LEGALIZING THE GREEN

　
   I agree with legalizing marijuana. Jadamsark from the blog “living around reds makes me blue”, makes a lot of great points to leallize the green. Why not? Like he says by buying and taxing weed the state would raise a substantial amount of revenue that Texas is desperately seeking to close the gap in our budget shortfall. We all know that the Medicaid program is very important to a lot of folks and by no means be dropped. I say this because I have a few family members on Medicaid and they dearly need that program.
   I don’t personally use marijuana, but I know some people that do for medical reasons. They tell me helps with some of the pain, but are afraid of getting caught with and facing serious charges. With that being said I strongly believe in at least legalizing marijuana for medical purpose, just like in Cali. If we were to make weed legal for recreational purposes we have to change the process in how we get hired for jobs and such. They obviously drug test future employees before we are hired. People are biased towards weed, but not so much against alcohol. More people die under the influence of alcohol than marijuana by a landslide. However, we are not going to make alcohol illegal because of the money the state profits off of it and its taxes. Also like he says the Texas would generate 14 billion dollars over the next 2 years, half the projected deficit. So economically it would make sense especially to all these powerful rich folks that look and care about money. If I was in congress I would be impressed and somewhat persuaded by his blog and at least give this some kind of consideration.

How can you tell when an Aggie policy is absurd?

   Dan Malone was a reporter for most of the Dallas, Fort Worth newspaper, where he built his work mostly around the Texas Public Information Act, now is a journalism instructor at Tarleton State University. He is teaching his students how to get public information.
   Texas A&M system governors Tarleton are saying that this could be a firing offense, because faculty members are not suppose to direct students to request public information from any system component. However, students in the A&M System can file open records requests on their own. Also a faculty member is allowed file a request as a private citizen, but cannot tell a student to request to open a files that is paying for an education.
    This conflicts with the letter and spirit of the 1973 Texas Public Information Act.
Tarleton State President F. Dominic Dottavio took the novel step of asking the A&M System's general counsel whether an instructor could direct students to use the law at all. Of course the answer was NO. This is unless the students are requesting records from UT or Texas Tech.
  A professor in the A&M System could be fired for assigning students to ask for the general counsel's letter to Dottavio, even though it could inform classroom debate of absurd public policies. The Austin American-Statesman reported that the rule behind the policy dates to 1997. That's well before the 2006 Tarleton news release touting Malone's hiring, saying he'd help the school's journalism program "significantly."
Also before the U.S. Education Department fined Tarleton $27,500 for not accurately reporting campus crime, a problem exposed when one of Malone's students in 2006 sought after records required under the federal Clery Act.
   There is probably an Aggie joke in this business somewhere. However, not to funny.
Tarleton and the A&M System could defiantly correct these issues to open government. It would be smart for the Legislature to help these students out by allowing them to be able to there research by being able to open records as well for the teachers to assist them.