Please add your article links or textbook passages to the comments section below. You are not allowed to duplicate any article or passage found by yourself or another student. The first source posted will be counted. These articles and quotations will be added to the group concept map.
Please add your article links or textbook passages to the comments section below. You are not allowed to duplicate any article or passage found by yourself or another student. The first source posted will be counted. These articles and quotations will be added to the group concept map.
Looking at other states, give us an ideal outcome or goal for your design challenge using real world examples. Be sure to tell us why the ideal system works better than what we have in Texas. I believe that you cant really call another cities transportation ideal just because it works better than what we have at home. however there certainly are other parts of the country that have sufficient access to public transportation and make it easier than what we sadly have in our largest cities in Texas. Take for example New York city. with around 4.3 million people using its subway lines each day that amounts to a vast majority of the cities population using a convenient public system of transportation. with he recent implementation of policies set by the state the MTA of new York is planning to switch and upgrade more efficient train cars. https://www.ny.gov/help-improve-new-York-city’s-subway-service/increasing-capacity-and-reliability-subway-system. The improvement in signaling systems would increase the number of trains at peak periods. obviously the new York subway lines aren’t perfect but the steps that they are taking in making it better to serve a population greater than what we have here in Houston shows potential that we could have a similar…
In an ideal world, Texas legislature would put into place reasonable and effective laws that would prevent the funneling of major money through our political system; Currently, there is no such movement. Although Texas may not be fighting the ‘campaign finance’ fight, there is always hope and insight that can help better our state, such as political strides in neighboring states. In recent 2019, the state of Colorado implemented three new laws supporting campaign finance restrictions and leading our country in the major fight against corruption in politics. Adequately represented by the social sector of our group concept map, Colorado agreed on the implementation of the “Clean Campaign Act” based off the views of their people and understanding of corruption within this political sector. Colorado’s new implementation of these laws put them ahead of other states, such as Texas, because they are beginning to put in motion important acts that will prevent major corruption of money in politics. The photo above represents what is important to most states, such as Texas. Your vote is irrelevant when there is money involved. Colorado is making it harder for contributors to buy legislation and politicians. As previously stated, I believe Colorado’s strides toward…
Many other states in this country have different motives of handling a situation however, Texas has a tendency to minimize the problems rather than resolving it. Most of my argument of this topic has to do with how is Texas handling voting laws compared to the state of Oregon? As we know, Texas is kind of an unusual state but I do think that it’s kinda of hard to maneuver in terms of voting meanwhile, in Oregon it’s as easy as it could be. I can recall back to the concept map and say that this is most likely a resources issue mainly to due with the lack of funding that is needed or the lack of voting machines that are required. Another thing that this could be a social status issue mainly to do with the many locations that many people of color cannot reach. The graphic above shows the results of the previous 2016 election and within it shows how easy it is to vote in Oregon compared to the other states such as Texas. In this site https://qz.com/1439299/here-are-the-states-where-its-hardest-to-vote/ it ranks the states based on how easy it is voting since 1998 and this ties into my argument…
There are many reasons on why our “ideal system” doesn’t necessarily benefit everyone, especially minority groups. One of the main goals that our Texas political system should strive to achieve is to provide a menu of choices for citizens’ voices in decision making. A lot of citizens are very outspoken in their opinions, but what about the people who may not have as much privilege as others to speak up? The state of Oregon has shown a lot of attempt to motivate its public officials and employees to engage with its citizens. Therefore, data and statistics have shown that Oregon citizens, specifically who have a lot of disadvantages, are now more recently getting their voices heard because of the reform Automatic Voter Registration (AVR). You will see, in this argument, AVR has had a huge improvement in voting rates for all citizens in the states that choose to exercise it. Regarding the concept map, this argument mostly fits into social maps and mental maps. By organizing our elections more efficiently, this would definitely benefit the voting system and overall political system by making it easier for more people to able to participate overall, especially concerning the ability to protest by…
Making Changes Over the years Texas has been known to rank amongst the bottom states in voter turnout. Why has Texas continued struggle to increase voting participation, is it a lack of resources or a lack of effort? While states such have seen increases in youth and minority voter turnout and are still looking for ways to increase. Colorado has continued to target youth voters. A bill was added to the Colorado Votes Act which extended voting hours, added mail-ballot drop boxes, and even added in-person polling centers on college campuses. In the beginning stages of the bill, few had objections towards it seeing how to meet the requirements for additional voting locations and extending voting hours would cost the counties at least $6 million. Rep. Susan Lontine offered a series of amendments in response which in turn slashed the price of the bill to about $2 million. Once the bill was passed “in 2018 41% of Colorado 18-29-year-olds voted, which was a 13% increase from the year prior.” https://www.cpr.org/2019/04/24/youth-voter-turnout-is-already-ridiculously-high-in-colorado-state-house-democrats-want-it-even-higher/ One of the main ways Texas could increase voter turnout is first getting more eligible voters registered. Other states have seen success with Automatic Voter Registrations, which makes citizens automatically…
California does a better job than Texas of incentivizing citizens to use alternatives to driving, allocating its budget to transportation infrastructure, and passing legislation that supports environmentally safe practices. California’s legislation addresses the issue of directing resources to developing public transportation and other infrastructure, while Texas constantly passes laws to fund new road projects. This difference in legislation reflects differing public mentalities on how to solve the issue of transportation and its impact on the environment. Chapter 10.1 Interest Groups in Texas defines interest groups as “formal associations of individuals or organizations that attempt to influence public policy” often through lobbying. It should be noted that California has more registered environmental interest groups than Texas in 2020. Some of these interest groups use their influence to affect legislation by forming groups labeled political action committees (PACs) that may receive and donate unlimited amounts of money to state and local campaigns, which is called electioneering (Chapter 10.3 How Interest Groups Influence Texas Government). According to a summary of the money raised in California for the 2020 election cycle, the total raised was $431 million. 67.8% funded the Democrats while 28.2% funded the Republicans. There…
As the amount of traffic percentage continues to rise many Houstonians have an issue trying to create ways in order to reduce the amount of congestion in the traffic as it can lead to longer queue times and create many human frustration. Houston is the 4th largest city in the United states but it is considered to be the 7th heaviest in traffic congestion with a 5th ranking on the amount of time spent on the road by 52 hours. As the city continues to grow the traffic congestion will also begin to grow. Even though traffic congestion is something that should not be stopped completely, we can try to reduce the amount of traffic by looking at other states and their rules and regulations. Cities such as Los Angeles and or Newyork are considered to have the most congested streets among the whole entire US but the amount of ideas that many of these cities are doing could be very helpful to Houston especially with Houston being a growing city it can postpone the traffic congestion. The 4th most congested city in the United States is New York with a population of 8.222 millions almost 3 to 4 times…
The impact roads have in our society are very important, in 2018 17,370,383 people in Texas had a valid drivers license. In recent years, the amount of households who own a car have risen, there are about 22 million registered vehicles here in Texas. Meaning that not only there is a lot of space being taken by these vehicles that cause congestion in traffic, but there are Environmental effects that these vehicles do to the environment. Problems like fuel emissions, greenhouse gases that effect the athmosphere, battery acids and they also consume more fuel. There are many ways to put an impact on these issues and there are other states and cities such as Seattle, Washington and Vermont who are battling these problems head on. This chart counts: Workers 16 years and over In recent research, the state of Vermont has ranked #1 as most Environmental. It turns out that Vermont along with other nine states have taken initiative into tackling carbon emissions from transportation vehicles. Which made me ask another question. If over half of the people in Texas drive a car, how do people in the state of Vermont get to work? According to the Burlington Free Press in…
