivia, even though it is against the law to make a highway through the rain forest. There have been protests from indigenous groups that clashed with police. After their struggle, nationwide protests with thousands of people in many cites ensued.

Here are links to the stories. Mr. Johnson's class needs to write a paragraph summery of each story and email it to me by Friday Morning.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/09/20119278844472501.html

Bolivian story, Check out the Video

http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2011/sep/08/150-gather-hayden-discuss-potential-routt-moffat-o/

Hayden Story

If each class would comment a bit on the event in their country to give some other points of view that would be awesome.

ALSO

Please comment on what right government has to use public protected lands, which both lands have been in the past, for economic gains and the benefits for the common person and what responsibility government has to protect natural resources and lands for the future.

Thanks and Peace out from Mr. J

First Assignment

Hello Hayden and SCCS (Santa Cruz Cooperative School). SCCS location  Hayden HS Here are the locations of the school so you have an idea of where each other are from. Mr. Pieraccini and myself thought it might be a good idea to do current events and topics between our two schools across continents and have you share your opinions. Some weeks my students will post there opinions first and other weeks the Hayden students will post first. You will be posting your comments into the comments section. Linked to the site will be the articles or videos or whatever we are working on.


Our first current event and topic is on Government Intervention. Markets are subject to intervention for various reasons by governments from around the world. Sometimes governments will tax goods they deem unhealthy, think cigarettes. Other times they will tax good from other countries before they even get to the consumer, think cars.  Sometimes governments will even try and "correct" or "Fix" the market when they think it needs some help. There are many other ways government intervenes into markets. Right now the debate that is going on in the USA is whether the government should intervene into the economy and try to help job growth and stimulate the economy to get the USA out of a recession or should the government stay out of the natural market and let it take care of and correct the economic recession it self. You have been given two article to read about the recent Jobs Bill trying to get passed by President Obama that deals directly with Government Intervention. 


Here are the articles.

Stimulus for Skeptics

Getting Back to a Grand Bargain


Your questions to respond to are,
1) What are your thoughts about how government intervenes in the markets?


2) Do you think the Jobs Bill will help out the economy. Explain your answer. 


Happy posting. I look forward to reading everyone's comments.