The Lies

                The court is a place were supposedly people don’t lie. You place your hand on the book and you say the oath, promising you won’t do it. Yet so many people lie and become deceptive while on the stand. There is a term for it, Perjury. Telling a lie to the jury happens all the time and it can totally ruin someone’s life and change the outcome of a decision in court.

                Eye witness testimonies and others like it are huge factors when deciding a case. If someone says they say you kill someone, you will likely be tried for murder and possibly convicted just on the one piece of evidence. It is scary that someone has to the power to false convict you of a crime you have never done quite easily. Eye witness testimonies should really have little to zero influence on a case because someone can lie too easily. People cannot have the power to just ruin someone’s life by putting them in jail by just telling a single lie. Sure there is charges against those who do lie in the court room, but how many times have people actually been caught lying? I don’t feel like it happens very much.

                False testimonies also can have a large effect based on generalizations. We have heard it from the Ferguson case and many others, some people are treated unfair and as less in the courtroom than others. In our society, a nice white girl can just say a minority did a crime and a lot of people would believe her. Society has put generalizations on certain groups of people and it isn’t fair at all. Lying and cheating the court room is so much easier if you fit the right demographics. Juries should be totally colorblind, have no preference to gender, and not look at the wealth of a person but we all know that isn’t the case. I feel like setting up some sort of blind system where the jury does not know about the victim or the criminal’s background and demographics. IT seems like the only way right now to make court fair. Our country is devoted to everyone having equal rights but discrimination and generalizations occur, even without us knowing it. So I feel the best way to stop the bias in the courtroom is to make everyone blind to the things that do not matter.  

Punishment 

            

            The punishment of criminals in this country is very controversial, specifically the death penalty. It has been debated for years, there have been cases for it and against it. There are terrible people in this world who probably don’t deserve to be here. But what if they do deserve to be here? What if we kill an innocent which has happened many times before? IS it worth it? Why do we even do it in the first place?

            This is a very dark subject and it’s hard for me to just talk about the lives of people as if I control them so I will try to be very careful in what I say and how I say it in this post. The death penalty has so much controversy in it. You see stories like this or this or this or many other examples. Mistakes happens, false testimonies or bad evidence, it’s terrible and the death penalty can result in the death of people who are completely innocent. The death penalty is permanent, there is no going back on previous mistakes.

            But also consider that some people want that permanent solution, I wouldn’t suggest it but is it torturing criminals by locking them up for the rest of their life? Should the get the option on whether they want to keep living? It depends on who you ask but I think if someone wants to leave after therapy and help, they should be able too. I feel like just giving someone the death penalty if they don’t want to die seems barbaric and not American. Even though there are some awful people in this world, I feel like they can always come back and live a life. They may be in prison their whole lives but living is a blessing and we shouldn’t be taking that away from people, no matter how bad they are. We might lose a bit of money holding these people up for decades but I feel like it is worth it to let people enjoy the gifts given to them at birth.

The System

            I’m going to split this topic into a lot of topics because there is a lot for me to talk about and different areas. This blog I am going to talk about how broken our judicial system is in this country. There are hundreds of laws set to protect us. Our rights, our freedom, and everything is defined in the laws we’ve created over the past 300 years. Laws make our society, tell us what is right and what’s wrong, they are important and shape our country as we know it. It’s scary though that although we have so many rules, they can be so easily manipulated and people can sneak by doing wrong because of our system.

           

            There are so many rules though. It becomes so hard to keep track, sure there is murder, theft, the well known crimes, but there is so many other laws, enforcement and wacky rules that no one enforces or knows about. The judicial system of America is so complex and intricate, it is hard to understand and to me, boring to learn about.

            What ticks me off though is when people are off scot free when they shouldn’t be, or people who are in jail when they shouldn’t be. It happens a lot and in these blogs I want to talk about my opinions on our “broken” America system.

           

            Lets start with money. The American ideals are that every man has the same political and judicial power, no matter how much money they have. Money shouldn’t be a factor in court but it is huge. The rich rule the court room along with our government. We have all heard of lobbying and bribing congress but taking advantage of wealth happens in the judicial branch too. Large business and people with a lot of money can do a lot more than someone with no money. It isn’t American and it isn’t fair. People with money can hire dozens of lawyers and people to help them win. They can put heavy fees on people who can’t afford them. The way lawyers and court fees are run put heavy burden on the underprivileged, which shouldn’t be the case in our society.

            It is sad, I feel like court fees and lawyers should be set up so that they don’t put a financial burden on people who are being attacked or can’t afford it. But I also realize that fees and money make people not sue over everything. Lawyers and the court wants a lot of money and it is what keeps people out of the court room, which is good. But I just seems so unfair that people with all the money can rule the courtroom and avoid the law. Something has to change to where everyone has a fair trial, not just those who have the most money.

Adam Wall

The Few left

            Bengal tigers are amazing. They are majestic and dangerous, everything I like. Populated in eastern Asia, they are depleting quickly though. In India, tigers got as low as only 1400 due to being hunted so much. Poaching was a serious problem in South Eastern Asia with these tigers and they were hunted into extreme endangerment due to they’re amazing furs. There have been rescue programs, reservations and other conservation methods for the tigers to retain their population and species to their former glory. This week, the people of India have giving us great news in that the population of tigers has increased from the 1400 to over 2200 in seven years. This is great news! Tigers are finally repopulating after nearly becoming extinct. The Bengal tiger is finally back in the forest again and efforts to stop the extinction of the tiger are working.

            There are tons of commercials showing sad tigers making us just want to give them all we have to make them stop being sad. There are other non-profit organizations, zoos, and scientists that give a lot of effort to help these majestic and amazing animals. I’m glad to see all the work pay off. I’m glad that after all these commercials and promotions for these beasts, I can see the progress made and what the money actually did for one of these wildlife preserves. It just shows that people do care about the environment and the animals living in it, people want the world to be its former self and not be totally ruled and ruined by humans. Hopefully soon we will start to see endangered animals follow the same route that the Bengal tigers are going.  

Adam Wall

FIFA

            Football, (soccer), dominates our world. Everyone watches it, from villages in Africa to a German pub, everyone loves soccer. It brings the world together. There will be war, disagreements, and hatred but football makes people forget all of that and connect the world through some good old competition. It makes the two teams equal, no matter what country they represent, it’s the same rules and regulations, no one team has an advantage. During the world cup last year for example, the United States the most powerful country in the world faced off against Ghana, a small poor country in western Africa. Ghana almost beat the world power as well. Examples like this make me really enjoy the culture of the game and how it brings the world together.

            The world cup is where all of this comes together. Sure there is the premiere league, Lega Calcio, and the MLS but they are nothing compared to the main event, the world cup. Run by FIfA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the world cup takes place ever four years and has been a tradition for the past 80 years. Countries all over the world come to a host countries stadiums and duke it out for the championship, professional players represent there country and everyone in the world spectates and watches. I love the atmosphere of the world cup. The USA normal doesn’t follow soccer that much but when the world cup comes around, there is patriotism all over the country for supporting our team and this is going on all across the world as well, I love the world cup.

            AS much as I love the world cup, there are still some issues I have with FIFA. The host country has been a huge controversy over the past few years. Brazil and South Africa, the last two countries who held the cup have been under some extremely economic stress. This is especially the case with Brazil who has to host the Olympics as well next year. Brazil spent over fifteen billion dollars on the world cup whether it was new stadiums, roads, buildings, and many other things. All this money is something they didn’t have even before the world cup and now they are facing serious problems with there economy and debt. All this debt and all they got out of it was some fancy stadiums in the middle of the jungle and little bit of tourism. Most countries host the cup for building of new infrastructure such as transportation, government offices, and stadiums for large events such as football and tourism. Sometimes this can be a huge boost for a country but this turns out not to be the case.  These world cups can totally cripple a country for over debt and terrible spending. I don’t know why countries keep bidding for these games when they know that it can totally cripple their country.

            FIFA is also being totally scum. Bidding usually takes place years before where a country says what they can provide for the tournament. More developed countries are usually chosen because they can better hold the games with more infrastructure and stadiums. Lately we seem to see some less developed countries taking the role of being the host. Qatar is the latest country that is now struggling but still decided to take the challenge of being host. Speculated for being picked because they bribed FIFA with oil money, they are now stuck with the 2022 world cup and they aren’t even close to being ready. IT doesn’t make any sense, its 120 degrees there so it will be impossible to play, it’s a strict Muslim country and they have little to no infrastructure. So FIFA being the idiots they are gave these guys the right host and now they’re stuck and trying to figure out if the should move the cup somewhere else. FIFA is so money driven and John Oliver did a great and funny thing on them if you want to learn anymore about the diabolical and terrible company of FIFA. They are ruining the greatest sports event in the world. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I) 

Adam Wall

Exxon Mobile

            I have been talking about oil a lot on this blog. It runs our world though and it’s extremely important to the human race. It runs our lives. This week, oil is again in the news. Oil spills have happened a lot over the past few decades and they destroy environments, they are terrible and whole ecosystems can collapse just because of oil. The Yellowstone River this week had an oil pipeline burst, releasing over 50,000 gallons of oil into the surrounding area. There is more on the spill here. 

            Exxon Mobile has gone through this routine multiple times.  They’ve gone through multiple spills before, such as in 2011 and of course a really devastating spill in 1989. You would think that they would learn there lesson by now but nope, they keep on not being careful with a substance that ruins ecosystems and bad things keep happening. They’ve paid millions of dollars in repairing damages to the environment and ecosystem but it doesn’t seem to harm the company and oil spills still keep happening. The government usually does nothing other than give a small fee to the oil company. No trade or consumer restrictions, no slowing production, just a small fine that is like pocket change to such a large oil company such as Exxon Mobile. The government needs to lay down the law; just these small fines won’t stop spills. By applying harsher penalties on oil companies, we can force them to better protect the environment through better built pipes and better procedures.

Adam Wall

The National Football league

            The NFL is the staple of American culture today. It’s what everyone talks about. It’s all about how their team is doing. It is about their fantasy league, and dreaming of their team finally winning the super bowl. The NFL is at another level when it comes to sports, in America; it dominates the sports world and is the center of attention. Instead of talking sports and football in this blog, I am going to talking about the NFL from a business point of view, the influence they have on our population and their soon to be decline.

           

            The NFL is worth billions and billions of dollars, only the richest of the rich have to chance to own one of these teams. The owners of these teams have a lot of power and money. Along with the teams, millions and billions of dollars are put into advertisement. Commercials, sponsors, merchandise and many other promotions have boosted so many products and businesses. They have such an influence and image created for sports watchers around the world, whether its having a party with friends, beer everywhere and girls dancing all over the place or simply sitting in a recliner, relaxing and watching the NFL. We never realize what a profound impact the NFL has had on a lot of peoples lives, some people don’t like sports but some people let it consume their lives and the NFL tries everything it can to make more and more money and to get peoples lives engrossed in football.

            The NFL, with all the power they have might be losing it though. Football and the American culture are slowly deteriorating and football might face the same fate that boxing had along time ago. The danger of the sport turns away children for their safety. Concussions and brain damage is a serious problem in football. People are running at each other at high speeds with the intention of knocking the lights out of each other, it isn’t safe.  The future of football is not good if kids around the country aren’t playing the game. I don’t think there is anything you can do to make football safer so I think we all just need to start converting to the most popular game in the world, soccer.

            Scandals and legal issues also surround the NFL. I get so mad at owners and the leaders of the NFL because of how they handle situations legally. Lately, Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson are just two examples. The NFL is just so arrogant and so rich, they don’t seem to care about the opinions of their business partners they just want more money. They don’t care that Adrian Peterson beat his kid. They just want him back in the league to make them more money. Money runs the world and it really runs the NFL. This blind disregard for their reputation and so much greed could end up crushing the NFL like kicker being blind-sided by a massive lineman.